; PARKE GODWIN 
 
DANIEL KAINE. 
 
 --o-- 
 
 Labor Oinnia Vincit. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
D Api 
 
A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 
 
 WITH 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM HIS PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 BY 
 
 PARKE GODWIN. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 first. 
 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 I, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 
 1883. 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 D . A P P L E T O N AND C O M P A K Y , 
 
 1883- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 SOME time after the death of Mr. Bryant, in 1878, his 
 younger daughter, Miss Julia S. Bryant, to whom his papers 
 were left, sent me copies of such of them as she supposed 
 might be useful in the preparation of a memoir of his life. 
 These consisted of letters written by him or to him, mostly 
 of a private or domestic nature, and of a few unpublished 
 or uncollected poems. Accompanying them were several 
 scrap-books containing some of his editorial writings, and 
 extracts of newspaper articles written about him at various 
 times. 
 
 To these scanty materials I was able, through the kind 
 ness of their possessors, to add his letters to Arthur and John 
 H. Bryant, his brothers, Gulian C. Verplanck, the Rev. Or- 
 ville Dewey, Mr. John Bigelow, the Rev. R. C. Waterston, 
 Miss Christiana and Miss Janet Gibson, of Edinburgh, Mr. H. 
 W. Longfellow, Professor J. S. Thaycr, of Cambridge, Miss 
 J. Dewey, Mrs. L. M. S. Moulton, Mr. John H. Gourlie, B 
 R. H. Stoddard, and others for which I return my thanks 
 to such of them as are living, and to the heirs of such as 
 have passed away. 
 
 Mr. Bryant, as the editor of a daily newspaper, was not 
 
 
 
v i PREFACE. 
 
 able to be a voluminous letter-writer. The letters he wrote 
 were mostly on business, or in acknowledgment of others, 
 and they were written at times when it was scarcely possible 
 to engage in discussions of opinions or of the events of the 
 day. Besides, his relations to his contemporaries were re 
 stricted, and, except with his intimate and life-long friend, 
 Mr. Richard H. Dana, he cannot be said to have maintained 
 any extensive correspondence. Nevertheless, out of the brief 
 and familiar notes interchanged with his friends, I have been 
 able to select many passages which, I trust, will be found 
 of interest, either as illustrative of the times or of the writer s 
 character. Whatever he said was gracefully said, and, either 
 in the mode of expression or in the turn of the thought, 
 was apt to contain something worthy of attention. 
 
 I will confess that I have been greatly embarrassed as 
 to how I should treat the editorial part of his life, the more 
 so as there are no models that I know of in English lit 
 erature for work of the kind. The statesman by the meas 
 ures he promotes, the soldier by his battles, the author 
 by his books, and the artist by his works, furnishes certain 
 stages, or, as the French say, c tapes, or halting-places, in his 
 career, which enables the biographer to mark the steps of 
 his progress. But the life of the editor affords no such 
 salient points. His labors consist of a series of incessant 
 and innumerable blows, of the real influences of which it is 
 hard to judge, except in a general way. It can only be 
 told of him what he endeavored to do, and not what he 
 actually did. Whatever effects he may have wrought on 
 public opinion were wrought by indefinitely small incre 
 ments, of the precise force and value of which we have no 
 measure. 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 Mr. Bryant s editorial life extended over a period of more 
 than fifty years. During that time he used his best abilities 
 and exertions in affecting the sentiments and aims of his fel 
 low-men : but to give a full account of his activity in this 
 respect would be to write the history of his times as well 
 as of his life, stretching the narrative into interminable vol 
 umes ; and yet to omit all account of it would be to neg 
 lect a most important part of his usefulness. In this diffi 
 culty, I have adopted the method of taking it for granted 
 that the reader is more or less familiar with the political 
 history of the nation, and of referring to Mr. Bryant s posi 
 tion and efforts only in regard to its leading events. Mv 
 desire, in every case, has been to estimate his services with 
 out any of the exaggeration to which I am, perhaps, uncon 
 sciously inclined by circumstances. 
 
 It has been thought advisable to supplement this memoir 
 and to preserve some permanent record of a singularly active 
 and beneficent career to add to these volumes a uniform 
 edition of Mr. Bryant s more important writings, both in 
 prose and poetry. It will comprise his Poems, his Orations 
 and Addresses, some Sketches of Travel, and a volume of 
 Miscellanies. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER FIRST. 
 
 PACE 
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE i 
 
 Reason for writing it ; birth ; parentage ; childhood ; early tastes and 
 studies; school; severe discipline. Amusements: House-raisings; cidci- 
 making ; maple-sugar camps. An eclipse of the sun. Religious influences. 
 Respect for the clergy. A child s prayer. Preparing for college. Love of 
 Greek. Short term at college. Chemistry, botany, and poetry. 
 
 CHAPTER SECOND. 
 THE PLACE AND TIME OF THE POET S BIRTH 38 
 
 Birthplace of the poet : Cummington ; its late settlement. Character 
 of the settlers ; their revolutionary patriotism. The homestead. Natural 
 beauty of the hill-region. Severe winters. Time of the poet s birth. A 
 glance at contemporary politics and literature. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRD. 
 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS 47 
 
 The Bryant ancestry : A table of genealogies; descent from the May 
 flower pilgrims ; physical strength of the stock ; consumption and poetry in 
 the family. Dr. Bryant, the father: his love of letters. Unitarianism. 
 Sarah Snell, the mother : her energy. A domestic diary. The family li 
 brary. The children s readings and rambles. Friends and acquaintances. 
 Judges Lyman and Howe. Solitude of the home. 
 
 CHAPTER FOURTH. 
 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN 6 7 
 
 The little preacher. Watts s hymns. Writes verses in childhood. 
 Fiery politics. Hatred of Jefferson. " The Embargo," a satire ; notice of 
 it in the "Monthly Anthology"; a second edition, with other poems; 
 
x CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 poetical versions of Scripture; a translation from Virgil; "The Bard"; 
 Napoleon challenged ; other juvenile poems ; value of such productions. 
 
 CHAPTER FIFTH. 
 THE COLLEGE STUDENT 85 
 
 Williams College ; why chosen ; reminiscences of a classmate ; John 
 Avery ; Anacreon s ode to Spring ; fragment from Simonides ; lines on the 
 college ; the Gerrymander ; takes a dismission. Return home. Reminis 
 cences of brothers. Influence of Greek literature. " Thanatopsis " written 
 and hidden away. 
 
 CHAPTER SIXTH. 
 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. A. D. 1811-1814 102 
 
 Begins to study law at Worthington. Reads Wordsworth. Yearnings 
 for college. A patriotic ode. Poems on love. Experience or fancy ? 
 Doubts and misgivings. A disappointment. Revulsion of feeling. A 
 chorus of ghosts. Colloquies with death. A ghastly visitation. Speedy 
 recovery. 
 
 CHAPTER SEVENTH. 
 THE LAW STUDENT. A. D. 1814, 1815 119 
 
 Removal to Bridgewater. Likes the place. Judge William Baylies. 
 An anti-war ode. Diligence in business. Youthful frolics. Interest in 
 public affairs. Wants to enlist in the army. Political transformations. 
 Bitter federalism. The Hartford Convention. An early rebel. State 
 rights. The return of peace. Escape of Napoleon. Admitted to the bar. 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHTH. 
 THE YOUNG LAWYER. A. D. 1816-1819 MO 
 
 Studies in poetry. Where to go. Settles in Plainfield. Writes " The 
 Waterfowl." Removes to Great Barrington. A complaint of the lungs. 
 Dislikes law. Discovery of " Thanatopsis " : It is published in the " North 
 American Review " ; supposed to be Dr. Bryant s ; success of the poem. 
 An address on the Bible. An essay on American poetry : The old versifiers 
 judged and dismissed. Town clerk, tything-man and justice of the peace. 
 
 CHAPTER NINTH. 
 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. A. D. 1820, 1821 . . . 161 
 
 Death of Dr. Bryant. Acquaintance with the Sedgwicks. Hymns writ 
 ten. A Fourth of July oration. The poet in love : Miss Fanny Fairchild. 
 Marriage : Announcement of it to the mother. " The Ages " read before 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 \ 1 
 
 the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge. Reminiscences. Acquaint 
 ances in Boston. The first collection of poems published : notice of it in 
 the "North American"; noticed in the " New York American " by Ver- 
 planck. The dawn of our native literature. 
 
 CHAPTER TENTH. 
 THE LAW ABANDONED. A. D. 1822-1824 .... .182 
 
 Changes of political opinion. Studies in political economy. Theodore 
 Sedgwick. Interest in the Greek struggle : A speech in favor of the Greeks. 
 Visit to New York. Increasing dissatisfaction with the law. A rejected 
 article ; writes for the " United States Gazette." Twenty or more new 
 poems. Pay for poetry. "The Spectre Ship." Interest in American lit 
 erature. The law abandoned. Village remembrances of the poet. 
 
 CHAPTER ELEVENTH. 
 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." A. D. 1825, 1826 206 
 
 New York in 1825 ; its extent and society. Mr. Bryant s removal 
 to the city : Early friends ; the Sedgwick brothers ; Cooper, Verplanck, 
 Halleck, Ware, Anderson, Sands. Cooper s lunch ; a bread and cheese 
 club. Fondness for the artists. Edits the " New York Review." Hard 
 work. Dana s first poetry. A good Catholic. The Academy of Design ; 
 Lectures on mythology. The Athenreum ; lectures on poetry. Da Ponte. 
 Madame Malibran. The "Review" merged in the " United. States Ga 
 zette." Dark prospects. Assists on a daily paper. 
 
 CHAPTER TWELFTH. 
 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. A. D. 1827, 1828 . . . .230 
 
 The New York " Evening Post " : Mr. Bryant engaged as a subordi 
 nate editor ; character of his services. Continues to act as editor of the 
 "Review." Contributors to it: Longfellow, Willis, Bancroft, Gushing. 
 Halleck s first poems. Bryant s poems of this period. Dana s " Buccaneer." 
 Reviews Dana in the " North American." " The Talisman " begun. 
 Genial editorship. The Sketch Club. Literary pranks of Sands and Bryant. 
 Mr. Bryant s contributions to the " Talisman." An eighth of January ode. 
 Becomes popular with the supporters of General Jackson. Correspondence 
 with Verplanck. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. 
 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. A. D. 1829-1832 251 
 
 A proprietor of the " Evening Post " : Mr. Bryant s notions of the 
 editorial function. His political philosophy : Not a mere doctrinaire ; his 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 devotion to freedom and equal rights ; his creed unpopular. His associate, 
 William Leggett : Their intense and radical democracy ; uphold Jackson s 
 administration. Proscriptions not condemned. Bryant s sympathy with 
 revolutions and reforms : No great like of reformers. Poetry deserted, 
 yet he gathers a volume ; sends a copy to Washington Irving in England ; 
 letter to Irving. 
 
 CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. 
 
 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. A. D. 1832 267 
 
 A visit to Washington : The capital fifty years ago ; glimpses of Old 
 Hickory, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, etc. The poems in England : Irving s 
 kindness ; notices of them in the reviews ; John Wilson ; notices of them 
 at home ; letters to Dana on the subject. Versification : Advice to John 
 H. Bryant on writing poetry. Edits "Tales of the Glauber Spa." Illi 
 nois in 1832. Captain Abraham Lincoln. The Bryant family pioneers of 
 the State. The prairies. Cholera in New York. Residence in Hoboken. 
 Mr. Bryant stays at his desk. Nullification condemned. Death of his 
 friend Robert C. Sands. 
 
 CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. 
 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. A. D. 1833, 1834 .... 291 
 
 Jackson s battle with the National Bank : Earnest support of the " Even 
 ing Post"; it alienates its mercantile clients; violent politics. A visit to 
 Canada. Prologue to a play. Correspondence with Dana : Criticisms of 
 one another s verses ; " The Robbers," a suppressed poem. A Boston edi 
 tion of the poems published. Preparing to go abroad. Abolition mobs in 
 New York. 
 
 CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. 
 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. A. D. 1834-1836 . . . .307 
 
 Sails for Havre. Residence in France, Italy, and Germany ; Longfellow ; 
 sudden recall home by Leggett s illness. Offered a dinner, which he de 
 clines. Affairs in New York. Miss Martineau. International copyright. 
 Van Buren. Unpopularity of the journal, which rebukes the mob and 
 defends the Abolitionists. Mr. Bryant meditates a removal to the West : 
 Letters to his brother John on the subject. 
 
 CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. 
 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. A. D. 1836 324 
 
 Jackson s " experiments on the currency." The question of corpora 
 tions. Conspiracies and usury laws. Factitious prosperity. The " Even- 
 
CONTENTS. x jjj 
 
 PACE 
 
 ing Post " denounced by its party leaders. Its Locofocoism. The rise of 
 the Abolitionists : The position of Bryant and Leggett ; it pleases none of 
 the parties. Fierce battles of opinion : Courage and independence of the 
 " Evening Post." A personal reminiscence : my first acquaintance with 
 Mr. Bryant ; his appearance and manner ; his solitude. Miss Eliza Rob- 
 bins. Miss Sedgwick. Mrs. Jameson. Italian exiles. Habits in the office. 
 Leggett s " Plaindealer " : It involves Bryant with Irving; a difference 
 without consequences. 
 
 CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. 
 POLITICAL WARFARE. A. D. 1837, 1838 . . . . . .345 
 
 Negro suffrage defended. Martin Van Buren President. The commer 
 cial crisis. The independent Treasury : Warmly espoused by the " Even 
 ing Post." The merchants fall away. The right of petition. Slavery in 
 the District of Columbia and the Territories. The murder of Lovejoy. 
 The case of the Amistad negroes. Mr. Bryant s moderate but determined 
 antislavery views. His journal at its lowest ebb. 1 1 is nationality and love 
 of the Union. Patriotic poems. Familiar letters. 
 
 CHAPTER NINETEENTH. 
 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. A. D. 1839 365 
 
 Intense labor. Compensations. Pedestrian tours. Study of German. 
 Baron von Mandlesloe. Life in the office : Visitors ; Cooper, Davezac, 
 Audubon, Stephens, Bancroft. Mr. Bryant s earnest devotion to American 
 literature. Emerson, Prescott, Hawthorne, Ware. Young Dana s " Two 
 Years before the Mast " : Difficulty of finding a publisher ; its success when 
 published. Death of Leggett. A dinner of poets: Bryant, Dana, Long 
 fellow, and Halleck. Notice of Charles Follen. 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTIETH. 
 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. A. D. 1840, 1841 . . . 379 
 
 Defeat of Van Buren s administration. The Hard Cider campaign. 
 Political tomfoolery : Mr. Bryant s ridicule of it. Death of President Har 
 rison : Mr. Bryant gives offence by refusing to put his paper in mourning ; 
 bitter denunciations ; his indifference. Character of John Tyler. The 
 Black Tariff. Country rambles. Van Buren in retirement. Visit to Dana. 
 A " Hymn of the Sea." 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. 
 
 NEW POEMS. A. D. 1842 392 
 
 Letter to the Rev. Orville Dewey. Affairs in New York. Morpcth. 
 Animal magnetism. Arrival of Dickens : His reception ; Mr. Bryant par- 
 
xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ticipates ; a memorable breakfast. International copyright. " The Foun 
 tain " and other poems published : Professor Felton s criticisms. Poetry 
 and politics. Mr. Bryant s usefulness as an editor. Approval of Dr. 
 Channing : Death of the great moralist ; Mr. Bryant s notice of him. 
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND. 
 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. A. D. 1843, 1844 . . . .405 
 
 Growth of the antislavery sentiment. A visit to the South. A country 
 home acquired. Letters to friends. Rambles in New England. Married 
 old maids. The plot for the acquisition of Texas : Mr. Bryant opposes it ; 
 his party adopts it by the nomination of Polk for the Presidency. Mr. 
 Bryant s embarrassment : A secret circular issued ; excitement produced by 
 it ; explanation of it by the " Evening Post." A vigorous protest against 
 the Texas policy : Not successful, nor yet fruitless. 
 
CHAPTER FIRST. 
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE.* 
 
 I HAVE friends who insist that I shall set down some notes 
 of the events of my life, thinking that the narrative of certain 
 parts of it may not be without interest or instruction. I sup 
 pose that as much as this may be said of the biography of 
 almost any man if faithfully written. There is, however, one 
 embarrassment with which I am met in undertaking this task. 
 My memory does not, in general, retain minute particulars. 
 Often when I desire to speak of what happened some years 
 ago, or perhaps only some months, I find the attendant cir 
 cumstances, some of which are perhaps desirable to be given 
 for the sake of perspicuity, entirely beyond the reach of my 
 recollection. If I could recover them, I might select from 
 them what would give a lifelike air and an individual charac 
 ter to my story. When I compare what I am able to relate 
 of my own life with the autobiographies of Franklin and some 
 others, I find the poverty of my materials so apparent that I 
 seriously distrust my power of engaging the attention of the 
 reader. I have begun to write, however, and shall go on ; and, 
 , when a few sheets are filled, I shall be able to judge whether 
 the manuscript shall be thrown into the fire or put by with 
 the papers which I preserve. 
 
 * This was written in the year 1874-5. G. 
 VOL. i. 2 
 
2 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 I was born in Cummington, in the State of Massachusetts, 
 on the 3d of November, 1794, when that region was a new 
 settlement. My father and mother then lived in a house, 
 which stands no longer, near the center of the township, amid 
 fields which have a steep slope to the north fork of the West- 
 field River, a shallow stream, brawling over a bed of loose 
 stones in a very narrow valley. A few old apple-trees mark 
 the spot where the house stood, and opposite, on the other 
 side of the way, is a graveyard, in which sleep some of those 
 who came to Cummington while it was yet a forest, and 
 hewed away the trees and were the first to till its fields. 
 
 My father, Dr. Peter Bryant, was a physician and sur 
 geon, who came to the place a young man from North Bridge- 
 water, where he was born. He was fond of study and well 
 read in his profession. As a surgeon he had a steady and firm 
 hand and an accurate eye, and performed difficult operations 
 with great nicety and dispatch. I remember to have heard 
 Professor Eaton, of the Rensselaer School, in Troy, say that 
 he was the most dexterous operator that he had seen handle 
 the surgeon s knife. He was a pupil of Leprilete, a refugee 
 from St. Domingo, educated in Paris, who settled in Norton, 
 in the eastern part of Massachusetts, where he married the 
 daughter of a plain farmer, and practiced as a surgical opera 
 tor with an extensive reputation. I remember having heard 
 this anecdote of him. He was once on a visit to Taunton, 
 when one of the ladies of the place, addressing the courteous 
 and lively Frenchman, as he stood dressed according to his 
 wont, with great elegance and precision, wearing ruffles at his 
 wrists, said : " Do bring Mrs. Leprilete to Taunton ; we will 
 do everything in our power to make her visit agreeable." 
 " Ah, madame," replied he, " you geev her leetle pork and 
 beans ; dot all she want." 
 
 My father delighted in poetry, and in his library were the 
 works of most of the eminent English poets. He wrote verses 
 himself, mostly humorous and satirical. He was not unskilled 
 in Latin poetry, in which the odes of Horace were his favor- 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 3 
 
 ites. He was fond of music, played on the violin, and I re 
 member hearing him say that he once made a bass viol for 
 he was very ingenious in the use of tools and played upon it. 
 He was of a mild and indulgent temper, somewhat silent 
 though not hesitating in conversation, and never expatiated at 
 much length on any subject. His patients generally paid him 
 whatever they pleased, if ever so little, so that he could not by 
 any means be called a thriving man. In one respect he did 
 not stint himself; he always dressed well, and with a most 
 scrupulous neatness, his attire being that of a Boston gentle 
 man, and he had a certain metropolitan air. In figure he was 
 square built, with muscular arms and legs, and in his prime 
 was possessed of great strength. He would take up a barrel 
 of cider and lift it into a cart over the wheel a feat of which 
 he was not unwilling to speak. His life was a laborious one, 
 being obliged to make professional visits to persons living at 
 a distance, often in the most inclement weather. He always 
 made these journeys on horseback. The family was frequent 
 ly disturbed at midnight, sometimes in the dead of winter or 
 in the midst of a furious storm, by a messenger from some 
 sick person who had put off sending for him until that un 
 timely hour. Physicians say that the patient s desire to see 
 the doctor is very sure to increase with the lateness and un- 
 seasonableness of the hour. 
 
 I have been told by a farmer, a native of Cummington, that 
 he remembered with pleasure my father s polite manners, and 
 that he had always a bow and a kindly greeting for him when 
 he was a shy boy a practice which he remarks that my fa 
 ther always followed, even toward the youngest. 
 
 My father took great interest in political questions. Tic 
 belonged to the party called Federalists, who at that time 
 were strong in Massachusetts, but in the Union at large were 
 a minority, and saw the Republic governed by their political 
 adversaries. He represented Cummington for several succes 
 sive years in the Massachusetts Legislature, and was after 
 ward a member of the State Senate. 
 
4 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 My mother, Sarah Snell Bryant, was the daughter of Eb- 
 enezer Snell, of Cummington, one of the first settlers of the 
 region in which I -was born. Concerning him I shall say more 
 hereafter. She was born in North Bridgewater, and was 
 brought by her father when a little child to Cummington. 
 She was tall, of an erect figure, and, until rather late in life, 
 of an uncommonly youthful appearance. She was a person 
 of excellent practical sense, of a quick and sensitive moral 
 judgment, and had no patience with any form of deceit or 
 duplicity. Her prompt condemnation of injustice, even in 
 those instances in which it is tolerated by the world, made a 
 strong impression upon me in early life, and if, in the discus 
 sion of public questions, I have in my riper age endeavored to 
 keep in view the great rule of right without much regard to 
 persons, it has been owing in a good degree to the force of 
 her example, which taught me never to countenance a wrong 
 because others did. My mother was a careful economist, 
 which the circumstances of her family compelled her to be, 
 and by which she made some amends for my father s want of 
 attention to the main chance. She had a habit of keeping a 
 diary, in which the simple occupations of the day and the 
 occurrences in which the family or the neighborhood had an 
 interest were briefly noted down. Of the dates obtained from 
 the diary I shall make some use in what I am about to write. 
 I remember hearing her, while I was yet a child, speak con 
 temptuously of Pope. She read him, not without a certain 
 admiration, but regarded him as the libeler of her sex in his 
 " Epistle on the Characters of Women." 
 
 I was thought to be a precocious child. On my first birth 
 day there is a record that I could already go alone, and on 
 the 28th of March, 1796, when but a few days more than six 
 teen months old, there is another record that I knew all the 
 letters of the alphabet. In both these instances it is proba 
 ble that, my mother, finding me rather docile, took pleasure 
 in bringing me forward somewhat prematurely. My elder 
 brother, Austin, was more remarkable as an early scholar than 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 5 
 
 mvsclf. On the 28th of March, i ;</>, before the close of his 
 third year, he began to read the Bible. On the I2th of April 
 following, he had finished the book of Genesis, and on the 315! 
 of March, 1797, before he had completed his fourth year, he 
 had read the Scriptures through from beginning to end. I 
 ought to be fond of church-going, for I began early, making 
 my first appearance at church about the middle of my third 
 year, though there is no note of how I behaved myself there. 
 
 In September, 1797, the family removed to Plainlield, but 
 not so far from its first home as to be out of the circuit of my 
 father s medical practice. Here, on the 7th day of February 
 following, it is recorded in my mother s diary that I was ill, 
 and the next day that I had a fever. I remember an incident 
 of that illness. I was in bed, my father approached me with 
 a lancet, and, taking my arm, pierced a vein at the meeting of 
 the forearm and shoulder. As I felt the prick of the lancet I 
 uttered a faint wail, which I seem even yet to hear as I write. 
 Many years since I can not say how many I was told, by a 
 person who lived near us at the time of which I am speaking, 
 that my case was thought a doubtful one, and that my father 
 and mother feared, to use his expression, " that they should 
 not be able to raise me." * I have lately been to look at the 
 site of that house. Nothing is left of it but the cellar and 
 some portions of the chimney, among a thick growth of bram 
 bles. Not far from it is a deserted house, where there lived a 
 neighbor, and beyond the house an old road no longer open 
 
 * Senator Dawes, whose uncle was a student in Dr. Bryant s office, in his Cen 
 tennial Address at Cummington on June 26, 1879, says : " The poet was puny and 
 very delicate in body, and of a painfully delicate nervous temperament. There 
 seemed little promise that he would survive the casualties of early childhood. In 
 after years, when he had become famous, those who had been medical students with 
 his father when he was struggling for existence with the odds very much against him, 
 delighted to tell of the cold baths they were ordered to give the infant poet in a 
 spring near the house each early morning of the summer months, continuing the 
 treatment, in spite of the outcries and protestations of their patient, so late into the 
 autumn as sometimes to break the ice that skimmed the surface." This was doubt 
 less the first application of hydropathy ever made in those parts. G. 
 
6 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 to the public, but given back to the fields from which it was 
 taken. On each side of it are several square hollows, evi 
 dently the place of old cellars belonging to houses, showing 
 that the neighborhood, now solitary, was not so formerly. 
 
 In May, 1798, our family removed again to the distance of 
 about two miles, and occupied a house in Cummington. Not 
 a trace of it now remains ; the plow has passed over its site 
 and leveled the earth where it stood, but immediately oppo 
 site are yet seen the hollow of an old cellar and the founda 
 tion stones of a house where there lived a neighbor. I re 
 member it as then embowered among flourishing apple-trees, 
 three or four of which, now in decay, the mere skeletons of 
 trees, are yet standing. The whole region of hill country, 
 which includes Cummington and the neighboring townships, 
 shows tokens of having been, in the agricultural parts at least, 
 much more populous than it now is. There are frequently to 
 be met with, old cellars, remains of garden walls, clumps of 
 exotic shrubs, tracks of old roads no longer open, here and 
 there an abandoned house, still standing, and the remains of 
 mills on the stream, where the dams have long since been 
 swept away by the floods, showing that a gradual depopula 
 tion has been going on. Only in those townships where vil 
 lages, of which there were none in my early days, have sprung 
 up, is there any increase of population. The sod, at that time 
 just reclaimed from forest, was exceedingly fertile ; the culti 
 vators were prosperous and growing rich. The soil is now 
 exhausted ; the fields which then yielded wheat and maize are 
 turned into pastures and mowing lands ; the plow is little used, 
 and the land which once sufficed for two farms now barely 
 answers for one. 
 
 From my new abode, before I had completed my fourth 
 year, I was sent to the district school, but at first, as I infer 
 from the minutes in my mother s diary, not with much regu 
 larity. I have no recollection of any irksomeness in studying 
 my lessons or in the discipline of the school. I only recollect 
 gathering spearmint by the brooks in company with my fel- 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 7 
 
 low-scholars, taking off my cap at their bidding in a light sum 
 mer shower, that the rain might fall on my hair and make it 
 grow ; and that once I awoke from a sound nap to find myself 
 in the lap of the schoolmistress, and was vexed to be thus 
 treated like a baby.* 
 
 It was in this year that I received a severe kick from a 
 horse. I recollect it as clearly as if it were yesterday. A 
 lady, one of our neighbors, had called, and fastened the horse 
 on which she came to a little tree before our door. Some 
 chips, freshly cut from a log of wood, were lying about, and 
 my elder brother amused himself with throwing them at the 
 horse s heels to make him caper. I followed his example. 
 After a little while, my brother, thinking me too near the ani 
 mal, called to me to come away ; but I paid no attention to 
 his warning. Suddenly the horse flung out his heels, one of 
 which struck me on the forehead and laid me flat. I was car 
 ried into the house, where my head was bandaged ; the scar 
 of the wound which I received remains on my forehead to this 
 day. Six days afterward, there is a record in my mother s 
 diary that I was unwell and was bled. The practice of letting 
 blood was then universal among physicians in that country. 
 After this occurrence, I remember going to school with a ban 
 daged head. 
 
 In the house opposite to ours, in the family of a Mr. White, 
 lived Jane Robinson, an unmarried woman, an amazon in 
 strength and spirit, full-chested and large-armed, of whom I 
 have heard my mother relate this anecdote. There lived in 
 Plainfield a man named Colson, Chris. Colson he was gener 
 ally called, who was said to be in the habit of beating his wife. 
 At a regimental review, then held every autumn, at which 
 were assembled the militia of several townships, and which 
 brought together great numbers of people, both men and 
 women, Jane Robinson headed a party of women, who took a 
 
 * The story in the family is that he was not merely " vexed," but almost frantic 
 with rage. G. 
 
8 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 rail from a fence, seized upon Colson, put him astride of it, 
 held him on, carried him round the field, and dismissed him 
 with an admonition to flog his wife no more. Jane Robinson 
 afterward found a mate, but I venture to say that he never 
 administered to her even what the English common law calls 
 " moderate correction." 
 
 In April, 1799, when I was in my fifth year, our family 
 went to live at the homestead of my grandfather on the 
 mother s side, Ebenezer Snell, which I now possess, and which 
 became my father s home for the rest of his lifetime. My 
 grandfather Snell was, as I have already said, one of the early 
 settlers of that region. He came to Cummington in about the 
 year 1774, or perhaps a little earlier, while most of it yet lay 
 in forest, chose a farm in a pleasant situation, with an east 
 erly slope, just west of the one on which he lived at the time 
 I came to him, and cut down the trees on the greater part 
 of it, planted an orchard, and raised abundant crops of wheat, 
 rye, and maize while yet the soil was unexhausted. As he 
 grew richer he sent one of his sons, of whom he had two, to 
 Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, gave his farm to the 
 other, and, purchasing the homestead east of it, built the house 
 in which I passed my boyhood. 
 
 My grandfather Snell was descended from Thomas Snell, 
 who came over to the Plymouth Colony from England, in 
 what year I cannot make out ; but it appears that he settled 
 in Bridge water in 1665, and is spoken of by Mitchell, in his 
 History of Bridgewater, as probably the largest landholder 
 there, since Snell s Plain and Snell s Meadows are still local 
 names. His son Josiah married Anna Alden, a granddaughter 
 of John Alden, who came over in the Mayflower with the first 
 Pilgrims, and of Priscilla Mullins, celebrated by Longfellow 
 in his poem. This Anna Alden was a grandmother of my 
 grandfather Snell. 
 
 Squire Snell, as my grandfather was called in the neigh 
 borhood, for he was a Justice of the Peace, had some remark 
 able pleasantries of character. He owed very little to the 
 
MR. 71 RY ANT S EARLY LI I- !:. 
 
 schools, but he employed a good deal of his leisure in 
 mostly of religious books. The Calvinistic denomination has 
 its subdivisions, and he belonged to the one founded by that / 
 subtle dialectitian, Dr. Samuel Hopkins, who at that time had 
 many disciples in the New England churches, and who in 
 sisted that regeneration consists in the eradication of selfish 
 ness to such a degree that the true Christian should be willing 
 to suffer eternal misery for the good of the whole universe. 
 My grandfather was master of the argument, and not unfre- 
 quently discussed the dogma with those who could not receive 
 it. He was habitually devout, and had family prayers morn 
 ing and evening, such prayers as sixty or seventy years since 
 were in vogue among the descendants of the Pilgrims, who 
 culled from the Hebrew Scriptures the poetical expressions 
 with which they abound, and used them liberally in their de 
 votions. In this they followed the example of their ministers, 
 who, however dry their services might be, were often poets in 
 their extempore prayers. I have often, in my youth, heard 
 from them prayers which were poems from beginning to end, 
 mostly made up of sentences from the Old Testament writers. 
 How often have I heard the supplication, " Let thy church 
 arise and shine forth, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, beau 
 tiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, and terrible as an army 
 with banners." One expression often in use was peculiarly 
 impressive, and forcibly affected my childish imagination. 
 " Let not our feet stumble on the dark mountains of eternal 
 death." Then there was that prayer for revolution, handed 
 down probably from the time of the Roundheads. "And 
 wilt thou turn, and turn, and overturn, till he shall come 
 whose right it is to reign, King of Nations, as now Kin:; of 
 Saints?" 
 
 Mv grandfather Snell was not wanting in mother wit, and 
 anecdotes of his clever sayings are still preserved in the neigh 
 borhood in which he lived. On one occasion a thrifty farmer, 
 not remarkable for good manners, said to him : 
 
 " To-day I am going to kill the biggest hog in town." 
 
10 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 " Hold, hold ! " was my grandfather s answer, " don t talk 
 of self-murder." 
 
 I remember one of the students of medicine in my father s 
 office telling my grandfather of a controversy carried on in 
 writing by two persons in Cummington on the nature of the 
 soul. 
 
 " My uncle," said the student, " maintains that thought is 
 the soul. He says the soul thinks ; therefore thought is the 
 soul." 
 
 " Poh, poh ! " replied my grandfather, " the man spits, there 
 fore the spittle is the man." 
 
 At one time in a town meeting, when a man who had com 
 mitted some offence against the laws, for which he had not 
 been prosecuted, became offensively noisy, he put him down 
 by saying : 
 
 " Remember, sir, that the ears on your head belong to the 
 county." 
 
 At that time corporal punishments were still inflicted by 
 the courts, and for certain petty offences the ears of the trans 
 gressor were cropped. Flogging was also administered by 
 constables on the sentence of a justice of the peace. 
 
 My grandfather once found that certain pieces of lumber 
 intended by him for the runners of a sled, and called in that 
 part of the country sled-crooks, had been taken without leave 
 by a farmer living at no great distance. These timbers were 
 valuable, being made from a tree the grain of which was 
 curved so as to correspond with the curve required in the 
 runners. The delinquent received notice that his offence was 
 known, and that, if he wished to escape a prosecution, he must 
 carry a bushel of rye to each of three poor widows living in 
 the neighborhood, and tell her why he brought it. He was 
 only too glad to comply with this condition. 
 
 My grandmother Snell, whose maiden name was Pack 
 ard, was a descendant of Samuel Packard who came over 
 from England in the ship Diligent of Ipswich, and settled in 
 Hingham, Massachusetts, about the year 1738, whence he re- 
 
.I/A 1 . BRYANT S EARLY LITE. Ir 
 
 moved to Bridgewater. The family were long-lived. I re 
 member hearing her say that her grandmother lived t> lin 
 age of ninety -nine years. She was of a mild, affectionate na 
 ture, and cared tenderly for her grandchildren. I rememl)er 
 that she often amused my elder brother and myself by draw 
 ing figures with chalk on the kitchen floor. One of these I 
 ahvavs viewed with particular interest, and sometimes teased 
 her to draw. It was a human figure, but with horns and clo 
 ven feet and a long tail. She called it Old Crooktail ; it was 
 evidently intended as a portrait of the Prince of Darkness. 
 
 My grandfather on the father s side was Dr. Philip Bryant, 
 of North Bridgewater in Massachusetts. lie was a descend 
 ant of Stephen Bryant, who came over from England in the 
 infancy of the Plymouth Colony, and in 1643 was in Danbury, 
 whence in 1650 he removed to Plymouth. Dr. Philip Bry 
 ant was his great grandson. My grandfather Bryant studied 
 physic with Dr. Abiel Howard, of West Bridgewater, whose 
 daughter Silence he married. He had a large practice as a 
 physician, and, being an active, healthy man, of a calm temper 
 and wise conduct of life, he lived to a good old age, continu 
 ing to practice till very shortly before his death, which took 
 place in 1816, when he was in his eighty-fifth year. His wife, 
 my grandmother, and the mother of his nine children, died of 
 consumption, after a married life of twenty years, at the age 
 of thirty-nine. Several of her children all the daughters, of 
 whom there were four wrote verses. One of them, Ruth, 
 who died of consumption at the age of twenty-three, composed 
 poems which were then thought rather remarkable, and I re 
 member a little manuscript volume of them copied by my 
 father in his beautiful handwriting. 
 
 My great grandfather, Dr. Abiel Howard, of West Brid-e- 
 water, was the first graduate of Harvard College from cither 
 of the four Bridgewaters. He studied divinity and preached 
 awhile, but, finding himself inclined to the profession of medi 
 cine, he went through the ordinary course of study and be 
 came a physician. He was fond of poetry, wrote verses, some 
 
12 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 of which I have seen in manuscript, and had a good library to 
 which my father in his youth had free access, and where he 
 indulged that fondness for study which continued through 
 life. Dr. Howard was the grandson of John Howard, who 
 came over from England a very young man, and lived for 
 some time in the family of Captain Miles Standish. He was 
 one of the earliest military officers in Bridgewater, and a man 
 of much influence in the colony. Dr. Howard was a man of 
 irritable temper, but the irritation soon passed off. A resident 
 of West Bridgewater once told me that when a boy he was 
 sent to call him to one of the family who was taken ill. As 
 soon as he delivered his message the Doctor exclaimed, " I 
 can t go, and I won t go ; I m sick now," and flung himself 
 into bed with his boots on. After awhile he rose, mounted 
 his horse, and visited the patient. 
 
 While living at the homestead, I went with my elder 
 brother, Austin, to a district school, kept in a little house 
 which then stood near by, on the bank of the rivulet that 
 flows by the dwelling. The education which we received 
 here was of the humblest elementary kind, stopping at gram 
 mar, unless we include theology, as learned from the Westmin 
 ster Catechism, which was our Saturday exercise. I was an 
 excellent, almost an infallible, speller, and ready in geography ; 
 but in the Catechism, not understanding the abstract terms, I 
 made but little progress. Our schoolmaster, who for many 
 years was one of the neighbors, named Briggs, a kind and just 
 man, believed in corporal punishment, and carried a birchen 
 twig, with which he admonished those who were idle or at 
 play by a smart stroke over the head. It was somewhat 
 amusing to see the delinquent cringe and writhe as the blow 
 descended, but nobody dared to laugh. I got few of these 
 reprimands, being generally absorbed in my lessons. 
 
 When the scholars were let out at noon, we amused our 
 selves with building dams across the rivulet, and launching 
 rafts made of old boards on the collected water ; and in winter, 
 with sliding on the ice and building snow barricades, which 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LI / /:. j^ 
 
 we called forts, and, dividing the boys into two armies, and 
 using snowballs for ammunition, we contended for the posses 
 sion of these strongholds. I was one of their swiftest runners 
 in the race, and not inexpert at playing ball, but, being of a 
 slight frame, I did not distinguish myself in these sieges. 
 
 One of the scholars, a lad older than myself, sickened and 
 died, and I went to his funeral. I well recollect the awe and 
 silence of the occasion and the strangely pallid face of the 
 dead. It was, I think, the first time that I ever looked upon 
 such a sight. 
 
 The boys of the generation to which I belonged were V \y 
 brought up under a system of discipline which put a far 
 greater distance between parents and their children than now 
 exists. The parents seemed to think this necessary in order 
 to secure obedience. They were believers in the old maxim 
 that familiarity breeds contempt. My grandfather was a dis 
 ciplinarian of the stricter sort, and I can hardly find words to 
 express the awe in which I stood of him an awe so great as 
 almost to prevent anything- like affection on my part, although 
 he was in the main kind, and, certainly, never thought of being 
 severe beyond what was necessary to maintain a proper de 
 gree of order in the family. 
 
 The other boys in that part of the country, my school 
 mates and play-fellows, were educated on the same system. 
 Yet there were at that time some indications that this very 
 severe discipline was beginning to relax. With my father 
 and mother I was on much easier terms than with my grand 
 father. If a favor was to be asked of my grandfather, it was 
 asked with fear and trembling ; the request was postponed to 
 the last moment, and then made with hesitation and blushes 
 and a confused utterance.* 
 
 One of the means of keeping the boys in order was a little 
 bundle of birchen rods, bound together with a small cord, and 
 
 * This part of the autobiography (pp. 13-20), Mr. Bryant used in an article on 
 The Boys of my Boyhood," which he contributed to the " St. Nicholas" magazine 
 of December, 1876. G. 
 
14 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 generally suspended on a nail against the wall in the kitchen. 
 This was esteemed as much a part of the necessary furniture 
 as the crane that hung in the kitchen fire-place, or the shovel 
 and tongs. It sometimes happened that the boy suffered the 
 fate of the eagle in the fable, wounded by an arrow fledged 
 with a feather from his own wing ; in other words, the boy 
 was made to gather the twigs intended for his own castiga- 
 tion. 
 
 It has never been quite clear to me why the birch was 
 chosen above all other trees of the wood to yield its twigs for 
 this purpose. The beech of our forests produces sprays as 
 slender, as flexible, and as tough ; and farmers, wherever the 
 beech is common, cut its long and pliant branches for driving 
 oxen. Yet the use of birchen rods for the correction of chil 
 dren is of very great antiquity. In his " Discourse on Forest 
 Trees," written three hundred years ago, Evelyn speaks of 
 birchen twigs as an implement of the schoolmaster ; and Lou- 
 don, in his " Arboretum," goes further back. He says : " The 
 birch has been used as the instrument of correction in schools 
 from the earliest ages." The English poets of the last century 
 make frequent mention of this use of birchen twigs ; but in 
 London s time, whose book was published thirty years since, 
 he remarks that the use of these rods, both in schools and pri 
 vate families, was fast passing away a change on which the 
 boys both of England and the United States may well be con 
 gratulated for the birchen rod was, in my time, even more 
 freely used in the school than in the household. 
 
 The chastisement which was thought so wholesome in the 
 case of boys, was at that time administered, for petty crimes, 
 to grown-up persons. About a mile from where I lived stood 
 a public whipping-post, and I remember seeing a young fel 
 low, of about eighteen years of age, upon whose back, by 
 direction of a justice of the peace, forty lashes had just been 
 laid, as the punishment for a theft which he had committed. 
 His eyes were red, like those of one who had been crying, and 
 I well remember the feeling of curiosity, mingled with pity 
 
J/A\ BRYANT S EARLY LI1-E. 15 
 
 and fear, with which I gazed on him. That, I think, was th<- 
 last example of corporal punishment inflicted by law in that 
 neighborhood. The whipping-post stood in its place for sev 
 eral years afterward, the memorial of a practice which had 
 passed away. 
 
 The awe in which the boys of that time held their parents 
 extended to all elderly persons, toward whom our behavior 
 was more than merely respectful, for we all observed a hushed 
 and subdued demeanor in their presence. Toward the minis 
 ters of the gospel this behavior was particularly marked. At 
 that time, every township in Massachusetts had its minister, 
 who was settled there for life, and when he once came among 
 his people was understood to have entered into a connection 
 with them scarcely less lasting than the marriage tie. The 
 community in which he lived regarded him with great vener 
 ation, and the visits which from time to time he made to the 
 district schools seemed to the boys important occasions, for 
 which special preparation was made. When he came to visit 
 the school which I attended, we all had on our Sunday clothes, 
 and were ready for him with a few answers to the questions 
 in the Westminster Catechism. He heard us recite our les 
 sons, examined us in the Catechism, and then began a little 
 address, which was the same on every occasion. 1 Ie told us 
 how much greater were the advantages of education which 
 we enjoyed than those which had fallen to the lot of our pa 
 rents, and exhorted us to make the best possible use of them, 
 both for our own sakes and that of our parents, who were 
 ready to make any sacrifice for us, even so far as to take the 
 bread out of their own mouths to give us. I remember being 
 disgusted with this illustration of parental kindness which I 
 was obliged to listen to twice at least in every year. 
 
 The good man had, perhaps, less reason than he supposed 
 to magnify the advantages of education enjoyed in the com 
 mon schools at that time. Reading, spelling, writing and 
 arithmetic, with a little grammar and a little geography, \\ 
 all that was taught, and these by persons much less quali- 
 
1 6 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 fied, for the most part, than those who now give instruction, 
 Those, however, who wished to proceed further took lessons 
 from the graduates of the colleges, who were then much more 
 numerous in proportion to the population than they now are. 
 
 The profound respect shown to the clergy in those days 
 had this good effect that wherever there was a large con 
 course of people, their presence prevented the occurrence of 
 anything disorderly or unseemly. The minister, therefore, 
 made it one of his duties to be present on those occasions 
 which brought people together in any considerable numbers. 
 His appearance had somewhat the effect which that of a 
 policeman now has at a public assembly in one of our large 
 towns. At that time there was in each township at least one 
 company of militia, which was required to hold several meet 
 ings in the course of the year, and at these the minister was 
 always present. The military parade, with the drums and 
 fifes and other musical instruments, was a powerful attraction 
 for the boys, who came from all parts of the neighborhood to 
 the place at which the militia mustered. But on these occa 
 sions there was one respect in which the minister s presence 
 proved but a slight restraint upon excess. There were then 
 no temperance societies, no temperance lecturers held forth, 
 no temperance tracts were ever distributed, nor temperance 
 pledges given. It was, to be sure, esteemed a shame to get 
 drunk ; but, as long as they stopped short of this, people, 
 almost without exception, drank grog and punch freely with 
 out much fear of a reproach from any quarter. Drunkenness, 
 however, in that demure population, was not obstreperous, 
 and the man who was overtaken by it was generally glad to 
 slink out of sight. 
 
 I remember an instance of this kind. There had been a 
 muster of a militia company on the church green for the elec 
 tion of one of its officers, and the person elected had treated 
 the members of the company and all who were present to 
 sweetened rum and water, carried to the green in pailfuls, 
 with a tin cup to each pail for the convenience of drinking. 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. ^ 
 
 The afternoon was far spent, and I was going home with 
 other boys, when we overtook a young man who had taken 
 too much of the election toddy, and, in endeavoring to go 
 quietly home, had got but a little way from the green, when 
 he fell in a miry place, and was surrounded by three or four 
 persons, who assisted in getting him on his legs again. The 
 poor fellow seemed in great distress, and his new nankeen 
 pantaloons, daubed with the mire of the road, and his dang 
 ling limbs, gave him a most wretched appearance. It was, I 
 think, the first time I had ever seen a drunken man. As I 
 approached to pass him by, some of the older boys said to me, 
 " Do not go too near him, for if you smell a drunken man it 
 will make you drunk." Of course, I kept at a good distance, 
 but not out of hearing, for I remember hearing him lament his 
 condition in these words : " Oh dear, I shall die ! " " Oh dear, 
 I wish I hadn t drinked any ! " " Oh dear, what will my poor 
 Betsy say ? " What his poor Betsy said I never heard, but I 
 saw him led off in the direction of his home, and I continued 
 on my way with the other boys, impressed with a salutary 
 horror of drunkenness and a fear of drunken men. 
 
 One of the entertainments of the boys of my time was 
 what were called the " raisings," meaning the erection of the 
 timber frames of houses or barns, to which the boards were to 
 be afterward nailed. Here the minister made a point of being 
 present, and hither the able-bodied men of the neighborhood, 
 the young men especially, were summoned, and took part in 
 the work with great alacrity. It was a spectacle for us next 
 to that of a performer on the tight-rope, to see the young men 
 walk steadily on the narrow footing of the beams at a great 
 height from the ground, or as they stood to catch in their 
 hands the wooden pins and the braces flung to them from 
 below. They vied with one another in the dexterity and dar 
 ing with which they went through with the work, and, when 
 the skeleton of the building was put together, some one 
 among them generally capped the climax of fearless activity 
 by standing on the ridge-pole with his head downward and 
 
 VOL. I. 3 
 
1 8 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 his heels in the air. At that time, even the presence of the 
 minister was no restraint upon the flow of milk punch and 
 grog, which in some cases was taken to excess. The practice 
 of calling the neighbors to these " raisings " is now discontin 
 ued in the rural neighborhoods ; the carpenters provide their 
 own workmen for the business of adjusting the timbers of the 
 new building to one another, and there is no consumption of 
 
 Another of the entertainments of rustic life was the mak 
 ing of maple sugar. This was a favorite frolic of the boys. 
 The apparatus for the sugar camp was of a much ruder kind 
 than is now used. The sap was brought in buckets from the 
 wounded trees and poured into a great caldron which hung 
 over a hot fire from a stout horizontal pole supported at each 
 end by an upright stake planted in the ground. Since that 
 time they have built in every maple grove a sugar house a 
 little building in which the process of making sugar is carried 
 on with several ingenious contrivances unknown at that time, 
 when everything was done in the open air. 
 
 From my father s door, in the latter part of March and the 
 early part of April, we could see perhaps a dozen columns of 
 smoke rising over the woods in different places where the 
 work was going on. After the sap had been collected and 
 boiled for three or four days, the time came when the thick 
 ening liquid was made to pass into the form of sugar. This 
 was when the sirup had become of such a consistency that it 
 would " feather " that is to say, when a beechen twig, formed 
 at the small end into a little loop, dipped into the hot sirup 
 and blown upon by the breath, sent into the air a light, feath 
 ery film. The huge caldron was then lifted from the fire, and 
 its contents were either dipped out and poured into molds, or 
 stirred briskly till the sirup cooled and took the form of ordi 
 nary brown sugar in loose grains. This process was exceed 
 ingly interesting to the boys who came to watch its different 
 stages and to try from time to time the sirup as it thickened. 
 
 In autumn, the task of stripping the husks from the ears 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. lg 
 
 of Indian corn was made the occasion of social meetings, in 
 which the boys took a special part. A farmer would appoint 
 what was called " a husking," to which he invited his neighbors. 
 The ears of maize in the husk, sometimes along with part of 
 the stalk, were heaped on the barn floor. In the evening lan 
 terns were brought, and, seated on piles of dry husks, the men 
 and boys stripped the ears of their covering, and, breaking 
 them from the stem with a sudden jerk, threw them into bas 
 kets placed for the purpose. It was often a merry time ; the 
 gossip of the neighborhood was talked over, stories were told, 
 jests went round, and at the proper hour the assembly ad 
 journed to the dwelling-house and were treated to pumpkin- 
 pie and cider, which in that season had not been so long from 
 the press as to have parted with its sweetness. 
 
 Quite as cheerful were the " apple-parings," which on au 
 tumn evenings brought together the young people of both 
 sexes in little circles. The fruit of the orchards was pared 
 and quartered and the core extracted, and a supply of apples 
 in this state provided for making what was called "apple 
 sauce," a kind of preserve of which every family laid in a 
 large quantity every year. 
 
 The cider-making season in autumn was somewhat corre 
 spondent to the vintage in the wine countries of Europe. 
 Large tracts of land in New England were overshadowed by 
 rows of apple-trees, and in the month of May a journey 
 through that region was a journey through a wilderness of 
 bloom. In the month of October the whole population was 
 busy gathering apples under the trees, from which they fell 
 in heavy showers as the branches were shaken by the strong 
 arms of the farmers. The creak of the cider mill, turned by a 
 horse moving in a circle, was heard in every neighborhood as 
 one of the most common of rural sounds. The freshly pressed 
 juice of the apples was most agreeable to boyish tastes, and 
 the whole process of gathering the fruit and making the cider 
 came in among the more laborious rural occupations in a way 
 which diversified them pleasantly, and which made it seem a 
 
20 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 pastime. The time that was given to making cider, and the 
 number of barrels made and stored in the cellars of the farm 
 houses, would now seem incredible. A hundred barrels to a 
 single farm was no uncommon proportion, and the quantity 
 swallowed by the men of that day led to the habits of intem 
 perance which at length alarmed the more thoughtful part 
 of the community, and gave occasion to the formation of tem 
 perance societies and the introduction of better habits. 
 
 From time to time the winter evenings, and occasionally a 
 winter afternoon, brought the young people of the parish to 
 gether in attendance upon a singing school. Some person 
 who possessed more than common power of voice, and skill in 
 modulating it, was employed to teach psalmody, and the boys 
 were naturally attracted to his school as a recreation. It often 
 happened that the teacher was an enthusiast in his vocation, 
 and thundered forth the airs set down in the music books with 
 a fervor that was contagious. A few of those who attempted 
 to learn psalmody were told that they had no aptitude for the 
 art, and were set aside, but that did not prevent their attend 
 ance as hearers of the others. In those days a set of tunes 
 were in fashion mostly of New England origin, which have 
 since been laid aside in obedience to a more fastidious taste. 
 They were in quick time, sharply accented, the words clearly 
 articulated, and often running into fugues, in which the bass, 
 the tenor, and the treble chased each other from the middle 
 to the end of the stanza. I recollect that some impatience 
 was manifested when slower and graver airs of church, music 
 were introduced by the choir, and I wondered why the words 
 should not be sung in the same time that they were pro 
 nounced in reading. 
 
 The streams which bickered through the narrow glens of 
 the region in which I lived were much better stocked with 
 trout in those days than now, for the country had been newly 
 opened to settlement. The boys all were anglers. I confess 
 to having felt a strong interest in that " sport," as I no longer 
 call it. I have long since been weaned from the propensity of 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 2 \ 
 
 which I speak ; but I have no doubt that the instinct which 
 inclines so many to it, and some of them our grave divines, 
 is a remnant of the original wild nature of man. Another 
 " sport," to which the young men of the neighborhood some 
 times admitted the elder boys, was the autumnal squirrel hunt. 
 The young men formed themselves into two parties equal in 
 numbers, and fixed a day for the shooting. The party which 
 on that day brought down the greatest number of squirrels 
 was declared the victor, and the contest ended with some sort 
 of festivity in the evening. 
 
 I have not mentioned other sports and games of the boys 
 of that day, such as wrestling, running, leaping, base-ball, and 
 the like, for in these there was nothing to distinguish them 
 from the same pastimes at the present day. There were no 
 public lectures at that time on subjects of general interest; 
 the profession of public lecturer was then unknown, and emi 
 nent men were not solicited, as they now are, to appear before 
 audiences in distant parts of the country and gratify the curi 
 osity of strangers by letting them hear the sound of their 
 voices. But the men of those days were far more given to 
 attendance on public worship than those who now occupy 
 their places, and of course they took their boys with them. 
 They were not satisfied with the morning and afternoon ser 
 vices, but each neighborhood held a third service of its own 
 in the evening. Here some lay brother made a prayer, hymns 
 were sung by those who were trained at the singing schools, 
 a sermon was read from the works of some orthodox divine, 
 and now and then a word of exhortation was addressed to the 
 little assembly by some one who was more fluent in speech 
 than the rest. 
 
 Every parish had its tything-men, two in number gener 
 ally, whose business it was to maintain order in the church 
 during divine service, and who sat with a stern countenance 
 through the sermon, keeping a vigilant eye on the boys in the 
 distant pews and in the galleries. Sometimes, when he de 
 tected two of them communicating with each other, he went 
 
22 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 to one of them, took him by the button, and, leading him away, 
 seated him beside himself. His power extended to other de 
 linquencies. He was directed by law to see that the Sabbath 
 was not profaned by people wandering in the fields and ang 
 ling in the brooks. At that time a law, no longer in force, 
 directed that any person who absented himself unnecessarily 
 from public worship for a certain length of time should pay a 
 fine into the treasury of the county. I remember several per 
 sons of whom it was said that they had been compelled to pay 
 this fine, but I do not remember any of them who went to 
 church afterward. 
 
 In my ninth year I began to make verses, some of which 
 were utter nonsense. My father ridiculed them, and endeav 
 ored to teach me to write only when I had something to say. 
 A year or two later my grandfather gave me as an exercise 
 the first chapter of the Book of Job to turn into verse. I put 
 the whole narration into heroic couplets, one of which I re 
 member, as the first draught. 
 
 " His name was Job, evil he did eschew, 
 To him were born seven sons ; three daughters too." 
 
 My father did not allow this doggerel to stand, but I for 
 get what I put in its place.* For this task I was rewarded 
 with the small Spanish coin then called a ninepenny piece. I 
 paraphrased afterwards the Hundred and Fourth Psalm. In 
 
 * Mr. Bryant had forgotten this ; but among his papers was found the following, 
 which is probably a part of his amended version : 
 
 " J ob S ood and J ust > in Uz had sojourned long, 
 He feared his God and shunned the way of wrong. 
 Three were his daughters, and his sons were seven, 
 And large the wealth bestowed on him by heaven. 
 Seven thousand sheep were in his pastures fed, 
 Three thousand camels by his train were led ; 
 For him the yoke a thousand oxen wore, 
 Five hundred she asses his burdens bore. 
 His household to a mighty host increased, 
 The greatest man was Job in all the East." G. 
 
AfR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 23 
 
 the spring of 1804, when I was ten years old, I composed a 
 little poem, the subject of which was the description of the 
 school, and which I declaimed on the schoolroom floor. It 
 was afterward printed in the " Hampshire Gazette," the county 
 newspaper published at Northampton. Meantime I wrote 
 various lampoons on my schoolfellows and others, and when 
 the great eclipse of the sun took place, in June, 1806, I cele 
 brated the event in verse. I remember being told about this 
 time that my father had said, " He will be ashamed of his 
 verses when he is grown up." I could not then see why.* 
 
 * As many readers will, doubtless, be amused by this childish effort at the de 
 scription of a great natural phenomenon, I append it : 
 
 " How awfully sublime and grand to see, 
 The lamp of Day wrap ed in Obscurity. 
 To see the sun remove behind the moon, 
 And nightly darkness shroud the day at noon ; 
 The birds no longer feel his genial ray, 
 But cease to sing and sit upon the spray. 
 A solemn gloom and stillness spreads around, 
 Reigns in the air and broods o er all the ground. 
 Once-smiling Nature wears another face, 
 The blooming meadow loses half its grace. 
 All things are silent save the chilling breeze, 
 That in low whispers rustles through the trees. 
 The stars break forth and stud the azure sky, 
 And larger planets meet the wondering eye. 
 Now busy man leaves off his toil to gaze, 
 And some are struck with horror and amaze, 
 Others of noble feelings more refin d 
 Serenely view it with a tranquil mind. 
 See God s bright image strikingly portrayed 
 In each appearance which his power had made. 
 (Fixed in their hearts cool Meditation sate, 
 With uprais d eye and thoughtful look sedate.) 
 Now burst the Sun from silence and from night, 
 Though few his beams, they shed a welcome light ; 
 And Nature s choir, enlivened by his rays, 
 Harmonious warble their Creator s praise. 
 The shades of darkness feel his potent ray, 
 Mine eye pursue them as they flee away ; 
 
24 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 As soon as I was able to handle the lighter implements of 
 agriculture I was employed in the summer season in farm 
 work, under the tuition of my grandfather Snell, who taught 
 me to plant and hoe corn and potatoes, to rake hay and reap 
 wheat and oats with the sickle, for wheat was then raised in 
 Cummington, and the machine called the cradle had not yet 
 come into general use. In raking hay my grandfather put me 
 before him, and, if I did not make speed enough to keep out 
 of his way, the teeth of his rake touched my heels. I became 
 tolerably expert in these occupations, but I never fully learned 
 the use of the scythe, having left the farm before I had suffi 
 cient strength to wield it. 
 
 My health was rather delicate from infancy and easily dis 
 turbed. Sometimes the tasks of the farm were too great for 
 my strength, and brought on a sick headache, which was re 
 lieved under my father s directions by taking a little soda dis 
 solved in water. I was also subject to frequent and severe 
 attacks of colic, which I discovered afterwards to have been 
 caused by the use of pewter vessels for culinary purposes, 
 which was then very common. When they were no longer 
 used, I had no more of these attacks. 
 
 So my time passed in study, diversified with labor and 
 recreation. In the long winter evenings and the stormy win 
 ter days I read, with my elder brother, books from my father s 
 library not a large one, but well chosen. I remember well 
 the delight with which we welcomed the translation of the 
 Iliad, by Pope, when it was brought into the house. I had 
 met with passages from it before, and thought them the finest 
 verses that ever were written. My brother and myself, in 
 emulation of the ancient heroes, made for ourselves wooden 
 shields, swords, and spears, and fashioned old hats in the 
 
 So from the greyhound flies the tim rous hare, 
 
 Swift as a dart divides the yielding air." 
 
 This is inscribed in the boy s handwriting: "Written by W. C. Bryant, just after 
 the great total Eclipse of the Sun, in the summer of the year 1806 in his twelfth 
 year." G. 
 
MR. fiRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 2 $ 
 
 shape of helmets, with plumes of tow, and in the barn, when 
 nobody observed us, we fought the battles of the Greeks and 
 Trojans over again. I was always from my earliest ye 
 delighted observer of external nature the splendors of a 
 winter daybreak over the wide wastes of snow seen from our 
 windows, the glories of the autumnal woods, the gloomy 
 approaches of the thunderstorm, and its departure amid sun 
 shine and rainbows, the return of spring, with its flowers, and 
 the first snowfall of winter. The poets fostered this taste in 
 me, and though at that time I rarely heard such things spoken 
 of, it was none the less cherished in my secret mind. Mean 
 time the school which I attended was removed to the distance 
 of a mile and a quarter from our dwelling, and to it in winter 
 we went often across the fields over the snow when it was 
 firm enough to bear us without breaking the glazed surface. 
 Then the coming and going was a joyous pastime. 
 
 I cannot say, as some do, that I found my boyhood the 
 happiest part of my life. I had more frequent ailments than 
 afterward, my hopes were more feverish and impatient, and 
 my disappointments were more acute. The restraints on my 
 liberty of action, although meant for my good, were, irksome, 
 and felt as fetters, that galled my spirit and gave it pain. Af 
 ter years, if their pleasures had not the same zest, were passed 
 in more contentment, and, the more freedom of choice I had, 
 the better, on the whole, I enjoyed life. 
 
 In those days the seasons of religious excitement, then 
 sometimes called awakenings, but now revivals of religion, 
 were of a more sensational character, so to speak, than at 
 present. There occurred one of them about this time in Cum- 
 mington and its neighborhood. The principal topic dwelt 
 upon by the preachers and exhorters at these seasons was the 
 doom of the wicked, which was set forth in the strongest 
 terms that their rhetoric could supply. Prayer meetings and 
 meetings for exhortation were held almost daily, especially in 
 the winter time. The newly converted stood forth, and with 
 passionate earnestness entreated their hearers to seize the op- 
 
26 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 portunity of mercy, and flee from the wrath to come. I saw, 
 at this time, women falling to the floor, " struck down " under 
 conviction, as the phrase was, and lying for a time apparently 
 unconscious of everything that was passing around them. I 
 saw men wringing their hands in despair. In many instances 
 this state of depression was followed by a sudden revulsion of 
 feeling ; a mood of gladness from which its subject dated his 
 new birth, and in which his heart overflowed with love to 
 God and to his fellow-creatures. He was then said to be 
 " brought out." A considerable number of admissions to the 
 church our minister was of the Congregational denomination 
 followed the revival. On these occasions were read the 
 " relations " of the candidates for admission, little manuscript 
 histories of their spiritual experience. Our pastor was pru 
 dent enough to wait a few months after a reputed conversion 
 before accepting the candidate as a church member, for it not 
 infrequently happened that relapses took place, and that those 
 who were reprobates before the awakening returned to their 
 old ways. Others remained constant to their new impressions. 
 In a community so religious I naturally acquired habits of 
 devotion. My mother and grandmother had taught me, as 
 soon as I could speak, the Lord s Prayer and other little peti 
 tions suited to childhood, and I may be said to have been nur 
 tured on Watts devout poems composed for children. The 
 prayer of the publican in the New Testament was often in my 
 mouth, and I heard every variety of prayer at the Sunday 
 evening services conducted by laymen in private houses. But 
 I varied in my private devotions from these models, in one 
 respect, namely, in supplicating, as I often did, that I might 
 receive the gift of poetic genius, and write verses that might 
 endure. I presented this petition in those early years with 
 great fervor, but after a time I discontinued the practice ; I 
 can hardly say why. As a general rule, whatever I might 
 innocently wish I did not see why I should not ask ; and I 
 was a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer. The Calvinistic 
 system, of divinity I adopted, of course, as I heard nothing 
 
BRYANT S EARLY LIJ-J-. 2 / 
 
 else taught from the pulpit, and supposed it to be the accepted 
 belief of the religious world. 
 
 In February, 1808, General Woodbridge, of Worthington, 
 a place about four miles distant from our dwelling, died. He 
 was a promising and popular lawyer, held in high esteem by 
 the Federal party, to which he belonged, and was much la 
 mented. My father suggested this event as a subject for a 
 monody. I composed one beginning with these lines : 
 
 " The word is given, the cruel arrow flies 
 With death-foreboding aim, and Woodbridge dies. 
 Lo ! Hampshire s genius, bending o er his bier, 
 In silent sorrow heaves the sigh sincere ; 
 Loose to the wind her hair dishevelled flies 
 And falling tear-drops glisten in her eyes." 
 
 The rest of the poem was very much like this. My father 
 read it, and told me that it was nothing but tinsel and would 
 not do. There were only four lines among all that I had writ 
 ten which he would allow to be tolerable. 
 
 About this time the animosity with which the two political 
 parties the Federalists and the Republicans, as they called 
 themselves regarded each other was at its height. There 
 was scarcely anything too bad for each party to say of the 
 other. My father was a Federalist, and his skill in his profes 
 sion gave him great influence in Cummington and the neigh 
 boring country. Accordingly the Federalists had a consider 
 able majority in Cummington, and by them he was elected 
 for several successive years as their representative to the Gen 
 eral Court or Legislature of the State of Massachusetts. I 
 read the newspapers of the Federal party, and took a strong 
 interest in political questions. Under Mr. Jefferson s adminis 
 tration, in consequence of our disputes with Great Britain, an 
 embargo was laid in 1807 upon all the ports of our republic, 
 which, by putting a stop to all foreign commerce, had a disas 
 trous effect upon many private interests, and embittered the 
 hatred with which the Federalists regarded their political ad- 
 
28 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 versaries, and particularly Mr. Jefferson. I had written some 
 satirical lines apostrophizing the President, which my father 
 saw, and, thinking well of them, encouraged me to write oth 
 ers in the same vein. This I did willingly, until the addition 
 grew into a poem of several pages, in the midst of which the 
 lines of which I have spoken took their place. The poem was 
 published at Boston in 1808, in a little pamphlet entitled, "The 
 Embargo ; or, Sketches of the Times, A Satire ; by a Youth 
 of Thirteen." It had the honor of being kindly noticed in the 
 " Monthly Anthology," a literary periodical published in Bos 
 ton, which quoted from it the paragraph that had attracted 
 my father s attention. 
 
 It was decided that I should receive a college education, 
 and I was accordingly taken by my father to the house of my 
 mother s brother, the Reverend Dr. Thomas Snell, in North 
 Brookfield, to begin the study of Latin. My uncle was a man 
 of fine personal appearance and great dignity of character and 
 manner, the slightest expression of whose wish had all the 
 force of command. He was a rigid moralist, who never held 
 parley with wrong in any form, and was an enemy of every 
 kind of equivocation. As a theologian he was trained in the 
 school of Dr. Hopkins, which then, I think, included most of 
 the country ministers of the Congregational Church in Massa 
 chusetts. My aunt, his wife, was a lady of graceful manners 
 and gentle deportment. There were two children, of amiable 
 dispositions, a son and a daughter, the son now a valued pro 
 fessor in Amherst College, and the daughter, now living in a 
 Northwestern State, a lady scarce less remarkable, I am told, 
 for dignity of manner, than her father. I had a little qualm of 
 homesickness at first, but it soon passed away as I became in 
 terested in my studies, in which my progress was, I believe, 
 more rapid than usual. I began with the Latin grammar, 
 went through the Colloquies of Corderius, in which the 
 words, for the ease of the learner, were arranged according to 
 the English order, and then entered upon the New Testament 
 in Latin. Once, while reciting my daily lesson to my uncle, 
 
AfR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 2 g 
 
 he happened to turn to a part of the volume several pa^es be 
 yond where I had been studying. He read the text ; 1 gave 
 the English translation correctly, answered all his questions 
 respecting the syntax, and applied the rules. He then per 
 ceived that the passage before him was not the one I had 
 studied, and, laying aside the book, immediately put me into 
 the ^Eneid of Virgil, which I found much more difficult, re 
 quiring all my attention. 
 
 While I was occupied with the JEneid, my father wrote to 
 me advising me to translate some portion of it into English 
 verse. Accordingly I made a rhymed translation of the nar 
 rative of a tempest in the first book and sent it to my father, 
 but got no commendation in return. I had aimed to be faith 
 ful to the original, but the lines were cramped and the phrase 
 ology clumsy. I wrote rather better when I had no original 
 to follow. Somebody showed me a piece of paper, with the 
 title "The Endless Knot," the representation of an intricate 
 knot in parallel lines, between which were written some home 
 ly verses. I thought that I could write better ones, and, my 
 head being full of the ancient mythology, I composed these : 
 
 So seemed the Cretan labyrinth of old, 
 Maze within maze, in many a winding fold. 
 Deep in those convoluted paths in vain 
 The wretched captive sought the day again, 
 But, lost and wearied with the devious way, 
 Fell to the monster bull a helpless prey 
 Till Ariadne lent the guiding thread 
 That back to life the Athenian hero led. 
 Thus, round and round, with intricate design, 
 These snaky walks in endless mystery twine ; 
 Yet here no danger lurks, no murderous power 
 Waits the pale victim, ready to devour. 
 Our hands in turn bestow the friendly clue ; 
 Pursue our verse, our verse shall guide you through. 
 
 One day my uncle brought home a quarto volume, the 
 " Life of Sir William Jones," by Lord Teignmouth, which he 
 
30 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 had borrowed, as I imagine, expressly for my reading. I 
 read it with great interest, and was much impressed with the 
 extensive scholarship and other literary accomplishments of 
 Sir William. I am pretty sure that his example made me 
 afterward more diligent in my studies, and I think also that it 
 inclined me to the profession of the law which in due time I 
 embraced. I recollect that a clergyman, from a neighboring 
 parish, who came to exchange pulpits with my uncle, observ 
 ing me occupied with the book, kindly said to me : " You 
 have only to be as diligent in your studies as that great man 
 was, and, in time, you may write as fine verses as he did." 
 
 In a closet of the room where I studied, I found a copy of 
 Mrs. Radcliffe s " Romance of the Forest," which I began to 
 read with an interest that grew stronger as I proceeded. My 
 uncle found me with the book in my hands, and advised me 
 not to go on with it. " These works," he said, " have an un 
 wholesome influence. They are written in an interesting 
 manner ; they absorb the attention, and divert the mind from 
 objects of greater importance." The book, however, was left 
 within my reach. For some days I did not take it up, but my 
 curiosity had been so strongly excited that I could not long 
 refrain, and again began to read it. I was observed, and the 
 book disappeared. When, not many years afterward, the 
 " Romance of the Forest " came in my way, the first thing I 
 did was to read it through. 
 
 While I was at my uncle s, in 1809, another edition of my 
 poem, " The Embargo," was published at Boston. It had 
 been revised and somewhat enlarged, and a few shorter poems 
 were added. 
 
 I went through the JEneid in my Latin studies, and then 
 mastered the Eclogues and the Georgics, after which my 
 uncle put into my hands a volume of the select Orations of 
 Cicero. While I was engaged with these, he once asked me 
 which I liked better, Virgil or Cicero. I frankly gave the pref 
 erence to Virgil, on which, without directly controverting my 
 preference, he pointed out some of the excellences of Cicero s 
 
MR. BRYANTS EARLY LIFT.. 3I 
 
 compositions, such as the solidity of the reflect ions, their ap 
 plication to the realities of life, and the constant refeivn 
 everything to the principles of justice. 
 
 I had occasionally a fellow-student or two who came to 
 the house for the benefit of my uncle s instructions. Among 
 these was Amasa Walker, since a professor in Oberlin Col- 
 lege, and well known for his able works on political economy. 
 
 As the spring came on, I wandered about the fields and 
 meadows, where I missed some of the early flowers of the 
 highland country in which I was born, and admired others 
 new to me. The hickory, the oak, and the chestnut trees, as 
 they put forth their young leaves, were new acquaintances to 
 me. As the summer came on, my attention was attracted to 
 an elegant plant of the meadows a wild lily with whorls of 
 leaves surrounding the stem. I watched impatiently the un 
 folding of its flower-buds, in hope that I might see it in bloom 
 before I went back to Cummington, but in this I was disap 
 pointed. 
 
 While at my uncle s my constitution seemed to have un 
 dergone a favorable change. I had been subject, as I have 
 already mentioned, to frequent and severe headaches, some 
 times taking the form of sick headache, after eating gross food 
 or taking immoderate exercise. These now left me entirely, 
 and through a long life I am now in my eightieth year my 
 head has never ached since. Though my health was delicate, 
 the diseases of childhood the measles, the mumps, and the 
 whooping-cough visited me lightly the scarlet fever I never 
 had. My father was one of the first to introduce vaccination 
 in Western Massachusetts. I was made to take the infection, 
 but, though the pustule was perfectly formed, I was scarcely 
 indisposed in consequence. 
 
