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Y46 WTnttler. Longfellow. Lowell. Holmes. Hawthorne, [isso- expressed the consolation and the sedate pleasure which may be found in the contemplation of nature even in rugged New England. John Greenleaf Whittier, so well known as the impassioned and sincere poet of anti- slavery enthusiasm, was more noteworthy still as another exponent of the peculiar charm which lurks beneath the rude face of the Yankee country. Mrs Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which had flashed the horrors of slavery into the upper consciousness of the philanthropic world, had been suc- ceeded by tales which, with the same careless admixture of genius and commonplace, had recorded the traditional society of earlier New England. Longfellow, with gentle amenity, had revealed to America the innocent charm which hides the murky depths of old-world literature; beyond anyone else he had translated the beauties of other languages into the simple tunes of his country, leaving his native air the sweeter for his song. Lowell, sympathetic at once with humanity and with the humani- ties, had proved himself the chief humanist of the Renaissance in New England ; and meanwhile had made those quaint political satires which raise a doubt whether he was more remarkable as a satirist or as interpre- tative critic. Oliver Wendell Holmes had written excellent occasional poems and some of those uniquely garrulous essays, which beyond anything else express the humour and the kindly rationalism of his time; they have their grimmer side as well, when one comes to understand the bravery of his lifelong struggle against the haunting horrors of Calvinistic dogma. And Hawthorne, the most deeply artistic of all, had beautifully recorded, in his own exquisite and tender style, the native temper of the country which, during his time, was finally emerging from the benumbing self-consciousness of ancestral Puritanism. These names, perhaps the most memorable in the record of New England letters, probably imply most of the tendencies which found expression there. But many more people were writing at the same time. Much of the work in question may be found in the earlier volumes of the Atlantic Monthly, which was founded in 1857. It remains to this day the chief vehicle of literature in New England ; and it has never swerved from its standard intention to publish nothing but what has been honestly meant and excellently phrased. In the earlier days, its most eminent editors were Lowell and Fields, men of widely different characters, but both of them native Yankees, full of instinctive sympathy with what was most deeply characteristic of their country. It is significant of what ensued in New England that their two most eminent successors in the control of the Atlantic Monthly have been neither New England men, nor, for all their admirable devotion to literature, completely at ease in New England surroundings. And it is hardly excessive to say that, so far as pure letters go, New England has not subsequently produced any writers of much more than local importance. In brief, the literature of New England may be regarded, for the moment, as complete. For nearly two hundred years the region had