It is well worth one’s while to look over the volumes of the “Anthology” to see what our fathers and grandfathers were thinking about, and how they expressed themselves.  The stiffness of Puritanism was pretty well relaxed when a Magazine conducted by clergymen could say that “The child,”—­meaning the new periodical,—­“shall not be destitute of the manners of a gentleman, nor a stranger to genteel amusements.  He shall attend Theatres, Museums, Balls, and whatever polite diversions the town shall furnish.”  The reader of the “Anthology” will find for his reward an improving discourse on “Ambition,” and a commendable schoolboy’s “theme” on “Inebriation.”  He will learn something which may be for his advantage about the “Anjou Cabbage,” and may profit by a “Remedy for Asthma.”  A controversy respecting the merits of Sir Richard Blackmore may prove too little exciting at the present time, and he can turn for relief to the epistle “Studiosus” addresses to “Alcander.”  If the lines of “The Minstrel” who hails, like Longfellow in later years, from “The District of Main,” fail to satisfy him, he cannot accuse “R.T.  Paine, Jr., Esq.,” of tameness when he exclaims:—­

  “Rise Columbia, brave and free,
  Poise the globe and bound the sea!”

But the writers did not confine themselves to native or even to English literature, for there is a distinct mention of “Mr. Goethe’s new novel,” and an explicit reference to “Dante Aligheri, an Italian bard.”  But let the smiling reader go a little farther and he will find Mr. Buckminster’s most interesting account of the destruction of Goldau.  And in one of these same volumes he will find the article, by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, doubtless, which was the first hint of our rural cemeteries, and foreshadowed that new era in our underground civilization which is sweetening our atmospheric existence.

The late President Josiah Quincy, in his “History of the Boston Athenaeum,” pays a high tribute of respect to the memory and the labors of the gentlemen who founded that institution and conducted the “Anthology.”  A literary journal had already been published in Boston, but very soon failed for want of patronage.  An enterprising firm of publishers, “being desirous that the work should be continued, applied to the Reverend William Emerson, a clergyman of the place, distinguished for energy and literary taste; and by his exertions several gentlemen of Boston and its vicinity, conspicuous for talent and zealous for literature, were induced to engage in conducting the work, and for this purpose they formed themselves into a Society.  This Society was not completely organized until the year 1805, when Dr. Gardiner was elected President, and William Emerson Vice-President.  The Society thus formed maintained its existence with reputation for about six years, and issued ten octavo volumes from the press, constituting one of the most lasting and honorable monuments of the literature of the period,