 In the beginning of July, 1809, having read through the 
 volume of Cicero s Orations, I left the excellent family of my 
 uncle, where I had been surrounded by the most wholesome 
 influences and examples, and returned to Cummington, after 
 an absence of just eight calendar months. I was welcomed 
 
32 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 by my four brothers and two sisters, all born before I went to 
 North Brookfield the youngest a boy two years old and a 
 lively house they made of it. They had all grown, of course, 
 during my absence, but I well remember that, as much as they 
 had grown, the house and its surroundings seemed to have 
 diminished. The parlor, the kitchen, my father s office, all 
 seemed to have shrunk from their former dimensions ; the 
 ceilings seemed lower, the fields around seemed of less extent, 
 the trees less tall, and the little brook that ran near the house 
 gurgled with a slenderer current. 
 
 I took my place with the haymakers on the farm,* and did, 
 I believe, my part until the 28th of August, 1 809, when I went 
 to begin my studies in Greek with the Reverend Moses Hal- 
 lock, in the neighboring township of Plainfield, where he was 
 the minister. He was somewhat famous for preparing youths 
 for college, and his house was called by some the bread and 
 milk college, for the reason that bread and milk was a fre 
 quent dish at the good man s table. And a good man he 
 really was, kind and gentle, and of the most scrupulous con 
 scientiousness. " I value Mr. Hallock," my grandfather used 
 to say, "his life is so exemplary." He was paid a dollar a 
 week for my board and instruction. " I can afford it for that," 
 he was in the habit of saying, " and it would not be honest to 
 take more." 
 
 I committed to memory the declensions and the conjuga 
 tions of the Greek tongue, with the rules of syntax, and then 
 began reading the New Testament in Greek, taking first the 
 Gospel of St. John. One of my fellow-students was Levi Par 
 sons, afterward distinguished as a missionary in the East. 
 He had not so good a verbal memory as I, and, as we two 
 made a class, he frequently interrupted me to ask my help in 
 the difficulties which he met with. I gave it for the first two 
 or three days, but, the applications of this sort becoming rather 
 frequent, I answered one of them with petulance. He went 
 
 * As the boy was not very strong, he often stopped in his labor to rest, when the 
 grandfather used to taunt him with a Well, Cullen, making varses again ? " G. 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 
 
 33 
 
 back to his place with a discouraged look ; I saw him wiping 
 the tears from his eyes, and the next day it appeared that he 
 had given up for the time the study of Greek, and had gone 
 back to the Latin. I have never thought of my conduct in 
 that instance without a feeling of remorse. 
 
 I now went on alone, giving myself with my whole soul to 
 the study of Greek. I was early at my task in the morning, 
 and kept on until bed-time ; at night I dreamed of Greek, and 
 my first thought in the morning was of my lesson for the day. 
 At the end of two calendar months I knew the Greek New 
 Testament from end to end almost as if it had been English, 
 and I returned to my home in Cummington, where a few 
 days afterward I completed my fifteenth year. 
 
 About this time occurred an event which I remember with 
 regret. My grandfather Snell had always been substantially 
 kind to me, and ready to forward any plan for my education, 
 but, when I did what in his judgment was wrong, he repri 
 manded me with a harshness which was not so well judged as 
 it was probably deserved. I had committed some foolish 
 blunder, and he was chiding me with even more than his 
 usual severity ; I turned and looked at him with a steady 
 gaze. " What are you staring at ? " he asked. " Did you 
 never see me before ? " " Yes," I answered ; " I have seen 
 you many times before." He had never before heard a dis 
 respectful word from my lips. He turned and moved away, 
 and never reproved me again in that manner, but never after 
 ward seemed to interest himself so much as before in any mat 
 ter that concerned me. 
 
 The next winter I was occupied with studies preparatory 
 to entering college, which for reasons of economy it was de 
 cided that I should do a year in advance, that is to say, as a 
 member of the Sophomore class. At this time I had no help 
 from a tutor, but in the spring I went again for two months 
 to Plainfield, and received from Mr. Hallock instructions in 
 mathematics. In the beginning of September, 1810, when the 
 annual Commencement of Williams College was at that time 
 
 VOL. L i 
 
34 
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 held, I went with my father to Williamstown, passed an easy 
 examination, and was admitted as a member of the Sopho 
 more class. After the usual vacation I went again to Wil 
 liamstown and began my college life.* 
 
 I found that kind of life on the whole agreeable, and formed 
 pleasant relations with my fellow-students and instructors. 
 There were two literary societies in the college, to one or the 
 other of which every student belonged, the Philotechnian and 
 Philologian, and, as my room-mate, John Avery, belonged to 
 the Philotechnian, I was induced to join it. These societies 
 had their literary exercises, in which I took a great interest. 
 
 My room-mate was a most worthy and well-principled per 
 son, several years older than myself, and I owed so much to 
 his example and counsels that I have often regretted not hav 
 ing kept up a correspondence with him. He became in after 
 life a minister of the Episcopal Church, and went to the South 
 ern States, to Maryland, I think, whence, about the year 1835, 
 he removed to Alabama, and died soon afterward. The stu 
 dents of Williams College were at that time mostly youths of 
 a staid character, generally in narrow circumstances, who 
 went to college with a serious intention to study, and prepare 
 themselves for some of the learned professions, so that I have 
 no college pranks to relate. The course of study in Williams 
 College at that time was meagre and slight in comparison 
 with what it now is. There was but one Professor, Chester 
 Dewey, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, a 
 man of much merit, who had the charge of the Junior class. 
 The President of the college, Dr. Fitch, superintended the 
 studies of the Senior class, and the Sophomores and Fresh 
 men were instructed by two tutors employed from year to 
 year. I mastered the daily lessons given out to my class, and 
 found much time for miscellaneous reading, for disputations, 
 and for literary composition in prose and verse, in all of which 
 I was thought to acquit myself with some credit. No atten 
 tion was then paid to prosody, but I made an attempt to ac- 
 
 * October gth. G. 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LIFE. 35 
 
 quaint myself with the prosody of the Latin language, and 
 tried some experiments in Latin verse which were clumsy 
 and uncouth enough. 
 
 Among my verses was a paraphrastic translation of Anac- 
 reon s ode on Spring. Moore s version of Anacreon s ode 
 was consulted, and my room-mate suggested that these trans 
 lations should be shown to two members of the Junior class, 
 whom he named, and of whose judgment in literary matters 
 he thought highly, and that they, without knowing the au 
 thorship of either, should be asked to say which of the two 
 was the better. Both versions copied in the same hand were 
 accordingly laid before them by Avery. He came back to 
 me greatly pleased, and informed me that the two judges 
 had given the preference to my translation. He added that 
 they evidently supposed my translation to be that of Moore, 
 and spoke of the other in an encouraging manner as quite 
 creditable on the whole. He came away without undeceiv 
 ing them. 
 
 My room-mate, for the sake of obtaining a more complete 
 education than the course of study at Williams then promised, 
 had resolved to leave the college and become matriculated at 
 Yale in New Haven. His example, and a like desire on my 
 part, induced me to write to my father for leave to take the 
 same step, to which he consented. Accordingly, in the year 
 1811, before the third term of my Sophomore year was ended, 
 I asked and obtained an honorable dismission from Williams 
 College,* and, going back to Cummington, began to prepare 
 myself for entering the Junior class at Yale. 
 
 I pursued my studies at home with some diligence and 
 without any guide save my books, but, when the time drew 
 near that I should apply for admission at Yale, my father told 
 me that his means did not allow him to maintain me at New 
 Haven, and that I must give up the idea of a full course of 
 college education. I have always thought this unfortunate 
 for me, since it left me but superficially acquainted with sev- 
 
 * May 8th. G. 
 
36 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 
 
 eral branches of education, which a college course would have 
 enabled me to master, and would have given me greater readi 
 ness in their application. I regretted all my life afterward 
 that I had not remained at Williams, where, considering that 
 the expenses were less than at Yale, my father might have 
 been willing to support me till I should obtain the degree of 
 Bachelor of Arts. 
 
 While I was engaged in the studies of which I have spoken, 
 the medical library of my father being at hand, I read, in a 
 very desultory manner, of course, portions both of the more 
 formal treatises and of the periodicals, and became much in 
 terested in the medical art, though the hardships of a physi 
 cian s life, as I saw in the case of my father, disinclined me 
 from making medicine my profession. The science of chem 
 istry had, not long before that time, been reformed and re 
 duced by Lavoisier substantially to the system now received, 
 and provided with a new nomenclature. By the aid of ex 
 periments performed in my father s office, with the chemical 
 agents which a country practitioner of medicine was obliged 
 to keep at home, I became a pretty good chemist as far as 
 the science, since that time vastly enlarged and extended, was 
 then carried. I also acquired some knowledge of botany 
 from works in my father s library, in which the Linnasan sys 
 tem was explained and illustrated. These readings and stud 
 ies formed an agreeable relaxation, if I may so call it, from 
 my more laborious academic studies, but I have never regret 
 ted the time which I gave them. Meantime, I read all the 
 poetry that came in my way. I remember a lesson given me 
 in poetical composition by my father. One day he took down 
 from the shelf in his office library Campbell s " Pleasures of 
 Hope," which I had read again and again until I had the most 
 of it by heart. He opened at the passage which speaks of 
 Admiral Biron s wanderings in South America, and read it, 
 closing with the lines : 
 
 " Till, led by thee o er many a cliff sublime, 
 He found a warmer world, a milder clime, 
 
MR. BRYANT S EARLY LI I- 1C. 37 
 
 A home to rest, a shelter to defend, 
 Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend." 
 
 He then bade me and others who were present observe 
 the tautology of these expressions, which was a serious blem 
 ish in the poems. 
 
 About this time my father brought home, I think from one 
 of his visits to Boston, the " Remains of Henry Kirke White," 
 which had been republished in this country. I read the poems 
 with great eagerness, and so often that I had committed sev 
 eral of them to memory, particularly the ode to the Rose 
 mary. The melancholy tone which prevails in them deep 
 ened the interest with which I read them, for about that time 
 I had, as young poets are apt to have, a liking for poetry of a 
 querulous cast. I remember reading, at this time, that remark 
 able poem, Blair s " Grave," and dwelling with great pleas 
 ure upon its finer passages. I had the opportunity of compar 
 ing it with a poem on a kindred subject, also in blank verse, 
 that of Bishop Porteus on " Death," and of observing how 
 much the verse of the obscure Scottish minister excelled in 
 originality of thought and vigor of expression that of the 
 English prelate. In my father s library I found a small, thin 
 volume of the miscellaneous poems of Southey, to which he 
 had not called my attention, containing some of the finest 
 of Southey s shorter poems. I read it greedily. Cowper s 
 poems had been in my hands from an early age, and I now 
 passed from his shorter poems, which are generally mere 
 rhymed prose, to his " Task," the finer passages of which sup 
 plied a form of blank verse that captivated my admiration.* 
 
 * Here the autobiography ends abruptly, and just at the time when the poet was 
 going to tell us of the various influences under which his " Thanatopsis" was written. 
 Why he stopped it is not known ; perhaps he found that his memory was failing 
 him although it is more likely that he became dissatisfied with the necessity his 
 task imposed upon him, of thinking so much about himself a practice to which 
 be was always averse. G. 
 
CHAPTER SECOND. 
 
 THE PLACE AND TIME OF THE POET S BIRTH. 
 
 I HAVE not been willing to break the simple and pleasant 
 narrative we have just read by interjecting frequent notes ; 
 but, as the writer of it has allowed himself, through modesty or 
 forgetfulness, to pass over many details that the public will 
 naturally desire to see, I shall endeavor to supply them in a 
 few supplementary chapters.* 
 
 If it be true, as Landor says, 
 
 "We are what suns and winds and waters make us; 
 The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills 
 Fashion and win their nurseling with their smiles," f 
 
 some words ought to be devoted to the locality in which our 
 poet had his birth and passed the days of his youth and earlier 
 manhood. 
 
 The town of Cummington, where he first saw light, is a 
 small hamlet, known to very few people, hidden away among 
 the hills of Hampshire County, in the western part of the 
 State of Massachusetts. It consists of several dwellings and 
 stores, situated on the north fork of a stony-bedded little 
 stream, called Westfield River, and of scattered outlying farm 
 houses that hang upon the slopes of the neighboring uplands. 
 All the country round is mountainous, as indeed is the whole 
 of western Massachusetts, comprising the four counties of 
 Berkshire, Hampshire, Franklin, and Hampden. An offshoot 
 
 * I am encouraged to adopt this method by the example of Mr. Lockhart, in 
 his delightful biography of Sir Walter Scott. See " Memoirs of the Life of Scott," 
 vol. i, Boston, 1849. 
 
 f "Hellenics," p. 274, London, 1847. 
 
CUMMINGTON IN EARLY DAYS. 39 
 
 from the Green Mountains of Vermont, or, as the early Dutch 
 settlers called them because of their wintry aspects, the Snow 
 Mountains, it is like them also a spur of the great Appala 
 chian chain that clasped the original republic. Its character 
 istics are those of a mountain country, but with peculiarities 
 of its own. The hill-ranges, which sometimes reach an ele 
 vation of between two and three thousand feet, contain few 
 single peaks standing out in solitary grandeur, although Gray- 
 lock, Everett, Mcttawampc. 1 lolyoke, and Tom, the highest 
 points, are objects of imposing magnitude. Nor are they hud 
 dled together, as we often see them in mountainous districts, 
 making the depressions narrow and suffocating. They are 
 
 " Wide, wild, and open to the sky," 
 
 and from almost any eminence the eye takes in a circle of broad 
 and billowy masses that lose themselves in sublime distances. 
 
 Within the valleys are found all varieties of natural beauty : 
 broad and grassy meadows, often gorgeous with flowers ; tall 
 and graceful trees, either single or in clumps or copses or for 
 ests ; sheets of water that here nestle in pretty pools and there 
 spread out in shining lakes ; brooks that dimple and . poise in 
 open meads or under overhanging bushes, or noisy, impatient 
 streams that make their way to the Connecticut River on one 
 side, and to the Housatonic on the other, by which they are 
 carried in more majestic currents to the sea. 
 
 This beautiful region, now largely covered by busy towns 
 and thrifty villages, and nearly everywhere intersected by 
 railroads, was, less than two hundred and fifty years since, an 
 unbroken wilderness. The bear, the wolf, and the catamount 
 were its almost exclusive possessors. Indians there were in 
 plenty, but they affected the river bottoms mainly, and pene 
 trated the higher thickets only in pursuit of game. To the 
 newly come Pilgrims, who were a dot on the sear icse 
 
 mountains seemed a dark and terrible barrier, infested by 
 savage beasts and wilder men, or by evil spirits who bur 
 dened the winds with their bowlings. It was thirty years 
 
40 PLACE AND TIME OF BIRTH. 
 
 from the landing at Plymouth before they had erected planta 
 tions at Agawam, now Springfield, at Nonotuck, now North 
 ampton, and at a few other places along the Connecticut River 
 Northfield, Deerfield, Brookfield, and Hadley. The terrible 
 wars with the Indians, who desolated the settlements, left be 
 hind them a heritage of sombre traditions, followed up by 
 those of the horrors and cruelties of the old French war. 
 
 Long after civilization was established on the low grounds 
 and slopes of the hills, there was one broad tract of the moun 
 tains that lay in its original rudeness and solitude. This was 
 situated about midway of the two great valleys, many miles 
 from any of the towns, and at an elevation of two thousand 
 feet or more. The Indians called it the Pontoosuc Forest, 
 but on the maps of the colony it was only known as Districts 
 Number i, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on up to 10. It had been visited 
 to be surveyed, but no one lived there, and it was wholly in 
 accessible save by paths which each one made for himself. 
 The first recorded intelligence in regard to it, appears in the 
 year 1762, when the colony of Massachusetts was suffering 
 under the burdens of expense imposed on it by the Indian and 
 French and English wars, and caused the dim and shadowy 
 outskirts to be sold by public auction as a means of recruiting 
 its exhausted treasury. The division set down as Number 
 5, extending some eight or nine miles in one direction and 
 three or four in another, was purchased by a company of 
 twenty-six persons living at Concord. At the head of them 
 was a Colonel John Cuming, a Scotchman by descent if not by 
 birth, and a man of note and enterprise, who had been actively 
 engaged in the still recent Indian conflicts, and who was but 
 just returned from Indian captivity in Canada. What he or 
 any of his companions knew of the territory they had bought, 
 or what the motive of its acquisition was, does not now ap 
 pear. " No white man was there to tell them of its climate, 
 its soil, its productions, its minerals, or its wealth, latent or 
 patent."* Only one, however, of the original owners ever 
 
 * Senator H. L. Dawes s Centennial Address, at Cummington, 1879. 
 
PATRIOTIC SPIRIT OF THE SETTLERS. 4I 
 
 occupied the place, and their names arr not hornr by those 
 who were or are now among its inhabitants. They seem to 
 have sent others to occupy for them. 
 
 It is characteristic of the times in which these wilds we- re 
 sold, that a stipulation was entered in the contract of sale- re 
 serving a certain part of the land, with a settled incomf in 
 rye "to be devoted to the support of a gospel minister," and 
 another part for the maintenance of a public school which 
 should be " free to all the people." At the very first meeting 
 held in the settlement, which was not till 1771, eleven years 
 from the time of the purchase, and five before the Declaration 
 of Independence, the subject of " locating- a meeting-house " 
 was taken up with serious zeal and earnestness. But the set 
 tlers were found to be too few in number and too poor, to say 
 nothing of their disagreements as to the proper locality, to 
 warrant the erection of any public edifice, and the worship of 
 the little community was carried on in houses of logs, where 
 the swallows built their nests, and mingled their chirpings 
 with a more nasal psalmody. It was not until the year 1793, 
 one year before our poet was born, that the first church was 
 erected on the hill-sides. 
 
 Yet, few as the settlers were, and remote from the centres 
 of political life and activity, they did not escape the agitations 
 of the outer world. That impatience of British oppression 
 which had been stirring for some time in all the colonies, was 
 felt alike on mountain and plain. The patriotic appeals of 
 James Otis and others were heard as echoes among the hills. 
 As early as 1774, before the soil of Concord was yet stained 
 by the first blood shed in defence of popular rights, the little 
 handful of emigrants to the mountains had appointed three of 
 their principal citizens to be a committee of correspondence 
 to keep the inhabitants informed of what was doing on the 
 plains, and to provide "powder and lead for any emergency.* 
 On the 1 7th of June, 1776, Ebenezer Snell, Jr., an uncle of 
 the poet, being in his father s cornfield, put his ear to the 
 
 * Centennial Address at Cummington, by H. L. Dawes, 1879. 
 
42 PLACE AND TIME OF BIRTH. 
 
 ground and heard a cannonading far away, which proved to 
 be the onset at Bunker Hill.* It was heard in a moral sense 
 all over the land. This Eben Snell volunteered, and was 
 present at the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. All the 
 young men, indeed, who could be spared from the needful 
 labors of agriculture enlisted in the patriot army. How many 
 went from Cummington into the service is not recorded ; but 
 the names of ten of them, a large proportion for so small a 
 neighborhood, who afterward received a pension, are still 
 cherished in the grateful memories of their descendants ; and 
 long after they had ceased to be, the stories of their devotion 
 and suffering, the romantic legends of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, 
 Bennington, and Yorktown, told by the lonely winter fire 
 sides, kept alive in the hearts of the farmers and woodmen 
 the spirit which had brought about the independence of the 
 nation. In truth, the youth of that generation were fed 
 upon tales of revolutionary prowess and endurance, and the 
 virtues and even the forms of the actors in the war assumed 
 in their eyes gigantic proportions ; while the principles of 
 political liberty, for which they had contended and bled, be 
 came a kind of religious faith. 
 
 To this secluded District No. 5, with its few scattered hab 
 itations and utter poverty of social life, Mr. Ebenezer Snell, 
 called both Deacon and Squire, took his family just before the 
 outbreak of the Revolution (1774)^ A young physician of 
 Norton, Dr. Peter Bryant, seeking a place wherein to practice 
 his art, wandered into the same neighborhood many years 
 later ; where, in course of time, he was smitten by the charms 
 of "sweet Sallie Snell," as he alliteratively expresses it in 
 verses still extant, and was married to her in 1792. Their two 
 elder children, Austin and William Cullen, were born in a 
 
 * This story was lately told by a writer in the New York " Journal of Ccm- 
 merce," who heard it from Mr. Snell, then eighty years of age. 
 
 f Deacon Snell was, in 1784, and afterward, a representative in the General 
 Court, or Legislature, of the State, and also, for many years, a Judge of the Court 
 of Sessions the County Court. 
 
SCENERY OF THE POET S BIRTHPLACE. 
 
 43 
 
 small frame house the characteristic architecture of the fron 
 tier that follows the log-hut on the top of a bleak hill some 
 two miles from the present village. For himself, Deacon 
 Sneli procured a more commodious dwelling farther west, 
 now known as the Bryant Homestead. If he had been a poet 
 or a painter, he could not have chosen a more charming site. 
 From the cosy shelter of its newly-planted apple orchards, it 
 looked out upon an immense expanse of low and high lands. 
 The hills to the eastward rose one above another until the last 
 one met the sun in his coming ; and those on the west and 
 south extended their hands to old Graylock, " familiar with 
 forgotten years." In front ran the babbling brook, to be here 
 after known as the Rivulet, through green meadows that de 
 scended, more or less precipitously, to the Westfield, whose 
 gentle murmurs, only heard in the stillness of night, broke 
 into a roar when the rains had swollen its current. Behind, 
 in solemn, interminable shade, stretched the primeval for 
 ests of beech, birch, ash, maple, and hemlock, of which the 
 readers of an " Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood" will 
 retain a vivid picture. 
 
 During the fairer season of the year, that is, from June into 
 October, the landscape here was all brightness and tranquil 
 lity. The clearest of skies looked down upon waving fields of 
 singular beauty. The suns rose each morning as if it were 
 the dawn of a new creation, and they set each evening amid 
 the most dazzling effusions of color, and a profound silence, 
 unbroken save by woodland murmurs and the songs of birds. 
 In the autumn these vast billowy circles of forest blazed with 
 crimson, gold, and purple, whose brilliancy the most gorgeous 
 of Venetian painters would have envied ; yet subdued by a 
 wreath of silver haze which made it soft, genial, and harmoni 
 ous. It was a magnificence, however, that was short-lived, for 
 in a latitude so far toward the north the winter arrived early 
 and continued long, and while it lasted it was very intense. The 
 cold blasts cut to the marrow ; the trees not only lost their 
 leaves, but stalked out of the earth like the skeletons of trees ; 
 
44 PLACE AND TIME OF BIRTH. 
 
 all the birds were driven away, save the crow, the hawk, the 
 jay, the partridge, and the nuthatch, which have no melody in 
 their harsh screams and scolding shrieks ; and/while the cattle 
 sought the shelter of barns and sheds, man clung to his fire 
 side. In every direction the outlook was bleak and deso 
 late ; and, though the fancies of poets discern in the effects 
 wrought by the winds among the falling snowflakes * when 
 the delicate sprays of the forests are glittering gems, the 
 massy trunks are encased in crystal, and the long-drawn aisles 
 of the wood-arches are amethyst and topaz an architecture 
 that surpasses the richest arabesques and fretworks of Moor 
 ish and Venetian genius, and to which no cathedral of the old 
 world is comparable the conditions of life were extremely 
 severe. A soil for the most part reluctant or sterile was 
 scarcely compensated, in the minds of the husbandmen at 
 least, by 
 
 " The glory of the morn, the glow of eve, 
 The beauty of the streams, and stars, and flowers." 
 
 In the midst of this lovely scenery the poet was born, and 
 at a time, too, not unworthy of passing remark. It was in 
 the second year of the second administration of Washington. 
 Our new political structure consisted as yet of only fifteen 
 States Vermont and Kentucky having been added to the 
 original thirteen since the Revolution. Many of the Revo 
 lutionary heroes were still alive ; the framers of the Fed 
 eral Constitution were most of them in active political life ; 
 the earnest contests of opinion, as to the character and di 
 rection to be given to the untried experiment of Democratic- 
 Republican government, were raging with great vehemence ; 
 and it seemed yet undetermined, in spite of the hopes indulged 
 in by more sanguine temperaments, whether the glorious 
 inspirations which had sustained the patriotic mind through 
 the appalling difficulties of the war, and the no less appalling 
 
 * The New England poets, Bryant, Emerson, Whittier, and Lowell, have man 
 aged to get some of their most charming lines out of the snow-scenes of their home. 
 
THE STATE OF LITERATURE. 
 
 45 
 
 difficulties of the quasi-anarchy that followed it, should i 
 in a stable, compact, and vigorous polity, or in failure, di^r. 
 and ruin. These contests were complicated by events abroad, 
 where a tempest of revolution had swept over France, and 
 was threatening- England as well as the nations of the Con 
 tinent. The "black terror" was coming to an end, Robes 
 pierre and his accomplices had gone to the scaffold, but the 
 Directory was still in power. French popular armies over 
 ran or menaced nearly . all the ancient States. The British 
 House of Commons was still ringing with the powerful elo 
 quence of Burke, Fox, and Pitt, and the great man, destined 
 to play a grander part than any one else in the coming drama, 
 lately a lieutenant of artillery, who had just got his hand in 
 at the petty siege of Toulon, was on his way to Italy, as Gen 
 eral, to begin the most wonderful series of military exploits 
 that history has ever recorded. 
 
 At that day no such thing as an American literature, in the 
 proper sense of the word, existed. Fisher Ames, writing on the 
 subject in 1801, says that, " excepting the writers of two able 
 works on Politics,* we have no authors. Has our country 
 produced one great original man of genius ? f Is there one lu 
 minary in our firmament that shines with unborrowed rays?" 
 As for poetry, he intimates that the Muses, like nightingales, 
 are too delicate to cross the salt water, or sicken and mope 
 without song if they do. $ But, as the political condition had 
 recently undergone a great change, which was thought to be 
 an improvement, the more buoyant minds of the era were 
 hopeful of a literary dawn. A passage in the famous dis 
 course which the eloquent Buckminster delivered eight years 
 later, in 1809, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cam 
 bridge, admits the fact of our sterility, but salves it with a pre 
 diction. " Our poets and historians," he said, " our critics 
 and orators, the men of whom posterity are to stand in awe 
 
 * Jefferson and John Adams probably. 
 
 f He had forgotten Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 \ " Life and Works of Fisher Ames," vol. ii, p. 428, Boston, 1854. 
 
46 PLACE AND TIME OF BIRTH. 
 
 and by whom they are to be instructed, are yet to appear 
 among us. But, if we are not mistaken in the signs of the 
 times, the genius of our literature begins to show symptoms 
 of vigor, and to meditate a bolder flight, and the generation 
 which is to succeed us will be formed on better models and 
 leave a brighter track." * 
 
 In Europe, the old spirit was visibly giving way to the new. 
 Kant s three wonderful volumes of criticism were but recently 
 from the press, and yet they had already moulded the acute 
 and active German mind into new forms. Goethe had print 
 ed " Goetz of Berlichingen " and Schiller his " Robbers," and 
 both were advancing to other and better work. In Eng 
 land the long reign of the Queen Anne s men was on the 
 decline. Cowper, though he would write no more, had yet 
 six years to live ; Burns was singing a swan-song of depart 
 ure ; Scott was hunting up the old ballads of the Scottish 
 borders ; Byron was a boy at Harrow ; Shelley was in his 
 cradle, and Keats was not yet born ; but the titanic Landor 
 had issued his first book, and Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
 Southey were dreaming pantisocratic dreams of a golden age, 
 not to be set agoing, as they fondly thought, in America, but 
 in the pages of their own poetry, destined to revive 
 
 " the melodious bursts that fill 
 The spacious time of great Elizabeth." 
 
 * "Sermons of J. S. Buckminster," Boston, 1829. 
 
CHAPTER THIRD. 
 
 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 NEITHER Mr. Bryant nor any of his kindred seems to have 
 been possessed with what Southey calls the leaven of ances 
 tral pride, or, at least, it did not work very powerfully in their 
 blood. No one of them, so far as I am able to ascertain, ever 
 took the pains to trace his family relationships among the 
 records of the old world. Their curiosity in this respect 
 stopped on the shores of the Atlantic. Though several of 
 them, whose reports are before me, made inquiries as to 
 their lineage, they were contented to go no further back 
 than the days in which the Pilgrims were landed at Ply 
 mouth. What William the Conqueror and his followers 
 are to the noble families of old England, the passengers 
 by the Mayflower are to the noble families of New England ; 
 meaning the families that have nobly served their day and 
 generation. They are the Eupatrids, or Founders, the only 
 sources of distinction and honor. No Bryant was among 
 these passengers ; but, if we trace the family up through 
 its degrees, we shall see that the poet had a triple title to 
 Mayflower origin.* 
 
 * The following table of the generations upward furnishes, perhaps, all the infor 
 mation that may be required on this head : 
 
 I. THE CHILDREN, BORN AT CI-MMINCITON. 
 
 Austin Bryant, b. April 16, 1793 ; William Cullen, b. November 3, 1794 ; 
 Cyrus, b. July 12, 1798 ; Sarah Snell, b. July, 1802 ; Peter Rush, afterward called 
 Arthur, b. November 28, 1803 ; Charity Louisa, b. December 20, 1805 ; and John 
 
48 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 The poet s mother was the daughter of Ebenezer Snell (see 
 note III, 3 and 4), the fourth of the six children of Zachariah 
 Snell and Abigail Hay ward (IV, 5, 6), who was the young 
 est child of Joseph Hayward and Harriet Mitchell (V, n, 12), 
 and Mrs. Harriet (Mitchell) Hayward was the youngest daugh- 
 
 Howard, b. July 22, 1807. Of these seven children, only Arthur and John Howard 
 
 are alive in 1882. 
 
 II. THE PARENTS. 
 
 "(i.) Dr. PETER BRYANT, b. at North Bridgewater August 12, 1767 ; d. at 
 
 Cummington March 19, 1820. 
 
 ISt * (2.) SARAH SNELL, b. at North Bridgewater December 4, 1768 ; mar 
 ried 1792 ; d. at Princeton, Illinois, May 6, 1847. 
 
 III. THE GRANDPARENTS. 
 
 ( (i.) Dr. PHILIP BRYANT, b. 1731 ; d. 1816, aged 85. 
 15 \ (2.) SILENCE HOWARD, b. 1738 ; married 1757; d. 
 
 t (3.) Col. EBENEZER SNELL, b. October i, 1738 ; found dead in his bed 
 2d. ) August 16, 1813. 
 
 ( (4.) SARAH PACKARD, b. September 10, 1737; married 1764; d. 
 
 IV. THE GREAT GRANDPARENTS. 
 
 f (i.) ICHABOD BRYANT, b. 1702 ; d. 1759 ; lived at Rhaneham, and thence 
 ist. < moved to West Bridgewater. 
 
 ( (2.) RUTH STAPLES ; birth and date of marriage unknown. 
 ^ ( (3.) Dr. ABIEL HOWARD, b. November 6, 1704 ; d. 1777. 
 
 ( (4.) SILENCE WASHBURN, b. 1713 ; married 1737 ; d. 1775. 
 , j (5.) ZACHARIAH SNELL, b. March 17, 1704 ; d. 
 
 I (6.) ABIGAIL HAYWARD, b. August 3, 1702 ; married 1731. 
 4th \ ^ ^ C a P t - ABIEL PACKARD, b. April 29, 1699 ; d. 1774. 
 
 ( (8.) SARAH AMES, b. January 23, 1702 ; married 1723 ; d. 1770. 
 
 V. THE GREAT GREAT GRANDPARENTS. 
 t j (i.) STEPHEN BRYANT, b. 1657. 
 
 ( (2.) MEHITABEL , date of marriage unknown (1683 ?). 
 
 (3.) FATHER of Ruth Staples unknown. 
 (4.) MOTHER " " 
 
 3d ! ( 5> ) J ONATHAN HOWARD, ; d. 1739. 
 
 / (6.) SARAH DEANE, dates unknown. 
 
 4th -S ^ Capt NEHEMIAH WASHBURN, b. 1685 ; d. 1748. 
 
 ( (8.) JANE HOWARD, b. 1689 ; married 1713 ; d. , 
 
 5th. \ kO J SIAH SNELL - 
 
 ( (10.) ANNA ALDEN, married 1699. 
 
 6th i ( IJ ) J OSEPH HAYWARD. 
 (12.) HARRIET MITCHELL. 
 
GENEALOGIES. 49 
 
 tcr of Experience Mitchell and Jane Cook. Now, this Jane 
 (Cook) Mitchell was the third of the five children of Francis 
 Cook and Esther his wife. Francis Cook and his son John 
 came over as passengers in the Ma\ flower, landing at Plym 
 outh December 22, 1620, while Mrs. Cook, who was a native 
 of the Netherlands, came over in 1623 in the ship Anne, the 
 third that made the voyage to Plymouth, accompanied by 
 their three other children, Jacob, Jane, and Esther. Their 
 fifth child, Mary, was born in Plymouth in 1626.* 
 
 f (13.) ZACHEUS PACKARD, d. 1723, son of Samuel Packard, d. 1684, who 
 7th. ? came over in the Diligent of Ipswich, 1638. 
 
 ( (14.) SARAH HOWARD, dates unknown. 
 
 8th \ ^ I5> ) J OHN AMES b - A P ril J 4. 1672 ; d. 1756. 
 
 ( (16.) SARAH WASHBURN, married January 12, 1697. 
 
 Stephen Bryant (see V, i) was the son of another Stephen Bryant, who came 
 from England in his youth in about 1632 ; was a town officer in Duxbury in 1644 ; 
 removed to Plymouth, and was propounded as freeman in 1655 ; surveyor of high 
 ways in 1658, 1674, 1678. He married Abigail Shaw about 1645, who came over 
 with her father, John Shaw, in 1632, and settled at Plymouth. From this couple 
 the Bryants were descended. 
 
 Sarah Deane (V, 6) was the daughter of John Deane, a son of the first emigrant 
 of the name, who came from near Taunton, in England, and settled at Taunton, in 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 Jane Howard (V, 8) was the daughter of Capt. John Howard, who came from 
 England, and lived at Duxbury in 1643. 
 
 Anna Alden (V, 10) was the daughter of John Alden, a son of the John Aldcn 
 who came by the Mayflower. 
 
 Sarah Howard (V, 14) was the daughter of the first John Howard, born 1666, 
 died 1750, and Mary Keith, daughter of the Rev. James Keith, of Aberdeen, Scot 
 land. 
 
 Harriet Mitchell (V, 12) was the daughter of Experience Mitchell, who arrived 
 in the Anne in 1623, and Jane Cook, a daughter of Francis Cook, a passenger by 
 the Mayflower. 
 
 Sarah Washburn (V, 16) was a daughter of Elizabeth Mitchell and granddaughter 
 of Experience Mitchell, just named. 
 
 * For these and other particulars I am indebted to Mr. Ellis Ames, of Canton, 
 Mass., one of the Commissioners appointed by the Legislature in 1865 to compile 
 a complete copy of the Statutes and Laws of the Province and State of Massachu 
 setts Bay, from the time of the Province Charter to the adoption of the Federal Con 
 stitution. (Since published in nine volumes.) His researches have been minute and 
 exhaustive. 
 
 VOL. I. 5 
 
50 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 Again : the poet s grandmother, ne e Sarah Packard, was 
 the daughter of Capt. Abiel Packard and Sarah Ames (see 
 IV, 7, 8), who was the daughter of John Ames and Sarah 
 Washburn (V, 15, 16). Mrs. Sarah Washburn, wife of Mr. 
 John Ames, was the youngest of the ten children of John 
 Washburn and Elizabeth Mitchell, and Mrs. Elizabeth (Mitch 
 ell) Washburn was one of the eight children of Experience 
 Mitchell and Jane Cook his wife ; Mrs. Jane (Cook) Mitchell 
 was the third of the five children of Francis and Esther Cook, 
 already mentioned. 
 
 Again, and more important : Josiah Snell (V, 9), the grand 
 father of Ebenezer Snell, married Anna Alden, the daughter 
 of John Alden, and a granddaughter of Capt. John Alden and 
 Priscilla Mullins, whose story is so beautifully told in the 
 poem by Longfellow.* Priscilla Mullins was the daughter of 
 William Mullins, or Mollines, who, with his wife and two chil 
 dren, Joseph and Priscilla, and a servant named Robert Car 
 ter, came over in the Mayflower. William Mullins, the father, 
 died in less than two months, viz., on the 2ist of February, 
 1621, and his wife a few days before or after him, and his son, 
 Joseph, and his servant, Robert Carter, died the same season ; 
 but the daughter, Priscilla Mullins, survived, married John 
 Alden, and had eleven children, one of whom was John, the 
 father of Anna, the wife of Josiah Snell,f the grandfather of 
 Ebenezer Snell, who was the grandfather of William Cullen. 
 Twice he ascends to Francis Cook, and once to the brave cap 
 tain of history and romance. 
 
 The name Bryant, or Briant, would seem to be rather 
 French than English, and is said to be prevalent still in Nor 
 mandy ; but the greater number of the names in our table are 
 unquestionably English. A Scottish strain came in with the 
 Rev. James Keith, a graduate of Aberdeen College, and for 
 
 * I cannot refer to this poem without remarking how much it adds to our interest 
 in John and Priscilla to know that our two earliest and most eminent poets, Bryant 
 and Longfellow, were descended from them. 
 
 f Authority of Mr. Ellis Ames, before cited (p. 49, note). 
 
PHYSICAL STRENGTH OF THE PARENTS. $I 
 
 more than fifty years a minister at North Bridgewater, where 
 the house he occupied still stands, and it may be supposed to 
 have brought with it the proverbial intensity of the Scottish 
 race, and " its double love of song and saintliness." But the 
 stock, on the side of both parents, though it blossomed into 
 no shining flowers, w r as a sturdy one, of vigorous sap and un 
 usual tenacity of life. 
 
 "Our great grandfather, Ichabod Bryant," Mr. Arthur Bryant 
 writes me, " was a man of gigantic size and strength. He would place 
 his hands on the shoulders of any common man and crush him to the 
 earth, in spite of his resistance. Our grandfather, Dr. Philip Bryant, 
 lived to the age of eighty-five, and visited his patients till a fortnight 
 before his death. A cousin of mine, who lived with him, and was 
 grown up when he died, told me that he would mount a horse to the 
 last with the greatest ease. Our father was a man of great muscular 
 power, and used to perform feats of strength that no two ordinary 
 men could accomplish. One of his greatest exploits, which seems 
 incredible, but is well attested, was this : He accompanied two of his 
 students of medicine to fish in a small lake of great depth which lies 
 among the hills northwest of Cummington, and is the source of West- 
 field River. They went out upon the water in an old skiff, but their 
 frail vessel soon broke asunder. The two students could not swim, 
 and my father took them both and swam ashore with them. Our 
 maternal grandfather was also uncommonly active and energetic ; 
 and, when our mother came to Illinois in 1835, she said, at the house 
 of my brother Cyrus, that she used, when young, to mount a horse 
 from the ground. He, affecting incredulity, remarked that he should 
 like to see it done, when she, piqued by his apparent scepticism, 
 added that, if a horse was brought to the door, she would do it 
 again. A horse was saddled and brought to the door, and, though 
 she was then sixty-seven years old, she performed the feat at once."* 
 
 * This vigor of race was sometimes shown in the collateral branches on the 
 larger field of war. Seth Bryant, son of Ichabod, was at the capture of Louisburg 
 in the old French war, was an orderly sergeant at Bunker Hill, and present also at 
 the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Oliver and Daniel, sons of Philip Bryant, 
 were both in the Revolutionary struggle, and the younger Philip Bryant was on 
 board the Chesapeake in her action with the Shannon. A son of Stephen Bryant, 
 
52 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 But, with all this strength, there was a taint of pulmonary 
 weakness somewhere in the family, of which several of its 
 members died, and which Dr. Bryant and two of his children 
 inherited. 
 
 The greater part of the father s early life was a severe 
 struggle against untoward circumstances. A paper in his 
 handwriting, found within the last year or two by Mr. John 
 H. Bryant, discloses many particulars of it, which he had 
 never spoken of even to his children. It is evidently the frag 
 ment of a letter written to some friend who had consulted him 
 in regard to his willingness to serve as Senator from the 
 County of Hampshire in the General Court. It will be read, 
 I think, with considerable interest. 
 
 " I have for some time been wishing to write to you upon a sub 
 ject which you once mentioned to me, but a diffidence which I found 
 it very difficult to overcome has till this time prevented my undertak 
 ing it. You, sir, are certainly so far acquainted with me as to be able 
 to judge whether I have abilities to support the dignity of the office 
 with honor to myself and my constituents. I do not affect that in 
 sensibility which would not prize the honor of representing so respect 
 able a portion of my native State as the County of H . Yet, if 
 
 the last, I should be very sorry to be the least of the honorable 
 Board. If my friends think that, by the exertion of such talents as I 
 have, I can contribute something to the service of my country, I am 
 willing under the great disadvantages that will attend my acceptance 
 of the office, the sacrifices of personal interest, and the privations of 
 domestic enjoyment, to consent to the nomination. 
 
 " I am sensible of the defects of my education, and have sought 
 to supply them as far as industry and my limited means would per 
 mit. I had literally no attention paid to it from 8 to 14 the season 
 when the mind is most susceptible and most easily impressed, and 
 
 and brother of Ichabod, William Bryant, who died in 1772, aged 88 years, has on 
 his tombstone at Perth Amboy, N. J., that he made "fifty-five voyages between 
 the ports of New York and London, and approved himself a faithful and fortunate 
 commander." Julian E. Bryant, a nephew of the poet, served through our Civil 
 War, rose to the rank of captain, and was drowned at Brazos, Texas, in 1865. 
 
DR. BRYANTS EDUCATION, 53 
 
 when it ought to receive the rudiments of knowledge. I was left with 
 an uncle who, being an avaricious man, thought all time lost which 
 was not employed agreeably to his frugal system of hoarding. I have 
 often smarted under the lash for the time I had stolen to read such 
 books as I could borrow in the neighborhood. During these years I 
 never had a single day s schooling. I was so vexed at this treatment 
 that I eventually ran away and refused to return. My father at this 
 time had married a second wife. She proved to be a thrifty woman, 
 and thought boys ought to be kept out of idleness that no good 
 could come of so much reading, and that some other employment was 
 much more profitable. My father s farm was new ; it wanted clear 
 ing and fencing. I was, therefore, kept closely at manual labor from 
 this time till I was 20 years old, except about three months each win 
 ter during the four first winters, a part of which time I attended a 
 grammar school and acquired some knowledge of writing, arithmetic, 
 and the rudiments of Latin. At eighteen I was allowed the privilege 
 of keeping school three months in the winter. By assiduous applica 
 tion I had at this time obtained a little knowledge of Greek, so that 
 at nineteen I underwent an examination and was approbated as quali 
 fied to keep a grammar school. At twenty I commenced an open 
 rebellion. My spirit could brook such management no longer. I 
 have every reason to respect my father, and have no doubt he would 
 have proceeded differently with his children had he not been too 
 much influenced by the counsels and maxims of his wife. Finding, 
 however, that I continued restive, I was permitted to enter myself as 
 freshman at Cambridge. But from dread of the expense of a public 
 education, or some other cause never explained to me, I was directed 
 soon after to commence the study of medicine under the tuition of 
 my father. With the avails of my school-keeping I purchased a few 
 of the Latin and Greek classics, and in the mean time read Homer 
 and Xenophon as well as I could without an instructor. I read also 
 such history as a small circulating library established in the parish 
 afforded, and as many medical books aside from my father s moder 
 ate library as I could procure by borrowing. My reading was mostly 
 confined to antiquated books. With these helps and one year s in 
 struction under a celebrated French surgeon, and attending a course 
 of lectures with the medical professor at Cambridge, I was thought 
 qualified at the age of twenty-three to enter upon the practice of my 
 
54 
 
 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 profession. After this I continued two years with my father, per 
 formed all the drudgery of the business, and shared a small part of 
 the profits, no suitable vacancy presenting itself. At the age of 
 twenty-five, with my small stock of book-knowledge, without experi 
 ence in the ways of the world, my whole property consisting of a 
 horse, a few books, and about twenty-five dollars worth of medicine, 
 I launched out into the wide world to begin business, and established 
 myself where I now reside. What happened during a two years voy 
 age to the East Indies, Isle of France, and Cape of Good Hope, is of 
 little consequence to this narrative. Suffice it to say that I returned 
 with more knowledge of men and things, but from several unlucky 
 incidents without having added anything to my property. I was 
 truly and literally poor." 
 
 The voyage referred to in this extract was undertaken by 
 Dr. Bryant in 1/95, in the capacity of surgeon to a mer 
 chant vessel, in which he had also risked some small mercan 
 tile ventures. Unfortunately for his enterprise, the French 
 Directory just about that time, in retaliation of a similar out 
 rage on neutral rights committed by Great Britain, had issued 
 an arbitrary decree against neutral ships destined to any of 
 the enemy s ports, which caused the vessel to be detained at 
 the Isle of France (Mauritius), where she was subsequently 
 confiscated, with all the property on board. Dr. Bryant was 
 compelled to remain on the island for more than a year, but 
 without wholly losing his time, as he practiced his art in the 
 French hospitals, and acquired a knowledge of the French 
 language. Some of the heavier hours of his exile he relieved 
 by pursuing the traces of the adventurous and susceptible 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre, who had visited the island a few 
 years before, and woven a spell of romance about its rustic 
 scenes and simple manners in the famous story of " Paul and 
 Virginia," which has brought tears to so many young eyes all 
 over the civilized world. On his return he stopped for a 
 while at the Cape of Good Hope, where he gathered books, 
 curiosities, instruments, and botanical specimens, all of which 
 
RISE OF VNITARIANISM. 
 
 55 
 
 were lost, with the rest of his luggage, by some accident that 
 befell them when they were about to be landed at Salem. 
 
 It is a mere conjecture, but not an improbable one, that 
 Dr. Bryant, while making acquaintance with the literature of 
 France, should have acquired some of that freedom and inde 
 pendence of thought, which enabled him soon afterward to 
 break away from the Calvinistic theology in which he had 
 been bred. A personal sufferer under the odious despot 
 ism desolating France, and extending its sweep even to the 
 oceans, he was not likely to become a very enthusiastic recipi 
 ent of the French philosophy, in its applications either to re 
 ligious or to political practice. On the contrary, he turned 
 out a sturdy antagonist of those " French influences," which 
 were supposed to be giving an infectious taint to our domes 
 tic modes of thinking. But a mind as open and inquisitive as 
 his, could hardly have escaped some touches of a spirit which 
 maddened nearly half the world. Be this as it may, it is cer 
 tain that after his return, when he was chosen a delegate to 
 the legislative assembly, he lent a willing ear to the new views 
 of Christianity promulgated at Boston. 
 
 A great intellectual contest had been going on in the 
 churches of New England ever since the middle of the previ 
 ous century an eddy of the mightier current that was bear 
 ing the civilized world away from its ancient anchorages, and 
 launching it upon the open sea. From the dawn of specula 
 tive thought on this continent, some little independence of 
 judgment had been exhibited by individuals, but the voices of 
 dissent were like the pipings of solitary birds in the forests. 
 They were not heard amid the roar of orthodox thunders. 
 The flag of Calvinism was the only recognized standard of 
 faith, and they who abandoned it or allowed it to be trailed in 
 the dust, were thought to be traitors alike to their traditions 
 and their God. Nor was the polemic confined to books and 
 sermons. It absorbed the great body of the people, who dis 
 cussed it in their wayside and household talks. Farmers and 
 mechanics argued " of Providence, foreknowledge, will and 
 
5 6 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 fate, fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," as famil 
 iarly as Milton represents his more illustrious personages to 
 have done in the pre-Adamistic age. Questions of State, too, 
 were mingled with questions of Church, and the debate was 
 often invigorated and inflamed by the incitements of political 
 as well as religious passions. 
 
 The battle was at its height when Dr. Bryant attended the 
 General Court for several successive sessions. He began his 
 duties in 1806, continued them through the years iSoS-g-12 
 and 13, and afterward as Senator in i8i6- i8. The eloquent 
 Buckminster was then at the summit of his power as a preach 
 er, and the no less eloquent William Ellery Channing was 
 pouring forth those fervid and beautiful addresses which have 
 since won him a deathless name. A Unitarian professor had 
 been appointed in Harvard University, and that seat of learn 
 ing was destined soon to be wrested from the hands of its or 
 thodox guardians, to become the nursery of a pronounced lib 
 eral religious sentiment. Dr. Bryant listened attentively to 
 the innovators, subscribed to their publications, and carried 
 back to Western Massachusetts, where they had scarcely yet 
 penetrated, the general doctrines of the new school. 
 
 He does not seem to have neglected his professional duties 
 because of these alien political and religious engagements. 
 His practice widened, and his reputation as a learned and 
 skilful physician increased. He wrote largely for medical 
 and other periodicals, was consulted by other physicians, and 
 attended regularly at the meetings of their societies, where he 
 became a prominent authority. Even in his legislative capa 
 city he endeavored to promote the interests of his profession, 
 and was instrumental in securing the passage of laws, intended 
 to raise the standard of medical education throughout the 
 State, which are still in force. In his public as in his private 
 conduct he was distinguished for his strict and unswerving 
 integrity. Men who knew him best honored him most ; and 
 to this day the traditions of his goodness and justice are care 
 fully preserved among the descendants of his neighbors. That 
 
THE MOTHER S DILIGENCE. 
 
 57 
 
 he should have consented to hide his fine endowments in the 
 obscurities of a small country practice is a proof of the modest 
 estimate that he put upon himself, and of his contentment 
 with other satisfactions than those that attend the pursuit of 
 riches and fame. 
 
 Mrs. SARAH SNELL BRYANT, the mother, was a woman of 
 less culture than her husband, but of vigorous understanding 
 and energetic character, and in every way worthy of his love 
 and confidence. Having gone to a new settlement when she 
 was only six years of age, she had enjoyed few of the advan 
 tages of education ; but as Mr. John H. Bryant, her youngest 
 son, writes : " Amidst the hardships and privations incident to 
 a life in the forest, she grew up to a stately womanhood. Her 
 opportunities were necessarily limited, so far as schools and 
 books were concerned, but she made a creditable progress 
 in all the rudimentary branches of learning." Her household 
 activity and diligence would, in this later age of the world, be 
 considered something marvellous. In the days of general im 
 poverishment after the war, the mother of the household did 
 nearly all her own domestic work. Factories there were none, 
 and, if there had been any, the roads were too rough to render 
 them of much avail. Each family had its own spinning-wheels 
 a smaller one in the corner of the sitting-room, to which the 
 busy foot of the matron was applied in the long winter even 
 ings, and a larger one in the hall or garret, where she could 
 walk back and forth with the spindle in her hands, and twist 
 the clean flax or tow into threads. It had also its loom for 
 the weaving of cloth, its carpet-frames, its candle-moulds, and 
 its dye-pots for the coloring of fabrics from the extracts of 
 various woods and weeds. Mrs. Bryant performed all these 
 labors. An idea of the amount of them is obtained from the 
 little diary, mentioned in the poet s narrative, in which she 
 registered what was done from day to day even in those pe 
 riods which are most trying and exhaustive in a woman s life. 
 It is filled with such items as these : " Made Austin a coat " ; 
 " Spun four skeins of tow "; " Spun thirty knots of linen " ; 
 
58 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 " Taught Cullen his letters " ; " Made a pair of breeches " ; 
 " Wove four yards and went a-quilting " ; " Made a dress for 
 the boy " ; " Sewed on a shirt " ; " Wove four yards and vis 
 ited Mrs. " ; " Washed and ironed " ; " Spun and wove." 
 And so the simple record runs on, year after year. 
 
 " All this work our mother did," says Mr. John H. Bryant, 
 with pardonable pride, " looking after her young children, 
 feeding them and nursing them in sickness, teaching them 
 to read and write, which was faithfully attended to during their 
 earlier years, while she turned the wheel by the winter fire. 
 In those times many shifts and expedients of economy were 
 necessary to maintain an honorable independence, which are 
 rarely thought of in these days, even by the poorest people. 
 Not only was she industrious and persevering in ordinary la 
 bor, but she took a deep interest in public affairs, both national 
 and State, never neglecting any of her house duties, but visit 
 ing constantly, especially the sick, whom she nursed for days 
 and nights together. She exerted a considerable influence in 
 township and neighborhood improvements, such as schools, 
 roads, etc. It was through her persuasion with us boys that 
 the maple and other shade trees were planted around the 
 homestead and along the highways. Having observed some 
 thing of the kind when on a journey, she resolved as soon as 
 she returned to have a similar work done at home. These 
 were the first trees set by the roadside in all that region, 
 where thousands have since been planted. She discouraged 
 all bad habits in her household, such as drinking, tobacco 
 chewing and smoking, and idleness and profanity. From this 
 last vice I believe all her children were entirely free, for if 
 any of them ever uttered an oath, I never heard of it. I 
 have often heard her exclaim, " Above all things, I abhor 
 drunkenness ! " also, " Never be idle ; always be doing some 
 thing " ; " If you are never idle, you will find time for every 
 thing." Dr. Johnson says : " It is a mortifying reflection to 
 think what we might have done, compared with what we 
 have done." 
 
THE FAMILY READL\\ ,. ^ 
 
 As there were no large schools in the vicinity, the children 
 of this couple were mainly educated by the efforts of their 
 parents. In the spring and summer the young men, as they 
 grew to be old enough, took part in the labors of the farm, 
 and the young women at all seasons in those of the household ; 
 but the long winter evenings were given by both to study. 
 Dr. Bryant was something of a scholar, knowing the Greek, 
 Latin, and French languages, and possessing, in addition to 
 the largest medical library in those parts, a considerable num 
 ber of the more important works of English literature, espe 
 cially of the poets, having been himself addicted to making 
 verses. Among these, according to a list which Mr. J. H. 
 Bryant has furnished me from memory, were Hume, Gib 
 bon, Rollin, Russell, Gillies, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Spen 
 ser, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Akenside, Goldsmith, Thompson, 
 Burns, Cowper, Beattie, Falconer, Campbell (Pleasures of 
 Hope), Hogg, Montgomery, Rodgers, Scott (Lord of the 
 Isles), Byron (Lara, Bride of Abydos, and Corsair), Southey 
 (Thalaba, and minor poems), and Wordsworth (Lyrical Bal 
 lads), and in other departments, Burke, Chesterfield, the Spec 
 tator, Fielding, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Adam Clark s Travels, Park s 
 Travels, Disraeli s Curiosities of Literature, and Sismondi s 
 Literature of the South of Europe. Besides the greater mas 
 ters, Mr. Cullen Bryant tells us, "there were Sanford and 
 Merton and * Little Jack ; there were Robinson Crusoe, 
 with its variations The Swiss Family Robinson and The 
 New Robinson Crusoe ; there were a Mrs. Trimmer s Knowl 
 edge of Nature and Berquin s lively narratives and sketches, 
 translated from the French ; there were Philip Quarll and 
 Watts s Poems for Children, Bunyan s Pilgrim s Progress* 
 and Mrs. Barbauld s writings. Later we had Mrs. Edge- 
 worth s Parent s Assistant and Evenings at Home. " They 
 had also American versifiers in abundance, Freneau, Hum 
 phreys, Trumbull, Dwight, etc., whom it was the fashion to 
 admire in Dr. Bryant s earlier days, but whom the children 
 very soon ceased to read with pleasure. 
 
60 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 That other New England families, particularly in the cities 
 and towns, were more copiously and variously supplied with 
 books, admits of no doubt, but few, I venture to say, living 
 among the mountains could have made so good a show.* 
 
 Among these books there are two that, in the circum 
 stances, are worthy of note Shakespeare and Wordsworth. 
 The Puritans and their descendants, down to a very recent 
 time, were not accustomed to look with friendly eyes upon 
 any of the playwrights. Dr. Channing tells us that, when he 
 and Judge Story were students at Harvard, toward the last 
 year of the last century, a few young men got together quietly 
 for the purpose of reading Shakespeare s plays, as if it were 
 something quite unwonted.f Indeed, Shakespeare, in those 
 days, even in England, if read at all, was read rather for his 
 interesting and dramatic stories than for the exquisite poetry 
 in which they are embedded ; and it is to be presumed that 
 the Bryant children read him in that way. But as they ad 
 vanced in years, Mr. Arthur Bryant informs me, their minds 
 gradually opened to those higher qualities which English, 
 guided by German, criticism, has since discovered in his 
 pages. Wordsworth s Lyrical Ballads were first published in 
 1798 (a small volume of 210 pages), and a second edition, in 
 two volumes, in 1800, from which a Philadelphia reprint was 
 
 * Mr. George Ticknor, writing of Boston, a principal city, and of one of its most 
 wealthy and conspicuous families, in the years i8o8- n, says that in those days books 
 " were by no means so accessible as they are now. Few, comparatively, were pub 
 lished in the United States, and, as it was the dreary period of the commercial restric 
 tions that preceded the war of 1812 with England, still fewer were imported. Even 
 good school-books were not easily obtained. A copy of Euripides in the original 
 could not be bought in any bookseller s shop in New England, and was with diffi 
 culty borrowed. The best publications that appeared in Great Britain came to us 
 slowly and were seldom reprinted. New books from the Continent hardly reached 
 us at all. Men felt poor and anxious in those dark days, and literary indulgences, 
 which have now become as necessary to us as our daily food, were luxuries enjoyed 
 by few." "Life of William Hickling Prescott." By George Ticknor. Boston: 
 Ticknor Fields, 1864. Page 9. 
 
 f " Memoirs of William Ellery Channing," vol. i. Boston, 1848. 
 
DEVOTION TO BOOKS. 6l 
 
 made in 1802.* Dr. Bryant purchased a copy of them in Bos 
 ton in 1 8 10, and took them home, where they were read with 
 no little admiration. The " Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 
 and " Love," by an anonymous friend, which the book con 
 tained, were at first thought to be superior to the other 
 pieces ; but in time the principal poet took entire possession 
 of their hearts.f It would thus seem that, while the great dis 
 pensers of British criticism were pouring out their unmeas 
 ured ridicule upon Wordsworth, he had found a small band 
 of delighted appreciators in the backwoods of America. J 
 
 All the works, indeed, of this small library were kept for 
 use, and not for ornament. The Doctor himself was so de 
 voted a reader that he always carried some of them with him 
 in his professional rounds, and, when he chanced to stop at a 
 house where a new book of any value lay on the shelf or the 
 table, he was soon lost in the perusal of it, sometimes forget 
 ting alike his patients and his meals in the intensity of his 
 interest, until reminded that he must break off if he wished to 
 get home before nightfall. The mother was not so eager and 
 liberal in her tastes, but she too managed, amid her many 
 avocations, to attain a knowledge of the leading historians, of 
 the best essayists, and of Pope and Cowper. As for the chil 
 dren, an aged lady who lived near by told me once that she 
 never passed the Bryant house of a winter evening and looked 
 into the windows without seeing three or four great hulks of 
 boys stretched out, with their backs on the floor and their 
 heads toward the birchwood fire, which was the only light, 
 each one deeply immersed in his book. As they read, children- 
 
 * "Memoirs of William Wordsworth," vol. i, p. 176, note by Henry Reed. Bos 
 ton : Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851. 
 
 f Cullen was then at school or college, and did not read the book till some time 
 afterward. 
 
 \ In 1814 Jeffrey allowed himself to speak of the Excursion as "a tissue of moral 
 and devotional ravings," "a hubbub of strained raptures and fantastic sublimities." 
 As late as 1822, Southey, in a letter to Landor, referred to " the dunccry and malig 
 nity " with which Wordsworth was still assaulted. Landor s Works, vol. i, p. 230. 
 
62 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 like, without much discrimination, Pope was a great favorite 
 with all of them, but particularly so with the father, who be 
 longed to the generation for which he had written, and who 
 shared in its opinion, expressed by no less a critic than John 
 son, that Pope s verses were the acme of poetic excellence. 
 The children preferred his Homer to his other works, the 
 sounding and mellifluous couplets of which they found it easy 
 to retain and to recite aloud. As they advanced in life and 
 judgment, Pope was dethroned for other favorites, such as 
 Spenser, whose stories of giants, knights, fairies, and fair ladies, 
 told in the sweetest of numbers, are so apt, singly if not col 
 lectively, to captivate the fancy of the young.* Milton, the 
 traditionary bard of the Puritans, is of too lofty a strain, gen 
 erally, to commend himself to youth, so that Cowper s plainer 
 sense, coupled with an equally fervent religiousness, rendered 
 him a more familiar companion. Scott and Byron were read, 
 as each of their works appeared, with much pleasure, yet with 
 some dissent. When Wordsworth came, these " striplings of 
 the hills," to use one of his own phrases, who knew nothing of 
 the theories of poetry, which he paraded in his prefaces, speed 
 ily felt his charms. They found in his nice observations of 
 nature, his simplicity of diction, his moral purity and eleva 
 tion, truthful expressions of what had always been a part of 
 their daily experience. The mountain scenery he describes so 
 lovingly was lying in all its substantial features before them, 
 and, as they climbed the hills or roamed the woods together 
 declaiming his more impressive passages, they were enabled 
 to attest his fidelity to real life, so far as it was known in their 
 humble sphere. 
 
 Excepting what he was able to find in nature and in books, 
 the companionships of our poet, in his childhood, were confined 
 almost exclusively to the members of his own family. Their 
 home was at a considerable remove from other habitations. 
 
 * Mr. Bryant once told me that he had read the " Faerie Queen" many times 
 through. 
 
LOVE OF THE WOODS AND FIELDS. 63 
 
 Whatever sports they engaged in they were compelled to de 
 vise for themselves out of their heads or out of their reading. 
 They had none of the advantages of great schools, of music, 
 of art, of theatres, of social gatherings and games, and of visits 
 to strange scenes and houses, which the youth of the present 
 generation enjoy. Of public amusements there were none. 
 Those rude rustic assemblages, which the autobiography 
 speaks of the sugar camps, the corn huskings, the house rais 
 ings, and the singing schools were infrequent, and, at the 
 best, could have possessed but little attractiveness for refined 
 and youthful minds, and there was nothing in them or in any 
 of their incidents to stir or expand the imagination or to kindle 
 the best affections of the heart. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was one amusement the elder brothers 
 were able to take together, which did not depend upon other 
 company, and with the delights of which they were never 
 sated. This was the exploration of the surrounding fields and 
 forests, which presented attractions varying with the varying 
 seasons of the year, but ever full and ever new. Day after 
 day they scoured the depths of the woods, climbing the hills 
 or descending into the ravines, until there was not a thicket, a 
 precipice, a brooklet, or even a tree, with which they were 
 not as well acquainted as they were with the objects of their 
 own house. These rambles were not, of course, made merely 
 for the sake of the scenery; boys, as I apprehend it, do 
 not care much for scenery in itself, which they take in by 
 the eye as unconsciously as they breathe the air. Their real 
 objects when they go abroad, if they have any beyond the 
 joys of mere physical exercise, are squirrels, birds nests, 
 wood-chucks, rabbits, and fruits and nuts in their seasons. 
 Nature is only the background or adjunct of their sports, and 
 mixes herself gradually with the substance of their minds, as 
 the glow of health mixes with the blood of the body.* 
 
 * Wordsworth, in the Prelude, has finely illustrated the influence of what he calls 
 " collateral objects and appearances " in impregnating and elevating the mind. Po- 
 eiical Works, vol. vii, p. 30. Boston. 
 
64 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 Our youngsters, like others, were alive to these special 
 pursuits (although in later life Mr. Bryant evinced a vehe 
 ment repugnance to all kinds of needless life-taking), and they 
 coupled with them the higher pleasures of botanical research, 
 which they had learned from their father, and of declaiming 
 aloud what they had read, amid the silence and solitude of 
 the fields. Cullen was particularly fond of composing his 
 own little bits of verse, while wandering alone, and he refers 
 to the practice in one of his earlier poems.* 
 
 This family, living so far from any considerable town, in 
 a region almost inaccessible at the best of seasons, and for a 
 greater part of the year buried in snow, enjoyed few opportu 
 nities of intercourse with the outside world. The post brought 
 them newspapers and letters once a week, if the snow per 
 mitted ; and all communication with the towns was made on 
 horseback. Visitors of educated tastes and polished manners 
 were only occasional. Dr. Bryant corresponded with men of 
 note, and in his periodical visits at Northampton, to attend the 
 meetings of the County Medical Society, he met many of the 
 most accomplished members of his profession. He shared 
 with them, also, the hospitalities of Judge Lyman s house, 
 which was the resort of the most eminent and cultivated per 
 sons of the day governors, senators, judges, lawyers, and lit 
 erary men. Otherwise, his nearest friend, Mr. Samuel Howe, 
 then a lawyer of local repute, and afterward Judge of the 
 Court of Common Pleas and Professor of the Law School at 
 Northampton, lived at a distance of four miles, in the little 
 village of Worthington. Congenial tastes and rare elevation 
 and purity of character rendered his society particularly agree 
 able to the Doctor.f Judges Howe and Lyman were men of 
 the old school, as it is called, who retained the grand manner 
 
 * See the original poem as it appears in the note to Poetical Works, vol. i. 
 " I cannot forget the high spells that enchanted." 
 
 f Judge Howe died in 1820. There is an article on his life and character in the 
 " Christian Examiner," vol. v, No. 3. See also an address to the Suffolk bar by Chief 
 Justice Parker. Boston : Nathan Hales, 1820. 
 
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES. 65 
 
 of colonial times, uniting dignity and grace of deportment 
 to fine intellectual endowments, wide reading, liberality of 
 thought and act, and public spirit. They were, moreover, 
 happily married to sisters, that were in every way worthy of 
 their own excellences. Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson says that 
 he had never seen " so stately and naturally distinguished a 
 pair as Judge and Mrs. Lyman. She was a queenly woman," 
 he adds, " nobly formed, in perfect health, made for society, 
 with flowing conversation, high spirits, and consummate ease."* 
 Mrs. Howe, no less notable for force and cultivation of mind 
 and for sweetness and beauty of life, became in later years the 
 delight and ornament of her circle at Cambridge, where the 
 fragrance of her graces and virtues still lingers.f These no 
 ble and accomplished people held Dr. Bryant in high esteem, 
 always speaking of him as " the wise and learned Dr. Bryant," 
 or, " the good and learned Dr. Bryant," whose " fellowship 
 was always a great resource." Through their assistance, as 
 well as on account of his own merits, he must have been in 
 troduced, when he went to Boston as a legislator, to many of 
 the best men and women of the capital of the Commonwealth ; 
 but of this fact no record now remains. We only know, as 
 the autobiography says, that he carried with him a metropoli 
 tan air, and that distinguished bearing which is derived from 
 habitual intercourse with persons of culture and social emi 
 nence. 
 
 The isolation and retirement in which they lived defended 
 the younger members of the family, no doubt, from vices and 
 follies that are the result of contagious example, and preserved 
 in them a simplicity of manner and taste which they never 
 abandoned. But it left the impress also upon our poet of an 
 austerity of deportment that he did not completely overcome 
 
 * " Private Memoirs of Mrs. Lyman." Cambridge, 1876. 
 
 f "Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumncr." Boston, 1877. Mrs. Lyman, I never 
 knew personally, but Mrs. Howe, I have met at the house of her son-in-law, George 
 S. Hillard, of Boston, and am able to confirm all that is said of her accomplishments 
 and elevation of character. 
 
 VOL. i. ( 
 
66 THE BRYANT FAMILY AND ANCESTORS. 
 
 in after life. Up to the time of his going to college in his six 
 teenth year, it is doubtful whether he had seen anything at all 
 of the social world, outside of his immediate relatives and their 
 scattered neighbors. It does not appear, by the diary, that he 
 was ever taken to Northampton by his father during the many 
 visits that were made to that place ; * and, if he had been, it is 
 not likely that the shy and modest boy, dressed in his mother s 
 homespun, would have been disposed to profit by the opportu 
 nities afforded him by its somewhat gay and polished society. 
 When he became a student of law at Bridgewater, he lamented 
 his want of those graceful and presentable qualities that are 
 acquired by commerce with men. It must not be supposed, 
 however, that he was uncouth or awkward, as country yonkers 
 are apt to be ; for his native delicacy and refinement of fibre, 
 and the example of his father, saved him from every appearance 
 of rusticity. He was merely sensitive and retiring, and often 
 fled from the encounter of strangers. Once freed from the 
 constraints of their presence, he was instinctively courteous, 
 graceful, and easy. 
 
 * Mr. Congdon says (" Reminiscences of a Journalist," p. 33, Boston, Osgood & 
 Co., 1880) that Cullen was once brought to New Bedford by his father ; but that was 
 likely not until 1820. 
 
CHAPTER FOURTH. 
 
 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 ALL the children of Dr. Bryant were practiced in reading 
 verses, but Cullen took a livelier interest in them than the 
 others, and at an earlier age. When he was but five years old, 
 as the good mother delighted to inform her younger children, 
 he used to clamber upon a high chair formed of a one-leafed 
 table, which, after having served for meals, was pushed back 
 against the wall, as a seat and preach. This preaching, as he 
 called it, was the declamation of certain of Watts s Hymns, 
 which he had learned at his mother s knee, or from hearing 
 them repeated in the church and at prayer meetings. Those 
 which he commonly selected are known by their first lines as, 
 " Come, sound his praise abroad," " Now, in the heat of youth 
 ful blood," " Early, my God, without delay," " Life is the time 
 to serve the Lord," and " Ere the blue heavens were spread 
 abroad." The sentiment of these pieces is, for the most part, 
 exceedingly sombre, and it is to be hoped that the child under 
 stood as little of them as the autobiography says he did of the 
 darker parts of the Westminster Catechism. These displays 
 were made freely enough before the family ; but, if any stran 
 gers appeared, he was more bashful than a girl, and hid him 
 self behind the first object he could find, even the rung of a 
 chair.* 
 
 * I may here narrate an incident which shows the effect of what the scientists ca!l 
 Heredity. A few years ago, an old gentleman from New Orleans, whose name I 
 have now forgotten, called at the house of his married daughter, where Mr. Bryant 
 was then living, to see the poet, whom he had not seen since his childhood. As he 
 entered the waiting-room, a grandson of Mr. Bryant a little fellow of four or five 
 
68 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 In his eighth year, as we learn from a letter,* he began to 
 make verses of his own, and he continued to do so, according 
 to the autobiography, in his ninth year. When he was ten 
 years old, he was appointed to deliver an address at the school 
 examination, which took place in the presence of the teacher, 
 clergyman, deacons, selectmen, and visitors. This he wrote in 
 heroic couplets, choosing for his theme the progress of knowl 
 edge in general, and of the school in particular, saluting, as he 
 passed on, each class of his hearers with a graceful compli 
 ment. These verses were afterward printed in the newspaper 
 of the county, the Hampshire "Gazette," of March 18, 1807, 
 where they appear under the signature of C. B. They must 
 have acquired more than a local repute, inasmuch as they 
 became a stock piece for recitation in other schools. Only a 
 few years since an elderly lady living in another part of the 
 State enclosed them in a note to Mr. Bryant, saying that she 
 had learned them as a little girl.f Other pieces of verse were 
 sent anonymously to the paper about the same time, but they 
 cannot now be identified. 
 
 His principal sources of inspiration were the political ex 
 citements of the times, so that he was a politician quite as 
 soon as he was a poet ; or, perhaps, it would be more correct 
 to say that in childhood, as in later life, he was an active citi 
 zen. Never, perhaps, in our political history have the conten 
 tions of party been more violent and acrimonious than they 
 were during the second administration of President Jefferson, 
 and they were particularly violent and acrimonious in New 
 England, where the free religious opinions of the President 
 gave great offence to the Puritanic mind. It had become 
 
 years of age, who had been playing on the floor instantly shot behind the leg of a 
 table, where he tried to hide himself in perfect silence. " More than fifty years ago," 
 said the visitor, " I entered Dr. Bryant s study, and a little chap with flaxen hair and 
 flashing eyes did precisely the same thing, in the same manner in every respect. It 
 was Cullen ; and here he is again." 
 
