USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 83
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1 A venerable lady has told me with a re- membrance half amused, half painful, of having, as the eldest child of the family, and the most proficient in her studies at the district school, been called by her grandmother, on the occa-
sion of the minister's visit at the house, to stand up and read to him from the Columbian Orator the fragment beginning, " Let us endeavor to realize the majesty and terror of the universal alarm on the final judgment day," etc.
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
is now proceeding at an accelerated rate. Many causes can be seen to have worked together in producing this change, - the rapid decline of the Puritan spirit, and the emancipation of the people from the theological straight- jacket which had cramped and stifled them so long; the improvement in their material condition ; the leaven of the neighboring university; the in- creased ease of communication between town and country ; the more abun- · dant distribution of the reprints of English books which were now rapidly multiplying.
An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology, by Professor Parker Cleaveland of Bowdoin College, published in 1817, was a work of great scientific value, which brought its author at once into intimate relations and correspondence with Davy, Brewster, Cuvier, and many other eminent men of science in England and on the Continent, where he was at once made a member of no less than sixteen learned societies.1
Dr. Jacob Bigelow's Florula Bostoniensis belongs properly to the first of our periods, the first edition having been published in 1814. His second work, American Medical Botany, - a collection of the native medical plants of the United States, with their properties and uses in medicine, diet, and the arts, - was published in 1819-20, in three volumes, and was everywhere recognized as a work of great practical as well as scientific value.
The writings of Alexander H. Everett, which began to appear about this time, are of two quite distinct kinds, corresponding with the two distinct lines of life which he followed alternately. Mr. Everett was Minister of the United States, successively at the Hague and at Madrid, at a period when the relations of the European powers among each other were in a very uncertain state. While occupying the former position he wrote an essay, which was published at London and Boston in 1821, entitled Europe, a General Survey of the Political Situation of the Principal Powers, etc., in which he took a somewhat optimistic view of the prospects of European politics, which appears, curiously enough, to be based chiefly on what he expected from Russia. This work was translated into French, German, and Spanish, and was followed in 1827 by a work of similar character, on the situation and prospects of America: in which the author states with force the fortunate conditions attending the growth and development of the United States, and' answers, without exaggeration or excess of pride, the cavils of unfriendly foreign critics. Upon Mr. Everett's return to Boston in 1829, he became the editor of the North American Review, and one of its most constant writers upon purely literary topics. Two volumes of his Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, including some poems, were published in 1845.
In 1824 the North American welcomed an efficient coadjutor in the Christian Examiner. The Examiner took up the work of the Christian
1 A second edition of his work was called for in 1822, and another in 1836, - a longevity remarkable in a treatise on a natural science in
which so many discoveries have since been made and so many new Theories promulgated. [See Professor Lovering's chapter in Vol. IV .- ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Disciple, a monthly Unitarian Magazine, begun in 1813 under the charge of Dr. Noah Worcester, and continued later in the hands of the Rev. Henry Warc, Jr. The Examiner was at first edited by John G. Palfrey, and was long remarkable among the denominational journals for the high literary character of its articles, in which the theological bias was not allowed to stand in the way of sound philosophic discussion of topics quite distinct from all theologic connection. It was in the first year of the Examiner that the literary ability of Channing was first brought to the general notice, by his articles on Milton, Napoleon, and Fénelon. The Unitarian denom- ination was young, fresh, vigorous, and had, through much hard fighting, made good its claim to a place among the Christian sects of the day. The enthusiasm of the contest was not yet cooled, and the foremost men among the denomination (young men almost without exception) believed its mis- sion was to be accomplished by work.1 Channing, in an article on " Na- tional Literature," printed in the seventh volume of the Examiner, explained the Unitarian idea of the connection of sound literature with a sound the- ology in these most explicit words: "Our chief hopes of an improved literature rest on our hopes of an improved religion. From the prevalent theology which has come down to us from the dark'ages we can hope nothing. It has done its best. All that can grow up under its sad shade has been already brought forth. True faith is of another lineage." On the other hand the Missionary Herald, successor of the Panoplist, the earliest sectarian magazine established in Boston, sustained with vigor the catise of the declining ancient faith; but it sustained that cause with theologic weapons exclusively. Into the domain of pure literature its champions did not enter. The faith of Channing was justified; and from that early day to the present the literature of this country has been the work of men to whom the old New England theology was but a tradition.2
About 1825 an increase of productiveness is apparent, though the in- crease was not immediately sustained. In this year first appeared, in its complete form, the History of New England, by John Winthrop, of which a portion, comprising all that was then known to be in existence, had been printed in 1790, at Hartford, under the auspices of Governor Trumbull. In the spring of 1816 the missing volume of Winthrop's manuscript was acci- dentally discovered in the tower of the Old South Meeting-house, and placed in the keeping of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which at once took measures looking to its publication. A somewhat serious diffi- culty stood in the way of this enterprise. The handwriting of the first governor was as hieroglyphics to his successors. But " the labor we delight in physics pain." James Savage gladly undertook the work of deciphering the manuscript and preparing it for the press; 3 and, after many delays and
1 " In beginning the publication of the Chris- tian Disciple, five years ago, we announced our intention to use it in defence of controverted religious truth." - Prcface to first number of the Christian Examiner, 1824.
