work in the more important departments. But this is hardly a just view of the age and its work, which has been one of ceaseless literary activity and a high order of production; though in the more serious studies there has, admittedly, been a lack of laborers who have attained high eminence and whose writings might have made the epoch preëminently rich in its intellectual possessions. If we except the novel and practical science, the gains of the later time have not been so great as to mark the new literary product with distinction and overshadow the era which we naturally expected it to supplant. At successive periods we must look for the ebb and flow of the literary tide, as the world is orphaned by the hushing of its older and masterful voices and again sired by the coming of new aspirants for literary honor and historic fame. That there has been more than this interregnum between the old and the new era we do not admit; nor is the characteristic of it, in comparison with a former age, by any means disadvantageous to the later time. What the earlier era had to its credit was a period of greater repose, when the voices that then arose in the literary world of our continent had a more attentive and responsive audience, undistracted by the clamor of a hurrying, distraught, preoccupied time. Work wrought by minds gifted with genius is rare in any age; but in our day genius has not altogether been lacking, nor have we been without books that inspire as well as instruct — books that delight and even enchain. The product, nevertheless, is comparatively small in weighty and serious studies; though, until the new era has been well-ushered in and the new writers have put the coping-stone on their achievements, no fair appraisement can be made of their abilities or of the place that contemporary writers are likely to hold in literature. One advantage the era has gained over that past is manifest in the protection which international copyright has given to writers by supplying them with a remunerative market on both sides of the Atlantic, with the stimulus which this practically affords to those who have taken, or may yet take, advantage of it. That this has been helpful to the literary product goes without saying; while the extended market has made bookpublishing less precarious, and, with the improvement in critical taste on the part of publishers and readers, has been highly and unexceptionably beneficial.
In the new era we have been especially under the reign of the novelist and the novel. Legitimate history has seemed to suffer in this respect, for, if we except a few notable achievements and the issue of the ordinary historical text-book, history proper has been but sparingly written, save in the guise and with the trickings out of fiction. Considering the indifference of the masses toward historic annals, this may not be without its compensations, though at times it may be perilous to truth to accept sober history in the bedizened attire of the alluring and picturesque novel. Much depends upon the writer and the extent of his historical equipment, as well as on the fidelity of the history and portraiture of the period with which he deals. The more eminent writers of fiction are notably careful in their methods and are, in the main, true to fact in their pictures of it, while their art contributes greatly to the interest with which they invest the time. This is especially so in the case of many novelists who have won fame and have wrought with wonderful skill and fidelity to fact in historical fiction. The names of a few of the more prominent of these historical romancers will readily occur to the reader. It would be no uninteresting study to point out with what success each has striven to interpret the romantic element in American history and to present, with vivid reality, characteristic pictures of the local life and environment of the various regions, settled and unsettled, of the continent. Of colonial Virginia, Mary Johnston has in Prisoners of Hope, To Have and to Hold and Audrey given realistic pictures in the beginning and middle of the 17th century. The field of Mary Hartwell Catherwood's romances has been mainly that of New France, though she has also exploited the south, especially in Old Kaskaskia and The Story of Tonti. The best of her novels that deal with early French-Canadian history is The Romance of Dollard. In Hugh Wynne, by the distinguished Philadelphia physician, poet and novelist, S. Weir Mitchell, we have an enthralling study of old colonial days preceding and during the War of the Revolution. It is especially interesting as a picture of the social life of Philadelphia, with its admixture of Tory, Whig and Quaker elements at the time of the British occupation. In his Adventures of François Dr. Mitchell has written an engaging story—the fictional memoirs of a foundling, choir-boy, thief, juggler and fencing-master during the French Revolution, a study which lightens the gloom of an era of hideous carnage. Characteristics, Circumstance and When All the Woods Are Green are others of his entertaining stories. In Alice of Old Vincennes Maurice Thompson wrote a strong story of the era of the French settlement of Indiana. With this class, also, belong Richard Carvel, a dramatic picture of Revolutionary days by Winston Churchill, and The Crisis, where we enter the scenes of the Civil War, made impressive by the figure of Lincoln, with glimpses from the southern point of view. When Knighthood Was in Flower, an English romance, by Charles Major, and Janice Meredith, a story of the Revolution, by Paul Leicester Ford, attained wide but brief popularity, Mr. Ford's book proving a disappointment to many who had read his admirable novel, The Hon. Peter Stirling and