 * Written in 1877 to Mr. George Stuart, Jr. 
 
 f On the back part of this note Mr. Bryant has written, " Some lines by a very 
 little boy." 
 
POLITICS IN OLD TIMES. fy 
 
 necessary for the United States, or it was thought to be neces 
 sary by the party in possession of the Federal government, 
 because of the English declaration of a continental blockade 
 in May of 1806, followed by the order in council of Novem 
 ber, 1807, w r hich had provoked the retaliatory decree of Na 
 poleon at Berlin in November, 1806, and at Milan in Decem 
 ber, 1 807, to take action against these arbitrary and outrageous 
 violations of the rights of neutrality. The doctrine of non- 
 intercourse or of non-importation, which had been a favorite 
 one in the early stages of the Revolution, and which, during 
 the administration of Washington, had been applied for a 
 short time in the form of an embargo upon foreign trade, was 
 again put in practice ; but the enforcement of it was so dis 
 astrous to our commerce that it raised immediately an out 
 cry of alarm and rebuke. This outcry was loudest and most 
 vehement in New England, which already carried on an ex 
 tensive commerce with foreign ports. The discussion of the 
 subject aroused, in addition to the usual passions of party, the 
 fiercest resentments of selfishness. Indeed, in a little while 
 the controversy was not so much the discussion of a question 
 of economic and political principle as an outbreak of private 
 and party animosities. The zealots on both sides looked upon 
 each other, not as men differing in opinion, and having a right 
 to differ, but as criminals and scamps. Family ties and an 
 cient friendships were often broken by political dissensions. 
 In the eyes of a Federalist nearly every Democrat was a fel 
 low of low habits and brutal manners, and in the eyes of a 
 Democrat nearly every Federalist was an upstart and the 
 sworn ally of monarchists and tyrants. Unhappily, this will 
 ful misunderstanding was not confined to the ignorant classes 
 of society. " My father," writes Miss C. M. Sedgwick, in a 
 private diary, " one of the kindest of men, and most observant 
 of the rights of all beneath him, habitually spoke of the people 
 as Jacobins, sansculottes, and miscreants. I remember well." 
 she adds, " looking upon a Democrat as the enemy of his 
 country, and at the party as sure, if it prevailed, to work our 
 
; THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 destruction." These hostile convictions and prejudices were 
 fostered by the newspapers of the day, which put no qualifica 
 tion or stint upon their utterances. They were so furious in 
 their zeal, so unrelenting in their hatred, so coarse and brutal 
 in their modes of speech, that young Buckminster, writing to 
 his father from Paris in 1806, deprecates their excessive vio 
 lence and bitterness as a serious damage to the reputation of 
 the Republic. " I only wish," he said, " I could let my friends 
 in political life in America know how painful, how mortifying, 
 how disgusting, how low, how infamous appear the animosi 
 ties and calumnies with which our American papers are filled. 
 I am called every day to blush for the state of society among 
 us, and attempt but in vain to say something in our defence. 
 There is nothing I have more at heart than to impress upon 
 the minds of my countrymen the grievous injury which we 
 suffer in Europe from the complexion of our newspapers and 
 the brutality of our party spirit the infamy of our political 
 disputes." * 
 
 Dr. Bryant was an earnest Federalist, and as a legislator, 
 who counseled with the leading men of his party at Boston, 
 more earnest than others less exposed to the heats of the con 
 clave. He not only read the journals of his party, but he 
 allowed his family to read them, and his sons caught the pre 
 vailing rage. One day having accidentally discovered in the 
 handwriting of Cullen, the following apostrophe to Jefferson, 
 the leader of the Democrats, he was naturally very much de 
 lighted with it, and thought it an effective political weapon, if 
 not very fine poetry. 
 
 " And them, the scorn of every patriot name, 
 Thy country s ruin and thy council s shame ! 
 Poor servile thing ! derision of the brave ! 
 Who erst from Tarleton fled to Carter s cave ; 
 Thou, who, when menac d by perfidious Gaul, 
 Didst prostrate to her whisker d minion fall ; 
 
 * " Memoirs of Rev. J. S. Buckminster," by Eliza Buckminster Lee. Boston: 
 Ticknor, Reed Fields, 1857. 
 
A FLING AT JEFFERSON. ji 
 
 And when our cash her empty bags supply d, 
 Didst meanly strive the foul disgrace to hide ; 
 Go, wretch, resign the presidential chair, 
 Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair. 
 Go, search with curious eye for horned frogs, 
 Mid the wild wastes of Louisianian bogs ; 
 Or, where Ohio rolls his turbid stream, 
 Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme. 
 Go, scan, Philosophist, thy Sally s charms, 
 And sink supinely in her sable arms; 
 But quit to abler hands the helm of state." 
 
 The doctor encouraged the boy to prosecute his invective, 
 which he did to the extent of five hundred lines and more, all 
 pretty much in the same strain. These the father carried to 
 Boston with him, where he had them printed in a pamphlet 
 under the title of " The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times ; 
 a Satire, by a youth of thirteen ; Boston ; Printed for the Pur 
 chasers, 1808." Flattering the prejudices of the dominant fac 
 tion, this philippic attracted a good deal of attention and was 
 speedily sold. The " Monthly Anthology " the great critical 
 authority of the period spoke in complimentary terms of the 
 effort, saying : 
 
 " If this poem be really written by a youth of thirteen, it must be 
 acknowledged an extraordinary performance. We have never met 
 with a boy of that age who had attained to such a command of lan 
 guage and to so much poetic phraseology. Though the poem is un 
 equal, and there are some flat and prosaic passages, yet there is no 
 small portion of fire and some excellent lines." 
 
 It then quotes the following passage : 
 
 " Look where we will, and in whatever land, 
 Europe s rich soil, or Afric s barren sand, 
 Where the wild savage hunts his wilder prey, 
 Or art and science pour their brightest day. 
 The monster, Vice, appears before our eyes, 
 In naked impudence, or gay disguise. 
 
72 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 " But quit the meaner game, indignant Muse, 
 And to thy country turn thy nobler views; 
 Ill-fated clime ! condemned to feel th extremes 
 Of a weak ruler s philosophic dreams ; 
 Driven headlong on to ruin s fateful brink, 
 When will thy country feel when will she think ! 
 
 " Satiric Muse, shall injured Commerce weep 
 Her ravished rights, and will thy thunders sleep ; 
 Dart thy keen glances, knit thy threat ning brows, 
 Call fire from heaven to blast thy country s foes. 
 Oh ! let a youth thine inspiration learn 
 Oh ! give him words that breathe and thoughts that burn ! 
 
 * Curse of our nation, source of countless woes, 
 From whose dark womb unreckoned misery flows ; 
 Th Embargo rages, like a sweeping wind, 
 Fear lowers before, and famine stalks behind." 
 
 The Reviewer " regrets that the young poet has dared to 
 aim the satiric shaft against our excellent President, but as 
 the lines are a good specimen of the author s powers, we 
 cannot resist the temptation of quoting them, conscious that 
 the first magistrate of this country, secure in the impen 
 etrable armor of moral rectitude, smiles at the drawn dag 
 ger and defies its point. " Here follow the lines on Jeffer 
 son, already cited in a former page; but a more vigorous 
 passage might perhaps have been found in this description 
 of the factious demagogue : 
 
 " E en while I sing, see Faction urge her claim, 
 Mislead with falsehood, and with zeal inflame ; 
 Lift her black banner, spread her empire wide, 
 And stalk triumphant with a Fury s stride. 
 She blows her brazen trump, and at the sound 
 A motley throng, obedient, flock around ; 
 A mist of changing hue o er all she flings, 
 And darkness perches on her dragon wings ! 
 
THE FIRST PUBLICATION. 73 
 
 " As Johnson deep, as Addison refm d, 
 And skill d to pour conviction o er the mind, 
 Oh might some patriot rise ! the gloom dispel, 
 Chase Error s mist, and break her magic spell ! 
 
 " But vain the wish, for hark ! the murmuring meed 
 Of hoarse applause from yonder shed proceed ; 
 Enter and view the thronging concourse there, 
 Intent, with gaping mouth and stupid stare ; 
 While, in the midst, their supple leader stands, 
 Harangues aloud, and flourishes his hands; 
 To adulation tunes his servile throat, 
 And sues, successful, for each blockhead s vote." 
 
 The prompt sale of the satire, coupled with the implied 
 challenge of the criticism, induced the father the next year to 
 bring out a second edition, in which the title ran thus : " The 
 Embargo, or Sketches of the Times ; a Satire ; Second Edi 
 tion, corrected and enlarged ; together with the Spanish Rev 
 olution, and other Poems. By William Cullen Bryant. Bos 
 ton. Printed for the author, by E. G. House, No. 35 Court 
 Street; 1809."* Prefixed to the verses was this " advertise 
 ment " : 
 
 " A doubt having been intimated in the " Monthly Anthology " of 
 June last whether a youth of thirteen years could have been the author 
 of this poem in justice to his merits the friends of the writer feel 
 obliged to certify the fact from their personal knowledge of himself 
 and his family, as well as of his literary improvement and extraordi 
 nary talents. They would premise that they do not come uncalled 
 before the public to bear this testimony. They would prefer that 
 he should be judged by his works, without favor or affection. As the 
 doubt has been suggested, they deem it merely an act of justice to 
 remove it after which they leave him a candidate for favor in com 
 mon with other literary adventurers. They, therefore, assure the 
 public that Mr. Bryant, the author, is a native of Cummington, in 
 
 * A copy of this is to be seen in the New York Historical Library the only one 
 I have been able to find. 
 
74 
 
 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 the county of Hampshire, and in the month of November last arrived 
 at the age of fourteen years. These facts can be authenticated by 
 many of the inhabitants of that place, as well as by several of his 
 friends who give this notice ; and, if it be deemed worthy of further 
 inquiry, the printer is enabled to disclose their names and places of 
 residence. February, 1809." 
 
 As the writer had now put his name in full to the title- 
 page, he thought it advisable to prefix also a Preface, in the 
 approved style of authorship. He said : 
 
 " PREFACE. 
 
 " The first sketch of the following poem appeared when the terra 
 pin policy of our administration, in imposing the embargo, exhibited 
 undeniable evidence of its hostility to commerce, and proof positive 
 that its political character was deeply tinctured with an unwarrant 
 able partiality for France. 
 
 " Since that time our political prospects are daily growing more 
 and more alarming the thunders of approaching ruin sound louder 
 and louder and. faction and falsehood exert themselves with increas 
 ing efforts to accelerate the downfall of our country. 
 
 " Should the candid reader find anything in the course of the 
 work sufficiently interesting to arrest his attention, it is presumed he 
 will not grudge the trouble of laboring through a few inequalities, 
 a few flat and prosaic passages. * 
 
 " The poem is intended merely as a sketch of the times. The 
 nice distinctions, the adequate proportions, the light and shade which 
 give life and beauty to the picture, require some maturer and more 
 skillful hand. 
 
 " The writer is far from thinking that all his errors are expunged, 
 or all his faults corrected. Indeed, were that the case, he is suspi 
 cious that the composition would cease to be his own. 
 
 " Fair criticism he does not deprecate. He will consider the in 
 genuous and good-natured critic as a kind of schoolmaster, and will 
 endeavor to profit by his lessons. 
 "CUMMINGTON, October 25, 1808." 
 
 * A slight fling at his critic of the " Anthology." 
 
SCRIPTURAL VERSIONS. 
 
 75 
 
 Of the new poems in this second edition, the longest 
 called " The Spanish Revolution," a hundred and thirty-five 
 lines, in the heroic measure also, celebrating the efforts of the 
 Spanish patriots to resist the incursions of Napoleon. A few 
 couplets describing a battle scene, which the boy, no doubt, 
 thought extremely fine, must satisfy the reader s curiosity. 
 
 " And now the peasantry, awaked to rage, 
 With Gallic armies mid the streets engage ; 
 How dire the din ! what horrible alarms, 
 Of shrieks and shouts, and ever-clanging arms ! 
 Keen sabres glare, deep-throated cannons roar, 
 And whizzing balls, in leaden volleys pour; 
 Whilst clouds of dust amid the blue immense, 
 Hang o er the scene, in ominous suspense; 
 Confusion o er the deathful fray presides, 
 Insatiate Death the storm of ruin guides ; 
 And wild-eyed Horror screaming o er the fight, 
 Invokes the curtains of chaotic night." 
 
 It is followed by an ode to the Connecticut River, in ten 
 stanzas, dated May, 1808 ; by the " Reward of Literary Merit," 
 dated 1807 ; eleven enigmas, of the same date ; " The Contented 
 Ploughman," a song, dated in June, 1808; " Drought," July, 
 1807; and a translation of Horace, 22d Carmen, Book I, rather 
 gracefully and faithfully done. All these are in quatrains. 
 
 In his maturer years Mr. Bryant was naturally ashamed of 
 his early political poems, both as poems and as expressions of 
 opinion. I once asked him if he had a copy of the " Embargo." 
 " No," he answered testily ; " why should I keep such stuff as 
 that?" More lately, when I told him that I had succeeded in 
 borrowing a copy from a friend, his reply was : " Well, you 
 have taken a great deal of trouble for a very foolish thing." 
 
 The pious grandfather, Deacon Snell, set the boy at much 
 better work than writing satires on men and things that he 
 knew nothing about, when he paid him for paraphrasing the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. What he made of the first chapter of 
 
76 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 the story of Job we have seen in the note on a previous page.* 
 A version of that noble ejaculation, the Hundred and Fourth 
 Psalm, is also spoken of there, but it has not been recovered. 
 In place of it, however, I find a version of David s lament over 
 Saul and Jonathan,f written about the same time, or shortly 
 afterward, which, as it is the first specimen of the poet s blank 
 verse a measure that he subsequently carried to such per 
 fection I shall be pardoned, I hope, for reproducing it in a 
 note. 
 
 * Page 22. 
 
 f II Samuel, i, 19. 
 
 \ " The beautiful of Israel s land lie slain 
 On the high places. How the mighty ones 
 Are fallen ! Tell it not in Gath, nor sound 
 The tidings in the streets of Ascalon, 
 Lest there the daughters of the Philistines 
 Rejoice, lest there the heathen maidens sing 
 The song of triumph. Oh ye mountain slopes 
 Ye Heights of Gilboa, let there be no rain 
 Nor dew upon you ; let no offerings smoke 
 Upon your fields, for there the strong man s shield, 
 The shield of Saul, was vilely cast away, 
 As though he ne er had been anointed king. 
 From bloody fray, from conflict to the death, 
 With men of might the bow of Jonathan 
 Turned never back, nor did the sword of Saul 
 Return without the spoils of victory. 
 Joined in their loves and pleasant in their lives 
 Were Saul and Jonathan ; nor in their deaths 
 Divided ; swifter were they in pursuit 
 Than eagles, and of more than lion strength. 
 Weep, Israel s daughters ! over Saul, who robed 
 Your limbs in scarlet, adding ornaments 
 That ye delight in, ornaments of gold. 
 How are the mighty fallen in the heat 
 Of battle ! Oh, my brother Jonathan, 
 Slain on the heights ! My heart is wrung for thee ; 
 My brother, very pleasant hast thou been 
 To me ; thy love for me was wonderful, 
 Passing the love of women. How are fallen 
 The mighty, and their weapons lie in dust ! " 
 
A CLASSICAL TRANSLATION. 
 
 77 
 
 The poetry of the Old Testament is of such incomparable 
 grandeur and beauty that the imagination of a child can not 
 be more powerfully expanded than by rendering it into his 
 own words. But the father, influenced by the literary spirit 
 of his age, was more inclined to the classic models, and, when 
 the boy, in November, 1808, went to Brookfield to begin his 
 preparations for college, it was earnestly enjoined upon him 
 to convert into English verse the passages of the ^Eneid and 
 other books that he might take up. The father s letter to 
 this effect we have not, but here is the boy s reply : 
 
 "BROOKFIELD, April 4, 1809. 
 
 u RESPECTED FATHER : You will doubtless find in the enclosed 
 lines much that needs emendation and much that characterizes the 
 crude efforts of puerility. They have received some correction from 
 my hands, but you are sensible that the partiality of an author for his 
 own compositions, and an immature judgment, may have prevented 
 me from perceiving the most of its defects, however prominent. I 
 will endeavor, to the utmost of my ability, to follow the excellent 
 instructions which you gave me in your last. I have now proceeded 
 in my studies as far as the Seventh Book of the yEneid. 
 
 " The Federal party here is now strengthened by the addition of 
 a considerable number. The family are still favored with .their usual 
 degree of health. But I must conclude. 
 
 " Your dutiful son, 
 
 "W. C. B." 
 
 The poems enclosed were two (not one, as it is said in the 
 Autobiography), and they hardly seem to deserve the severity 
 of criticism applied to them by both father and son. They 
 are too long for admission here, but an extract from one of 
 them will not, perhaps, be out of place as a note.* It is the 
 description of a storm, Book I, 1. 19. 
 
 * 4< Eolus spake, and with a godlike might 
 Impelled his spear against the mountain s height. 
 Straight the freed winds forsake their rocky cell, 
 And o er the earth in furious whirlwinds swell. 
 
;8 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 The second version, the account of Polyphemus, JEneid, 
 Book III, line 6i8th, was more spirited, but is not of a nature 
 to be quoted. 
 
 How thoroughly the lad entered into his classical studies 
 appears from a poetical epistle addressed to his elder brother 
 Austin, a little while after the foregoing letter was sent to his 
 
 The Southwest laden with its tempests dire. 
 Fierce Eurus and the raging South conspire ; 
 Disclose the ocean s depths with dreadful roar, 
 And roll vast surges thundering to the shore. 
 The cordage breaks, the seamen raise their cries, 
 Clouds veil the smiling day, and cheerful skies ; 
 Blue lightnings glare, redoubled thunder rolls, 
 And frowning darkness shrouds the dreary poles ! 
 While instant ruin threatening every eye, 
 Hangs on the waves, or lowers from the sky ! 
 Relaxed with shuddering fear, yEneas stands ; 
 And groaning, raises to the heavens his hands. 
 4 Thrice happy ye who died in war, he cries. 
 4 In stately Troy, before your parents eyes ; 
 Why fell I not, Tydides, by thine hand, 
 On Trojan plains, thou bravest of thy band? 
 Then might I lie by mighty Hector s side, 
 Or where Sarpedon, great in battle, died ; 
 Where, with impetuous torrent, Simois rolls, 
 The arms and bodies of heroic souls. 
 
 44 A mighty wave descending from on high, 
 Death on its brow before the hero s eye, 
 Fell on the ships which bore the Lycian crew, 
 And headlong from his seat the pilot threw. 
 Thrice the swift vortex whirled the vessel round, 
 And straight ingulphed it in the deep profound ! 
 Then o er the waves, in thick confusion spread, 
 Rose arms and planks and bodies of the dead. 
 
 41 Now Ilioneus sturdy barque gave way, 
 Achates vessel owned the tempest s sway ; 
 Then round young Abas ship its terrors roar, 
 And that whose bosom old Alethes bore. 
 Their joints were wrenched, and all, with gaping sides, 
 Receive, in drenching streams, the hostile tides." 
 
THE YOUNG BARD. ~Q 
 
 father. The original contained some one hundred and eighty 
 lines, but only a few of these are preserved : 
 
 " Once more the Bard, with eager eye, reviews 
 The flowery paths of fancy, and the Muse 
 Once more essays to trill forgotten strains, 
 The loved amusement of his native plains. 
 Late you beheld me treading labor s round, 
 To guide slow oxen o er the furrowed ground ; * 
 The sturdy hoe or slender rake to ply, 
 Midst dust and sweat, beneath a summer sky. 
 But now I pore o er Virgil s glowing lines, 
 Where, famed in war, the great ^Eneas shines ; 
 Where novel scenes around me seem to stand, 
 Lo ! grim Alecto whirls the flaming brand. 
 Dire jarring tumult, death and battle rage, 
 Fierce armies close, and daring chiefs engage ; 
 Mars thunders furious from his flying car, 
 And hoarse-toned clarions stir the raging war. 
 Nor with less splendor does his master-hand 
 Paint the blue skies, the ocean, and the land ; 
 Majestic mountains rear their awful head, 
 Fair plains extend, and bloomy vales are spread. 
 The rugged cliff in threatening grandeur towers, 
 And joy sports smiling in Arcadian bowers ; 
 In silent calm the expanded ocean sleeps, 
 Or boisterous whirlwinds toss the rising deeps ; 
 Triumphant vessels o er his rolling tide, 
 With painted prows and gaudy streamers, glide." 
 
 Meanwhile, the " Bard " was not so entirely absorbed in 
 the fortunes of ^Eneas and his companions as to forget those 
 of his own country. His indignant remonstrances had not 
 succeeded in getting President Jefferson to resign his place 
 and resume his scientific studies ; but the dire embargo was in 
 
 * This recalls the words of Burns s first dedication : " The poetic genius of my 
 country found me at the plough." 
 
8o THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 due course of time repealed. Nevertheless, the clouds of dan 
 ger that gathered about the nation were not thereby dissi 
 pated. Napoleon Bonaparte had come to supply the place of 
 Jefferson as the ogre of New England apprehensions. All 
 Europe, excepting England, now lay at the feet of that san 
 guinary and selfish despot ; Italy was a dependency of France ; 
 Germany was overrun; and Spain and Portugal were pos 
 sessed by his victorious troops. In the despondency which 
 these rapid successes impressed upon the general mind, it 
 seemed as if the career of the conqueror would prove to be 
 irresistible, and that, having subdued the Old World, his som 
 bre helm might project its shadows over the New. As we 
 now see it, after the event, knowing how his difficulties multi 
 plied with his triumphs, there was no real danger of such a 
 catastrophe. But the imaginations of his contemporaries 
 were inflamed, and our youthful poet shared in the general 
 fears. He was not, however, mastered by them ; and during 
 a school vacation, in January, 1810, like David of old, he 
 flung his stone of defiance at the Goliath. Summoning to 
 his assistance a mysterious and inexplicable personage, who 
 had long haunted the American Parnassus, as " the Genius 
 of Columbia," he dared " the son of glory " to an encounter 
 with the " sons of freedom," and he put the despot to a 
 speedy and ignominious flight before their invincible valor.* 
 
 I have cited these juvenile efforts purely as biographic 
 material, and not as evidence of any peculiar poetic powers. 
 
 * This outbreak of patriotic valor may amuse the reader, and I append it : 
 THE GENIUS OF COLUMBIA. 
 
 Far in the regions of the west, 
 
 On throne of adamant upraised, 
 Bright on whose polished sides impressed, 
 
 The Sun s meridian splendors blazed, 
 
 Columbia s Genius sat and eyed 
 
 The eastern despot s dire career ; 
 And thus with independent pride, 
 
 She spoke and bade the nations hear. 
 
VALUE OF THESE POEMS. 8 1 
 
 They show better than almost any other records the influ 
 ences under which the lad was educated ; but they do not as 
 poetry bear witness to the real bent of his genius, or even 
 foreshadow the characteristics of his later writings that mi- 
 nute and loving observation of nature which became with him 
 almost a religion or that profound meditative interpretation 
 of the great movements of the universe which amounted to a 
 
 " Go, favored son of glory, go ! 
 
 Thy dark aspiring aims pursue ! 
 The blast of domination blow, 
 
 Earth s wide extended regions through ! 
 44 Though Austria, twice subjected, own 
 
 The thunders of thy conquering hand, 
 And Tyranny erect his throne, 
 
 In hapless Sweden s fallen land ! 
 44 Yet know, a nation lives, whose soul 
 
 Regards thee with disdainful eye ; 
 Undaunted scorns thy proud control, 
 
 And dares thy swarming hordes defy ; 
 44 Unshaken as their native rocks, 
 
 Its hardy sons heroic rise ; 
 Prepared to meet thy fiercest shocks, 
 
 Protected by the favoring skies. 
 44 Their fertile plains and woody hills, 
 
 Are fanned by Freedom s purest gales ! 
 And her celestial presence fills 
 
 The deepening glens and spacious vales." 
 She speaks ; through all her listening bands 
 
 A loud applauding murmur flies ; 
 Fresh valor nerves their willing hands, 
 
 And lights with joy their glowing eyes ! 
 Then should Napoleon s haughty pride 
 
 Wake on our shores the fierce affray ; 
 Grim Terror lowering at his side, 
 
 Attendant on his furious way ! 
 With quick repulse, his baffled band 
 
 Would seek the friendly shore in vain, 
 Bright Justice lift her red right hand, 
 
 And crush them on the fatal plain. 
 
 W. C. B. 
 
 CUMMINGTON, January 8, 1810. 
 VOL. I 7 
 
82 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 kind of philosophy. There is nowhere in them any of the 
 inspiration or local coloring of the beautiful scenes in which 
 he lived. They do not breathe the odor of the soil, nor vi 
 brate with the pulses of the mountain winds ; even the day 
 dreams and musings of childhood are not there ; only facti 
 tious passions, excited by his political surroundings, and 
 wholly unsuited to his tender years. In manner, too, they 
 were imitative. " Such rhymes of boys," said Mr. G. W. Curtis 
 truly, " are but songs of the mocking-bird " ; * but it could not 
 easily have been otherwise. At the time the lad began to 
 write, the mode of versification, appropriated by Dryden and 
 Pope from Gallic originals, was universally and almost des 
 potically in the ascendant. " The little Queen Anne s Man " 
 had not been, as Mr. Stoddard asserts, " long since dethroned 
 in England ; " f he was still reigning in full power. The ten- 
 syllabled couplet, with its balanced antitheses and monoto 
 nous jingle, was the inevitable vehicle of all poetic expres 
 sion ; and the matter to be expressed was prescribed almost 
 as imperatively as the manner of the expression.^: It is true 
 that Cowper, Thompson, Gray, Burns, and the Percy bal 
 lads, had introduced more simple and natural methods of 
 writing in metre ; but these were not yet acknowledged by 
 the teachers or widely admired by the public. ] As to our 
 American versifiers, they were the bond-slaves of the "sys 
 tem," as Mrs. Browning calls it, and rejoiced in their bond 
 age, or rather were wholly unconscious of it. Every youth 
 who felt a desire to rhyme was condemned to follow strictly 
 in their footsteps. It would have been hardly less than a 
 miracle for a boy of the backwoods, whatever his native in 
 stincts, to break away from the traditionary fetters and set 
 up a style of his own. In the experienced literary circles of 
 
 * " Commemorative Address," Dec. 30, 1878, p. 16. Scribner & Sons, New York, 
 f R. H. Stoddard. " Memorial Pamphlet," p. 38. New York, 1879. 
 \ It is worthy of remark that, once emancipated from this measure, Mr. Bryant 
 never recurred to it for any purpose whatever. 
 
 H See Wordsworth s Prefaces " Lyrical Ballads." 
 
POE TR Y AL WA YS MA TURE. 33 
 
 the mother country, where thought was certainly free to 
 move in any direction, Wordsworth and his colleagues of 
 the Lakes were nearly forty years in working out that return 
 to the nobler old English models which is now deemed to 
 have been a sort of regeneration of English verse. 
 
 It is, moreover, to be remembered that genuine origi 
 nal poetry is seldom, if ever, the product of immature in 
 tellect. As Davenant quaintly says, in his preface to Gon- 
 debart,* " these engenderings of unripe age become abortive 
 or deformed." They are not the digestions of the author s 
 own mind, but the suggestions of his books. Memory is, in 
 truth, for such the mother of the Muses. When a youth of 
 quick sensibilities reads a fine passage he admires it hugely, 
 and because he admires it he fancies that he can do something 
 like it ; but what he does is a reproduction, and not a creation. 
 For this reason it is that so few juvenile poems ever possess 
 any enduring vitality. One looks in vain through the history 
 of the world s literature for an exception. Even those drag 
 nets, the Anthologies, which carry along a great deal of rub 
 bish with a few pearls, cease very soon to contain them. If 
 they survive at all, they survive, not on account of their in 
 trinsic merit, but as exciting surprise that writers so young 
 should, on the whole, have done so well, or because the au 
 thors of them have subsequently attained notoriety or fame. 
 Certainly, Tasso s Lines to his Mother, written when he was 
 nine years old, Cowley s Tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, f writ 
 ten when he was ten, and Pope s " Ode to Solitude," written in 
 his twelfth year, are extremely interesting poems , but they are 
 interesting because they were Tasso s, Cowley s, and Pope s. 
 If these names had never been heard of again, the verses would 
 have been forgotten. A certain lyrical faculty is possible to 
 the very young as we see in the case of the Davidson and 
 Goodall children, not to mention others but the true power 
 
 * Cited by Southey. " Poetical Works," vol. i. Preface to Minor Poems, 
 t Mr. Bryant himself thought Cowley s early pieces "the finest ever written at 
 his age in the English language." " X. A. Review," Xo. 256, p. 369. 
 
84 THE BOY POET AND POLITICIAN. 
 
 of poetry is, as Matthew Arnold somewhere says, the power 
 to awaken in us a clear, full, fresh, intimate sense of the essen 
 tial harmony of the objects about us, so bewildering and cha 
 otic in their first impressions ; and this power comes only out 
 of the deeper experiences of life. 
 
 Nevertheless, these youthful verses possess, apart from the 
 question of their poetic merit, a great deal of literary interest. 
 Mr. Bryant is one of the few instances in which precocity 
 was followed by a ripe maturity ; and it is always pleasing 
 to consider the first efforts of men of genius who have after 
 ward made a name to compare their rude, clumsy begin 
 nings with the results of more cultured skill ; and to remark 
 the native as well as the traditional crudities and falsenesses 
 out of which they have been compelled to work their way. 
 From his tenth to his sixteenth year, this boy, shut up among 
 the hills, away from the social influences that kindle ambition, 
 had composed some thirty or forty different pieces of verse 
 that are still extant, besides many others that are lost mak 
 ing in all some thousands of lines satires, elegies, odes, songs, 
 and translations ; work which certainly shows a decided lit 
 erary faculty. All of it bears marks of negative good augury 
 in the absence of all morbidness or affectation, proving it no 
 mere febrile or hot-house growth, as all of it bears marks of 
 positive good augury in a certain clearness, vigor, and dex 
 terity of execution. He always seems to know what he would 
 be at, and how to do it ; and, though his matter and manner 
 were both furnished him from without, it is easy to see, in his 
 struggles to express himself in rhyme, the workings of that 
 spirit which induced the little child to deviate in his prayers 
 from those he heard around him, and to ask, on his own ac 
 count, that he might " some time write verses that should en 
 dure." In considering the whole case, I do not recall from the 
 history of literature any more remarkable example of early, 
 continuous, and prolonged intellectual exertion than is to be 
 found in the career of our poet. 
 
CHAPTER FIFTH. 
 
 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 A. D. iSlO, l8ll. 
 
 IT was fortunate for the subject of this memoir that, when 
 his father began to educate him, the love of the classics an 
 inheritance from England, widely cherished during our colo 
 nial period was by no means extinct. Every person who 
 expected to figure as a man of polite learning, or enter upon 
 any of the liberal professions, knew that a knowledge of Greek 
 and Latin literature was an indispensable preliminary. Every 
 New England family, that could in any way compass the ex 
 pense, was possessed of the ambition to send at least one of its 
 members to college. In the Bryant family, the lot fell upon 
 the second son the eldest, Austin, having been provided for 
 by his grandfather as a farmer, and the others being yet too 
 young to be taken into account. Cullen, therefore, after having 
 been instructed at home in the rudiments of Latin and French, 
 was transferred, as the autobiography relates, to the care of 
 his uncle at Brookfield, Parson Thomas Snell, who joined to 
 his pastoral labors the preparation of a few lads for the higher 
 seminaries. Cullen remained at Brookfield seven months, from 
 November 8, 1808, to July 9, 1809, and was then removed 
 (August 28th) to the house of the Rev. Moses Hallock, of 
 Plainfield, who was somewhat noted, in his restricted sphere, 
 as a successful teacher of youth. There he continued more 
 than a year, when he was taken by his father to Williamstown 
 to be examined for the Sophomore class, which he entered 
 October 8, 1810. 
 
86 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 Williamstown, though situated in one of the noblest 
 mountain precincts of Massachusetts, was, at that time, a 
 small straggling village of a few houses, with muddy and 
 undrained streets, and without trees, presenting little of that 
 loveliness of aspect which noAV renders it one of the most 
 charming and picturesque of summer retreats. The college, 
 scarcely older than Mr. Bryant himself, was no more than a 
 grammar school, considering the range of its studies and the 
 small number of its teachers. Dr. Bryant chose it for his son, 
 partly because of its proximity to his place of residence, and 
 partly because of the narrowness of his means. His tastes 
 and associations would have inclined him to Cambridge, 
 which enjoyed a wider repute, and was now under religious 
 influences with which he sympathized, if he could have af 
 forded to incur the additional expenses. 
 
 The brief references to his college career contained in Mr. 
 Bryant s autobiography are supplemented by a few particulars 
 in a letter to the Rev. Calvin Durfee, the historian of the col 
 lege, written at Roslyn, Long Island, July 19, 1859. 
 
 u I entered Williams College," he says, " in the autumn of the year 
 1810, almost half a century since having prepared myself in such a 
 manner that I was admitted into the Sophomore class. At that time 
 Dr. Fitch was president of the college, and instructor of the Senior 
 class. I have a vivid recollection of his personal appearance a 
 square-built man, of a dark complexion, and black, arched eyebrows. 
 To me his manner was kind and courteous, and I remember it with 
 pleasure. He often preached to us on Sundays, but his style of ser 
 monizing was not such as to compel the attention. We listened with 
 more interest to Professor Chester Dewey, then in his early manhood, 
 the teacher of the Junior class, who was the most popular of those 
 who were called the Faculty of the college. Two young men, recent 
 graduates of the college, acted as tutors, superintended the recitations 
 of the two lower classes, and made their periodical visits to the col 
 lege rooms, to see that everything was in order. These four were at 
 that time the only instructors in Williams College. 
 
 " Before my admission, it had been the practice for the members 
 
WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 8 7 
 
 of the Sophomore class, in the first term of their year, to seize upon 
 the persons of some of the Freshmen, bring them before an assembly 
 of the Sophomores, and compel them to go through a series of bur 
 lesque ceremonies, and receive certain mock injunctions with regard 
 to their future behavior. This was called gamutizing the Freshmen. 
 It was a brutal and rather riotous proceeding, which I can, at this 
 time, hardly suppose that those who had the government of the col 
 lege could have tolerated ; yet the tradition ran that, if it was not 
 connived at, no pains were taken to suppress it. There were strong 
 manifestations of a disposition to enforce the custom after I became 
 a member of the Sophomore class, but the Freshmen showed so reso 
 lute a determination to resist it that the design was dropped ; and 
 this, if I am rightly informed, was the last of the practice. 
 
 " The college buildings consisted of two large plain brick struct 
 ures, called the East and the West College, and the college grounds, an 
 open green, were between the two and surrounding them both. From 
 one college to the other you passed by a straight avenue of Lombardy 
 poplars, which formed the sole embellishment of the grounds. There 
 was a smaller building or two of wood, forming the only dependen 
 cies of the main edifices, and every two or three years the students 
 made a bonfire of one of these. I remember being startled one night 
 by the alarm of fire, and, going out, found one of these buildings in a 
 blaze and the students dancing and shouting round it. 
 
 " Concerning my fellow-students, I have little of importance to 
 communicate. My stay in college was hardly long enough to form 
 those close and life-long intimacies of which college life is generally 
 the parent. Orton and Jenkins I am not sure of their Christian 
 names, and have not the catalogue of graduates at hand were among 
 our best scholars, and Northrop and C. F. Sedgwick among our best 
 elocutionists. When either of these two spoke, every ear was open. 
 I recollect, too, the eloquent Lamed and the amiable Morris. 
 
 " The library of the college was then small, but was pretty well 
 supplied with the classics. The library of the two literary societies 
 into which the students were divided was a little collection, scarcely, 
 I think, exceeding a thousand in number. I availed myself of it to 
 read several books which I had not seen elsewhere. 
 
 " Where the number of teachers was so small, it could hardly be 
 expected that the course of studies should be very extensive or com- 
 
88 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 plete. The standard of scholarship in Williams College at that time 
 was so far below what it now is, that I think many graduates of those 
 days would be no more than prepared for admission as Freshmen 
 now. There were some, however, who found too much exacted from 
 their diligence, and left my class on that account. I heard that one 
 or two of them had been afterward admitted to Union College. 
 There were others who were not satisfied with the degree of scholar 
 ship attained at Williams College, and desired to belong to some in 
 stitution where the sphere of instruction was more extended. One of 
 these was my room-mate, John Avery, of Conway, in Massachusetts, 
 a most worthy man, and a good scholar, who afterward became a 
 minister of the Episcopal Church, and settled in Maryland. At the 
 end of his Sophomore year he obtained a dismission, and was matric 
 ulated at Yale College, New Haven. I also, perhaps influenced some 
 what by his example, sought and obtained, near the end of my Soph 
 omore year, an honorable dismission from Williams College. With 
 the same intention, I passed some time afterward in preparing my 
 self for admission at Yale, but the pecuniary circumstances of my 
 father prevented me from carrying my design into effect." 
 
 Mr. Charles F. Sedgwick, one of the class-mates men 
 tioned, still survives, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, an 
 honored citizen of Sharon, Connecticut; and in reply to a 
 letter addressed to him by the biographer, asking his rem 
 iniscences of the youthful poet, was kind enough to return the 
 following answer : 
 
 "SHARON, Conn., Sept. 22, 1879. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I have your favor of the 8th inst., and will give such 
 a reply as I am able to your inquiries regarding the college life of 
 your honored father-in-law. His stay in college was so short that he 
 had no time to develop those minute characteristics about which you 
 inquire, and which a more extended term would have exhibited, but 
 the general tenor of his college life is well preserved in my memory. 
 
 " He came with the reputation of having written some two or three 
 minor poems, bearing upon the political questions then agitating the 
 public mind, and which dealt out very pungent ridicule upon the Demo 
 cratic policy of those days. I do not remember that I heard those 
 poems alluded to by him, or in his presence, during his stay in college. 
 
J/A\ SRDGWICK S REMEMKRAXCES. 89 
 
 " He was well advanced in his sixteenth year, tall and slender in 
 his physical structure, and having a prolific growth of dark-brown 
 hair. I do not remember that I ever knew of any person in whom 
 the progress of years made so great a change in personal appearance 
 as in him. 
 
 " During his stay in college he associated with the more orderly / 
 and studious scholars, and was very modest and unobtrusive, though 
 pleasantly familiar with his personal friends. His scholarship was re 
 spectable, and his lessons were well mastered. In the performance 
 of the task, imposed upon each student, of reading a composition be 
 fore the class in the presence of the tutor, he prepared a short poem, 
 which received the commendation of the tutor, the Rev. Orange 
 Lyman, afterward Presbyterian pastor at Vernon, Oneida County, 
 N. Y. He also translated one of the odes of Anacreon, which he 
 showed to a few friends. He gave me the perusal of it, but, as I have 
 not the book, I cannot point out which ode it was. Except these two 
 specimens, I remember nothing in his show of scholarship or in the 
 incidents of his college life which foretold the brilliancy of his sub 
 sequent career. After Thanatopsis had made him famous, a tradition 
 obtained some credit that it was conceived and written in some ob 
 scure locality among the mountains of Williamstown. I never gave 
 the story credit, and at my last meeting with him in 1876, he stated 
 that it was written at his home in Cummington.* 
 
 " I have only to add that Mr. Bryant was much respected by all 
 his acquaintances in college, mild and gentlemanly in his intercourse 
 with his fellow-students, and that his class-mates regretted his leav 
 ing them after so short a connection with the college. The corpora 
 tion of Williams afterward restored his name to the college catalogue 
 by conferring upon him the usual college degrees, and the college is 
 proud to number him among its alumni. 
 
 " Very respectfully yours, 
 
 "CHARLES F. SEDGWICK." 
 
 The poem recited before the class was probably the " Ver 
 sion of a Fragment of Simonides," which has since been 
 
 * The tradition was nevertheless a natural one, as it was written about a month 
 after his last visit to the college to attend the Commencement of his class, from 
 which he had previously taken a dismission. 
 
QO THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 included in the collected works of Mr. Bryant. There is an 
 " Indian War Song " of the same year, in which he pours 
 forth the sanguinary and vengeful feelings of a supposed In 
 dian chief, with all the energy of a Greek chorus, and which, 
 though not distinguished by any unusual poetic excellence, 
 has yet a certain historical interest as the precursor of his 
 several poems relating to the aboriginal element of our poetic 
 traditions. In this line of thought Freneau had preceded 
 him, but Freneau had never been able to manage the materials 
 with the same mastery of their more noble and pathetic asso 
 ciations.* 
 
 He was less successful in another attempt to declaim before 
 the class, in which he had selected a passage from " Knicker 
 bocker s History of New York" a work then recently pub 
 lished, and which he had been reading with great admiration 
 in his leisure hours but the humor of which so convulsed him 
 with laughter when he attempted to recite it, that he was com 
 pelled to resume his seat, under the frowns of the tutor, but 
 amid an outburst of merriment from his companions. 
 
 The John Avery spoken of in the autobiography died at 
 an early age ; but a letter which he wrote, while he was the 
 room-mate of Bryant, to Mr. Solomon Metcalf Allen, a son of 
 Dr. Thomas Allen, the first minister at Pittsfield, gives us an 
 other glimpse of the poet in those early days.f 
 
 * The reader will derive from this, the first of the eight stanzas of which the 
 " War Song " is composed, a pretty good conception of its tone and manner : 
 " Ghosts of my \vounded brethren rest, 
 
 Shades of the warrior-dead ! 
 Nor weave, in shadowy garment drest, 
 
 The death-dance round my bed ; 
 For, by the homes in which we dwelt, 
 And by the altar where we knelt, 
 And by our dying battle-songs, 
 And by the trophies of your pride, 
 And by the wounds of which ye died, 
 
 I swear to avenge your wrongs." 
 | I am indebted for this letter to Mrs. Erastus Hopkins, of Northampton, Mass. 
 
ANACREON S SPRING. QI 
 
 "April 6, x8ix. 
 
 " Bryant, I think I told you, means to leave Williams College. He 
 will be no small loss to the class and to college. 
 
 " Many, especially in the Senior classes, have been unwilling to 
 allow him the credit of writing the * Embargo, &c., but I am confident, 
 if he lives and has the smiles of Providence, his writings will give suffi 
 cient evidence of his capability of writing them. 
 
 " The following is a specimen of his college poetry, which has not 
 had the advantage of his father s criticism. 
 
 " It is a translation of Anacreon s ode to the * Spring contained 
 in Grseca Minora: 
 
 " Lo ! fragrant Spring returns again 
 
 With all the Graces in her train ! 
 
 See, charmed to life the budding rose, 
 
 Its meek and purple eyes unclose; 
 
 Mark how the ocean s dimpling breast, 
 
 Slow swelling sinks in tranquil rest ! 
 
 O er the green billow heaving wide, 
 
 The sportive sea-fowls gently glide ; 
 
 The crane returned from tropic shores 
 
 Bends his long neck and proudly soars. 
 
 Clear smiles the sun with constant ray 
 
 And melts the shadowy mists away. 
 
 The works of busy man appear 
 
 Fair smiling with the smiling year; 
 
 With future plenty teems the earth 
 
 And gives the swelling olive birth. 
 
 Haste, quick the genial goblet bring 
 
 Crowned with the earliest flowers of Spring, 
 
 While ruddy fruits depending bloom, 
 
 Where late the blossom breathed perfume, 
 
 Along the bending bough are seen 
 
 Or peep beneath the foliage green.* 
 
 * In a private paper of Mr. Bryant, dated May, 1862, is another version of the 
 " Spring," which must have been, I think, an attempt to recall that of his college 
 days, which Avery preserved. 
 
 " See what a shower the Graces fling, 
 Of roses round the path of Spring. 
 
92 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 " This will not suffer by comparison with Moore s translation of 
 the same. 
 
 "JOHN AVERY, JR." 
 
 Mr. Bryant speaks of his residence at Williamstown as 
 having been on the whole agreeable to him, but a poem which 
 he delivered before one of the literary societies of the college 
 conveys a somewhat different impression. It is a pretty se 
 vere satire upon the town, the college, and its authorities. He 
 does not forget to celebrate the natural beauty of the place : 
 
 " Hemmed in with hills, whose heads aspire 
 Abrupt and rude, and hung with woods," 
 
 but he deprecates the climate, which infects it at one sea 
 son with " a lengthened blaze of drought," and, at another, 
 drenches it with "the tempest s copious floods": 
 
 " A frozen desert now it lies, 
 
 And now a sea of mud," 
 
 from which mud, he continues, the most deleterious exhala 
 tions arise : 
 
 " And hover o er the unconscious vale, 
 And sleep upon the mountain side." 
 And then he asks : 
 
 " Why should I sing those reverend domes, 
 
 Where Science rests in grave repose ? 
 Ah me ! their terrors and their glooms 
 Only the wretched inmate knows. 
 
 See how the billow on the breast 
 Of ocean sinks to glassy rest. 
 And here the wild duck swims, and there 
 The crane goes journeying through the air. 
 The great sun pours a constant ray, 
 The shadowy clouds are chased away, 
 And all that toiling man has done 
 Looks bright beneath the glorious sun, 
 Young berries stud the olive bough, 
 The wine-cup wears a garland now, 
 The fruit-buds into blossoms start 
 And push the leafy shoots apart." 
 
THE RETURN HOME. 93 
 
 Where through the horror-breathing hall 
 The pale-faced, moping students crawl 
 
 Like spectral monuments of woe ; 
 Or, drooping, seek the unwholesome cell, 
 Where shade and dust and cobwebs dwell, 
 
 Dark, dirty, dank, and low."* 
 
 The spirit of invective, which dictated the " Embargo," was 
 not entirely dead within the young man ; but in this case, I am 
 inclined to believe, his objurgations were more playful than seri 
 ous. Mr. Bryant, in after life, always regretted, as he says in 
 the autobiography, that he was not allowed to pursue his stud 
 ies at Williamstown to the end of the course. He remained 
 there only seven months, leaving in May, 1811, and, although 
 he attended the Commencement exercises, September 3d of 
 the same year, it was simply as a spectator. His scholastic 
 life closed with this brief term, and was never resumed. 
 
 His return home, though a source of disappointment to 
 himself, was an occasion of joy to the family. On the verge 
 of manhood handsome, exuberant in spirits, having new ex-, 
 periences to relate, and new compositions of his own to re 
 peat, the younger brothers and sisters hailed his reappearance 
 among them with delight. It was the signal for a renewal 
 of their obstreperous games and their joyful wanderings in 
 the woods. Older than most of the others, Cullen was re 
 garded as a leader, both of their sports and their studies ; and 
 his geniality and sweetness of disposition made him a most 
 acceptable leader. He was at times quick-tempered, as it is 
 called, but his little outbreaks of passion soon passed away, 
 and were succeeded by the most affectionate demonstrations 
 of kindliness and sympathy. His sisters, toward whom he 
 was always extremely gentle and courteous, returned his love 
 with more than sisterly devotion, while his brothers evidently 
 regarded him as in some sort a superior being. " My earliest 
 
 * This poem, which has several stanzas, Mr. Arthur Bryant retained in his mem 
 ory, from having heard his brother repeat it after returning home. 
 
94 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 recollections of my brother," said Mr. Arthur Bryant, at a lit 
 erary celebration in Chicago, in 1864, "are connected with his 
 vacations, when I used to stare at him with astonishment and 
 admiration, while he declaimed, with loud voice and extrava 
 gant gesticulation, sometimes his own verses, such as the " In 
 dian War Song," and the translation of a chorus in " CEdipus 
 Tyrannus," and sometimes those of other poets. 
 
 The boys, in fact, as they roamed about the hills, recited 
 to one another. First, you might hear Cullen shouting out 
 Strophe I of the CEdipus, as he had rendered it in English : 
 
 " Where is the wretch condemned to death 
 
 From Delphi s rock sublime ? 
 Who bears upon his hands of blood 
 
 The inexplicable crime ? 
 Oh ! swifter than the winged pace 
 
 Of stormy-footed steed, 
 Fly, murderer ! fly the wrath that waits 
 
 The unutterable deed ! 
 For lo ! he follows on thy path 
 
 Who fell before thee late, 
 With gleaming arms and glowing flame, 
 
 And fierce, avenging hate." 
 
 Then Arthur, or another, would take up Antistrophe I : 
 
 " I heard the God of prophecies 
 
 From high Parnassus speak, 
 Where lurks the guilty fugitive 
 
 Apollo bids us seek ? 
 Mong rocks and caves and shadowy woods, 
 
 And wild, untrodden ways, 
 As some lone ox that leaves the herd, 
 
 The trembling outlaw strays ; 
 Yet vainly from impending doom 
 
 The assassin strives to haste, 
 It lives and keeps eternal watch 
 
 Amid the pathless waste." 
 And so on through the whole chorus. 
 
7/75 BROTHERS REMINISCENCES. 
 
 95 
 
 " I used," Mr. Arthur Bryant continues, " to commit his 
 verses to memory, and attempt to imitate his elocution. I re 
 member, too, that our grandfather, when his friends came to 
 visit him, was wont to summon my brother to read the manu 
 script of his poems, and of once hiring him to write an elegy 
 on the death of the Gerrymander.* 1 still retain in memory 
 fragments and entire poems written about this period, many 
 of which were never printed." 
 
 At the same celebration at Chicago, a brother still young 
 er, Mr. John H. Bryant, said : " In my early childhood I 
 looked up to him with a feeling of wonder and awe ; and 
 from that day my love and veneration for him have never fal 
 tered, but have grown deeper and stronger to this very hour. 
 When I was yet a child, I well remember that his return 
 home was always an occasion of joy to the whole family, in 
 which I warmly participated, although not old enough to 
 fully appreciate the cause of the delight. He was lively and 
 playful, tossed me about, and frolicked with me in a way that 
 made me look upon him as my best friend. He seemed to 
 handle me so easily that I came to have great respect for his 
 prowess and strength, and I used to brag to other boys about 
 my stout brother ; but I afterward learned that his strength 
 was not remarkable, but that he had great skill and celerity in 
 the use of it." 
 
 The autobiography says that our student, while at college, 
 paid some attention to Latin prosody, besides engaging in a 
 
 * The Gerrymander was a monstrous figure which the Federal newspapers con 
 structed out of the outlines made on the map of Massachusetts, by a peculiar ar 
 rangement of electoral districts, which Mr. Elbridge Gerry was said to have con 
 trived in order to secure a legislature which would elect him to the United States 
 Senate. Mr. Gerry was a man of great ability and distinction member of the Pro 
 vincial Congress, one of the Continental Congress in which Hancock and Adams 
 served, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Judge of the Court of Ad 
 miralty, a Governor of Massachusetts in 1810, and Envoy to France, and Vice-Presi 
 dent in Madison s time ; but the effect of this caricature was to destroy him politi 
 cally for the nonce ; and up to the present time the word Gerrymander is used as a 
 slang phrase descriptive of the fraudulent manipulation of electoral districts. 
 
96 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 good deal of miscellaneous reading, but it does not refer to 
 what cannot but be regarded as the greatest benefit he derived 
 from his studies there his introduction to the Greek poets. 
 It was more than an introduction in his case ; it was the awak 
 ening of his mind to the peculiar spirit and art of those writ 
 ers. At least, one is compelled to infer as much from the fact 
 that, from this time, for two or three years onward, his only 
 translations, excepting a few from Horace whose education 
 at Athens had made him more or less Grecian were confined 
 to the Greeks. Among these translations, in addition to four 
 of Lucian s " Dialogues of the Dead," rendered in prose, were 
 several odes of Anacreon, the lines of Mimnermus of Colo 
 phon on the " Beauty and Joy of Youth," one of Dion s idyls, 
 and choruses from Sophocles. It is true that seven months 
 are but a short period wherein to acquire a knowledge of the 
 rich world haunted by the Grecian muses (or of any other 
 knowledge, in fact), but it is long enough to awaken the curi 
 osity of a fresh and sympathetic young mind, endowed with 
 poetic sensibilities, and yearning with poetic ambitions. He 
 could hardly have acquired that familiarity with them, which 
 faithful translation implies, without acquiring also some per 
 ception of their spirit and tone. The peculiarities of Greek 
 literature lie deep, no doubt, and yet they are so pervasive 
 that they lie on the surface no less ; and any quick and 
 thoughtful student, intent upon the object, may get at them in 
 a little while. The simplicity of diction, as we call that ex 
 quisite choice of words which has no word too much nor any 
 word out of place ; the harmonious rhythms, beating like the 
 pulses of a healthful body, and uniting the tenderest grace 
 with robust and masculine strength ; the vivid imaginative 
 ness, that finds for the most subtle and visionary gleams of 
 thought a perfect concrete form ; and the austerity of judg 
 ment, that binds the most impetuous flights of imagination 
 with chains of beauty, and subdues the ecstasies of passion 
 to a god-like repose these are qualities that may be seen at a 
 glance, although they furnish food for the studies of a lifetime. 
 
STUDIES AND RAMBLES. 
 
 97 
 
 Mr. Bryant was at that period of life when the intellect is 
 most restless, inquisitive, and daring, and it was quite impos 
 sible for him to have studied such models as he did and re 
 main contented with the poetic judgments that he had been 
 taught to form. At any rate, he was full of these new acqui 
 sitions when he returned home, and, although he gave some 
 little time to the study of the natural sciences, particularly of 
 chemistry and botany, his real interest lay with the poets. 
 His old idols, the wits that shone and sparkled in the age of 
 Anne, lost their lustre amid the splendors cast by the Grecian 
 luminaries. He had loved them as a child for their pictures, 
 their sentiment, and their wit, to say nothing of their musical 
 jingle, but he was now, as a youth, beginning to study them 
 in the light of a higher art. He soon saw that they were 
 only men of the town, of the coffee-house and the drawing- 
 room, who walked in slippers, and loved to dress in silk at 
 tire, and not men of the woods and fields, who walked upon 
 the ground and saw nature with their own eyes. Cowper, 
 Thompson, Burns, and Southey were discovered to be much 
 better guides than his former models, and to them henceforth 
 he devoted his attention. 
 
 These studies, however, did not seduce him from his ram 
 bles, during one of which his thoughts took a shape that proved 
 to be of the greatest consequence to his poetic growth. He 
 had been engaged, as he says,* in comparing Blair s poem 
 of " The Grave " with another of the same cast by Bishop 
 Porteus; and his mind was also considerably occupied with 
 a recent volume of Kirke White s verses those " Melodies of 
 Death," to use a phrase from the ode to the Rosemary. It 
 was in the autumn; the blue of the summer sky had faded 
 into gray, and the brown earth was heaped with sere and 
 withered emblems of the departed glory of the year. As he 
 trod upon the hollow-sounding ground, in the loneliness of 
 the woods, and among the prostrate trunks of trees, that 
 
 TOL. L 8 * " Autobi S ra P h y." P- 37- 
 
98 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 for generations had been mouldering into dust, he thought 
 how the vast solitudes about him were filled with the same 
 sad tokens of decay. He asked himself, as the thought ex 
 panded in his mind, What, indeed, is the whole earth but a 
 great sepulchre of once living things ; and its skies and stars, 
 but the witnesses and decorations of a tomb ? All that ever 
 trod its surface, even they who preceded the kings and patri 
 archs of the ancient world, the teeming populations of buried 
 cities that tradition itself has forgotten, are mingled with its 
 soil ; all who tread it now in the flush of beauty, hope, and joy, 
 will soon lie down with them, and all who are yet to tread it 
 in ages still unknown, " matron and maid, and the sweet babe 
 and the gray-headed man," will join the innumerable hosts that 
 have gone the dusky way. 
 
 While his mind was yet tossing with the thought, he hur 
 ried home, and endeavored to paint it to the eye, and render 
 it in music to the ear. He began abruptly, in the middle of a 
 line: 
 
 " Yet a few days, and thee 
 
 The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
 
 In all his course ; " 
 
 and, working through the various suggestions of his theme, he 
 ended no less abruptly : 
 
 " Thousands more 
 
 Will share thy destiny ; the tittering world 
 Dance to the grave. The busy brood of care 
 Plods on, and each one chooses as before 
 His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
 Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
 And make their bed with thee."* 
 
 This poem, for which he coined a name from the Greek, 
 " Thanatopsis," was, says the poet Stoddard, " the greatest 
 
 * This is the form of the poem as it was first published. See " Poetical Works," 
 vol. i, notes. 
 
THANATOPSIS. ^ 
 
 poem ever written by so young a man." Certainly, it is 
 marked by a grandeur and profundity of thought, a breadth 
 of treatment, and an imaginative reach that surprises us in 
 one of his age only seventeen ; but what renders it more re 
 markable is the suddenness with which it breaks away from 
 everything he had hitherto attempted. There is nothing at 
 all in his antecedent efforts or aspirations to account for it 
 fully ; nor in the models he studied. A germ of the leading 
 thought a rude, uncouth germ is to be found in Blair, who 
 asks: 
 
 " What is this world ? 
 What but a spacious burial-field unwalled, 
 Strewed with death s spoils, the spoils of animals 
 Savage and tame, and full of dead men s bones. 
 The very turf on which we tread once lived, 
 And we that live must lend our carcasses 
 To cover our own offspring; in their turns 
 They too must cover theirs." 
 
 The versification may, perhaps, bear traces of Cowper and 
 Southey, although it is more terse, compact, energetic, and 
 harmonious than that of either of them ; its pauses, cadences, 
 rhythms are different, and it has a movement of its own, a 
 deep organ-like roll, which corresponds to the sombre nature 
 of the theme. A lingering memory of the sublime lamenta 
 tions of Job, an impression from the Greeks of that ineffable 
 sadness which moans through even their lightest music, and 
 his recent readings, may all have conspired to influence its 
 tone ; but the real inspiration of it came from the infinite soli 
 tudes of our forests, stretching interminably inland over the 
 silent work of death ever going on within their depths, which 
 has been going on since the far beginning of time, and will be 
 going on till time shall be no more. 
 
 And as it came out of the heart of our primeval woods, 
 so it first gave articulate voice to the genius of the New 
 World, which is yet, as the geologists tell us, older than 
 
100 THE COLLEGE STUDENT. 
 
 the Old. For the first time on this continent a poem was 
 written destined to general admiration and enduring fame. It 
 in fact began our poetic history, and, whatever great things 
 have since been done or will yet be done, to " Thanatopsis " 
 belongs the glory of the morning star, which glitters on the 
 front of day, and only fades in the superior light it has itself 
 announced. 
 
 Contrary to his custom, the youthful poet did not take this 
 poem to his father for criticism, nor even read it to his brothers 
 for their approval, but he carefully hid it away in a pigeon-hole 
 of his father s desk, on which it had been written. Whether 
 he considered it too incomplete to be shown, or was doubtful 
 of the reception that might be vouchsafed the sentiment of it, 
 which contemplated death, not as the penalty of one man s 
 disobedience, but as a universal and even gracious fact in the 
 economy of nature,* is not known. The probability is that 
 it was merely allowed to slumber until it could be amended. 
 The theme had so filled his imagination by its magnitude and 
 suggestiveness, that any attempt to give it form, and particu 
 larly the attempt of a tyro, must have seemed to him pre- 
 
 * Two critics have said that " Thanatopsis " is a pagan poem, because there is 
 no mention of the Deity in it, nor recognition of the Christian doctrine of resur 
 rection and immortality. Certainly, in its original form there is no intimation of a 
 belief in the continuous consciousness of fhe individual, showing the young poet s 
 sympathy with the doubts and perplexities of the early part of the present century. 
 But was such an intimation required by his theme ? Is the artist, who describes a 
 great natural fact, obliged to include the supernatural ? Nature knows absolutely 
 nothing of a hereafter ; and, if the poet had introduced the topic more positively, he 
 would have departed from his main purpose. His mind was directed to a single ob 
 ject the universality of Death in the natural order, and the sentiments inspired by 
 that fact ; he therefore named his poem " Thanatopsis, or a View of Death " ; and to 
 invoke another order of thought would have been to break the unity of his contem 
 plations. Apart, however, from the merely aesthetic question what the critics allege 
 as a defect of the poem is really one of its great claims to originality. It takes the 
 idea of Death out of its theological aspects and sophistications, and the perversions 
 of conscience with which they are connected, and restores it to its proper place in 
 the vast scheme of things. This, in itself, was a mark of genius in a youth of his 
 time and education. 
 
EFFECTS OF THE POEM. IQI 
 
 sumptuous and inadequate to the last degree, and he reserved 
 it for a time when maturer skill should qualify him to render 
 his work a worthier expression of his thought. Imperfect as 
 it was, however, the effort served to awaken him to a clearer 
 consciousness of his powers, and of the direction in which they 
 might be best applied. 
 
CHAPTER SIXTH. 
 
 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 A. D. I8ll-l8l4. 
 
 THE profession for which Cullen was originally intended 
 was that of medicine, in accordance with an almost immemo 
 rial custom of his family. The father, grandfather, and great 
 grandfather had practised the gentle art of healing, and the 
 father, in naming him after one of the most illustrious physi 
 cians of Scotland William Cullen wished to indicate his 
 preferences as to the destination of his son. But the hard 
 ships encountered in his own course and the smallness of his 
 material gains had somewhat modified his desires. Perhaps 
 the boy s promise of intellectual powers turned his attention 
 to other fields, in which he supposed they might be more 
 brilliantly displayed. A merely literary career was, of course, 
 not to be thought of, in the condition of our literature at that 
 day. A few men, in past times, had endeavored to live by 
 their wits, like Robert Treat Paine and Philip Freneau, but 
 their examples were not encouraging, for Paine died a sot, 
 and Freneau became a mere dependent upon official patronage. 
 
 The law, with its prospects of political preferment, pre 
 sented greater attractions to youthful ability than any other 
 walk, and, as Cullen had already shown in his satires some apt 
 ness for public discussions, it was decided that he should be 
 come a lawyer. His shy and delicate nature was not precisely 
 fitted to the turmoils of politics or the rude conflicts of the bar ; 
 but the pursuit was an intellectual one, not wholly inconsistent 
 with the indulgence of his poetic bents, and so he submitted 
 
AT WORTHINGTON. 
 
 103 
 
 willingly to the choice of his parents. In December, 1811, he 
 was put in charge of Mr. Howe, of Worthington, to be ini 
 tiated into the mysteries of Blackstone, Stephens, and Coke. 
 Mr. Howe was at this time a widower, but in the course of 
 the next year was married again, to a Miss Robbins, of Bos 
 ton, who, in some reminiscences written for the late William 
 S. Thayer, Consul-General of the United States for Egypt, 
 recalls the youthful poet.* " The first time I saw Mr. Bryant," 
 she says, " was in the autumn of 1813 ; he was then a student 
 in my husband s office, and about nineteen years of age. He 
 was quiet, reserved, and diffident, so that I formed but little 
 acquaintance with him ; but I learned from my husband that 
 he was a diligent student, not only of his profession, but of all 
 the good books he had time for, including the classics and 
 botany. He was a practical botanist, going to the woods and 
 fields for his specimens. My husband feared that Bryant 
 would be backward about speaking, and, I think, wrote to him 
 afterward to accustom himself to the practice. I doubt if he 
 ever satisfied himself in that branch of his profession." One 
 reason why Mrs. Howe formed but little acquaintance with 
 her husband s pupil was, that he was afraid of her, as it ap 
 pears by a letter he wrote to one of his sisters. He had never 
 seen a grand lady in his life, and he shrank from the encoun 
 ter of one reputed to be so cultivated and so eloquent in con 
 versation. He was not, however, as diligent a student as 
 she represents. Too conscientious to neglect his studies alto 
 gether, he yet allowed himself to be drawn in other direc 
 tions. A month after reaching Worthington he congratulated 
 himself in a little poemf on his escape from the farm, because 
 
 * Communicated by Miss Sarah Thayer, of Northampton, a sister of Mr. W. S. 
 
 Thayer. 
 
 t u AD MUSAM. 
 
 " So long neglectful of thy dues, 
 
 And absent from thy shrine so long, 
 Say, wilt thou deign, Immortal Muse, 
 Again to inspire thy votary s song ? 
 
104 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 now he might devote himself to the Muse without stint. Ac 
 cordingly, he turned his attention to spendees and dactyls quite 
 as much as to feoffments and fees-tail. Mr. Howe was a skil 
 ful teacher, and lent him what assistance he could, carrying his 
 professional zeal so far, indeed, that one day, when he found 
 his pupil reading a book of verses, he seriously warned him 
 against such a sad waste of his time. The book happened to 
 be Wordsworth s " Lyrical Ballads," which the young man 
 had picked up at home and taken with him ; and the warning 
 was doubtless well deserved. Mr. Richard H. Dana, writing 
 afterward, says, " I never shall forget with what feeling my 
 friend Bryant, some years ago, described to me the effect pro 
 duced upon him by his meeting for the first time with Words 
 worth s ballads. He said that, upon opening the book, a 
 thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in his heart, 
 and the face of Nature, of a sudden, to change into a strange 
 freshness and life. He had felt the sympathetic touch from 
 an according mind, and you see how instantly his powers 
 and affections shot over the earth and through his kind." 
 Mr. Dana s own partiality for Wordsworth may have col 
 ored his language a little; but there is no doubt that Mr. 
 Bryant regarded the volume as a precious discovery. It 
 introduced him, as Mr. Dana says, to a kindred mind to one 
 endowed, like himself, with pure and simple tastes, and ex 
 quisitely alive to all the sweet and gentle influences of exter 
 nal nature. How hard it must have been to be debarred the 
 study of a work which disclosed to him such sources of new 
 delight ! 
 
 The time lias been when fresh as air 
 
 I loved at morn the hills to climb, 
 With dew-drenched feet and bosom bare, 
 
 And ponder on the artless rhyme ; 
 And through the long laborious day 
 
 (For mine has been the peasant s toil), 
 I hummed the meditated lay, 
 
 While the slow oxen turned the soil." 
 WORTHINGTON , January, 1812. 
 
YEARNINGS FOR COLLEGE. IO 5 
 
 But there were other reasons why he was not entirely sat- 
 isfied with his studies of law. He wanted to get to college 
 again. His friend, John Avery, was at Yale, luxuriating among 
 its literary and scientific treasures, while he was confined to 
 the little village of Worthington, which he described in a let 
 ter to Avery as " consisting of a blacksmith-shop and a cow- 
 stable, at either of which places he might be found, while the 
 only entertainment it afforded was bound up in the pages of 
 Knickerbocker. " Avery s replies must have fostered his dis 
 content, for he tells the " dear old chum " that, " with his acqui 
 sitions, he would be readily admitted to the Junior class." 
 Then he expatiated on the pleasures of reading Xenophon, 
 Thucydides, and Herodotus, with the hope of getting into 
 Longinus and Plato soon; what an unsurpassed cabinet of 
 minerals there was ! how brilliant the lectures of Silliman on 
 chemistry and natural philosophy ! how, at the debates, Dr. 
 Dwight himself presided, whose " decisions were most elo 
 quent and instructive," he not being " afraid to give his opin 
 ions on the great principles of government ! " But, concludes 
 Avery, after he had cast those tempting baits before the lone 
 student of the hills : " I approve of your philosophy, in gen 
 eral, that it is more noble to rule the passions than to pene 
 trate the depths of mathematical science, or shine in the de 
 partments of literature." It was a good philosophy, indeed, 
 for one pining after opportunities of study that he knew 
 would never come. 
 
 Nor was the condition of public affairs, in which, like 
 a good citizen, he always took some interest, such as to 
 give him much satisfaction. The federal party had lost 
 ground throughout the Union. Madison, the friend and 
 disciple of the hated Jefferson, was about to be chosen his 
 successor in the Presidency. A large majority of Repub 
 licans ruled in both houses of Congress; but, no longer re 
 strained by the prudent counsels of Jefferson, they had be 
 come, under the fiery impulses of young Clay and young 
 Calhoun, a war party, bent upon embroiling the country in 
 
106 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 hostilities with England. War was in fact declared a few 
 months after the removal to Worthington (June, 1812), when 
 the hot political contests that grew out of it, the threats of 
 invasion from Canada, the raisings of troops, the varying 
 reports of successes and defeats, the brilliant exploits of our 
 navy on the lakes and on the ocean, and the disgraceful 
 burning of Washington by the British kept the public 
 mind in such a ferment that, if Mr. Bryant shared in it, 
 very little real hard study was to be done even in the back 
 woods. 
 
 There is, however, no evidence in any of his papers that 
 he was unusually affected by the general agitation ; on the 
 contrary, it is remarkable that during these years, from the 
 spring of 1812 to the autumn of 1814, when the domestic 
 news, like that from abroad of Napoleon s gigantic expedi 
 tion to Russia, with its terrible reverses, was so stirring, his 
 Muse, though newly awakened by Wordsworth, was almost 
 silent. Accustomed to put his feelings on all subjects into 
 verse, there is not a word that relates to these great public 
 occurrences excepting a Fourth of July ode, written at the re 
 quest of the Washington Benevolent Society of Boston, made 
 through his father.* 
 
 * This was a sort of Tyrtean blast, as the following specimen of it will show . 
 
 " Should Justice call to battle 
 
 The applauding shout we d raise ; 
 A million swords would leave their sheath, 
 
 A million bayonets blaze. 
 The stern resolve, the courage high, 
 
 The mind untam d by ill, 
 The fires that warmed our leader s breast 
 
 His followers bosoms fill. 
 Our Fathers bore the shock of war, 
 
 Their sons can bear it still. 
 
 " The same ennobling spirit 
 
 That kindles valor s flame, 
 That nerves us to a war of right, 
 Forbids a war of shame ; 
 
A LOVE EPISODE. 
 
 ID/ 
 
 The real reason of his silence at this period was, as I sup 
 pose, a contest going on in the youth s own mind, which had 
 for him, as it will have for the reader, more interest than 
 any public events. Carefully preserved among his papers 
 and he was for the most part inattentive in keeping what 
 concerned himself only are several fragments of poems ex 
 pressive of the joys, the doubts, and the disappointments of 
 love. These, when I opened them, seemed to me mere lit 
 erary exercises, but on closer inspection they disclosed a seri 
 ousness of feeling and certain reactive effects upon his mind 
 that led me to suspect that possibly a real experience lay 
 behind them. I was confirmed in this suspicion by the 
 reminiscences of Mr. Arthur Bryant, who says that, while 
 his brother w r as a student of law in Worthington, a distin 
 guished friend of their father came from Rhode Island on 
 a visit to Cummington, bringing with him a beautiful and 
 accomplished daughter, who fascinated the poet, so that for 
 some time afterward they maintained an earnest correspond 
 ence. Of the incidents of the brief attachment, however, noth 
 ing more is known; but, if we are permitted to form con 
 jectures from the poems themselves, it would appear that, 
 
 For not in Conquest s impious train 
 
 Shall Freedom s children stand ; 
 Nor shall, in guilty fray, be raised 
 
 The high-souled warrior s hand ; 
 Nor shall the patriot draw his sword 
 
 At Gallia s proud command. 
 
 " No ! by our Father s ashes, 
 
 And by their sacred cause, 
 The Gaul shall never call us slaves, 
 
 Shall never give us laws ; 
 Even let him from a swarming fleet 
 
 Debark his veteran host, 
 A living wall of patriot hearts 
 
 Shall fence the frowning coast 
 A bolder race than gen.erous Spain, 
 
 A better cause we boast." 
 
108 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 while it was at first hearty and sincere, the course of it did 
 not run smoothly, and the end proved very painful for some 
 reason or other. 
 
 As these poems are fragmentary and unfinished, they are 
 not quoted as poems, but to show how far they shadow forth 
 a little romantic story. The earliest of them, mere random 
 lines, is a vague intimation of worship at a distance, and en 
 deavors to describe how a youthful poet, dreaming of his 
 love, might see in the dawn that reddens the snowy hills, the 
 blushes of life on the cheeks of the fair maid of his adoration. 
 In the dusky air, he sees the soft dun shadow of her hair ; in 
 the beautiful stars above the summits, her lustrous eyes ; and 
 in the streams of the valleys, the currents of his own heart, 
 that look up and exclaim, 
 
 " How bright, but oh ! how far ! " 
 
 The second poem refers, but still remotely, to a mysterious 
 charm, of which he has suddenly become aware : 
 
 " Let no rude sound be uttered nigh, 
 
 Be heard no step profane, 
 While tempered to the heaven-taught lyre 
 I pour the sacred strain. 
 
