This, then, is our starting-point: evident character and ability, at a disadvantage both in production and in the disposal of the product; imperfect educational equipment; and a hopeless consciousness of inferiority, almost amounting to an inability to stand upright mentally. Susanna Rowson, who wrote the popular “Charlotte Temple,” may be classed as an American novelist, although not born in this country. She appears also as a writer of patriotic songs, an actress, a teacher, and the compiler of a dictionary and other school-books. “The Coquette, or the History of Eliza Wharton,” by Hannah Webster Foster, was another prime favorite among the formal novels of the day. Kind Miss Hannah Adams, in her old age, chanced to praise a certain metrical effort,—unpromisingly labeled “Jephthah’s Rash Vow,”—put forth by a girl of sixteen, Miss Caroline Howard. Here occurs an indicative touch. “When I learned,” says this commended Miss Caroline, “that my verses had been surreptitiously printed in a newspaper, I wept bitterly, and was as alarmed as if I had been detected in man’s apparel.” Such was the feeling with which the singing-robes were donned by a maiden in 1810—a state of affairs soon to be replaced by a general fashion of feminine singing-robes, of rather cheap material. For during the second quarter of the present century conditions somewhat improved, and production greatly increased. “There was a wide manifestation of that which bears to pure ideality an inferior relationship,” writes Mr. Stedman of the general body of our literature at this period. In 1848 Dr. Griswold reports that “women among us are taking a leading part”; that “the proportion of female writers at this moment in America, far exceeds that which the present or any other age in England exhibits.” Awful moment in America! one is led to exclaim by a survey of the poetic field. Alas, the verse of those “Tokens,” and “Keepsakes,” and “Forget-me-nots,” and “Magnolias,” and all the rest of the annuals, all glorious without in their red or white Turkey morocco and gilding! Alas, the flocks of quasi swan-singers! They have sailed away down the river of Time, chanting with a monotonous mournfulness. We need not speak of them at length. One of them early wrote about the Genius of Oblivion; most of them wrote for it. It was not their fault that their toil increased the sum of the “Literature suited to Desolate Islands.” The time was out of joint. Sentimentalism infected both continents. It was natural enough that the infection should seize most strongly upon those who were weakened by an intellectual best-parlor atmosphere, with small chance of free out-of-door currents. They had their reward. Their crude constituencies were proud of them; and not all wrought without “emolument,” though it need hardly be said that verse-making was not and is not, as a rule, a remunerative occupation. Some names survive; held in the memory of the public by a few small, sweet songs on simple