was very eccentric, both in thought and style, having been influenced in both these respects by his study of German iterature.

His greatest works are—Sartor Resartus, Hero Worship, The French Revolution, Life of Frederick the Great, and several volames of Essays.

EXTRACTS.

I.

Earnestness alone makes life eternity.

II.

Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day, it will be found flourishing as a banyan grove-perhaps, alas! as a hemlock forest-after a thousand years.

RUSKIN. 1819

John Ruskin is the greatest art-critic of his time. He was born in 1819, was educated at Oxford, and is now Professor of Art in that University. He is one of the greatest masters of prose composition. In beauty of style he is unequalled by any author of the century except De Quincey and Macaulay.

His most celebrated works are Modern Painters, Seven Lamps of Architecture, and Stones of Venice.

EXTRACTS.

I.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.

II.

Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

JII.

SUNRISE IN THE ALPS.

[We give the following extract, though it is long, to show what poetry and sublimity a great master can throw into a single sentence. It is only part of a description, all of which is equally sublime.]

Wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the

mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning-their lung avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath, as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame and tossing vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels: and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with love and fear of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best delivered this His message unto men!

OTHER PROSE WRITERS OF THIS AGE.

HISTORICAL.

GEORGE GROTE (1794-1876), author of History of Greece, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates. Grote's History of Greece is the best ever published.

CONNOP THIRLWALL (1797-1876), author of History of Greece.

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON (1792-1867), author of History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Accession of Napoleon, 18 vols.; and Life of Marlborough.

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE (1818

), author of History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth, 12 vols.; Short Studies on Great Subjects; History of Ireland.

HENRY HART MILMAN (1791-1868), author of History of Christianity, His. tory of Latin Christianity, etc.

REV. CHARLES MERIVALE (1808-1874), author of History of the Romans, Conversion of the Roman Empire, Conversion of the Northern Nations. ARTHUR HELPS (1818-1875), author of Friends in Council, Companions of My Solitude, Social Pressure, Conquerors of the New World, etc.

JOHN FORSTER (1812-1876), author of Essays, Life of Landor, Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth, Life of Goldsmith, Life of Dickens, etc. MISS AGNES STRICKLAND (1806- ), author of Queens of England, Queens of Scotland, Bachelor Kings of England. Assisted by her sister Elizabeth.

FICTITIOUS.

RT. HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Earl of Beaconsfield (1805-1881), a distin guished statesman, many years Premier of England; author of Vivian Grey The Young Duke, Henrietta Temple, Contarini Fleming, Coningsby, Sibyl, Lothair, and several other novels; also Life of Lord Bentinck.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE (1815-1882), author of La Vendee, Orley Farm, Barchester Towers, Framley Parsonage, The Bertrams, Ralph the Heir, etc.;

also the West Indies and the Spanish Main, Travels in North America. I'rave's in Australia, etc. (Mrs. Trollope, his mother, was also a novelist; so is his brother, T. Adolphus Trollope.)

CHARLES READE (1814-1884), a novelist of the first class, author of Peg Woffington, Christie Johnstone, Never Too Late to Mend, White Lies, Griffith Gaunt, Put Yourself in His Place, etc.

Rev. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), author of Alton Locke, Westward Ho, Yeast, Hypatia, etc.

Charles LeveR (1806-1872), author of Harry Lorrequer, Charles O'Malley, Jack Hinton, etc. Unequalled in his delineations of Irish life and character. SAMUEL LOVER (1797-1868), Irish, author of Rory O'More, Handy Andy, novels; and Angels Whisper, Molly Bawn, and other popular songs.

SAMUEL WARREN, LL.D. (1807-1877), author of Ten Thousand a Year (a very amusing novel), and some law treatises.

G. P. R. JAMES (1801-1860), author of Edward the Black Prince, Richelieu, and many other novels; also several biographical works.

CHARLOTTE BRonte (1816-1855), author of Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette, three excellent novels.

WILKIE COLLINS (1824- ), author of Life of William Collins (his father); also of The Dead Secret, No Name, Womar. in White, and other novels. MRS. CRAIK, formerly Dinah Maria Mulock (1826-1887), author of John Halifax, Gentleman; The Ogilvies; The Woman's Kingdom; A Brave Lady, and various other novels.

THOMAS HUGHES (1823- ), author of School Days at Rugby, Tom Brown at Oxford; also Life of King Alfred, and Memorials of a Brother.

Gerald GriffiN (1803-1840), an Irish novelist and poet of rare genius, author of Holland Tide, The Collegians, and other tales; also of Gille Machree and other popular poems.

