And in
many cases to probe it as well.
It would take a volume to criticise these writers in any detail. I can
attempt no more than a bald and imperfect enumeration. Miss Mary
Wilkins's studies of New England life are well known and appreciated in
England, but the talent of Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is not sufficiently
recognised. In her _Country of the Pointed Firs_, for example, there are
whole chapters that rise to a classical perfection of workmanship. The
novelists of the Eastern cities, with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman,
at their head, are of course numberless. For studies in the local colour
of New York nothing could be better than Professor Brander Matthews'
_Vignettes of Manhattan_, and other stories. Mr. Paul Leicester Ford's
_Honorable Peter Stirling_, though antiquated in style, gives a
remarkable picture of political life in New York. The Bowery Boy is
cleverly represented, so far as dialect at any rate is concerned, by
Mr. E.W. Townsend in his _Chimmie Fadden_. Even the Jewish and the
Italian quarters of New York have their portraitists in fiction. Life in
Washington has been frequently and ably depicted; for instance, in Mrs.
Burnett's _Through one Administration_.
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