BOOK VI THE REST OF THE STORY I NEW YORK SINCE 1857 LONG as we have dwelt on the Renaissance of New England, we can hardly have forgotten that the first considerable American literary expression developed in the Middle States. Before New England emerged into literature, the work of Brockden Brown had been completed and the reputations of Irving and Cooper and Bryant established. Bryant, as we have seen, lived through the whole period which brought New England letters to their height and to their decline. He outlived Poe, he outlived Willis, and long before he died the Knickerbocker School had passed into a memory. Meanwhile those writers whose works had centred about the "Atlantic Monthly" had achieved their full reputation. The "Atlantic Monthly," we remember, was started in 1857. That same year saw also the foundation of "Harper's Weekly," which still admirably persists in New York. At that time "Harper's Monthly Magazine" had been in existence for seven years; and the two New York newspapers which have maintained closest relation with literary matters, the "Evening Post" and the "Tribune," had long been thoroughly established. The other periodicals which now mark New York as the literary centre of the United States were not yet founded. In reverting to New York, then, we may conveniently revert to 1857. Though the fact by which this year is commonly remembered in American history has left no mark on literature, we may conveniently remind ourselves that throughout America 1857 was marked by a memorable financial panic. The great expansion of the country during the preceding twelve or fifteen years had resulted in a general extension of credit and in a general overdevelopment of enterprises, particularly of railroads, which were bound to involve reaction. For a little while the material progress of the country came to a standstill. It was only when this material progress was renewed, partly under the stimulus of the Civil War, that the overwhelming superiority of New York as a centre of material prosperity made itself finally felt. Throughout the century, to be sure, the preponderance of New York had been declaring itself. In 1800 it had 60,000 inhabitants to only 24,000 in Boston. In 1830, when it had 200,000 inhabitants, Boston had only 61,000; and by 1857 the population of New York was at least three-quarters of a million, while that of Boston still proportionally lagged behind. From the time when the Erie Canal was opened, in fact, the geographical position of New York had already made that city by far the most considerable in America. Less than three hundred miles from Boston, it was and it remains geographically as central as Boston is isolated. Until after the Civil War, however, the preponderating importance of New York had not proceeded so far as to deprive the place of a decided local character. Traces of this, indeed, it still retains; but most of its modern characteristics seem traceable to a political accident. Throughout the period during which its geographical position, at first slowly, then faster and faster, has declared its commercial superiority, New York has never been a political capital. In this respect its contrast with Boston is most marked. Though Boston has been the capital only of the small State of Massachusetts, this small State has always been the most important of isolated New England. Boston, then, its political capital, has enjoyed not only the commercial and economic supremacy of the region, but also such supremacy as comes from attracting and diffusing the most important influences of local public life. In this aspect Boston on a small scale resembles the great capitals of the world. New York, on the other hand, commercially and financially the most important spot in America, has never been much else. Almost from the beginning our national government has been centralised in Washington, a city artificially created for political purposes at a point of small economic importance. The government of the State of New York, ever since New York was a State, has been situated at the comparatively insignificant town of Albany. The enormous growth of New York City, to be sure, has long given it great political weight. In current political slang there are few more picturesque phrases than that which describes some candidate for the Presidency of the United States as coming down to the Harlem River with a considerable majority, to be met at that traditional boundary of the metropolis by an overwhelming force of metropolitan voters. In point of fact, however, metropolitan New York has always had to seek legislation from a much smaller city more than a hundred miles away; and thither it has always had to take for decision every question carried to its court of highest appeal. Two natural results which have followed may be paralleled in various other American cities similarly placed, - Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco. In the absence of far-reaching political activity, emphasis on merely local politics has been disproportionate; and meanwhile the city, which has prospered only from such preponderatingly material causes, has appeared excessively material in general character. Throughout this century of material development, then, New York has lacked some of those advantages which make a true capital intellectually stimulating. Its extraordinary |