x IDEALS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
the susceptibility to grace and beauty, of the Old South, have left their record in those writers whose contributions to our literature are of permanent value; for while Irving does not rank with Hawthorne or Poe his place beside them as a sensitive and winning reporter of the taste and manner of his time and locality is secure. The range of this early writing is not wide nor are its elements many. It is true, Poe and Hawthorne are subtle in perception and method, and Emerson's thought is often elusive and his paragraphs perplexing in face of the perfect clearness of his sentences; nevertheless, a certain quality which is distinctly American runs through their work, and while its elevation is great its area is relatively small. The earlier literature represented only a narrow strip of the continent and a comparatively limited experience. Its delicacy, refinement and purity gave it the distinction of rare spirituality; it was a record of the soul of a people made with singular insight and with the deep fidelity of sympathy; but it did not and could not report the depth and breadth of American life. The time was not ripe; that life had not yet broadened to cover the continent.
That life has not yet come to clear knowledge of itself and has not yet definitely formulated itself, and a full report of it is still to be made. It may be many decades before an adequate account of the spirit, that is, the ideals, of the American people can be written; but the striking fact about contemporary literature in this country is its approximation to the completeness and complexity of an adequate report of national life. This is the first thing that strikes us as we turn from the old books to the new. That the old books were better, in some ways, than the new, does not diminish the significance of the fact that the books of today are far more inclusive of national types and experience than were the books written during the period which ended with the Civil war. At the close of that war American literature was practically the literature of the Atlantic seaboard; today it is the literature of a continent. It is not evenly distributed; but every geographical section has found
