Loom and Spindle by Harriet H. Robinson — Read

One of the most curious phases in the life of New England, and one that must always puzzle the historian of its literature, is its sudden intellectual blossoming half a century ago.

Emerson says, "The children of New England between 1820 and 1840 were born with knives in their brains; " and this would seem to be true, since during or very near that time, were born the majority of those writers and thinkers whose lives have been so recently and so nobly rounded out, -- Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, John Pierpont, -- they whose influence cannot be overestimated in bringing an ideal element into our hitherto prosaic New England life.