in character and tendency to the earlier series. Time has greatly
blunted the edge of these satires, but they were influential in their
day, and are an important part of the literature of the old Federalist
party.

Humphreys became afterward distinguished in the diplomatic service, and
was, successively, embassador to Portugal and to Spain, whence he
introduced into America the breed of merino sheep. He had been on
Washington's staff during the war, and was several times an inmate of
his house at Mount Vernon, where he produced, in 1785, the best-known
of his writings, _Mount Vernon_, an ode of a rather mild description,
which once had admirers. Joel Barlow cuts a larger figure in
contemporary letters. After leaving Hartford, in 1788, he went to
France, where he resided for seventeen years, made a fortune in
speculations, and became imbued with French principles, writing a song
in praise of the guillotine, which gave great scandal to his old
friends at home. In 1805 he returned to America and built a fine
residence near Washington, which he called Kalorama. Barlow's literary
fame, in his own generation, rested upon his prodigious epic, the
_Columbiad_. The first form of this was the _Vision of Columbus_,
published at Hartford in 1787. This he afterward recast and enlarged
into the _Columbiad_, issued in Philadelphia in 1807, and dedicated to
Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steam-boat. This was by far the
most sumptuous piece of book-making that had then been published in
America, and was embellished with plates executed by the best London
engravers.

The _Columbiad_ was a grandiose performance, and has been the theme of
much ridicule by later writers. Hawthorne suggested its being
dramatized, and put on to the accompaniment of artillery and thunder