EDMUND YATES, G. A. SALA, GEORGE MACDONALD, MRS. WOOD, MISS YONGE, and many others, have also written novels of great popularity.

SCIENTIFIC.

JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873), a profound thinker and great writer; author of System of Logic, Political Economy, Essay on Liberty, etc.

HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE (1822-1862), author of History of Civilization HERBERT SPENCER (1820- ), one of the greatest of the Darwinian philosophers, author of Social Statics, Principles of Psychology, Education, etc. SIR DAVID BREWSTER (1781-1868), author of Natural Magic, More Worlds than One, Lives of Newton, Galileo, Kepler, etc.

SIR CHARLES LYELL (1797-1875), author of Elements of Geology, Travels in North America, Antiquity of Man, etc.

HUGH MILLER (1802-1856), self-educated geologist, author of Old Red Sandstone, Footprints of the Creator, Testimony of the Rocks, My Schools and Schoolmasters, etc.

MRS. MARY SOMERVILLE (1780-1872), the most learned woman of her age, author of Connection of the Physical Sciences, Physical Geography, etc.

WM. WHEWELL, D. D. (1795-1866), a writer of wonderful attainments. author of History of the Inductive Sciences, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, The Plurality of Worlds, etc.

JOHN TYNDALL (1820- ), author of Heat a Mode of Motion, On Sound Fragments of Science, Hours of Exercise, etc.

THOS. HENRY HUXLEY, F. R. S. (1825- ), author of Man's Place in Nature, Comparative Anatomy, Protoplasm, Lay Sermons, etc.

CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS.

PROF. MAX MULLER (1823- ), author of Science of Language, 2 vols., Chips from a German Workshop, 4 vols.

RT. HON. WM. E. GLADSTONE (1809- ), the leading Liberal statesman of England, author of Juventus Mundi, Homeric Studies, etc.

EARL OF DERBY, E. G. S. Stanley (1799-1869), an English statesman, and author of a fine Translation of Homer.

MRS. ANNA JAMESON (1797-1860), the ablest female prosist of the age author of Characteristics of Women, Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art, etc

THEOLOGICAL.

DEAN STANLEY (1815-1881), author of Life of Arnold, Commentary on Corinthians, Sinai and Palestine, etc.

RICHARD WHATELY, D. D. (1787-1863), Archbishop of Dublin, author of Rhetoric, Logic, Political Economy, New Testament Difficulties, etc.

R. C. TRENCH, D. D. (1807-1887), Abp. of Dublin, author of Notes on the Parables, Notes on the Miracles, Lessons on the Proverbs, On the Study of Words, English Past and Present, Poems, etc.

HENRY ALFORD, D. D. (1810-1871), Dean of Canterbury, author of Edition of New Testament, The Queen's English, Poems, etc.

REV. C. H. SPURGEON (1834- ), the most popular preacher of England, author of several volumes of sermons, Morning by Morning, Evening by Evening, John Ploughman's Talks, etc., etc.

HIS EMINENCE NICHOLAS WISEMAN, S. T. D. (1802-1865), Cardinal and Abp. of Westminster, one of the greatest scholars and writers of his age author of many doctrinal works, also of a large number of lectures on Religion and Science, Self-Culture, Literature, Art, and other popular subjects.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D. D. (1801- ), a writer of rare excellence, author of Loss and Gain (a religious novel), Apologia pro Vita Sua, etc. KENELM H. DIGBY (1800- ), author of Mores Catholici, The Lover's, Seat, The Children's Bower, Evenings on the Thames, Poems, etc.

(Many eminent theologians are omitted from this list for the reason stated at the bottom of page iv.)

AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES.

Cooper, Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, Ticknor, Motley, Everett, Webster, etc.

PART II.

THE LITERATURE OF AMERICA.

OR

INTRODUCTION.

RIGIN.-American Literature may be said to have begun in 1640, the year in which the first book was printed in this

country.

This was the Bay Psalm Book. Most of the books produced in America before this time may be regarded as English books, as they were not only printed in England, but were also intended mainly for English circulation. PERIODS.-American Literature is divided, in this work, into three Periods:

I. The Colonial Age, 1640-1760.

II. The Revolutionary Age, 1760-1830.

III. The National Age, 1830-1875.

PERIOD I.THE COLONIAL AGE.

1640-1760.

[Embracing, in English history, the last nine years of the reign of Charles I., the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and the reigns of Charles II., James II., William and Mary, Queen Anne, George I., and George II.]

THIS

HIS age was unfavorable to literary production. It was an age of fighting rather than writing. The colonists, engaged in a constant struggle for existence, had but little time to devote to literary pursuits; hence they left us but few works of perma. nent and universal interest.

Most of the literature of this age is theological. This is owing