 " There is a charm of heavenly birth, 
 
 A charm of mystick name, 
 Of power the virgin s laughing eye 
 To light with lovelier flame, 
 
 " That bids the rose-enamelled cheek 
 
 A riper blush assume, 
 To beauty gives a fairer grace, 
 To youth a deeper bloom. 
 
 " It dwells not in the teeming mine, 
 The diamond s caverned home, 
 Nor where along their coral bed 
 The sea s green waters foam. 
 
MISGIVINGS. 109 
 
 " Nor Africk sends this wondrous gift, 
 
 Nor India s purple shores, 
 Nor regions where the power of frost 
 Has heaped his nitrick stores. 
 
 " But in the modest virgin s face 
 
 Is all its influence seen, 
 It loves the eye of timid look, 
 The soft retiring mien," etc., etc. 
 
 WORTHINGTON, August, 1 8 12. 
 
 He was enabled to speak more boldly in a version of the 
 words of old Paulus Silentiarius : 
 
 " The peerless rose no added charm receives 
 From wreaths of flowers around its virgin leaves, 
 Nor thou, sweet maid, from robes of costly care, 
 Nor gems that sparkle in thy glossy hair ; 
 White is the pearl, more white thy bosom s snow, 
 Among thy locks the gold forgets to glow, 
 In vain the gem that India s shore supplies, 
 The gleaming jacinth, emulates thine eyes, 
 But thy moist lip and airy grace of frame 
 By art unaided wake the unbidden flame, 
 For these I pine till to my ardent gaze 
 Thy tell-tale eye the dawn of love betrays." 
 
 But, the poet stops to ask, shall he yield himself to this 
 pleasing but delusive passion he that had formed for himself, 
 whose friends had formed for him, such ambitious hopes of 
 success, in a far different way. 
 
 " Yes, I have listened all too long, 
 Deluder ! to thy syren song. 
 Ah, love ! when first its musick led 
 My cheated steps thy paths to tread, 
 I never dreamed those airs divine, 
 And those fair quiet walks were thine. 
 
1 10 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 " And I would once have scoffed in scorn 
 At him who dared pronounce me born 
 To bend at beauty s shrine enchained, 
 And do the homage I disdained ; 
 I little thought the hour to see, 
 When a blue eye could madden me. 
 
 " I seek the scenes that once I sought 
 To bring high dreams and holy thought, 
 That gave my early numbers birth, 
 The unpeopled majesty of earth 
 One image still too loved to fade, 
 Is with me in the lonely shade. 
 
 " Yet, sometimes there dejected strays 
 The genius of my better days ; 
 And I am troubled when I trace 
 The darkened grandeur of his face, 
 While thus he breathes his warnings high, 
 Betwixt rebuke and prophecy. 
 
 " When riper years this dream dispel, 
 Thy heart shall rue its folly well ; 
 And thou with bitter tears shall gaze 
 On the blank train of wasted days ; 
 And curse the withering spell at length, 
 That broke thy spirit s early strength. 
 
 " There were, in early life, of thee 
 Who augured high and happily ; 
 Who loved and watched the opening shoot, 
 And propped the stem and looked for fruit ; 
 And they shall see its blossoms die, 
 Withered before a woman s eye. " 
 
 Then he answers himself, half in jest and half in earnest, by 
 paraphrasing several odes of the old Grecian master, Anacreon 
 (the I4th, the soth, and 36th), which relate how, resolving to 
 set the little god at defiance, the dimpled archer took his bow 
 and golden case of arrows, and dared him to the field. En- 
 
SEPARATION. Ill 
 
 cased in mail, like that which Pelides wore in battle, he stood 
 manfully up to the enemy but alas! and alas! he was pierced 
 through and through for his rashness. Why attempt to de 
 fend the outposts, when the citadel was already entered? 
 Overcome, and a captive, like that same little god, when 
 bound by the rosy chains woven by the daughters of Beauty, 
 he wished for no release ; it was so delightful a slavery. No, 
 indeed, henceforth 
 
 " To love, to love, shall be my law," 
 
 and he desires through all the vicissitudes of time, even when 
 age should bring gray locks and the decrepit frame, to bow 
 still at the shrine of his queen. 
 
 Next follows a time of separation the youth must go away 
 to his studies, and the fair one, with her company, to her own 
 people indicated in two references. The first is this: 
 
 " The home thy presence made so dear, 
 I leave the parting hour is past ; 
 Yet thy sweet image haunts me here 
 In tears as when I saw thee last. 
 
 " It meets me where the woods are deep, 
 It comes when twilight tints depart, 
 It bends above me while I sleep, 
 With pensive looks that pierce my heart." 
 
 The other runs thus : 
 
 " When on Fernandez isle, whose cliffs upbear 
 Sweet dells that blossom in the unbreath d air, 
 Stood the self-banished Scot, and saw the sail 
 That brought him, bound away before the gale, 
 And voices which he never more might hear, 
 Laughter and shout and song came to his ear 
 With faint and fainter sound, as o er the main 
 The glad crew hastened to their homes again, 
 Then turned and cast his melancholy eye 
 On the lone scene where he must live and die, 
 
112 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 And heard the eternal moaning of the tide 
 That cut him off from men his spirit died 
 Within him, and the bitter tears came fast." 
 
 Left alone on the hills, as Selkirk was on his island, there 
 was yet the resource of correspondence, and it was during 
 this absence that the letters probably passed which Mr. Arthur 
 Bryant recalls ; but with the return of spring, a year later, 
 borrowing from Virgil, who himself borrowed from Theocri 
 tus, he calls upon Galatea to come back from the sea-shore to 
 the hills: 
 
 " Come, Galatea ! hath the unlovely main 
 
 A charm thy gentle gazes to detain ? 
 
 Spring dwells in beauty here ; her thousand flowers 
 
 The glad earth here about the river pours ; 
 
 Here o er the grotto s mouth the poplars play ; 
 
 Here the knit vines exclude the prying day. 
 
 Come, Galatea ! bless this calm retreat ; 
 
 Come, leave the maniack seas their bounds to beat." 
 
 WORTHINGTON, 1814. 
 
 Galatea must have come back, for we are informed : 
 
 " The gales of June were breathing by, 
 
 The twilight s last faint rays were gleaming, 
 And midway in the moonless sky 
 
 The star of Jove was brightly beaming. 
 
 " Where by the stream the birchen boughs 
 Dark o er the level marge were playing, 
 The maiden of my secret vows 
 I met, alone, and idly straying. 
 
 " And since that hour for then my love 
 
 Consenting heard my passion pleaded 
 Full well she knows the star of Jove, 
 
 And loves the stream with beeches shaded. 1 
 WORTHINGTON, 1814. 
 
 A little later the outlooks are still favorable : 
 
JO YS AND DOUBTS. II3 
 
 " Dear arc these heights, though bleak their sides they raise, 
 
 For here, as forth in lonely walk we fare ; 
 Her cheek to mine soft Evelina lays, 
 
 And breathes those gentle vows that none may share. 
 
 Mine is her earliest flame her virgin care 
 The look of love her speaking eye that fills 
 
 To the known shade, when Eve s consenting star 
 Sees his soft image in the trembling rills, 
 My lovely Oread comes my charmer of the hills." 
 
 CUMMINGTON, 1814. 
 
 With Bion, he tells his solemn joy to the skies : 
 
 " Hail, holy star of love, thou fairest gem 
 
 Of all that twinkle in the veil of night ! 
 As the broad moon to thee, so thou to them 
 
 Superior in beauty beamest bright. 
 
 Lend me, while she delays, thy tender light. 
 Thou for whom Sol, to yield his turn to thine 
 
 Stooped to the glowing West his hastened flight ; 
 On deeds of guilt I call thee not to shine, 
 Nor thefts, but those of love and mutual love is mine." 
 
 WORTHINGTON, 1814. 
 
 But again doubts and misgivings intrude in the midst of it 
 all ; and something apparently has gone wrong : 
 
 " Ah, who would tempt the hopeless spell, 
 
 Whose magic binds the slaves of Love ? 
 
 The heart his power has touched can tell 
 
 How false to peace his flatteries prove. 
 
 " Each silent sign by passion taught 
 
 To tell the wish that thrills the breast, 
 The gaze with speechless meaning fraught, 
 The glowing lip in secret pressed. 
 
 " The stolen hour by moonlight past, 
 
 When hands are met and sighs are deep; 
 Are wanderings all, for which at last 
 
 The heart must bleed, the eye must weep." 
 VOL. i. 9 
 
114 
 
 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 These doubts and misgivings are but the prelude to some 
 terrible rupture, when the delicious charm is suddenly broken, 
 and the wounded lover tramples his affection under the heels 
 of his pride. He cries out in his pain and anger : 
 
 " I knew thee fair I deemed thee free 
 
 From fraud and guile and faithless art, 
 Yet had I seen as now I see, 
 
 Thine image ne er had stained my heart. 
 
 " Trust not too far thy beauty s charms ; 
 
 Though fair the hand that wove my chain, 
 I will not stoop, with fettered arms, 
 To do the homage I disdain. 
 
 u Yes, Love has lost his power to wound, 
 
 I gave the treacherous homicide, 
 With bow unstrung and pinions bound, 
 A captive to the hands of Pride." 
 
 There the love seems to end ; but contemporary in date 
 with these poems, or following closely upon them, is another 
 series of poems of a wholly different cast, which we cannot say 
 were in any way connected with the former, but which show, at 
 least, that the serene philosophy expressed in " Thanatopsis," 
 a few years before, had been ruffled by certain storms of pas 
 sion that opened quite another view of the dark abysses of 
 Death. As if weary of life, and longing for its extinction, the 
 poet hears the voices of the grim tenants of the grave calling 
 upon him to take up his rest with them. It is, as he names it, 
 
 " A chorus of Ghosts " ; 
 and it runs in this wise : * 
 
 * This piece was published ten years later, with the signature X. not the usual B. 
 in the New York " Review," with the seventh stanza, since supplied by Mr. Arthur 
 Bryant, omitted. It conflicts somewhat with my interpretation of these poems, as 
 this one is dated February, 1814, which was before he had any reason to complain; 
 but the date may have been put on years afterward, when his memory was not clear. 
 
FROM THE SHADES. n 
 
 44 Come to thy couch of iron rest ! 
 
 Come share our silent bed ! 
 There s room within the grave-yard s bounds 
 To lay thy weary head. 
 
 " Come, thou shalt have a home like ours, 
 
 A low and narrow cell, 
 With a gray stone to mark the spot ; 
 For thee the turf shall swell. 
 
 " Cold are its walls but not for thee 
 
 And dark, but thou shalt sleep ; 
 
 Unfelt, the enclosing clods above 
 
 Their endless guard shall keep. 
 
 " Yes, o er thee where thy lyre was strung, 
 
 Thine earliest haunts to hail, 
 Shall the tall crow-foot s yellow gems 
 Bend in the mountain gale. 
 
 " There, as he seeks his tardy kine, 
 
 When flames the evening sky, 
 With thoughtful look, the cottage boy 
 Shall pass thy dwelling by. 
 
 " Why shudder at that rest so still 
 
 That night of solid gloom ? 
 If refuge thou would st seek from woe, 
 Tis in the dreamless tomb. 
 
 " There is no tie that binds to life, 
 
 No charm that wins thy stay; 
 To-morrow none will recollect 
 That thou didst live to-day. 
 
 " Come, we will close thy glazing eye, 
 
 Compose thy dying head; 
 And gently from its house of clay 
 
 Thy struggling spirit lead." 
 WORTHINGTON, February, 1814. 
 
 But who are these ghosts that invite his company and prom 
 ise him so much ? Do they know aught of the fate of a " dear 
 
u6 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 one " that, as we now learn, has gone to them ? He will seek 
 an interview with the awful monarch of the shades himself, 
 and challenge him to disclose the secrets of his prison-house. 
 At midnight he makes his appeal : 
 
 " The night has reached its solemn noon, 
 
 And blotting half the sky ; 
 The clouds before the westering moon 
 
 In broad black masses lie. 
 No voice is heard no living sound, 
 
 Nor even the zephyr s breath ; 
 And I, where sheds the grove profound 
 A night of deeper horror round, 
 
 High converse hold with Death. 
 
 " He comes but not the spectre grim 
 
 By fabling dreamers planned, 
 With wickered ribs and fleshless limb, 
 
 And scythe and ebbing sand. 
 But dim as through the polar shade, 
 
 When sails the gathering storm. 
 A shadowy presence vast and dread, 
 In terrors wrapt, which ne er arrayed 
 
 Distinguishable form. 
 
 " By all the dying feel and fear, 
 
 By every fiery throe, 
 By all that tells thy triumphs here 
 
 And all we dread below ; 
 By those dim realms those portals pale 
 
 Whose keys tis thine to keep, 
 I charge thee, tell the thrilling tale ! 
 I charge thee, draw aside the veil 
 
 That hides the dear one s sleep ! 
 
 WORTHINGTON, 1814. 
 
 Death answers the invocation, not in person, but by send 
 ing the longed-for object herself to repeat the persuasions of 
 the more general chorus : 
 
A DARK INTERVIEW. 
 
 " It was my love that form I knew 
 
 The same that glazed unmoving eye; 
 And that pure cheek of bloodless hue, 
 As when she slept with those that die. 
 
 " Why leave thy quiet cell for me 
 
 Have not my tears been duly shed ? 
 Have I not taught the willow-tree 
 To weep with me above thy head ? 
 
 " And culled the earliest blooms of May 
 The latest sweets that Autumn knows, 
 To strew thy grave and brush d away 
 From the cold turf the winter snows? 
 
 " I deemed that thou my dreams would st bless. 
 
 A seraph flush d with heavenly bloom, 
 And gild with gleams of happiness 
 
 My few brief years of care and gloom. 
 
 " But oh, that eye is ghastly bright, 
 
 It glares with death, as mine will soon ; 
 And that blanched brow is cold and white 
 As the pale mist beneath the moon. 
 
 " Oh, wave not that dim hand again, 
 
 Oh, point not to thy lowly cell ; 
 For visions flash across my brain, 
 And thoughts too horrible to tell. 
 
 " I may not follow thee, my love, 
 
 Nor now thy dreamless slumber share ; 
 The cold clods press thy limbs above, 
 And darkness and the worm are there. 
 
 " Yet a few hours, and Nature s hand 
 
 Itself shall sorrow s balm apply; 
 And I shall bless t% kind command 
 
 That cools this brow and seals this eye." 
 November^ 1814. 
 
II 8 POEMS ON LOVE AND DEATH. 
 
 This morbid condition of mind, whatever the origin of it, 
 whether the result of personal experience or a mere dramatic 
 attempt to bring out a peculiar situation, was not of long con 
 tinuance. It passed off without harm, as such attacks com 
 monly do. Allston says somewhere that young painters are 
 apt to have a mania at one time or another for painting ban 
 dits and it is not impossible that young poets have a similar 
 desire to meddle with the dark secrets of the charnel-house. 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTH. 
 
 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 A. D. 1814, 1815. 
 
 IN June, 1814, the student changed his residence from 
 Worthington to Bridgewater, where he was soon engaged 
 in the studies of his profession, and absorbed once more in 
 public affairs. His grandfather, Dr. Philip Bryant, lived in 
 Bridgewater, and for that reason, doubtless, he was trans 
 ferred to that place. His own wish was to complete his 
 course in Boston, and he makes frequent mention of it in 
 letters to his father, for the sake of the advantages, he says, 
 and not in a spirit of discontent. But the uniform reply of 
 the father is, that he cannot afford the expense. " You have 
 cost me already four hundred dollars at Mr. Howe s, and I 
 have other children equally entitled to my care. Besides, my 
 health is imperfect ; I have suffered much from the fatigues 
 of the last season, and, as I may not long be with you, I must 
 do what I can for you all while I am still here." 
 
 Bridgewater was a larger town than any he had yet lived 
 in that is to say, it comprised more houses and people and 
 the conditions of intellectual and social life were more ample ; 
 but the best of the New England villages, in those days, con 
 tained few persons likely to appreciate a young man of genius 
 and of delicate tastes, already enriched by a considerable knowl 
 edge of ancient literature, and cherishing visions of poetic fame. 
 One of his fellow-students speaks of the place as " utterly des 
 titute of good society," which he considers a benefit to one en- 
 
120 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 gaged in the dry study of the law. " A Bridge water winter," he 
 adds, " is more intolerable than a Bridgewater summer the 
 wind perpetually shifting from out to in now rain, next snow 
 now a frozen collection of rough points for one to hobble 
 over, then a swimming ocean of mud for one to wade through." 
 But Mr. Bryant enjoyed his residence there, and always re 
 ferred to it, in later years, as very pleasant. His teacher, Mr. 
 William Baylies, was both a well-instructed jurist and a gentle 
 man of cultivation and noble personal traits, whose friends 
 were in the habit of comparing him, in appearance and char 
 acter, with the model of the times, General Washington. Dig 
 nity of manner, a strong sense of justice, urbanity, elevated 
 maxims of conduct, and disinterestedness, furnished the grounds 
 of this comparison.* Under his influence, or it may have been 
 to escape his former unhappy state of feeling, Mr. Bryant now 
 devoted himself closely to study. In some lines, addressed 
 " to a friend on his marriage," \ he said : 
 
 " O er Coke s black-letter page, 
 Trimming the lamp at eve, tis mine to pore, 
 Well pleased to see the venerable sage 
 Unlock his treasured wealth of legal lore ; 
 And I that loved to trace the woods before, 
 And climb the hills a playmate of the breeze, 
 Have vowed to tune the rural lay no more, 
 Have bid my useless classics sleep at ease, 
 And left the race of bards to scribble, starve, and freeze." 
 
 * In an obituary notice of him, after his death in 1865, when he had reached his 
 eighty-ninth year, Mr. Bryant said that "he was a man of imposing presence, kindly 
 manners, and a close observer of character. His memory was stored with anecdotes 
 of remarkable persons, the relation of which at times made him very entertaining. 
 His tastes and habits of life were exceedingly simple, though his fortune was liberal, 
 and his disposition of his income generous. He had a supreme contempt for the 
 tricks of his profession, and for all indirect practices, and few lawyers ever exercised 
 their profession so exempt from complaint and criticism." Mr. Bryant also wrote, 
 at the request of relatives, a beautiful inscription for his monument. 
 
 f Published, three years later, in the " North American" for March, 1818. 
 
AN ANTI- WAR ODE. 1 2 1 
 
 A montli after getting to Bridgewater his poetical faculties 
 were put in request for a Fourth of July ode, which hardly 
 broke in upon his routine, although it revived some of the old 
 spirit of the politician. It was rather rhymed declamation 
 than poetry, in which he took occasion to deplore the folly 
 and ravages of the war and to rejoice in the downfall of Na 
 poleon, whom the allies had shut up in Elba. He lauded the 
 valor and persistency of England, and upbraided his own coun 
 trymen for having taken no part in the great work of inde 
 pendence achieved on the continent of Europe.* His assiduity 
 of study is evidenced by the elaborate digests and notes that 
 are found among his papers. They are arranged with extreme 
 
 * A few stanzas from this ode will show the spirit of it : 
 
 " Our skies have glowed with burning towns, 
 
 Our snows have blushed with gore, 
 And fresh is many a nameless grave 
 
 By Erie s weeping shore. 
 In sadness let the anthem flow 
 
 But tell the men of strife, 
 On their own heads shall rest the guilt 
 Of all this waste of life. 
 
 " Woll have ye fought, ye friends of man, 
 
 Well was your valor shown ; 
 The grateful nations breathe from war 
 
 The tyrant lies o erthrown. 
 Well might ye tempt the dangerous fray, 
 
 Well dare the desperate deed : 
 Ye knew how just your cause ye knew 
 
 The voice that bade ye bleed. 
 
 " To thee the mighty plan we owe 
 
 That bade the world be free ; 
 The thanks of nations, Queen of Isles ! 
 
 Are poured to heaven and thee, 
 Yes ! hadst not thou, with fearless arm, 
 
 Stayed the descending scourge ; 
 These strains, that chant a nation s birth, 
 
 Had haply hymned its dirge." 
 
122 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 care under appropriate divisions and headings, and with ample 
 references to the authorities in old English treatises and the 
 more modern American statutes and decisions. Together, 
 they would form no incomplete manual of the rudimentary 
 principles of the science, as it existed at that day. What is 
 also remarkable in them is the neatness of the chirography. 
 The young man had not yet formed his hand, such as it was 
 afterward, rather copying his father in this as he did in his 
 verses, but it is clear and full of character. One sees in it de 
 cision and vivacity, but only the germs of that flowing grace 
 that marked it at a later period. 
 
 It is creditable to Mr. Bryant, young as he was, that his 
 teacher at once took him into his confidence, and, during his 
 absences as a legislator,* entrusted him with the control of 
 nearly all his business. Letters passed between them con 
 stantly ; on the one side giving reports of the state and prog 
 ress of cases and soliciting instruction on the other impart 
 ing that instruction, and with it the latest news of public af 
 fairs. As we were at war with a great naval power, it was 
 an important time in the history of parties and of the nation. 
 Public opinion of the propriety of the war and the modes 
 in which it should be carried on was very much divided. 
 The scenes of battle on the ocean or on the frontier were 
 scarcely more fiery than those of Congress and the popular 
 assemblies. 
 
 Mr. Bryant, it seems, had no difficulty in the preliminary 
 tests of his profession. Addressing his father, August 16, 
 1814, he says: 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I went to Plymouth last week, where I stayed four 
 days, and might, perhaps, have been obliged to stay a week had it 
 not been for good luck in finding a Bridgewater man there with a 
 vacant seat in his chaise. I there received a certificate in the hand 
 writing of A. Holmes, Esquire, and sprinkled with his snuff instead 
 
 * Mr. Baylies had been a member of Congress for the years 1809, 1812, and 1814 ; 
 and was re-elected in 1815, afterward in i8i6- i7, and again in 
 
PRELIM^ 7 ARY ADMISSION. ^3 
 
 of sand, for which I paid six dollars, according to the tenor and sub 
 stance following : 
 
 " These certify that William C. Bryant, a student at law in brother 
 r.iylies s office, has been examined by us, and we do agree that he be 
 recommended to be admitted an attorney at August Term, 1815, he 
 continuing his studies regularly all that time. 
 
 Br. JOSHUA THOMAS, ) Committee of the Bar for 
 Impress. ABM. HOLMES. \ Examining Candidates. 
 August 9, 1814. 
 
 " By the bye, I ought to have mentioned, and perhaps I did men 
 tion in my last, that there is a bar rule providing that all students at 
 law who have not had the happiness and honor of an academic de 
 gree should be examined by a committee of three, any two of whom 
 will do, to decide how long such person shall study. Now, you will 
 see, the time fixed to admit me to the bar is before I emerge from my 
 minority. Whether this will be any objection or not I cannot tell I 
 have not been able to find any law which makes it so, and the exam 
 iners inquired my age at the time ; but, if there should be any im 
 propriety in being admitted next August, nothing is more easy, you 
 know, than to postpone it till November. 
 
 " When I was at Plymouth I went on to the Gurnet. There are 
 rather more than sixty men at the place, all stowed into about a 
 dozen or fifteen small tents. Their accommodations are not very 
 comfortable. There are seven guns in the fort two twelves, two 
 twenty-fours, and three eighteen pounders. 
 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 " W. C. B." 
 
 To an old office companion at Mr. Howe s, Elisha Hub- 
 bard, who had removed to Northampton, he writes two weeks 
 later as follows : 
 
 " I have waited for you to write to me long enough to weary the 
 patience of the man of Uz, and I assure you I should really have been 
 angry at your conduct, had I not suspected that the fascinations of 
 some fair Northampton belle might have caused you to forget the ex 
 istence of your old friends. If you will honestly own this to be the 
 fact, I will lay aside my resentment, for you know I am partial to 
 those errors which owe their origin to the tender passion. My situa- 
 
I2 4 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 \ 
 
 tion here is perfectly agreeable : books enough ; a convenient office, 
 and for their owner, a good lawyer and an amiable man. The testi 
 mony which all classes bear to the uprightness of Mr. Baylies s charac 
 ter is truly wonderful. Everybody, even those who entertain the 
 greatest dislike to lawyers in general, concur in ascribing to him the 
 merit of honesty. You, who know how much calumny is heaped 
 upon the members of our profession, even the most uncorrupt, can 
 estimate the strict and scrupulous integrity necessary to acquire this 
 reputation. Mr. Baylies is a man of no ostentation ; he has that 
 about him which was formerly diffidence, but is now refined and 
 softened into modesty. As for old Worthington, not the wealth of 
 the Indies could tempt me back to my former situation. I am here 
 very much in my old way, very lazy, but something different in being 
 very contented. 
 
 "W. C. B." 
 
 A few weeks later again, Sept. iQth, writing to another of 
 his Worthington fellow - students, Mr. George Downes, he 
 touches certain topics in a way which shows not only how far 
 he had escaped from his late morbid communings with death, 
 but that his studies did not withhold him from the usual pleas 
 ures of young men : 
 
 " I am certainly as well contented with this place as I could be 
 with any, and I would not exchange it for Worthington if the wealth 
 of the Indies were thrown into that side of the balance ; yet I must 
 acknowledge that, when I think of Ward s store, and Mills s tavern, 
 and Taylor s grogshop, and Sears s, and Daniels s, and Briggs s, &c., 
 &c., &c., such cool, comfortable lounging-places, it makes me rather 
 melancholy, for there is not a tavern in this parish. A store with a 
 hall, however, close to my door, supplies the place of one. We had 
 a ball there last Friday, and it rained furiously. We had been put 
 ting it off for about a week, from day to day, on account of the wet 
 weather, and at last, despairing of ever having a clear sky, we got to 
 gether in a most tremendous thunder-storm, and a very good scrape 
 we had of it. The next morning we set out, six couples of us, to go 
 to a great pond in Middleborough, about thirteen miles from this 
 place, on a sailing party, which we had likewise been procrastinating 
 a number of days on account of the weather. When we began our 
 
YOUTHFUL FROLICS. 
 
 12 
 
 journey there was every sign of rain; the clouds were thick and 
 dark, and there was a devil of a mist ; but the sun came out about 
 ten o clock, and we had one of the most delightful days I ever saw. 
 Mine host and hostess were very accommodating ; they gave us some 
 fine grapes and peaches, a good dinner, and tolerable wine. We had 
 a charming sail on the lake, and our ladies were wonderfully sociable 
 and alert, considering they were up till three o clock the night be 
 fore. At about eight in the evening we got back safe to the west par 
 ish of Bridgewater. . . . Yesterday we received orders from the 
 Major General of this division to detach eight hundred and ninety 
 men from this brigade to march to the defence of Plymouth. This 
 takes all the militia from this quarter. They marched this morning. 
 The streets were full of them a little while ago, but now the place is 
 as solitary and silent as a desert." 
 
 September 26th, he gave Mr. Baylies a more particular ac 
 count of the military movements, and of the popular disposi 
 tion in regard to them. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : We are in rather an unpleasant pickle in this part 
 of the country, General Goodwin having read General Cochran s let 
 ter, in which he communicated to Mr. Monroe his intention of de 
 stroying all the towns on the sea-coast, posted off to Governor Strong, 
 and, after giving him some idea of the dangers which threatened the 
 goodly and important town of Plymouth, got permission to call out as 
 many men from his division to the defence of the peace as he thought 
 proper. A detachment was accordingly made of eight hundred men 
 from this brigade. We received the orders last Sunday week, and the 
 next Tuesday our people marched. Thirty are called from Captain 
 Lathrop s company, besides two sergeants, two corporals, two drum 
 mers, and St. Leonard thirty-seven from Captain Edson s besides a 
 like number of sergeants, etc., and a captain and ensign. This draft 
 takes all the militia from this parish without being full the compa 
 nies being very small some having got certificates and some being 
 sick and excused by the captain. Our streets are now very solitary 
 the place is a perfect desert ; you would hardly recognize the country 
 around your office if you were to see it; Briggs and Ben Howard and 
 Charles and Allen are gone Eaton only is left to sell a little some- 
 
126 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 thing to drink. It is understood to be the intention of said Goodwin 
 to keep these men at Plymouth till winter as a scarecrow to the Brit 
 ish fleet. The people here grumble heartily at the affair, and seem 
 angry that the General should think the safety of his pitiful village of 
 more consequence than their corn and potatoes. Those, however, 
 who stay at home are the most discontented. The soldiers are said 
 to enjoy themselves wonderfully, and some of them swear that they 
 would not come back if they could have an opportunity. They have 
 been attentively supplied with every comfort and convenience which 
 their situation could admit of; they are established at the rope-walks, 
 We are very anxious here to hear from Congress ; our paper of to-day, 
 in which we expected the President s message, failed. I believe every 
 body knows what kind of talk to expect from the mouth of his Imbe 
 cility,* if he may be so titled ; but the eyes of an attentive nation are 
 fixed upon their Legislature to see what steps they will take upon this 
 momentous occasion. How does the Southern autumn agree with your 
 constitution ? I hope it has not given you the fever and ague which we 
 who dwell on the salubrious sands of the old colony dread so much." 
 
 In all his correspondence with Mr. Baylies, the young man 
 betrays an insatiable curiosity in regard to the progress of 
 events. Newspapers were not so many in those days, nor did 
 news fly as quickly as now, and country constituents depended 
 very much upon the letters of their representatives for knowl 
 edge of what was going on. " Who is this Dallas," Mr. Bry 
 ant asks, " that has been recently appointed Secretary of the 
 Treasury? is he a native of this country is he competent? 
 What are the commissioners doing at Ghent? Do you mean 
 to impose any more taxes? If you do, I can tell you, the 
 people will revolt. There is no mistaking their spirit ; you 
 know what it is ; the same that animated the children of the 
 Hills, at Cummington, who, when twenty-six men were called 
 for, stepped forward to a man ! " " What are the views of the 
 Administration," he asks in October, " and the prospects of the 
 nation ? Is all probability of peace cut off ? Is the war to be 
 
 * His Imbecility was James Madison. 
 
INTEREST IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS. l2 -j 
 
 interminable ? I earnestly wish that you would tell me some 
 thing about these things, not only for my sake, but that of 
 others, and you would save me much of such dialogue as 
 the following: Any letters from Mr. Baylies to-day? Yes. 
 Well, what does he write? That it is very hot weather at 
 Washington. You may tell the Administration that, if the 
 system of taxation proposed by the Committee of Ways and 
 Means goes into effect, the people of the old colony will not 
 like them any better for it. If Mr. Madison wants to make us 
 sick of his war, let him lay upon our shoulders those bur 
 dens which are so cheerfully and proudly borne ; let him in 
 crease those taxes which are paid with so much promptness 
 and alacrity. I cannot tell how mature the public feelings are 
 but the subject of a separation of the States is more boldly 
 and frequently discussed, and the measures of our State Legis 
 lature are received among our party, as far as I can judge, with 
 universal approbation, while the Democrats regard them with 
 considerable alarm. Many are very boisterous about it, but 
 perhaps they may become calm by the time the taxes are to be 
 paid." 
 
 Mr. Baylies always replies with alacrity and patience, and 
 encloses copies of " his Imbecility s" messages. In one in 
 stance he wrote three close pages in explanation of the pro 
 ceedings at Ghent, and of his opinions as to the proper terms 
 of peace. He seemed to regard his young student as a repre 
 sentative of the general community, and furnished him with 
 full and explicit accounts of whatever was done or said at the 
 seat of government. 
 
 Only five days later than the date of the last letter (Octo 
 ber loth) Mr. Bryant is completely possessed by the military 
 fever, and writes his father a long and earnest letter, showing 
 why he ought to go into the army, " for the defence of the 
 State," be it remembered, not for the service of the United 
 States. There is an intestine foe, he alleges, more dangerous 
 than Great Britain, and it may be necessary soon to set up an 
 independent empire. 
 
128 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER : Mr. Richards being about to return from a visit 
 to his brother here, I have taken this opportunity to write by him. 
 The militia, which were ordered to Plymouth and New Bedford upon 
 permission obtained by General Goodwin, after he had made a terri 
 fying representation to the Governor of the dangers which threatened 
 the former of these places, are now about to return. The affair was 
 laid before the Legislature, who considered it inexpedient that the 
 greater portion of the laboring part of the community should be taken 
 from their farms to be stationed in a petty village, which perhaps the 
 British would never take any notice of. Two hundred are, however, 
 to be left at New Bedford. Our people here grumbled very consid 
 erably at being thus destitute of hands to get in their corn and pota 
 toes, but it was observed, however, that those who remained at home 
 were the most discontented. The soldiers enjoyed themselves roundly, 
 and were attentively supplied with every comfort and convenience 
 which their situation could admit of. I escaped the draft, as, through 
 the forbearance of the captain, I had not been once called upon to do 
 military duty. I was, however, almost ashamed to stay at home when 
 everybody besides was gone, but was not a little comforted by the 
 reflection in which, I believe, most people concurred with me that 
 the place was in no danger, that the detachment was entirely un 
 necessary, and, therefore, I might as well stay as go. 
 
 " Politics begin to effervesce a little here. People are afraid of paper 
 money afraid of exorbitant taxation, etc., etc. Democracy is, how 
 ever, as obstinate, and inclined to justify its leaders, as ever. I pre 
 sume that you in Hampshire begin to grow pretty warm by this time. 
 The fact is, there is more party feeling, more of party union, in your 
 part of the country than here. You are more of a newspaper reading 
 people, and let the Hampshire Gazette * only give the word, which, 
 by the by, it copies from some leading Federal paper, and every Fed 
 eralist in the country has his cue, everybody knows what to think. 
 Here the case is different ; one takes the Centinel, one the * Mes 
 senger, and one the * Boston Gazette, while by far the greater part 
 take no paper at all. The consequence is that one is very warm, 
 another very moderate, and another is in doubt how to be. I go 
 upon the supposition that this parish affords a fair specimen of the 
 habits and feelings of the people in this part of the State. . . . 
 
 " I have a question for you : Whether it would be proper for me to 
 
WANTS TO EM.I^T. 12() 
 
 have anything to do with the army which is to be raised by voluntary 
 enlistment for the defence of the State. Attached as you are to your 
 native soil, to its rights and safety, you could not, surely, be unwilling 
 that your son should proffer his best exertions, and even his life, to 
 preserve them from violation. The force now to be organized may 
 not be altogether employed against a foreign enemy ; it may become 
 necessary to wield it against an intestine foe in the defence of dearer 
 rights than those which are endangered in a contest with Great 
 Britain. If we create a standing army of our own if we take into 
 our own hands the public revenue (for these things are contemplated 
 in the answer to the Governor s message) we so far throw off our alle 
 giance to the general government, we disclaim its control and revert 
 to an independent empire. The posture, therefore, which is now 
 taken by the State Legislature, if followed up by correspondent meas 
 ures, is not without hazard. If we proceed in the manner in which 
 we have begun, and escape a civil war, it will probably be because the 
 Administration is awed by our strength from attempting our subjec 
 tion. By increasing that strength, therefore, we shall lessen the prob 
 ability of bloodshed. Every individual who helps forward the work 
 of collecting this army takes the most effectual means in his power to 
 bring the present state of things to a happy conclusion. A general 
 spirit of devotion to the cause of the States, and of attachment to the 
 measures into which we have been driven by the weakness and wick 
 edness of our rulers, ought to pervade all ranks of men ; no one should 
 be induced to shrink from the contest on account of petty personal 
 sacrifices. That even these would not be made, in case I should enter 
 into the service, I am inclined to think, from the following reasons : 
 i st. If I enter upon my profession next year, I shall come into the 
 world raw and rustic to a degree uncommon even in most persons of 
 my age and situation in all the greenness of a secluded education, 
 without that respect which greater maturity of years and more ac 
 quaintance with the world would give me. 2d. As I understand the 
 matter, the objection which is made to my spending five years in the 
 study of the law is not upon the ground that I shall not come soon 
 enough into business, but that the expenses attending my education 
 would be greater than you could meet without injuring the interest of 
 the family. In this reason I have always concurred, and this it is that 
 has led me to endeavor to shorten the term of my studies as much as 
 VOL. i. 10 
 
130 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 possible. If I should enter into the service of the State, I should pro 
 cure the means of present support, and, perhaps with prudence, might 
 enable myself to complete my studies without further assistance. I 
 should then come into the world, as I said, with my excessive bash- 
 fulness and rusticity rubbed off by a military life, which polishes and 
 improves the manners more than any other method in the world. It 
 is not probable that the struggle in which we are to be engaged will be 
 a long one. The war with Britain certainly will not. The people can 
 not exist under it, and if the government will not make peace, Massa 
 chusetts must. Whether there may be an intestine contest or not 
 admits of doubt ; and if there should be, the entire hopelessness of 
 the Southern States succeeding against us will probably terminate it 
 after the first paroxysm of anger and malignity is over. If these ideas 
 should meet your approbation, you will make some interest for me at 
 headquarters. The army, you will perceive, is to be officered by the 
 Governor." 
 
 The same month, day not given, after detailing the state of 
 several cases at law, he tells Mr. Baylies : 
 
 "You inquire what our people think of the new system of taxa 
 tion. I believe that I mentioned something upon the subject in my 
 last, and I can now still more confidently say that, if the taxes pro 
 posed are made, they will be, in my opinion, the cause of violent and 
 unstifled discontent. Perhaps we shall not agree to pay them. This 
 will, however, depend upon the determinations of our State Legislature, 
 of which you have all the means of forming an opinion which we have 
 here. I regret that I cannot give you a more particular account of 
 the state of public feeling in these parts, but, as far as I am acquainted 
 with it, there seems to be a deep presentiment of an approaching dis 
 solution of the Union." 
 
 Again, not long after, he says : 
 
 " We hear that you legislators have got through with the conscrip 
 tion bill, and it is presented to the President to receive his sanction. 
 God forgive the poor perjured wretch if he dares sign it. If the 
 people of New England acquiesce in this law, I will forswear feder 
 alism forever." 
 
.ITICAL CHANGES. ! 3 , 
 
 \V - in these letters, which, 1 have no doubt, represent the 
 spirit of the times much better than more important public doc 
 uments, what striking mutations party opinions may undergo 
 in a very little while. From the origin of the government, the 
 Republicans had professed themselves the opponents of Nation 
 alism or Centralism, and the particular defenders of the rights, 
 or, as it was called, the Sovereignty of the States. On the other 
 hand, the Federalists, as their name imports, were sticklers 
 for central supremacy and local subordination. Nearly all the 
 earlier controversies of politics turned upon this point of the 
 precise limitations to be affixed, respectively, to the general and 
 the particular governments. But the attitude of parties was 
 now changed, if not completely reversed. The Republicans, 
 who were in possession of power, did not scruple in stretch 
 ing the exercise of it to the utmost bounds, while the Federal 
 ists began to construe the organic law with literal strictness, 
 questioning every aggression, and calling upon the States to 
 interpose a check to the strides of Federal authority. The 
 Legislatures of Massachusetts and other Eastern States not 
 only denounced the war as " impolitic, impracticable, and un 
 just," and demanded peace on almost any terms, but they con 
 certed measures for the protection of their own citizens from 
 " the violence and tyranny of the United States." They pro 
 posed an amendment to the Federal Constitution even, in the 
 interests of the local jurisdictions. Governor Strong, of Massa 
 chusetts, supported by the courts, and by the executives of other 
 States, refused to place the State militia under the command 
 of officers of the Federal army. In several of the States, in 
 deed, delegates were appointed to assemble in convention at 
 Hartford,* to consider existing grievances and devise reme 
 dies. This body, in its public acts and enunciations, was re 
 strained and prudent, taking great care not to advise a rupture 
 with the Union as yet ; but the constituents it represented were 
 more outspoken. 
 
 * The convention met in Hartford on the I5th of December, 1814. 
 
1 32 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 Unfortunately for his military and political projects, Mr. 
 Bryant was taken ill in November, and compelled to return to 
 Cummington. What his disease was is not told ; but probably 
 some incipient form of the pulmonary malady that threatened 
 him more seriously a few years later.* His recovery he com 
 municates to Mr. Baylies in a note, dated December, which 
 has, perhaps, a trifle of literary interest : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I have got back to Bridgewater safe and sound, and 
 in much better trim than when I went from it. All the people in this 
 
 quarter are well and kicking, except old Mrs. , who was in the 
 
 ground before I returned. But here is no snow. Alt the indication 
 of winter is very cold weather. But from Boston to Albany there is 
 excellent sleighing, and on the hills of Hampshire the best I ever 
 knew. I paid a visit to my old instructor, Mr. Howe. I found him 
 among his sheep, en deshabille.\ Business, he tells me, is languishing. 
 
 * It was about the time of this illness that Mr. Bryant seems to have received 
 more natural views of the great enemy, Death, than those expressed on a former 
 page, if we may judge by this little poem : 
 
 " Oh, thou whom the world dreadeth ! Art thou nigh 
 
 To thy pale kingdom, Death ! to summon me? 
 While life s scarce tasted cup yet charms my eye, 
 And yet my youthful blood is dancing free, 
 And fair in prospect smiles futurity. 
 Go, to the crazed with care thy quiet bring ; 
 Go to the galley-slave who pines for thee, 
 Go to the wretch whom throes of torture wring, 
 And they will bless thy hand, that plucks the fiery sting. 
 
 " I from thine icy touch with horror shrink, 
 
 That leads me to the place where all must lie ; 
 
 And bitter is my misery to think 
 
 That, in the spring-time of my being, I 
 
 Must leave this pleasant land, and this fair sky ; 
 
 All that has charmed me from my feeble birth ; 
 The friends I love, and every gentle tie ; 
 
 All that disposed to thought, or waked to mirth ; 
 
 And lay me darkly down, and mix with the dull earth." 
 BRIDGEWATER, July, 1815. 
 
 f Mr. Howe had caught the mania that prevailed for raising merino sheep, and 
 devoted a good deal of time to the enterprise ; not, however, with success. 
 
BYRON S "LARA." 
 
 133 
 
 14 1 met at Mr. Howe s with Lara, a tale, which is advertised 
 on the cover of the Analectic Magazine as being written by Lord 
 Byron. It seems intended as a sequel to the Corsair. It pos 
 sesses some merit, but I think it cannot be written by Lord Byron. 
 The flow of this poet s versification is admirably copied, but it seems 
 to me to want his energy of expression, his exuberance of thought, 
 the peculiar vein of melancholy which imparts its tinge to everything 
 lie writes ; in short, all the stronger features of his genius. Conrad, 
 whose character you used to admire, and who makes his appearance 
 in this tale as a Spanish peer, under the name of Lara, is degener 
 ated into a lurking assassin, a midnight murderer. But perhaps you 
 have seen the poem. For my part, I never heard of it till I met with 
 it at Mr. Howe s. May it not be the effort of some American genius ? " 
 
 The student had scarcely got to work again when his 
 brother informed him of the illness of their father, in a letter, 
 which shows also how the whole family were saturated with 
 Federalism and revolt. Austin Bryant writes from Cum- 
 mington, January 25, 1815 : 
 
 " DEAR BROTHER : Our father has been very ill for a month past ; 
 he was taken with a fever which has probably settled itself upon the 
 liver. ... I have heard nothing of your commission. People here 
 tell me that you ought to have applied to some military character for 
 a recommendation. Probably this might have more weight with the 
 Governor. But be this as it may, I think you ought to have one, con 
 sidering the eagerness with which you have sought for it. ... What 
 think you of the proceedings of the convention ? * Our Federalists 
 were much disappointed, saying that they dared not adopt any ener 
 getic measures, but would go on in the old way of supplication till the 
 chains that were preparing to bind them to the earth were riveted. 
 But I trust in God these things will never be. There is a redeeming 
 spirit in New England which will resist every encroachment upon its 
 liberties and stamp the oppressor under its feet. . . ." 
 
 Cullen s reply, February 5, 1815, is worthy of note, not 
 only as an exhibition of the popular feeling, but as an early 
 
 * The Hartford Convention. 
 
I34 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 specimen of his ability and judgment in handling public ques 
 tions. 
 
 "DEAR BROTHER: Yours of the 25th tilt. I received yesterday. 
 I am much afflicted at the news of my father s sickness. I trust you 
 are doing everything in your power to make his situation as comfort 
 able as possible. . . . 
 
 " The Governor s message at the beginning of the present session 
 of our Legislature will be a sufficient answer to those people who as 
 cribe the failure of my application for a commission to the want of a 
 recommendation from some military character. You inform me that 
 your federalists are much disappointed at the proceedings of our con 
 vention. This is not much to be wondered at, considering the gen 
 eral character and feelings of the citizens of Hampshire. They are 
 impatient of oppression, and prepared to resist the least encroach 
 ment upon their rights. But what do they want done ? Shall we at 
 tempt by force what we may perhaps obtain peaceably ? The plan 
 proposed by the convention, if it should meet with success, certainly 
 appears competent to secure the interest of the Eastern States at the 
 same time that it preserves the Union. If it should fail, it will not be 
 our fault nor that of our convention. In that event we might resort 
 to the first principles of things the rights of mankind the original, 
 uncombined element of liberty but, in the mean time, it appears to 
 my judgment proper to make use of all the means for our relief which 
 the constitution allows. For this purpose our delegates were chosen 
 this was the tenor of their instructions; all that the constitution 
 would permit they have done, and they could not have done more 
 without transgressing the commands of the people in whose service 
 they were employed. They have publicly proclaimed the terms on 
 which depends the continuance of the Union ; they have solemnly 
 demanded of the national government that the rights taken from them 
 should be restored, and barriers erected against future abuses of au 
 thority. Now, if these things could be effected by a peaceable com 
 promise, would it not be better than to resort to sudden violence ? 
 We should then be in possession of all the advantages which could be 
 derived from a separation, without hazarding any of its dangers. 
 Even if it were certain that this plan will fail, yet perhaps it would be 
 necessary that we should adopt it to hold up as our justification to the 
 
THE HARTFORD CONVENTION. 
 
 35 
 
 world as we go along to show that we act, not from factious motives 
 or from a temporary burst of popular turbulence to unite the wishes 
 of all honest men in favor of our cause, and take from the mouths of 
 our enemies all occasion of contumely. And this effect is, in a great 
 measure, produced. Our southern friends (and Mr. Baylies gives me 
 a very good opportunity of inspecting the southern papers) can scarce 
 ly find terms to express their approbation of the proceedings of our 
 convention, while the ingenuity of Democracy is vainly exercised to 
 find some plausible occasion to revile them. I conceive that the plan 
 of conduct which they have recommended will make more proselytes 
 and acquire more respect to the Federal party than anything that has 
 been done for these ten years. It will strongly impress our adver 
 saries with the idea of that dignified and temperate firmness which 
 steadily advances to its object ; and it is not altogether impossible 
 that it may alarm them into compliance. If not, next June will be 
 the season for further deliberations. It will be time enough to tell 
 the world that the original compact between the States is dissolved. 
 But, in my opinion, you people of Hampshire expected too much ; you 
 thought that the Eastern States were in a moment, and by a single 
 effort, to be restored to peace, liberty, and independence. How, you 
 did not know, but the convention were to devise the means. But the 
 delegates were no necromancers ; they were mere men like ourselves. 
 They could not draw rain from the clouds nor call ghosts from the 
 ground ; evils of the magnitude which we surfer were not easily re 
 moved, nor were they to be approached by rash hands. They have 
 conducted themselves like men aware of the high responsibility which 
 rested upon them. Such are my ideas upon the subject, though I 
 confess they are changed from what they were when I first saw th e 
 report of our delegates. I am, however, far from censuring or even 
 wishing to diminish the high spirits and quick sensibility to oppres 
 sion that prevails in your county. It is necessary to counterbalance 
 the sluggishness of our towns on the shore. 
 
 " The reasons in favor of the conduct of our convention may, 
 therefore, be reduced to the following: i. Because their instructions 
 limited their deliberations to constitutional measures. 2. Even if their 
 authority had been unlimited, yet it were better to exhaust the cata 
 logue of peaceable and constitutional expedients before we proceed 
 to violence, especially as the plan now recommended has never been 
 
136 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 tried ; and it is calculated to bring the parties to a certain and speedy 
 issue upon the great points of dispute. 3. Because the plan now rec 
 ommended bids fair to be a popular one, and to overcome by its mod 
 eration that strenuous opposition to our wishes which a more violent 
 one would be likely to encounter. 4. Because it is necessary to make 
 one lasting and distinct expression of the general will of the Eastern 
 States, to give them an opportunity of granting our demands in pref 
 erence to risking a separation before we appeal to those immutable 
 principles of right and liberty given by God with his own divine image 
 to man. Yours affectionately, 
 
 "CULLEN." 
 
 The application for a military appointment did not fail al 
 together; for, the next July (25, 1816), a commission as adju 
 tant in the Massachusetts militia was sent to Mr. Bryant ; 
 but, after holding it for less than a year, he returned it to the 
 hands of the adjutant-general (February 8, 1817). Before he 
 received this right to buckle on his sword, the negotiations for 
 peace, which had been going on at Ghent, were satisfactorily 
 terminated. While the ink was still wet upon the paper ad 
 dressed to his brother by our young and somewhat belliger 
 ent publicist, the result was announced to Congress, and pro 
 claimed throughout the country (February 17, 1815). It was 
 hailed with rejoicing everywhere ; the Federalists flung up 
 their caps because the fighting was over, though they still 
 grumbled that not a single object for which the war was un 
 dertaken had been obtained, and the Republicans because the 
 victory of Jackson at New Orleans, January 8th, enabled them 
 to keep their reverses out of sight and to retire amid a blaze 
 of glory. 
 
 In a letter, dated March 19, 1815, to Judge Howe, Mr. Bry 
 ant refers to the subject : 
 
 " I reciprocate most cordially your congratulations on the return 
 of peace. This event, so much desired and so little expected, seems 
 to have excited in every part of the Union a delirium of transport 
 which has not even yet subsided. Yet, whatever may be our feelings 
 on this occasion, I trust that we shall not feel much gratitude to the 
 
PEACE DECLARED. ^7 
 
 man who has so long and so successfully been employed in wasting 
 the strength and debasing the character of the nation, merely because 
 he has not suffered its very life-blood to flow from the arteries of the 
 Union ; still less, when it is recollected that he was compelled to this 
 present treaty only by the necessity of affairs. . . . 
 
 41 But God forbid that the Federalists should relax their exertions 
 to drag back into that obscurity from which they ought never to have 
 emerged the men who have brought upon the country so much dis 
 tress and disgrace. I much fear, however, that this accommodation 
 will incline the Federal party to indolence, and that, in the conva 
 lescent prosperity of the country, they will forget the mighty influence 
 which has brought us so near to our ruin ; and now, wearied with its 
 only efforts, perhaps, pauses for some more favorable opportunity to 
 destroy us. 
 
 " If the peace has blown my military projects to the moon, it per 
 haps may be a question whether it has not a little shattered your 
 Merino speculations. I say a question, because I do not think it yet 
 ascertained whether we might compete successfully with other nations 
 in the exportation of wool ; but our prospects in the law are, I think, 
 rather brightened." * 
 
 * He expressed the same views of the war in an ode written for the Howard Society 
 of Boston, of which I will cite a specimen : 
 
 " Ah, taught by many a woe and fear, 
 
 We welcome thy returning wing ; 
 And Earth, O Peace ! is glad to hear 
 
 Thy name among her echoes ring. 
 
 And Winter looks a lovelier Spring, 
 And hoarsely though his tempest roars, 
 
 The gale that drives our sleet shall bring 
 The world s large commerce to our shores. 
 
 " My country, pierced with many a wound ! 
 
 Thy pulse with slow recovery beats. 
 War flies our shores, but all around 
 
 The eye his bloody footprint meets, 
 
 As when the dewy morning greets, 
 Serene in smiles and rosy light, 
 
 Some prostrate city through whose streets 
 The earthquake past at dead of night." 
 
1 38 THE LAW STUDENT. 
 
 The rejoicings over the return of peace were somewhat 
 dashed, among those to whom the name of Napoleon was still 
 a terror, by the news of his escape from Elba. Mr. Bryant, 
 writing to his father, May 24th, says : 
 
 " I presume that you in Cummington, as well as we in Bridge- 
 water, were a little surprised that Bonaparte should so suddenly re 
 sume the sceptre of France. The exile of Elba has outwitted all 
 Europe. We, I think, may dread, in common with other nations, the 
 consequences of this event. They, by due concert and proper meas 
 ures, may, perhaps, ensure their own safety, even if they should not 
 have the power or inclination to pull him again from the throne ; we 
 have no security against his artifices and emissaries but in the virtue 
 of the people, which, I fear, is not wonderfully great." 
 
 Nevertheless, his apprehensions were not so great as to 
 prevent him from applying himself for the rest of the sum 
 mer to diligent preparations for his examination in August, to 
 which he looked forward with anxiety. Writing to his friend 
 Downes, in June, he says : 
 
 " The nearer I approach to the conclusion of my studies the more 
 I am convinced of the necessity of industry. You, my friend, were 
 born under a more fortunate star than I. You have everything in 
 your favor in entering upon the practice of law, accommodating your 
 conversation to every sort of people, and rendering yourself agreeable 
 to all. The maturity of your manners will add much to the respect 
 you will receive upon entering into life, and the natural placidity of 
 yo"ur temper will enable you to contemn the little rubs which will, of 
 course, attend the young practitioner. But I lay claim to nothing 
 of all these, and the day when I shall set up my gingerbread-board is 
 to me a day of fearful expectation. The nearer I approach to it the 
 more I dread it." 
 
 Downes tells him in return that he must not give way to 
 despondency, and thereby do injustice both to his application 
 and to his talents. " If I were conscious," he says, "of possess 
 ing those qualities in the same degree, I would whistle all fears 
 of the future down the wind." His distrust did not arise from 
 
LICENSED TO PRACTICE. 
 
 any want of knowledge of the law on which both Mr. Howe 
 and Mr. Baylies took occasion to compliment him but from 
 conscious defects as a speaker. In July, Mr. Howe wrote him 
 a long letter on the subject, instructing him how the art of 
 speaking is to be acquired and improved, but predicting for 
 him " the very highest rank in the fraternity of which he is 
 soon to become a member." To this the student replies, 
 August 8th, with not a little grace of allusion, as well as good 
 sense : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Your remarks upon public speaking I read with 
 the more interest as they come from one who has practiced that art 
 with such distinguished success. Yet I must acknowledge that their 
 effect upon me was considerably lessened by the reflection that mere 
 industry could never have supplied that eloquence. You must be 
 content, sir, not to claim the whole merit of producing it to yourself. 
 You must ascribe much of it to the bounty of Nature, assisted, I have 
 no doubt, by art, but still entitled to the credit of furnishing the raw 
 material which was afterward to be worked up into such polish and 
 eloquence. I never could believe that the maxim, orator Jit, holds 
 good in its full extent. It may be true that any man of common 
 sense and common utterance may, by practice and diligent endeavor, 
 be brought to talk decently well upon some occasions, but what we 
 currently term eloquence^ according to my weak judgment, depends as 
 much upon the original constitution of the mind as any other faculty 
 whatever. This, heowver, is not the place for a disquisition of this kind. 
 
 " Next week, by the leave of Providence and the Plymouth bar, I 
 become a limb of the law. You inquire in what part of the world I 
 intend to take up my abode. I have formed a thousand projects ; I 
 have even dreamed of the West Indies. After all, it may be left to 
 mere chance to determine. I hope soon to see you, and have the 
 benefit of your advice upon this subject. My best remembrances to 
 all who have not forgotten me. Believe me, sir, with the highest es 
 teem and respect, Yours, etc., 
 
 "W. C. BRYANT." 
 
 On the 1 5th of August he left Bridgewatcr, with his creden 
 tials as an attorney of the Common Pleas in his pocket. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTH. 
 
 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 A. D. 1816-1819. 
 
 IT is worthy of note that the same year in which Mr. Bryant 
 attained his majority and was admitted to the bar he adopted 
 the poetic form he worked in for the rest of his life. During 
 the perturbations of what may be called the Love and Death 
 assault, the noble inspirations that breathe through " Thanatop- 
 sis " had been for a time forgotten. In the distractions of the 
 interval, indeed, he seems to have feared that the Muses had 
 deserted him altogether, and he implores their return.* As 
 soon as he reaches home he begins to woo them back. The 
 artificial style in which he was trained is definitively aban 
 doned ; his boyish heroics, those Tyrtsean drum-beats, are 
 thrown aside ; his amatory sobs and sighs are suppressed ; 
 his morbid colloquies with Death are outgrown ; and, with 
 his Greek studies in memory, and the influences of the new 
 British school of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth grow 
 ing in force, he devotes himself to a minute study of nature. 
 All his papers of this period bear witness to constant and 
 ever-renewed attempts, in different forms, to paint her vary 
 ing aspects. Fragments and sketches mostly, they resemble 
 those rough outlines which artists are in the habit of making 
 in preparation for larger canvases. He hums to himself of 
 flowers, groves, streams, trees, and especially of winds which 
 
 * See " I cannot Forget with what Fervid Devotion," in its original form. Poet 
 ical Works, vol. i, notes. 
 
POETIC STUDIES. ! 4I 
 
 abounded in the region where he lived.* Among other 
 things, he began an Indian story, after the manner of Scott s 
 highland poems, but, judging by the little of it that was exe 
 cuted, the descriptive quite overmastered the narrative parts. 
 There was a great deal more of the old Pontoosuc forest in it 
 
 * Here are a few specimens out of many : 
 
 44 The cloudless heavens are cold and bright, 
 The shrieking blast is in the sky, 
 
 And all the long autumnal night 
 Whirl the dry leaves in eddies by." 
 
 11 The sun is risen, but wan and chill 
 Wades through a broken cloud ; 
 And in the woods that clothe the hill 
 November winds are loud." 
 
 41 Hark ! how with frantic wing the blast 
 
 Buffets the forest bare, 
 Though long ago its branches cast 
 The last dry leaflet there." 
 
 44 Where Westfield holds his gleaming course 
 Tall hills and narrow meadows washing, 
 And all at once with gentle force 
 Against a million pebbles dashing." 
 
 " The new-risen sun s mild rays adorn 
 
 The clouds beneath him rolled ; 
 And the first scarlet tints of morn 
 
 Have brightened into gold. 
 With many a note the wild is cheered ; 
 
 W T ith many a rustling foot resounds ; 
 The squirrel s merry chirp is heard, 
 
 From knoll to knoll the rabbit bounds ; 
 The woodpecker amidst the shade 
 
 Is heard his drumming bill to ply; 
 On whirring wings along the glade 
 
 Sweeps the brown partridge by." 
 
 44 Now, e er she bids our fields adieu, 
 
 With fragrant fingers June delights, 
 Profuse with flowers of sunny hue, 
 
 To clothe our plains and grassy heights. 
 
I 4 2 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 than of the Indian ; Nature, indeed, was winning him com 
 pletely to herself, and one of the first fruits of her caresses 
 was the " Yellow Violet," written just before leaving Bridge- 
 water, while on a visit to Cummington.* Another piece, 
 originally printed in the "North American" (1817) as "A 
 Fragment," now known as " An Inscription for the Entrance 
 to a Wood," is due to the same feeling. Composed in a noble 
 old forest that fronted his father s dwelling-house, it is an ex 
 quisite picture of the calm contentment he found in the woods. 
 Every object the green leaves, the thick roof, the mossy 
 rocks, the cleft-born wind-flowers, the dancing insects, the 
 squirrel with raised paws, the ponderous trunks, black roots, 
 
 Through banks of gold the stream is rolled. 
 
 That half its gleaming waters hide, 
 
 In gold the mountain rears its pride, 
 
 In gold the sloping vales subside, 
 The meadows wave in gold. 
 
 " On either side, along the road, 
 
 Glitters a yellow margin gay, 
 But where the heifer crops her food 
 
 Less glowing tints the tract betray, 
 And far around as eye can see 
 
 One blossomed waste is all the scene, 
 
 Save verdant cornfields stretched between, 
 
 Or groves or orchards rising green 
 In summer majesty." (a) 
 * It was not published till some years later. 
 
 (a) Of this yellow flower, Mr. J. H. Bryant, in a letter to me, gives these par 
 ticulars : " There is a very singular fact connected with the flowering plant which 
 produced the scene described in the stanza. This was the Ranunculus actis ; 
 common name, Crowfoot, or Buttercup. It first made its appearance along the 
 road-sides of the hill-towns (as they are called) of Western Massachusetts early in 
 this century. The farmers, looking upon it as a pestilent weed, attempted for a while 
 to eradicate it by digging it up. But, in spite of them, it increased with astonishing 
 rapidity, and in a few years took possession of the soil of all that region. It occupied 
 the road-sides, the pastures and meadows, and every place except the woodland and 
 the small patches of ground planted with corn or other grain. It was a large, 
 branching, and profusely flowering plant, and gave that part of the country, when in 
 full flower, the appearance described in the poem. What is singular is, that, after 
 occupying the soil for some ten or twelve years, it began to disappear, and in ten or 
 twelve years more it was nearly extinct. Now it is rarely seen. It was a glorious, 
 entrancing sight, when, as far as the eye could see, the whole country was clothed in 
 bright yellow, the surface rolling and tossing in the June breezes." 
 
ORIGIN OF " THE WATERFOWL." I43 
 
 and sunken brooks is painted with the minutest fidelity, and 
 vet with an almost impassioned sympathy. 
 
 Doubtless he would gladly have lingered in those shades ; 
 but the work of life was before him ; his bread was to be won, 
 and he knew not as yet where it was to be won. Boston, the 
 great city of business and literature, was the goal of his own 
 wishes ; but how was he, an utterly unknown young man, to 
 subsist in Boston, while the needed clients were finding out 
 his talents and getting ready to entrust their interests to his 
 skill? His father was in a condition to help him to valuable 
 acquaintances, but he was not in a condition to provide him 
 with means. The good friends, Howe and Baylies, too, were 
 able to recommend him professionally at Northampton, or New 
 Bedford, or Troy, all of which had been in contemplation ; but 
 the same difficulties existed in each as in Boston. How was 
 he to live until success should come ? There was, in fact, no 
 alternative for him but to begin in some small country village, 
 where, if the prospects of practice were not very alluring, the 
 costs of subsistence at least might be managed. On the oppo 
 site hill-side from Cummington, about seven miles distant, and 
 to be seen from his father s residence, was a hamlet called 
 Plainfield, whither he resolved to go to try his fortune. He 
 had been there at school, and the family once sojourned there 
 for a little while, so that he would not be an entire stranger 
 among its people. On the I5th of December he went over to 
 the place to make the necessary inquiries. He says in a letter 
 that he felt as he walked up the hills very forlorn and desolate 
 indeed, not knowing what was to become of him in the big 
 world, which grew bigger as he ascended, and yet darker with 
 the coming on of night. The sun had already set, leaving be 
 hind it one of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which 
 often flood the New England skies ; and, while he was looking 
 upon the rosy splendor with rapt admiration, a solitary bird 
 made wing along the illuminated horizon. He watched the 
 lone wanderer until it was lost in the distance, asking himself 
 whither it had come and to what far home it was flying. 
 
144 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 When he went to the house where he was to stop for the 
 night, his mind was still full of what he had seen and felt, and 
 he wrote those lines, as imperishable as our language, " The 
 Waterfowl." The solemn tone in which they conclude, and 
 which by some critics has been thought too moralizing, 
 
 " He who from zone to zone 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 Will lead my steps aright," 
 
 was as much a part of the scene as the flight of the bird itself, 
 which spoke not alone to his eye but to his soul. To have 
 omitted that grand expression of faith and hope in a divine 
 guidance would have been to violate the entire truth of the 
 vision.* 
 
 What promise there was for a lawyer in a mountain ham 
 let like Plainfield, containing at the most a dozen houses, and 
 those of farmers chiefly, it is difficult to see ; yet that Mr. 
 Bryant obtained some business is shown by a letter of Mr. 
 Howe to Judge Eli P. Ashmun, of Northampton, asking him 
 to correct a mistake that his young friend had fallen into as to 
 a continuance in a case, and adding : " You have heard me 
 
 * The date of this poem, December, 1815, is to be remarked ; for our accomplished 
 and genial countryman, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a lecture on Shelley, deliv 
 ered in Boston in 1853, after quoting that fine passage from " Alastor," 
 
 " A swan was there ; 
 
 It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings 
 Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course 
 High over the immeasurable main," 
 
 added that : " The germs of two familiar and beautiful poems, written on this side of 
 the water, might here be found." One of these poems, though it was not mentioned 
 byname, was understood to be " The Waterfowl," but " The Waterfowl " is of earlier 
 date. The preface to the first edition of "Alastor" is dated December 14, 1815; 
 and the title-page is dated 1816, so that the volume could not have reached this coun 
 try until some months afterward. Whether it found its way at all to so obscure a vil 
 lage as Plainfield is doubtful. As, however, " The Waterfowl " was not published till 
 1818, Dr. Holmes s mistake was natural enough, and when his attention was called 
 to it, he corrected it with his usual grace and kindliness. 
 
REMOVAL TO GREAT BARRINGTON. 
 
 145 
 
 speak of him often as a man of great worth and intelligence." 
 At any rate, he remained in Plainfield only eight months, 
 when he received an invitation to a partnership with a young 
 lawyer named George H. Ives, of Great Barrington. Ives, in 
 his communication, says that he had been able to make from a 
 thousand to twelve hundred dollars a year by his practice, and 
 that with good office help the sum might easily be increased. 
 The offer was accepted with alacrity, and on the 3d of Octo 
 ber, as he writes in his reminiscences of Miss Catharine M. 
 Sedgwick, Mr. Bryant made the journey from Cummington, 
 most likely on foot : 
 
 " The woods were in all the glory of autumn, and I well remem 
 ber, as I passed through Stockbridge, how much I was struck by the 
 beauty of the smooth, green meadows on the banks of that lovely 
 river, which winds near the Sedgwick family mansion, the Housatonic, 
 and whose gently-flowing waters seemed tinged with the gold and 
 crimson of the trees that overhung them. I admired no less the con 
 trast between this soft scene and the steep, craggy hills that overlooked 
 it, clothed with their many-colored forests. I had never before seen 
 the southern part of Berkshire, and congratulated myself on being a 
 resident of so picturesque a region." 
 
 Of these changes of domicile, writing to an old office-mate 
 in Bridgewater, soon after his arrival in Great Barrington, he 
 says : 
 
 " After leaving Bridgewater, and lounging away three months at 
 my father s, I went to practice in Plainfield, a town adjoining Cum 
 mington. I remained there eight months, but, not being satisfied with 
 my situation and prospects in that place, I left it for Great Barrington, 
 a pleasant little village in Berkshire County, on the banks of the 
 Housatonic, where I am now doing business with a young man of the 
 name of Ives. This town was originally settled by the Dutch about 
 the year 1730, and their descendants compose about one tenth of the 
 present inhabitants.* Its politics are highly Federal. I live about 
 
 * Many years later, in an article contributed to the " Landscape Book " (G. P. 
 Putnam, New York, 1868), he indulged in some curious speculations as to the Dutch 
 VOL. i. 11 
 
1 46 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 five miles from the line of the State of New York, and ten from that 
 of Connecticut. In Plainfield I found the people rather bigoted in 
 their notions, and almost wholly governed by the influence of a few 
 individuals, who looked upon my coming among them with a good 
 deal of jealousy. Yet I could have made a living out of them in spite 
 of their teeth, had I chosen to stay; but Plainfield was an obscure 
 place, and I had little prospect of ever greatly enlarging the sphere of 
 my business. ... I came into this place about the ist of last Octo 
 ber ; since I have been here I have been wasted to a shadow by a 
 complaint of the lungs,- but am now recovered." 
 
 The " complaint of the lungs " this letter refers to was a 
 pulmonary weakness which had already assailed his father 
 and a younger sister. The more serious effects of it, which 
 befell them a few years later, he supposed he averted in his 
 own case by avoiding the use of tea, coffee, and spices of every 
 kind, by eating sparingly of meat, and by taking systematic 
 exercise, in the open air when he could, and when he could 
 not, in his rooms. 
 
 In spite of his ill health, Mr. Bryant set to work at his pro 
 fession with earnestness, resolved to make himself master of 
 
 origin of the town which are worth quoting : " I have often reflected," he says, " upon 
 what would have been the consequences if the power of England had met the fate 
 that befell the power of Holland, and if that republic had flourished while England 
 fell into decay. The Dutch emigration, of course, would have filled the valley of the 
 Housatonic. Bilderdyk would have been at this moment the favorite poet of the 
 people on that river ; the romances of Loosje s would have taken the place of those 
 of Walter Scott ; the more devout would have read the sermons of Van der Palm, 
 and the lovers of mirth would have laughed at the jokes of Weiland. So far as con 
 cerns the fine arts, the dwellings would have been more picturesque, comfortable 
 Dutch homes, with low rooms and spacious stoops, embowered in trees, instead of the 
 green, naked, and tasteless habitations of the Yankees. The painters who sought 
 their subjects among the inhabitants of the valley would have painted interiors after 
 the manner of Teniers, or elaborate and highly finished landscapes, in which fidelity 
 to Nature was more regarded than selection of objects, after the manner of Cuyp." 
 It is to be remarked, as an evidence of Mr. Bryant s retentiveness of memory, that 
 this same paper contains two fresh and vivid descriptions of atmospheric phenomena, 
 thunder-storms followed by strange plays of light, that he had seen forty years be 
 fore. 
 
THEMIS OR THE MUSE. 
 
 47 
 
 it, and to achieve reputation and wealth. Of course, at the 
 outset his practice was trivial the collection of debts and the 
 trial of small causes in the justice s court ; but he was very 
 diligent, and it grew as rapidly as the narrow stage on which 
 he worked permitted. The old debate, which has kept itself 
 alive among lawyers since the days of Cicero, as to the com 
 patibility of literary studies with professional success, was con 
 stantly arising in his mind, and he seems to have concluded, 
 at first, that he must abandon poetry altogether, even as a pas 
 time, if he wished to keep up with his colleagues and rivals. 
 But it was not without a struggle. Writing to his recent 
 teacher, Mr. Baylies, he says : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have at length summoned up industry enough 
 to answer yours of the yth of February last [1817]. I am obliged to 
 you for the kind inquiries you make concerning my situation. You 
 ask whether I am pleased with my profession. Alas ! sir, the Muse 
 was my first love, and the remains of that passion, which is not rooted 
 out nor chilled into extinction, will always, I fear, cause me to look 
 coldly on the severe beauties of Themis. Yet I tame myself to its 
 labors as well as I can, and have endeavored to discharge with punctu 
 ality and attention such of the duties of my profession as I am capable 
 of performing. When I wrote you last I had a partner in business. 
 He has relinquished it to me. I bought him out a few days ago for a 
 mere trifle. The business of the office has hitherto been worth about 
 ten or twelve hundred dollars a year. It will probably be less here 
 after, yet I cannot think it will decrease very materially, as I am very 
 v/cll patronized, and have been considered with more kindness than I 
 could have expected. There is another office in town, kept by Gen 
 eral Whiting, one of the senators from this district, who has a partner, 
 Mr. Hyde. In arguing cases I have not been very frequently em 
 ployed. I never spouted in a court-house. While in Hampshire 
 County, I did something in that way, and began to make long speeches 
 at references and in justices courts, but since I came here my part 
 ner, who was respectable as an advocate, and had the advantage of 
 longer experience, took that trouble off my hands. Since our separa 
 tion, however, I am trying my hand at it again. . . . Upon the whole, 
 I have every cause to be satisfied with my situation. Place a man 
 
148 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 where you will, it is an easy thing for him to dream out a more eligible 
 mode of life than the one which falls to his lot. While I have too 
 much of the mauvaise honte to seek opportunities of this nature, I have 
 whipped myself up to a desperate determination not to avoid them." 
 
