_Henry W. Longfellow._--It was in 1839 also that Longfellow published his once popular “Hyperion, a Romance,” in which, in connection with a pathetic love story, he mainly sought, in the style of Richter, to convey his romantic impressions of the life and traditions of the Old World. The volume is charged, if not surcharged, with sentiment. Paul Flemming’s enthusiasm for the quaint and picturesque in European lore and scenery takes us back to the days when Continental Europe was for Americans a land of romance, and when visits to the Old World were still not accomplished without difficulty and had not lost their novelty. Of a wholly different texture is the only other prose tale written by Longfellow, “Kavanagh, a Tale,” which appeared in 1849 and which probably suffered by coming so near the romantic and fascinating “Evangeline.” It is a bookish and uneventful story of New England life; Hawthorne said of it, “Nobody but yourself would dare to write so quiet a book.” Yet it is written in a characteristically graceful style, and shows that the scholar-poet was a good observer of the life around him, though he could not give that life an air of reality in his portraiture. _John Lothrop Motley._--The fame of Motley’s historical work has obscured the reputation of his fiction. “Morton’s Hope, or The Memoirs of a Provincial” (1839), like “Hyperion,” recalls the interest in German university life which was becoming general in America--a life which Motley vividly describes. From Germany the hero returns to participate in the American Revolution, in which he distinguishes himself. In “Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony” (1849), Motley utilised the story of Thomas Morton, the jolly Royalist who with his followers settled near Boston in 1626 and whose revelry shocked his staid Puritan neighbours. As a historical picture, it has high value. Both of these novels, abounding in carefully wrought descriptions and gleams of genuine humour, deserved greater success than they had. _Caroline M. Kirkland._--A similar service was done for life in Michigan by Caroline M. Kirkland (1801-64), whose humorous and lively descriptions of frontier life, “A New Home; Who’ll Follow?” (1839), “Forest Life” (1842), and “Western Clearings” (1846), were in their day successful and popular. Mrs. Kirkland’s early works were published over the pen-name of “Mrs. Mary Clavers.” Her literary career extended over a quarter of a century, and she was long a popular contributor to magazines and annuals.