cently
appeared; and so had a small duodecimo volume by Bryant, containing "The
Ages," and half a dozen smaller poems. Miss Sedgwick's "New England Tale"
was published about the same time. But a large proportion of those who are
now regarded as our ablest writers were as yet unknown, or just beginning
to give sign of what they were. Dr. Channing was already distinguished as
an eloquent and powerful preacher, but the general public had not yet
recognized in him that remarkable combination of loftiness of thought with
magic charm of style, which was soon to be revealed in his essays on
Milton and Napoleon Bonaparte. Ticknor and Everett were professors in
Harvard College, giving a new impulse to the minds of the students by
their admirable lectures; and the latter was also conducting the "North
American Review." Neither had as yet attained to anything more than a
local reputation. Prescott, a gay and light-hearted young man,--gay and
light-hearted, in spite of partial blindness,--the darling of society and
the idol of his home, was silently and resolutely preparing himself for
his chosen function by a wide and thorough course of patient study.
Bancroft was in Germany, and working like a German. Emerson was a Junior
in College. Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and Poe were
school-boys; Mrs. Stowe was a school-girl; Whipple and Lowell were in the
nursery, and Motley and the younger Dana had not long been out of it.

"Precaution," though an indifferent novel, was yet a novel; of the
orthodox length, with plot, characters, and incidents; and here and there
a touch of genuine power, as in the forty-first chapter, where the scene
is on board a man-of-war bringing her prizes into port. It found many
readers, and excited a good deal of curiosity as to who the author might
be.

"Precaution" was published on the 25th of August, 1820, and "The Spy" on
the 17th of September, 1821. The second novel was a great improvement upon
the first, and fairly took the public by storm. We are old enough to
remember its first appearance; the eager curiosity and keen discussion
which it awakened; the criticism which it called forth; and, above all,
the animated delight with which it was received by all who were young or
not critical. Distinctly, too, can we recall the breathless rapture with
which we hung over its pages, in those happy days when the mind's appetite
for books was as ravenous as the body's for bread-and-butter, and a novel,
w