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Mrs. Maria Brooks (1795-1845).-Pronounced by Southey "the most impassioned and most imaginative of all poetesses." Her chief poem is Zophiel; or, The Bride of Seven.

2. PROSE-WRITERS.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).-One of the greatest philosophers and statesmen of his age. Rose from a tallowchandler's boy to some of the highest positions under the government. Among his chief works are his Autobiography, his Essays, etc.

John Adams (1735-1826).—Second President of the United States. Educated at Harvard. One of the framers of the Declaration of Independence. Author of many political and state papers.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826).—Third President of the United States. A great scholar and statesman. Author of Notes on Virginia. Wrote also the "Declaration of Indpendence."

Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745–1813).—A medical writer of great reputation. Educated at Princeton. Author of Medical Inquiries and Observations and many miscellaneous essays.

Lindley Murray (1745-1826).-Author of the first English Grammar; also of the English Reader. Wrote also a number of poems. Born near Swatara, Pennsylvania.

Hugh H. Brackenridge (1748-1816).—An eminent politician and judge. Educated at Princeton. Was also a minister. Author of Modern Chivalry and other works.

Timothy Dwight (1752–1817).—Both a poet and a theologian. Educated at Yale. Became President of Yale College. His chief prose work is Theology Explained and Defended. Among his best poems are Columbia and Greenfield Hill.

John Witherspoon (1722-1794).-One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Became President of Princeton College in 1768. Educated at Edinburgh. Author of Essays on Important Subjects and other works.

Dr. David Ramsay (1749-1815).-An historian of the Revolution. Educated at Princeton. Resided mostly in South Carolina. Author of History of South Carolina, History of the United States, Life of Washington, etc.

James Madison (1751-1836).-Fourth President of the United

States. Celebrated as a statesman. Educated at Princeton. His chief literary works are his papers in The Federalist.

Alexander Wilson (1766-1813).—-An ornithologist. Born in Scotland. Wrote both prose and poetry. Author of an extended work on ornithology.

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810).—The first American Govelist. He was of Quaker descent. Wrote Wieland, Alarin, Arthur Mervyn, etc.

Archibald Alexander (1772-1851).—A distinguished theologian. Became President of Hampden-Sidney College. Was for thirty-eight years Professor of Theology at Princeton. Author of Evidences of Christian Religion, History of the Israelitish Nation, etc.

John Marshall (1755-1835).—A celebrated jurist. Chief-justice of the United States. Author of The Life of Washington. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804).—A soldier, statesman, and jurist. Secretary of the Treasury under Washington. Was killed in a duel by Aaron Burr. His literary fame rests on his contributions to The Federalist.

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William Wirt (1772–1834).—An American lawyer. general of the United States from 1817 to 1829. Letters of a British Spy and Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry.

John J. Audubon (1780-1851).-Celebrated as a writer on ornithology. His chief work is The Birds of America, in four volumes.

Judge James Kent (1763–1847).—Distinguished as a writer on law. Educated at Yale. Wrote Commentaries on American Law.

James K. Paulding (1779-1860).-—Secretary of the Navy under President Van Buren. Author of The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham, Westward Ho! and many other works.

Joseph Story (1779-1845).-A celebrated American jurist. Educated at Harvard. Became a judge of the United States Supreme Court. Author of Commentary on the Constitution of the United States and many treatises on legal matters.

Washington Allston (1779-1843).-Celebrated as artist, poet, and prose-writer. Author of The Sylphs of the Seasons, Romance of Monaldi, Lectures on Art, etc.

THE NATIONAL PERIOD.

1830 to the Present Time

FROM 1830 onward America has shown a rapid lite rary development such as was never before known in her history. Libraries have rapidly increased; the newspapers and other periodicals have added largely to the dissemination of knowledge; a healthy literary sentiment has grown up; a literary atmosphere has been created which has proved congenial to authorship; and an active demand for more and better reading-matter has developed the talent of American writers. As a result, works of great merit both in prose and in poetry have been produced with great rapidity, and book-making has become one of the recognized industries of our country.

To give an account of all the writers of merit that represent the National Period of our literature would be impossible. The following are therefore selected as representatives, the other chief writers being included under the head of "Contemporaneous Writers:"

1. Poets-Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes.
2. Historians-Bancroft, Prescott, Motley.
3. Essayists Channing, Emerson, Lowell.
4. Novelists-Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne.

. Journalists-Curtis, Willis.

6. Miscellaneous Writers-Taylor, Holland, Mit chell.

7. Orators-Webster, Everett.

4. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT,

1794-1878.

His

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, one of America's greatest poets, was born at Cummington, Hampshire county, Massachusetts, on the 3d of November, 1794. father, who was a physician, was a man of considerable literary culture, and, it is said, taught his son "the value of correctness and compression, and enabled him to distinguish between true poetic enthusiasm and fustian." Bryant gave evidence of his poetic ability in very early life, having written verses when but nine years of age. At the age of ten, we are informed, he wrote a little poem which was spoken at school, and which was afterward published in a county newspaper.

The Embargo, which was his first published volume, was written when he was but fourteen. It was published in Boston in 1809.

Bryant was educated at Williams College, which he left without taking his degree, and began the study of law. After having been admitted to the bar he practiced his profession for a year at Plainfield, and then at Great Barrington, Mass., but in 1825 he abandoned the law for literature, which he made his profession for life.

He first edited the New York Review and Athenæum Magazine, a monthly periodical, which in the following year was merged in a new work of similar character called The United States Review and Literary Gazette, of which also Bryant became editor. In 1826 he became editor of the New York Evening Post, which position he held to the time of his death, in 1878.

Bryant's celebrity as a poet was established by Thanatopsis, published in 1816, but written when the author was only eighteen years of age. This exquisite poem was published in the North American Review, and at once attracted great attention. It immediately placed its author in the foremost rank of American poets-an honorable place which he has ever since maintained.

His next notabie attempt was his poem, The Ages, delivered at Harvard in 1821. Many of Bryant's bestknown poems appeared in the periodicals of which he was editor, though others were contributed to other periodicals of the day. He was also a prose-writer of great force, having a clear, concise style, which characterized every article he wrote, and with which neither hurry, excitement, nor the press of business was permitted to interfere.

Among Bryant's best works are his poems, Thanatopsis, The Death of the Flowers, Forest Hymn, The Evening Wind, Green River, Song of the Saviour, The Planting of the Apple Tree, Waiting at the Gate, and The Flood of Years.

In addition to his editorials in the Post, his chief prose works were his contributions to the Talisman, Letters of a Traveler, and an excellent translation of Homer, in four volumes.

Bryant, like Wordsworth, was a poet of Nature, and by some he has been styled "the American Wordsworth," though in purity of diction and dignity and elegance of style he is very much superior to his Eng. lish compeer.

Bryant's country home for many years of the latter part of his life was at Roslyn, on Long Island, a picturesque spot affording in itself excellent themes for the poet. He died on the 12th of June, 1878, from the effects of a stroke which he received just after having delivered an oration in Central Park, New York, on the

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