state! So I had it cut off. Yes. Well, good-by, master! talk any more." I can't That day, before setting off to shoot, I had a conversation with the village constable about Lukerya. I learnt from him that in the village they called Lukerya the "Living Relic": that she gave them no trouble, however; they never heard complaint or repining from her. "She asks nothing, but on the contrary she's grateful for everything; a gentle soul, one must say, if any there be. Stricken of God," so the constable concluded, "for her sins, one must suppose; but we do not go into that. And as for judging her, no-no, we do not judge her. Let her be! A few weeks later I heard that Lukerya was dead. So her death had come for her - and "after St. Peter's day." They told me that on the day of her death she kept hearing the sound of bells, though it was reckoned over five miles from Aleksyevka to the church, and it was a week-day. Lukerya, however, had said that the sounds came not from the church, but from above! Probably she did not dare to say-from heaven. MOSES COIT TYLER (1835-1900) HE literary historian who performs for his country a double service to criticism and literature deserves its gratitude. Ad mirable criticism often lacks the literary touch and tone,yet these are especially welcome in the critic of literature. Professor Moses Coit Tyler, in the thorough-going and attractive studies he was years in making of the American literary past, stood alone in the dignified endeavor to cover the whole field with scholarly care, and by the methods of broad comprehensive criticism. His task was left incomplete; but he had published exhaustive and stimulating volumes upon the literature of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods, of such a quality as to declare him master of the field. His treatment of material that in some hands would inevitably prove dull in the handling, has made the tentative literary struggles and efforts warm and full of illumination. MOSES COIT TYLER To this attractiveness may be added the solider characteristics which go to make up the critic truly called to his vocation: judgment, the sense of proportion, an appreciation of what are the underlying principles in the development of American life and letters, and a sound moral insight. Professor Tyler was by birth and training the right sort of man to give a critical survey of the earlier American literature, which is in intent and result so predominantly earnest and ethical. Moses Coit Tyler was a New-Englander; born in Griswold, Connecticut, on August 2d, 1835. He was graduated from Yale in 1857, and studied theology there and afterwards at Andover Theological Seminary, Andover, Massachusetts. From 1860 to 1862 he was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1863 he went to England, and resided there four years. On his return he was appointed to the English chair of the University of Michigan. In 1881 he became Professor of History at Cornell, which position he retained until his death. He was made a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1883. Professor Tyler's literary activity began with the publication of the 'Brawnville Papers' in 1869,—a series of essays on physical culture. The initial part of his chief life work was put forth in 1878: 'A History of American Literature During the Colonial Time,' in two volumes. The preface announced the author's intention of making successive studies, covering the growth of American letters up to the present time. In 1897 'A Literary History of the American Revolution' appeared in pursuance of this scheme. Professor Tyler also published in 1879, in conjunction with Professor Henry Morley, a 'Manual of English Literature.' He contributed to the 'American Statesmen' Series the monograph on Patrick Henry (1887); and in 1894 appeared 'Three Men of Letters,'-appreciations of Bishop Berkeley, President Dwight, and Joel Barlow. A volume entitled 'Essays from the Nation' is made up of contributions to that journal while the writer was in England. Professor Tyler's criticism of the American literary production is based upon a recognition of its vital relation to history, to politics, and society. He apprehends that the "penmen» have exerted an influence upon the course of American affairs not second to the statesmen and generals. This sense of the significant bearing of the native literature upon native life gives his study a fresh, interesting point of view. Hence it is a contribution to American history. Professor Tyler's style is very enjoyable for liveliness, color, and euphony. His writing has, distinctly, the artistic touch, and it is never dry, formal, or conventional either in manner or thought. The selections appended sufficiently illustrate this trait. Professor Tyler's death occurred at Ithaca, N. Y., December 28th, 1900. He did not live to complete the great task he had set for himself, having published only four volumes of his Literary History of America. EARLY VERSE-WRITING IN NEW ENGLAND From A History of American Literature. Copyright 1878, by G. P. HAPPY surprise awaits those who come to the study of the A early literature of New England with the expectation of finding it altogether arid in sentiment, or void of the spirit and aroma of poetry. The New-Englander of the seventeenth century was indeed a typical Puritan; and