Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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“ [110] a new kind of scholarship, of which the height was reached in admirable works of history; in religion it developed Unitarianism; in philosophy, Transcendentalism; in general conduct, a tendency toward reform which deeply affected our national history; and meantime it developed the most mature school of pure letters which has yet appeared in this country.” ¹

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Period of transition.

The period at which Boston began to assert itself as a literary centre which in some sense rivaled New York may be set, perhaps, at the year (1830) when Webster and Channing were at the height of their reputation; when Webster's Reply to Hayne was delivered, and Channing was just entering upon that career of social and political reform which gave him both American and European fame. Boston was then a little city of some sixty thousand inhabitants, still a small peninsula hemmed in by creeks and mud banks, without water pipes or gas, but with plenty of foreign commerce and activity of brain. The area of the peninsula was then 783 acres; it is now 1829 acres. There was no Back Bay in the