2 [See Mr. Bradford's chapter on “ Philo- sophic Thought in Boston," in Vol. IV .- ED.] 8 " The difficulty of transcribing it for the press seemed to appall several of the most com- petent members. The task appeared inviting to
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
accidents, the entire diary was worthily published by him in 1825, with abundant notes.
Jared Sparks, who had become for a second time the editor of the North American Review in 1822, began, shortly after, his laborious researches among the state papers at Wash- ington and in the capitals of all Javed Sparks the original States of the Union, with a view of publishing a col- lection, as nearly complete as possible, of the writings of Washington. The papers at Mount Vernon were put into his hands; and in 1828 he ob- tained, by the friendly influence of members of the British Cabinet and of Lafayette, permission to transcribe such documents as he might find of use in the state-paper offices of London and Paris. The publication of this work, which extended to twelve volumes, covered the years from 1834 to 1837. Its success was immediate and gratifying.1 This was but the beginning of an imposing series of compilations, involving prolonged and tedious if not difficult research, requiring the exercise of judgment in the selection and skill in the arrangement of voluminous material which would have ap- palled at the outset all but the stoutest of literary workers. In. 1829 Mr. Sparks brought out the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, also in twelve volumes octavo, of which the material was derived mostly from the archives of the State Department at Washington, though the foreign offices furnished as before a considerable portion. From 1835 to 1840 he pub- lished a collection of the Works of Franklin with a memoir of his life, taken up where the autobiography stopped. In addition to these labors he wrote and published, in 1832, a Biography of Gouverneur Morris ; he origi- nated the American Almanac, of which, in 1830, he edited the first volume ; he projected and carried out a Library of American Biography, of which one series, covering the years from 1835 to 1839 and comprising ten 12mo volumes, was so successful that another series was begun at once, which extended to fifteen volumes, of which the last was published in 1846. Of the sixty brief biographies included in these twenty-five volumes, cight were written by Mr. Sparks. Perhaps no other American writer has added so great a mass of valuable matter to the libraries of his country. His work, if not brilliant, is enduring; and all laborers in the field of American history and biography will owe to his patient and long-continued labors their own comparative exemption from the drudgery of research.2
In a lighter walk of literature, also, a greater activity is observable. Miss Catherine Sedgwick's stories were among the first works of fiction which can be said to possess any considerable merit. A New England Tale, published anonymously, appeared in 1822. It was followed, two years me."- Savage's preface. [See Vol. I. p. xvii. 109, 463 .- ED.] ·
1 A selection of the letters was published in Paris by Guizot; and at Leipsic, Von Raumer published a translation of the entire work.
2 [The library of Mr. Sparks, rich in works on American history, is now in Cornell University, except his manuscript collections which are in Harvard College Library. A catalogue of it, pre- pared by C. A. Cutter, has been printed .- En.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
later, by Redwood, which achieved great popularity both at home and abroad, being reprinted in England and translated into French, German, Italian, and Swedish. Within the next eleven years Miss Sedgwick pro- 1 hour 1894. Emsedgwick duced Hope Leslie, Clarence, Le Bossu, The Linwoods, and a series of children's books. They are for the most part placid stories of New England country life, with vivacity enough to retain a gentle hold on the attention, and with a refinement and grace of style which carry the reader not unwillingly over the long descriptive or reflec- tive passages, during which the action of the story comes to a halt.
