Ward and Mark Twain are the best rep- event. Tucker's "Partisan Leader: an resentatives? In one sense, it is true, Apocalypse of the Origin and Struggles Sam Slick, the clockmaker, is the parent of the Southern Confederacy," published of Artemus Ward, the showman. But in 1836, narrates with remarkable prethe form of literature which is represented science the break-up of the republic, and in both books the humorous drama the struggle between the North and the with a single character in different situa. South. Tucker foretells how the Southtions is one which American humorists ern States broke off from the union and have made peculiarly their own. Though formed a Southern Confederacy; how the credit of the invention may belong to Virginia and the frontier States wavered Judge Haliburton, the original stock has between North and South, and finally sebeen so modified that it is now essentially ceded when the Northern States raised American. If we wished to prove the "an army of observation "on the pretext limitations which we indicated in the in- of fearing attack. He insists on the adtellectual as well as the physical equip- vantages in point of material which the ment of American writers, we should seek South possessed over the North, and on our evidence in the humorists of the New the encouragement to hope for armed World. But we are abashed by the fact assistance which the sympathy of Great that the most clownish of their capers are Britain afforded the Confederates. It was more admired by Englishmen than by obvious to many besides Tucker that the Americans. The form chosen for the conflagration was advancing. The heat humorous display is exactly fitted for keen was sensibly felt. The coming crisis observers of superficial peculiarities and showed itself in social and political Utoridiculous situations, who are also defi- pias, in vague dissatisfaction with existing cient in the powers of creating characters conditions, in a restless spirit of religious or constructing plots. In the single-figure exploration, in wild beatings against the dramas neither plot nor character is need- barriers of the unseen world, in the hy ed. Dealing largely in hyperbole or exag- sterical sentimentalism and fantastic idealgeration of facts, relying for effect upon ism of a species of fictitious literature, the assumption of simplicity or the affec- which owed its popularity to its appeals tation of modesty, American humor is de- to highly strung, excited, nervous society. ficient in depth and pathos, wanting in The book, which, in more than a literary broad comicality, heartiness, and geniality. sense, gave the signal for the struggle, At its best the national humor is little could only have produced its effect at a more than lively, keenly discriminating, time of strained tension. At the present caricature, often resting on a basis of seri- day its interest is rather historic than inous earnestness. Coarsely drawn, hard-trinsic. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" appealed hitting pictures exhibit in exaggerated by its vigorous, highly colored pictures to outline, softened by no depth and shade a people which had been gradually worked of tenderness, a rapid, condensed vigor, and a remarkable power of producing the required effect by the smallest. possible number of touches. But no mechanical aids to absurdity, in the shape of fantastic spelling or unexpected turns, will prevent these rough-and-ready sketches from frequently degenerating into buffoonery or blasphemy. They present a marked contrast to the easy finish and unstudied refinement of the best humorists of the Old World. Easy without being finished, they are unstudied but not refined. They are, in many cases, hasty charcoal sketches scrawled upon the walls of society to please the casual passers-by.

When Hawthorne's last great novel was published, America was already nearing that tremendous conflagration which was to purge the national character of much of its dross and slag, weld the people into a united nation, and inaugurate a national literature. Men had long expected the

up to the highest pitch of impressionable sensibility. Topsy is the only first-rate character in the book, and she is a black diamond. Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair are painted with the sentimental vulgarity which characterizes Dickens or Warren in their treatment of ladies and gentlemen. Eva is an exaggerated Little Nell. There is no compacted consistency in the work. Scenes and situations, often powerfully treated in themselves, might be extracted without affecting the so-called plot. But in, and behind, the authoress moves a tenth wave of moral sentiment which, consciously or unconsciously, sweeps through the book. "Uncle Tom's Cabin " hit the nail on the head. Whether the details were, or were not, true, their collection into the experiences of an individual gave a false and exaggerated view of the evils of slavery. On the other hand, Mrs. Stowe was abundantly justified in her method when she showed the abuses

1

which were at least possible, and the enormities that the system legalized.

