Read the passage.
The American Romantics v. the American Realists
There are many strong examples of the effect that history has had upon culture, and 19th-century America ranks high on that list.
At the beginning of the 1800s, the new country began to explore its vast resources. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase added almost 830,000 square miles, nearly doubling the size of the United States. This launched a period known as the Westward Expansion as pioneers moved into new territories. By 1870, what we now refer to as the continental United States was largely settled (barring the Great Plains). It was a time of great promise and optimism. This was echoed in the works of American Romanticism and Transcendentalism. These movements include writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson.
What is the tone of this paragraph?
pessimistic
humorous
admiring
dismissive