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

growth has nevertheless brought into being there something more like metropolitan life than has yet existed elsewhere in America. Any one whose memory of New York extends back for thirty years can personally recall changes there which prove by no means superficial.

The New York of the '60's was little changed from that of 1857; you felt there traces of old local character quite as marked as you would feel to-day in Boston or Philadelphia. How the New York of to-day might present itself to a European, one can hardly say. To any American the change has become something more than the growth of the old Dutch and English town into that endless extent of towering commercial buildings, of palaces, and of slums, which now begins to count its population by the million. What the visitor from New England most feels in modern New York is its metropolitan character. In many aspects, of course, the city remains American; in many others it seems chiefly a great centre of world-life. Nowhere before on this continent have human beings and human energy so concentrated; never before has life become so little local, so broadly general. With all its differences from the great cities of the old world, you begin to feel that to-day it has more in common with London and Paris, with Vienna and Berlin, with old Rome and Babylon, and all the rest, than with ancestral America.

Very material this development, of course; and from the accident that New York is not a true capital, its materialism has been more and more emphasised. On such a scale as this however, material development cannot help involving intellectual activity. In world-centres life becomes more and more strenuous. The problems before individuals grow more complicated, the rewards larger. The scale of everything increases. If you have things to sell, there you can find most buyers; if you would buy things, there you can find most who have things to sell. So if as an artist you have things that

you would impart to other men, there you can surely find the greatest number of men to whom they may be imparted. If by chance what you do in such a place is worth doing, its effect will be wider and greater than anything done amid the smaller, less disturbing influences of isolation. While New York has been developing its material prosperity, then, it has also been developing higher life. From the moment when

the Renaissance of New England began to decline, New York has more and more certainly been growing into the intellectual and artistic centre of America.

Some

For many years our principal publishers have been centred there; so have the periodicals which are most generally read throughout the country. There is "Harper's Magazine," which dates from 1850; "Harper's Weekly," which dates from 1857; the "Century Magazine," founded as "Scribner's Monthly" in 1870, and translated to its present name in 1881; "Scribner's Magazine," founded in 1887; and more. twenty years ago the old "North American Review" was bought by New York people and its title transferred there to a periodical of less staid character than the conventional old quarterly so dear to New England tradition. In New York, too, there has been published since 1865 the only American weekly paper which seriously discusses public and literary affairs, "The Nation;" and there are comic weeklies as well, "Puck" and "Life," and more. The list might go on endlessly; but for our purposes this is enough. The extent of literary activity involved in such production is incalculably greater than New England ever dreamed of.

All the same, this activity has been distinguished from the literary activity of renascent New England in two rather marked ways. The first is that, in spite of its magnitude, it is less conspicuous in New York than the old "North American Review" or even the "Dial," and still more than the earlier volumes of the "Atlantic Monthly " were in their contemporary Boston. As one looks back at Boston between 1800 and

1864, one inclines to feel that its intellectual life was rather more important than its material, and that even on the spot this intellectual importance was appreciated. In New York, however important our contemporary literary expression, material activity is more important still. The second way in which literary New York may be distinguished from our elder literary Boston results from the first; it was typified by an incident at a New York dinner-party eight or ten years ago. A Bostonian, in some small degree a man of letters, was invited to meet a company of literary New Yorkers. In the course of conversation one of the company happened casually to mention that he was in editorial charge of a well-known magazine. The visitor from New England laughingly confessed that he had no idea that his neighbour held so distinguished an office. This provincial ignorance so amused the company that they proceeded to ask their visitor to name the editors of the familiar periodicals on which we have already touched,— « Harper's Magazine," "Harper's Weekly," the "Century Magazine," "Scribner's Magazine," and the rest. The Bostonian, who knew all these publications perfectly well, had never known who conducted any of them. The only New York editorial fact about which he was certain was that Mr. Godkin had something to do with the "Nation." Though such ignorance was by no means to the credit of the Bostonian, it clearly indicates a truth concerning contemporary letters in New York. To a degree previously unprecedented in America, they have become impersonal. You know the names of publishers, you know the names of magazines, but in general you have misty notions of who is writing.

Yet New York has not lacked literary worthies. At various times, for example, while considering the literature of New England, we have had occasion to notice Horace Greeley, the founder of the "New York Tribune." Not precisely a man of letters, unless within the range of letters you include regular journalism, Greeley had marked influence on literature in New