Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/779

 -isoo] Changes in New England. Whitman. Harte. 747 been defining its native character under the rigid influence of Puritan theology. When the Revolution awakened it to its final sense of nationality, the strength of formal Puritanism was broken. A certain disintegration ensued. So long as the generations were alive which had grown to consciousness under the conservative influences of the older time, the expression of New England retained at once the idealism and the aspiration toward ideal excellence, of every kind, which had been the saving grace of the Fathers. Then, in course of time, Unitarianism lapsed into uncontrolled freedom of devout thought, and so into such vagaries that, as we have seen, prudent folk have been apt to recoil into the arms of Churches more rigidly ecclesiastical than those of their fore- fathers. So, while the literature of New England once seemed a pro- phecy of some newly-enfranchised future, it is beginning to reveal itself rather as the record of an ideal and innocent past. And, all the while, the disintegrated region from which it sprang has been tending to lapse more and more into provincial isolation. The subsequent literature of America is contemporary. Its chief centre is undoubtedly New York, where the principal publishers of the country are now settled, and where the most widely circulated magazines are established. It is hardly excessive, however, to say that the only writer, no longer living, who has achieved in that region a reputation comparable with that achieved by the eminent writers of New England is Walt Whitman. To many, particularly abroad, he appears deeply and prophetically American. To most Americans his rude eccentricities of thought and phrase appear so far from characteristic of their country, that, while admitting him to possess some touch of genius, they are apt to think of him as a sporadic anarchist. To name the writers and to discuss the literary tendencies of the present day would be out of place here. Of the numberless writers of local short stories who have sprung up throughout the country, none has yet surpassed the first to declare himself Bret Harte, who so vividly set forth certain picturesque aspects of the American conquest of the Pacific slope. Like him, the most popular living American writers have generally emerged from the ranks of popular journalism. It is hard to summarise the modern American temper; and it is harder still to summarise the literary history at whose course we have so hastily glanced. Yet, on the whole, this seems analogous to the legal and the philosophical history on which we touched before. The country whose thoughts and aspirations it has expressed is a country animated by more than common devotion to ideals the conceptions which are matters not of knowledge, but of fervent faith. It is a country, at the same time, which has been brought by historical necessity face to face with innumerable practical questions, which have had to be settled swiftly. Its precept has consequently soared above its practice, until to strangers it may well seem hypocritical. Its saving grace has been CH. XXIII.