it will hardly be said that any typical Puritan of that century was a poetical personage. In proportion to his devotion to the ideas that won for him the derisive honor of his name, was he at war with nearly every form of the beautiful. He himself believed that there was an inappeasable feud between religion and art; and hence the duty of suppressing art was bound up in his soul with the masterpurpose of promoting religion. He cultivated the grim and the ugly. He was afraid of the approaches of Satan through the avenues of what is graceful and joyous. The principal business of men and women in this world seemed to him to be not to make it as delightful as possible, but to get through it as safely as possible. By a whimsical and horrid freak of unconscious Manichæism, he thought that whatever is good here is appropriated to God, and whatever is pleasant, to the Devil. It is not strange if he were inclined to measure the holiness of a man's life by its disagreeableness. In the logic and fury of his tremendous faith, he turned away utterly from music, from sculpture and painting, from architecture, from the adornments of costume, from the pleasures and embellishments of society,- because these things seemed only "the Devil's flippery and seduction" to his "ascetic soul, aglow with the gloomy or rapturous mysteries of his theology." Hence, very naturally, he turned away likewise from certain great and splendid types of literature,- from the drama, from the playful and sensuous verse of Chaucer and his innumerable sons, from the secular prose writings of his contemporaries, and from all forms of modern lyric verse except the Calvinistic hymn. Nevertheless the Puritan did not succeed in eradicating poetry from his nature. Of course, poetry was planted there too deep even for his theological grub-hooks to root it out. Though denied expression in one way, the poetry that was in him forced itself into utterance in another. If his theology drove poetry out of many forms in which it had been used to reside, poetry itself practiced a noble revenge by taking up its abode in his theology. His supreme thought was given to theology; and there he nourished his imagination with the mightiest and sublimest concep tions that a human being can entertain-conceptions of God and man, of angels and devils, of Providence and duty and destiny, of heaven, earth, hell. Though he stamped his foot in horror and scorn upon many exquisite and delicious types of literary art; stripped society of all its embellishments, life of all its amenities, sacred architecture of all its grandeur, the public service of divine worship of the hallowed pomp, the pathos and beauty, of its most reverend and stately forms; though his prayers were often a snuffle, his hymns a dolorous whine, his extemporized 15134 liturgy a bleak ritual of ungainly postures and of harsh monotonous howls: yet the idea that filled and thrilled his soul was one in every way sublime, immense, imaginative, poetic,-the idea of the awful omnipotent Jehovah, his inexorable justice, his holiness, the inconceivable brightness of his majesty, the vastness of his unchanging designs along the entire range of his relations with the hierarchies of heaven, the principalities and powers of the pit, and the elect and the reprobate of the sons of Adam. How resplendent and superb was the poetry that lay at the heart of Puritanism, was seen by the sightless eyes of John Milton, whose great epic is indeed the epic of Puritanism. Turning to Puritanism as it existed in New England, we may perhaps imagine it as solemnly declining the visits of the Muses of poetry, sending out to them the blunt but honest message"Otherwise engaged." Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, Thalia and Melpomene and Terpsichore could not! under any pretense have been admitted; but Polyhymnia — why should not she have been allowed to come in? especially if she were willing to forsake her deplorable sisters, give up her pagan habits, and submit to Christian baptism. Indeed, the Muse of New England, whosoever that respectable damsel may have been, was a Muse by no means exclusive: such as she was, she cordially visited every one who would receive her- and every one would receive her. It is an extraordinary fact about these grave and substantial men of New England, especially during our earli est literary age, that they all had a lurking propensity to write what they sincerely believed to be poetry,- and this, in most cases, in unconscious defiance of the edicts of nature and of a predetermining Providence. Lady Mary Montagu said that in England, in her time, verse-making had become as common as taking snuff. In New England, in the age before that, it had become much more common than taking snuff-since there were some who did not take snuff. It is impressive to note, as we inspect our first period, that neither advanced age, nor high office, nor mental unfitness, nor previous condition of respectability, was sufficient to protect any one from the poetic vice. We read of venerable men, like Peter Bulkley, continuing to lapse into it when far beyond the great climacteric. Governor Thomas Dudley was hardly a man to be suspected of such a thing, yet even against him the evidence must be pronounced conclusive: some verses in his own handwriting were found upon |