 Mr. Baylies encouraged him thus : 
 
 " I am pleased that your situation is so promising, and hope that 
 your most sanguine expectations will be realized. It is not surprising 
 that you should meet with difficulty in breaking off all connection 
 with the Muse, as your love has ever met with so favorable a return. 
 I do not, however, condemn your resolution. Poetry is a commodity, 
 I know, not suited to the American market. It will neither help a 
 man to wealth nor office. You recollect, no doubt, the lines of Swift, 
 more applicable to this country than to his : 
 
 " Not Beggar s brat on bulk begot ; 
 Not Bastard of a Peddler-Scot, 
 Are so disqualified by fate ; 
 To use in Church or Law or State 
 As he whom Phoebus in his ire 
 Has blasted with poetic fire. " 
 
 So, a little later in the year, he writes a former fellow-student 
 still hopefully : 
 
 " It may be said, with more truth of our profession than of any 
 other, that industry is the road to success and you, I hope, will be 
 more diligent in the pursuit of knowledge than I was, or even seemed 
 to be ; for, while I appeared to study, I was half the time only dream 
 ing with my eyes open. As essential to these habits of diligence, you 
 are doubtless as well aware as I am that one should make himself 
 satisfied with the profession he has chosen. Our profession may be a 
 hard taskmaster, but its rewards are proportioned to its labors, which 
 is as much as any way of life has to say for itself." 
 
 But, while he was striving to keep his business well in hand, 
 and for that purpose to detach his mind completely from liter 
 ature, the Fates were arranging it otherwise. Some time in 
 June his father wrote to him from Boston that Mr. Willard 
 
DISCOVERY OF THANATOPSIS." 
 
 Phillips (an old Hampshire friend) " desired him to contrib 
 ute something to his new review." " Prose or poetry will be 
 equally acceptable. I wish," the prudent doctor adds, " if you 
 have leisure, you would comply, as it might be the means 
 of introducing you to notice in the capital. Those who con 
 tribute are generally known to the literati in and about Bos 
 ton." The younger Bryant was not tempted or was too busy 
 to reply, and so the ambitious father undertook to push the 
 matter in his own way. While his son was yet at Bridge- 
 water, he had discovered the manuscripts of " Thanatopsis," 
 the " Fragment," and a few other poems carefully hidden away 
 in a desk. A tradition in the family runs that, when he read 
 the first of these, he carried it to a lady in the neighborhood, 
 with tears streaming down his cheeks, and exclaimed : " Oh ! 
 read that ; it is Cullen s." Mrs. Howe, in her reminiscences, 
 relates that, " during Cullen s residence in Bridgewater, Dr. 
 Bryant brought us two manuscript poems Thanatopsis and 
 The Waterfowl. * We were greatly delighted with them, and 
 so was the father, who enjoyed our commendations of them 
 very much." He was so much delighted with them that he 
 resolved to carry them to Boston, to subject them to the judg 
 ment of his friend Phillips, whose new literary enterprise, 
 called "The North American Review," though but recently 
 established, had already acquired some name. It was the bant 
 ling of a club of young men, mostly lawyers of a scribbling 
 turn, who, in the winter of 1814- 15, proposed "to foster Ameri 
 can genius, and, by independent criticism, instruct and guide 
 the public taste." Their first project had been a bimonthly 
 publication, but, on the return of Mr. William Tudor f from 
 Europe, full of the notion of a quarterly, the two plans were 
 combined in " The North American Review." The first num 
 ber appeared in May, 1815. Mr. Tudor acted as editor till 
 
 * This is a lapse of memory. " The Waterfowl " was not then written, as we have 
 seen. It was the Inscription. 
 
 f Author of the Life of James Otis. 
 
150 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 1817, when it passed entirely into the hands of a club, of which 
 the chief members were Richard H. Dana, Edward T. Chan- 
 ning, and Willard Phillips. President Kirkland and several 
 of the professors of Harvard College promoted its establish 
 ment. Dana, the son of Chief Justice Dana, was an ardent 
 lover of poetry, as well as a fine critic ; Channing, a brother 
 of the more famous William Ellery Channing, was a cultivated 
 scholar, who two years afterward became Boylston Professor 
 of Rhetoric at Cambridge ; and Phillips was a tutor in the 
 college, but later in life a judge of probate and a distinguished 
 writer of law books. They were all deeply imbued with the 
 spirit of that naturalistic revolution which was taking place in 
 the literature of England, and which they hoped to infuse into 
 American literature. Dr. Bryant carried his wares to Phil 
 lips, because Phillips some years before (1804) had been a 
 country neighbor. As " Thanatopsis," in the first draft, was 
 full of erasures and interlineations, he had transcribed it ; but 
 the other pieces were in their original state. Mr. Phillips 
 was not at home when he called, and so he left his package, 
 with his name. When it was put into the editor s hands, he 
 read the poems with an absorbed interest, saw at once their 
 superiority to Avhat he had been in the habit of receiving, and 
 he hastened with them to his fellows in Cambridge, to take 
 their opinions. They listened attentively to his reading of 
 them, when Dana, at the close, remarked, with a quiet smile : 
 " Ah ! Phillips, }^ou have been imposed upon ; no one on this 
 side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." It is 
 easy to imagine the surprise with which these editors whose 
 best contributions before had been indifferent translations from 
 Martial or Boileau, or original pieces merely imitative of 
 some reigning English favorite listened to the sombre but 
 majestic roll, as of the sea, in " Thanatopsis," or to the low, 
 soft music, as of the wind through innumerable leaves, in the 
 " Fragment." Dana, indeed, having just written a review of 
 Mr. Allston s " Sylphs of the Season," in which he spoke of it 
 as " a cause of grief and mortification " that it was the only ex- 
 
SUCCESS OF " THANATOPSIS." I5I 
 
 ccption in a wide waste of feebleness and nullity,* we can not 
 wonder at his exclamation. But Phillips rejoined, with some 
 spirit, that he had not been imposed upon. " I know," he said, 
 "the gentleman who wrote the best of them, at least, very well; 
 an old acquaintance of mine Dr. Bryant at this moment sit 
 ting in the State-House in Boston as Senator from Hampshire 
 County." " Then," responded Dana, " I must have a look at 
 him," and, putting on his clogs and his cloak, he trudged over 
 to Boston. " Arrived at the senate," said Mr. Dana in a con 
 versation afterward with the Rev. Robert C. Waterston, " I 
 caused the doctor to be pointed out to me. I looked at him 
 with profound attention and interest ; and, while I saw a man 
 of striking presence, the stamp of genius seemed to me to be 
 wanting. It is a good head, I said to myself, but I do not see 
 Thanatopsis in it," and he went back a little disappointed. 
 Mr. Waterston, in communicating the incident, thinks it " re 
 markable for a penetration and originality characteristic of 
 Mr. Dana s sagacious judgment." 
 
 The two poems were published in September, but prefixed 
 to " Thanatopsis " were four stanzas on the subject of Death f 
 which, though accidentally contained in the same bundle, 
 had no connection with it, and were not intended for publica 
 tion. Much inferior in every way to the main poem, this un 
 happy juxtaposition may have prevented many readers from 
 perusing it ; at any rate it attracted no remark in the contem 
 porary journals. But in the immediate circle of the reviewers 
 the excellence of both poems was acknowlegded and extolled, 
 and the father and son were at once solicited to become regu 
 lar contributors. Mr. Phillips, addressing the son, in Decem 
 ber, says : " I recollect the epitome of your present self, and 
 with pleasure renew the acquaintance through your father. 
 Your Fragment was exceedingly liked here. Among others, 
 
 * This review appeared in the same number of " The North American Review " 
 in which "Thanatopsis" and the " Fragment " were printed September, 1817. 
 
 f Written at the time of his dejection, described in chapter vi, ante p. 109. Se 
 them in Poetical Works, vol. i, notes. 
 
152 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 Mr. Channing, the clergyman (William Ellery Charming), 
 spoke very highly of it, and all the best judges say that it and 
 your father s * Thanatopsis are the very best poetry that has 
 been published in this country." Whether this was the first 
 intimation the younger Bryant received of the uses that had 
 been made of his poems we cannot now tell ; probably the 
 " Review " had preceded this letter, for in October I find that 
 he was instrumental in getting up a club to subscribe for it ; 
 and, in forwarding the subscription, says : " I have one of the 
 numbers in my possession," which it is to be presumed was 
 that containing his own handiwork. On January 9, 1818, writ 
 ing to his father, he observes, incidentally : 
 
 " We have subscribed for * The North American Review here. I 
 wrote Mr. Phillips for it, and he answered me. He gave you the 
 credit^ if it can be called by that name, of writing the Thanatopsis. 
 I have sent you a correct copy of my version of The Fragment of 
 Simonides, and another little poem which I wrote while at Bridge- 
 water,* which you may get inserted if you please in that work. I 
 would contribute something in prose if I knew on what subject to 
 write." f 
 
 In February the father answered, from Boston : " I handed 
 the poems you sent me to Mr. Phillips, who has since informed 
 me that they were approved and admired. With respect to 
 " Thanatopsis," I know not what led Phillips to imagine I 
 
 * " To a Friend on his Marriage," not printed till March, 1818, in the same num 
 ber with the " Version of Simonides," and " The Waterfowl." 
 
 f Mr. Bryant s interest in the " Review " increased from this time, and writing 
 to Phillips, April I3th, he says : " If your work sustains its present character, it will 
 soon acquire a reputation not easily to be shaken. A good Review has been a de 
 sideratum in our literature. The public taste requires to be guided and reformed. 
 Our countrymen are assisted in forming their opinions concerning the numerous 
 modern publications imported into this country from Great Britain by the judgment 
 of the critics of that island. But, with respect to our native works, we have hitherto 
 had no such guide on which we could safely rely. Your work with its present prom 
 ise, I think, will supply what we so much want, and constitute a kind of literary cen 
 sorship, which, assigning to merit its just applause, and exposing unsupported preten 
 sions, shall give a proper direction to our national tastes." 
 
LONGS FOR BOSTON. 
 
 153 
 
 wrote it, unless it was because it was transcribed by me ; I left 
 it at his house when he was absent, and did not see him after 
 ward. I have, however, set him right on that subject, and 
 told him what you said about writing for the Review. " But 
 if Phillips was set right others were not, for Edward Channing, 
 nearly a year later, still refers to the poem as Dr. Bryant s, 
 and Mr. Dana was under the same impression in 1821, when 
 Mr. Bryant first went to Boston. 
 
 These small literary successes seem to have renewed Mr. 
 Bryant s desire to remove from the narrow and sterile field in 
 which he was to the livelier atmosphere of Boston. His fa 
 ther remarks, in reply to an intimation of the kind, that, " with 
 regard to removing to Boston, there are some objections, one 
 of which is that the county of Suffolk is crowded with lawyers. 
 Still I think an industrious young man of talents and enter 
 prise would in a few years force his way into notice among 
 them. But will it not be better for you to continue where you 
 are a few years, and lay a solid foundation, \vhile you have 
 your time to yourself without interruption? I, however, do 
 not wish to influence your determination in respect to the 
 disposition of your own affairs. Every young man who in 
 tends to make his way in the world and figure among his 
 contemporaries must rely at last upon his own talent and ex 
 ertions." 
 
 Mr. Phillips was too vigilant an editor to be put off with 
 mere promises of contributions, and already had written to 
 the younger Bryant, urging him to do something in prose, 
 suggesting that a recent collection of American poetry by one 
 Solyman Brown would furnish a good subject. The young 
 lawyer, though somewhat inclined to undertake it, did not 
 suppose himself in possession of the requisite materials. He 
 applied to his father, February 2Oth, in regard to it, thus : 
 
 " DEAR FATHER : If I can procure the book he speaks of, I will 
 undertake the subject mentioned by Mr. Phillips. To collect much 
 further information than I at present possess, my situation here does 
 not afford me many facilities. This place is like most other villages 
 
154 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 in this country there are not many who suffer an excessive passion 
 for books to interfere with other employments or amusements, and 
 they encumber their houses with no overgrown collections. This 
 scarcity of books, indeed, occasions me much inconvenience after hav 
 ing been accustomed all my life to have access to very respectable 
 libraries. Most of the American poets of much note, I believe, I have 
 read : Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, Humphreys, Honeywood, Clifton, 
 Paine. The works of Hopkins I have never met with. I have seen 
 Philip Freneau s writings, and some things by Francis Hopkinson. 
 There was a Dr. Ladd, if I am not mistaken in the name, of Rhode 
 Island, who, it seems, was much celebrated in his time for his poetical 
 talent, of whom I have seen hardly anything, and another, Dr. Church, 
 a Tory at the beginning of the Revolution, who was compelled to 
 leave the country, and some of whose satirical verses which I have 
 heard recited possess considerable merit as specimens of forcible and 
 glowing invective. I have read most of Mrs. Morton s poems, and 
 turned over a volume of stale and senseless rhymes by Mrs. Warren. 
 Before the time of these writers, some of whom are still alive, and the 
 rest belong to the generation which has just passed away, I imagine 
 that we could hardly be said to have any poetry of our own, and in 
 deed it seems to me that American poetry, such as it is, may justly 
 enough be said to have had its rise with that knot of Connecticut 
 poets, Trumbull and others, most of whose works appeared about the 
 time of the Revolution. Any facts which may occur to you on the 
 subject, of which I might, perhaps, be unaware or ignorant, I should 
 be obliged to you to suggest to me. I may visit Cummington before 
 next June. I remember the * American Review and Monthly Maga 
 zine, published some eighteen or twenty years ago a book which 
 you have contained considerable information on this subject, and 
 some biographies. 
 
 " The Address you mention it is out of my power to send to you, 
 as it was printed in the Berkshire * Star, and I have not the paper in 
 which it appeared. It was hasty and imperfect, and I was reluctant 
 to suffer it to be published, and should not have consented but for 
 the solicitations of Mr. Wheeler, our parson. The good man was so 
 importunate and so confident that it would be good on account of the 
 quarter from which it came, it not being very common for young law 
 yers in this part of the country to harangue upon such subjects, that I 
 
AN ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. ^5 
 
 could not well refuse him, but stipulated that the production should 
 appear without my name. It was, however, by some mistake, printed 
 as the work of William C. Bryant, to which was carefully subjoined at- 
 torncy-at-law" 
 
 The Address referred to in the last paragraph was one he 
 had been requested to prepare for the Bible Society of Great 
 Barrington, before which it w r as delivered on the 2Qth of Jan 
 uary, and the next week published in the local paper of Stock- 
 bridge. His general theme was " The Bible," of which he 
 said : " Its sacredness awes me, and I approach it with the 
 same sort of reverential feeling that an ancient Hebrew might 
 be supposed to feel who was about to touch the ark of God 
 with unhallowed hands." His special topic, however, was the 
 political and social influences of the Scriptures, and he tried to 
 show, by glancing at the moral condition of the nations, that 
 wherever they were allowed a free circulation among the peo 
 ple the great interests of human civilization were rapidly ad 
 vanced. In style it was exceedingly simple and concise, but, 
 as a whole, showed a ready familiarity with the state of society 
 in different parts of the globe. This address made him more 
 widely known to the people of Berkshire, and was of consider 
 able advantage to him in his profession. But his growing re 
 pute in law and literature seems not yet to have extinguished 
 his military aspirations, for in a note to Baylies, dated April 
 1 4th, he says: 
 
 " The great folks at Washington, I see, make themselves pretty 
 busy with the difficulties between this country and Spain. If we 
 should have a war with that country, and one could get a commission 
 in the army, he might, perhaps, before it was ended, have an oppor 
 tunity of garnishing his private history with a few South American 
 adventures." 
 
 In the postscript he modestly asks : 
 
 " Do you read The North American Review ? In the number 
 for September (I believe), 1817, perhaps in the preceding number, 
 
156 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 there are some lines entitled Thanatopsis and A Fragment, by an 
 old friend of yours, and in the number for March, 1818, three more 
 Pair of varses from the same hand." 
 
 At this time Mr. Bryant was called by his business to the 
 city of New York ; it was his first visit to any considerable 
 town, and it would be agreeable to know the impressions it 
 made upon his mind ; but the following brief letter to his 
 father, dated June 20, 1818, is the only reference to the subject 
 that remains : 
 
 "DEAR FATHER : Yours of the nth instant I received on the i3th 
 by my uncle, whom I had little time to see, as I was then just setting 
 off to attend a court in Sheffield. I am obliged to you for the concern 
 you express respecting my health. It has been considerably improved 
 by my journey to New York. I was absent a fortnight; we were 
 three days coming up the river, beating up one day and night against 
 a furious head-wind, during most of which time I was obliged to lie 
 flat on my back in my berth to prevent sea-sickness, of which I felt 
 some qualms. While in New York I kept running about continually, 
 and this constant exercise, together with being rocked and tumbled 
 about in the vessel, operated on me as a restorative, and since my re 
 turn my pain in the side and night-sweats have left me. I believe my 
 affairs will not permit my visiting Cummington at present. My sev 
 eral absences of late render it proper that I should now give a little 
 attention to my office, and, as I have taken off the tether from Major 
 Ives and let him loose into the field of practice again, it has become 
 necessary that I should use some diligence to prevent any part of that 
 share of practice which I have obtained from falling into his hands. 
 Perhaps, however, I may see Cummington some time in the course of 
 the summer or autumn. I have written a review of Mr. Brown s 
 book, and forwarded it to the publishers of The North American 
 Review. Luckily, I found the volume in this neighborhood, and es 
 caped throwing away my money on it. It is poor stuff." 
 
 The review, called "An Essay on American Poetry," was 
 printed in July. It was the author s first elaborate effort in 
 prose, and while the style is on the whole graceful and fin- 
 
AMERICAN POETRY JUDGED. 157 
 
 ished, the judgments, though still somewhat influenced by pre 
 vailing opinions, are sensible and independent. In a very quiet 
 manner the author dismisses the poetical pretensions of the 
 rhymers who were then in vogue. He does not depreciate 
 their products unjustly, or indulge in the slightest bitterness 
 of criticism ; on the contrary, his appreciations are more lib 
 eral than any we should now express, saying the best things 
 he could of each writer ; but, nevertheless, like a judge giving 
 final sentence, he banishes the entire set to the limbo of obli 
 vion. It is the coming poet, in fact, unconsciously disposing 
 of his predecessors, and clearing away the rubbish to make 
 room for others better qualified to do honor to the nascent 
 genius of their country. Its principal effect is to show us the 
 limitations in which our poetic literature was compelled to 
 begin under the influences of an older literature in the same 
 language, and from which it was almost impossible for tyros 
 and stammerers to escape. Mr. Bryant s one demand is for a 
 spirit of greater independence, for less imitation of form, for a 
 more hearty reliance upon native instinct and inspiration ; in 
 a word, for greater freedom, greater simplicity, and greater 
 truth. 
 
 What effect this quiet dethroning of much-worshipped lit 
 tle idols produced on the popular mind we are not informed ; 
 but Mr. Channing and his colleagues highly approved its tone, 
 and said so to the author, who answered, September i8th, as 
 follows : 
 
 " I am much gratified with the favorable reception that my con 
 tribution 4o The North American Review has met with from the pro 
 prietors of that work, as well as with the obliging manner in which it 
 has been communicated to me, and feel myself happy if I may be es 
 teemed to have done anything to raise the literature of my country. 
 In the mean time I may occasionally attempt something for your 
 journal, and lend such assistance as might be expected from one situ 
 ated as I am, Musis procul, et Permesside lympha, distant from books 
 and literary opportunities, and occupied with a profession which 
 ought to engage most of my attention. I have tried to write an essay 
 
THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 for your next number, but could not satisfy myself.* There is hardly 
 any spot in the department of essays unoccupied. With respect to 
 writing another review, I will be contented with such a work as you 
 may think proper to mention provided you do not set me too diffi 
 cult a task. I enclose you a small poem which I found by me, and 
 which you may give a place in your journal, if you think it will do." 
 
 The poem enclosed was " The Yellow Violet," written some 
 years before. It was not published in the " Review," however, 
 owing to the discontinuance of the department of " original 
 poetry." Mr. Channing, advising him of the change, takes 
 occasion to commend his verses very highly, and to suggest 
 that he ought to collect his fugitive pieces into a volume. Mr. 
 Bryant s reply (March 25, 1819) shows the moderate estimate 
 that he put upon his poetical labors : 
 
 " Your favor of the 8th inst. has been received. To commenda 
 tion so flattering as you are pleased to bestow on me, coming from 
 such a quarter, I hardly know what to say. Had you seen more of 
 those attempts of mine, concerning which you express yourself so fa 
 vorably, your opinion would, perhaps, have been different. The lines 
 I sent you, you are at liberty to dispose of as you think proper ; but do 
 not, by any means, take any trouble to make a place for them in your 
 journal, and, above all, do not let them appear if they are not worthy 
 of it. ... If I can procure the Backwoodsman (a poem by J. K. 
 Paulding) at any of the neighboring book-stores, I will review it for 
 your June number. If I do not get it, I will send some article for the 
 miscellaneous department. ... I may, perhaps, some time or other, 
 venture a little collection of poetry in print, for I do not write much 
 and, should it be favorably received, it may give me courage to do 
 something more. In the mean time, I cannot be too grateful for the 
 
 * The essay on " The Happy Temperament," published in No. g, p. 206, of the 
 " Review," in which he tries to show that, while cheerful dispositions are to be cul 
 tivated, a true sensibility to the evils and sorrows of life is not only the cause of 
 philanthropic exertion, but the source of peculiar satisfactions, which give balance 
 and dignity to the character. Similar thoughts are expressed by Coleridge in a son 
 net to Bowles. The essay is worth reading as a clew to his own prevailing serious 
 ness. 
 
AN OFFICE-HOLDER. 
 
 159 
 
 distant voice of kindness that cheers me in the pursuit of those studies 
 which I have nobody here to share with me." 
 
 I building s book he was unable to get, and so he did not 
 review it, but he sent instead an essay on the use of " Trisylla 
 bic Feet in Iambic Verse," which discloses how close and crit 
 ical a student he was of the mere technique of his art. It was 
 written, I suspect, some time before (probably in 1815), when 
 he was breaking away from the school of Pope and adopting 
 the broader methods of the later English school. He contends 
 in it that the introduction of an occasional anapest in iambic 
 measures, though seemingly irregular, really adds to the vi 
 vacity, if not the beauty, of the lines. He cites the older Eng 
 lish authors Shakespeare, the dramatists, and Milton in proof 
 of his position, alleging, moreover, that among the more mod 
 ern writers the most successful are those who are freest from 
 the trammels of the Queen Anne period.* 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Bryant lost none of his interest as a good 
 citizen in the local affairs of the town in which he lived. On 
 the Qth of March, 1819, he was elected one of its tithing men, 
 whose duties consisted in keeping order in the churches, and 
 enforcing the observance of the Sabbath. I may add that 
 soon afterward he was chosen town clerk by a vote of 82 out 
 of 102. His principal function in this capacity was to keep 
 account of the town s doings, such as the appointment of se 
 lectmen, surveyors of the highway, fence viewers, field dri 
 vers, and hog reeves. One may still see his records at Great 
 Barrington, where they form an object of considerable curios 
 ity to summer visitors. Written in a neat and flexible hand, it 
 is remarked that almost the only blot is where he registers his 
 own marriage, and the only interlineation where in giving the 
 birth of his first child he had left out the name of the mother. 
 These archives are a curious evidence of the extremely simple 
 and primitive way in which New England towns were former- 
 
 * Wordsworth is not referred to throughout, which is one reason I have for think 
 ing it was written some time before it was printed. 
 
160 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 ly governed. Each one was a little Democratic Republic, the 
 people of which came together annually on the call of the se 
 lectmen, through the constable, to choose the several officers 
 required to execute the laws, to fix the rates of local taxation, 
 and then to adjourn for the rest of the year. His salary as 
 clerk was five dollars per annum, at which rate he held the 
 place for the period of five years all the time that he remained 
 in the village. A more important dignity, conferred upon 
 him by the Governor of the Commonwealth, was that of Jus 
 tice of the Peace, empowered to hear and try small causes as 
 an inferior local court. In this character, it appears, he per 
 formed the marriage ceremony twice, for contracting parties 
 who objected to the service of the usual clergyman because 
 they differed from him in religious opinion. An old gentleman 
 still living makes it a boast that he was " jined to his first old 
 woman by Squire Bryant." 
 
CHAPTER NINTH. 
 
 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 A. D. I82O, 1821. 
 
 WE have seen Dr. Bryant, the poet s father, complaining, 
 in a letter on a former page, of over-exertion and impaired 
 health. A hereditary weakness of the lungs, made worse by 
 exposure to the bleak atmosphere of the hills, had long given 
 his family cause for anxiety. His own skill, aided by that of Dr. 
 Thatcher and other distinguished physicians of Boston, whom 
 he knew, enabled him to alleviate the more painful symptoms. 
 It was, however, only for a time. A visit made to the sea-shore 
 in 1819, in which Cullen was his companion, brought no relief. 
 On his return he was confined to his house, and in the spring 
 of 1820 to his bed. Had he been able to command means and 
 leisure for a sojourn in a more congenial climate, he might per 
 haps have been saved ; but a life of almost incessant jogging, 
 by night and day, in all weathers, over mountain roads that 
 seemed rather the channels of torrents than ways of travel, had 
 exhausted his vitality. He lingered until the 2oth of March, 
 when he died, a comparatively young man still, being only in 
 the fifty-third year of his age. Even at this distance of time, 
 one cannot but feel a profound regret that he who had so 
 carefully tended the early development of his boy, and taken 
 so natural a pride in the beginnings of his success, should not 
 have lived to witness the full bloom of his genius and fame. 
 
 The event William, as he was now called, communicated to 
 an aunt in these words : 
 
 VOL. I. 12 
 
162 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 "CUMMINGTON, March 22, 1820. 
 
 " DEAR AUNT CHARITY : I sit down to give you the melancholy 
 news of the death of my father. He expired on Sunday, the 2oth 
 of this month, between the hours of seven and eight in the evening. 
 It was not his fate to wait the gradual extinction of life which is the 
 usual termination of the disorder under which he labored, and which 
 would probably have carried him off soon. ... I never saw anybody 
 die before, but, judging as well as I am able, I thought his exit on the 
 whole more easy than usual. . . . Let us hojte that after all his suffer 
 ings our dear departed friend has gone to a happier world. A man 
 so honest and upright in his conduct, so gentle in his temper, so for 
 giving of injuries, so full of offices of humanity to which he sacrificed 
 his health and perhaps his life must be of those whom God rewards 
 with felicity. Indeed, if it is not so, I think there is little hope for 
 any one of the human race. 
 
 " I am, dear aunt, 
 
 " Your affectionate nephew, 
 
 "WM. C. BRYANT." 
 
 It was a blow that fell with great severity upon all the 
 children, whom it deprived of their main protector and sup 
 port, but upon none of them with a more crushing force than 
 upon Cullen, who had been so intimately associated with his 
 father from a tender age. The memory of this loss clung 
 to him for many years. Some time before, he had written a 
 " Hymn to Death " not in the old querulous vein, but cele 
 brating his triumphs over the lusty Leviathans who trample 
 and consume the poor and weak ones of the earth which he 
 now recalled, in order to change its tone of praise into one of 
 lamentation. For 
 
 " He is in his grave who taught my youth 
 The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
 Offer d me to the Muses" 
 
 And, again, eight years later, when speaking in " The 
 Past" of 
 
A WRITER OF HYMNS. ^3 
 
 " earlier friends, the good, the kind, 
 The venerable form, the exalted mind," 
 
 he was thinking of 
 
 "Him by whose kind, paternal side I sprung." 
 
 Faithful to his vow of not allowing his poetic impulses to 
 interfere with his professional pursuits, Mr. Bryant does not 
 appear to have written anything in verse save the fragment 
 called " The Burial Place," begun and broken off in 1819, since 
 he entered upon his practice in 1816. What few pieces he 
 sent to " The North American Review " were taken from his 
 scrap-book. But now, in 1820, his poetic susceptibilities were 
 assailed from several sides at once. Soon after his father s 
 death, while he was yet full of the sentiment it inspired, an ap 
 peal was made to him by the Unitarians, in aid of a collection 
 of Hymns they projected. Mr. Henry D. Sewall, the editor, 
 applied to Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, of Stockbridge, to use 
 her efforts in his behalf, and the result she communicates to 
 her brother Robert, of New York, in a letter dated May 17, 
 1820: 
 
 " * I wish, she says, you would give my best regards to Mr. Sew- 
 all, and tell him that I have had great success in my agency. I sent 
 for Mr. Bryant last week, and he called to see me on his return from 
 court. I told him Mr. Sewall had commissioned me to request some 
 contributions from him to a collection of Hymns, and he said, without 
 any hesitation, that he was obliged to Mr. Sewall, and would with 
 great pleasure comply with his request. He has a charming counte 
 nance, and modest but not bashful manners. I made him promise to 
 come and see us shortly. He seemed gratified ; and, if Mr. Sewall 
 has reason to be obliged to me (which I certainly think he has), I am 
 doubly obliged by an opportunity of securing the acquaintance of so 
 interesting a man. "* 
 
 * Forty-four years after this Mr. Bryant printed, without publishing, a small vol 
 ume of his Hymns, and sent a copy to Miss Sedgwick, who, in her reply, says : " My 
 dear Mr. Bryant: But for your prohibition, I should at once, on the receipt of my 
 precious little Hymns have sent to you my earnest thanks, and told you how vividly 
 
1 64 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 This was the first time Miss Sedgwick had seen the poet ; 
 and Mr. Bryant, who never ceased to honor all the family for 
 their virtues, and to be grateful to them for their attentions to 
 him when he was quite unknown to the rest of the world, re 
 calls his introduction to her in the reminiscences he wrote for 
 her " Memoirs" : 
 
 " t At that time, he says, referring to his first arrival at Great Bar- 
 rington, * I had no acquaintance with the Sedgwick family ; but the 
 youngest of them, Charles Sedgwick, a man of most genial and engag 
 ing manners and agreeable conversation, as well as of great benevo 
 lence and worth, was a member of the Berkshire bar, and by him, a 
 year or two afterward, I was introduced to the others, who, from the 
 first, seemed to take pleasure in being kind to me. I remember very 
 well the appearance of Miss Sedgwick at that period of her life. She 
 was well formed, slightly inclining to plumpness, with regular features, 
 eyes beaming with benevolence, a pleasing smile, a soft voice, and 
 gentle and captivating manners. The portrait of her by Ingham, 
 painted about that time, or a little later, although not regarded, I 
 think, by the family as a perfect likeness, yet brings to my mind her 
 image as I saw her then, with that mingled expression of thoughtful- 
 ness and benignity with which her features were informed. " 
 
 At the instance of this amiable and accomplished family 
 the young lawyer was called to pass through an ordeal by 
 which every promising young professional man was formerly 
 tried in this country the delivery of a Fourth of July oration. 
 It was spoken at Stockbridge, and with some success. Mr. 
 William Pitt Palmer, many years afterward, in 1858, wrote of it, 
 thus : " It was the first time," he says, " I ever saw the poet. 
 He spoke from the pulpit of the Old Church ; his delivery was 
 modest and graceful. I got a position in the gallery near the 
 speaker, and have not yet forgotten how fine, large, and promi- 
 
 they recall the day when the young poet, one of the first objects of my hero-worship, 
 offered me in my dear home the six hymns ; and but for boring you, I would have 
 described the color and form of his cloak, and the fire and expression of his counte 
 nance, but " 
 
A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. ^5 
 
 ncnt his forehead appeared to me under the brown locks that 
 curled around it. lie was already looked upon as a person of 
 unusual literary attainments one of the first botanists of Berk 
 shire, one of the best classical scholars in all Massachusetts, 
 and a poet facile princcps on this side of the Atlantic." This 
 address, though replete with patriotic sentiment, would not, 1 
 fear, pass muster among the models of fervid anniversary elo 
 quence. Distinguished by its purity of style and solid gravity 
 of thought, it must have fallen coldly upon the ears of the au 
 dience if they were at all accustomed to the turgidness and 
 inflation characteristic of such occasions. In one respect it is 
 still interesting to us, and that is, its indignant protest against 
 the " Missouri Compromise," a measure of contemporary Fed 
 eral legislation, described as "extending the dangerous and 
 detestable practice of enslaving men into territory yet unpol 
 luted with the curse." It w r as the earliest utterance of his 
 convictions not only in regard to the character of slavery, but 
 in regard to those party bargains euphuized as compromises, 
 which transact with evil, and debauch and degrade the public 
 conscience. Yet the raw simplicity of the country poet and 
 lawyer is seen in the expression of his belief that the people of 
 Missouri would have too much good sense and kindness of 
 heart to accept the pernicious privilege granted them by the 
 nation. 
 
 Mr. Dana s project of a periodical, to be called " The Idle 
 Man," and to consist of " poetry, essays, criticisms, and his 
 torical and biographical sketches," enlisted Mr. Bryant s 
 warmest interest from the beginning. As early as May, 1821, 
 Mr. Channing asked his assistance for it, suggesting that "a 
 literary frolic now and then is the best restorative for a con 
 scientious, but overworked and jaded, attorney." In reply, 
 Mr. Bryant put " The Yellow Violet" at Mr. Dana s disposal, 
 and enclosed another piece, " Green River," which he had 
 picked out of his waste-basket, adding that his attorney- 
 ship " was not so absorbing that he might not turn off some 
 trifles occasionally," while " a connection with The Idle 
 
1 66 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 Man would be of more honor to him than he could be of 
 service to it." 
 
 When the first number of " The Idle Man " appeared,* he 
 wrote Dana that he was delighted with it, and " should think 
 better of the world if it liked it, too. It is an attempt to bring 
 us back to the purer and better feelings of our nature. When 
 I saw one of the articles," he goes on to say, " headed Mr. 
 Kean " (an acute and powerful criticism of Kean s acting), " I 
 wished you had chosen a subject more likely to be popular ; 
 but, before I had finished reading it, you had interested 
 me in it so much that I would not have exchanged it for 
 any other. f It is not possible for me in this retirement to 
 judge of the progress your work is making in the literary 
 world, but all whom I have seen that have read it speak 
 favorably of it. You must suffer the world to get in love 
 with it gradually, if you mean that they shall remain attached 
 to it long. I feel a strong confidence that it will succeed." 
 This confidence grew as the successive numbers appeared. 
 Mr. Bryant not only contributed some of his best poems 
 to it, such as " Green River," " A Winter Piece," " The 
 West Wind," " The Burial Place," " A Walk at Sunset," but 
 he commended it warmly in the newspapers and to private 
 friends. 
 
 If Mr. Bryant s self-imposed poetic abstinence was inter 
 rupted by the demand of his denomination for hymns, and 
 by his interest in Dana s enterprise, it was completely routed 
 by an enemy from another quarter a pair of bright eyes. 
 Not long after his settlement in Great Barrington, at one 
 of the village " sociables " he met a Miss Fanny Fairchild, 
 who seems to have impressed him deeply from the first mo 
 ment. She was the daughter of well-to-do and respectable 
 country people, who had cultivated a farm on the Seekonk, 
 
 * " The Idle Man." New York : John Wiley, 1821. 
 
 f The papers of " The Idle Man " have since been printed in Mr. Dana s col 
 lected works. 
 
THE POET IN LOVE. 
 
 a tributary of Green River, but who were now dead, hav 
 ing been carried off almost together by a fever.* Their de 
 mise broke up the household, and Fanny became alternately 
 an inmate of the homes of her married sisters, where her cheer 
 ful and social temper and unwearying industry made her an 
 ever-welcome guest. She was in the nineteenth year of her 
 age, " a very pretty blonde, small in person, with light-brown 
 hair, gray eyes, a graceful shape, a dainty foot, transparent 
 and delicate hands, and a wonderfully frank and sweet expres 
 sion of face." The poet was drawn to her by the triple attrac 
 tions of her orphanage, her good sense, and her loveliness ; 
 but the depth of his attachment was not revealed to him until 
 the object of it was called to accompany a sister on her re 
 moval to East Bloomfield, in the Genesee Valley of New 
 York. It was then an extreme limit of western emigration, 
 and as, in default of canals, railways, and steamboats, her jour 
 ney thither was made in high covered wagons, over bad cor 
 duroy roads, through an almost unbroken wilderness, and 
 often exposed to the molestations of wild Indians or wilder 
 white borderers, it was, of course, slow and tedious. The 
 prolonged absence it required awoke her timid admirer to a 
 painful sense of his loneliness. He began to pity himself very 
 much in rhyme, and to pour out little ditties of complaint, 
 yet full of tender recollections and yearnings. These are too 
 unpremeditated and personal to be reproduced ; but I may 
 say that they differ much from the strains of a greener age 
 are calmer, less fluctuating, more assured in tone, and well 
 represented by " Oh, Fairest of the Rural Maids ! " which is 
 the only one of them the author has cared to print.f 
 
 * The name of the mother s family was Pope, and it was connected in some way 
 with Alexander Pope, the poet. 
 
 f Poetical Works, vol. i, p. 39. Of the others, the following may be given as a 
 specimen : 
 
 " Though summer sun and freshening shower 
 Have decked my love s deserted bower, 
 Though bees about the threshold come 
 Among the scented blooms to hum, 
 
1 68 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 On the return of Miss Fairchild from the West, the young 
 couple engaged themselves to be married ; and how earnestly 
 and seriously they entered into the new relation is shown by 
 a prayer, which they seem to have uttered together as a sort 
 of betrothal vow to God. It was found among Mr. Bryant s 
 papers, never having been read, probably, by any eyes but 
 theirs until after his death. 
 
 " May Almighty God mercifully take care of our happiness here 
 and hereafter. May we ever continue constant to each other, and 
 mindful of our mutual promises of attachment and truth. In due 
 time, if it be the will of Providence, may we become more nearly 
 connected with each other, and together may we lead a long, happy, 
 and innocent life, without any diminution of affection till we die. 
 May there never be any jealousy, distrust, coldness, or dissatisfaction 
 between us nor occasion for any nothing but kindness, forbear 
 ance, mutual confidence, and attention to each other s happiness. 
 And that we may be less unworthy of so great a blessing, may we 
 be assisted to cultivate all the benign and charitable affections and 
 offices not only toward each other, but toward our neighbors, the 
 human race, and all the creatures of God. And in all things wherein 
 we have done ill, may we properly repent our error, and may God 
 forgive us and dispose us to do better. When at last we are called to 
 render back the life we have received, may our deaths be peaceful, 
 
 Though there the bindweed climbs and weaves 
 Her spotted veil of flowers and leaves ; 
 Though sweet the spot, I cannot bear 
 To gaze a single instant there. 
 
 " Ah, there no longer deigns to dwell 
 The peerless One, I love so well, 
 And vainly may I linger near 
 The musick of her step to hear, 
 And catch from spheres of azure light 
 The glance my heart has proved too bright. 
 Fair is the spot I own it fair, 
 But cannot look an instant there. 
 44 GREAT BARRINGTON, 1819." 
 
HIS MARRIAGE. 
 
 169 
 
 and may God take us to his bosom. All which may he grant for the 
 sake of the Messiah. 
 44 GREAT BARRINGTON, 1820." 
 
 If ever solemn supplication to heaven was answered on 
 earth, this one assuredly was, by a long life of reciprocal love, 
 esteem, confidence, and helpfulness. 
 
 On the nth of June, 1821, they were married at the house 
 of the bride s sister, Mrs. Henderson,* and a few days later 
 the groom communicated to his mother the facts and embar 
 rassments of the occasion in this whimsical way : f 
 
 " DEAR MOTHER : I hasten to send you the melancholy intelli 
 gence of what has lately happened to me. 
 
 " Early on the evening of the eleventh day of the present month I 
 was at a neighboring house in this village. Several people of both 
 sexes were assembled in one of the apartments, and three or four oth 
 ers, with myself, were in another. At last came in a little elderly gen 
 tleman, pale, thin, with a solemn countenance, pleuritic voice, hooked 
 nose, and hollow eyes. It was not long before we were summoned to 
 attend in the apartment where he and the rest of the company were 
 gathered. We went in and took our seats; the little elderly gentle 
 man with the hooked nose prayed, and we all stood up. When he had 
 finished, most of us sat down. The gentleman with the hooked nose 
 then muttered certain cabalistical expressions which I was too much 
 frightened to remember, but I recollect that at the conclusion I was 
 given to understand that I was married to a young lady of the name 
 of Frances Fairchild, whom I perceived standing by my side, and I 
 
 * The house is still standing in Great Barrington, an object of some interest to 
 strangers. Fifty-five years after the event recorded in the text, Mr. Bryant and one 
 of his daughters visited the place. He walked about it for some time, saying 
 nothing ; but, as he was about to turn away, he exclaimed : " There is not a spire of 
 grass her foot has not touched," and his eyes filled with tears. 1 1 is wife had then 
 been dead nearly ten years. 
 
 \ It was Mr. Bryant s duty, as town clerk, to publish the bans of marriage in 
 the church, which was generally done by reading them aloud ; but in his own case 
 he pinned the required notice on the door of the vestibule and kept carefully out of 
 sight. 
 
THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 hope in the course of a few months to have the pleasure of intro 
 ducing to you as your daughter-in-law, which is a matter of some in 
 terest to the poor girl, who has neither father nor mother in the world. 
 
 " I have not played the fool and married an Ethiop for the jewel 
 in her ear. * I looked only for goodness of heart, an ingenuous and 
 affectionate disposition, a good understanding, etc., and the character 
 of my wife is too frank and single-hearted to suffer me to fear that I 
 may be disappointed. I do myself wrong ; I did not look for these 
 nor any other qualities, but they trapped me before I was aware, and 
 now I am married in spite of myself. 
 
 " Thus the current of destiny carries us all along. None but a 
 madman would swim against the stream, and none but a fool would 
 exert himself to swim with it. The best way is to float quietly with 
 the tide. So much for philosophy now to business. . . . 
 
 " Your affectionate son, WILLIAM." 
 
 When this singular epistle, in which his pride seems to be 
 awkwardly seeking excuses for a humiliating surrender, reached 
 the good mother, she is said to have exclaimed : " He make a 
 fool of himself ! He never has done so yet, and couldn t if he 
 tried." 
 
 A few months after his marriage, Mr. Bryant was surprised 
 by a communication from the Secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa 
 Society of Harvard College, Mr. W. J. Spooner, requesting 
 him, " by a unanimous vote of the fraternity," to deliver the 
 usual poetical address at the next Commencement. At first 
 he shrank from the task, but at length consented to under 
 take it, although with many misgivings and doubts. In his 
 answer to Mr. Spooner, April 26th, he said : 
 
 " SIR : The honor thus conferred upon me is as unlocked for as it 
 is flattering; I did not even know that I was a member of your soci 
 ety till I was informed of it by your letter. I have concluded to ac 
 cept the appointment, and discharge myself of it as well as I can. 
 
 " I have never attended an anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
 
 * An expression used in a previous letter of his sister. 
 
VISIT TO BOSTON. ! 7 ! 
 
 ciety, and must profess myself entirely unacquainted with the order 
 of proceedings on that occasion. Of the general character of the 
 performances I know only so much as might be gathered from reading 
 a few of them which have occasionally fallen in my way. As you 
 have kindly offered to give me any information I may desire on these 
 subjects, I shall be obliged to you if you will mark out for me such a 
 brief general outline as may prevent me from doing anything outrt or 
 getting foul of an interdicted subject." 
 
 Mr. Spooner responded in several pages, instructing him 
 as to the sort of address expected of him, the probable com 
 position of the audience, the time, place, and manner of de 
 livery, and hinting also at the success or non-success of former 
 poets. Mr. Willard Phillips wrote him a long epistle of ad 
 monition, particularly urging him to pay attention to his elo 
 cution. In Mr. Phillips s opinion nearly everything depended 
 upon that ; and he thought that an indifferent poem, if it could 
 be spoken in a fine manner, would achieve an undoubted suc 
 cess. 
 
 During the summer the leisure left him by his professional 
 work was devoted to the preparation of this poem, which he 
 found more of a labor than he had anticipated. " The compo 
 sition of my address," he wrote to a friend, " owing partly to 
 my having written but little, and partly to the difficulty of 
 the stanza I have selected (the Spenserian), has come near to 
 making me sick." Nevertheless, it was finished, and in Au 
 gust he went to Boston to fulfil his engagement. It was his 
 first visit, of which we have any account, to a much-longed- 
 for city, and it would be pleasing to learn his impressions of it 
 and its people. But the following letter, addressed to his 
 wife, August 2 5th, is the only one preserved out of his corre 
 spondence of the time, and I give it at length as characteristic : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRANCES : You observed in what an elegant style I 
 went from Great Barrington to Sheffield. Seated on a rough board 
 laid on the top of a crazy wagon, whose loose sides kept swinging 
 from right to left, with a colored fellow at my right hand and a 
 
i; 2 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 dirty old rascal before me who kept spitting all the way. I was 
 jolted over a road that filled my mouth and ears and clothes with 
 dust, and which the mulatto observed was very much like de des 
 ert of Arabey. About half past eleven in the evening we arrived at 
 Hartford. At half past six the next morning I was on my way to 
 Boston, and about twelve o clock at night I saw the rows of lamps 
 along the great western avenue, and beyond them those of the Cam 
 bridge and Charleston bridges. We entered Boston over this great 
 western avenue, which is not yet finished. I am now at Mrs. Vose s. 
 Yesterday, in the afternoon, Mr. Phillips called on me in a chaise 
 and carried me to Waltham. We passed by the seat of Mr. Otis, 
 a fine, large building on a smooth, round eminence a little distance 
 from the road, with a wood on the west. The approach to it was 
 through a gravelled road of about an eighth of a mile in length, 
 with a thick, dark row of trees and shrubbery on either side. He 
 took me to the seat of Mr. Lyman, a Boston merchant, who has ac 
 quired great wealth in the India trade the father of that Mr. Lyman 
 who wrote the book about Italy. It is a perfect paradise ; Phillips 
 tells me that there is not a country-seat in the United States on which 
 so much expense has been laid out. The owner is continually en 
 gaged in making improvements and alterations, the annual cost of 
 which is not less than twenty thousand dollars. The house is a hand 
 some building, shaded with exotic trees the mountain-ash of Europe, 
 with its large, numerous cymes of red berries; the English beech, 
 with its smooth, lead-colored stem and purple foliage. Here I saw 
 the Chinese sumach a sort of apple-tree which Phillips called the 
 crab-apple, a pretty tree loaded with fruit of a delicate light yellow 
 ish-red color, about twice the size of a thornberry, and various other 
 shrubs whose names I did not learn. In front of the house to the 
 south was an artificial piece of water winding about and widening 
 into a lake with a little island of pines in it, an elegant bridge cross 
 ing it, and swans swimming on the surface. A hard-rolled walk by 
 the side of a brick wall about ten feet in height, and covered with 
 peach and apricot espaliers which seemed to grow to it, like the creep 
 ing sumach to the bark of an elm, led us to a grove of young forest- 
 trees on the top of an eminence in the midst of which was a Chinese 
 temple. North of the house was a park with a few American deer in 
 it, and a large herd of spotted deer a beautiful animal imported from 
 
" THE AGES." 
 
 73 
 
 Bengal. We visited the green-house. Here were pine-apples grow 
 ing. The rafters were covered with the grape-vine of Europe, whose 
 clusters were nearly ripe. Here was the American aloe, whose ensi- 
 form leaves are as thick and as large as I am, a species of datura 
 with large, white flowers the size of a half-pint tumbler, and a thou 
 sand other curious matters. More than a hundred acres lie about 
 this seat without any enclosure, most of which is fine, smooth turf, 
 with occasional corn-fields. We took tea at Mr. Lyman s with sev 
 eral agreeable ladies. They said there was some elegant poetry in 
 the last l Idle Man. * Phillips has seen my thing,f and tells me it 
 will go well. 
 
 " Your affectionate husband, 
 
 "W. C. BRYANT." 
 
 Mr. Bryant, during this visit, not only formed the acquaint 
 ance of the Danas, Channings, and others connected with 
 "The North American Review," for which he had written, 
 and with several of whom he corresponded, but he must have 
 been introduced to the professors of the college and to many 
 distinguished visitors. Allston was there, fresh from his inti 
 macy with Coleridge ; Sully, of Philadelphia, was there, en 
 gaged temporarily in his art, and hosts of others statesmen 
 and lawyers of eminence the Adamses, Quincys, Pickering, 
 Story, Mason, and Webster ; but of these he says not a word. 
 That he enjoyed his intercourse with persons at once conspic 
 uous and congenial we know from his later reminiscences; 
 but the letter to his wife makes no mention of them, though 
 it evinces a lively interest in the horticulture of the environs 
 of Boston. The beautiful results of art in the adornment of 
 the earth s surface were new to him, hitherto familiar Only 
 with the wild beauties of the hills, and he made the most of 
 his opportunities. 
 
 His poem called " The Ages," a rapid survey of the gen 
 eral progress of mankind in virtue and knowledge, was, on 
 
 * This refers to his own pieces, 
 f I. e., his poem. 
 
174 
 
 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 the whole, a marked success. The newspapers of the day 
 make little reference to it, as it was not their habit then to 
 speak of such things ; * but there are several persons still liv 
 ing who remember it very well. Mr. Emerson was one of the 
 class of that year, and I endeavored to get him to revive his 
 impressions of the occasion, but, unfortunately, he was not in a 
 state of health to enable him to comply with my request.f 
 Mr. John C. Gray, however, the orator of the day, although 
 now in the eighty -eighth year of his age, has a distinct recol 
 lection of all that occurred. " Mr. Bryant and I were to 
 gether," he writes, " in the same pulpit, in the old Congrega 
 tional Church, where the services were held. Mr. Bryant was 
 extremely modest and unassuming in his deportment. As I 
 had closed my part of the duty, and was near him, I could lis 
 ten attentively and hear every word. I said to myself at the 
 time, If Everett had read this poem, what a sensation it 
 would have produced ! It was read quietly, and perhaps 
 with some monotony of manner, so that unless one gave a 
 close attention, it did not produce its full effect. As a general 
 thing, works of this kind, grave and thoughtful in substance, 
 are not appreciated at the moment; but persons of discern 
 ment, who followed the thought without requiring an effect 
 ive or powerful manner, or a clear and strong delivery, felt 
 that Mr. Bryant s poem was an uncommon production. It 
 placed him, as I thought, at the very head of American poets 
 and there has been, as I still think, his rightful place ever 
 since. The audience was a distinguished one a formidable 
 one for a young man to front John Quincy Adams, Timothy 
 Pickering, John Lowell, Drs. Channing and Kirkland, Ever- 
 
 * The Boston " Daily Advertiser" of August 3 1st has-simply the following notice : 
 " PHI BETA KAPPA. The anniversary of this society was celebrated yesterday. 
 The public oration was delivered by John C. Gray, Esq., and the poem by William 
 C. Bryant, Esq. These interesting performances commanded the deep attention, 
 and received the high approbation, of a very numerous and select audience." 
 
 \ Mr. Emerson, I think, must have made the acquaintance of the poet, as I find 
 little notes of introduction, etc., from him to Mr. B., written not long afterward. 
 
EIGHT POEMS PUBLISHED. ^5 
 
 ett, Dana, Shaw, and a multitude of others that are not often 
 gathered in these days." Another contemporary, the vener 
 able and accomplished Miss Eliza Susan Quincy, daughter 
 and sister of a Josiah Quincy, recalls Mr. Bryant s appearance 
 and address in a letter in which she says : 
 
 " There was a crowded audience in the ancient church. Mr. Bry 
 ant s appearance was pleasing, refined, and intellectual ; his manner 
 was calm and dignified ; and he spoke with ease and clearness of 
 enunciation. There was no attempt at oratorical display ; but, con 
 sidering the grave and elevated tone of the poem, it excited more re 
 peated tributes of applause than could have been anticipated, and the 
 last stanza rendered these testimonies of approbation vehement. A 
 few days aftenvard Mr. Isaac P. Davis, a man noted for his very gen 
 eral acquaintance in society, during a visit to Quincy, informed me 
 that Mr. Bryant s poem was generally considered the finest that had 
 ever been spoken before the Phi Beta Society." 
 
 It was, in fact, considered so good by his immediate friends 
 the Danas, Channings, Allston, etc. that they would not hear 
 of his quitting Boston until he had consented to the publica 
 tion of it, and of what else he had done in a poetical way. He 
 immediately proceeded to put his few pieces together, and the 
 proofs reached Great Barrington a few days after his return 
 the new volume itself in a few weeks. It can hardly, how 
 ever, be called a volume ; it was a small pamphlet of only 
 forty-four pages, containing eight poems in all " The Ages," 
 " To a Waterfowl," " The Fragment from Simonides," " The 
 Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood," " The Yellow Violet," 
 "The Song," "Green River," and " Thanatopsis " but such 
 poems as had never before appeared in American literature. 
 Brief as they were, and few as they were, they were yet of a 
 kind to make a reputation ; and, if the author had never written 
 another line, his name would have been remembered with de 
 light and honor for many years to come. Dana, in forwarding 
 the poems, scolded him roundly for certain changes, not now 
 to be guessed, that he had made in his text. 
 
176 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 " I send you a copy of your poems," he said, under date of Cam 
 bridge, September 8, 1821, "as a glass for you to look into and see 
 how handsome you are in print. We three Mr. Channing, my 
 brother, and I have taken a liberty with you, at which, I trust, you 
 will not be offended. If you should be, our support under your in 
 dignation would be, that we surfer in a good cause. We have pub 
 lished The Yellow Violet as you first wrote it, as also the line, * Shall 
 come and make their bed with thee ; and The Barcan Desert pierce. 
 What could have induced you to change * the sweet babe for that line 
 and a half? As to * the pale realms of shade, a little after, it is utterly 
 abominable. Nothing in the Elysian fields worse than it. As you 
 first wrote it, nothing could have been more simple and solemn, and 
 the objection made to the * to earth seemed to me at the time a hyper- 
 criticism. At any rate, I shall be glad to know what the caravan and 
 1 shade all mean now. Could I but have found your rough draft, we 
 should have had your * sweet babe and the old caravan brought back 
 to their proper places without a moment s hesitation. I believe that 
 a poet should not be allowed to alter in cold blood ; he grows finical. 
 Make their bed with thee is scriptural and holy; the alteration was 
 neither good nor bad. Opposed as Mr. C. and I were to the change 
 of The Yellow Violet, we read original and alteration to my brother 
 twice over, and he said that it would be a sin in us to allow the change, 
 as it was in our power to prevent it, and that the town atmosphere must 
 have got into your upper regions when you made that and the other 
 changes. He was very sorry he did not see you before you left, and 
 would have been at home had he known you were to leave before one 
 o clock. In good earnest, my dear sir, I am fearful that your feelings 
 may be wounded by what we have done, and I wished my hands washed 
 of the affair more than once. Yet I acted from the most thorough con 
 viction that your poems would be injured by what you intended doing. 
 And when you come, by and by, to read over those alterations which 
 we could not put out, you will regret that it was out of our power. 
 Forgive me the liberty I took part in, and I will forgive you your sad 
 alterations, and we will shake hands." 
 
 Mr. Bryant, so far from being offended by the restorations, 
 was thankful for them, and in his reply to Dana says : 
 
THE EARLIEST CRITICISM. ,77 
 
 " Yours of the 8th I received day before yesterday, and to-day the 
 copy of my poems. I am infinitely obliged to you for the trouble you 
 have taken with them, and submit as quietly as you could wish to your 
 restoration of the altered passages. As to * the pale realms of shade, 
 I have not a word to say in its defence. I dislike it as much as you 
 can, and I had a secret misgiving of heart when I wrote it. I am now 
 engaged with all my might in reviewing your book, The Idle Man, 
 and will send on the fruit of my labors soon. ... I am glad you do 
 not mean to be discouraged by any symptoms of coldness with which 
 the public have received it at New York. If it goes off well in Bos 
 ton, and at the South, there is no fear that it will not soon do well 
 enough in New York. The fires kindled at both ends of the pile will 
 meet at last and be hottest in the middle. . . . 
 
 " In the mean time, I send you something of my own for your next 
 number. It is a poem which I found unfinished among my papers 
 on my return from Boston, and added the latter half of it on purpose 
 for your work. You see my head runs upon the Indians. The very 
 mention of them once used to make me sick, perhaps because those 
 who undertook to make a poetical use of them made a terrible butchery 
 of the subject. I think, however, at present, a great deal might be 
 done with them. You may give what name you please to my poem." * 
 
 Mr. Willard Phillips endeavored to help his young friend 
 along by printing in the October number of " The North 
 American " an elaborate criticism of the poems. As this was 
 the earliest printed notice they received, I quote a part of it. 
 
 " Of what school is this writer ? The Lake, the * Pope, or the 
 Cockney ; or some other? Does he imitate Byron, or Scott, or 
 Campbell? These are the standing interrogatories in all tribunals 
 having the jurisdiction of poetry, and it behooves us to see that 
 they are administered. He is, then, of the school of Nature, and 
 of Cowper, if we may answer for him ; of the school which aims 
 to express fine thoughts, in true and obvious English, without 
 attempting or fearing to write like any one in particular, and with 
 out being distinguished for using or avoiding any set of words or 
 
 * Mr. Dana called it " A W T alk at Sunset." See Poetical Works, vol. i, p. 43. 
 VOL. i. 13 
 
178 THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 phrases. It does not, therefore, bring any system into jeopardy to 
 admire him, and his readers may yield themselves to their spon 
 taneous impressions without an apprehension of deserting their 
 party. 
 
 " There is running through the whole of this little collection a 
 strain of pure and high sentiment, that expands and lifts up the soul, 
 and brings it nearer to the source of moral beauty. This is not in 
 definitely and obscurely shadowed, but it animates bright images and 
 clear thoughts. There is everywhere a simple and delicate portraiture 
 of the subtle and ever-vanishing beauties of Nature, which she seems 
 willing to conceal as her choicest things, and which none but minds 
 the most susceptible can seize, and no other than a writer of great 
 genius can body forth in words. There is in this poetry something 
 more than mere painting. It does not merely offer in rich colors 
 what the eye may see or the heart feels, or what may fill the imagina 
 tion with a religious grandeur. It does not merely rise to sublime 
 heights of thought, with the forms and allusions that obey none but 
 master spirits. Besides these, there are wrought into the composition 
 a luminous philosophy and deep reflection, that make the subjects as 
 sensible to the understanding as they are splendid to the imagination. 
 There are no slender lines and unmeaning epithets, or words loosely 
 used to fill out the measure. The whole is of rich materials, skilfully 
 compacted. A throng of ideas crowds every part, and the reader s 
 mind is continually and intensely occupied with the thick-coming 
 fancies. " 
 
 Many persons, even his father s friend, Mrs. Lyman, thought 
 this praise exaggerated and undeserved. Not so, Mr. Gulian 
 C. Verplanck, author of " The Bucktail Bards " (1819), a po 
 litical satire, and of several discourses that had already made 
 him widely known, who wrote to Mr. Bryant, October 4th, in 
 this way : 
 
 " SIR : I received a few days ago a copy of your poems from your 
 friend, Mr. R. Dana. You will see how highly I think of their mer 
 its by the brief criticism in the paper which you will receive with 
 this.* The American is a paper of extensive circulation, and of 
 
 * The New York " American, October 4, 1821. 
 
MR. VERPLANCK S OPINION. 
 
 considerable importance in our State politics ; it is edited by a cousin 
 of mine, who now and then indulges me with the use of his editorial 
 columns for other purposes. An Anniversary Discourse, which I 
 published some time ago, having, by better luck than commonly 
 falls to the lot of such publications, just reached a second edition, 
 I have taken that opportunity to make some corrections and add a 
 few notes and illustrations. I beg your acceptance of a copy. 
 
 " I am, with respect, yours, etc., 
 
 "G. C. VERPLANCK. 
 
 To this the poet answered from Great Barrington, October 
 10, 1821 : 
 
 " GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, Esq. : 
 
 " SIR : Yours of the 4th inst., together with the New York Ameri 
 can of the same date, and a copy of your * Anniversary Discourse, 
 have just reached me. 
 
 " I had before seen the greater part of your Discourse in the 
 shape of extracts in various publications, but I am happy in an op 
 portunity to read, in its original connection, the whole of a work the 
 free and liberal spirit of which, to say nothing of its other merits, too 
 generally acknowledged to need any testimony of mine, had already 
 so much interested me. 
 
 " Whether you think highly of my poems or otherwise, I hope, at 
 least, that you think more of them than I was able to find in the paper 
 you sent me. On unfolding it, I found the two inside pages entirely 
 blank, through some blunder, I suppose, of the press. I conclude, 
 however, from the intimation in your letter, that the notice was a fa 
 vorable one, and I am grateful for the assistance afforded me at a 
 time when it may do me much service. 
 
 " I am, sir, with much respect, yours, etc., 
 
 "W. C. BRYANT." 
 
 At length a more perfect copy of the paper arrived, and 
 Mr. Bryant was gratified to see his merits recognized by one 
 who held an acknowledged position in literature outside of 
 Boston. Verplanck discerned at once the quality of the verses 
 before him, and he spoke in the warmest terms of " their ex- 
 
l8o THE FIRST COLLECTION OF POEMS. 
 
 quisite taste, their keen relish for the beauties of nature, their 
 magnificent imagery, and their pure and majestic morality." 
 
 His little venture attracted some attention, even in Eng 
 land, where a collection of " Specimens of American Poetry " 
 (Allman, London, 1822), made by Mr. Roscoe, brought it to 
 the notice of the reviewers. A writer in " Blackwood " (June, 
 1822) graciously said : " Bryant is no mean poet; and, if he is 
 a young man, we should not be surprised at his assuming, one 
 day or another, a high rank among English poets." In justifi 
 cation of this prophecy the critic adduced " Thanatopsis" and 
 "The Waterfowl," which showed " really superior powers." 
 This recognition, however, did not prevent " Blackwood," two 
 years later, from taking all its praises back, in an article which 
 denied " the existence of anything like American literature or 
 American authors." " All their writers are but feeble dilu 
 tions of English originals. Some of the pieces of Bryant 
 having found their way by piecemeal into England, and hav 
 ing met with a little newspaper praise, which was repeated 
 with great emphasis in America, he is set up by his associates 
 as a poet of extraordinary promise ; but Mr. Bryant is no 
 more than a sensible young man of a thrifty disposition, who 
 knows how to manage a few plain ideas in a handsome way. 
 The Waterfowl/ though beautiful, has no more poerty in it 
 than the Sermon on the Mount (!), and his blank verse is a 
 mere imitation of Milman," which was a curious- sort of imita 
 tion, seeing that his blank verse anticipated Milman s by some 
 years.* The " Retrospective Review " took the same tone, and, 
 after admitting that "Mr. Bryant stood at the head of the 
 American Parnassus," found that " he copied Lord Byron in 
 his Spenserian stanzas, and in his blank verse reminds us at 
 once both of Cowper and Wordsworth." 
 
 Strictures like these, however much they may have been 
 deserved in times past, were getting to be no longer pertinent. 
 A new life, full of the richest promise, was already begun in 
 
 * "Blackwood," September, 1824. 
 
A LITERARY SPRINGTIME. jgi 
 
 this country. The year embraced in this chapter, which saw 
 the publication of Mr. Bryant s little volume, belonged to a 
 significant and notable time in our literary annals. It was 
 then that Cooper published his " Spy " ; Washington Irving 
 his " Sketch Book " and " Bracebridge Hall " ; I lalleck his 
 " Fanny " ; Sands and Eastburn their " Yamoyden " ; Dana 
 his " Idle Man " ; Hillhouse his " Percy s Masque " ; Percival 
 his " Prometheus " ; Miss Sedgwick her " New England Tale " ; 
 Channmg his earliest essays in the " Christian Disciple " ; 
 Daniel Webster his " Plymouth Oration " ; and Edward Liv 
 ingston his " Penal Codes." " Many voices have followed 
 these," as Bayard Taylor said in his address at Halleck s 
 grave ; " but we must never forget the forerunners, who were 
 even in advance of their welcome, and created their own 
 audiences." 
 
CHAPTER TENTH. 
 
 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 A. D. 1822-1824. 
 
 IT was at this time, I am disposed to believe, that Mr. Bry 
 ant s political opinions underwent certain modifications which 
 it is important to notice. He was still a Federalist, attended 
 the meetings of his party, served on committees, and, when ne 
 cessary, discussed the character and claims of candidates for 
 office in the newspapers.* But a great change had been going 
 
 * If one may judge from the following jeu d esprit, however, found among his 
 papers, he was more disposed to make fun of the politicians in general than to take 
 part in their contests : 
 
 " All things must have an end empires and thrones 
 
 Speeches and messages though ne er so long 
 There is an end to smiles, an end to groans, 
 
 To C s sermons and to B s song. 
 
 All things must have an end that high behest 
 
 Has brought the Sixteenth Congress to its close, (a) 
 And packed its members off to East and West, 
 
 To Florida in flowers and Maine in snows. 
 
 " Some carry home the unspoken speech again, 
 
 Some mourn a luckless bill td its long sleep 
 Untimely sent, as dies upon the plain 
 
 The tender poppy trod by huddling sheep. 
 Some glory to have proved their length of wind, 
 
 Some that a starveling measure struggled through, 
 One sighing statesman leaves his heart behind, 
 
 Another, some cool hundreds lost at loo ! 
 
 (a) The Sixteenth Congress closed March 3, 1821. 
 
CHANGE OF POLITICS. ^3 
 
 on in both the tone and direction of political controversy since 
 the days of his young enthusiasm for State rights and rebel 
 lion. After the peace of 1815 the old parties were more or 
 less fused or extinguished, and a period of quietude followed, 
 which, during the administration of Monroe, who was elected 
 to the presidency in 1821 by an almost unanimous vote, was 
 called " the era of good feeling." New questions of differ 
 ence, however, arose out of the altered circumstances of the 
 nation. A considerable manufacturing interest had grown up 
 in the Northern States during the war with England, which at 
 the close of it desired to be continued. The conditions of peace 
 revived and stimulated more active interchanges in domestic 
 commerce, and schemes for the promotion of it came into the 
 ascendant. The Eastern States demanded tariffs to shelter 
 them from foreign competition, and enlarged harbors for their 
 shipping ; the Western States wanted highways and canals to 
 put them in easier communication with the East ; and the 
 South was not backward in clamoring for such internal im 
 provements as might facilitate the access of their crops to the 
 
 " Homeward to Boston Webster hies to breathe, 
 
 Jove-like, the incense that in every nook 
 Smokes up to his Olympus from beneath 
 
 With clerkly Everett, who his trade mistook (a) 
 Shrewd Woodbury hastens to his own hearth-fire, 
 
 And Gorham grave and Dwight of manners bland, 
 And knowing Anderson and Mclntyre, 
 
 And Burges with old Lempriere in his hand.(<) 
 
 " And Carolina welcomes Drayton home, 
 
 Hayne, and McDuffie of the fearless voice ; 
 And in the news that White and Polk are come, 
 
 The gorgeous vales of Tennessee rejoice. 
 But there the wild-cat in the depth of woods 
 
 Trembles to feel the south wind s softer breath, 
 For well she knows that with the opening buds 
 
 Crockett returns, whose very stare is death." (c) 
 
 (a) Mr. Everett had been a clergyman, and became a politician. 
 
 (b) Tristam Burges, of Rhode Island, noted for his classical quotations. 
 
 (c) Davie Crockett, famous for his eccentricittes and his rifle. 
 
1 84 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 
 seaboard cities and to a great and growing inland population. 
 How these various enterprises should be fostered and sus 
 tained became a principal object of legislative solicitude. 
 
 Mr. Bryant, during this lenten time, while new issues were 
 getting into shape, devoted his leisure to studying the politi 
 cal history of his country. This led him to reconsider the 
 grounds of his traditionary opinions, and to scrutinize more 
 closely than he had done before the principles and tendencies 
 of various past and dominant parties. His attention was par 
 ticularly directed to the doctrines of political economy, which, 
 though still wearing a gloss of newness on this side of the 
 Atlantic, were in much favor with inquiring and independent 
 minds in Europe. His friends the Sedgwicks, like himself of 
 Federal affinities, were yet disposed, by their reading and re 
 flections, to a generous hospitality toward conclusions which 
 the treatises of Smith, Say, Thornton, and Ricardo, but espe 
 cially the great debates in the British Parliament in the time 
 of Huskisson (1820), rendered more and more popular in Eu 
 rope. Theodore Sedgwick, indeed, the foremost of the fam 
 ily, and a man of eminent character and parts, had long been 
 a decided advocate of freedom of exchange.* Either following 
 
 * Mr. Theodore Sedgwick, the second son of Judge Theodore Sedgwick, who 
 died in 1813, was greatly admired by Mr. Bryant, and doubtless exercised consider 
 able influence over his opinions and conduct. In a memoir of this distinguished 
 friend, written for " Griswold s Biographic Annual " in 1839, ne describes him as 
 one " whose character deserves to be held up to the imitation of all men engaged in 
 political life, or in public controversies of any kind. He was a man of many virtues, 
 but he enjoyed one distinction of difficult attainment, that of being a politician with 
 out party vices. In the question respecting the powers of government and the 
 proper objects and limits of human laws, he took part with great zeal, deeming them 
 highly important to the welfare of mankind ; yet he bore himself in these disputes 
 with such manifest sincerity, disinterestedness, and philanthropy, and with such gen 
 erosity toward his adversaries, as to make them regret that he was not on their side. 
 Nothing could excel his dislike of the ignoble ferocity into which party men allow 
 themselves to fall, save his abhorrence of the unmanly practices to which they some 
 times resort. It is with a feeling of deep reverence that I essay to speak of such a 
 man." Further on, speaking of Mr. Sedgwick s work, entitled " Public and Private 
 Economy," he says : " It is full of wise and just views, and informed by a warm and 
 
STUDIES POLITICAL ECONOMY. ^5 
 
 his lead or impelled by his own researches, Mr. Bryant took 
 the same view. What he learned from these sources was, that 
 the great economic movements of society, or the complex ac 
 tions by which human wants are supplied, are as uniform and 
 regular as any other aggregate of causes and effects, or that, 
 if they vary, it is within calculable limits: in other words, 
 that social phenomena are subject to laws with which it is 
 injurious to interfere in any artificial manner. But, having 
 arrived at this fundamental principle, he saw that it carried 
 with it, to a certain extent, the readjustment of other more 
 general political notions. He observed that in the proceed 
 ings of Congress, where economic subjects were perpetually 
 coming up in one shape or another, the leading statesmen 
 were apt to take position in regard to them according to their 
 proclivities of constitutional doctrine. Those who inclined to 
 a protective system were also inclined, or bound by the neces 
 sities of the case, to broad constructions of the powers of the 
 national Government, while those who were emancipated from 
 old economic errors were as earnestly disposed to a rigid exe 
 gesis. It was pretty evident, therefore, that, while he was 
 nominally ranked as a Federalist, his place, when parties 
 should divide and organize on economic grounds, would be 
 inevitably on the side of the Republicans. 
 
 Mr. Dana, in his correspondence with Mr. Bryant, urges 
 him not to trouble himself about such questions, but to un 
 dertake a poem of greater length than any he had yet writ 
 ten. "We talk of you a great deal down at my brother s," 
 he said, " and want you to write a poem as much longer than 
 
 genuine philanthropy. Its principal design was to promote the object that lay near 
 est the heart of the author, that of narrowing more and more the limits of poverty, 
 ignorance, and vice among his countrymen, of inspiring them with the love of per 
 sonal independence, giving them habits of reflection, teaching them reverence for 
 one another s rights, and thus bringing about that equality of condition which is the 
 most favorable to the morals and happiness of society, and to the harmonious work 
 ing of our institutions." I cannot but here remark that, secluded as the whole of 
 Mr. Bryant s early life was, he was rarely favored by the enjoyment of intercourse 
 with such men as Judge Howe, Mr. Baylies, and the several Sedgwicks. 
 
