n
hoop-skirt, "built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark." Mr.
Hale's historical scholarship and his habit of detail have aided him in
the art of giving _vraisemblance_ to absurdities. He is known in
philanthropy as well as in letters, and his tales have a cheerful,
busy, practical way with them in consonance with his motto, "Look up
and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, and lend
a hand."

It is too soon to sum up the literary history of the last quarter of a
century. The writers who have given it shape are still writing, and
their work is therefore incomplete. But on the slightest review of it
two facts become manifest; first, that New England has lost its long
monopoly; and, secondly, that a marked feature of the period is the
growth of realistic fiction. The electric tension of the atmosphere
for thirty years preceding the civil war, the storm and stress
of great public contests, and the intellectual stir produced by
transcendentalism seem to have been more favorable to poetry and
literary idealism than present conditions are. At all events there are
no new poets who rank with Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and others of
the elder generation, although George H. Boker, in Philadelphia, R. H.
Stoddard and E. C. Stedman, in New York, and T. B. Aldrich, first in
New York and afterward in Boston, have written creditable verse; not to
speak of younger writers, whose work, however, for the most part, has
been more distinguished by delicacy of execution than by native
impulse. Mention has been made of the establishment of _Harper's
Monthly Magazine_, which, under the conduct of its accomplished editor,
George W. Curtis, has provided the public with an abundance of good
reading. The old _Putnam's Monthly_, which ran from 1853 to 1858, and
had a strong corps of contributors, was revived in 1868, and continued
by that name till 1870, when it was succeeded by _Scribner's Monthly_,
under the editorship of Dr. J. G. Holland, and this in 1881 by the
_Century_, an efficient rival of _Harper's_ in circulation, in literary
excellence, and in the beauty of its wood-engravings, the American
school of which art these two great periodicals have done much to
develop and encourage. Another New York monthly, the _Galaxy_, ran
from 1866 to 1878, and was edited by Richard Grant White. Within the
last few years a new _Scribner's Magazine_ has also taken the field.
The _Atlantic_, in Boston, and _Lippinco