As producer, editor, critic,
and friend of the foremost writers of his epoch, Mr. Howells has
known the books of our new national era as no one else could have
known them. Some future historian of the period may piece
together, from no other sources than Mr. Howells's writings, an
unrivaled picture of our book-making during more than sixty
years. All that the present historian can attempt is to sketch
with bungling fingers a few men and a few tendencies which seem
to characterize the age.
One result of the Civil War was picturesquely set forth in
Emerson's "Journal." The War had unrolled a map of the Union, he
said, and hung it in every man's house. There was a universal
shifting of attention, if not always from the province or section
to the image of the nation itself, at least a shift of focus from
one section to another. The clash of arms had meant many other
things besides the triumph of Union and the freedom of the
slaves. It had brought men from every state into rude jostling
contact with one another and had developed a new social and human
curiosity.
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