ould choose the
first vigorous epoch of New England Puritanism, say from 1630 to 1676;
then, the epoch of the great Virginians, say from 1766 to 1789; and
finally the epoch of distinctly national feeling, in which New England
and the West were leaders, between 1830 and 1865. Those three
generations have been the most notable in the three hundred years since
the permanent settlements began. Each of them has revealed, in a noble
fashion, the political, ethical, and emotional traits of our people;
and although the first two of the three periods concerned themselves
but little with literary expression of the deep-lying characteristics
of our stock, the expression is not lacking. Thomas Hooker's sermon on
the "Foundation of Political Authority," John Winthrop's grave advice
on the "Nature of Liberty," Jefferson's "Declaration," Webster's "Reply
to Hayne," Lincoln's "Inaugurals," are all fundamentally American.
They are political in their immediate purpose, but, like the speeches
of Edmund Burke, they are no less literature because they are concerned
with the common needs and the common destiny. Hooker and Winthrop wrote
before our formal national existence began; Jefferson, at the hour of
the nation's birth; and Lincoln, in the day of its sharpest trial. Yet,
though separated from one another by long intervals of time, the
representative figures of the three epochs, English in blood and
American in feeling, are not so unlike as one might think. A thorough
grasp of our literature thus requires--and in scarcely less a degree
than the mastery of one of the literatures of Europe--a survey of a
long period, the search below the baffling or contradictory surface of
national experience for the main drift of that experience, and the
selection of the writers, of one generation after another, who have
given the most fit and permanent and personalized expression to the
underlying forces of the national life.

There is another preliminary word which needs no less to be said. It
concerns the question of international influences upon national
literature. Our own generation has been taught by many events that no
race or country can any longer live "to itself." Internationalism is in
the very atmosphere: and not merely as regards politics in the narrowed
sense, but with reference to questions of economics, sociology, art,
and letters. The period of international isolation of the United
States, we are rather too fond of saying, closed with t