The first stories of Lydia Maria Child followed close upon those of Miss Sedgwick, which in their chief characteristics they much resemble. Hobo- mok, an Indian novel, appeared in 1824, and The Rebels the next year. But Mrs. Child's extraordinary versatility and untiring industry would not let her be content with a single line of work. She set on foot in 1826 a chil- dren's magazine called the the Juvenile Miscellany, of which she remained for eight years the editor, writing for it such stories as children enjoy and profit by at once, - short, lively, picturesque in character and incident, and with a moral not too obtrusive. She was at the same time the editor of a collection of biographies called the Ladies' Family Library, for which she wrote the lives of Madame de Stael and Madame Roland, of Lady Rachel Russell and Madame Guyon, Biographies of Good Wives, and the History of the Condition of Women in All Ages in two volumes. The Mothers' Book, The Girl's Book, and the Frugal Housewife, are works of which the char- acter is indicated by their titles. A genial good sense, and practical, con- vincing wisdom, gave both charm and influence to these simple lessons in the essentials of home life, not less needed by the present generation than by that for which they were written. But the books thus enumerated, various as they are, were far from exhausting the lines in which Mrs. Child's activity found its exercise. She was an ardent reformer. Her compact and vigorous Appeal for that · class of Americans called Africans, Lo Maria Child. published in 1833, was one of the earliest books to help on the Antislavery movement, which was then be- ginning to acquire momentum; and her noble enthusiasm in this cause never flagged to the end of her long life.1 In 1841 she became, with her husband, an editor of the National Antislavery Standard, published in New York, to which city they had lately removed. Twenty years later, when John Brown lay under sentence of death in Charlestown (Va.) jail, Mrs. Child sent him a letter of sympathy which involved her in a correspondence with Governor Wise and Mr. Mason, of Virginia.
1 [See Dr. James Freeman Clarke's chapter in this volume .- ED.]
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
This correspondence was published in a pamphlet, of which three hun- dred thousand copies were circulated,1 - a striking illustration of the excited state of public feeling at that crisis. The " Letters from New York," contributed at short intervals to the Boston Courier, in 1841-42, probably did more for the immediate popularity of Mrs. Child than any of her more laborious works. Depicting with rare tenderness and observation, and with a lively and graceful style, the thousand contrasted aspects of human life in a great city, the letters were greatly admired and copied into newspapers all over the country. They were afterward collected and published in two volumes. Her last important work, the most ambitious of all her undertakings, was issued in 1855, in three volumes, with the title, The Progress of Religious Ideas.
Two remarkable series of books for children were commenced nearly simultaneously in 1825; the one by S. G. Goodrich, afterwards much more widely known by the pseudonym of Peter Parley, attached to his first books. Mr. Goodrich was a Boston publisher, and began in 1828 an illustrated annual called the Token, which was continued until 1842. Mr. Goodrich was the chief contributor, but was assisted with an occasional paper from other hands, among whom was Nathaniel Hawthorne, then quite unknown to fame. Many of the Twice Told Tales appeared in the Token, where they attracted little or no attention, and where, but for the splendor of his greater works, they would have doubtless remained decently interred. The books of Peter Parley are upon all imaginable subjects within the comprehension of children, from the elementary arithmetic and geography of the primary school, to travels, biography, natural history, astronomy, and political economy, and the young reader has his choice of subjects. Mr. Good- rich's own count of the number of his published works runs up to one hundred and seventy, of which one hundred and sixteen were issued under the name of Peter Parley. "Of all these, about seven millions of volumes have been sold. About three hundred thousand volumes are now sold annually."2
The works of Jacob Abbot are not less voluminous than those of Mr. Goodrich. The Young Christian series of books for boys, issued in 1825, comprises four volumes. The Rollo Books, begun in 1830, extended to twenty-four vol- farol Ablock umes. Later came the Marco Paul Series and the Franconia Stories ; the one of six volumes, the other of ten. Then followed a long succession of illustrated histories, ancient and modern; then more story books, twelve series; and finally a course of Science for the Young, treating, in separate volumes, of Light, Heat, Electricity, Water, Land, etc. Very many of these books are even now in active circulation, and are as much admired by the boys and girls of to-day as they were by their grandfathers and grandmothers fifty years ago.
1 New American Cyclopedia.
2 Goodrich's Recollections of a Lifetime, 1856. VOL. 111 .- 82.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Of poetry, the production during the second period was very slender in quantity. There was, however, now and then something in that direction worth considering. "Going into town one day," writes Richard H. Dana, " while assisting E. T. Chan- Reich & H. LDana. ~ ning in the North American Re- view, he read to me a couple of pieces of poetry which had Boston, Fel" /64 just been sent to the Review,- the 'Thanatopsis' and the ' Inscription for the Entrance
to a Wood.' While Channing was reading one of them I broke out, say- ing, ' That was never written on this side the water ;' and naturally enough, considering what American poetry had been up to that moment."
