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Bliss Perry, The American spirit in lierature: a chronicle of great interpreters, Chapter 7: romance, poetry, and history (search)
e, the political verse of Whittier and Lowell, presupposed a keen, reflecting audience, mentally and morally exigent. The spread of the Lyceum system along the line of westward emigration from New England as far as the Mississippi is one tangible evidence of the high level of popular intelligence. That there was much of the superficial and the spread-eagle in the American life of the eighteen-forties is apparent enough without the amusing comments of such English travellers as Dickens, Miss Martineau, and Captain Basil Hall. But there was also genuine intellectual curiosity and a general reading habit which are evidenced not only by a steady growth of newspapers and magazines but also by the demand for substantial books. Biography and history began to be widely read, and it was natural that the most notable productiveness in historical writing should manifest itself in that section of the country where there were libraries, wealth, leisure for the pursuits of scholarship, a sense