d
to make its way. To re-assert the dignity and usefulness of the
beautiful arts was, {432} perhaps, the chief service which the
Massachusetts Unitarians rendered to humanism. The traditional
prejudice of the Puritans against the ornamental side of life had to be
softened before polite literature could find a congenial atmosphere in
New England. In Channing's _Remarks on National Literature_, reviewing
a work published in 1823, he asks the question, "Do we possess what may
be called a national literature?" and answers it, by implication at
least, in the negative. That we do now possess a national literature
is in great part due to the influence of Channing and his associates,
although his own writings, being in the main controversial and,
therefore, of temporary interest, may not themselves take rank among
the permanent treasures of that literature.

1. Washington Irving. Knickerbocker's History of New York. The Sketch
Book. Bracebridge Hall. Tales of a Traveler. The Alhambra. Life of
Oliver Goldsmith.

2. James Fenimore Cooper. The Spy. The Pilot. The Red Rover. The
Leather-Stocking Tales.

3. Daniel Webster. Great Speeches and Orations. Boston: Little,
Brown, & Co. 1879.

4. William Ellery Channing. The Character and Writings of John Milton.
The Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte. Slavery. [Vols. I. and
II. of the Works of William E. Channing. Boston: James Munroe & Co.
1841.]

{433}

5. Joseph Rodman Drake. The Culprit Fay. The American Flag.
[Selected Poems. New York. 1835.]

6. Fitz-Greene Halleck. Marco Bozzaris. Alnwick Castle. On the
Death of Drake. [Poems. New York. 1827.]

[1] Compare Carlyle's Herr Diogenes Teufelsdroeckh, in _Sartor
Resartus_, the author of the famous "Clothes Philosophy."

{434}

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONCORD WRITERS.

1837-1861.

There has been but one movement in the history of the American mind
which has given to literature a group of writers having coherence
enough to merit the name of a school. This was the great humanitarian
movement, or series of movements, in New England, which, beginning in
the Unitarianism of Channing, ran through its later phase in
Transcendentalism, and spent its last strength in the antislavery
agitation and the enthusiasms of the Civil War. The second stage of
this intellectual and social revolt was Transcendentalism, of which
Emerson wrote, in 1842: "The history of genius and of religion in th