ecially if it makes young people acquainted with
our writers of the past and with something of the old-time life and
the spirit that controlled our ancestors, it will serve an excellent
purpose.

Our writers should be compared with those of other sections and other
countries; and due honor should be given them, equally removed from
over-praise and from depreciation. If we, their countrymen, do not
know and honor them, who can be expected to do so? No people is great
whose memory is lost, whose interest centres in the present alone, who
looks not reverently back to true beginnings and hopefully forward to
a grand future.

So I would urge my fellow-teachers to a fresh diligence in studying
and worthily understanding the life and literature of our past, and in
impressing them upon the minds of the rising generation, so as to
infuse into the new forms now arising the best and purest and highest
of the old forms fast passing away.

My sincere thanks are hereby tendered to the scholars who have aided
me by their advice and encouragement, to living authors and the
relatives of those not living who have generously given me permission
to copy extracts from their writings, to the publishers who have
kindly allowed me to use copyrighted matter, to Miss Anna M. Trice,
Mr. Josiah Ryland, Jr., and the officials of the Virginia State
Library where I found most of the books needed in my work, and to Mr.
David Hutcheson, of the Library of Congress. My greatest indebtedness
is to Professor William Taylor Thom and Professor John P. McGuire, for
scholarly criticism and practical suggestions in the course of
preparation.

1895. LOUISE MANLY.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See Professor Woodrow Wilson's excellent article on the University
study of Literature and Institutions, in the FORUM, September, 1894.

LIST OF WORKS FOR REFERENCE.

Appleton: Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols.

Duyckinck: Cyclopaedia of American Literature, 2 vols.

Allibone: Dictionary of Authors, 3 vols.

Kirk: Supplement to Allibone, 2 vols.

Stedman: Poets of America.

Stedman and Hutchinson: Library of American Literature, 11 vols.

Poe: Literati of New York.

Griswold: Poets and Poetry of America.
Prose Writers of America.
Female Poets of America.

Hart: American Literature, Eldredge Bros., Phila.

Davidson: Living Writers of the South, (1869).

Miss Rutherford: American Author