It was ten years after these early poems of Bryant were published before Dana (who had contributed some slighter pieces to the New York Reviewe) published, in 1827, The Buccaneer, and other small poems. In 1833 he
My remaining years comment be many . I can give them to my books , and shall try to wait patiently for the great Final Result, with calming and without fear .
and now, what more have I to add, but to
ask for you and yours all peace and comfort. Your grateful friends Charles Sprague December, 1864.
AUTOGRAPH OF CHARLES SPRAGUE.1
issued a larger volume, which included some later poems and the papers written many years before for The Idle Man. In the same year Longfellow has published his first modest volume, the grave and tender translation of the Coplas de Maurique. Whittier, editor of a small newspaper in Hart-
1 [An extract from his " Centennial Ode " is Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., February, 1875, p. 427. given in fac-simile in Vol. I., p. 246. For Mr. The present fac-simile is from a letter lent by his Waterston's notice of Charles Sprague, see son, Mr. C. J. Sprague. - ED.]
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
ford, has printed two years before his Legends of New England, and in 1836 will publish Mogg Megone. In the latter year Holmes's first volume will appear. There is even a moment when it seems possible that an ex- president may devote to the service of poetry the powers which have raised him to the heights of statesmanship. In 1832 there appears a poem, in heroic verse, entitled Dermot MeMorrogh; Or the Conquest of Ireland, - an historical tale in four cantos, by John Quincy Adams, which owed its existence to the author's admiration for Byron's Don Juan, and which, as his son suggests, "would probably have met with a better reception from the public had the expectation been less high, and its model not have over- shadowed it altogether."
Charles Sprague, whose occasional poems, - notably the Shakespeare Ode, written for the festival at the Boston Theatre, in 1823, the Ode for the Centennial Celebration of Boston, in 1830, and the Phi Beta Kappa poem on Curiosity, - had struck a note of grace unusual in productions of that character, was also the author of many minor poems in which the tender- ness and purity of thought were matched by the grace and felicity of expression.
Of the poetry of John Pierpont, the greater portion perhaps consists of occasional verses for the dedication of churches, for the ordinations of min- isters, for the meetings of temperance societies, for anniversary celebrations, for the laying of corner-stones, and the like, - fugitive verses, of which the interest passed away with the occasions which called them forth. Another con- InSieponting siderable portion consists of patriotic and political pieces which blaze with the ardent spirit of the reformer, much as those of Whittier did, twenty years later. There are, however, a small number of poems of a wholly different and superior order,-poems filled with a soft and tender fancy, like the " Passing Away," or with grave and lofty reflection, like "The Exile at Rest," - which indicated a poetic gift which would doubtless have borne more abundant fruit but for the pressure of the stormy times on which it fell.
A new magazine was established in 1831. Mr. Edwin Buckingham, son of the renowned editor of the Galaxy and the Courier, - who had served an apprenticeship in the office of the last named paper, during which he had shown a marked aptitude for literary work, and who had afterward been made an assistant-editor of the Courier, - ventured, with his father's assis- tance, to set on foot the New England Magasine. At the death of its young projector, two years later, his father became its editor; but finding the double charge of a monthly magazine and a daily newspaper too much even for his vigorous powers, it was sold, in 1834, to Dr. S. G. Howe and John O. Sargent. In a literary point of view the enterprise was a success- ful one. Since the discontinuance of the Anthology, there had been in Boston no vehicle for the lighter forms of periodical writing; except per-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
haps the Galaxy, which, however, was a newspaper and not a magazine, and which was now extinct. A new generation had grown up since the days of the Anthology ; and the opportunity furnished by the new montlily for the publication of miscellaneous papers, however varicd in subject or style, was not neglected. Mr. Buckingham, in his reminiscences, gives, among the more or less frequent contributors to the New England Maga- zine, the names of Edward Everett, Judge Story, Dr. Holmes, Hillard, Hildreth, Longfellow, Dr. Howe, and Miss H. F. Gould.1 "One dollar a page," says Buckingham, "was offered for such original communications as might be accepted and published; and this, insignificant as the sum may seem to those whose talents and popularity are in demand at a much higher price, brought communications from almost every State in the Union." In . 1835 the magazine was purchased by Park Benjamin, who, the next year, united it with the American Monthly Magazine, of New York.