"Surry of Eagle's Nest," "Mohun, or the Last Days of Lee and his Paladins." With the conclusion of the war between Different episodes in the struggle have North and South, American fiction enters found other narrators in Lanier, De Forupon a new era. The date forms a water-rest, Gilmore, Trowbridge, and many shed, a 66 great divide." New tendencies others. It is noteworthy that two writers become more and more marked. To in- of brilliant promise, each in his way repdicate these with completeness is obvi- resenting one of the two tendencies of ously impossible. Even the moderate later American fiction, should have fallen degree of detail with which the previous in the war. One was FitzJames O'Brien, period was treated can no longer be at whose short tales of mystery and horror tempted. Writers of fiction muster by rival those of Poe in perfection of artistic the hundred instead of by the score; the finish. The other was Winthrop, who exaverage quality has improved almost as hibited something of the passion, poetry, rapidly as the quantity has increased. vigor, and manly earnestness, without But certain lines of development may at which novelists of the war only make the least be indicated. The older school reader wince or shiver with every word. were devotees of historical romance; they More within the scope of ordinary powers took no interest in psychology; they pro- lay the stories devoted to the devastation, vided no intellectual exercise; passing or the reconstruction, of society. No picover both mind and heart, they aimed at ture has been painted of the widespread the nerves in order to inflict a shock. desolation that the war left behind in its The later schools of American fiction fol- trail which can compare for graphic power low different tendencies. One school is with that of Miss Murfree in "Where the given up to the exhibition of character. Battle was Fought." Cable, himself a Direct transcripts from contemporary Southerner of the Southerners, yet consociety form its staple subject. Short vinced of the justice of the Northern stories, instead of novels or romances, cause, has chosen as the pivot of more become its favorite method of presentation. Commonplace characters, ordinary scenes in society, familiar incidents in daily life, are portrayed with minute realism of treatment, fidelity of detail, and accuracy of observation. Another school, while adhering to contemporary life as their main subject, allows freer play to the imagination, neither eschews passion, nor dreads melodrama, and endeavors to unite the realism of the novel with the idealism of romance. The first group of writers belong, for the most part, to keen and crowded New England, where intense concentration of wealth, trade, and population seems to have fostered a corresponding intensity of literary finish. The second group of writers belongs to the West and to the South, and its best representatives are Bret Harte and Howe, Cable and Miss Murfree.

Historical romance, which up to 1861 had played so large a part in American fiction, almost disappears after the war of 1861. That internecine struggle, with its splendid exhibitions of endurance, daring, and patriotism, its vast issues, its stupendous proportions, dwarfed into insignificance all the previous materials for historical romance. But the material which it provided in itself was as yet too recent for adequate treatment. Cooke has tried to tell the Virginian side of the story in such books as "Hilt to Hilt,"

than one of his stories the meeting and blending of the two peoples. Other lessknown writers have labored in the same field. In " Rodman, the Keeper," for instance, Miss Woolson tells a pathetic story of the granite-walled cemetery which the North erected in memory of those of her sons who fell on a Southern battlefield. In temper and feeling, her story, short though it is, is far finer than Tourgee's needlessly irritating novels. Baker is another novelist who attempts to mediate between the race-prejudices of the North and the caste-prejudices of the South. "Mose Evans" turns upon the contrast between old and new. In the story of a New Englander who settles in South Carolina, Baker brings out the respect which the inert Southerner and the enterprising Yankee feel for each other, the latent sense that each is lacking in something which the other can supply, the good fellowship that may spring up between the shrewdness of saws and maxims and the repose of unthrifty carelessness. Every novel, which thus helps to distinguish the social conventions and conditions of the people, removes a fruitful source of prejudice and throws another bridge " Across the Chasm."

