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, and may be considered as a true revival of polite learning in this country after that decay and neglect which resulted from the distractions of the Revolutionary War, and as forming an epoch in the intellectual history of the United States.  Its records yet remain, an evidence that it was a pleasant, active, high-principled association of literary men, laboring harmoniously to elevate the literary standard of the time, and with a success which may well be regarded as remarkable, considering the little sympathy they received from the community, and the many difficulties with which they had to struggle.”

The publication of the “Anthology” began in 1804, when Mr. William Emerson was thirty-four years of age, and it ceased to be published in the year of his death, 1811.  Ralph Waldo Emerson was eight years old at that time.  His intellectual life began, we may say, while the somewhat obscure afterglow of the “Anthology” was in the western horizon of the New England sky.