Literature in the West now began to have an existence. Another young poet from Chester County, Pa., namely, Thomas Buchanan Read, went to Cincinnati, and not to New York, to study sculpture and painting, about 1837, and one of his best-known poems, _Pons Maximus_, was written on the occasion of the opening of the suspension bridge across the Ohio. Read came East, to be sure, in 1841, and spent many years in our sea-board cities and in Italy. He was distinctly a minor poet, but some of his Pennsylvania pastorals, like the _Deserted Road_, have a natural sweetness; and his luxurious _Drifting_, which combines the methods of painting and poetry, is justly popular. _Sheridan's Ride_--perhaps his most current piece--is a rather forced production, and has been overpraised. The two Ohio sister poets, Alice and Phoebe Cary, were attracted to New York in 1850, as soon as their literary success seemed assured. They made that city their home for the remainder of their lives. Poe praised Alice Cary's _Pictures of Memory_, and Phoebe's _Nearer Home_ has become a favorite hymn. There is nothing peculiarly Western about the verse of the Cary sisters. It is the poetry of sentiment, memory, and domestic affection, entirely feminine, rather tame and diffuse as a whole, but tender and sweet, cherished by many good women and dear to simple hearts. A stronger smack of the soil is in the Negro melodies like _Uncle Ned_, _O Susanna_, _Old Folks at Home_, _'Way Down South_, _Nelly was a Lady_, _My Old Kentucky Home_, etc., which were the work, not of any Southern poet, but of Stephen C. Foster, a native of Allegheny, Pa., and a resident of Cincinnati and Pittsburg. He composed the words and music of these, and many others of a similar kind, during the years 1847 to 1861. Taken together they form the most original and vital addition which this country has made to the psalmody of the world, and entitle Foster to the first rank among American song-writers.