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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book 38 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life 22 0 Browse Search
Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches 18 0 Browse Search
Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America. 16 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 2 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 14 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.) 12 0 Browse Search
Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the story of his life 12 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature 12 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays 12 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men 9 1 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays. You can also browse the collection for Matthew Arnold or search for Matthew Arnold in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Americanism in literature. (search)
ne, a hygiene; but we cannot remain always Puritans. The world needed that moral bracing, even for its art; but, after all, life is not impoverished by being ennobled; and in a happier age, with a larger faith, we may again enrich ourselves with poetry and passion, while wearing that heroic girdle still around us. Then the next blossoming of the world's imagination need not bear within itself, like all the others, the seeds of an epoch of decay. I utterly reject the position taken by Matthew Arnold, that the Puritan spirit in America was essentially hostile to literature and art. Of course the forest pioneer cannot compose orchestral symphonies, nor the founder of a state carve statues. But the thoughtful and scholarly men who created the Massachusetts Colony brought with them the traditions of their universities, and left these embodied in a college. The Puritan life was only historically inconsistent with culture; there was no logical antagonism. Indeed, that life had in it mu