Excluded, as we have said, by recent events of overpowering interest from the old materials of historic romance, modern American fiction mainly devoted itself to

has been fulfilled. Both the impressionists of New England and the romance writers of the South combine in their effort to delineate contemporary life. Only European novelists, like James and Crawford, stand outside the movement. In artistic reticence and in completeness of finish the best writers of the New England school have few rivals. Their power is displayed in evading rather than constructing plots; in the reproduction, not the creation, of characters. Their gifts are still restricted to the presentation Novelettes

abound; novels are rare; romances almost non-existent. Within their own restricted range the New England writers have created a method of treatment which is distinctively American. Their realism is a patriotic effort to conquer depressing surroundings. It clings to contemporary and national life, instead of taking refuge in the émigré novel of James or Crawford, or presenting it through the veil of an exaggerated humor. Yet it is, in its very essence, an acknowledgment of defeat; it abandons the old ideas of fiction; its method constitutes a retrogression rather than an advance in art.

the task of delineating contemporary life | growth of national fiction. The promise with fulness of detail and fidelity to truth. Situations, incidents, characters, scenery are American. The treatment also is American. It is colorless, cold, direct; thin, and even bleak, in atmosphere. The victorious rival of the old historical romance was the Civil War; the most formidable competitor of the modern American novel is the daily press. But the change in subject was in itself sound and healthy. It gave an unmistakable proof of the growth of an essentially national literature. A glance at some of the bestknown works of the modern school illus- of episodes and incidents. trates the strength of the movement. New England life, for instance, has been painted with infinite variety of detailnow in its moral aspects by Mrs. Cooke, now in its religious moods by Miss Phelps, now in its quiet domesticity by Miss Jewett, now in its youthful conditions by Miss Alcott. By all these writers it has been colored with a tinge, more or less strong, of sentimentality. Mrs. Stowe, Holmes, Higginson, Whittier, and others have each contributed elements which make the picture more complete. The commercial, literary, or social life of its cities has been preserved by Newell, Kimball, Bishop, and Fawcett, by Bayard American realism is best represented in Taylor, by Curtis and Howells. The the works of Howells. His novels are too holiday society of Newport is described well known in this country to require by Hale, Higginson, and Lathrop; the detailed criticism. In his hands Amerpolitical society of Washington in "De-icans seem to have lost the virility of the mocracy" and "Through One Adminis- race. Flabby characters, painted in caretration." A Harley Street of women fully subdued tints, actors in whom the doctors is painted by Miss Jewett, Phelps, author himself does not pretend to be and Howells. Negroes are represented interested, drift aimlessly, without faiths, in Cable's "Bras-Coupé," or in the "Un- hopes, passions, or aspirations, through cle Remus" and "Mingo" of Joel Har- stories which are never concluded, each ris. Bret Harte is a Californian Dickens, turned out with the neatness, grace, and and Western civilization in back-country precision of an accomplished modiste. districts is also drawn by Eggleston, and Howells writes on the assumption that all with greater intensity and reserved power literature is written, that strong emotions by Howe in that strange product of a are “played out," that the trivialities of newspaper-office, "The Story of a Coun- life are worth preserving in the clear try Town." Spiritualists and Shakers amber of a finished literary style, that the have stood for their portraits; Mormons niaiseries of tea-table yawns deserve to have been painted by Mrs. Paddock; the be chronicled with the same minute fidelCommunists of the Middle States are ity as a daring deed of heroism. He has drawn in "Among the Chosen." Cable's no story to tell. He does not deal in senexquisite miniatures and Miss Murfree's timent; he avoids catastrophes; he dis larger canvas hold up the mirror to Louis- trusts imagination; he dreads melodrama; iana and Tennessee. Nothing like these he eschews theatrical effects; he shrinks minute and careful presentations of con- from exaggeration. The result is a sum temporary life and character existed be- of negatives. He either possesses fore the war. Without attempting an romantic force, or has curbed it till the exhaustive catalogue, the instances that spirit is crushed. He reverses the legitiare given clearly indicate the modern ten-mate basis of novels or romance. Other dencies of American fiction. writers have endeavored to show the romance which underlies every-day realities.

The change of subject promised a new

no

sands of the vulgar and the commonplace. It is this which has enabled him to hold his own against the competition of journalistic literature.

