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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 539 1 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 88 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 58 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men 54 0 Browse Search
C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874. 54 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life 44 0 Browse Search
Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir 39 1 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book 38 0 Browse Search
George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition. 38 0 Browse Search
Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters 36 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays. You can also browse the collection for Americans or search for Americans in all documents.

Your search returned 13 results in 7 document sections:

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A plea for culture. (search)
Agassiz and Bayard Taylor, by dint of exceedingly rapid and continuous travelling, can still find a few regions which Americans will consent to hear described, outside of America; and a few wandering lecturers on geology still haunt the field, the three rainy days in the four weeks when I cannot take a walk. It is hard to imagine a life which would seem to most Americans more utterly misspent than this. Misspent it was, but how harmlessly and how happily! What pure delight, what freedom reached Europe,--there is certainly now no danger that public life will not have sufficient attractions for cultivated Americans. There is more danger that it will absorb them too much. Why should we insist, like Nick Bottom the weaver, on playinhas learned to content himself with the approbation of a few. This is only one half the truth; but it is the half which Americans find hardest to remember. Yet American literature, though its full harvest be postponed for another hundred years, i
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Literature as an art. (search)
on and missionary toil are over, they enter on a tiresome millennium of meat and pudding. To guard against this spiritual obesity, this carnal Eden, what has the next age in reserve for us? Suppose forty million perfectly healthy and virtuous Americans, what is to keep them from being as uninteresting as so many Chinese? I know of nothing but that aim which is the climax and flower of all civilization, without which purity itself grows dull and devotion tedious,--the pursuit of Science andinks from it in prose. Across the water, this tendency seems to increase. Just as an Englishman often seems ashamed to speak well, and pooh-poohs all oratory, so he is beginning to show the same slipshod manner on paper. What stands between Americans and good writing is usually want of culture; we write as well as we know how, while in England the obstacle seems to be merely a boorish whim. The style of many English books and magazines is less careful than ours, --less finished, less harmo
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Americanism in literature. (search)
sional and temporary, but he who makes his local coloring forever classic through the fascination of the dream it tells. Reason, imagination, passion, are universal; but sky, climate, costume, and even type of human character, belong to some one spot alone till they find an artist potent enough to stamp their associations on the memory of all the world. Whether his work be picture or symphony, legend or lyric, is of little moment. The spirit of the execution is all in all. As yet, we Americans have hardly begun to think of the details of execution in any art. We do not aim at perfection of detail even in engineering, much less in literature. In the haste of our national life, most of our intellectual work is done at a rush, is something inserted in the odd moments of the engrossing pursuit. The popular preacher becomes a novelist; the editor turns his pastepot and scissors to the compilation of a history; the same man must be poet, wit, philanthropist, and genealogist. We fin
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Ought women to learn the alphabet? (search)
of Wilton. Even now, travellers agree that throughout civilized Europe, with the partial exception of England and France, the profound absorption of the mass of women in household labors renders their general elevation impossible. But with us Americans, and in this age, when all these vast labors arc, being more and more transferred to arms of brass and iron; when Rochester grinds the flour and Lowell weaves the cloth, and the fire on the hearth has gone into black retirement and mourning; whd. In the United States, we have formally abandoned this theory for one half of the human race, while for the other half it still flourishes in full force. The moment the claims of woman are broached, the democrat becomes a monarchist. What Americans commonly criticise in English statesmen, namely, that they habitually evade all arguments based on natural right, and defend every legal wrong on the ground that it works well in practice, is the precise defect in our habitual view of woman. T
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Mademoiselle's campaigns. (search)
Mademoiselle's campaigns. The scene and the actors. The heroine of this tale is one so famous in history that her proper name never appears in it. The seeming paradox is the soberest fact. To us Americans, glory lies in the abundant display of one's personal appellation in the newspapers. Our heroine lived in the most gossiping of all ages, herself its greatest gossip; yet her own name, patronymic or baptismal, never was talked about. It was not that she sunk that name beneath high-sounding titles; she only elevated the most commonplace of all titles till she monopolized it and it monopolized her. Anne Marie Louise d'orleans, Souveraine de Dombes, Princesse Dauphine d'auvergne, Duchesse de Montpensier, is forgotten, or rather was never remembered; but the great name of Mademoiselle, La Grande Mademoiselle, gleams like a golden thread shot through and through that gorgeous tapestry of crimson and purple which records for us the age of Louis Quatorze. In May of the year 1
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Fayal and the Portuguese. (search)
st, the surf habitually higher; and there is such a depth of water in many places around the shore, that, on one occasion, a whale-ship, drawn too near by the current, broke her main-yard against the cliff, without grazing her keel. The population numbers about twenty-five thousand, one half of these being found in the city of Horta, and the rest scattered in some forty little hamlets lying at irregular distances along the shores. There are very few English or French residents, and no Americans but the different branches of the Consul's family,--a race whose reputation for all generous virtues has spread too widely to leave any impropriety in mentioning them here. Their energy and character have made themselves felt in every part of the island; and in the villages farthest from their charming home, one has simply to speak of a familha, the family, and the introduction is sufficient. Almost every good institution or enterprise on the island is the creation of Mr. Dabney. He tra
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, On an old Latin text-book. (search)
nly, must not become mere observers nor mere thinkers, but must hold to the side of art as well. Grant that it is the worthy mission of the current British literature to render style clear, simple, and convincing, it may yet be the mission of Americans to take that style and make it beautiful. And in this view we need, above all things else, to retain in our American universities all that looks toward literature, whether based upon the study of the modern, or, still better, of the ancient since the natural preferences of children should be followed in all training, not set at defiance, it is unnecessary and unwise to impose the same order of precedence upon all minds. There is really a good deal of time in childhood; even young Americans do not mature so instantaneously but that you can teach them something before the process is complete. President Eliot says, There have been many good college students who have learned in two years all the Greek and Latin required for admissio