ASSOCIATIONS; LITERATURE.

407

age and facilitate reading and study. Many libraries have been founded by private beneficence, such as the Newberry Library, Chicago; the Astor Library, New York; and the Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore. Others have been started or supported by the people, as the Public Libraries of Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, and of Cincinnati and many other places.

The spirit of investigation has shown itself from time to time in the United States by the formation of many societies whose purpose is to encourage study and research by publishing reports, by mutual interchange of views, and in other ways. The oldest of these, the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, is still in active operation. Another body, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1848), holding its annual meeting at a different place each year, has done much to increase local interest in the subjects brought before it.

The Smithsonian Institution at Washington founded in accordance with the bequest of a wealthy Englishman, is almost a government institution; it has done much to further the advancement of science by the publication and distribution of scientific books and papers.

Since 1876 the increase in the number of associations formed for the encouragement of special lines of research is remarkable, and nearly all branches of knowledge are represented.

439. Literature. --During the earlier years of the American colonies there was little time to devote to anything which was not obviously practical in its application, and consequently the purely literary man was almost unknown. To Το the colonists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries two subjects, however, were of transcendent importance, religion and politics; and works on these two subjects were

abundant, particularly in the field of politics. The political pamphlets and addresses issued from the colonial press of the eighteenth century are not surpassed in vigor by those published in England, or, indeed, upon the continent of Europe, during the same period. The names of John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington are deservedly held in high esteem for their writings in this field.

General literature was at a low ebb for a long time, and it was not until Charles Brockden Brown published his novels during the last years of the eighteenth century, that there was much indication of a literature that could be called American. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), with his

"Thanatopsis" (1817), was the forerunner of poets soon to follow. The founding of The North American Review (1815) was also an indication of a change. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), who published his first novel in 1821, showed not only that America could produce writers, but that in the new world were scenes and characters admirably fitted for their pen. Washington Irving (1783-1859), by his graceful essays and sketches and his pure English, did much to raise the estimation in which American literature was held, both at home and abroad. About 1840 new writers came into prominence: among them Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), whose works are familiar the land over, and also John Greenleaf Whittier

EDGAR A. POE.

GENERAL LITERATURE.

409

(1807-1892), the Quaker poet, whose ballads and poems of nature are truly American in subject and in sympathy. Oliver Wendell Holmes (born

in 1809), the genial essayist, humorist, and poet; James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), the satirist, the critic, and the poet; Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864), America's greatest romancer; Edgar Allan Poe (1811-1849), the author of weird poems and romances; Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882), the philosopher, poet, and essayist,

showed that in

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

purely literary work America

was accomplishing much. George Bancroft (1800-1891), with his History of the United States, the first volume of

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

which was published in 1834;

William H. Prescott (17961859), with his histories of the Spanish power in Spain and in the New World; Richard Hildreth (1807-1865), with his History of the United States; John Lothrop Motley (18141877), with his works on the Netherlands; Francis Parkman (1823-1893), with his series of volumes on "France and England in North Amershow that in the field of America take a high

rank. It would be equally true to make similar statements in regard to all departments of knowledge, in all of which the writers of America now take their stand alongside of those of Europe.

One of the striking features of the recent literature of the United States is the appearance of many able writers in the

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

southern states who have entered

every field and whose novels and dialect stories are written in a style peculiarly their own.

The magazines of the United States, of which Harper's, The Century, and Scribner's are examples, lead the world in beauty of execution and of illustration, and largely through the encouragement of their publishers the American wood-engraver has attained a position unsurpassed.

The newspapers of America have multiplied wonderfully, and their scope has been widened until in the daily press almost every subject that is likely to interest readers is treated of by specialists, while at the same time no pains or expense is spared to furnish the latest and most accurate news. The great dailies of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston are marvels of enterprise.

CHAPTER XXI.

SOCIAL AFFAIRS; POLITICS; DIPLOMACY.

REFERENCES.

General. - Appleton's Annual Cyclopædias; E. B. Andrews, The History of the Last Quarter-Century in the United States, 1870-1895, finely illustrated (this work is a panorama of events rather than a history); The Statesman's Year Book; The Tribune Almanacs; The World Almanacs; Review of Reviews; Current History; Political Science Quarterly, Review of Political Events in June and December of each year; the current periodicals.

440. Wilson Bill; Senate Bill. (1894.) A part of the Democratic programme after the success in the elections of 1892 (Sect. 426) was the revision of the tariff. At the first session of the fifty-third Congress William L. Wilson, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, introduced a new Tariff Bill, called "An Act to Reduce Taxation and Provide Revenue for the Government, and for Other Purposes." Its important features were the extensive use of the principle of ad valorem duties,1 the general reduction in rates, and a tax on all incomes exceeding $4000. When the act came before the Senate it was discussed at length, and was very much altered. This "Senate Bill," as it is properly called, was finally accepted by the House of Representatives. The President was unwilling to veto the bill, and thus leave the McKinley tariff in force, and yet he could not sign it without approving measures against which

1 Duties levied according to the value of the goods.