Howells tries to prove that, though tragic | events actually do occur, the world is a commonplace world after all. Every trace of personal sympathy is eliminated. The characters are diligently studied; but the examination of states of mind is over-ful photographs which Howells produces

In strong contrast to the pitilessly faith

of an artificial, conventional, highly sophisticated society, stand the exquisite miniatures of old Creole life of Cable, the vivid pictures of wild, half-savage Californian diggers of Bret Harte, the powerfully drawn figures of uncouth inhabitants of Tennessee which Miss Murfree throws upon her broad canvas.

Against the bleakness of Howells's atmosphere stands out with more effect the rich warmth of Cable's coloring. It is the passage from the ice of the north to the glow of the sun-bathed south, the return to romance from bald, impersonal, unsympathetic realism. Cable pursues once more the old romantic track; but he follows it in the changed spirit of the later school of fiction. Absorbed in his subject, he yet approaches it as an artist who is permeated with a sense of the intrinsic value of good workmanship. His aim is not to express his own emotions, still less to shock the reader's nerves; his first object is to produce a vivid impression of the truth. To gain this effect he spares no labor in minute and careful detail. So unrhetorical and so simple is the manner that the reader attributes to the material the magic of the author's enthusiasm. This is the legitimate triumph, the rich reward, of art. Hundreds had read of Creole life in 1803, and dismissed it with a glance as prosaic history. Cable possesses the vein of poetry and imaginative feeling that enables him to conjure up a picture so laden with the fragrance of the past as to communicate its meaning palpably to the senses. The facts are old; they acquire novelty from the genius of their treatment.

done. His observation transcends the limits of analysis, for it discovers everything, and, if the ingredients are trivial, everything is too much. His observation is clinical rather than pictorial, and his figures, though life-like, scarcely seem to be alive. It may be questioned whether persons who are always intent upon the observation of peculiarities, the collection of foibles, the classification of varieties, do not lose the power of depicting characters. The universal motive forces of men and women are neglected. The realistic standpoint from which Howells writes is deadening; even the deft workmanship of the artist fails to galvanize it into vitality. His intellectual fastidiousness is so highly cultivated that he recoils from strong passions or large topics. His process of refining produces thinness even more than refinement. In spite of an apparent superficial refinement, the extreme delicacy runs perilously near to coarseness. It is of the exaggerated kind which shrank from speaking of the breast of a fowl, or clothed the legs of a piano in drawers. Trim and complete in form, clearly thought out in ideas and characters, his books are so bleak in atmosphere, so carefully lowered in tone, that his effects are produced by the effacement of the accessories, which, in themselves, are minutely elaborated. He seems to set before himself as his ideal the elimination of all substantiality and the substitution of manner for plot. No reason appears to exist why one group of ordinary persons or one sequence of trivial events should be selected more than another. Yet the selection once made, the skill with which the type is fixed is consummate. Cable transports us into a new, yet old, For English readers, he cannot fail to world; he has the charm of freshness. possess attractions, because of the details Less English than Aldrich or Howells, he which he preserves of New-World society does not bring his heroes or heroines into and the intensely American atmosphere some great centre of modern society, some with which his books are suffused. His vortex of feverish activity, which is only chief charm lies in the artistic finish of a newer London. He deals with charhis writings, the trenchant sayings, the acters and social habits belonging to a brilliancy often excessive, and there- bygone past; he paints Louisiana at the fore tiresome-of the epigrammatic con- moment when it was sold by Napoleon to versations, and, above all, the quiet humor the United States, and when Creole noblewith which he works his puppets. It is men, passionately attached to the country this humorous touch which redeems the which repudiated them, awoke to find triviality of his subjects. It is this, also, themselves American citizens; he uses which enables him to represent American with consummate skill the contrasts belife without disappearing in the quick-tween the enterprising activities of modVOL. LXXIII. 3773

LIVING AGE.