1 86 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 
 The Ages as may please you. Fix upon a subject, and turn 
 over the plan in your mind ; get as full of the matter as you 
 have leisure to be, and write as you find time." Again, in 
 November, he renews the advice : " Have you turned the 
 matter over and gathered in your thoughts?. There are men 
 of talents enough to carry on the common world, but men of 
 genius are not so plenty that any can afford to be idle, neither 
 can any man tell how great the effect of a work of genius is 
 in the course of time. Set about it in good earnest." Mr. 
 Bryant did not set about it, nor take any notice of the sug 
 gestion. With all the fire of youth in him, he yet despaired 
 of an achievement which he seemed to agree with a later 
 opinion of Poe in thinking impossible for any man a long 
 poem which should also be a good poem.* 
 
 A subject of much public excitement at the time was the 
 revolt of the Greeks from the tyrannic and cruel rule of the 
 Turks. I can well remember, though a mere child then, the 
 depth and intensity of feeling with which the whole commu 
 nity, even the children, followed the incidents of the heroic 
 struggle of the children of Leonidas against the Moslem. 
 How we pitied and extolled the Greeks, and how we exe 
 crated the Turks ! The same enthusiasm which carried 
 Byron from the delights of Genoa and Venice to his death 
 bed at Missilonghi, animated a large number of our young 
 men, who, like Dr. Samuel G. Howe, were disposed to go in 
 person to the assistance of the oppressed. Mr. Bryant s zeal 
 never attained to such a degree of warmth, but exhaled in 
 poetic expressions and a popular address on the Greek Revo- 
 
 * Mr. Bigelow, in his memorial address to the Century Club, says : " Like Hor 
 ace, like Burns, like Beranger, but unlike most other poets of celebrity, Bryant never 
 wrote any long poems. I once asked him why. He replied : There is no such 
 thing as a long poem. His theory was that a long poem was as impossible as a long 
 ecstasy ; that what is called a long poem, like Paradise Lost and the Divine Com 
 edy, is a mere succession of poems strung together upon a thread of verse, the 
 thread of verse serving sometimes to popularize them by adapting them to a wider 
 range of literary taste or a more sluggish intellectual digestion." 
 
THE GREEK REVOLUTION. 
 
 hi don. These were, however, of service in keeping sympathy 
 alive by a generous intellectual appreciation. His address, 
 delivered at Great Barrington in December, 1823, is marked 
 by impressive thought and a fine manly fervor, rather charac 
 teristic of the scholar than of the statesman. His love for the 
 Greek language seems to have diffused itself over the whole 
 race by which it was spoken. " Nothing ignoble or worth 
 less," he assumed, " can spring from so generous a stock. It 
 was in Greece that civilization had its origin, and the grand 
 impulse which she communicated to the human mind will never 
 cease to the end of time. It was there that poetry, sculpture, 
 all the great arts of life, were invented or perfected, and first 
 delivered down to succeeding generations. Greece was the 
 real cradle of liberty in which the earliest republics were 
 rocked. We are the pupils of her great men, in all the prin 
 ciples of science, of morals, and of good government ; her gen 
 ius, in short, in every department of intellectual creation, has 
 instructed, overcome, and awed the world ; she preserved 
 learning and religion when all the rest of Europe was a prey 
 to barbaric invasion, and the world owes her a debt of grati 
 tude which it would be pusillanimous to forget, or to fail to 
 return in heaping measures of assistance and benefaction." 
 Turning, then, to the present condition of Greece, he painted 
 in pathetic colors her martyrdoms and sufferings, and urged 
 the people, almost in agonizing tones, to rush to her rescue 
 and relief. 
 
 Mr. Bryant did not take his friend s advice in regard to a 
 long poem ; but what he did set about, strange to say, was a 
 farce intended for the stage. It is uncertain whether he had 
 ever seen a play ; and his genius, though not devoid of a sense 
 of humor, was hardly of a comic cast. Yet he determined to 
 try it in that vein. A duel having been recently achieved by 
 two Southern Hotspurs, under preliminaries and conditions 
 more wiredrawn than even Touchstone s catalogue of the de 
 grees of courtly punctilio, he thought it presented an admira 
 ble opportunity for bringing the practice of duelling itself, still 
 
1 88 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 
 popular in nearly all parts of the country, into deserved ridi 
 cule. He therefore tried to expose it to irresistible laughter. 
 Of this piece, called " The Heroes," one must say, as Brummel 
 said of his cravats, " These are our failures." The situations 
 were perhaps funny enough ; the dialogue was brisk with rep 
 artee, and the characters not unamusing in their mock-heroic 
 eloquence and attitudes. But, as a whole, it was illy adapted 
 to representation. His good friend, Charles Sedgwick, to 
 whom the play was communicated, like Lord Burleigh, shook 
 his dubious locks. He thought the satire effective, but doubt 
 ed whether the jokes and squibs would be appreciated, owing 
 to lapse of time. Nevertheless, he was willing to submit the 
 matter to his brother Henry, who, because he lived in New 
 York, was supposed to be a better judge, and it was sent to 
 him for decision. The arbitrator gave no encouragement 
 whatever to the aspiring dramatist.* But the incident, small 
 in itself, had important effects. Mr. Henry Sedgwick saw 
 enough in the sketch to make him think that, if Mr. Bryant 
 would remove to the city, he might, perhaps, run a successful 
 career as a writer for magazines. Accordingly, in returning 
 the farce, he urged a consideration of the subject with some 
 degree of earnestness. "The time," he wrote, "is peculiarly 
 propitious ; the Athenseum, just instituted " (a library and read 
 ing-room since merged, I think, in the Society Library), "is 
 exciting a sort of literary rage, and it is proposed to set up a 
 journal in connection with it. Besides, The Atlantic Maga 
 zine, which has pined till recently, is beginning to revive in 
 the hands of Henry J. Anderson, who has a taste or whim for 
 editorship, and he unquestionably needs assistance. Bliss & 
 White, his publishers, are liberal gentlemen; they pay him 
 
 * " I send you a letter from New York about the farce," wrote Charles Sedgwick. 
 " Happily for me, you are too well acquainted with the opinions of the Sedgwick 
 tribe to take in dudgeon Mr. Harry s free sayings about it. To tell you the truth, 
 I was rather amused by his surprise at seeing a farce written by you, and by his 
 comparisons on the subject, and, as I could send you his letter easier than tell what 
 he said, I do so." 
 
A TRIP TO NEW YORK. 189 
 
 $500 a year, and authorize an expenditure of $500 more. Any 
 deficiencies of salary, moreover," Mr. Sedgwick adds, " may 
 be eked out by teaching foreigners, of whom there are many 
 in New York, eager to learn our language and literature. In 
 short, it would be strange if you could not succeed where 
 anybody and everything succeeds." The prospects thus pre 
 sented, it must be confessed, were not brilliant or alluring, but 
 Mr. Sedgwick s zeal was sufficiently persuasive to induce 
 Mr. Bryant to make a flying visit to the metropolis on a 
 prospecting tour, as the miners would say. Writing to his 
 wife of his arrival, under date of New York, April 24, 1824, 
 he says nothing of his objects, yet glances at a few note 
 worthy persons : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRANCES: I have, on the whole, made up my mind 
 not to come home this week. The weather has been so bad that I 
 have seen little of the city as yet, and, as there is no knowing when I 
 shall be here again, I think I had better take time to look about me 
 before I leave the place. ... I dined yesterday at Mr. Robert Sedg 
 wick s in a company of authors Mr. Cooper, the novelist ; Mr. Hal- 
 leek, author of Fanny ; Mr. Sands, author of Yamoyden ; Mr. 
 Johnson, the reporter (of the Court of Appeals), and some other lit 
 erary gentlemen. Mr. Cooper engrossed the whole conversation, and 
 seems a little giddy with the great success his works have met with. 
 Hier, au soir nous allames, Mons. Ives et mot, chez une famille Fran- 
 faise, ou nous jouames an whist ct par lames Fran^aise tout le temps* 1 . . . 
 I got in on Sunday morning at five o clock, and heard two sermons 
 from Parson Ware, and very good ones too. Tuesday we had Sparks, 
 editor of the North American Review, to dine with us a man of 
 very agreeable manners ; he was on his way to Boston from Balti 
 more. Please to tell Dr. Leavenworth, if I do not get home before 
 Monday, to make my apology to the world, and get somebody to take 
 down the votes for me f and make the proper memorandums. Good- 
 
 * These scraps of French hide no secrets, and are retained only to show a habit, 
 which Mr. Bryant long followed, of writing a part of his familiar notes to his family 
 in the language which they happened to be learning at the time. 
 
 f I. e., as town clerk. 
 
190 
 
 THE LA W ABANDONED. 
 
 by Baisez la petite Fanchette pour moi and give my regards to the 
 family. Your affectionate husband, 
 
 "WM. C. BRYANT." 
 
 It was to this visit, doubtless, Miss C. M. Sedgwick refers 
 in a letter from New York to her brother Charles at Lenox : * 
 
 " We have had a great deal of pleasure," she says, " from a glimpse 
 of Bryant. I never saw him so happy, nor half so agreeable. I think 
 he is very much animated with his prospects. Heaven grant that 
 they may be more than realized. I sometimes feel some misgivings 
 about it ; but I think it is impossible that, in the increasing demand 
 for native literature, a man of his resources, who has justly the first 
 reputation, should not be able to command a competency. He has 
 good sense, too, good judgment, and moderation, and never was a 
 man blessed in a warmer friend than he has in Harry ; and besides 
 Harry there are many persons here who enter warmly into his cause. 
 He seems so modest that every one is eager to prove to him the 
 merit of which he is unconscious. I wish you had seen him last even 
 ing. Mrs. Nicholas was here, and half a dozen gentlemen. She was 
 ambitious to recite before Bryant. She was very becomingly dressed 
 for the grand ball to which she was going, and, wrought up to the 
 highest pitch of excitement, she recited her favorite pieces better than 
 I have ever heard her, and concluded the whole, without request or 
 any note of preparation, with The Waterfowl* and Thanatopsis. 
 Bryant s face * brightened all over, was one gleam of light, and, I am 
 certain, at the moment he felt the ecstasy of a poet." 
 
 Without abandoning his profession, on his return from this 
 visit he devoted himself to literary work with more earnest 
 ness than he had ever before displayed. The " North Ameri 
 can," having rejected a critique of his on the " Idle Man," was 
 closed to him ; f but a new field had been opened by the timely 
 
 * This letter is dated in February, 1822 (" Life and Letters of C. M. Sedgwick," 
 by Mary E. Dewey) ; but I can find no evidence of Mr. Bryant s having been in 
 New York during that year. 
 
 f Mr. Phillips having invited him to write a review of the book, he complied. 
 But in the interval, and before his article arrived, the editorship of the Review was 
 
A REJECTED ARTICLE. ! 91 
 
 establishment "in Boston of the " United States Literary Ga 
 zette," a periodical conducted by a young lawyer of a liter 
 ary turn, since known as the venerable Judge Theophilus Par 
 sons, who earnestly solicited his aid.* He began to write for 
 him in the latter part of 1823, and continued to write through 
 the year 1824, until some time in 1825. It proved the time of 
 his most prolific poetic effort. Between twenty and thirty 
 poems were then produced, the names of which alone suggest 
 the rare value of his collaboration. They were " The Massacre 
 at Scio," " Rizpah," " The Rivulet," " March," " The Old Man s 
 Funeral," " Sonnet to - ," "An Indian Story," " Summer 
 Wind," "An Indian at the Burial-Place of his Fathers," the 
 song called " The Lover s Lessons," " Monument Mountain," 
 the " Hymn of the Waldenses," " After a Tempest," " Au 
 tumn Woods," " Mutation," " November," " Song of the Greek 
 Amazon," " To a Cloud," " The Murdered Traveller," " Hymn 
 to the North Star," " The Lapse of Time," "The Song of the 
 Stars," and the " Forest Hymn." Never before had so many 
 bits of verse of equal excellence been contributed to the same 
 periodical within the same limits of time. They show that 
 the writer s monotonous drudgery, " scrawling strange words 
 with a barbarous pen," had not dimmed his eyes to the deli 
 cate beauties of Nature, nor abated the force of his imagina 
 tion. In the " March," " The Rivulet," " Monument Mount 
 ain," " Autumn Woods," "After a Tempest," and the "Forest 
 Hymn," we have some of the finest work of his life, equal to 
 the best in the little volume of 1821, and hardly surpassed in 
 
 changed. It passed into the hands of Mr. Alexander and Edward Everett, gentlemen 
 of fine scholarship and taste, but who, adhering still to the classic English models of 
 the Queen Anne period, were not admirers of either the opinions or style of Mr. 
 Dana. Mr. Dana s habitual study of the older English writers, and his warm admira 
 tion of Wordsworth and Coleridge, in spite of the arbitrary dicta of Jeffrey in the 
 "Edinburgh," put him somewhat in advance of his contemporaries. His pecu 
 liarities of thought and expression seemed strange and unnatural, if not affected, 
 then, although we should now regard them not only as perfectly natural, but as really 
 beautiful. 
 
 * Mr. Parsons died in 1882, after this was written. 
 
1 9 2 
 
 THE LA W ABANDONED. 
 
 later years. His principal theme is Nature, which he treats 
 as one whose mission it was to show an uncongenial world 
 what beauty lay concealed in our vast, uncouth, almost savage 
 wilds of woods and fields. But his enthusiasm for the Greeks 
 finds elegiac or lyrical vent now and then ; and the region in 
 which he lived, once the home of a powerful tribe of Indians, 
 whose solitary descendants wandered back at times, from their 
 new settlements toward the setting sun, to gaze upon the 
 graves of their race, suggested pathetic stories out of their 
 traditions.* Among these pieces there is one which has a deep 
 
 and tender personal meaning. It is the " Sonnet to ," his 
 
 sister, a dearly loved companion of earlier days, who was then 
 in the last stages of the disease of which the father had died a 
 few years before. She was a person of rare endowments and 
 sweetness of disposition, and well might he pray that 
 
 " death should come 
 Gently to one of gentle mould like thee, 
 As light winds wandering through groves of bloom 
 Detach the delicate blossoms from the tree." 
 
 She died in the twenty-second year of her age, and there 
 after the old familiar places wore a gloom for him, which, per 
 haps, inclined him more willingly to the change of residence 
 Mr. Sedgwick had suggested. The memory of this cherished 
 companion of his childhood he carried with him for years, as 
 may be seen in the allusive lines of " The Past," and of " The 
 Death of the Flowers." 
 
 The reader will be both amused and surprised to learn that, 
 when Mr. Bryant was asked to name the compensation he ex 
 pected for these writings, he fixed upon two dollars for each 
 piece, and seemed, says Judge Parsons, writing to me, abun 
 dantly satisfied with the terms. The publishers, however 
 (Messrs. Cummings, Hillard & Co.), appreciating the worth of 
 
 * The people of Stockbridge have erected a monument to the memory of the 
 Stockbridge tribe of Indians, who were the friends of their fathers. 
 
THE PAY FOR POETRY. 193 
 
 their contributor, offered him two hundred dollars a year for 
 an average of one hundred lines a month about sixteen and a 
 half cents a line expressing, at the same time, " their profound 
 regret that they were unable to offer a compensation more 
 adequate." Even this was more than he got by his book ; for 
 it appears, from accounts rendered him by Mr. Phillips two 
 years later, that since 1821 some seven hundred and fifty copies 
 had been printed, of which only two hundred and seventy were 
 sold, so that the profits of the author in five years, all expenses 
 told, amounted to just fifteen dollars, minus eight cents less 
 than two dollars for each of the pieces contained in the vol 
 ume.* 
 
 But if the pecuniary harvest was small, that of fame was 
 more considerable. The poetry of the " Gazette " attracted a 
 great deal of attention, so much so, indeed, that a volume en 
 titled " Miscellaneous Poems" f was made of it, and the " North 
 American " thought the publication of it a signal event in our 
 literary history.:): It is, perhaps, worthy of note that Mr. Bry 
 ant himself formed a high opinion of the poetry of the " Ga 
 zette " other than his own ; for, noticing it afterward in the 
 " New York Review," he said : " We do not know, of all the 
 numerous English periodical works, any one that has furnished 
 within the same time as much really beautiful poetry. We 
 might cite, in proof of this, the April Day, the Hymn of the 
 Moravian Nuns, and the Sunrise on the Hills/ by H. W. L. 
 (we know not who he is), or more particularly those exquisite 
 morccaux, True Greatness, The Soul of Song, The Grave 
 of the Patriots, and The Desolate City, by P., whom it would 
 be affectation not to recognize as Dr. Percival." The H. W. 
 
 * A gentleman met Mr. Bryant in a New York book-store a few years ago, and 
 said : " I have just bought the earliest edition of your poems, and gave twenty dollars 
 for it." " More, by a long shot," replied Mr. Bryant, "than I received for writing 
 the whole work." 
 
 f Boston : Cummings, Hillard & Co., and Harrison Gray, 1826. 
 
 \ " North American Review," vol. xxii, p. 43, 1826. 
 
 Vol. i, p. 289. 
 
 VOL. I. 14 
 
1 94 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 
 L., whom he did not know, then an undergraduate of Bowdoin 
 College, has since come to be pretty well known as Mr. Henry 
 W. Longfellow. 
 
 Mr. Dana was so ardent a friend that he lost no opportu 
 nity in urging Mr. Bryant to protracted effort. Writing from 
 Cambridge, July 4, 1824, he says: 
 
 " .... So much by way of preface. And now to my object 
 which is, to learn from you what you have done, without the bar, be 
 sides the little you have written for Parsons. I shall expect from you 
 a full and honest account of yourself. Your * Rivulet was delicate 
 and tender and beautiful ; but it sometimes ran so near Green River 
 that they mingled their murmurings. I suppose Green River was 
 not at all in your mind, and that you have not been aware of this ? I 
 doubt whether it is well for the mind to work much in this way to 
 write from some occasional thought, or chance object. However 
 beautiful what it produces may be, it is not called upon for the exer 
 cise of all its strength ; it acts in detachments. But, if it is about un 
 dertaking a great work, there is a plan to be sketched out on a large 
 scale. The powers are all astir gathering from abroad, out of all 
 quarters. Then there is such a movement within such a thronging 
 of events and images, and such a press of thoughts and feelings that, 
 if a man had time to look into himself, he would be as much in won 
 der at the change there as at the sight of a suddenly peopled desert. 
 A man does not feel himself completely till he grapples with some 
 thing that will hold him a tug. . . . 
 
 " Two gentlemen, lately from England, report that Cooper is in 
 high snuff there. They say he ranks at least with Irving, and that no 
 works meet with a quicker sale. I was sorry on Phillips s account to 
 see such a review of * The Pilot. It can do no harm to Cooper; he 
 is to the windward of the American reviewers, at least. It seemed to 
 me altogether unworthy of Phillips in point of ability. I am afraid he 
 meant to steer a middle course between Cooper s petty enemies and 
 those who have the good sense and the fairness to relish him and 
 speak well of him. I had no thought of running on to this length. 
 Channing, Allston, and my brother desire to be remembered to you, 
 and hope to hear of you shortly through me." 
 
A LONG POEM DECLINED. 
 
 195 
 
 Mr. Bryant answers, July 8th : 
 
 ". . . You inquire whether I have written anything except what I 
 have furnished to Parsons. Nothing at all. I made an engagement 
 with him with a view, in the first place, to earn something in addition 
 to the emoluments of my profession, which, as you may suppose, are 
 not very ample, and, in the second place, to keep my hand in, for I was 
 very near discontinuing entirely the writing of verses. As for setting 
 myself about the great work you mention, I know you make the sug 
 gestion in great personal kindness toward myself, and I cannot suffi 
 ciently express my sense of that unwearied good-will which has more 
 than once called my attention to this subject. But I feel reluctant to 
 undertake such a thing for several reasons. In the first place, a pro 
 ject of that sort on my hands would be apt to make me abstracted, 
 impatient of business, and forgetful of my professional engagements, 
 and my literary experience has taught me that it is to my profession 
 alone that I can look for the steady means of supplying the wants of 
 the day. In the second place, I am lazy. In the third place, I am 
 deterred by the difficulty of finding a proper subject. I began last 
 winter to write a narrative poem, which I meant should be a little 
 longer than any I had already composed ; but finding that would turn 
 out at last a poor story about a Spectre Ship, and that the tradition 
 on which I had founded it had already been made use of by Irving, 
 I gave it up. I fancy that it is of some importance to the success of 
 a work that the subject should be happily chosen. The only poems 
 that have any currency at present are of a narrative kind light stories, 
 in which love is a principal ingredient. Nobody writes epic, and no 
 body reads didactic poems, and as for dramatic poems, they are out 
 of the question. In this uncertainty, what is to be done? It is a 
 great misfortune to write what everybody calls frivolous, and a still 
 greater to write what nobody can read. 
 
 " I am glad to hear that Miss Sedgwick s new novel, * Redwood, * 
 finds so much favor with your friends, and I think that when you have 
 read it you will call it a good book. What you tell me of the success 
 of our countryman, Cooper, in England, is an omen of good things. I 
 hope it is the breaking of a bright day for American literature, the 
 
 * It was dedicated to Mr. Bryant. 
 
196 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 
 glory and gladness of which shall call you again from your retire 
 ment." 
 
 Again, on the i6th of November, 1824, Mr. Dana recurs to 
 the subject : 
 
 " Cooper holds you in great admiration. G. C. Verplanck talked 
 about you, too. So far as I could discover in a two days visit in the 
 city, you are mighty popular. They all say what I have said to you 
 till I begin to think myself impertinent that you must write a longer 
 poem than you have yet written. ... A poem of fair length, with se 
 lections from what you furnished Parsons (which he can t refuse you, 
 as you work dog cheap), together with the contents of your little vol 
 ume, and the addition of two or three small pieces never before pub 
 lished, will make the world look upon you as a man of quite a comely 
 size and port when you issue forth again. I should think you would 
 find very little difficulty in making yourself, abroad as well as at home, 
 a man of consequence, as you seemed from your letter to me to be 
 doubting what steed to mount. This much I will say : Mount what 
 one you may, you will put such spirit into him that you will soon say, 
 in the words of him who will never speak more, The horse doth feel 
 his rider. When you have got well agoing, joy me with the news 
 thereof." 
 
 In another letter Dana takes occasion to inform him that 
 he is getting a name in England. In " Blackwood s Magazine " 
 for June, he says, referring to a criticism already cited, " is a 
 notice (slim enough, to be sure) of Roscoe s * Selections of 
 American Poetry ; and they seem to be fully aware that you 
 are another sort of a man from those bound up with you. 
 They say that if you are a young man you w T ill undoubtedly 
 take your rank with their leading poets. This is a good deal 
 for Blackwood to say of any American." Phillips was of opin 
 ion, also, that this faint notice of him abroad had produced 
 great effect on the currents of domestic opinion. " Many of 
 your countrymen," he remarks, " deemed you inferior to Per- 
 cival ; my poor praise in the North American they thought 
 an extravagant eulogium ; but, now that you have been repro- 
 
THE SPECTRE SHIP. 
 
 I 97 
 
 duccd by Roscoe in England, the question is settled, and they 
 have become your most decided admirers." * 
 
 The narrative poem of the " Spectre Ship," mentioned in 
 the letter of July 8th, is still partly extant in manuscript. It is 
 a story founded upon the tradition told by Cotton Mather, in 
 his " Magnalia Christi," of a vessel which, in the time of the 
 Pilgrims, sailed from New Haven, having a large body of re 
 turning emigrants on board, but which was never heard of 
 again.f The interest of it was made to hang, as far as I can 
 gather from the indications of the fragments, on the adven 
 tures of a young lover who leaves his orphan sweetheart be 
 hind him to suffer the various calamities of Indian captivity on 
 shore, while he suffers from the no less barbarous treacheries 
 of the sea, until they are at length restored to each other s 
 arms by some of those miraculous agencies known to novelists 
 and poets. In what way he was going to weave the supersti 
 tious element into his story does not appear. Nevertheless, the 
 scheme gave ample scope for descriptions of forest and sea, in 
 calm and storm, and was suggestive of incidents as romantic 
 as any of those that Scott has immortalized. Mr. Bryant, how 
 ever, did not carry his execution of it beyond a few hundred 
 lines, of which it may be repeated what has been already said 
 of his projected Indian tale, that the descriptive parts overbal 
 ance the narrative. He could tell a simple story well, as he 
 has since proved by " Sella " and " The Little People of the 
 Snow," but whether he was equal to the dramatic exigencies 
 of a sustained and complicated plot admits of some doubt. 
 His genius was meditative, not epical ; and while we possess 
 such poems as " The Fountain," " The Rain-Dream," " Among 
 
 * Narrowness or provincialism of judgment was then one of the most formidable 
 obstacles in the way of our native writers, and I am not sure that we are yet wholly 
 free from the impediment. 
 
 f Mr. Longfellow has some verses on the same subject, beginning : 
 " In Mather s Magnalia Christi 
 
 Of the old colonial time, 
 You will find in prose the legend 
 Which is here set down in rhyme." 
 
I 9 8 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 
 the Trees," " The Night Journey of a River," and others of 
 the kind, we may easily forgive him his want of ambition or 
 ability to reach success in other walks of his art. 
 
 Many letters of this time show Mr. Bryant s incessant ac 
 tivity in services to other writers. Charles Sedgwick thanks 
 him gratefully for his review of Miss Sedgwick s " Redwood," 
 which, as it was inscribed to him, he only undertook at the ur 
 gent request of Mr. Jared Sparks, now become the editor of 
 the " North American." * Mr. Thomas J. Upham, since dis 
 tinguished as a metaphysician, but then aspiring to be a poet, 
 submitted his first effusions to Mr. Bryant s correcting hand. 
 He revised in manuscript, also, the poems of Henry Pickering, 
 author of " The Ruins of Paestum," and afterward made them 
 the subject of a careful notice in the "North American." f 
 James T. Hillhouse, a writer who had before come into note 
 at home and abroad, thought it advisable to send the manu 
 script of " Percy s Masque " to him to be looked over. " Be 
 ing resolved," Mr. Hillhouse wrote, " to venture once more 
 into the perilous field of dramatic poetry, I am anxious that 
 my weapons of warfare should be inspected and approved by 
 skilful eyes." Mr. Bryant read the poem with care, and com 
 mended it to public favor in an elaborate review. : Besides 
 these, many minor writers, ambitious to avail themselves of 
 his taste and judgment, enclosed their manuscripts to him, so 
 liciting his opinion, and sometimes hinting that they would not 
 be offended if he should rewrite the weaker parts. He was pa 
 tient and good natured with all, and often at pains to return 
 elaborate corrections and advices. 
 
 In these labors he was actuated by an urgent desire to help 
 the cause of American letters. " We should ill fulfil," he said, 
 " the task we have undertaken (as reviewers) if we did not oc 
 casionally pause, amid our severer labors, to notice the early 
 blossoms Avhich the spring-time of our literature is calling up 
 along our path." " It is a matter of no small gratification," he 
 
 * " North American Review," No. n, p. 384. f No. 19, p. 42. \ No. 20, p. 245. 
 
INTEREST IN AMERICAN LETTERS. 
 
 goes on to say, " in watching the progress of American poetry, 
 to see it assuming something of an original and national char 
 acter to see the embalmed body that lately was worshipped as 
 a nymph, symmetrical, indeed, but cold, lifeless, and without 
 human emotion, laid quietly in the grave, and a new-born be 
 ing arise, full of youth and life, though sometimes awkwardly 
 putting forth her strength, and sometimes affected in her at 
 tempts at gracefulness, and decking herself, in infantile fond 
 ness, with a profusion of ornaments and flowers." 
 
 As the books he criticised have largely passed away, so his 
 criticisms of them have lost their interest for us now, yet they 
 furnish, incidentally, hints of the writer s opinions on some 
 topics connected with his art that may be pondered with 
 profit. Thus, in the notice of " The Ruins of Paestum," we dis 
 cover what he regarded as the besetting fault of the writers of 
 that day haste ; haste in composition, and haste in rushing be 
 fore the public. " No kind of composition," he remarks, " re 
 quires a more perfect abstraction of mind than poetry, or a 
 more intense and vigorous exertion of the faculties, and he 
 who covets its rewards cannot dispense with its discipline. 
 Improvisators have never produced a lasting work. When 
 Parnassus is to be scaled, he only reaches the summit who 
 boldly climbs its heights through brambles and briers, and 
 fearless of precipices, and not he who sidles safely and slowly 
 along circuitous paths, taking his ease when he will." Again, 
 he remarks that to fly into print before one has given the last 
 touches to his work, and made it as good as he is able, " offends 
 decorum as much as a gentleman would who should walk into 
 an assembly with a long beard, an unbrushed coat, and a dirty 
 pair of boots." Similarly, in the review of " Redwood," we 
 find a suggestive discussion of the adaptation of American life 
 to the purposes of the novelist ; and in that of " Hadad," * a 
 little later, some wise thoughts on the propriety of using scenes 
 and characters from Scripture as themes for dramatic treat- 
 
 * " New York Review," vol. i, p. I. 
 
200 THE LA W ABANDONED. 
 
 ment, illustrating his conclusions by references to Milton, Cow- 
 ley, Byron, Moore, Montgomery, Cumberland, Dwight, and 
 Hannah More. 
 
 It is to be inferred, from the persistency as well as variety 
 of his literary work at this time, that Mr. Bryant was verging 
 more and more toward a definite committal of himself to lit 
 erature as a vocation. He did not neglect his practice of law ; 
 on the contrary, his exertions were greater, and his reputation 
 as a lawyer was growing. He was called to argue cases at 
 Northampton, at New Haven, and before the Supreme Court 
 at Boston.* None the less, " Green River " shows that his 
 heart was not in it ; he wanted to get away from the " sons 
 of strife, subtle and loud " ; and the letters that passed be 
 tween himself and several intimate friends now turn mainly 
 upon his wish to quit it all forever. Mr. Phillips rebukes 
 him frankly for his desire to abandon a career in which suc 
 cess is so entirely assured. Mr. Charles Sedgwick is more 
 guarded, but proposes that he should go to New York to 
 see what can be done there. In a letter of November 4, 1824, 
 he says : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have thought a great deal of your project since 
 court. The law is a hag, I know, wearing the wrinkled visage of an 
 tiquity, toward which you can feel no complacency. Though it 
 comes to us fraught with the pretended wisdom of ages, it wears an 
 ugly drapery of forms, and the principles of virtue and the simple 
 perceptions of truth are so involved in clouds of mystical learning 
 and nonsense that the finest mind must needs grope in obscurity and 
 be clogged with difficulties. Besides, there are tricks in practice 
 which perpetually provoke disgust. The end, indeed, may be good, 
 and success certain, and eminence, too, but the process is perplexing, 
 and the way not pleasant. I can not bear, however, to have you quit 
 the profession, for many weighty personal reasons ; and I feel a great 
 interest that you should prove that your genius which delights the 
 
 * A late Senator of the United States from Connecticut, Mr. Truman Smith, 
 writes me that he was associated with Mr. Bryant in the conduct of an important trial 
 at New Haven, in which he evinced the very highest learning, acumen, and assiduity. 
 
THE LAST CASE IN LAW. 2 Ql 
 
 world can surmount the barriers of the least inviting and most labori 
 ous profession. Still I do not know how you ought to decide. If I 
 had your mind and a very prevailing desire for literary occupations, I 
 should run the hazard of indulging it. If you do this, I hope, before 
 you form any definite plan, you will go to New York and see what 
 you can find there worthy of your notice. I do not know how useful 
 my brothers may render themselves in this way, but of one thing I 
 can assure you : neither of them will be wanting in that zeal which 
 characterizes a friend. Whenever and whatever you decide, may 
 God bless you. Yours, affectionately, 
 
 "C. S." 
 
 Whether he went to New York in compliance with this ad 
 vice is not told ; but Phillips s continued expostulations make 
 it clear that his purpose is at last fixed. He will turn his back 
 upon Themis, and be henceforth constant to the Muses. In 
 speaking of the reasons of this change later in life, Mr. Bryant 
 averred that he could never make up his mind to undertake a 
 cause, of the rigid and entire justice of which he was not fully 
 persuaded ; and that, with such feelings, the law afforded him 
 little prospect of emolument. He further alleged that the de 
 cisions of the courts were not in accordance with equity, citing 
 in proof one of the last cases in which he was employed. It 
 seems that a person named Tobey had said of another person 
 named Bloss that he had burned down his own house to se 
 cure the insurance money. Tobey, on being prosecuted for 
 slander, Mr. Bryant acting as attorney for the prosecution, 
 was mulcted some five hundred dollars ; but on an appeal from 
 the lower courts to the Supreme Court, it was decided, for 
 mainly technical reasons, that, as a man has a right to do as 
 he pleases with his own, the accusation was not slanderous.* 
 " Thus, by a piece of pure chicane in a case the merits of 
 
 * The case is reported in 2cl Pickering, Massachusetts Reports, p. 320. Chief 
 Justice Parson s decision is thus summarized : "Simply to burn one s store is not un 
 lawful, and the words, He burnt his store or then is no doubt in my mind that he 
 burned his own store, he "would not have got his goods insured if he had not meant to 
 burn it, or a general allegation that the defendant charged the plaintiff with having 
 
202 THE LA W ABANDONED. 
 
 which were with my client, and which were perfectly under 
 stood by the parties, the court, the jury, and everybody who 
 heard the trial, or heard of it my client was turned out of 
 court, after the jury had awarded him damages and so de 
 prived of what they intended he should receive." Disgusted, 
 therefore, alike by his non-success and the reason of it, he 
 flung up his briefs and turned his looks elsewhere.* His long 
 ings, as we have seen, had been for Boston, the undoubted lit 
 erary centre of the time, where Allston, Pierpont, Sprague, and 
 others were diffusing a mild poetic radiance over the better 
 achievements of learning and eloquence. But the pivot was 
 now shifting. New York already illustrated by Irving and 
 Cooper harbored some sparkling wits in the persons of Hal- 
 leek, Drake, Verplanck, and Sands. Yet it was a desperate 
 venture to undertake to live by literature in its existing state. 
 Irving and Cooper were our only successful professional au 
 thors, and both of them possessed some little hereditary for 
 tune. Verplanck and Sands were lawyers, and Halleck was 
 in a mercantile business. What promise was there for a writer 
 of poetry and that poetry of a refined, not popular, cast in a 
 great commercial town ? 
 
 There are still living a few persons who remember Mr. 
 Bryant in the Great Barrington days, f and I have obtained 
 from them, by letter or personal communication, some remi 
 niscences of the impression he made upon his village contempo 
 raries. Mr. Leavenworth, who would otherwise have been 
 
 wilfully and maliciously burnt his own store, will not sustain an action for slander 
 without a colloquium or averment setting forth such circumstances as would render 
 such burning unlawful, and that the words were spoken of such circumstances ; and 
 the want of such colloquium will not be cured by an innuendo." 
 
 * See, " I broke the Spell that held me long." Poetical Works, vol. i, p. 99. 
 
 f These are Mr. E. W. Leavenworth, former member of Congress from the Syra 
 cuse district, in whose father s house Mr. Bryant boarded, and who studied law for 
 a short time in his office ; Mrs. George Pynchon, nee Rossiter, who saw him in so 
 ciety ; Colonel Ralph Taylor, for a while his room-mate ; Mr. Isaac Seeley, his suc 
 cessor as town clerk ; Mr. George Hains, whom, as justice of the peace, he married 
 to Miss Hannah Avery ; and Mr. Edward P. Woodward and wife. 
 
VILLAGE OPINIONS. 203 
 
 our best witness, was too young 1 to remember much of him ; 
 but he distinctly recalls his solitary, brooding habits, and his 
 dislike of his occupation ; his love of the thickets along Green 
 River and the Housatonic ; and his reticent, almost austere 
 manner with strangers, contrasted with his cheerful, entertain 
 ing, joyous way among his friends. Mrs. Pynchon relates that 
 he was simple and scrupulously neat in his dress, wearing com 
 monly blue cloth made in city fashion, which to rustic taste 
 seemed a little dandified. Occasionally he attended evening 
 parties, and took part in games and frolics, but was never de 
 monstrative, and much less hilarious. The young women liked 
 his bright eyes and clustering light-brown hair, and " set their 
 caps for him " ; but he once gave them great offence by saying 
 that " farmers daughters always walked as if they were carry 
 ing swill-pails " for which ungracious speech, however, he 
 made amends by marrying a farmer s daughter in the end. 
 He drank wine now and then, but was rigidly temperate in 
 both eating and drinking, making his diet chiefly of fruits and 
 vegetables, and his beverages of milk and water. " A more 
 perfect gentleman," said one good lady, "never existed; and 
 yet he had a strange fondness for talking with queer and com 
 mon people farmers, woodmen, and stage-drivers. He would 
 crack his jokes with them at any time, and yet seemed to avoid 
 more respectable people." Colonel Taylor says he liked to 
 wander most of anything, and when he met an acquaintance 
 his first salutation was, " Come, what say you for a stroll " 
 which stroll, once begun, was apt to last for the greater part 
 of the day. " He was a passionate botanist," adds the same 
 authority ; " knew the name of every tree, flower, and spire of 
 grass; and was curious also about the antiquities of every 
 place, and yet when you told him anything he seemed to know 
 it all before. He relished a jest heartily even broad jokes got 
 off some of his own, and his laugh, when he did laugh, began 
 with a queer chuckle, spread gradually over the whole face, 
 and finally shook him all over like an ague." " He was com 
 monly gentle, courteous, and polite ; but he allowed of no fa- 
 
204 THE LAW ABANDONED. 
 
 milarities ; and impertinence or vulgarism he rebuked on the 
 spot, no matter who the offender. Once, when some young 
 men, a little sot with liquor, were teasing another somewhat 
 more intoxicated than themselves, he reproached them for 
 their inebriety and cruelty, predicting that they would all 
 come to a bad end ; and every one of them did die a drunkard." 
 In court he often lost his self-control when provoked by ad 
 versaries ; and on one occasion a neighbor met him bouncing 
 out of the door, almost white with rage, and exclaiming : " If 
 old Whiting says that again, I will thrash him within an inch 
 of his life." " The fun of this was," says Colonel Taylor, " that 
 while Mr. Bryant was spare, almost diminutive in size, the 
 other fellow, General Whiting, was quite a giant. Little as he 
 was, however, he was fearless, and would have undertaken, 
 and done it, too, if he liked." " He was punctual in going to 
 church, owning half a pew in the Congregational Church, but 
 he was terribly prone to pick the sermons all to pieces." 
 
 As a poet he was scarcely known to his neighbors until he 
 had gone up to Cambridge to deliver his Phi Beta Kappa ad 
 dress. Even then he was not without rivals for village fame. 
 One of these, David Hitchcock, a cobbler, whose " Shade of 
 Plato" and "Social Monitor" may yet be seen in type,* used 
 to pay, it is said, for his corn and potatoes with his doggerel. 
 Another, Emanuel Hodget, like Homer, sang his verses through 
 the streets. Meeting Mr. Bryant one day, he accosted him 
 thus : " Well, Squire Bryant, they say you are a poet like me ; 
 is that so? I ve never heerd any of your varses; would you 
 like one of mine ? Here goes : 
 
 1 Squire Bryant is a man so bold 
 He scorns to be controlled ; 
 And keeps his books under his arm, 
 For fear they may be sold. 
 
 Mr. Bryant used to repeat this effusion with great glee ; 
 but many of his listeners could not understand why he laughed 
 
 * They were printed in thin volumes at Stockb ridge, in 1812. 
 
THE DEATH OF BYRON. 
 
 205 
 
 at it so much. One among them, at least, was an exception, a 
 French officer of Napoleon s army, and a friend of Lafayette, 
 named Bouton, who gave him lessons in French and fencing, 
 and became a most sincere and admiring friend. They corre 
 sponded in French when Bouton removed to another village, 
 and in one of the latter s letters is this remonstrance : " Ah, my 
 good friend, why dost thou despair because the fickle jade For 
 tune is not kind to thee? Thou shouldst snap thy fingers at her 
 as I do. Hast thou not an amiable wife, a lovely child, and tal 
 ents to win thee a name ? Yes, Europe may fondle England s 
 spoiled child of genius (Byron), but posterity will prize thee 
 more than him " a sagacious forecast, not flattery, if I may 
 judge from the prevailing tone of the old soldier s epistles. 
 Byron was then uppermost in everybody s mind, and it is told 
 of Mr. Bryant that once as he approached a group of village 
 youths one of them exclaimed : " See Bryant ; because he is a 
 poet he wears his shirt-collar turned over in imitation of 
 Byron ! " " Silence, sir ! " was the poet s only response ; " poor 
 Byron is now no more," and his eyes moistened as he spoke. 
 Judging by his sentiments in after years, he no doubt dis 
 liked the loose, cynical, and sophisticated man ; but, like every 
 one who lived from 1816 to 1824, he could not but feel the 
 power and the passion of the bard, and his heart might well 
 have softened at the thought of a career so young, so brilliant, 
 so wasted, for which the redeeming future was now suddenly 
 closed forever.* 
 
 * Mr. Bigelow, in his memorial address to the Century Club, said : " I don t re 
 member to have heard him ever cite a line or an opinion of Byron, who was never 
 one of his favorites. Some twenty-five or thirty years ago a person claiming to be a 
 son of the poet appeared in New York with some poems and letters which he said 
 had been written and given him by Byron, and for which he sought to find a market 
 among our publishers. I spoke of the matter one day to Bryant, and his reply sur 
 prised me more than it would have done after my opinions of Byron were more set 
 tled. Looking up with an expression which implied more than he uttered, he said : 
 I think we have poems enough of Byron already. " No less, in the anthology 
 which he supervised, there are more quotations from Byron than from any other 
 contemporary poet. 
 
CHAPTER ELEVENTH. 
 
 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 A. D. 1825, 1826. 
 
 MR. BRYANT visited New York in both January and Feb 
 ruary, 1825, a " literary adventurer," as he describes himself.* 
 His route was by stage to Hartford, where he expected to 
 take a steamer, but, as no steamer was ready to sail, he con 
 tinued by stage, and reached the city after a journey of three 
 days and a night. In his first letter to his wife, announcing his 
 arrival, he says : " I have no leisure to report progress as to 
 my projects ; but I will do the best I can while I am here, and 
 decide as soon as possible whether to remain or not. Sedg- 
 wick is constantly occupied with my affairs." 
 
 New York, at the time of these visits, was a considerable 
 city, but hardly yet the metropolis. Boston surpassed it in 
 literary repute, and Philadelphia vied with it in commercial 
 activity. The completion of the Erie Canal, however, cele 
 brated but a year before by grand illuminations and parades, 
 having opened trade to the boundless prairies of the West, 
 was giving it a start to supremacy. As yet its population did 
 not exceed a hundred and fifty thousand souls. A line drawn 
 from Catharine Street, on the East River, along Canal Street 
 to the Hudson River, would have formed the northern bound 
 ary of the thickly settled parts. Broadway, the principal thor 
 oughfare, was built up as far as Canal Street ; beyond that to 
 Prince Street only a few straggling houses were to be seen, 
 
 * Address on G. C. Verplanck. 
 
NEW YORK IN 1825. 
 
 and then came orchards and fields. I can myself remember to 
 have played as a boy on a stone bridge that crossed a stream 
 in Canal Street coming from the Kolch, a considerable pond 
 near the site of the present Tombs, and to have hesitated in 
 going beyond it, in dread of imaginary savages, or of the 
 press gangs that stole little boys and carried them to sea. 
 Lispenard s meadows, near by, had just been filled up and 
 graded for building lots. Greenwich village, a few miles out, 
 was a summer resort and place of refuge when the yellow 
 fever raged, as it often did in the overcrowded districts. A 
 favorite suburban walk was along the bank of the North 
 River, as far as the State prison, at the foot of Amos Street, 
 overlooking the harbor with its stately ships and its steam 
 boats, still somewhat of a novelty. Dr. Hosach s Botanic 
 Garden, covering some twenty acres of ground (near Forty- 
 seventh Street), and filled with rare plants, native and exotic, 
 was generally an attractive place. 
 
 Within the city the streets were narrow, and about as dirty 
 as they have ever since remained, but they were then fre 
 quented by loose pigs, were badly lighted by rusty oil lamps, 
 and poorly watched by constables in huge capes and leather 
 caps. Some few were exceptionally fringed with trees elms, 
 plane, and catalpas and the park, finely shaded, was the play 
 ground for children in the day-time, and a social gathering- 
 place for their elders in the evening. The richer and more 
 fashionable denizens lived around the Battery, and Maiden 
 Lane was the center of the more splendid shops and stores.* 
 
 More compact than now, the inhabitants were generally 
 more intimately acquainted with one another. Everybody 
 knew everybody, and everybody took part in what was going 
 on. The resources of enjoyment theatres, operas, concerts, 
 balls, and excursions were limited, but they were open to all. 
 
 * For many of these facts about the city I am indebted to a paper prepared for 
 me by my friend Chief Justice Daly, who speaks from his own personal recollections. 
 It is not the place, or I should avail myself more largely of his interesting communi 
 cation. 
 
208 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 Family visiting was common, so that it was easy to get into 
 " society " ; and the taverns were not so much frequented by 
 wayfarers as by residents, to whom they answered the purpose 
 of clubs and restaurants. Each one of them, in fact, had its 
 special circle of gossips and clever men. All the celebrities of 
 the professions, the stage, or of literature were there to be met 
 with ; and, seated at little tables on the well-sanded floor, with 
 pipes in their mouths, and jugs of punch at their elbows, they 
 discussed politics, books, play-actors, and the events of social 
 life. In one of these clubs, founded by Cooper, called the 
 Bread and Cheese Club, which met in Washington Hotel, on 
 the site of Stewart s late wholesale store, Mr. Bryant en 
 countered many of the distinguished men of the day James 
 Kent, Thomas Adclis Emmet, Edward D. Griffin, among the 
 lawyers ; President Duer, and Professors Renwick, McVickar, 
 Anthon, and Moore, of Columbia College ; the poets Percival, 
 Hillhouse, Halleck, and Sands; and the artists Vanderlyn, 
 Morse, Jarvis, and Dunlap. 
 
 He was, however, chiefly indebted to the brothers Sedg- 
 wick Henry and Robert, both men of high standing at the 
 bar for his social opportunities. " Their houses," he says,* 
 " were the resort of the best company in New York cultivated 
 men and women, literati, artists, and occasionally foreigners of 
 distinction. Here I often found Verplanck, who had shortly 
 before published his work on the Evidences of the Christian 
 Religion, and was then occupied in getting through the press 
 his able Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts. Here I met 
 the novelist J. Fenimore Cooper, who, however, soon after 
 had a difference with Robert Sedgwick, which put an end to 
 his intimacy with the family. At these houses I met Robert C. 
 Sands, the wit and poet, whose Yamoyden, written by him 
 in conjunction with James Wallis Eastburn, had just before 
 appeared ; and Hillhouse, author of Percy s Masque, and the 
 finer drama of Hadad, which he was then writing. Halleck, 
 
 * " Memoirs of Miss C. M. Sedgwick." 
 
THE SEDGIVICK BROTHERS. 
 
 209 
 
 then in the height of his poetical reputation, was among the 
 visitors, and Anthony Bleeker, who read everything that came 
 out, and sometimes wrote for the magazines, an amusing com 
 panion, always ready with his puns, of whom Miss Eliza Fenno, 
 before her marriage to Verplanck, in 1 8 1 1 , wrote that she had 
 gone into the country to take refuge from Anthony Bleeker s 
 puns. Here were frequently seen Morse, then an artist, uncon 
 scious of the renown which was yet to crown him as the author 
 of the most wonderful invention of the age ; and Cole, the 
 landscape painter, in the early promise of his genius. Here, 
 too, the clear, magnetic voice of Mrs. Nicholas was some 
 times heard reciting Hallcck s Marco Bozzaris, or one cf 
 Lockhart s ballads from the Spanish, to a spell-bound and 
 breathless audience." 
 
 " Henry D. Sedgwick was a philanthropist and reformer, 
 without the faults which too often make that class of persons 
 disagreeable. He was foremost in all worthy enterprises, but 
 did not fatigue people with them. He took a deep interest in 
 the project of reducing our statutes to a regular and intelligi 
 ble code, and wrote an able pamphlet in its favor. I remember 
 vividly the personal interest he took in one of the authors of 
 that code Benjamin F. Butler, then of Albany, and afterward, 
 under the administration of Jackson, Attorney-General of the 
 United States how much he was impressed with the purity 
 of his character and the singleness of his mind, and how much 
 we all admired him, on a visit which he made to New York, 
 then a young man, with finely-chiseled features, made a little 
 pale by study, and animated by an expression both of the 
 greatest intelligence and ingenuousness. Mr. Sedgwick was 
 warmly in favor of that change which has since been made in 
 our laws giving the wife the absolute disposal of her own 
 property the advantages of which he was fond of illustrating 
 by the marital law of Louisiana. He w r as a zealous friend of 
 universal freedom, and allowed no escaped slave from the 
 South to be sent back if he could prevent it. I remember go 
 ing with him on board a vessel just arrived from a Southern 
 
 TOL. I. 15 
 
2io "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 port, lying at a wharf in New York, in which it was said that 
 a colored man was detained in order to be sent back into slav 
 ery. We found no indications of the presence of any such 
 person, but, if we had, he would have been immediately liber 
 ated by a writ of habeas corpus." 
 
 Three days after his arrival in New York, February 2ist, 
 Mr. Bryant writes to his wife : 
 
 "Mv DEAR FRANCES: It will not be possible for me to set out 
 from here till Thursday next, which will bring me to Hudson on Fri 
 day afternoon. . . . My friends here are making some interest to ob 
 tain the approbation and patronage of the Athen?eum for a literary 
 paper to be established under my direction, and I think there is a 
 pretty good prospect that they will succeed. The Athenaeum at pres 
 ent is all the rage, and I think there is great probability q un journal 
 etabli sous ses auspices aurait une circulation fort ttendue* At all events, 
 I shall make the experiment. Mons. Hillhoues, Dr. Wainwright, 
 pre tre de Veglise Anglicane, Mom. Verplanck ct beaucoup d autres savans 
 de New York se sont interesse s pour moi dans ce projet, et fai a ce que je 
 pense, sujet d espere que mon attentat necJiouera pas. \ Baissez la petite 
 Fanchette pour moi. Ayez, je I ous prie, un soin particulier de votre saute" 
 et croyez moi. 
 
 " Pour la vie, 
 
 " Avec la dernier e passion, 
 
 " Votre ami, etc., 
 
 "WM. C. BRYANT." 
 
 The attempt did fail, for some reason or other. Mr. Bry 
 ant s reputation had preceded him, % and helped him tp ac- 
 
 * That a journal established under its auspices will have a wide circulation. 
 
 f Mr. Hillhouse, Dr. Wainwright, prelate of the English Church, Mr. Verplanck, 
 and many others are very much interested in my project, and I have reason to hope 
 that my attempt will not fail. 
 
 \ No less, a venerable lady informs me that at a great conversatione in the house 
 of one of the leaders of society, at which she was present, a gentleman read the " Wa 
 terfowl " from a newspaper slip, and no one present could tell him the name of the 
 author. So, Mr. Coleman, the editor of the " Evening Post," a sort of literary Aris- 
 tarchus, reprinted " Thanatopsis/ May n, 1824, with these remarks: "Hearing a 
 
EARLY UNITARIANISM. 2 \\ 
 
 quaintances, but it is possible that his religious opinions stood 
 somewhat in his way. The Unitarian sect, to which he be 
 longed, was small in numbers, and not in good odor with its 
 orthodox rivals. Its first society had been formed in a parlor 
 only a few years before, 1819, Mr. Edward Everett preaching 
 the first sermon, and a year later, when Dr. Channing came on 
 from Boston to address it, was refused admittance to any of 
 the usual places of religious meeting. At length the College 
 of Physicians and Surgeons opened a room to it, and thereby 
 stirred up a hornet s nest.* But whatever the hindrances, after 
 waiting several days, Mr. Bryant returned home greatly dis 
 appointed. 
 
 A month later he came back to the city to renew his at 
 tempt, and writing to his wife, March 23d, says : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRANCES : I suppose you would like to know whether 
 I broke my neck in going out to Hudson last Thursday. I can assure 
 
 literary friend, whose taste and judgment we respect, speak highly of the poetic tal 
 ents of William Cullen Bryant, and of his effusions published in 1821, we procured 
 the book, and now present the following beautiful poem, as fully justifying the 
 eulogium." 
 
 * Dr. J. W. Francis was one of the physicians who were bold enough to let the 
 room to Dr. Channing s friends, and in describing the commotion it caused, adds : 
 " Some three days after that memorable Sunday I accidentally met the great theolog 
 ical thunderbolt of the times, Dr. John M. Mason, in the book-store of that intelligent 
 publisher and learned bibliopole, James Eastburn. Mason soon approached me, and 
 in earnestness exclaimed, You doctors have been engaged in a wrongful work ; you 
 have permitted heresy to come in among us, and have countenanced its approach. 
 You have furnished accommodations for the devil s disciples. Not wholly unhinged, 
 I replied : We saw no such great evil in an act of religious toleration ; nor do I 
 think, I added, that one individual member is responsible for the acts of an entire 
 corporation. You are all equally guilty, cried the doctor, with enkindled warmth. 
 4 Do you know what you have done ? You have advanced infidelity by complying 
 with the request of these sceptics. Sir, said I, we hardly felt disposed to sift their 
 articles of belief as a religious society. There, sir, there is the difficulty, exclaimed 
 the doctor. Belief; they have no belief; they believe in nothing, having nothing 
 to believe. They are a paradox ; you can not fathom them. How can you fathom 
 a thing that has no bottom ? I left the doctor dreadfully indignant, uttering some 
 thing of the old slur on the sceptical tendencies of the faculty of physic." "Old 
 New York," p. 154. 
 
212 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 you that it is as sound at this moment as your own, notwithstanding 
 your prediction. However, I met with what was almost an equiva 
 lent. I got wet by riding half a mile in that tremendous thunder- 
 shower, and afterward drove to Hudson, a distance of ten miles, in a 
 damp great coat and pantaloons. I waked the next morning giddy 
 and almost blind with a cold. I thought to go to New York in the 
 steamboat on Friday, but none went down that day. Then I engaged 
 a passage in a sloop, and had my baggage carried on board of her, 
 and after waiting there from three o clock till six in the afternoon, 
 during which time I was chiefly employed in pulling at a rope to help 
 get her away from the dock, against a strong northwest wind, the ves 
 sel ran upon the bottom of an old wharf in the river and stuck. I 
 went back to my quarters in the city. The next day (Saturday) the 
 Olive Branch came along about noon ; I got on board of her, and 
 Sunday morning at five o clock found myself in this city. 
 
 " Here I am trying to starve myself well, going hungry amid a pro 
 fusion of good cheer, and refusing to drink good wine amid an ocean 
 of it. But all will not do ; I am continually in the steamboat. Sit 
 ting or standing, I feel the roll and swell of the water under me ; the 
 streets and floors of houses swing from side to side as if they were 
 floating in a sea. However, I am not much alarmed as long as my 
 lungs are free from the distemper, which they seem to be hitherto. 
 My negotiations with the Atlantic Magazine are going on, but I do 
 not know exactly what will come of them. . . . Mr. Hillhouse s Ha- 
 dad is out. He has presented me with a copy, which I shall bring 
 up with me. . . . Monday evening I was at one of the soirees of Dr. 
 Hosack. There was a crowd of literary men citizens and strangers 
 in fine apartments splendidly furnished, hung with pictures, etc. I 
 saw Captain Franklin among others, who is just arrived from Europe, 
 and is going on another Polar Expedition, by land.* Two other gen 
 tlemen of the expedition were with him. He does not look like a 
 man who has suffered the hardships of which his narrative gives an 
 account. He is square built, rather short, inclining to corpulency, 
 with the complexion of a shoemaker. Kiss Fanchette for me. 
 "Your affectionate husband, 
 
 "W. C. BRYANT." 
 
 * This was Sir John Franklin on his second voyage to the Arctic Seas. 
 
"THE NEW YORK REVIEW." 213 
 
 The " Atlantic Magazine," here spoken of, a monthly 
 periodical which had been established in 1824 under the 
 charge of Mr. Robert C. Sands, was now in the hands of 
 Mr. Henry J. Anderson, and leading a precarious life. It 
 was proposed to amalgamate it with an earlier periodical, 
 called the " Literary Review," and issue them under the 
 name of the " New York Review and Athenseum Maga 
 zine," with Mr. Anderson and Mr. Bryant as editors, and 
 "the co-operation of several gentlemen, amply qualified, to 
 furnish the departments of Intelligence, Poetry, and Fiction." 
 This arrangement was carried into effect, and the first num 
 ber of the new review was announced to appear in June. 
 Enclosing a prospectus to Mr. Dana, in April, Mr. Bryant 
 wrote, not very hopefully : " I have given up my profes 
 sion, which was a shabby one, and I am not altogether 
 certain that I have got into a better. Bliss & White, how 
 ever, the publishers of the New York Review, employ 
 me, which at present will be a livelihood, and a livelihood 
 is all I got from the law." Dana, in response, promised 
 him every sort of assistance, and, as an earnest of his pur 
 pose, enclosed a contribution which he called " The Dying 
 Crow." Dana s letter, dated Cambridge, April I5th, dis 
 closes a bit of literary history, showing that, although the 
 older man considerably, he was yet much the younger poet. 
 He says : 
 
 "I send you my first attempt perhaps my last in blank verse. 
 I may as well say in verse, for I never wrote thirty lines before in any 
 measure. It may be too long; though, as it is a musing, meditative 
 affair, I do not know that such an objection holds against it. At any 
 rate, I would not go through the toil of compressing it. ... Does 
 the movement offend thee, thou veteran in verse? The truth is, 
 though I have read a good deal of poetry, and been delighted with 
 its music, I never thought or cared about its rules. So I came to my 
 work raw and ignorant. Though I have said so much about my 
 1 Crow, you must not think that I expect you, as a matter of course, 
 to show him to the public. . . . 
 
214 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 11 What a magnificent hymn you wrote for the last Literary Ga 
 zette !"* 
 
 Before this letter was received, Mr. Bryant had gone to 
 Great Barring-ton, to settle up the remnants of his business, 
 and to provide a home for his little family during the sum 
 mer. It was impossible for him, however, to take a final leave 
 of the grand old woods, which for ten years had been the 
 sanctuaries of his musings, and which perhaps he might never 
 see again, at least on the familiar footing of the past, without 
 offering to the Mightiest, amid their majestic solitudes, " his 
 solemn thanks and supplications." As he walked the col 
 umned aisles beneath the verdant roof, hearing only the soft 
 winds that ran along the summit of the trees in music, he sang 
 in grave and measured language his " Forest Hymn," pouring 
 out his soul in worship to that universal Spirit which others, 
 less simple and austere, find only in houses made with hands. 
 On his return to the city he took lodgings with a French 
 family, of which he gives this account (May 24th) : 
 
 "My DEAR FRANCES: I am now boarding at M. Evrard s. The 
 family speak only French, and what is better, very good French ; and 
 what is better yet, are very kind and amiable people. Mr. E. is a 
 bigoted Catholic, and is taking great pains to convert me to the true 
 and ancient faith. I have been so far wrought upon by his argu 
 ments that I went yesterday to vespers in St. Peter s Church ; but my 
 convictions were not sufficiently strong to induce me to kneel at the 
 elevation of the host. As I have a great respect for family prayer 
 among all denominations of Christians, I intend asking M. Evrard 
 the favor of being permitted to attend his. On these occasions, it is 
 said, he utters with inconceivable rapidity a long list of such petitions 
 as the following : 
 
 Sainte Marie, priez pour moi, 
 
 Chaste Vierge, priez pour moi, 
 
 Mere adorable, priez pour moi, 
 
 Mere de Dieu, priez pour moi. 
 
 * The " Forest Hymn." Mr. Bryant was still a writer for the " Gazette," though 
 Mr. Parsons had yielded the control to others. 
 
DANA S FIRST POETR Y. 215 
 
 " I have had one or two turns of being a little homesick since I 
 have been here, but I think if you and Francis were with me I should 
 pass my time quite as pleasantly, to say the least, as I did in Great 
 Barrington. In the mean time I have become a great church-goer; 
 I went three times yesterday, including the Roman Catholic service, 
 which is more, I believe, than I have done before these ten years." 
 
 To Dana s letter, which arrived in his absence, he replied 
 the next day, 25th: 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : On coming to New York about a week since, I 
 found two letters from you which seemed from their dates to have 
 been waiting for me some time. In one of them I was very glad to 
 find a contribution in verse for my magazine. I am surprised after 
 reading it to hear you say that you never wrote thirty lines before in 
 any measure. You have come into your poetical existence in full 
 strength, like the first man. Not that I was surprised to find the 
 conceptions beautiful that I was prepared for, as a matter of course 
 but you write quite like a practiced poet. The printer has got it, 
 and you shall see your first-born in print next week. It will be ad 
 mired, without doubt. The only fault I find with it is, that you give 
 rather too many magnificent titles to a bird the popular associations 
 connected with which are not generally of the dignified kind you 
 mention. I can speak also of his character from my own experience, 
 having once kept a tame crow, and found him little better than a 
 knave, a thief, and a coward. As for the trochees, etc., never fash 
 your mind about them. They are well enough. I would not alter 
 them if it could be done without injuring the beauty of the expres 
 sion. I hope to receive more favors of the same kind from you. 
 Choose a subject worthy of your genius, and you will do nobly. In 
 the mean time, if you have any prose that you can spare, I should be 
 very glad to publish it in my journal. ... I suspect that in the course 
 of the week we shall be sorely perplexed to get matter for the miscel 
 laneous department. A talent for such articles is quite rare in this 
 country, and particularly in this city. There are many who can give 
 grave, sensible discussions on subjects of general utility, but few who 
 can write an interesting or diverting article for a miscellany. . . , 
 
 " I do not know how long my connection with this work will con- 
 
2i6 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 \ 
 
 tinue. My salary is $1,000; no great sum, to be sure, but it is twice 
 what I got by my practice in the country. Besides, my dislike for 
 my profession was augmenting daily, and my residence in Great Bar- 
 rington, in consequence of innumerable quarrels and factions which 
 were springing up every day among an extremely excitable and not 
 very enlightened population, had become quite disagreeable to me. 
 It cost me more pain and perplexity than it was worth to live on 
 friendly terms with my neighbors ; and, not having, as I flatter my 
 self, any great taste for contention, I made up my mind to get out of 
 it as soon as I could and come to this great city, where, if it was my 
 lot to starve, I might starve peaceably and quietly. The business of 
 sitting in judgment on books as they come out is not the literary em 
 ployment the most to my taste, nor that for which I am best fitted, 
 but it affords me, for the present, a certain compensation, which is a 
 matter of some consequence to a poor devil like myself." 
 
 Again in a few days (May 28th) Mr. Bryant recurs to the 
 same subject : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : You will see in the copy of our magazine (for 
 June) which I send you, that I have changed your crow to a raven. 
 I do not know how you will like the metamorphosis, but it is a change 
 only of the title of your poem, and I have not ventured to take any 
 such liberty with the verses. My reason for doing this was that the 
 title was not a taking one; Anderson was of the same opinion, and 
 urged me strongly to make the alteration ; and Mr. Halleck (author 
 of Fanny, etc.), to whom it was shown, while he admired the beauty 
 of the poetry, thought the title unfortunate. The raven is a North 
 American bird, common in the interior of the United States, and nat 
 uralists say that his habits are similar to those of the crow. I hope 
 you will forgive the liberty I have taken, as it was only with a view to 
 draw to your poem the attention it deserves. You will appear in our 
 magazine in company with Mr. Halleck. The poem entitled * Marco 
 Bozzaris was written by him, and I think is a very beautiful thing. 
 Anderson was so delighted with it he got it from the author after 
 much solicitation that he could not forbear adding the expression 
 of his admiration at the end of the poem. For my part, though I en 
 tirely agree with him in his opinion of the beauty of the poem, I have 
 
A GOOD CATHOLIC. 
 
 my doubts whether it is not better to let the poetry of magazines com- 
 i.iend itself to the reader by its own excellence. The lines which fol 
 low yours were written by your humble servant."* 
 
 To his wife he writes, June 30! : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRANCES : I send you by Mr. Charles Sedgwick, who 
 is about setting out for Lenox, the first number of the New York 
 Review, which he has kindly undertaken to put into the post-office 
 there along with this letter. I think it is a pretty good number. I 
 speak with reference to the articles which I did not write myself. . . . 
 Our subscription list is going on pretty well ; we have already about 
 five hundred in the city and one hundred in the country, besides the 
 Boston subscribers of which no return has yet been made. . . . This 
 v.-eek has been a chapter of terrible accidents in New York. Last 
 Friday a Swiss who had just arrived in this country was murdered 
 by two of his fellow-passengers. Yesterday morning at six o clock 
 the boiler of one of the steamboats plying between this city and 
 Brunswick exploded at the wharf, as she was just setting out with one 
 hundred passengers on board, and four of the hands were scalded to 
 death and others badly injured ; and this morning about two o clock 
 a Mr. Lambert, returning from a party a little out of the city, with 
 some of his friends, was assaulted by a party of drunken apprentices, 
 and a fray ensued in which he was killed.f 
 
 " I like my boarding-house better and better. It is almost impos 
 sible to conceive of a man of more goodness of heart and rectitude 
 of principle than M. Evrard. He is very religious, very charitable, 
 and very honest a proof of the utter folly and presumption of all 
 those who arrogate to their own sect the exclusive title of Christians. 
 Here is a bigoted Catholic a man who believes that miracles are 
 wrought by good men at this late day; who kneels to the consecrated 
 wafer as to the body of God himself; and who invokes saints and 
 angels to pray for him and yet his religion, mistaken as it is in these 
 points, is as full of piety toward God and kindness to his neighbor as 
 that of any man I ever knew, while it is much more amiable and 
 cheerful than that of many sects. On the whole, I think that ^ good 
 Catholic is quite as good as & good Calvinist" 
 
 * "A Song of Pitcairn s Island." 
 
 f Rather startling incidents for an emigrant from a quiet country village. 
 
21 8 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 The next week (June 12) he continued his reports: 
 
 " MY DEAR FRANCES : I envy you very much the pure air, the 
 breezes, the shade, and the coolness which you must enjoy in the 
 country, while I am sweltering under a degree of heat which I never 
 experienced in my whole lifetime for so long a period. For six days 
 the thermometer has hardly been below 80, day or night. I cannot 
 write except in the morning, when the air is a little cooler ; but in 
 the middle of the day, when the thermometer is at 85 or 87 Fahr., 
 it is almost impossible to call up resolution enough even to read. 
 Yesterday, in the afternoon, I rode a few miles into the country; I 
 found it worse, if possible, than the city. The roads were full of 
 carts, barouches, chaises, hacks, and people on horseback passing 
 each other ; and a thick cloud of dust lay above the road as far as the 
 eye could follow it. It was almost impossible to breathe the stifling 
 element. 
 
 " Along with these inconveniences, however, there is one advan 
 tage which, to me, is of considerable importance. The nights are 
 very dry. I do not perceive that the night air is at all more damp 
 than that of the day. There is a window at the head of my bed, and 
 I have slept with it wide open for six nights past without experienc 
 ing the least inconvenience without perceiving anything like that 
 current of moist air which in the country you always feel coming 
 from an open window in the stillest nights. A cough which I have 
 had hanging upon my lungs ever since last March has left me en 
 tirely. Upon the whole, I think that a change of climate is likely to 
 prove rather beneficial to my health than otherwise. I lodge in 
 Chambers Street, near the Unitarian Church, which, of course, I at 
 tend pretty regularly. M. Evrard, my host, has lived here twenty 
 years, and during that time no epidemic fever has prevailed in this 
 quarter. His house is at some distance from that part of the city in 
 which the yellow fever made so many victims a few years since. The 
 North River is at a short distance from us. I see it whenever I put 
 my head cut of the window ; and whenever the wind is westerly it 
 comes to us from over a body of water several miles in width. ..." 
 
 His work on the " Review " was rather more laborious than 
 he had anticipated. Mr. Anderson, his colleague, and Mr. 
 Sands, who was now joined with them, were both active writ- 
 
DARK PROSPECTS. 
 
 2I 9 
 
 crs, but the laboring oar fell to his hands. He had complained 
 of the drudgery of the law, and now found himself involved 
 in drudgery of another kind quite as trying. To read and 
 give an account of trashy novels and flimsy verses ; to prune 
 and patch the manuscripts of ambitious but inexperienced 
 writers ; to provide essays, tales, and poems of his own were 
 by no means agreeable tasks. Besides, the city was insuffer 
 ably hot, dirty, and stuffy, and he missed his rambles in the 
 woods. Still, he put as good a face upon it as he could, and 
 says to Mrs. Bryant, the latter part of June : 
 
 " Notwithstanding the heat, the noise, and the unpleasant odors of 
 the city, I think that if you and Frances were with me I should pass 
 my time here much more pleasantly than at Great Barrington. I am 
 obliged to be pretty industrious, it is true, but that is well enough. 
 In the mean time, I am not plagued with the disagreeable, disgusting 
 drudgery of the law ; and, what is still better, am aloof from those 
 miserable feuds and wranglings that make Great Barrington an un 
 pleasant residence, even to him who tries every method in his power 
 to avoid them." 
 
 He speaks encouragingly, but he was in reality despond 
 ent. The prospects of the "Review" were not bright; he 
 was very much alone ; and his heart was ever going back to 
 his mountains. His mood is indicated in those sweet and pen 
 sive lines on "June" gentle aspirations destined to become a 
 prophecy wherein he hopes his grave at least shall be made 
 in the season of flowers and singing birds, and where, 
 
 " through the long, long summer hours 
 
 The golden light should lie, 
 And thick young herbs and groups of flowers 
 Stand in their beauty by." 
 
 It was a great relief to him, in the latter part of June and 
 July, to be able to make a flying visit to Cummington, and, 
 standing on his native hills again, while the mountain wind, 
 most spiritual thing of all the wide earth knows, lifted his 
 
220 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 brown locks, to indulge in the grand reveries that appear in 
 " The Skies," and the " Lines on Revisiting the Country." 
 
 He was more contented with the city when his family 
 joined him in the autumn, for he was less solitary. His habits, 
 to say nothing of his reserve and diffidence, withheld him from 
 miscellaneous companionships. What leisure his labors on the 
 " Review " left him he devoted to perfecting his knowledge of 
 French and Provengal, and to the acquisition of the Italian, 
 Spanish, and Portuguese languages. He had his intimacies, 
 but they were few. Cooper and Verplanck were occasional 
 visitors ; Anderson attracted him by his profound and various 
 knowledge and courteous manners ; and Sands s acquisitions 
 and humor rendered his fellowship delightful. With William 
 Ware, the Unitarian clergyman, whose refinement and culture 
 were afterward so beautifully exhibited in "Zenobia," "Pro- 
 bus," and " Julian," he formed a lifelong friendship. And there 
 were others to whom he may be said to have attached himself 
 as a class the artists. They were men for the most part like 
 himself of great simplicity of character, fond of the beauties 
 of nature, and struggling, in the midst of poverty and untoward 
 circumstances, to win a place, however humble, for themselves 
 and their country in the higher walks of intellectual exertion. 
 In their company he was at home ; they made him a member 
 of their little societies and conclaves ; he took part in all their 
 efforts to bring the fine arts forward in the estimation of an 
 indifferent or ungenial public, and, by his persistent advocacy 
 of their claims at that early day, helped to gain for them the 
 high repute they now enjoy. 
 
 How patiently and faithfully he discharged his duties of 
 editor may be seen in this letter of September ist to his friend 
 Dana : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR: I intended answering your letter before this, but 
 I have been exceedingly lazy and somewhat hurried during the hot 
 weather that has continued almost ever since I received it. I have 
 found time, however, to look over the lines you sent me, and, as you 
 seemed to give me leave to make some alterations, I have in particular 
 
A GLIMPSE OF COOPER. 2 2l 
 
 taken the liberty, whenever I found you out of the pale which the law 
 givers of versification have put up to confine poets in, to catch you 
 and bring you back, and put on your fetters again. There ar,e two 
 lines which I am confident you left on purpose to try me : 
 
 O er hills, through leafy woods, and leafless; 
 To me, who love the stream to trace, etc. * 
 
 I tried by reading these lines over and over to make them agree in 
 time and measure; but, finding that impossible, I altered them, and in 
 doing this was obliged to alter several of the neighboring lines. I 
 must confess that you had one good reason I have written good rea 
 son but that is wrong you had one apology for leaving the lines as 
 they were namely, the difficulty of making them otherwise. 
 
