o have been more favorable to poetry and literary idealism than
present conditions are. At all events there are no new poets who rank
with Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and others of the elder generation,
although George H. Boker, in Philadelphia, R. H. Stoddard and E. C.
Stedman, in New York, and T. B. Aldrich, first in New York and afterward
in Boston, have written creditable verse; not to speak of younger
writers, whose work, however, for the most part, has been more
distinguished by delicacy of execution than by native impulse. Mention
has been made of the establishment of _Harper's Monthly Magazine_, which,
under the conduct of its accomplished editor, George W. Curtis, has
provided the public with an abundance of good reading. The {575} old
_Putnam's Monthly_, which ran from 1853 to 1858, and had a strong corps
of contributors, was revived in 1868, and continued by that name till
1870, when it was succeeded by _Scribner's Monthly_, under the editorship
of Dr. J. G. Holland, and this in 1881 by the _Century_, an efficient
rival of _Harper's_ in circulation, in literary excellence, and in the
beauty of its wood engraving, the American school of which art these two
great periodicals have done much to develop and encourage. Another New
York monthly, the _Galaxy_, ran from 1866 to 1878, and was edited by
Richard Grant White. During the present year a new _Scribner's Magazine_
has also taken the field. The _Atlantic_, in Boston, and _Lippincott's_,
in Philadelphia, are no unworthy competitors with these for public favor.

During the forties began a new era of national expansion, somewhat
resembling that described in a former chapter, and, like that, bearing
fruit eventually in literature. The cession of Florida to the United
States in 1845, and the annexation of Texas in the same year, were
followed by the purchase of California in 1847, and its admission as a
State in 1850. In 1849 came the great rush to the California gold
fields. San Francisco, at first a mere collection of tents and board
shanties, with a few adobe huts, grew with incredible rapidity into a
great city; the wicked and wonderful city apostrophized by Bret Harte in
his poem, _San Francisco_:

{576}

"Serene, indifferent of Fate,
Thou sittest at the Western Gate;
Upon thy heights so lately won
Still slant the banners of the sun. . . .
I know thy cunning and thy greed,
Thy hard, high lust and willful deed."

The adventurers of