During the years from 1830 to 1840, although the production of literary works of importance was not very considerable, there was an increasing activity of mind which was to bear manifest results in succeeding years. Along-side the growing intellectual cultivation of the people, great social, moral, and political questions began to agitate the public mind, which were to temper and shape the literature of the next generation. The tremendous question of Slavery, feared and hated all over the country, was now rising steadily into prominence. Of the Antislavery movement, Boston was long the centre. Such an element in the national politics was a perpetual stimulus to the best minds of the whole country, but its influence was.here especially strong and pervasive. No department of literature escaped it. The total- abstinence movement, the reform of diet, the subject of imprisonment for debt, were topics of less exigency, but which had their share of attention and discussion.2 The subject of public-school education had been hitherto more a matter of local pride and self-gratulation than of intelligent study. It was now to be discussed in a way which left little to be said but much to be done. In 1837 Horace Mann became Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education; and in the eleven years during which he held that position he put forth, in place of the formal and complacent reports which the incumbents of similar offices are wont to lay before a satisfied public, a series of formidable documents, which it is safe to say will long remain unexampled in the records of official literature. No conviction was ever
1 This must have been one of the earliest periodicals to offer compensation to its writers. Mr. Congdon, in his Reminiscences, says of lit- erary remuneration : " Fifty years ago, apart from the money paid to preachers and perhaps the writers of school-books, there was no such thing. I should be surprised to find that Bryant re- ceived any money whatever for 'Thanatopsis,' which was published in the North American Review for 1817. Out of Boston in 1820 I ques- tion if any Massachusetts editor received so much as $500 a year, for most writing in news-
papers was done by lawyers and other men of education, as a matter of love or political fealty. The first magazines paid nobody; and much later there were respectable periodicals which never ran the risk of hurting a young writer's pride by offering him sordid wages. Mr. Willis was the first magazine writer who was tolerably well paid; at one time, about 1832, he was writ- ing four articles monthly for four magazines, and receiving $100 for each " (p. [26).
2 [See Mr. George P. Bradford's chapter, in Vol. IV. - ED.]
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THE PRESS, ETC., OF THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
more firmly rooted in the minds of the people of Massachusetts than that of the excellence of their public school system and the efficiency of its administration. But no system of public administration, however excellent, was ever without abuses. Mann spent fifteen hours a day in travelling up and down over the State, - making himself acquainted with the schools, the studies pursued in them, the competency of the teachers, and the prog- ress of the scholars; collecting information of the condition and efficiency of about three thousand different public schools and several hundred private schools and academies ; 1 and whenever an abuse, whether little or large, fell under his eye, it was proclaimed without reserve and without mercy. But this severity was in the interest of the public whom he served, and was but the logical and necessary outcome of enthusiasm in his work, which alone could have carried him at once through the prodigious labors and the em- bittered personal controversies in which it involved him. His reports are treatises on almost every subject which bears even remotely on the main topic. In the very first of those reports he thus states the divisions into which the general topic had arranged itself in his mind: 1. The number and condition of school-houses; 2. The manner in which school committee- men discharge their duties; 3. The interest felt by the community in the education of all its children; 4. The competency of teachers. In con- sidering the first of these divisions, he discovered at once that it would carry him far beyond reasonable limits, and he therefore laid it aside and submitted later, as a supplementary report, a careful essay on the planning of school-houses, illustrated with numerous plans. His observations of the incompetency of the teachers in most of the schools, - an incompetency arising in most cases, not so much from inability as from lack of training,- led him to recommend the immediate establishment of normal schools to provide the training needed; a recommendation which was at once carried into effect. His reports were commonly accompanied with letters from scientific or medical experts, sustaining or elaborating some important point upon which he perhaps anticipated objections. Letters from Dr. S. G. Howe, Dr. James Jackson, Dr. S. B. Wood, and others appear in these documents, which are in themselves valuable contributions to the public knowledge in the matters of detail of which they treat. I must not be tempted into even a brief review of the services of this admirable public character; that belongs to another chapter: but any account of the literary achievements of Boston would be ludicrously incomplete which should fail to take account of the intellectual vigor, the mastery of subject, and the terseness and polish of style which distinguish these remarkable reports.2
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