ommon roadways, found consolation in speculative philosophy and
romantic literature. The _North American Review_ was already fifteen
years old, and the best minds of the country were happy to have their
thought and inspirations printed in its staid columns. Boston was a
state of mind in 1830, and a good Methodist preacher who visited the
city a little later lamented the lapse from the great virtues and the
great theology of the Mathers.

But outside of Boston and its university suburb, there was little
patience with a new religion or with a theology which did not teach the
world the total depravity of man and the vengeance of an angry Deity
consigning his wayward children to everlasting perdition. Southern
gentlemen like Calhoun or Hayne might accept the mild and humane God of
Channing, but not the farmers of the rural districts or the business men
of the small towns.

If Boston cultivated philosophy and religious reform, New York was the
seat of a literature that was read. Washington Irving, the author of
the _Sketch-Book_ and _Tales of a Traveller_, was just returning from a
long and triumphant literary sojourn in Europe to make his home on the
Hudson. James Fenimore Cooper was publishing his _Leather Stocking
Tales_, which have made the hair on so many boys' heads stand on end.
William Cullen Bryant was making the _New York Evening Post_ the organ
of American culture and setting the pace for the better element of the
press. In Philadelphia, Carey and Lea were alternately publishing the
writings of struggling literary lights and fiery pamphlets on the tariff
and internal improvements. In 1832 John Pendleton Kennedy, of Maryland,
published his _Swallow Barn_, a novel which portrayed the easy-going
life of the Virginia planters; and in Richmond, William Wirt, disgusted
with Western politics, rested on his laurels as the author of the
_British Spy_ and the _Life of Patrick Henry_. To match the _North
American Review_ the Charleston lovers of literature were publishing
their excellent _Southern Review_. Even history was not without her
muses. Reverend Jared Sparks was editing all the crudities of grammar
and errors of spelling out of Washington's fourteen volumes of
correspondence; George Ticknor, a young professor at Harvard, was
beginning the work which was to culminate in his famous _History of
Spanish Literature_; and George Bancroft was writing a _History of the
United States_ which was to win him international fame