The American novelists that I have dealt with so far have been veterans of letters, men and women who have had a long career. Few of the younger writers do not owe them something as regards their conception of life and of art. They have imposed upon the new generation their realism, their choice of subjects and their style. Most of the writers of America borrowed their pessimistic philosophy and their direct mode of expression from Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson. Idealism is quite dead in the American novel of to-day, at any rate that traditional idealism based on sentimentality. Even the disillusioned realism of the masters whose work I have analyzed no longer satisfies the young. They have substituted cynicism and utter crudity for it. The newcomers have lost all faith, hope and charity. The prevalent pessimism of the last fifteen years of American literature, particularly noticeable in the novel, betrays a profound disturbance of the American conscience. It is partly the result of the political and social events of the last few years. When an ideal is shattered, when a faith dies out and when the sense of a moral and social discipline is relaxed, apprehension, soul-fear and anxiety prevail. This is precisely the case in the United States to-day. American pessimism is the ransom of Puritanism. The traditional idealism has failed. The young Americans are burning what their fathers adored. Through their disenchantment they have sensed the practical incapacities of the idealists. They sounded out the transcendental vagueness of even as high a moral leader as Emerson, and the democratic quixotism of Whitman made them smile. They relegated the good Walt among those whom they ironically term “Chautauqua poets.”