ABSTRACT
Since the death of Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1894, his reputation has shrunk and dwindled with that of his group. With the rise of other literary schools, New England standards have been submitted to a somewhat rude overhauling, and Brahmin ideals are no longer reckoned as authoritative as they were once believed to be, nor the supremacy of Boston genius so indisputable. Concord has risen as Cambridge and Beacon Street have declined, and in the shadow of Waldo Emerson and David Thoreau, the wit of Back Bay is in danger of being obscured. The extreme parochialism of the Brahmin mind is revealed in James Russell Lowell’s incapacity to understand the South. From this pleasant background of Brahmin conservatisms, Lowell went forth into a world given over to momentous changes, contemptuous of all Brahmin standards, to find his way as he might.
