Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[66] for Mr. James's development, after all. Mr. Howells has scarcely yet given up taking the heroes of his books from among those who had gone through a similar ordeal, and it will be many years before the force of that great impulse is spent. For one thing, the results of the war have liberated the Southern literary genius, and that part of the nation, so strangely unprolific till within twenty-five years, is now arresting its full share of attention, and perhaps even more than its share.

It is difficult to say just how far the influence of a literary tonic extends, and Goethe might doubtless be cited as an instance where art was its own sufficient stimulus. In the cases of a writer like Poe, we trace no tonic element. The great anti-slavery agitation and the general reformatory mood of half a century ago undoubtedly gave us Channing, Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell; not that they would not have been conspicuous in any case, but that the moral attribute in their natures might have been far less marked. The great temporary fame of Mrs. Stowe was identified with the same influence. Hawthorne and