 " I have also ventured to make some changes where the sentences 
 were continued from one couplet to the beginning of another, or 
 where they began near the end of one couplet and were continued to 
 the middle of the next a practice sometimes exceedingly graceful in 
 the heroic measure, but which, if frequently introduced in octo 
 syllabic verse, produces harshness. In other cases where I thought 
 the idea not sufficiently brought out, I have taken the liberty to 
 amplify it a little. But you will see all the mutilations I have made 
 when you receive the journal, which I will send on the heels of this 
 letter. 
 
 " One thing I have done : I have respected the thoughts in all the 
 alterations I have made, and it is a great excellence of your verses that 
 they are full of thought. You are, however, more at home in blank 
 verse than rhyme at least, you are so in the specimens you have sent 
 me. 
 
 " I saw Cooper yesterday. He is printing a novel entitled The 
 Last of the Mohicans. The first volume is nearly finished. You tell 
 me that I must review him next time myself. Ah, sir ! he is too sen 
 sitive a creature for me to touch. He seems to think his own works 
 his own property, instead of being the property of the public, to whom 
 he has given them ; and it is almost as difficult to praise or blame 
 them in the right place as it was to praise or blame Goldsmith prop 
 erly in the presence of Johnson." 
 
 * Fragment of an Epistle. 
 
222 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 Again, he writes to Dana in January, 1826: 
 
 " I like your poem very much. I have not yet been able to dis 
 cover the popular name of your bird,* but I wish you would take the 
 trouble to make a little change in the metrical construction of it, and 
 send me the alterations in your next. I refer to the following lines : 
 
 " * With the motion and roar 
 Of waves driving to shore. 
 
 And also, 
 
 " * To thy spirit no more 
 
 Come with me, quit the shore 
 For the joy and the light 
 When the summer birds sing/ 
 
 These lines do not correspond in measure with the lines which occupy 
 the same place in the other stanzas. All other lines in the poem are 
 such as the ear will acknowledge for iambics, but these are in a kind 
 of tripping measure, which is not in harmony with the rest of the 
 poem, and is disagreeable from its unexpectedness. Besides, they do 
 not, as it seems to me, suit with the general solemn and plaintive effect 
 of the whole. Cannot you substitute iambics for these ? The abbre 
 viation long I should be glad to see altered, for it is certainly an inno 
 vation ; but if you insist upon it I shall retain it. f 
 
 " It is true, as you say, that there is a want of literary entertainment 
 in our journal. But as to the multitude of clever men here who might 
 furnish it, let me say that we have some clever men to be sure, but 
 they are naughtily given to instructing the world, to elucidating the 
 mysteries of political economy and the principles of jurisprudence, 
 etc. ; they seem to think it a sort of disgrace to be entertaining. 
 Since the time of Salmagundi, the city has grown exceedingly grave 
 and addicted to solid speculations. Paulding sometimes writes for 
 our magazine, and we pick up the rest of it as well as we can." 
 
 * It is now entitled " The Little Beach Bird." 
 \ These lines now stand : 
 
 " With the motion and the roar 
 Of waves that drive to shore." 
 And, 
 
 " And on the meadow light 
 When birds for gladness sing." 
 
LECTURES ON POETRY. 
 
 223 
 
 In the autumn of 1825 Mr. Bryant had been invited by the 
 Athenseum Society to deliver a series of lectures on " Poetry," 
 and, having accepted the invitation, he prepared four lectures 
 for delivery in the April following. The more prominent 
 residents of the city were making a systematic effort to raise 
 its intellectual tone and scope, and for that purpose organized 
 courses of lectures on many subjects. Professor Charles An- 
 thon was engaged to discourse on " Roman Writers," Profes 
 sor Renwick on " Chemistry," Professor McVickar on " Taste 
 and Beauty," Mr. S. F. B. Morse on " Painting," Mr. William 
 Beach Lawrence on " Political Economy," and Dr. John 
 Frederick Schroeder on " Oriental Literature." * Mr. Bryant 
 could not, of course, in the brief compass allowed him, pretend 
 to give anything like an exhaustive or complete view of the old 
 est and most prolific of the arts the very literature of which 
 fills volumes, if not libraries. As, moreover, his lectures were 
 intended to be merely a popular defence and recommendation 
 of Poetry as one of the grand means of human culture, and 
 not to be addressed to adepts or even students, they required 
 no elaborate discussions of its philosophy, conceived either in 
 the spirit of the English school of Addison, Kames, and Blair, 
 or of the more recent and deeper aesthetics of the Germans. 
 He could not so much as dwell upon its technical rules, or the 
 history of its development, or the characteristics of different 
 countries and ages, or even the merits and defects of the great 
 writers by whom it had been most signally illustrated, and he 
 therefore confined himself to a brief consideration of its nature, 
 its influences, and its relations to the general progress of man 
 kind. As these elementary views will probably be printed in 
 his collected works, I give no analysis of them. Suffice it to 
 
 * Some of the lectures at the Athenceum were not without results. Among the 
 lecturers was Professor James Freeman Dana, of New Haven, whose subject was 
 " Electro-Magnetism," a science then in its infancy ; and among the hearers was S. 
 F. B. Morse, the artist, whose thoughts, already turned to the possibility of utilizing 
 the electric current, took a shape which a few years later issued in the Electro-Mag 
 netic Telegraph. " Life of Morse," p. 161. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1874. 
 
224 " A LITERARY ADVENTURER: 
 
 say that his several topics were handled with clearness, in 
 sight, and facility as well as amplitude of illustration. The 
 discussions, though not profound as we should now esteem 
 them, gave occasion for many happy and instructive remarks, 
 and, as an expression of the views of a master on important 
 phases of his own peculiar walk, they are suggestive and inter 
 esting. 
 
 While delivering these lectures, Mr. Bryant was also ac 
 tive in another and kindred movement. There had been for 
 years in New York an institution called the American Acad 
 emy of Art, of which Jonathan Trumbull was President, and 
 Chancellor Livingston, De Witt Clinton, and other conspicu 
 ous citizens were members. It gave yearly exhibitions of pic 
 tures, mostly borrowed from private owners, and it professed 
 to furnish instruction in an irregular way to students in the 
 elements of drawing. The artists were dissatisfied with it as 
 a representative of their body, not only because its means of 
 education were inadequate, but because it was almost exclu 
 sively managed by laymen. To supply its deficiencies, they 
 organized at first a simple Drawing Association (November 8, 
 1825), which met in the old Almshouse building, behind the 
 City Hall. This soon expanded (January 18, 1826) into the 
 more ambitious enterprise of a National Academy of the Arts 
 of Design. Mr. S. F. B. Morse, one of the most active promo 
 ters of the scheme, was chosen the first President of it, and 
 Messrs. Durand, Dunlap, Inman, Cummings, Ingham, Agate, 
 and a few others composed the membership. It opened schools, 
 gave exhibitions, and instituted a series of lectures on anatomy, 
 perspective and cognate subjects, among which mythology 
 and history, in their relation to the plastic arts, were included. 
 In 1826 Mr. Bryant was appointed one of the professors of 
 the new academy. When he began his labors does not appear 
 on the records, but he read to the classes five lectures on " My 
 thology" in December, 1827, which were repeated in Febru 
 ary, 1828; again in January, 1829, and finally in November, 
 1831. This continuance of them through five years would 
 
LECTURES ON MYTHOLOGY. 2 2$ 
 
 show how highly they were estimated, if we had not the grate 
 ful votes of the Academy testifying to their worth. Confining 
 his treatment to the Greek and Roman mythology, and to the 
 Dii Majorum Gentium in this, the lecturer gave the fullest his 
 torical details within his sphere of the origin and growth of 
 the ancient faiths, accompanied by such allegorical interpreta 
 tions as they had suggested to former writers or to his own 
 fancy. He has succeeded wonderfully in compressing the 
 wide, weltering, almost chaotic mass into a consistent and in 
 telligible form, and imparting life, beauty, and meaning to the 
 stories which have come down to us rather as crude, gro 
 tesque, and indecent fantasies than as " the fair humanities of 
 old religion." * 
 
 Meantime the " Review " was getting on as it could that 
 is, not swimmingly. Compared with the ample dimensions 
 and vivacious contents of our later periodicals, with " The 
 Century " and " Harper s," it was but a meagre and dull affair. 
 
 * The distinction with which he opens the first lecture I think worth preserving : 
 44 The Painter and the Sculptor," he says, 44 are connected with the ancients, with 
 their religion and with their notions of all that is noble and beautiful in humanity, by 
 nearer ties than any other students of antiquity nearer than even the Poet or the 
 Philosopher. You live among the remains of the ancient world, and, with the crea 
 tions of ancient genius before your eyes, you copy the noble features moulded by the 
 old artists ; you imitate forms that were wondered at and worshipped in the age in 
 which they were produced attitudes and faces which even yet inspire the beholder 
 with a sort of religious awe, seem to fill the air around them with the emanations of 
 their own superhuman beauty. On the other hand, between the modern student and 
 the fathers of ancient history a veil is interposed which is never wholly withdrawn 
 the veil of a dead language. He must labor long and severely before he can sur 
 mount this difficulty. He is detained in things which have no connection with the 
 pure spirit of ancient literature in grammatical rules, the meaning of words, and 
 forms of construction. It is as if you had to acquire the sense of sight by a surgical 
 operation before you could look upon the remains of ancient sculpture around you. 
 After all his labor he must content himself with incomplete conceptions of the pathos, 
 the force and harmony shrined in the majestic but disused dialects which he studies 
 dialects which to no man in modern times convey the ideas they express with that 
 grace and energy which belongs to the language of his birth. If he recurs to trans 
 lations, he is still more unfortunate, for these are but shadows of their glorious origi 
 nals." 
 
 VOL. i. 1C 
 
226 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 It wanted, I think, distinctiveness, perhaps aggressiveness of 
 character. Many of the disquisitions were heavy, and the 
 criticisms, though sensible, were not pungent.* It was, no 
 doubt, as good as any of its contemporaries, even the " North 
 American," on which it was modelled. In one respect, its 
 poetry, it far surpassed them all. Of Mr Bryant s own works 
 it contained : " The Song of Pitcairn s Island," " The Skies," 
 " Lines on Revisiting the Country," " I Cannot Forget," " To 
 a Mosquito," " Romero," " The Close of Autumn " (" Death of 
 the Flowers "), " The New Moon," " A Meditation on Rhode 
 Island Coal," " Hymn to Death," " An Indian Girl s Lament," 
 and one or two others, not since acknowledged. Some of 
 them, written in the country, are equal to his best ; but others, 
 particularly the humorous pieces effects, no doubt, of Sands s 
 lively fellowship are not so much admired. Dana also con 
 tributed to it his best things: "The Dying Raven," "Frag 
 ments of an Epistle," " The Husband and Wife s Grave," and 
 " The Little Beach Bird." It introduced to the public Hal- 
 leek s " Marco Bozzaris," " Burns," " Wyoming," and " Con 
 necticut," f which are his best ; several of the earlier efforts of 
 Longfellow, which, however, were not his best, and of N. P. 
 Willis, who wrote under the name of Roy. Mr. George Ban 
 croft, since eminent as an historian, aspired to poetry then, and 
 
 * They were not, however, without keen critical insight, as this notice of Dis 
 raeli s " Vivian Gray" may show. " This is a piquant and amusing novel, though 
 its merits are not of a very high order. . . . The foundation of the story is extrava 
 gant. The powers, purposes, and influence of a mature man are attributed to a boy 
 of twenty ; and the work is rather a series of sketches than a regularly built story. 
 The hero has no mistress but politics, and no adventures but political adventures. 
 The other prominent characters are all fools or knaves, and all are more or less 
 forced and unnatural. Their aggregate makes a strong picture, which dazzles, but 
 does not satisfy. The style of writing is dashing and careless, occasionally rising into 
 hasty extravagance, and at times sinking into mawkish sentimentality. The morality 
 of the book is loose. It is, in fact, little more than a picture of the vices and follies 
 of the great, with an active spirit in the midst of them, making their vices and follies 
 the stepping-stones to his ambition." December, 1827. 
 
 \ The three last after it was changed to the " United States Review." 
 
MADAME MALIBRAN. 
 
 227 
 
 translated for it from Goethe and Schiller, and Mr. CaUl> 
 dishing opened his varied career in it by gentle flirtations 
 with the Italian Muses. 
 
 Two subjects were given prominence in the prose depart 
 ment which greatly needed codling at that time, the Fine 
 Arts and the Italian opera, the former of which I suspect Mr. 
 Bryant took care of, and the latter Mr. Anderson.* Mr. Bry 
 ant s principal prose articles were: " Hillhouse s Hadad," 
 * Memoirs of Count Segur," " Provencal Poets," " Scott s Lives 
 of the Novelists," " Moore s Sheridan," " Rammohun Roy s 
 Precepts of Jesus," " Wayland s Discourses," " Webster s Ad 
 dress," "Recent Poetry," "Richard Henry Lee," " Percival s 
 Poems," " A Pennsylvania Legend," " Sketches of Corsica," 
 " Wheaton s Pinkney," etc. Of these articles the interest now 
 has wholly passed away. They are for the most part well 
 written, and some of them exhibit research. His portrait of 
 Sheridan, after Moore, is full of character-painting ; he breaks 
 a lance with the potent Sir Walter even as to the comparative 
 worth of the Romancers ; shows himself in advance of his day 
 in religious liberality when he speaks of Rammohun Roy; 
 and the "Sketches of Corsica" enable him to trace the pecu 
 liar characteristics of Bonaparte, his wild passion for war, his 
 rancorous revengefulness, his duplicity, his contempt for wo- 
 
 * A mercurial but accomplished Italian teacher, Lorenzo Da Ponte, a former 
 friend of Mozart and of the eccentric Joseph II, of Austria (and whose adventures in 
 Europe furnished the materials of a diverting autobiography), pervaded New York, 
 and possessed it with some degree of his own enthusiasm for his native language and 
 his national music. It was by his help that a company of singers, under the man 
 agement of Signor Garcia, was persuaded to try its fortunes in the new world, and 
 to transplant, if it could, a rare exotic to a somewhat reluctant soil. Mr. Anderson 
 was intimately connected with Da Ponte (having afterward married his daughter), 
 and through him Mr. Bryant, who cared nothing for music, though a great deal for 
 the Italian language and literature,, was brought in contact with this strange world. 
 For a time he and his family occupied the same boarding-house with the Garcia s, 
 where they learned to admire the wild fawn of the herd, the Signorita Felicite, then 
 in the seventeenth year of her age, beautiful, capricious, charming, and affectionate, 
 who afterward, by the grace, the versatility, the brilliancy, and the terrible grandeur 
 of her operatic performances, acquired a world-wide fame as Mme. Malibran. 
 
228 "A LITERARY ADVENTURER." 
 
 men, and his brigandage, to the barbarous ferocities of his 
 Corsican blood. 
 
 But the " Review," whatever its merits or defects, found 
 no public. It was born at an unfavorable time during one of 
 those periodical storms which, under the name of financial 
 crises, sweep over the world with destructive power and the 
 little venture felt the effects of a gale in which, in the old world, 
 the more stupendous fabric reared by the genius of Scott 
 went down. In March (1826) it was merged with the " New 
 York Literary Gazette " into the " New York Literary Gazette, 
 or American Athenaeum " ; and in July into " The United 
 States Gazette " of Boston, under the title of " The United 
 States Review and Literary Gazette " ; big names all of them, 
 but scarcely more than names. In the final arrangement Mr. 
 Bryant was allowed a quarter ownership and five hundred dol 
 lars a year salary, with a prospective increase contingent upon 
 the increase of subscribers, who never came. A divided con 
 trol, one editor (Mr. James G. Carter, afterward Charles Fol- 
 som) holding the reins at Boston, another, Mr. Bryant, at New 
 York, must have been a hindrance instead of a help. The out 
 look for our " adventurer " grew more and more dark. In spite 
 of his struggles, his projects had failed, or threatened failure ; 
 and the " Journey of Life " opened upon him in the sombre 
 hues of his little poem, where 
 
 " The lights that tell of cheerful homes appear 
 Far off; and die like hope amid the glooms." 
 
 Lest resources should be altogether wanting, he renewed his 
 license to practice law in the courts of New York (March, 
 1826), and was associated for a time with Mr. Henry Sedg- 
 wick in the prosecution of a claim for the recovery of a part 
 of the fund which had been raised in behalf of the Greeks, but 
 which had in some way been perverted. But I do not find 
 that he appeared in any of the courts. Just when his affairs 
 were at the worst he was requested to act temporarily as as 
 sistant editor of the New York " Evening Post." I say tern- 
 
THE EVENING POST. 
 
 229 
 
 porarily, because the place had been already offered to his 
 friend Dana, who had not yet answered. Mr. Bryant, indeed, 
 was deputed to consult him about it, and went to Boston for 
 that purpose, but found him reluctant to leave his home at 
 Cambridge, to say nothing of an offer made him by the Boston 
 " Centinel," which, being only a weekly, would exact less labor. 
 Writing to Verplanck from Cummington, August 26th, as to 
 the results of his mission, he said : " Dana seems desirous to 
 have the place in the office of the Evening Post kept in re 
 serve until he has heard what could be done nearer home." 
 Nothing came of it ; but it is curious to think what that jour 
 nal would have become in the hands of so decided a monarch 
 ist in politics and so high a churchman in religion. As late as 
 October 2d, when Mr. Bryant wrote to his wife in the coun 
 try, the matter was not yet determined. He says : 
 
 "I shall send you a number of the Evening Post, either by Mr. 
 Van Deusen or by the mail, containing an account of the * Commence 
 ment of Columbia College, and will also mark with a pencil such para 
 graphs as are written by me. I have got to be quite famous as the 
 editor of a newspaper since you were here, and a few of my friends 
 Mr. Verplanck in particular are anxious that I should continue 
 in it. Some compliments have been made to me about its improve 
 ment in character. The establishment is an extremely lucrative one. 
 It is owned by two individuals Mr. Coleman and Mr. Burnham. 
 The profits are estimated at about thirty thousand dollars a year fif 
 teen to each proprietor. This is better than poetry and magazines." 
 
 It certainly opened a prospect much more seductive than 
 that which lay immediately before him. 
 
CHAPTER TWELFTH. 
 
 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 A. D. 1827, 1828. 
 
 THE " Evening Post/ on which Mr. Bryant was now em 
 ployed as a subordinate, was one of the oldest journals of the 
 city. Founded in the first year of the century by William 
 Coleman, under the auspices of Alexander Hamilton, Colonel 
 Varick, Archibald Gracie, Colonel Troupe, and other Feder 
 alists of note, it steadily maintained their political opinions up 
 to the close of the Second War. As the lines of party demar 
 cation were then more or less obliterated, it became somewhat 
 independent ; and it continued so until the presidential contest 
 of 1824 a sort of personal scrub-race between four or five 
 opposing candidates when it so far threw off its old bonds as 
 to support Crawford of the South against Adams of the East 
 and Clay and Jackson of the West. 
 
 Newspapers, however, were not then the voluble organs of 
 public sentiment they have since become. Advertising sheets 
 mainly, adding to their local chronicles and digests of foreign 
 intelligence, an occasional comment on public questions or 
 characters, they preferred for the most part to confine their 
 disquisitions to squabbles with one another.* The more solid 
 
 * Cheetam and Duane, for example, were editors of rival gazettes, to which the 
 " Evening Post " paid its compliments in this wise : 
 
 " Lie on, Duane, lie on for pay ; 
 
 And, Cheetam, lie thou too 
 More against truth you cannot say, 
 Than truth can say gainst you." 
 
THE "EVENING POST." 231 
 
 matter came from without from Lucius Crassus, or Publius, 
 or Viator, or a Constant Reader. Even criticisms of literature 
 and the fine arts were apt to appear as communications. Nei 
 ther the news nor the discussions exhibited any great boldness 
 or hurry of enterprise.* But Mr. Coleman, the editor of the 
 " Evening- Post," having been a lawyer, was something of a 
 scholar, and gave to it a considerable literary repute. It was 
 for this reason chosen in 1819 as a vehicle for the waggeries of 
 two young rhymers Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rod 
 man Drake who under the name of Croaker & Co. obtained a 
 great deal of notoriety. They satirized the men and things of 
 the day Cobbit, Dr. Mitchell, the aldermen, and the theatres 
 in a humorous manner, mingling occasionally graver strains 
 with their fun.f When jests less good-natured than theirs 
 found their way into print, the consequence was apt to be a 
 meeting at Hoboken early in the morning. Coleman himself, 
 the law partner of Aaron Burr for a time, adopted his notions 
 of the duel. His pen was now and then too sharp at the nib, 
 and compelled him to " make his proofs " according to French 
 phrase. Once, at least, he w r as in hiding for some days for 
 having put an adversary under the sod. But he was now get 
 ting old and self-indulgent, and glad to avail himself of a new 
 hand. 
 
 During Mr. Bryant s year of apprenticeship, as it may be 
 called (i826- 29), we are able to trace his handiwork in more 
 discriminating and elaborate notices of new books, in larger 
 extracts from foreign journals showing the progress of sci 
 ence, in constant presentations of the claims of artists and 
 their works to public regard, in more careful characterizations 
 of public men, and in almost daily suggestions of reform in 
 city affairs a new water supply, a better organized police, 
 cleanlier streets, and a more elegant style of architecture in 
 shops and houses. Mr. Bryant s fine taste was perpetually 
 
 * News arrived slowly: in five days from Albany, a week from Washington, and 
 one or two months from Europe. 
 
 f Drake s " American Hag " was among these. 
 
232 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 urging him to these repeated appeals to improvement ; and 
 they are mentioned here because the services that journalists 
 render the communities in which they live in this way, small 
 in the detail but important in the results, are not generally 
 appreciated. He was also outspoken in his opposition to the 
 practice of duelling, which prevailed more or less all over the 
 country, denouncing it with the utmost severity, and to the 
 licensing of money lotteries, which filled the streets with shops 
 for the sale of chances, and every fortnight attracted anxious 
 and noisy multitudes into the Park to witness the turn of the 
 fatal wheels. 
 
 In politics there was no evidence of his activity, except on 
 the subject of free-trade. It has been frequently represented 
 that he first induced the " Evening Post " to support that doc 
 trine, but such is not the case. The journal was committed to 
 it before his accession to the staff. In the city of New York, 
 indeed, it was popular with the merchants and more eminent 
 citizens. One finds on published lists of delegates to free- 
 trade conventions, or attached to calls for free-trade meetings, 
 such well-known names as those of Albert Gallatin, Peter Jay, 
 James Kent, John Duer, Morgan Lewis, James G. King, Peter 
 Remsen, Isaac Bronson, Reuben Withers, Jonathan Goodhue, 
 Jacob Lorillard, Gardner Rowland, Charles H. Russell, and 
 others. A majority in both houses of Congress, however, 
 voted for protection, and there was not a journal this side of 
 the Potomac, except the " Evening Post," which endeavored 
 to controvert its fallacies. In the northern parts of the Union, 
 the seaboard towns particularly, a few friends of freedom were 
 to be found, while the people of the interior of the Atlantic 
 States and the entire population of the West seemed to acqui 
 esce without scruple in the policy of legislative favoritism and 
 discrimination. Mr. Bryant, who, as we have seen, had for 
 some years been a student of political economy, was able, in 
 this respect, to animate and strengthen the polemics of his 
 journal. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was only as yet a subaltern, and engaged, 
 
HARD WORK. 
 
 233 
 
 besides, in the management of his staggering monthly, now 
 " The United States Review." His contributions to it in 
 prose were many, but not significant for us ; while his poet 
 ical pieces, "October," " The Damsel of Peru," " The African 
 Chief," " Spring in Town," " The Gladness of Nature," " The 
 Greek Partisan," " The Two Graves," and " The Conjunction 
 of Jupiter and Venus," though spirited enough in their way, 
 are hardly up to his old mark.* His residence in the city had 
 enlarged his knowledge of, and deepened his interest in, the 
 ways and doings of men, but it seemed to need the genial 
 breezes of the country to awaken his harp to its finest tones. 
 In the " Summer Ramble," which he contributed to the " Mir 
 ror," we hear again the soft voices of the grass, and the strains 
 of tiny music, that swell 
 
 " From every moss-cup of the rock, 
 From every nameless blossom s bell." 
 
 Mr. Dana, some time in 1826, announced to Mr. Bryant 
 that he was about to do himself what he had often urged 
 upon him that is, publish a poem of some length and in book 
 form. In pursuance of this purpose, the manuscript of " The 
 Buccaneer" was fonvarded to Mr. Bryant early in 1827, with 
 a request that he should look over it, and suggest such revis 
 ions as might seem to be advisable. He wrote of it (June I, 
 1827) as follows: 
 
 " . . . . The first moment I was able I finished the examination 
 of your work. I should, however, apologize. I have a good deal of 
 work to do. I drudge for the * Evening Post and labor for the 
 * Review, and thus have a pretty busy life of it. I would give up 
 one of these if I could earn my bread by the other, but that I cannot 
 do. I have delayed attending to your manuscript from time to time, 
 just as I often delay writing poetry, until I should feel able to do it 
 
 * Some of these, he said to his brother once, were written when he was greatly 
 overworked, and he desired to leave them out of his edition of 1832, but his friends 
 probably Anderson and Sands would not hear of it. 
 
234 
 
 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 better justice. I have delayed it too long, but it was not from mere 
 laziness. 
 
 "You are mistaken in supposing the piece did not take well with 
 me. I think very highly of it. It has passages of great power and 
 great beauty, and the general effect, to my apprehension, is very fine. 
 Did you tell me not to show it ? I cannot find the letter which ac 
 companied the manuscript, and I may have sinned, for I have shown 
 it to Verplanck, who approved, and we have agreed that it should be 
 printed. . . . 
 
 "It is difficult to judge in what manner the public will receive 
 your work. I believe the reception will be respectful. I hope 
 it will be cordial, but fashion has a great deal to do with these 
 things ; and, though there is a better taste for poetry in this country 
 than there was ten years ago, there are yet a great many who count 
 the syllables on their fingers e. g., Mr. Walsh * and all that class of 
 men. But we will try what we can do for it. I have not marked 
 all the passages which I thought required amendment, because I was 
 not certain where the fault lay. There is occasionally a startling 
 abruptness in the style, and Matt is treated by the poet who relates 
 the story with a sort of fierce familiarity which is sometimes carried 
 too far. If I have thus, both here and in the notes I have made, 
 dwelt upon the blemishes, it is not because they are more numerous 
 than the beauties, but because I wish the work to be entirely free of 
 them. They are blemishes of execution merely, and I, who have 
 been an apprentice in the trade of verse from -nine years old, can 
 only wonder how, with so little practice, you have acquired so much 
 dexterity. There are passages of strong pathos, and, indeed, the 
 whole work is instinct with this quality; the descriptions are also 
 striking, and as many powerful lines might be picked out of the poem 
 as out of any other of the size that I know." f 
 
 * Robert Walsh, probably, the editor of a Philadelphia periodical. 
 
 f This amusing note from Halleck belongs to this time : 
 
 "DEAR BRYANT: Mr. Morris, the editor of the Mirror, has asked me to say 
 to you that his engraving of the seven, or nine I forget which Illustrious Ob 
 scure is completed. He has made me what I ought to have been, and very possibly 
 shall be a Methodist parson. As for the character in which you appear in the plate, 
 he wishes you to call on him and judge for yourself. The barber-shop sort of im- 
 
REVIEWS DAN AS POEMS. 
 
 -35 
 
 The book was published in the autumn, and, in order to 
 help it along, Mr. Bryant, at the request of Mr. Sparks, the 
 editor, wrote a review of it for the " North American. * In 
 a letter to Dana of February 16, 1828, he refers to the matter 
 thus: 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I am glad you are so well pleased with my review 
 of your poems. It is pretty well received, I believe, by the reading 
 world, and thought a fair criticism. Mr. Walsh, to be sure, says that 
 your poems are too broadly and strongly eulogized, but Mr. Walsh s 
 opinion on poetry is not worth anything, and, although it yet passes 
 for more than it is worth, its real value is beginning to be better un 
 derstood than formerly. Mr. Walsh is the greatest literary quack of 
 our country, and deserves to be taken down a peg or two. It would 
 do him good, for the creature really has some talent ; and, if he would 
 be content to drudge in a plain way, might be useful. I saw Mr. 
 Greenough (the sculptor), and am obliged to you for introducing me 
 to so agreeable a man, and one of such genuine tastes and right 
 opinions. 
 
 " P. S. I ought to answer your question about the New York 
 Evening Post. I am a small proprietor in the establishment, and am 
 a gainer by the arrangement. It will afford me a comfortable liveli 
 hood after I have paid for the eighth part, which is the amount of my 
 share. I do not like politics any better than you do ; but they get 
 only my mornings, and you know politics and a belly-full are better 
 than poetry and starvation. 
 
 " I should also express my pleasure at learning of the success of 
 your poems in Boston. To confess to you the truth, I had strong 
 misgivings as to their reception very strong ; but I knew that there 
 had been a change in the tastes of the people there, and that the popu 
 larity of Wordsworth s poems, whether real or fictitious, had prepared 
 
 mortality with which this engraving honors us is most particularly annoying, but 
 how could we help ourselves ? // faut se soumettrcj as they say in French, or, as 
 that prince of corporals and philosophers, Nym, with his usual brief eloquence, ex 
 presses it, Things must be as they may. Y rs truly, 
 
 " IVtdnesday, i6M 7*>, 28, n o clock." ! ! ALLECK - 
 
 * "North American Review." Dana s Poems, No. 26, p. 239, 1827. 
 
236 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 the way for you. As to the reception here, you know we are a pro 
 saic, money-making community, and nothing takes unless it be a new 
 novel, or some work on a subject of immediate interest; but they have 
 been read with pleasure by the few who know how to value such 
 things. We did what we could in the papers both before and after 
 the work appeared. 
 
 "W. C. B." 
 
 Mr. Dana s warnings against politics that " vile blackguard 
 squabble," as he calls it were as yet hardly needed ; Mr. Bry 
 ant s interest in it was no doubt quickened by his new propri 
 etorship in the " Evening Post," but he was not absorbed by it. 
 The " Review " having finally collapsed, his attention was given 
 to a new literary project originated by Sands. A fashion of 
 decorated annuals, caught by French and English publishers 
 from the " Annalen " of the Germans, was now reigning in the 
 United States, and the booksellers of the principal cities vied 
 with one another in the production of Tokens, Souvenirs, 
 Amaranths, and Amulets, of light miscellaneous contents, but 
 sumptuously printed and adorned. " Mr. Elam Bliss, a worthy 
 member of the trade," says Mr. Verplanck,* "mentioned a 
 thing of the kind to Mr. Sands, who, after consulting with Mr. 
 Verplanck and Mr. Bryant, hit upon the scheme of a yearly 
 publication which should combine the characteristics of an an 
 nual with those of a miscellany from the pens of two or three 
 authors writing in conjunction." By the kindness of several 
 artists, with whom the writers were on terms of intimacy, 
 some respectable embellishments were gotten together, and 
 the " Talisman " for 1828 was prepared in the latter part of 
 i82/.f It was put forth in the name of an imaginary editor, 
 
 * " Memoir of Robert C. Sands," prefixed to his works. Harper & Brothers, New 
 York, 1834. 
 
 f Out of this casual association of artists and literary men the Sketch Club arose. 
 Cooper s club, the Lunch, was no more, owing to his departure for Europe, and 
 the Sketch Club was meant to be a sort of substitute. Its meetings were continued 
 until it was merged in what is now " The Century Club," one of the largest and 
 most prosperous clubs of the city. 
 
THE " TALISMAN" BEGUN. 237 
 
 Mr. Francis Herbert, who professed to draw his materials, 
 tales, essays, and verses out of a portfolio, which had been 
 slowly gathered in the course of years of travel and research. 
 He was, of course, one of those omniscient and ubiquitous 
 individuals, easily found in such cases, who had visited every 
 part of the earth, made himself familiar with the languages, 
 the literature, and the manners of people of all ages and climes, 
 and capable of writing, with equal ease, on every kind of topic, 
 and in every variety of style. A petty volume with a few 
 engravings in it was a small result for such grand pretensions, 
 but it had no less a considerable literary success. 
 
 It would be difficult to conceive of editorship under pleas- 
 anter circumstances than those in which the " Talisman " was 
 compiled. Mr. Sands resided at Hoboken, where his father s 
 hospitable house was made the headquarters of the trio. It 
 was in the midst of a pleasant hamlet of the most beautiful sur 
 roundings. The New Jersey shore of the Hudson River, from 
 the peninsula of Paulus Hook (Jersey City) to beyond Wee- 
 hawken on the north, presented a singularly picturesque out 
 line of indented coves and wood-fringed promontories, stretch 
 ing away over level meadow-lands to a bolder background of 
 heights. Wandering through the tangled undergrowth of the 
 woods to the little grassy plot where Hamilton fell in his duel 
 with Burr, and so many other mortal quarrels were voided, or 
 stretching themselves upon the sunny top of a cliff that com 
 manded a magnificent view of river, bay, and city, now belong 
 ing to the King estate, the editors would concoct their projects 
 for the annual. Sometimes the members of the Sketch Club 
 would join them in these excursions, and take minutes of the 
 views that were to be afterward engraved.* 
 
 * On one of these rambles they encountered a Frenchman, who gave himself out 
 as having been an intimate of the household of the grand Napoleon. Unfortunately, 
 he said, he had lost all his most valuable papers in the retreat from Moscow. It ap 
 peared, when he was more closely questioned, that these were receipts for the prepa 
 ration of favorite dishes. At present he was in search of rattlesnakes, which, he 
 averred, when properly cooked and sauced, were the most delicious of edibles. 
 
238 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 On returning home they would reduce their wandering 
 talks to manuscript, Sands, as the readiest penman, commonly 
 acting as amanuensis, while the others walked the room or 
 lolled upon chairs. How the house would ring, says Miss 
 Sands, surviving sister of Robert, with eloquent declamations 
 and roars of uproarious laughter ! Often the passing stranger 
 would stop, thinking rather of jolly fellows at a feast than of 
 sober and sedate scholars in the throes of composition. Sands, 
 in fact, had a propensity for innocent and playful mischief, and 
 on these occasions would divert his companions with stories 
 of his adventures among the primitive Dutch settlers of Com- 
 munipaw, whose festivals and frolics he sometimes attended. 
 Or else he was getting up one of his many literary practical 
 jokes. " It was his sport," says Mr. Verplanck, " to excite 
 public curiosity by giving extracts, highly spiced with fashion 
 able allusions and satire, from the forthcoming novel which 
 novel was, and in truth is, yet to be written or else to entice 
 some unhappy wight into a literary or historical newspaper 
 discussion, then to combat him anonymously, or, under the 
 mask of a brother editor, to overwhelm him with history, 
 facts, quotations, and authorities, all manufactured for the 
 occasion." * This pedantic sort of fun was much in vogue 
 at one time with the wits of " Blackwood " and other maga 
 zines, but has now fallen into disuse. Mr. Bryant seems 
 rather to have liked it, and often took part with Sands in his 
 mystifications. " Did you see a learned article," he wrote to 
 Mr. Verplanck, at Washington, " in the Evening Post the 
 other day about Pope Alexander VI and Csesar Borgia? 
 
 * " One of these pranks occurred in relation to the Grecian Crown of Victory, 
 during the excitement in favor of Greek liberty, when, after several ingenious young 
 men, fresh from their college studies, had exhausted all the learning they could pro 
 cure, either from their own acquaintance with antiquity, or at second hand from 
 Lempriere, Potter, Barthelemi, or the more erudite Paschalis de Corona, Sands ended 
 the controversy by an essay rilled with excellent learning, that rested mainly on a 
 passage of Pausanias, quoted in the original Greek, but for which it is vain to look 
 in any edition of that author." 
 
LITERARY PRANKS. 
 
 239 
 
 Matt. Patcrson undertook to be saucy in the Commercial 
 as to a Latin quotation in it, so we i. e., Sands and myself sent 
 him on a fool s errand. He has not been able as yet, I believe, 
 to find the Virorum Illustrium Reliquas, though he says Da 
 Ponte has a great many queer old Latin books, and he has an 
 indistinct remembrance of a work that has virorum clarorum on 
 the title-page ! " Again, he says : " You have doubtless seen 
 the learned epistle of Mr. John Smith to the editors of the 
 * Evening Post ? The poems were concocted, as well as the 
 greater part of the translations, by Sands and myself ; some by 
 Anderson, Paine, and Da Ponte. We look upon it here as a 
 very learned jeu d* esprit" The joke consisted in taking a fa 
 miliar couplet and running it through all the languages, ancient 
 and modern, inclusive of several Indian dialects. These quips 
 and quirks were sometimes flung into the camps of political 
 adversaries, where they exploded like fire-crackers, and pro 
 duced a great deal of spluttering and noise, but not much 
 damage. One of the more successful flings was levelled at 
 Miss Fanny Wright (afterward Madame Darusmont), the fore 
 runner of those ladies, now not so scarce, who lecture on In 
 fidelity and Marriage, or what Miss Wright used to call No- 
 lige (Knowledge). Writing to Verplanck still, he says, slyly : 
 "I suppose you saw an Ode to Miss Wright in the Post 
 not long since ? It has passed for Halleck s among the know 
 ing ones, and Carter was so cock-sure of it that he republished 
 it in the Statesman, and laid a wager with Colonel Stone that 
 Halleck was the author. Mr. Walsh must have fallen into the 
 same mistake, for he republished it with praise." 
 
 On one occasion Miss Sands remembers that Verplanck 
 came rushing to the house, early in the afternoon, in a state of 
 breathless excitement, exclaiming : " Oh, Sands, I ve got such 
 a poem ! Gray s Elegy is nothing to it. I picked it up at 
 
 * When Mr. Ilalleck was asked if he wrote the ode, he promptly answered, " No ; 
 and there is but one man in New York who could have written it, and that L> 
 Bryant." 
 
240 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 the publishers, and all the way across the river it has been ring 
 ing in my brain. 
 
 " l Far in thy realms withdrawn 
 
 Old Empires sit in sullenness and gloom ! 
 
 and he then repeated the whole of Mr. Bryant s poem " To 
 the Past." At the close the two editors congratulated each 
 other with the fervor of those who find a treasure. 
 
 Nor were the rambles of the editors confined to the woods ; 
 as scholars, they had antiquarian tastes, and often explored to 
 gether out-of-the-way places in the city itself, where odd char 
 acters were to be found, or which were distinguished by his 
 torical associations. They gazed, of course, upon the spot in 
 Wall Street where Washington had been inaugurated as the 
 first President of the United States, recalling the forms of 
 Hamilton, Madison, the elder Adams, Jay, Knox, Sherman, 
 Lee, Clinton, Ames, Ellsworth, Gouverneur Morris, and others 
 who stood around him as he took the oath administered by 
 Chancellor Livingston. They lingered about the fine old 
 house at the head of Pearl Street, where he afterward received 
 his friends. Sometimes they paced the shores of the North 
 River, just above the present Barclay Street ferry, where 
 Jonathan Edwards, temporary pastor of the Wall Street 
 Church, used to walk backward and forward while he medi 
 tated the mysteries of eternal preordination and free-will, as 
 the eternal murmurs of the ocean fell upon his ears. At 
 other times they sought out the house in Stone Street where 
 the philanthropic Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, lodged 
 on his first visit to America ; or that on the corner of Broad 
 way looking on the Battery, which had been the headquar 
 ters of Wolfe, the conqueror of Canada, and afterward of 
 Howe, who fell at Ticonderoga ; or the old two-story struc 
 ture in Cedar Street, in which Jefferson conversed with Tal 
 leyrand and Billaud de Varennes ; and they tried to learn 
 the places that Volney and Cobbett, the Abbe Correa and 
 General Moreau, and Tom Moore and Jeffrey had frequented. 
 
OLD NEW YORK. 241 
 
 Of all these sites, no one was more attractive than the massive 
 wooden building, with a lofty portico, supported by Ionic col 
 umns, on the hill at the corner of Varick and Charlton Streets, 
 where Lord Amherst had lived, where President Adams en 
 tertained foreign ministers and the more conspicuous senators 
 and congressmen, and Aaron Burr resided at the height of 
 his career. All these places, celebrated by the editors in their 
 " Reminiscences of New York," have since been swept away 
 by the remorseless besom of metropolitan progress. 
 
 The "Talisman" was continued in the years 1829 and 1830 
 making three volumes in all when other occupations on the 
 part of the writers of Mr. Verplanck in Congress, of Mr. 
 Bryant as editor of the " Evening Post," and of Mr. Sands as 
 editor of the " Commercial Advertiser " put an end to a work 
 which had been a source of a vast deal of amusement to them, 
 if not of much profit.* A few years later the principal con 
 tents were republished as " Miscellanies," and obtained a wider 
 and more lucrative popularity. f 
 
 Mr. Dana s earnest remonstrances against " politics," which 
 we have read, were prompted as much, doubtless, by anxiety 
 as to the direction in which Mr. Bryant s preferences tended 
 as by his general sense of the degraded methods of our politi 
 cal warfare. Regarding the Democratic polity with small 
 
 * Mr. Bryant s poetical contributions to the " Talisman " were : "A Scene on the 
 Banks of the Hudson"; "The Hurricane"; "William Tell"; "Innocent Child 
 and Snow-white Flower " ; " The Close of Autumn " ; " To the Past " ; " The Hunt 
 er s Serenade " ; " The Greek Boy " ; " To the Evening Wind " ; " Love and Folly " ; 
 "The Siesta"; "Romero"; "To the River Arve "; "To the Painter Cole," and 
 "Eva," including " The Alcayde of Molina" and " The Death of Aliatar." It is 
 a proof how little the " New York Review " had been known that two or three of 
 these were republished from it without seeming detection. His prose pieces were : 
 " An adventure in the East Indies " ; " The Cascade of Mclsingah " ; " Recollections 
 of the South of Spain " ; " Moriscan Romances " ; " Story of the Island of Cuba" ; 
 " The Indian Spring" ; " The Whirlwind " ; " Early Spanish Poetry" ; " Phanette 
 des Gantelmes"; "The Marriage Blunder"; and parts of "The Devil s Pulpit," 
 and of " Reminiscences of New York." 
 
 f " Miscellanies" by G. C. Verplanck, Robert C. Sands, and W. C. Bryant. Xew 
 York: Elam Bliss, 1832. 
 VOL. i. 17 
 
2 4 2 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 admiration, he felt still less for the parties which struggled 
 for ascendency under it. As for the more popular or radical 
 of those parties, he did not hesitate to express the utmost 
 aversion, and yet it was toward that party his friend Bryant 
 was rapidly gravitating. In its enmity to the dogma of pro 
 tection, the " Evening Post " had gradually fallen into an atti 
 tude of antagonism to the administration of John Quincy 
 Adams. Perhaps a little leaven of old Federal prejudice, 
 which deemed Adams guilty of party treachery when he dis 
 closed the real animus of the New England leaders during the 
 war, tinctured its dislike. At any rate, as early as June, 1827, 
 it took the field in favor of the nomination of General Jackson. 
 Its avowed reason was that Jackson had pronounced himself 
 friendly to " a judicious tariff," which was interpreted to mean 
 a mitigation of the existing customs duties ; but another motive 
 may have operated upon Mr. Bryant s mind. Like many 
 other literary men of the time, Irving, Cooper, Bancroft, Ver- 
 planck at home, and, in later years, Landor abroad, he had 
 formed a very high opinion of the personal character of the 
 General. His known simplicity and frankness, his incorrupti 
 ble honesty, his strong sense of justice, his popular sympathies, 
 his fearless directness in moving to his ends, were qualities 
 that captivated not the common people alone, but simple- 
 hearted men everywhere who loved manliness and energy. 
 Jackson was comparatively untried in civil affairs ; scholastic- 
 ally ignorant ; of irascible, if not unbridled passions, and im 
 patient of restraint ; but his integrity was spotless, and his will 
 in the execution of his purposes inflexible. Moreover, there 
 was a certain degree of heroism in his life of the frontier, and 
 as a military chief among the everglades of Florida, which 
 captivated the imagination. 
 
 At the outset, the partizanship of the " Evening Post," 
 though it was decided, was not immoderate ; but it was found, 
 as the campaign advanced, that a personality like Jackson s 
 admitted of no half-way attachments or dislikes. He was 
 either, as his friends averred, "a noble old Roman," or, ac- 
 
A JACKSON ODE. 243 
 
 cording to his enemies, a monster of violence greatly to be 
 dreaded. Mr. Bryant was disposed to concur with the for 
 mer, and, as the controversial heat increased, his admiration 
 warmed. His regular adoption, however, among the Demo 
 cratic train-bands was owing to an incident which, consider 
 ing his habitual reticence and dignity, is somewhat amusing. 
 Jackson s chief glory dated back to the 8th of January, 1815, 
 when he won the victory of New Orleans, so that his parti 
 sans inscribed the anniversary of that day among the festal 
 days of the calendar, always to be celebrated by dinners, 
 songs, speeches, and fireworks. The poet, at the instigation 
 of a friend, had written an ode for one of these occasions, 
 which, containing a sonorous and rollicking refrain, gave great 
 pleasure to the admirers of "Old Hickory," who took it up 
 and made it popular. Mr. Verplanck, writing from Wash 
 ington, January 9, 1828, describes its early fortunes thus, using 
 names from the " Talisman " : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRANCES : I am sorry to tell you that, although from 
 1 The North American Review we have learned the merits of your 
 work, yet as Mr. Walsh thinks the praise given by the eastern critic 
 too high, we are altogether at a loss to decide on your literary rank, 
 not a single copy of your coup d essai having reached us. 
 
 " Your political demonstrations have succeeded far better. I re 
 ceived from Mr. Hoyt a copy of your ode for the 8th of January, 
 which was, I trust, sung with splendid effect, admirable music, and 
 the finest voices, at the Masonic Hall.* If it was not I told a lie to 
 our Jackson friends. 
 
 " At the Jackson dinner yesterday, after an admirable speech from 
 Livingston, full of interesting anecdotes of the * Matins of St. Vic 
 toria for that he said is the Catholic name of the 8th something was 
 said about New York, to which the president (not Mr. Adams, but 
 General Van Ness) requested me to reciprocate. I made a little 
 speech regretted that the letter of the venerable and patriotic chair 
 man of our New York dinner conveying an official toast had by some 
 
 * Where the Democrats of New York kept their festival. 
 
244 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 unaccountable accident miscarried. But, that we might as far as pos 
 sible sympathize with my constituents, I told them that I would read 
 a noble effusion of poetry, at that moment doubtless thrilling every 
 bosom in the Masonic Hall. Perhaps my partiality for the author 
 (who, etc., etc.) might deceive me, but it seemed to me to breathe the 
 purest spirit of poetry I was sure that it did that of the purest 
 patriotism. 
 
 " I then read the ode with due emphasis, and a little theatrically. 
 Vice-President Calhoun nodded approbation. Van Beuren (sic) was 
 in ecstasies, so was the Speaker (Taylor), and Kremer shouted clamor 
 ous delight. After divers cheers I renewed : Mr. President, in the 
 absence of any official instruction from my gestive constituents, permit 
 me, instead of substituting a sentiment of my own, to offer you in their 
 name as a toast the last stanza of the verses I have read : " Drink to 
 those who won," etc. * 
 
 " This was received with enthusiasm. The company (and at that 
 period they were all in a mood to judge of poetry and sentiment, for 
 they had merely got to a point of temperate excitement) shouted and 
 clapped, the music brayed, the cannons fired, and Colonel Hayne 
 swore that the Jackson cause had all the poetry as well as all the 
 virtue of the land. 
 
 " Remember me to M. DeViellecour, Miss Huggins, and our other 
 friends. I am yours, very truly, 
 
 " G. C. VERPLANCK." 
 
 Mr. Bryant answered, February i6th, thus: 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have not written, I believe, since Mr. Herbert 
 got his letter containing an account of the reception of his ode at the 
 dinner at Washington. He was wonderfully delighted with it, and so 
 also were his friends. The artist who made Plutarch Peck s coat, 
 with his usual interest in everything that relates to American letters, 
 called to obtain a sight of it, and a copy was dispatched to M. Vielle- 
 cour, who returned a note expressive of the gratification with which he 
 had perused it. Mr. Herbert was observed to look wonderfully com 
 placent for a day or two, but his face grew longer when Mr. Walsh 
 
 * This ode I once found in the " Evening Post," but have been unable to get at 
 it acrain. 
 
LETTERS TO VERPLANCK. 
 
 245 
 
 said that the ode had been praised too highly, and the critical Charles 
 King declared it prosaic. However, a couple of articles which lately 
 appeared in the * Enquirer, in which justice is done to both Mr. Walsh 
 and his Jak Rugby, have restored their usual serenity to the features 
 of our excellent friend. 
 
 " The tariff does not seem likely to be popular to the eastward. 
 It was amusing to observe by the papers how it was received. The 
 Jackson papers in that quarter seized upon it as a proof that the Jack 
 son party was friendly to manufactures, or at least willing to give their 
 friends fair play. The Adams papers preserved a dead silence for a 
 while, and then the storm broke forth. The Boston Courier attacks 
 the whole bill tooth and nail, as you probably have seen by this time. 
 The dissatisfaction with the tax on molasses seems to be pretty 
 general ; it reaches from Albany to Portland. An article from the 
 * National Journal, in which it is said that the bill does not meet the 
 views of the real friends of the American system, is copied into almost 
 every administration paper that I take up ; and they all take their cue 
 from it. I think the New England members will be forced, as you 
 predict, to vote against it. W. C. B." 
 
 These letters are good specimens of those that passed be 
 tween Mr. Verplanck and Mr. Bryant at this time, which are 
 nearly all of them curious mixtures of allusions to the ideal 
 characters of the " Talisman," or its progress, and of discus 
 sions of politics. Mr. Verplanck was preparing a new tariff bill, 
 as Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and Mr. 
 Bryant gave him what help he could with the details. Some 
 times Verplanck would impart to him the drift of opinion in 
 Washington, with innuendos and speculations as to the move 
 ments of the great chiefs, which he would use in his news 
 paper, " in advance of the mails," and he in return would give 
 the Congressman the gossip of the city, and what the newspa 
 pers or prominent authorities were saying about their literary 
 bantling. On one occasion I find that Washington Irving, 
 who was Secretary of Legation at London, ventured informa 
 tion (but not improperly) as to the negotiations about the West 
 India Trade, which the editor turned to use, doubtless to the 
 
246 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 disgust of his contemporaries, whom he anticipated. But the 
 interest in these desultory notes is now too remote to justify 
 more than a few brief extracts. 
 
 "MAY 9, 1828: I publish to-day yours of the 5th, or at least a 
 part of it, but so altered that the authorship need not be claimed by 
 you unless you please. It has also been thought best to publish Mr. 
 McDuffie s letter. I made an apology for you on the day after the 
 article appeared in the Commercial ; but the merchants said it was 
 sly, and did not think it quite satisfactory. It, however, had the effect 
 of disgusting them with Blunt, if they were not disgusted before. The 
 letters published to-day, particularly Mr. McDuffie s, will set the mat 
 ter right. . . . 
 
 " The demand for the Talisman continues, and you must do your 
 share for another year. Inman has a design illustrating Moore s poem 
 of the Dismal Swamp, which I hear spoken highly of, and which he 
 wishes engraved for the Talisman. Will you pick up from the Vir 
 ginians some particulars of the Dismal Swamp while you are at Wash 
 ington, which some of us may weave into a narrative, or make a florid 
 description out of." 
 
 . "DECEMBER 29, 1828: The American Academy of Arts have 
 filled their gallery with copies of Italian and Flemish paintings, which 
 an Italian has brought over for originals. Some are good copies, say 
 Morse and the other artists, but for the most part daubs. By the bye, 
 do not let Colonel Trumbull paint the other four national pictures. 
 They will be taken down again in twenty years ; and the Colonel has 
 got thirty-two thousand dollars already for his copies. Give one to 
 Allston while he is not only alive but in the vigor of his genius. Give 
 one to Morse, who is going abroad next spring to Rome, who will 
 study it there, and give five years of his life to it. Give one to Sully, 
 and, if the colonel cannot do without the remaining one, let him have 
 it as a matter of grace." 
 
 "JANUARY 27, 1829: As to the degree of favor with which the 
 Talisman has been received, I can only say that the impartial opin 
 ions seem to place it even higher than last year. I suppose you have 
 seen Buckingham s opinion of it, placing it, in point of literary merit, 
 
LETTERS CONTINUED. 
 
 247 
 
 above all other works of the kind. The Middletown Gazette, a 
 paper in which I showed you a criticism on Charles King s style, ex 
 pressed the same opinion, but committed a great blunder as to the 
 authors, ascribing the book to Paulding, Halleck, and myself. The 
 Norfolk Herald paid a high compliment to Mason s engraving of 
 the Dismal Swamp, which it said gave a pleasing view of the Great 
 Feeder, with a lady crossing the lake by the fire-fly lamps in a canoe 
 rowed by an Indian. As I told you beforehand, Coleman cannot 
 abide the scenes at Washington not liking the ridicule of fat women ; 
 and Lewis Tappan is outrageous against the Simple Tale, which he 
 looks upon as an impious sneer at the charitable and religious socie 
 ties, of many of which he is a principal pillar." 
 
 " FEBRUARY 9, 1829 : People have done talking about Miss Wright 
 here, and now the common topic is General Jackson s health. As 
 often as about once a week somebody sets afoot a report that he is 
 dead. This morning there is a good deal of anxiety because he has 
 not got to Washington yet, although he has been allowed eight whole 
 days to travel thither from Pittsburgh. As we have all set our hearts 
 on his being president, I solemnly believe that, if he were to take it 
 into his head to die before he is declared to be elected, it would occa 
 sion tenfold more vexation and disappointment than if Mr. Adams had 
 received a majority over him. We should all think it very unkind of 
 him, after all the trouble we have been at on his account. Besides, 
 you know that everybody is in an agony of curiosity to know who he 
 will put into his Cabinet. If he should slip off to the other world 
 without solving this riddle, we should never forgive him. Do you not 
 intend to make some great speech this session that we can publish in 
 the Post, with REMARKS, earnestly inviting the attention of our read 
 ers ? Or will it be soon enough to take that trouble another ses 
 sion." 
 
 "FEBRUARY 27, 1829: Having a spare moment, I think I cannot 
 employ it better than in taking you to task for letting General Jackson 
 make so bad a Cabinet. Van Buren is very well, but how comes Ing- 
 ham to be the Secretary of the Treasury ? It does not signify to say 
 that he is not exactly in favor of the tariff as it now stands; he is a 
 tariff man, infected with the leaven of the American system. Then as 
 
248 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 for capacity, I should judge, from what I have seen of him in letters 
 and speeches, that he is no great matter. We are very much inclined 
 to grumble here at the appointment of Ingham. Eaton, I have no 
 doubt, would have stood quite as high in the general estimation as to 
 talent ; I mean, if he had never written the * Life of Jackson. Branch 
 is a man, too, of whom we know little in this quarter, and that little 
 does not give us a high opinion of him. Berrian s appointment will 
 be highly satisfactory. I allow, the Cabinet is as good as the last ; the 
 Treasury Department is a little better filled, but where are the great 
 men whom the General was to assemble round him, the powerful 
 minds that were to make up for his deficiencies? Where are the 
 Tazewells, the Livingstons, the Woodburys, the McLanes, etc. ? " 
 
 " NEW YORK, AUGUST 5, 1829 : * You will see in to-day s * Evening 
 Post an extract from a letter concerning a new picture by Washing 
 ton Allston of a mother and child. I copied it from a letter which 
 Verplanck has just received from Dana. Dana says that The Past 
 suited him exactly, and spoke of its naked strength, in which he 
 thought it exceeded anything I had written. He added that, if Bry 
 ant must write in a newspaper to get his bread, he prayed God he 
 might get a bellyful. Dana speaks in the same letter of a poem he 
 has been writing, and says he thinks he shall deliver it at Andover. 
 What has he to do with Andover, I wonder ? I hope he is not studying 
 divinity, to make himself a Calvinistic parson. He is inclined to Cal 
 vinism, you know, but I hope he will not Andoverize himself. 
 
 "Yesterday was the Commencement of Columbia College. It 
 rained violently, and, therefore, I neither attended the exercises nor 
 went to the dinner. Theodore Sedgwick, the younger, had the vale 
 dictory, and acquitted himself with great credit. Mr. Verplanck spoke 
 highly in praise of his performance. I like Leggett, so far, very much. 
 He seems to be an honest man, of good principles, industrious, and a 
 fluent though by no means a polished writer." 
 
 " DECEMBER, 1829 : f We are greatly obliged to you for such oracu 
 lar hints, for so they are received, as you have occasionally given us 
 since you went on to the capital. They are copied everywhere, even 
 
 * To Mrs. Bryant. f To Mr. Verplanck again. 
 
LETTERS CONTINUED. 
 
 in the American. The President s message has been very favorably 
 received here. Those who are concerned in the United States Bank 
 did not like the part relating to that institution, but even on that sub 
 ject there is not much excitement, notwithstanding the opposition 
 journals have tried hard to kindle one. How came Eaton to suffer 
 his report to appear so overcharged with verbal inaccuracies? Partly, 
 I suppose, by having an ignorant copyist for the press, and partly by 
 his own ambition to be fine ; but in either case he is inexcusable. It 
 has given the small critics of the opposition something to talk about. 
 
 " The * Talisman I have little to tell you about. If you see the 
 Courier, you must have seen Paulding s article about it, and Brooks s 
 certificate to its merits. Bliss does not talk of making much money 
 by the concern." 
 
 "DECEMBER 24, 1829: The other day Mr. Sands showed me the 
 third volume of a work called * Tales of an Indian Camp, published 
 in England by Colburn, and which Carey and Lea are to republish 
 here. You may perhaps have seen some preliminary puff of the book, 
 in which the author is said to be a Mr. Jones J. A. Jones, I believe, 
 the same who wrote the sonnet on Webster and then edited a Jackson 
 paper in Philadelphia. And what do you think I found Mr. Jones 
 had been doing in this third volume ? Only transplanting my story of 
 the * Cascade of Melsingah bodily into his work, leaving out my in 
 troduction and fitting it with a short one of his own, altering slightly 
 the beginning and end of several of the paragraphs, and putting a new 
 sentence at the close of the whole, but otherwise copying verbatim 
 about twenty pages of Mr. Herbert s composition. It is the same old 
 coat with a new cuff and collar. Not the slightest acknowledgment 
 of the obligation is made in any part of the book. What adds to the 
 man s impudence, he relates in the course of the work, with the utmost 
 gravity, as Mr. Sands tells me, that in his childhood he was attended 
 by an Indian servant, from whom he learned the superstitions and 
 traditions he has made use of in compiling the book. This theft from 
 me is not, however, the only one the work contains. The * Notes to 
 Yamoyden are stolen in the same wholesale manner. It will be nec 
 essary that the critics should be prepared to vindicate Mr. Herbert s 
 literary rights when the book comes out. For my own part, I intend 
 to expose the robbery, and if the book comes in your way you will not 
 
250 THE SUBORDINATE EDITOR. 
 
 forget what is due to our old friend. Sands has seen Carey. He 
 seems to entertain the proposition favorably, and promised to write, 
 with an offer of terms."* 
 
 These letters are important only as showing how the poet 
 was getting more and more busy with politics and politicians 
 a connection which for the time paralyzed his poetic activity, 
 so that for nearly three years after the close of the " Talisman " 
 he wrote nothing in verse that he has since been willing to 
 acknowledge. 
 
 * This relates to the republication of the " Talisman " as " Miscellanies." 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. 
 
 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 A. D. 1829-1832. 
 
 BY the death of Coleman, July, 1829, Mr. Bryant was left 
 chief editor of the " Evening Post " in the ownership of which 
 also he acquired an additional interest by an arrangement with 
 Mrs. Coleman. His life-work was now to be begun not that 
 which most subtly and widely influenced his countrymen, but 
 that which absorbed the greater part of his attention, and most 
 taxed his energies. He had abandoned his profession and 
 come to the city to engage in a purely literary career, and 
 here he was involved in journalism, of which so much is mere 
 hackwork and routine. It is no winged Pegasus he mounts, 
 to curvet and caracole in the air, amid the plaudits of onlook 
 ers, but a sorrier steed, as fiery, perhaps, as his fabled brother, 
 whose path lies on the dusty highways of life, and among the 
 clamors of noisy and ferocious combatants. Could he have 
 anticipated at the time the whirlpool of agitation and toil 
 into which it would plunge him for the greater part of his 
 days? 
 
 His personal character -his stern self-respect, and pervad 
 ing sense of responsibility in all that he did lifted his employ 
 ment at once into a region of elevation and dignity. Know 
 ing the power of the press, if wielded in a worthy manner, 
 knowing also its temptations to time serving and slackness of 
 performance, he resolved that if in his hands it fell short of the 
 noblest ideals, it should not be for the want of upright purposes 
 
252 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 and persistent endeavor. Of the spirit in which he approached 
 his task, I shall allow him to speak in a passage which fur 
 nishes a clew to his subsequent career, and which may not be 
 wholly devoid of instruction to his fellow-journalists even at 
 this later day : * 
 
 " The class of men," he said, " who figure in this country as the 
 conductors of newspapers are not, for the most part, in high esteem 
 with the community. It is true, they are courted by some, and 
 dreaded by others courted by those who are fond of praise, and 
 dreaded by those who are sensitive to animadversion ; courted by 
 those who would use their instruments for their own purposes, and 
 dreaded by those whose plans may suffer from their opposition but, 
 after all, the general feeling with which they are regarded is by no 
 means favorable. Contempt is too harsh a name for it, perhaps, but 
 it is far below respect. Nor does this arise from the insincerity or 
 frivolousness of their commendation or their dispraise in the thousand 
 opinions they express in matters of art, science, and taste, concern 
 ing all of which they are expected to say something, and concern 
 ing many of which they cannot know much, as from the fact that pro 
 fessing, as they do, one of the noblest of sciences, that of politics in 
 other words, the science of legislation and government they too 
 often profess it in a narrow, ignorant, ignoble spirit. Every journal 
 ist is a politician, of course ; but in how many instances does he as 
 pire to no higher office than that of an ingenious and dexterous par 
 tisan ? He does not look at political doctrines and public measures 
 in a large and comprehensive way, weighing impartially their ultimate 
 good or evil, but addicts himself to considerations of temporary expe 
 diency. He inquires not what is right, just, and true at all times, 
 but what petty shift will serve his present purpose. He makes poli 
 tics an art rather than a science a matter of finesse rather than of 
 philosophy. He inflames prejudices which he knows to be ground 
 less because he thinks them convenient. He detracts from the per 
 sonal merits of men whom he knows to be most worthy. He con 
 demns in another party what he allows in his own. In short, he 
 considers his party as a set of men who are tc be kept in office, if 
 
 * " Memoir of William Leggett," " Democratic Review," July, 1829. 
 
POLITICAL CREED. 253 
 
 they are already in, or placed in office, if they are not, at any hazard, 
 instead of making it his duty to support certain doctrines and meas 
 ures, and to recommend them to the people by reason and argument, 
 and by showing their beneficial effects and the evils of opposite doc 
 trines and different measures. . . . Yet the vocation of the newspaper 
 editor is a useful and indispensable, and, if rightly exercised, a noble 
 vocation. It possesses this essential element of dignity that they 
 who are engaged in it are occupied with questions of the highest im 
 portance to the happiness of mankind. We cannot see, for our part, 
 why it should not attract men of the first talents and the most ex 
 alted virtues. Why should not the discussions of the daily press 
 demand as strong reasoning powers, as large and comprehensive ideas, 
 as profound an acquaintance with principles, eloquence as command 
 ing, and a style of argument as manly and elevated, as the debates 
 of the Senate ? " 
 
 Running through this exposition of his professional creed 
 are references to the philosophy or science of politics, which 
 are not vague words with him. Already a firm believer in 
 the doctrines of political economy, as they had taken shape in 
 the English and Continental treatises, he had persuaded him 
 self that society, in satisfying its natural wants, or in procur 
 ing, assimilating, and distributing the means of its nourish 
 ment, acted as a spontaneous organism. In this respect the 
 social nature of man, like external nature, was subject to fixed 
 and invariable laws, which scientific induction might discover 
 and formulate, but which it was beyond the power of legisla 
 tion to modify, except arbitrarily and to the detriment of hu 
 man well-being. But if such is the case, if in this important 
 order of its functions, society is capable of operating harmo 
 niously without political interference, and impelled alone by 
 permanent and indefeasible impulses, what is the use of gov 
 ernment? In what sphere, to what extent, under what limita 
 tions, may the hand of authority interpose in the regulation 
 of social movements? Mr. Bryant s answer was that com 
 monly given by the disciples of laisscz faire, but with a differ 
 ence. Government, he said, is the organ and representative 
 
254 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 of the whole community, not of a class, or of any fraction of 
 that community. Its primary duty, therefore, is to maintain 
 the conditions of universal liberty or the equilibrium and har 
 mony of the social forces so that the energies of the individual 
 may the most freely act and expand, according to his own 
 judgment, his own capacities, his own views of the duties and 
 destinies of man here upon earth. It must not undertake di 
 rectly any enterprises of its own religious, intellectual, artis 
 tic, or economical but it must secure a perfectly safe and 
 open field to every kind of enterprise and to every one of its 
 members. In a wordj its functions are juridical to protect 
 and maintain rights and not paternal or eleemosynary to en 
 courage, nurse, and coddle interests, save in so far as those 
 interests are general, or common to every member of the 
 body-politic. Liberty, justice, order, are its supreme, almost 
 exclusive ends, and not prosperity, which will come of itself 
 when those ends are attained. On this theory of the State, 
 Mr. Bryant contended, our institutions as a nation are dis 
 tinctively built, and either we must give up our pretensions 
 to democracy or carry them out with a manly courage to 
 every logical and practicable result. Whether he was right 
 or wrong in his notions, it cannot be denied that his exalted 
 conception of the true nature of governmental agency gave a 
 rare dignity to his discussions, and won for him, in the end, 
 a public confidence that has seldom been surpassed in any 
 editorial career. 
 
 He was all the more convinced of the soundness of his po 
 litical philosophy because it was at one with his moral in 
 stincts. Holding that the proper aim of morality was not 
 a mere outward obedience to an established rule, but an in 
 ward recognition of the true manhood of man, or reverence 
 for that rationality, conscience, and freedom which are the 
 sole and characteristic attributes of human nature, the em 
 phatic injunction of the Apostle, " Honor all men," consti 
 tuted for him the practical side of ethics. It brought, as he 
 thought, his politics into a complete unity of principle with 
 
PRACTICAL VIEWS. 
 
 255 
 
 his religion, " the perfect law of love " displayed in the life 
 and teaching of Jesus Christ. He was, in a word, thoroughly, 
 radically, intensely a Democrat, but of the positive rather than 
 the negative school of democracy, which, insisting upon the 
 rights of the individual, maintains also the duties of the indi 
 vidual to every one of his fellow-men. 
 
 Baldly stated as they are here, these opinions would seem 
 to be the merest doctrinarianism ; yet in theory, as in prac 
 tice, Mr. Bryant was very far removed from the simple doc 
 trinaire. His principles, I think, never came to him as a sys 
 tem. They were the results of his feelings rather than of his 
 thoughts or of any deliberate process of reflection. His pro 
 found love and respect for his fellow-men ; his unwillingness 
 to ask for himself what he would not concede to another and 
 to all others ; his humility, his sense of justice, his yearning 
 for progress in all the nobler arts of life ; and his deep, relig 
 ious reverence for a humanity which the Most High had not 
 disdained to assume with a view to its ultimate glorification 
 on earth as in heaven these were the sources of his abstract 
 political convictions. Nevertheless, in the discharge of his 
 actual duties he was eminently practical. No one, indeed, 
 not even the statesman in power, is more imperatively re 
 quired to consider the real condition and feelings of society 
 than the political editor who aspires to be a teacher and guide 
 of men. All his problems come to him in the concrete, as 
 something to be resolved there and then, and to be resolved 
 in a way that will satisfy a large number of his contempora 
 ries. If he should treat them in the abstract only, he would 
 soon be without an audience. He may, like the statesman, 
 secretly worship an ideal of policy, and be forever reaching 
 toward the realization of it in his practical measures; but 
 he must also, like the statesman, take into account the opin 
 ions and tendencies of his fellows, or the living spirit of his 
 age and nation. Mr. Bryant was a careful observer of these 
 circumstances ; he read with attention the newspapers and 
 magazines of all parties ; he conversed freely with men of all 
 
256 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 conditions, and particularly with the plain people whom he 
 encountered in his many rambles ; and he cultivated the habit, 
 in his discussions, of always arguing from the specific instances 
 in hand. Thus, in his innumerable strictures upon our tariff 
 legislation, he seldom recurs to general principles, but dwells 
 upon the duty on iron, the duty on woollens, the duty on salt, 
 etc., showing its immediate influence on society as it is, and 
 in all its ramifications of interest. Of course, he carries with 
 him, without expressing them, his fundamental convictions, as 
 everybody must do who would not render his reasonings a 
 jumble of transient expedients, but the special case is relied 
 upon to enforce his conviction, rather than the conviction to 
 enforce the special case. It was a part of his strategy, I may 
 further observe, never to fly violently in the face of existing 
 prejudices if it could be helped, but to dislodge them by at 
 tacks on the flank and rear. If, however, victory was not 
 otherwise to be obtained, he had the courage to march boldly 
 and openly to the point of attack, and to take the consequence 
 of battle. 
 
 Unfortunately, he found himself, from the outset of his 
 editorial career, in sharp conflict with a large and powerful 
 force of public opinion. A mass of schemes growing out of 
 the needs of our young and impatient material civilization 
 confronted him, w^hich not only proceeded upon theories 
 of government the reverse of his own, but which threatened 
 to swamp all rational notions of government in a deluge of 
 selfish and avaricious clamors. These schemes were prose 
 cuted by a great party, strong alike in numbers, intelligence, 
 and wealth, and upheld by leaders distinguished for intellect 
 and eloquence. One segment of this numerous body, com 
 prising the bankers and merchants, endeavored to control, 
 by means of allied incorporations, the issues of paper cur 
 rencies, which exercised all the functions of money ; another 
 part, composed of the manufacturers, demanded bounties in 
 the shape of prohibitory and discriminating taxes against 
 foreign rivals ; and a third raved for subsidies to enable 
 
JACKSON S ADMINISTRATION. 257 
 
 them to construct local roads and canals, and to clear out 
 unnavigablc harbors and rivers in the name of internal im 
 provements. They all agreed in one thing in mercenary 
 intentions against the common treasury. It required no ex 
 traordinary reach or astuteness of sagacity to see what a stu 
 pendous means of bribery their conjoint bids for favors were 
 likely to become in our popular Congressional and Presiden 
 tial elections; or how much they tended to an overwhelm 
 ing concentration of power in the hands of successful party 
 managers ; or what an evil lesson they taught practically to 
 the masses of people, whom they persuaded that national 
 prosperity depends not upon individual energy and individ 
 ual economy, but upon the fostering care and corrupting 
 patronage of government. It was in this light, at least, that 
 Mr. Bryant saw these projects, and he set himself against 
 them with all his ardor and ability. 
 
 It was for some time doubtful during Jackson s candidacy 
 whether, if elected, he would turn the Federal power in favor 
 or against the enterprising classes, as they were called. Orig 
 inally brought forward by Federalists, he was yet known to be 
 not of their way of thinking. During a brief senatorial term 
 he had rather given in to the prevailing views, and voted for 
 tariffs and internal improvements. But after his nomination, 
 and before his election, he looked decidedly in another direc 
 tion. Educated in the tenets of the old Republicans, and pro 
 fessing an earnest sympathy with the masses rather than classes 
 of the people, his known character and unknown views awak 
 ened a dread of him which lent a great deal of passion and 
 bitterness to the contest. It raged in the end with a vehe 
 mence that had scarcely been equalled since the days of Jef 
 ferson. On reaching the chair of State, Jackson was not long 
 in letting it be understood that the reins of government were 
 in his hands. Professing to be guided by a spirit of the ut 
 most impartiality and justice, he did not conceal his very de 
 cided party proclivities. " The blessings of government," he 
 said, "like the dews of heaven, must fall upon all alike," which 
 
 VOL. I. 18 
 
258 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 was not a consolatory remark for those who lived upon its 
 special favors. 
 