ern America and the alien type of careless | prejudices. Other figures, such as Brasinertness which is presented in the Creole Coupé, Aurora Nancanou, and Raoul, are gentry. He has a story to tell, and he finely conceived and powerfully painted tells it exquisitely. In the hot, if slum- portraits. Yet, in spite of the strong bering, passions of Louisiana, in the pa- interest of the book, it is wanting in ar triarchal despotism of its broad-acred rangement, unskilful in management of gentry, in the reciprocal confidences of its perspective, deficient in the highest gifts slave-owning system, in the sudden inroad of constructive composition. Still more of new ideas, men and methods, he has conspicuous are these deficiencies in " Dr. struck a mine of gold. Vivid, concise, Sevier," which becomes both wearisome definite, never negligent in his touch, for its injudicious accumulation of detail, always finished almost to excess, felicitous and confused owing to the wide range in expression, he unites the best qualities that it seeks to embrace. The same critof the New England school with South. icism holds good, in an even greater deern characteristics, which are heightened gree, of "Bonaventure," in which large rather than impaired by the artistic form constructive power is still more conspicof their exhibition. His method of in- uously lacking. tuitive portraiture is based on sympathy rather than on observation or experience. Yet it is deeper, more real, and hardly less direct, than the New England method. Himself a Southerner who fought in the Confederate ranks, imbued with the reverential feeling which, as distinguished from the North, still characterizes his countrymen, he is yet convinced of the justice of the abolitionist cause. His sympathetic pictures of prejudices which are, perhaps, as irremovable in the Creole as they are incomprehensible to the Yankee, and his incidental presentation of the intolerable condition of men, and especially women, of color, give to his works the dignity of an ethical purpose without depriving them of the natural charm of

romance.

It is in his cabinet pictures, or miniatures, of Creole life that Cable is seen at his best. Here he displays to fullest advantage his gift of conveying distinct impressions with the fewest possible strokes. Here it is impossible to praise the quality of his work too highly. If there is a fault, it is that he abuses his marvellous talent for the transliteration of dialects. As works of art, the stories contained in "Old Creole Days or "Madame Delphine are perfect. Complete in themselves, firm and true in outline, they are worked up to an exquisite degree of finish. His figures are chosen from all ranks, manners and moulds from "Madame Délicieuse" to "Ole Charlie and in them feudal fidelity, French grace, and Spanish dignity, offer piquant contrasts to the inroad of Yankee speculation. The background is skilfully adapted to the actors. It is New Orleans, with its sleepy, picturesque wharves, its half-deserted streets bearing aristocratic præRevolutionary names, its houses lying back from the road with tottering iron gates and windows closed by shutters, exclusive and dignified in their decay, like high-bred émigrés in darned court suits. Half close your eyes, and the delicious languor of a southern night steals over the senses; the fragrance of magnolias rises from the ill-kept luxuriant gardens; a vision flits by of a white-robed Creole beauty; a flash of glittering steel writhes in the shadows under the wall; in the distance snatches of some old French song are borne on the perfumed air from bands

"The Grandissimes "is the most successful of his larger efforts. Agricola's supreme contentment with his own surroundings makes him cruel, by convincing him of the happiness of all around him. Even the death of Bras-Coupé does not shake his confidence. Averse to the effort of understanding circumstances, holding opinions which are stereotyped by traditional views upon slavery, he has built up a barrier in his mind against which rights vainly dash themselves to pieces. An invincible patriot, he is capable of noble enthusiasms, though he is without moral sense, at once brave and selfish, chivalrous and intriguing. Honoré Grandissime offers another distinct type of Creole character. Less vigorous than Agricola, a dilettante in politics, religion, philosophy, and morals, he holds vague of gay, rollicking youths returning from ideas on the need for reform ideas which are too shadowy to assume definite shape and has no real desire to learn the truth. Only when face to face with difficulties which he cannot circumvent, does he act with a noble contempt for

the ball. Pure without prudery, Cable can describe the voluptuousness of a quadroon ball with fascinating brilliancy; yet he never nauseates us with that heavy scent of musk with which French writers would load the atmosphere. He handles