Harvard College, and caught the imaginations of large numbers of the
best educated and prosperous classes of the community. Attempting to
adjust themselves between the old order of things on the one side,
and the new forces of evangelism and liberalism on the other,
another great body of Congregationalists found a middle ground in a
movement of modified Calvinism, which sustained the life of
Congregationalism in large areas of New England. By these movements
of conflict and readjustment, whatever of unity the older
Congregational faith had possessed was gradually broken down and a
renaissance of religious and moral ideas was ushered in.

This change was soon to find expression in a new literary movement
in New England, a movement in which poetry and prose were to take on
a cheerful optimism, a joy in life, and an idealism. This new
literature reflected the influence of the Unitarian movement, the
influence of European romantic literature, and the influence of
German philosophy. Before long the Transcendentalists proclaimed the
new idealism that was showing itself about Boston. [Footnote:
Wendell, Literary Hist. of America, book V., chaps. iv., v.] Bryant,
Longfellow, Whittier, Hawthorne, and Emerson were all prophesied in
the forces of intellectual change that now spread over the section.

Even New England's statesmen were deeply influenced by the literary
spirit. Daniel Webster, although the son of a New Hampshire pioneer
whose log cabin was on the edge of the vast forest that stretched
north to Canada, had won an education at the "little college" at
Dartmouth; and, after his removal to Boston, he captivated New
England by his noble commemorative orations and enriched his
arguments before the courts by the splendor of his style. He united
the strong, passionate nature of his backwoods father with a mind