s, indeed, stand out in sharp contrast
with those habitual strollers on Broadway and frequenters of literary
gatherings, though each of them was for a while a part of Knickerbocker
New York. To all appearances they were only two more Bohemians like the
rest, but the curiosity of the twentieth century sets them apart from
their forgotten contemporaries. They are two of the unluckiest--and yet
luckiest--authors who ever tried to sell a manuscript along Broadway.
One of them is Edgar Allan Poe and the other is Walt Whitman. They shall
have a chapter to themselves.

But before turning to that chapter, we must look back to New England
once more and observe the blossoming-time of its ancient commonwealths.
During the thirty years preceding the Civil War New England awoke to
a new life of the spirit. So varied and rich was her literary
productiveness in this era that it still remains her greatest period,
and so completely did New England writers of this epoch voice the ideals
of the nation that the great majority of Americans, even today, regard
these New Englanders as the truest literary exponents of the mind and
soul of the United States. We must take a look at them.

CHAPTER VI. THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS

To understand the literary leadership of New England during the thirty
years immediately preceding the Civil War it is necessary to recall the
characteristics of a somewhat isolated and peculiar people. The mental
and moral traits of the New England colonists, already glanced at in
an earlier chapter, had suffered little essential modification in two
hundred years. The original racial stock was still dominant. As compared
with the middle and southern colonies, there was relatively little
immigration, and this was easily assimilated. The physical remoteness of
New England from other sections of the country, and the stubborn loyalty
with which its inhabitants maintained their own standards of life, alike
contributed to their sense of separateness. It is true, of course, that
their mode of thinking and feeling had undergone certain changes. They
were among the earliest theorists of political independence from Great
Britain, and had done their share, and more, in the Revolution. The
rigors of their early creed had somewhat relaxed, as we have seen, by
the end of the seventeenth century, and throughout the eighteenth there
was a gradual progress toward religious liberalism. The population
steadily increased, and New England'