, James Godfrey,
Cadwallader Colden, and above all, Franklin himself, were winning the
respect of European students, and were teaching Americans to use their
eyes and their minds not merely upon the records of the past but in
searching out the inexhaustible meanings of the present. There is no
more fascinating story than that of the beginnings of American science
in and outside of the colleges, and this movement, like the influence of
journalism and of the higher education, counted for colonial union.

Professor Tyler, our foremost literary student of the period, summarizes
the characteristics of colonial literature in these words: "Before the
year 1765, we find in this country, not one American people, but many
American peoples.... No cohesive principle prevailed, no centralizing
life; each little nation was working out its own destiny in its own
fashion." But he adds that with that year the colonial isolation came to
an end, and that the student must thereafter "deal with the literature
of one multitudinous people, variegated, indeed, in personal traits,
but single in its commanding ideas and in its national destinies." It is
easy to be wise after the event. Yet there was living in London in 1765,
as the agent for Pennsylvania, a shrewd and bland Colonial--an honorary
M. A. from both Harvard and Yale, a D.C.L. of Oxford and an LL.D. of
St. Andrews who was by no means sure that the Stamp Act meant the end of
Colonialism. And Franklin's uncertainty was shared by Washington. When
the tall Virginian took command of the Continental Army as late as 1775,
he "abhorred the idea of independence." Nevertheless John Jay, writing
the second number of the "Federalist" in 1787, only twelve years later,
could say: "Providence has been pleased to give this one connected
country to one united people; a people descended from the same
ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion,
attached to the same principles of government."

CHAPTER IV. THE REVOLUTION

If we turn, however, to the literature produced in America between the
passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 and the adoption of the Constitution
in 1787, we perceive that it is a literature of discord and passion.
Its spirit is not that of "one united people." Washington could indeed
declare in his "Farewell Address" of 1796, "With slight shades of
difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political
principles"; yet no one knew better than Wa