 The administration of Jackson, beginning only three months 
 before Mr. Bryant s editorship, was a stormy one throughout. 
 His whispered suspicions of the National Bank, the charter 
 of which was to expire in a few years ; his vetoes of road and 
 harbor bills on the ground of their want of national scope and 
 bearing ; the enmity of his friends, less ambiguous than his 
 own, to the device of protection, which they seemed deter 
 mined to defeat in detail, if not in gross ; his plan for the re 
 moval of the Indian tribes beyond the limits of the States 
 furnished themes for excited debates on home affairs ; while 
 at a later day his vigorous prosecution of our claims against 
 France, and his frank but determined dealing with Great Brit 
 ain in questions of colonial trade, kept alive in many minds a 
 hovering fear of foreign complications. 
 
 It is for history, not biography, to write an account of 
 these disputes. Suffice it to say that in all of them the Presi 
 dent had no more efficient supporter than the " Evening Post." 
 It caught a good deal of its hero s courage and energy, and 
 could be at times, in spite of its habitual decorum, exasperat 
 ing and fiery. Once indeed and only once in the whole 
 course of his fifty years of editorial experience Mr. Bryant 
 so lost the control of himself that he inflicted personal chas 
 tisement upon an adversary who had given him the lie direct. 
 It was the impulse of a moment, as the parties passed each 
 other in the street, and regretted almost as soon as it was 
 done. The next day Mr. Bryant recounted the incidents of 
 the affair impartially, stating the gross provocation that he 
 had received, but apologizing to the public for having so in 
 discreetly taken the law into his own hands. He could never 
 afterward hear the matter alluded to without annoyance, and 
 particularly when it was intimated to him that the person who 
 had given the offence was not the one who had been subjected 
 to its penalty. With the exception of this unfortunate occur 
 rence, Mr. Bryant, though railed at with the vulgar and vio- 
 
POLITICAL PROSCRIPTION. 059 
 
 lent vituperations of our journals, confined his replies to words 
 which were trenchant and severe enough, but never tran 
 scending the bounds of allowable party warfare. Nor was he 
 often blinded by the smoke of battle to the shortcomings and 
 misdeeds of his party associates. He castigated them, when 
 he had occasion, with the same plainness of phrase that he 
 used toward his adversaries, and not infrequently incurred 
 their displeasure. We shall see, as the anti-slavery feeling 
 took form and prominence, that his journal was not afraid 
 of prodding even the " old lion " in his den. 
 
 In one respect, I feel bound to say, the "Evening Post" 
 permitted its party attachments to close its eyes to a most de 
 plorable phase of Jackson s administration. There were in it 
 no rebukes rather defences, or, if that word be too strong, 
 pleas in abatement of the practice of removing political 
 opponents from office, which did not originate with Jack 
 son, but was greatly extended by him, under the pernicious 
 maxim that " to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy," 
 and which has since grown into a prodigious and most men 
 acing abuse. It is true that Mr. Coleman, who was an ar 
 dent admirer of Edmund Burke, had before committed the 
 journal to the opinion that administrations should be kept 
 entirely in the hands of their political friends. He justified 
 himself by quotations of passages in Burke s " Thoughts on 
 Present Discontents," * which argue that, while it is " the 
 business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper 
 ends of government," it is the business of the politician, who 
 is the philosopher in action, " to pursue every just method 
 to put the men who hold his opinions in such a condition 
 as may enable them to carry their common plans into exe 
 cution with all the power and authority of the State." It 
 was not seen, or if it was seen it was concealed, that Burke s 
 words apply only to chiefs of departments, who control the 
 policy of government, and not to subordinates, who are 
 
 * Eurke s Poetical Works, vol. i, p. 530, et al. Boston edition. 
 
260 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 mere ministerial agents, while he protests in so many words 
 against the use of "proscription." Jackson himself, before 
 his election, enunciated the true principle. " The chief mag 
 istrate," he said, "of a great and powerful nation should never 
 indulge in party feelings. His conduct should be liberal and 
 disinterested, always bearing in mind that he acts for the 
 whole, and not a part, of the community." But the pressure 
 of hungry supporters, acting upon his too ready and impas 
 sioned resentments, overcame the scruples of his better judg 
 ment, and the example of proscription which he set, only too 
 faithfully followed by his successors of all parties, has con 
 verted our political contests into reckless scrambles for office, 
 generated a class of professional politicians, who control the 
 entire machinery of elections, and opened the way and given 
 impulse to systems of bargaining and corruption which are the 
 most imminent and fearful dangers of the republic. Mr. Bry 
 ant, in process of time, discovered the tendencies of this de 
 testable bigotry,* and took a prominent part in the endeavor 
 to arrest and correct its evils. Alas ! how little has yet been 
 accomplished toward a real amelioration ! 
 
 Our editor s interests were not confined to the affairs of his 
 own country. The decade, beginning in 1830, the reader will 
 remember, was the heyday of what Carlyle used to ridicule so 
 scornfully as " glorious enfranchisements " and " rose-water 
 millenniums," when the minds of the race both in Europe and 
 America were full of regenerating effervescences. It was the 
 day of political revolution in France, Belgium, Poland, Italy, 
 and South America, of Catholic and West India Emancipa 
 tions, of reform bills in England, and of various smaller phi 
 lanthropies, moral and social, everywhere such as improved 
 jurisprudence, wholesomer dietetics, disciplined prisons, so- 
 
 * " The practice of sweeping and indiscriminate dismissions from office for opin 
 ion s sake," he wrote, " corrupts our elections, embitters party quarrels, and makes 
 many cowards and many hypocrites. Its effect is to put bad men in office, by render 
 ing party zeal a principal qualification, and causing appointments to be made with 
 too much haste to be made well." " Evening Post," but not till November 28, 1842. 
 
REVOLUTIONARY SYMPATHIES. 2 6l 
 
 cietarv experiments, and fervent religious revivals. Mr. Brv- 
 ant did not escape the prevalent tendencies. He watched 
 the larger struggles with earnest attention and outspoken sym 
 pathy ; he signed and commended calls for meetings gotten 
 up to express opinions, or to raise money, in behalf of the Eu 
 ropean revolutionists ; and, rejoicing in their successes, he par 
 ticipated in feeling, if not always in person, in the processions 
 and dinners that celebrated their supposed triumphs. Even 
 for the less imposing revolts of the South Americans against 
 the Spanish yoke, he uttered many a friendly word, defending 
 the character and conduct of such chiefs as Bolivar, and ear 
 nestly urging the patriots to renewed exertions whenever they 
 seemed about to fail. O Connell in Ireland excited his warm 
 admiration, and when the victory was achieved he joined 
 heartily in the commemorating festivities. He must, I infer, 
 have made hirnself somewhat prominent in these demonstra 
 tions ; for in a letter from Gamier Pages,* dated Paris, June, 
 1830, he is addressed as one " whose occupations and labors, as 
 well as personal character," would be of the greatest assistance 
 to the liberal cause in Europe. " We have," continues M. Pa 
 ges, " the most incomplete notion of the United States, which 
 yet furnishes us the model that we wish to imitate. You have 
 arrived at that happy state in which you have nothing to think 
 of but the conservation of the political well-being you enjoy, 
 while we in France must fight continually to acquire what you 
 already possess. May I then ask of you, who are so com 
 petent to give them, the instructions that we so much need in 
 our circumstances? " etc. I have no means of saying to what 
 extent Mr. Bryant put himself in relation with the continental 
 leaders, or that he did so at all. 
 
 His zeal in the smaller reformatory movements was less 
 marked ; for, while he approved the objects of many of them, 
 such as the Prison Discipline and Anti-Capital-Punishment So 
 cieties, he kept somewhat aloof from reformers themselves, 
 
 * A member of the Provisional Government of 1848. 
 
262 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 who were apt to be shallow yet overbearing men, of less 
 agreeable companionship and chatter than the trees and birds 
 he found in the woods. He once or twice presided at unim 
 portant meetings, but I do not discover that he cared to speak. 
 His adherence to the doctrines of Hahnemann in medical prac 
 tice dated from a later period ; and, although the preachers of 
 "the vegetable gospel" claimed him as a convert, we have 
 seen that his habits of living were a matter of necessity, im 
 posed upon him long before by the state of his health. 
 
 In all his professional labors Mr. Bryant had a most able 
 associate in William Leggett, whom he called to his assistance 
 shortly after the death of Coleman. He was a native of the 
 city, who for a few years had served as a midshipman in the 
 navy, which he abandoned because of some real or fancied 
 tyranny on the part of a superior officer. For a while, then, he 
 wrote tales and verses that acquired him local repute enough 
 to justify the issue of a weekly periodical called the " Critic," 
 of several of the later numbers of which he composed the en 
 tire contents reviews, essays, tales, biographical notices, and 
 poems, besides putting it in type and delivering it to its sub 
 scribers. At the outset of his engagement, Mr. Leggett stipu 
 lated that he should not be asked to write on politics, " a sub 
 ject he did not understand, and for which he had no taste," 
 but in less than a year he overcame both his ignorance and 
 aversion, and wrote fluently and copiously on questions of 
 free-trade, currency, abolitionism, and constitutional law. It 
 must be said, however, in excuse of this appearance of haste, 
 that he was an unusually industrious student, quick of percep 
 tion, ardent in the love of truth, supremely disinterested, and 
 if too rapid in the formation of his judgments, and fearless in 
 the expression of them, frank in the avowal of his errors, and 
 always amenable to instruction. As he had been, like Mr. 
 Bryant, a known writer of verses in his case such as young 
 sailors are apt to perpetrate during moonlight nights at sca 
 the wags of the opposition press lost no time in christening 
 them " The Chaunting Cherubs of the Evening Post. " More 
 
NO TIME FOR POETRY. 263 
 
 impetuous in temperament than his chief, he sometimes needed 
 restraint, but for the most part his writing added to the vigor 
 of the journal and helped to raise it to the leadership it soon 
 attained. 
 
 Arduous and incessant work on his paper left Mr. Bryant 
 no time for poetical labor. After the pieces prepared for the 
 last number of the "Talisman" early in 1829 he wrote no 
 poetry for some years, as I have said once, in 1832, after a visit 
 to the Western prairies, but not again until his residence in 
 Europe in 1835. Resolved, however, not to be lost to the liter 
 ary world altogether, he prepared, in 1831, a volume of poems, 
 comprising all that he had published since the little pamphlet 
 of 1821 was printed. It contained about eighty additional 
 pieces not a luxuriant crop for ten years, considering quan 
 tity, but of rare worth and significance in respect to quality.* 
 When it appeared, the reviews, with the single exception of a 
 Philadelphia periodical, which thought but poorly of it, recog 
 nized its merits. Mr. William J. Snelling, in the " North 
 American," pronounced it " the best volume of American 
 poetry that had ever appeared." f Mr. Longfellow, in the same 
 number, \ referred to his translations " as rivalling the originals 
 in beauty." " He is," said Mr. H. W. Prescott, in the next num 
 ber, discoursing of American literature in general, " placed 
 by general consent at the head of our poetic literature. His 
 writings are distinguished by those graces which belong to 
 naturally fine perceptions and a chastened taste. A deep 
 moral purity, serious but not sad, tinctures most of his views 
 of man and nature, and insensibly raises thought from the con 
 templation of their lower objects to that of the mind who 
 formed them." Mr. Hugh Swinton Legar6 had before con 
 fessed, in the " Southern Quarterly," [ that, proposing to sub- 
 
 * Poems. By William Cullen Bryant. New York : Elam Bliss, 1832. 
 
 f "North American," April, 1832. 
 
 J April, 1832. 
 
 July, 1832. 
 
 | "Southern Quarterly Review," February, 1832. 
 
264 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 ject them to rigid criticism, he had turned down the pages he 
 wished to remark upon, but found, before he got through, 
 that he had turned down nearly every leaf in the volume for 
 commendation. Other writers were no less generous ; and it 
 was this chorus of approval, doubtless, that induced him to 
 test the hospitality of England toward a new American pro 
 duction. At the suggestion of Mr. Verplanck, he sent a copy 
 of his book to Washington Irving, who, as our pioneer in 
 prose, it was natural to suppose, would lend a helping hand 
 to a pioneer in poetry. He was then residing abroad ; and, 
 though Mr. Bryant was unacquainted with him personally, he 
 had every reason to rely upon his amiability and kindness. 
 Some time before, Irving, writing to his friend Brevoort, from 
 Madrid, in 1826, had said: " I have been charmed by what I 
 have seen of the writings of Bryant and Halleck. Are you 
 acquainted with them? I should like to know something 
 about them personally ; their vein of thinking is quite above 
 that of ordinary men and ordinary poets ; and they are mas 
 ters of the magic of poetic language." * This expression had 
 been communicated to Mr. Bryant, who would have scrupled 
 else to ask the services of a stranger. He wrote to Mr. Irving, 
 December 29, 1831, as follows: 
 
 " SIR : I have put to press in this city a duodecimo volume of two 
 hundred and forty pages, comprising all my poems which I thought 
 worth printing, most of which have already appeared. Several of 
 them I believe you have seen, and of some, if I am rightly informed, 
 you have been pleased to express a favorable opinion. Before pub 
 lishing the thing here, I have sent a copy of it to Murray, the London 
 bookseller, by whom I am anxious that it should be published in 
 England. I have taken the liberty, which I hope you will pardon a 
 countryman of yours, who relies on the known kindness of your dis 
 position to plead his excuse, of referring him to you. As it is not 
 altogether impossible that the work might be republished in England, 
 
 * "Life and Letters of Washington Irving," vol. iii, p. 241. New York : Put 
 nam s Sons, 1880. 
 
POEMS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND. 265 
 
 if I did not offer it myself, I could wish that it might be published by 
 a respectable bookseller in a respectable manner. 
 
 " I have written to Mr. Verplanck, desiring him to give me a letter 
 to you on the subject ; but, as the packet which takes out my book will 
 sail before I can receive an answer, I have presumed so far on your 
 goodness as to make the application myself. May I ask of you the 
 favor to write to Mr. Murray on the subject as soon as you receive 
 this. In my letter to him I have said nothing of the terms, which, 
 of course, will depend upon circumstances which I may not know, or 
 of which I cannot judge. I should be glad to receive something for 
 the work, but, if he does not think it worth the while to give anything, 
 I had rather that he should take it for nothing than that it should not 
 be published by a respectable bookseller. 
 
 " I must again beg you to excuse the freedom I have taken. I have 
 no personal acquaintance in England whom I could ask to do what I 
 have ventured to request of you ; and I know of no person to whom 
 I could prefer the request with greater certainty that it will be kindly 
 entertained. I am, sir, 
 
 " With sentiments of the highest respect, 
 
 " Your obedient and humble servant, 
 
 "WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT." 
 
 " P. S. I have taken the liberty to accompany this letter with a 
 copy of the work." 
 
 Mr. Verplanck wrote to Mr. Irving two days later, com 
 mending the project of his friend : 
 
 "WASHINGTON, December 31, 1831. 
 
 " DEAR IRVING : My friend Bryant, some of whose poetry I know 
 you have read and admired, has been collecting, and is about to pub 
 lish, a volume of his poems in New York. I need not praise them to 
 you. A letter received from him this morning informs me that he 
 has sent a copy of them to Murray, and has referred him to you as to 
 the character of the work. I believe that I am answerable myself for 
 this liberty, though he asks me * to inform him (you) of the liberty he 
 has taken. His object is an honorable publication in Europe, though 
 I take it for granted that profit would be acceptable, which I am happy 
 to say is not necessary. You will receive a copy of the work, which I 
 
266 THE EDITOR IN CHIEF. 
 
 have not yet seen in the present shape ; but his lines To the Past, 
 Lament of Romero, * Summer Wind, and everything painting our 
 scenery, I am sure can be eclipsed by nothing of our own day ; the 
 first, I have thought, by nothing in the language. 
 
 " I have the honor to be, 
 
 "Yours, very truly, 
 
 "G. C. VERPLANCK." 
 
 The fortunes of the book in England we shall learn in the 
 next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. 
 
 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 A. D. 1832. 
 
 EARLY in the year 1832, one of the most active of his life, 
 Mr. Bryant visited Washington, with a view, as I conjecture 
 from hints in one of his letters to Mr. Verplanck, to establish 
 a permanent correspondence for his paper. Up to that time 
 "our regular correspondent" was hardly known, and editors 
 depended for special news upon their relations with members 
 of Congress. He may have desired also to make the acquaint 
 ance of the leading men of the day, but, knowing his later 
 habit of avoiding personal contact with politicians, it is not 
 very probable. His few familiar letters to his wife, giving an 
 account of what he saw fifty years ago, may possess an interest 
 for some of the thousands of travellers who are familiar with 
 the capital in these days. 
 
 " JANUARY 23d : I wrote you yesterday, giving an account of my 
 arrival here. Since that time I have called on Mr. Verplanck. He 
 took me last evening to the house of Mr. Woodbury, Secretary of 
 War, whom we found in the midst of his family and two or three 
 friends a fine-looking man, with a prepossessing face, and of agree 
 able conversation. After a stay of about three quarters of an hour 
 we went to Mr. McLane s, Secretary of the Treasury, where we found 
 more display. Mr. McLane is a quiet man, of small stature and un 
 assuming manners. His wife, the mother of ten children, is a lady 
 of great vivacity and a good deal of address, full of conversation, and 
 talking to all the guests with great fluency. The eldest daughter is 
 
268 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 a young lady, as I should judge, of sixteen. There were several la 
 dies, half a dozen members of Congress, and Mr. Poirisett, late Min 
 ister to Mexico. Among the ladies was a daughter of the ex-Em 
 peror Iturbide, looking much as you might suppose Mrs. Salazar* to 
 have done at the age of eighteen. A young lady of the name of 
 Christie played a psalm-tune or two on the piano, accompanying the 
 music with the words. One of the hymns sung was Watts s Sweet 
 fields beyond the swelling flood. 
 
 "This morning I went to visit the Capitol. We first entered the 
 Representatives Hall, a spacious building, but not well designed for 
 its purposes; speakers experience great difficulty in making them 
 selves heard in it. Mr. Verplanck next took us to the library, an ele 
 gant room, and literally well stocked with books. We then went to 
 the gallery of the Senate Chamber, and waited for the Senators to 
 assemble. The Senate Chamber is not a large nor handsome apart 
 ment, compared with the Representatives Hall. We saw Harry 
 Clay, who has what I should call a rather ugly face. He is a tall, 
 thin, narrow-shouldered, light-complexioned man, with a long nose, 
 a little turned up at the end, and his hair combed back from the 
 edge of his forehead. We saw, also, the Vice-President, Calhoun, 
 who, you know, is the presiding officer of the Senate. He is a man 
 of the middle size, or perhaps a little over, with a thick shock of hair, 
 dull complexion, and of an anxious expression of countenance. He 
 looks as if the fever of political ambition had dried up all the juici 
 ness and freshness of his constitution. He despatched the business 
 of the body over which he presided with decision and rapidity. Af 
 terward we went to the gallery of the other House, and saw Mr. 
 Adams, Mr. Everett, and others, and heard two or three short 
 speeches on trifling questions. Becoming tired of these, we climbed 
 to the top of the great dome of the Capitol. From this elevation we 
 descried the whole city, with all its avenues leading in various direc 
 tions over a vast extent of surrounding country, through which flow 
 the waters of the Potomac. This afternoon we dined with Mr. Cam- 
 breling ; Colonel Drayton and Mr. Powlett, two very agreeable men, 
 were of the party. We were going to see Old Hickory, but it was 
 
 * A Spanish lady with whom Mr. Bryant s family boarded in New York for a 
 time. 
 
WASHINGTON IN 1832. 269 
 
 too late before we were ready, as the old gentleman goes to bed at 
 nine o clock." 
 
 " JANUARY 25th : Yesterday I called, with Mr. Wetmore, on the 
 Secretary of State, Mr. Livingston. To-day I dined with Mr. Ver- 
 planck. Several members of both Houses were present. To-night 
 I am going to see the President, and afterward to Commodore Pat 
 terson s to a party." 
 
 "JANUARY 29th: When I wrote you on Wednesday, I was about 
 to call at the President s. We went with Mr. Cambreling in a car 
 riage to the palace, on a bitter cold night, about seven o clock in the 
 evening. We were told by the servant that the President was en 
 gaged up-stairs, and could not be seen. C. proposed, however, that 
 we should go in and see Major Lewis and Major Donaldson (private 
 secretaries), which we did. Soon after, I observed that C. was out 
 of the room, and in a few minutes he entered with the President a 
 tall, white-haired old gentleman, not very much like the common 
 engravings of him. He received us very politely, and after about 
 three quarters of an hour, in which he bore his part very agreeably in 
 the conversation, we took our leave. Mr. Van Buren had been re 
 jected that day by the Senate, and when that subject was alluded to 
 the lion roared a little. We then went to Commodore Patterson s, 
 where there was a party made up of various materials the families 
 of heads of departments, naval officers, members of Congress, foreign 
 ministers and attaches, and others. Of the ladies, some were pretty, 
 but the prettiest was a Mrs. Constant, from New York. On Thurs 
 day evening Mr. Verplanck took us to Governor Cass s. We saw 
 him en famille with his two daughters; he is, as you may have heard, 
 a widower a grave-looking, rather dark-faced man of fifty years of 
 age. On Friday evening we dined with Mr. Livingston, Secretary 
 of State. The entertainment was, I think, altogether the most sump 
 tuous and elegant I ever witnessed. There were no guests but Ma 
 jor Lewis, who lives with the President, Dr. Frienhau, and ourselves. 
 We afterward went to a party at Mr. McLane s. It was much like a 
 New York party, but more crowded. Three rooms were filled with 
 company, and in two of them there was dancing. On Saturday we 
 dined with Thomas L. Smith, formerly of New York, now Register 
 
2 ;o SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 of the Treasury. Major Barry, the Postmaster-General, was a guest 
 a man of slight make, and apparently the wreck of a man of talents. 
 " This morning we took a walk of a mile and a half to George 
 town, which is, in some sort, the parent of Washington. It is situ 
 ated close on the shores of the Potomac, and looks like an old town, 
 compared with Washington. The country about it seems to be pleas 
 ant with hills, valleys, and woods. The shores of the Potomac above 
 the town are beautiful and varied. We crossed the river on the ice 
 to what was formerly a part of Virginia, but is now included in the 
 District of Columbia, and found ourselves in a wood that clothed the 
 slope of a hill. We returned in a driving snow-storm. ... I have 
 heard no elaborate speeches yet from the great men, but I have heard 
 a specimen of the manner of most of them in their debates. I have 
 heard Hayne, Webster, Clay, and others in the Senate, and Drayton, 
 Adams, Cambreling, Archer, and Everett in the House. McDuffy 
 I have not heard." 
 
 Soon after his return, Mr. Bryant was gratified by the re 
 ceipt of a letter from Washington Irving, giving an account of 
 his discharge of the duty with which he had been intrusted. 
 It was dated at Byron s former home, Newstead Abbey, Jan 
 uary 26th : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : I feel very much obliged to you for the volume you 
 have had the kindness to send me, and am delighted to have in my 
 possession a collection of your poems, which, separately, I have so 
 highly admired. It will give me the greatest pleasure to be instru 
 mental in bringing before the British public a volume so honorable to 
 our national literature. When I return to London, which will be in 
 the course of a few days, I will ascertain whether any arrangement 
 can be effected by which some pecuniary advantage can be secured to 
 you. On this head I am not very sanguine. The book trade is at 
 present in a miserably depressed state in England, and the publishers 
 have become shy and parsimonious. Besides, they will not be dis 
 posed to offer you anything for a work in print for which they cannot 
 secure a copyright. I am sorry you sent the work to Murray, who 
 has disappointed me grievously in respect to other American works 
 intrusted to him; and who has acted so unjustly in recent transac- 
 
LETTERS TO IRVING. 
 
 271 
 
 tions with myself as to impede my own literary arrangements, and 
 oblige me to look round for some other publisher.* I shall, however, 
 write to him about your work, and if he does not immediately under 
 take it, will look elsewhere for a favorable channel of publication. 
 41 Believe me, my dear sir, 
 
 "With the highest consideration, 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 "WASHINGTON IRVING." 
 
 Murray s answer to Irving, dated Albemarle Street, Febru 
 ary 2d, was curt and to the point : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I received Mr. Bryant s poems yesterday, and I 
 am very sorry to say it is quite out of Mr. Murray s power to do any 
 thing for him, or with them. I send the volume to you in compliance 
 with your request. I am, dear sir, 
 
 " Yours, very truly, 
 
 "J. MURRAY, Jr." 
 
 Mr. Irving-, nothing daunted, applied to other publishers, 
 and at length succeeded in finding one in Mr. Andrews, who 
 consented to undertake it on the condition that a line in the 
 " Song of Marion s Men," which reads 
 
 "The British foeman trembles," 
 should be changed to 
 
 "The foeman trembles in his camp," 
 
 to avoid wounding British susceptibilities. The book was 
 published in March, 1832, with a dedication to Samuel Rogers, 
 which spoke in the warmest terms of the poems contained 
 in it. 
 
 * The descriptive writings of Mr. Bryant, said Irving, are essen 
 tially American. They transport us into the depths of the primeval 
 forest, to the shores of the lonely lake, the banks of the wild, nameless 
 stream, or the brow of the rocky upland, rising like a promontory from 
 amid a wide ocean of foliage, while they shed around us the glories 
 
 * A temporary misunderstanding, which was subsequently repaired. 
 
2/2 
 
 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 of a climate fierce in its extremes, but splendid in all its vicissitudes. 
 His close observation of the phenomena of nature and the graphic 
 felicity of his details prevent his descriptions from ever becoming 
 general and commonplace, while he has the gift of shedding over 
 them a pensive grace that blends them all into harmony, and of cloth 
 ing them with moral associations that make them speak to the heart. 
 Neither, I am convinced, will it be the least of his merits, in your eyes, 
 that his writings are imbued with the independent spirit and buoyant 
 aspirations incident to a youthful, a free, and a rising country. " 
 
 Mr. Rogers accepted the dedication in these friendly words : 
 
 " MY DEAR IRVING : I wish I could thank you as I ought, but that 
 is impossible. If there are some feelings which make men eloquent, 
 mine are not just now of that class. To have been mentioned by you 
 with regard on any occasion, I should always have considered as a 
 good fortune. What, then, must I have felt when I read what you 
 have written. If I was a vain man before, I am now in danger of be 
 coming a proud one ; and yet I can truly say that never in my life 
 was I made more conscious of my unworthiness than you have made 
 me by your praise. 
 
 " Believe me to be 
 
 " Your very grateful and very sincere friend, 
 
 " SAMUEL ROGERS. 
 "March 6, 1832." 
 
 Mr. Irving announced the success of his negotiations, in a 
 letter to Mr. Bryant from London, March 6th : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I send you a copy of the second edition of your 
 work, published this day. You will perceive that I have taken the 
 liberty of putting my name as editor, and of dedicating the work to 
 Mr. Rogers. Something was necessary to call attention at this mo 
 ment of literary languor and political excitement to a volume of poetry 
 by an author almost unknown to the British public. 
 
 " I have taken the further liberty of altering two or three words in 
 the little poem of * Marion s Men lest they might startle the pride 
 of John Bull on your first introduction to him. 
 
 " Mr. Andrews, the bookseller, has promised to divide with you 
 any profits that may arise on the publication, and I have the fullest 
 
IRVING S KINDNESS. 
 
 273 
 
 reliance on his good faith. The present moment, however, is far from 
 promising to literary gains, and I should not be surprised if the re 
 turns are but trifling. 
 
 " Believe me, my dear sir, 
 
 " Very respectfully and truly yours, 
 
 "WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 "\VM. C. BRYANT, Esq." 
 
 That Mr. Bryant was pleased with what Irving had done 
 for him, appears by this note to Verplanck of April 2oth : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Your letter seems to have been all powerful with 
 Washington Irving. I sent him a copy of my poems, and another to 
 Murray, referring him to Irving. On receiving the volume, Irving 
 wrote me a letter, saying that he would do what he could for me, but 
 he was sorry that I had given the work to Murray, who had occasioned 
 him a great deal of trouble in the transactions he had with him re 
 specting his own works. A few weeks after receiving the letter I 
 received another, informing me that Murray declined doing anything 
 with the work, and that it has been placed in the hands of J. Andrews, 
 of New Bond Street, who was to divide with me any profit that might 
 arise from its publication. Yesterday I received from Mr. Irving a 
 copy of the London edition, with his name on the title-page as editor, 
 and a dedication to Rogers prefixed to the poems, in which the kind 
 est things are said of them. This was doing so much more than I 
 had any reason to expect, that you may imagine the agreeable surprise 
 it gave me. 
 
 " Why do you never write ? The Evening Post is in an eclipse 
 since you have withdrawn the light of your countenance. The other 
 papers are ahead of it in the revelation of State secrets and mysteries 
 of policy. Yours truly, 
 
 "WM. C. BRYANT." 
 
 As soon as a copy of the English republication was received 
 in this country, Mr. Bryant took occasion to thank Mr. Irving 
 for his services as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I have received a copy of the London edition of 
 my poems forwarded by you. I find it difficult to express the sense I 
 
 VOL. I. 19 
 
274 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 entertain of the obligation you have laid me under by doing so much 
 more for me in this matter than I could have ventured, under any cir 
 cumstances, to expect. Had your kindness been limited to procuring 
 the publication of the work, I should still have esteemed the favor 
 worthy of my particular acknowledgment ; but by giving it the sanc 
 tion of your name, and presenting it to the British public with a rec 
 ommendation so powerful as yours, on both sides of the Atlantic, I 
 feel that you have done me an honor in the eyes of my countrymen, 
 and of the world. 
 
 " It is said that you intend shortly to visit this country. Your 
 return to your native land will be welcomed with enthusiasm, and I 
 shall be most happy to make my acknowledgments in person. 
 
 " I am, sir, very sincerely yours, 
 
 "WM. C. BRYANT." 
 
 Mr. Irving was crossing the ocean on his way home at the 
 date of the foregoing letter, which was intended to reach him 
 in Europe. As soon as Mr. Bryant heard of his return, he 
 addressed him this second letter of acknowledgment, which 
 was the first received, from Philadelphia, May 22d : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : I wrote you some time since to express my 
 thanks for the kind interest you have taken in the publication of my 
 book in England, but perceiving your name in the morning paper 
 among those of the passengers of the last Havre packet, I conclude 
 that my letter has not reached you. I take this opportunity, there 
 fore, of doing what my absence from New York will not permit me to 
 do at present in person namely, to say how exceedingly I am obliged 
 to you for having done so much more for my book than I was enti 
 tled, under any circumstances, to expect. I was not vain enough to 
 think you would give it to the British public with the sanction of 
 your name, or take upon yourself, in any degree, the responsibility of 
 its merit. To your having done so I ascribe the favorable reception 
 for such it is, so far as I am able to judge which it has met with 
 in Great Britain, as well as much of the kindness with which it is re 
 garded in this country. 
 
 " I am, sir, very gratefully and truly yours, 
 
 "WM. C. BRYANT." 
 
THE POEMS AT HOME. 275 
 
 A brief interchange of sentiment between Mr. Bryant and 
 Mr. Dana, from which I make a few extracts, had taken place 
 in the interval. 
 
 "NEW YORK, APRIL 9th: You were right in expecting a copy of 
 my poems. I made out a list of persons to whom I intended to pre 
 sent copies, before the work was out, and I put down, first, the names 
 of three old and good friends yours and Channing s and Phillips s. 
 
 * . . . The review in the American Quarterly * was written, it 
 is said, by Dr. McHenry, author of The Pleasures of Friendship, 
 and other Poems ; but Walsh has said, in his paper, that it was writ 
 ten at his particular request, and adopted by him as soon as he saw 
 the manuscript. It is supposed, also, that it received some touches 
 and additions from his pen. Walsh has a feeling of ill nature toward 
 me, and was doubtless glad of an occasion to gratify it, but I be 
 lieve that, as you say, the article will do me no harm. 
 
 " You ask about the sale of the book. Mr. Bliss tells me it is very 
 good for poetry. I printed a thousand copies, and more than half of 
 them are disposed of. As to the price, it may be rather high at $1.25, 
 but I found that, with what I should give away, and what the book 
 sellers would take, little would be left for me if a rather high price 
 was not put upon it, and so I told the publisher to fix it at a dollar 
 and a quarter. If the whole impression sells, it will bring me 300, 
 perhaps a little more. I hope you do not think that too much. I 
 have sent the volume out to England, and Washington Irving has had 
 the kindness to undertake to introduce it to the English public. . . . 
 As for the lucre of the thing on either side of the waters, an experi 
 ence of twenty-five years for it is so long since I became an author 
 has convinced me that poetry is an unprofitable trade, and I am very 
 glad that I have something more certain to depend upon for a living. 
 
 " I wish the critics of poetry in this country understood a little 
 more of the laws of versification. The tune of 
 
 Rum ti, rum ti, rum ti, etc., 
 
 is easily learned, but English verse not only admits but requires 
 something more. He who has got no further than rtim ti knows no 
 
 * A severe and almost abusive criticism. 
 
276 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 more of versification than he who has merely learned the Greek alpha 
 bet knows of Greek. Yet people undertake to talk about the rules 
 of English prosody who are evidently utterly ignorant of the usage, 
 the established usage, of the great mass of English poets who deserve 
 the name. I have half a mind to write a book in order to set our 
 people right on this matter, but I fear nobody would read it." 
 
 " APRIL loth : I have this moment received the American 
 Monthly. If you see Mr. Channing, give him my best thanks for 
 what he has so well and kindly said of my writings. 
 
 "As to the great poem or the lo?ig poem of which you speak, I must 
 turn it over to you to be written. One who has achieved such a tri 
 umph as you have over ill-natured critics, winning a reputation in 
 spite of them, should not let his talent sleep the moment it is acknowl 
 edged. 
 
 " I am going to remove to Hoboken on the first of May, where I 
 will give you a chamber. But do not come till I get back from the 
 West, for to the West I am going in the course of about four weeks, 
 with no other purpose in the world than to look at it. I have a brother 
 settled in Illinois, so I shall go down the Ohio till it mingles with the 
 Mississippi, and up the Mississippi till it meets the Illinois, and up 
 the Illinois to within twenty miles of Jacksonville, where my brother 
 lives. 
 
 " I have written you an egotistical sort of letter, but you will ex 
 cuse me in consequence of having lately published a book. My re 
 gards to all my friends in Cambridge. W. C. B." 
 
 Mr. Dana s reply was from Cambridge, April 2oth : 
 
 "... I wish that your half a mind to write a book on English 
 versification might become an entire one. Nor am I quite so sure that 
 it would not be read. Let me see : there are all the manufacturers 
 of verses for monthly magazines, daily papers, and albums no small 
 number. Then you have only to call it The Verse Class-Book ; or, 
 Prosody made Easy, and have it reviewed in The American Journal 
 of Education, and recommended to all academies and boarding- 
 schools, and your fortune is made at once. But, seriously (if you, 
 with your half mind, were half serious), I should be glad to see such 
 
DANA ON VERSIFICATION. 
 
 a work as you would write, illustrating your principles with such se 
 lections as you would make from our master poets and from the 
 Greeks and Latins, where you wished to point differences or resem 
 blances. We have no work deserving the name of a treatise on Eng 
 lish prosody. Every departure from the ordinary rule is set down to 
 neglect, or ignorance, or laziness; for instance, the trisyllable with 
 how much beauty you have used it (a little too frequently, perhaps, 
 for what is peculiar) ! How exquisite it is in Shakespeare, and how 
 fine in Milton, I need not say. To me, sometimes, in an impassioned 
 line, when Milton makes a break, the trochee following the iambus 
 gives an abrupt, startling energy to the passage, which it would hardly 
 have had if he had adhered to the common rule. And I believe that, 
 in many cases, though he may not have so written it premeditatedly, 
 he retained it designedly. 
 
 " To think of the infinite variety of sound that one with a bold 
 mind and a harmonious ear may pour forth ! It seems to me that 
 versification has never been treated upon philosophically enough, 
 merely as the utterance of thought and feeling, and taking the char 
 acter and undergoing all the changes of these. Sensible remarks, and 
 plain moral reflections in verse, for instance, would naturally fall into 
 a Pope-like measure. Fiery, impassioned thought and feeling take 
 the abrupt and somewhat harsh one; feelings and thoughts more 
 lofty and imaginative would as naturally swell into a full and rich har 
 mony. Pope s verse, for instance, was the result, I should say, not of 
 system, but of the general cast of his thoughts and feelings. He may 
 have made it into a system, but that was after-work. I am so sensible 
 of my own defects in versification that it is unpleasant to me to speak 
 of myself in relation to the subject, or I would say that I have thought 
 that, without the slightest premeditation, my own movement in verse 
 was, in its poor degree, frequently subject to all these changes from 
 within. I know it may be said that versification should run through 
 all the changes without losing either its melody or harmony; nor 
 have I the least wish to accommodate the laws of verse to my heinous 
 transgressions. I love the melody and harmony of others tongues, 
 though I have none in my own. I am pleased with sounds I cannot 
 myself give forth. I began too late, and am too impatient, also, of the 
 labor, or rather am not enough skilled to preserve all the meaning and 
 strength, and give harmony too. Write such a work as I know you 
 
278 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 can write, and I promise you I will be your diligent pupil. ... I 
 visited New Bedford and Newport. While in Newport I walked at 
 the rate of eight and ten miles a day. The sea and I held stupendous 
 dialogues ! How spiritual the sea is ! how it seems to swallow one 
 up in the Infinite ! How bleak it is of a rainy day, and how awfully 
 white the curl of its breakers in contrast ! . . . 
 
 " Channing was pleased with your remembrance of him in yours 
 to me, and sends his most sincere regards. I learn by to-day s paper 
 that the English edition of your poems has made its appearance, with 
 a dedication to Rogers, by Irving. Samuel Rogers ! never mind, dear 
 sir, it will help to favor. If the English will but give you fair play, 
 how they will bow and scrape to you at home ! and, then, how silly 
 Walsh will look ! Let him go ; revenge is bad for both head and 
 heart. R. H. D." 
 
 The reception of his book in England was, on the whole, 
 favorable very much so, considering what the tone of British 
 criticism had been up to this time ; * but the praise or blame 
 was alike superficial. The critics spoke of qualities that any 
 reader might see at a glance, without discerning that peculiar 
 genius which placed the writer among the great meditative 
 poets of all time. The " Foreign Quarterly Review," f which 
 commended his descriptive fidelity, his quiet beauty of style and 
 moral purity, yet complained " of a want of finish, such as we 
 find in Gray, Goldsmith, Moore, and Campbell." " Although 
 Mr. Bryant," the critic goes on to say, " occasionally recalls 
 
 * A few years before, the " Retrospective Review " (a) remarked : " In respect to 
 the poetry of our friends, the Americans, little can be said at present. Their verses 
 are too like ours to call for particular mention. Their principal writers of verse are 
 Mr. Barlow, Mr. Paulding, Mr. Linn, Mr. Pierrepont, Maxwell Eastburn, Dabney, 
 Mr. Allston, who has contrived to reconcile the two muses of poetry and painting, 
 and, finally, the author of Fanny and William Cullen Bryant. The author of 
 Fanny takes Beppo for his model, and Mr. Bryant, who certainly stands first in 
 the American Parnassus, copies the style of Lord Byron, in his Spenserian stanzas, 
 and in his blank verse reminds us at once both of Wordsworth and Cowper." 
 
 f February, 1832. 
 
 (a) Vol. ix, p. 311, 1824. 
 
THE POEMS IN ENGLAND. 279 
 
 Cowper, Wordsworth, and Rogers," he is " by no means a 
 copyist," " writing in the same spirit, it is true, but without 
 descending into imitation." " His sketches of Nature surpass 
 those of Thompson, and The Ages, written in the manner of 
 * Childe Harold, though inferior to it in brilliancy and power, 
 is superior to it in thought and sentiment." The loudest ap 
 plause came from John Wilson, the Christopher North of 
 " Blackwood," then a stalwart figure in the literary world, 
 who, himself a poet and not unwilling to pick a brother to 
 pieces, as his dissection of Tennyson shortly after shows, was 
 warm, and even enthusiastic.* " The Song of Pitcairn s Isl 
 and, " he said, " is the kind of love poetry in which we de 
 light " ; the " Hunter s Serenade " he pronounced " a sweet, 
 lovely lay " ; and the " Marion s Men " " a spirit-stirring, beauti 
 ful ballad, instinct with the grace of Campbell and the vigor 
 of Allan Cunningham." But the chief charm of the poet s 
 genius he found to consist in " a tender pensiveness, a moral 
 melancholy, breathing over all his contemplations, dreams, and 
 reveries, even such as in the main are glad, and giving assur 
 ance of a pure spirit, benevolent to all living creatures, and 
 habitually pious in the felt omnipresence of the Creator." The 
 inspiration of many of his poems is traced to "a profound 
 sense of the sanctity of the affections. That love which is the 
 support and the solace of the heart in all the duties and dis 
 tresses of this life is sometimes painted by Mr. Bryant in its 
 purest form and brightest colors, as it beautifies and blesses 
 the solitary wilderness. The delight that has filled his own 
 being, from the faces of his own family, he transfuses into the 
 hearts of the creatures of his imagination, as they wander 
 through the woods, or sit singing in front of their forest bow 
 ers." Though he disagreed with Irving, thinking Bryant less 
 " American " than Cooper, he quoted admiringly the poems 
 descriptive of the landscape of the New World, and gave long 
 
 * " Blackwood s Magazine," April, 1832. Mr. Bryant, in his various visits to 
 England, tried to see Wilson, but was not, I believe, on any occasion successful. 
 
280 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 passages from others, which " could only have emanated from 
 a genius of very high order." 
 
 The trip to Illinois, alluded to in a foregoing letter, was 
 undertaken by Mr. Bryant in order that he might see his 
 brothers, who were among the earliest settlers of that as yet 
 unsettled State. After the death of their father, the children 
 of the family were left pretty much to shift for themselves. 
 Austin, the elder, took charge of the homestead, where the 
 mother and daughters remained ; Cyrus, after trying to be a 
 merchant in South Carolina, taught the natural sciences at Mr. 
 Bancroft s school in Northampton ; Arthur was for a while at 
 West Point, but abandoned it because of ill health, and went 
 to the West as a farmer (1830); John followed him the next 
 year, and sooner or later the whole family were gathered at 
 Princeton, Illinois. They carried out the pioneer traditions of 
 their grandparents and parents, and took up their abode in 
 the wilderness, which they not only helped to tame, but where 
 they were active in moulding its raw civilization into that of a 
 highly advanced and powerful community. During these 
 wanderings and trials William was in correspondence with 
 one or the other of them, endeavoring to further their interests 
 as he could, and not forgetting their mental improvement, as 
 these extracts from letters to brother John, himself a poet of 
 no mean pretensions, will show : 
 
 " NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 21, 1831 : I am glad that you are so well 
 pleased with the country, considering that you have become, as I 
 suppose is the case, a landed proprietor ; and I have no doubt, from 
 your account, that, if you should choose to leave the place, you will be 
 able to sell again at an advanced price. 
 
 "As for yourself, I hope you are not in too great a hurry to marry. 
 When you do, I hope you will take the step with wisdom and reflec 
 tion. Marry a person who has a good mother, who is of a good fam 
 ily that do not meddle with the concerns of their neighbors, and who, 
 along with a proper degree of industry and economy, possesses a love 
 of reading and a desire of knowledge. A mere pot-wrestler will not 
 do for you. You have tastes for study and elegance, and must not 
 
ADVICE ON POETRY. 2 8l 
 
 link yourself to one who has no sympathies for you in your admiration 
 for what is excellent in literature. A woman, too, whose religious 
 notions are fanatical would be a plague to you. By the way, I sup 
 pose you have heard of the great religious excitement which prevailed 
 last winter and spring in the western part of Massachusetts. Four- 
 days meetings, an expedient for the spread of fanaticism borrowed 
 from the Methodists, were held everywhere, and when I visited Cum- 
 mington, although the rage was somewhat cooled by the necessity the 
 farmers found of attending to their business, prayer-meetings were held 
 at four o clock in the morning at the village, and meetings in the day 
 time twice a week. People would trot about after prayer-meetings for 
 the sake of listening to unprofitable declamations about the meta 
 physics of the Calvinistic school, who would never stir a step to fur 
 nish their minds with any useful knowledge. . . . 
 
 " I have seen several poetical things by you, some of them very 
 well, in the Jacksonville papers. I must repeat, however, the injunc 
 tion to study vigor and condensation in your language and originality 
 in your ideas. Your blank verse might also be improved by greater 
 variety in the pauses. Affairs go on prosperously with me. The 
 Evening Post* has increased in subscribers within the last year, and 
 I am in hopes by making it better to obtain still more. I shall want 
 them to pay the new debt I have contracted. I intend to visit Wash 
 ington this winter to look at the old General and his Cabinet. It ap 
 pears that the unlucky, I was going to say, but revoke the word it 
 appears that the late dissolution of his Cabinet has, instead of dimin 
 ishing his popularity, made the old gentleman more popular than 
 ever. At the next election he will * walk over the course. " 
 
 "NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 19, 1832 : I have received several of your 
 poetical compositions published in the Illinois Herald. The lines 
 on leaving the place of your nativity are very well. Those addressed 
 to Kate are flowing and easy, but with some weak passages. The 
 poem on winter also is unequal. The New Year s address was, I 
 suppose, like most things of the kind, written in haste. Indeed, it is 
 a pity to spend much time on what is so soon laid by and utterly for 
 gotten, or what cannot possibly interest the reader afterward. As to 
 the politics of the address, I think that, if they were not your own, I 
 should not have put them in verse. I saw some lines by you to the 
 
282 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 skylark. Did you ever see such a bird? Let me counsel you to 
 draw your images, in describing Nature, from what you observe around 
 you, unless you are professedly composing a description of some for 
 eign country, when, of course, you will learn what you can from books. 
 The skylark is an English bird, and an American who has never vis 
 ited Europe has no right to be in raptures about it. Of course, your 
 present occupation necessarily engrosses the greater part of your time, 
 and leaves you but little leisure for writing verses. What you write, 
 however, you should not write lazily, but compose with excitement 
 and finish with care, suffering nothing to go out of your hands until 
 you are satisfied with it. I have visited Washington, where I passed 
 ten days. I saw the President, who appears to be a sensible old gen 
 tleman, of agreeable manners, and the four Secretaries who compose 
 a very able Cabinet the most so that we have had since the days of 
 Washington. Of fashionable society I saw something. The only pe 
 culiarity I observed about it was the early hours that are kept the 
 balls beginning at eight and breaking up at eleven, and the refresh 
 ments being all light, and no supper. I heard a few words from most 
 of the distinguished men in Congress, but no speeches of length or 
 importance. If I come, I cannot set out until the middle of May. I 
 shall move the ist of May, I think, to Hoboken, and the semi-annual 
 dividend of the profits of the Evening Post is made on the i5th of 
 May. My stay in Illinois will be short. The family at Cummington 
 talk of going to Illinois next fall if the farm can be sold. . . . 
 
 "I send you, by Mr. Coddington, a copy of my poems, and I have 
 also given him one, according to your request. The book sells, I be 
 lieve, tolerably well that is, for poetry, which in this country is al 
 ways of slim sale. I do not expect, however, to make much by it. If 
 it brings me two hundred or two hundred and fifty dollars, I shall 
 think myself doing pretty well. Poetry, at present, is a mere drug, 
 both in this country and in England. Since Byron s poetry, I am 
 told that nothing sells. I have, however, sent my book to England to 
 try its luck, offering it for what I can get, and if I can get nothing, 
 consenting that it shall be republished for nothing, provided it be 
 done respectably." 
 
 The journey to Illinois was no easy one in those days, when 
 the Indians were still abroad, and the modes of conveyance of 
 
ILLINOIS IN 1832. 283 
 
 the rudest kind. It took Mr. Bryant a fortnight to accom 
 plish it, going- across the Alleghanies by stage, down the 
 Ohio River and up the Mississippi to St. Louis by steam 
 boat, and then over the prairies by wagon or on horseback. 
 One incident is curious enough to be recorded. While alone 
 in these " gardens of the desert " he encountered a com 
 pany of raw Illinois volunteers, who were going forward to 
 take part in the Black Hawk Indian War. They were led 
 by a tall, awkward, uncouth lad, whose appearance particu 
 larly attracted Mr. Bryant s attention, and whose conver 
 sation delighted him by its raciness and originality, garnished 
 as it probably was by not a few rough frontier jokes. He 
 learned, many years afterward, from a person who had been 
 one of the troop, that this captain of theirs was named Abra 
 ham Lincoln. 
 
 Mr. Bryant found his brothers in possession of lordly es 
 tates in land, but at a hard grip with poverty. They were 
 clearing the soil, planting trees, and raising rough log homes. 
 He remained with them a week, making excursions into the 
 neighboring wilds, and then returned, by way of Louisville, 
 through Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland, whence, hearing 
 that cholera was in New York, he quickened his steps. He 
 found his family already removed to a pretty cottage near the 
 home of the Sands s, at Hoboken, and snugly domiciled just in 
 time to escape the pestilence. It had broken out with great 
 fury, and, being a new and almost unknown scourge, the terror 
 created can scarcely be imagined at this day. I remember 
 passing through New York at the time, on my way from 
 Princeton College, which had been dismissed in apprehension 
 of the disease, and it seemed to me like a town suffering siege. 
 The streets were deserted, many shops and houses were closed, 
 every face wore an expression of despondency and fear, and 
 almost the only noises heard in the streets were the rattle of 
 the death-carts as they carried off the dead. All that fearful 
 summer our editor was compelled to remain at his post, en 
 deavoring to calm the general panic and enliven the general 
 
284 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 gloom by such cheerful and assuring accounts as the circum 
 stance might warrant. 
 
 In the autumn Mr. Dana and Mr. Bryant exchanged words 
 that referred to these subjects. Mr. Dana began October 3d, 
 from Newport, whither he had gone on account of ill-health : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : Your kind purpose in inviting me to pass part of 
 the warm weather with you at Hoboken, upon your return from the 
 West, was, like much else, brought to nothing by that power before 
 which great and small gave way the cholera. By this time I suppose 
 your city is as gay as ever, and in full dance over the graves of the 
 thousands who have gone down to death since that plague entered it. 
 As I never dance, I shall not visit you for that purpose now ; and, for 
 the sake of moralizing, why, there is enough at home and in my own 
 bosom for that. I do hope, however, that you and I shall meet by 
 another summer. Why may we not meet on this fair island ? unless 
 you fear that your poetic taunts may rise up against you.* 
 
 " My dear sir, what are you doing in the poetics ? Your name is 
 up, and you must not follow the adage and lie abed. It is a little 
 amusing to see how, with all our patriotism, our men of real genius 
 must send abroad for their good names. Look at the miserable no 
 tices of your poems at home, and then consider how you stand in 
 England. I read a review of you in Blackwood. I was at points 
 with the reviewer in some things ; but, upon the whole, thought there 
 was a good deal of fair commendation. The long talk about the want 
 of description peculiar to our scenery and customs was owing in a 
 measure to Irving s sweeping remark. In the few things in which it 
 has been your object to describe what is peculiar to our country, you 
 have done it; but these do not justify Irving s unqualified assertion. 
 Why must everything be daubed over with our treacle ? (I don t 
 mean your maple sugar.) I perfectly nauseate it. By-the-by, with all 
 my respect for Mr. Irving, I must be allowed to say that his dedica 
 tion to Rogers showed much effort to little effect, and was withal very 
 un-English. I will not say it was unworthy the dedicates, but it was 
 unworthy both the dedica/^ and the dedica?r. When you write 
 
 * This alludes to Mr. Bryant s fling at the island in his " Meditation on Rhode 
 Island Coal." 
 
THE CHOLERA IN NEW YORK. 285 
 
 (will you ?), let me know in what English periodicals besides Black- 
 wood you have been noticed. I never read our reviews unless, for 
 instance, you are concerned, and seldom see them." 
 
 Mr. Bryant s reply was from New York, October 8th, as 
 follows : 
 
 "Mv DEAR SIR: . . . You are right; we have had a fearful time 
 in New York, the pestilence striking down its victims on the right 
 hand and the left, often at noonday, but mostly in darkness, for of 
 the thousands who had the disorder three quarters were attacked at 
 the dead of night. I have been here from the i2th of July, when I 
 returned from the westward, till the present time, coming every morn 
 ing from Hoboken to attend to my daily occupation, every morning 
 witnessing the same melancholy spectacle of deserted and silent streets 
 and forsaken dwellings, and every day looking over and sending out 
 to the world the list of the sick and dead. My own health and that 
 of my wife and youngest child in the mean time have been bad, with 
 a feeling in the stomach like that produced by taking lead or some 
 other mineral poison. Since the second week in September the state 
 of things has changed, and my own health was never better than it is 
 at this moment. 
 
 " I am much obliged to you for conveying to me the proposal of 
 the booksellers I forget their names to print a second edition of 
 my book. There are, I believe, about a hundred copies of the first 
 on hand, and I must see them fairly off before I print again. Bliss 
 sells as slow as Old Rapid in the play sleeps. Any other bookseller 
 would have got off the whole before this time; but he is a good creat 
 ure, and I could not find it in my heart to refuse his instances to be 
 permitted to publish the book. What you say of Blackwood s ani 
 madversions about scenery, etc., is just. I am a little mortified that 
 the transatlantic critics will not look at my Past, which I think my 
 best thing. You ask who has noticed me abroad. * Blackwood you 
 have seen. My book was made the subject of a rather extravagant 
 but brief notice in Campbell s Metropolitan. They say it is also 
 noticed at some length in the last number of The Foreign Quarterly 
 Review, which I have not seen. The Athenaeum, * The Literary 
 Gazette, and some of the other weekly literary journals no great au- 
 
286 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 thorities in matters of criticism spoke of the work when it first ap 
 peared, and made large extracts. I read somewhere that it was re 
 viewed in * The Penny Magazine, which, though less than a l two 
 penny affair (pronounced * tuppeny ), comes out under the auspices of 
 the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge, and has a circulation of, I 
 believe, fifteen thousand copies. 
 
 " I have seen the great West, where I ate corn bread and hominy, 
 slept in log houses, with twenty men, women, and children in the 
 same room. ... At Jacksonville, where my two brothers live, I got 
 on a horse, and travelled about a hundred miles to the northward over 
 the immense prairies, with scattered settlements, on the edges of the 
 groves. These prairies, of a soft, fertile garden soil, and a smooth, 
 undulating surface, on which you may put a horse to full speed, cov 
 ered with high, thinly growing grass, full of weeds and gaudy flowers, 
 and destitute of bushes or trees, perpetually brought to my mind the 
 idea of their having been once cultivated. They looked to me like 
 the fields of a race which had passed away, whose enclosures and 
 habitations had decayed, but on whose vast and rich plains, smoothed 
 and levelled by tillage, the forest had not yet encroached.* . . . 
 
 " P. S. Dr. Anderson, who has just called, tells me that he has no 
 doubt that the notice of my poems in The Foreign Quarterly was 
 written in this country. The critic s notion of prosody is the same 
 as Dr. McHenry s, etc." 
 
 Before setting out for Illinois, Mr. Bryant was employed 
 on a volume of Tales which he had projected, which was to 
 be called " The Sextad," from the number of authors engaged 
 in it, but, Verplanck having backed out, it took the name of 
 11 Tales of the Glauber Spa." It was published soon after his 
 return. f His own share in it, besides the editorship, was con 
 fined to two stories" Medfield " and " The Skeleton s Cave " 
 his friends, Miss Sedgwick, and Messrs. Sands, Leggett, and 
 
 * These thoughts were embodied in the poem on the " Prairies," which Mr. Bry 
 ant wrote while his mind was full of the subject, and contributed to the " Knicker 
 bocker Magazine." 
 
 f " Tales of the Glauber Spa." By several American authors. 2 vols. New 
 York: J. &J. Harper, 1832. 
 
"TALES OF THE GLAUBER SPA." 287 
 
 Paulding, contributing the rest. It was intended to be anony 
 mous. " But the newspapers," said the " Evening Post," " those 
 inveterate enemies to secrecy, have undertaken to point out the 
 several partners in the joint stock. To Miss Sedgwick they 
 ascribe one story, Le Bossu, and, whether from deference to 
 her as a lady, or whether from their candid opinion of her in 
 trinsic merits as a writer, they have allotted to her the best tale 
 in the collection. To Mr. Paulding they ascribe two stories, 
 Childe Roeloff s Pilgrimage and Selim ; to Mr. Sands two, 
 Mr. Green and Boyuca ; and the remaining three tales 
 they apportion between ourselves " (Bryant and Leggett). It 
 then proceeds : 
 
 " Whether this ascription is correct or not so far as the others are 
 concerned, is not for us to say ; but, for ourselves, we may and do 
 solemnly assert that we were never at Glauber Spa in our lives ; that 
 we never had anything to do with Sharon Clapp, or his son Eli, or 
 his wife, or his daughters ; that we never tasted of either oxhides 
 or gin from the fountain at Sheep s Neck ; and, finally, that we be 
 lieve Mr. Clapp s story is a piece of sheer fiction, manufactured out of 
 whole cloth, and with no other object than to do those respectable 
 gentlemen, Mr. John and Mr. James Harper, out of a portion of their 
 well-gotten gains." 
 
 But it was not a propitious time for tale-writing. Day by 
 day the politics of the nation was growing hotter. The ques 
 tion was no longer one of party supremacy, but of national 
 existence. Legislation for special interests was bringing forth 
 its fruits. The manufacturers, in their zeal to secure an exclu 
 sive home market for their products, had raised the rates of 
 the tariff so high that it virtually destroyed the foreign market 
 of the cotton planters, who, impetuous by nature, and domi 
 neering by position and habit, were not satisfied to oppose the 
 evil under which they suffered by argument and appeals to the 
 justice of the country, but threatened a resort to force. En 
 tangled in the fine-spun theories of constitutional construction 
 so acutely reasoned by Mr. Calhoun, they talked of nullifying 
 
288 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 the laws of Congress by State ordinances, which, with singu 
 lar infatuation, they professed to consider a peaceable remedy. 
 Mr. Bryant felt keenly the wrongs inflicted upon the South by 
 the pernicious policy of protection, and had battled against it 
 more earnestly and persistently than any other man at the 
 North. His persuasions, indeed, had brought a considerable 
 number of his Democratic allies to his views. But he would 
 not allow his party connections to seduce him into any kind 
 of approval of the remedial measures proposed by the nullifi- 
 ers. Long before the interposition of Jackson he pronounced 
 their plans impracticable and disorganizing, and he warned 
 them against the incipient treason that lurked in their after- 
 dinner toasts and speeches. While adhering to the doctrine 
 of State Rights as an imperative maxim in matters of adminis 
 tration, he looked for remedies and modes of adjustment in 
 cases of conflict between Federal and State authorities, to the 
 determinate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, where it could 
 be applied, and where it could not be applied, to remonstrances 
 to Congress, to appeals to the people in their elective capacity, 
 to addresses to other States invoking justice, and to amend 
 ments of the Constitution in the manner prescribed. Should 
 these constitutional and peaceful methods, however, prove in 
 adequate, he was willing to resort, in the last extremity, to the 
 natural right of resistance to oppression, but he called it revo 
 lution. Nullification and secession were, in his eyes, revolution 
 in disguise, and they were not justified by the circumstances. 
 He therefore earnestly supported Jackson s Union Proclama 
 tion of December nth, extolling its teachings, and approving 
 its menaces of legal prosecution, and, if need be, of war. For 
 tunately, war was evaded; the leaders in Congress came to 
 their senses ; the more odious features of the tariff were re 
 pealed by the compromise tariff of 1833, and a promise given 
 of the final extinction of that kind of destructive legislation.* 
 
 * The " Evening Post " regarded the Compromise Tariff as a timid but certain 
 abandonment of the protective policy, and rejoiced accordingly : " We should be un 
 just to the cause we have constantly and zealously maintained were we not to ex- 
 
DEATH OF SANDS. 289 
 
 This year, 1832, fatal to so many human beings because of 
 the pest, was particularly marked by the number of distin 
 guished men who had died in the course of it Goethe, Scott, 
 Cuvier, Champollion, Bentham, Adam Clarke, Charles Car 
 roll, and the young Napoleon. Mr. Sands had written a poem 
 on the subject, called " The Dead of Thirty-Two," and three 
 days after the publication of it (December I7th) he sat down 
 to complete an article on " Esquimaux Literature " for the first 
 number of the " Knickerbocker Magazine,* when, as his pen 
 cil had just traced the line, 
 
 " Oh, deem not my spirit among you abides," 
 
 he was smitten by a paralysis of which he died. Below the 
 line, in the original manuscript, several irregular pencil-marks 
 were observed, extending nearly across the page, as if traced 
 by a hand that moved in darkness, or no longer obeyed the im 
 pulses of the will. During the brief interval of lethargy that 
 followed the attack, the only words he uttered were, "Oh, 
 Bryant, Bryant ! " f In the same number of the magazine that 
 
 press our deep and sincere gratification that the glorious principle of free-trade is 
 proclaimed by a solemn legislative act of this country, and the restrictive system 
 given over to a sure though lingering dissolution. . . . This journal has persevered 
 in the cause through good report and ill report ; it has never intermitted, never 
 slacked, never lowered its tone, from the fear of going too fast for the party to which 
 it has been attached ; for which course we have received much abuse, . . . and been 
 fiercely threatened with vengeance ; but we have gone on unmoved." March 4, 
 1833. In these sanguine anticipations the writer was destined to great disappoint 
 ment. Selfish interests are not so easily dislodged. 
 
 * Mr. Bryant s " Arctic Lover to his Mistress" was intended to form part of this 
 article. 
 
 f " He was," said Mr. Bryant, " a man of extraordinary powers and attainments, 
 joined to a disposition of equal humanity and goodness. His classical acquisitions 
 were rare in an age not fruitful in ripe Latin and Greek scholars, and his acquaint 
 ance with the tragedians of Athens was scarcely less familiar than is that of the mod 
 ern English scholar with the dramas of Shakespeare. In the literature of his own 
 language his reading was unusually large and various, and to this he had added an 
 intimate knowledge of that of several languages of Europe. He possessed an intel 
 lect of great activity, a quick and prolific fancy, and a vein of strong, racy, original 
 humor." 
 
 VOL. I. 20 
 
290 SUCCESS OF THE POEMS. 
 
 contained the fragment of his latest production was a short 
 memoir of his life by the friend whose name was the last upon 
 his lips.* The same friend also set on foot the project of a 
 volume of his collected writings, which he helped the editor, 
 Mr. G. C. Verplanck, to compile, f 
 
 * " Knickerbocker Magazine." No. i. New York : Peabody & Co., 1833. 
 f "The writings of Robert C. Sands." In prose and verse. With a Memoir of 
 the Author. Harper & Brothers, 1834. 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. 
 
 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 A. D. 1833, 1834. 
 
 THE battle of arms was averted ; but the battle of opinion 
 went on, with scarcely less fury than before. Jackson, hav 
 ing routed the nullifiers, was determined to rout the specu 
 lators as well traders on borrowed capital he called them. In 
 his first message (1829) he had questioned the constitutionality 
 and uses of the United States Bank the charter of which 
 would expire in 1836 and, though at first unseconded by his 
 own party in Congress, he renewed his attacks until the final 
 veto of the bill rechartering the institution in 1832. The 
 questions raised were mainly economical, but they were soon 
 complicated with mere party questions, and the contest was 
 carried on with unexampled violence. 
 
 In its tug for life the bank encountered no more active and 
 sleepless enemy than the " Evening Post," which not only ap 
 proved the measures of the President and the reasons he gave 
 for them, but took a broader ground of hostility to all special 
 acts of incorporation, and to all attempts, by means of legisla 
 tion, to remove any kind of business, banking in particular, 
 from the general conditions applicable to every kind of busi 
 ness. Its opinions gave offence to the mercantile classes, 
 which were largely the dependents or patrons of the bank. 
 They had looked on with some impatience, if not formal dis 
 sent, when it argued against the dissipation of national funds 
 in various local jobs of pretended improvement ; but they left 
 
292 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 that account to be settled by those who were directly con 
 cerned. Many of them, too, formerly the advocates of a free 
 commercial system, were now inclined, by political affinities, 
 to take part with the manufacturers, whose schemes in their 
 own behalf were seriously menaced by the logic and ridicule 
 of the " Evening Post." But, now that it assailed the bank, 
 it was making a thrust at their own vitals. They believed, as 
 sincerely as they believed their Bibles or their ledgers, that 
 without that regulator, a safe, sound, uniform paper currency 
 was impossible. No domestic exchanges, save at enormous 
 trouble and cost, could be effected without it ; no easy collec 
 tion and transfer of the public revenues made. In a word, 
 nothing but confusion, disturbance, panic, and loss in the 
 whole vast field of commerce and industry if it should be de 
 stroyed. Thinking thus, they could not maintain, by their ad 
 vertisements and subscriptions, a journal that was blowing its 
 trumpet at the very head of the hostile forces. Accordingly, 
 they withdrew in large numbers, which, however, had the 
 effect only of inflaming its zeal and fixing its determination.* 
 
 Out of this fiery furnace Mr. Bryant was glad to escape, in 
 the summer of 1833, by making a visit with his wife to Can 
 ada. Just before his departure he was invited by a committee 
 of prominent citizens Dr. Hosack, James G. King, Vice- 
 Chancellor McCoun, and others to prepare an address on 
 the occasion of a benefit to be given to William Dunlap, the 
 historian of the stage, when Charles Kemble and his accom 
 plished daughter Fanny, and a young actor named Edwin 
 Forrest, had volunteered to appear ; but he either distrusted 
 
 * In the midst of his political distractions Mr. Bryant could yet find time to 
 amuse himself with such trivialities as the New Year s addresses of his carriers. It 
 was a custom then of the lads who distributed newspapers to salute their " patrons " 
 on the first day of January as poets laureate do their sovereigns in doggerel lines, 
 which recounted the events of the year and predicted good times to come. Whether 
 anybody read these effusions it is hard to say. They are, for the most part, unread 
 able now, though I presume that, if the recipients of them had known that the first 
 poet of the land was disguising himself as an humble newsboy, they would have given 
 more attention to his matutinal lays. 
 
A PROLOGUE. 293 
 
 his powers to write for occasions * or was so eager to get off 
 that he declined the honor, f He went by way of his favorite 
 Berkshire Valley, in Massachusetts, through Vermont to St. 
 
 * How very much he was indisposed to write, or even to translate, for occasions, 
 appears in this letter to Miss Sedgwick, dated New York, February 12, 1834 : 
 
 " DEAR FRIEND : I am sorry to decline any request in which you take an inter 
 est, particularly when it is urged with so much delicacy ; but I have two good rea 
 sons for not undertaking the translation of the ode on the supposed death of Pellico, 
 of which you shall judge. In the first place, I have several things on my hands at 
 present which occupy all my leisure. In the second place, I have looked over the 
 ode, and doubt my ability to produce such a version as would satisfy my friends and 
 myself with anything like a reasonable expenditure of trouble. You know that our 
 English tongue is, of all languages, the most intractable for the purposes of poetic 
 translation, both from the peculiarity of its idioms and the paucity of its rhymes. It 
 is, therefore, a work of vast dexterity and patience the ne plus ultra, I had almost 
 said, of poetic skill, though not of poetic genius to produce a translation in Eng 
 lish which shall be a decidedly good poem in itself, animated with the fire and spirit 
 of an original, and at the same time a faithful transfusion of the ideas of its proto 
 type. In the things of the kind which I have executed, I have not kept close to the 
 original, but I should not like to take liberties of the kind with the ode you send me, 
 which is really beautiful and affecting, and deserves to have all its thoughts and im- 
 sges preserved unmarred and unchanged. 
 
 "I am, very sincerely, yours, etc., 
 
 "W. C. BRYANT." 
 
 f Not, however, without having made some attempts of that kind. Among his 
 papers is a prologue, written for the opening of a theatre, not named. It seems to 
 me quite as good as those of Johnson or Goldsmith ; but, unfortunately, the writer has 
 taken his notions of theatres from books rather than from actual experience, for he 
 supposes that -^schylus and Euripides have as full possession of the stage as Shake 
 speare, judging by these lines : 
 
 " Here shall by turns to wondering crowds be shown 
 
 Each glorious triumph that the stage has known. 
 
 Scenes that have made the tears of ages flow, 
 
 And words that thrilled and melted long ago. 
 
 Orestes, maddening with his fancied guilt, 
 
 Shall talk with Furies o er the blood he spilt ; 
 
 And pale Medea, with a sterner air, 
 
 Walk in her calm and terrible despair. 
 
 And Caesar, slain that Rome might yet be free, 
 
 Submit, and die with Roman dignity. 
 
 And poor Ophelia plait the idle wreath 
 
 For her sick brow, and sing of love and death. 
 
294 
 
 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 Johns, and thence to Montreal and Quebec, which are such 
 miniatures of the Old World that he came back with a strong 
 desire to visit Europe. 
 
 For a while Mr. Bryant was now busied with Mr. Dana s 
 literary affairs, and subsequently with his own, to which these 
 extracts from their letters refer : 
 
 "NEW YORK, JUNE 21, 1833: I have called on the only book 
 sellers here who would be likely to undertake the publication of your 
 work. The Carvills declined on account of the times/ observing 
 that they had already on hand some manuscripts which they had paid 
 for a year or two since, and which they had delayed publishing on 
 account of the state of their own affairs and of the book market. 
 They, however, treated the application very respectfully, and did not 
 decline until they had heard all I had to say, and considered the mat 
 ter. On going to the Harpers, I found that your friend Mr. Wood 
 had prevented me, as we used to say in the old English dialect, which 
 Dr. Webster threatens to reform when he mends the common version 
 of the Bible. Mr. Wood appears to have said everything that could 
 be said on the subject, and to have left the brothers impressed with a 
 high opinion of your talents, but they could not be persuaded that 
 the book would be what they called a selling book, at least in such a 
 degree as to induce them to offer anything for it. 
 
 " You do well in republishing your prose. It will be better re 
 ceived at the present than formerly. Your poetical reputation will 
 cause it to be sought for and read, and the public can no longer be 
 confined to the cold and artificial style of writing which was then 
 held up as the standard. W. C. B." 
 
 "NEW YORK, OCTOBER 2, 1833: I had received your volume of 
 poems for which I thank you very much before writing the notice 
 you speak of, in the Evening Post. * It was a hasty article hasty, 
 I mean, for a subject to which I was so desirous to do justice and I 
 
 And Lear, bareheaded in the storm that tears 
 The pelted woods and strews his aged hairs, 
 Find colder than the winds upon his breast 
 The love of those who feigned to love him best." 
 * They had been printed at Boston in the interval. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH DANA. 395 
 
 saw, on reading it over after it was printed, that I had not been very 
 happy in speaking of the merits of the poem entitled Factitious Life. 
 I had neglected to say anything of the satire of the piece, which was 
 happy and well directed. I have seen the notice of your book in the 
 4 Christian Register. It was not written by a person capable of judg 
 ing of your writings, but I thought that the writer meant his article to 
 be a friendly one. By the way, I have to make amends for what I 
 said about a critic of my poems in the Foreign Quarterly Review 
 before I had seen his article. You may remember what I wrote to 
 you on that subject. Since that time I have seen the * Review, and 
 have not the slightest doubt that the writer meant to be exceedingly 
 kind, condescending, and patronizing, and all that ; the misfortune 
 was, that he did not know how to criticise poetry. I have no right 
 to complain, for he wrote in a friendly spirit, and praised me enough, 
 I believe, though not in the right place. What is the reason that 
 none of the critics in England or America, except Channing, in no 
 ticing my things, have said a word about The Past ? 
 
 " After all, poetic wares are not for the market of the present day. 
 Poetry may get printed in the newspapers, but no man makes money 
 by it, for the simple reason that nobody cares a fig for it. The taste 
 for it is something old-fashioned ; the march of the age is in another 
 direction ; mankind are occupied with politics, railroads, and steam 
 boats. Hundreds of persons will talk flippantly and volubly about 
 poetry, and even write about it, who know no more of the matter, and 
 have no more feeling of poetry, than the old stump I write this letter 
 with. I see you predict a change for the better in your new preface 
 to the Idle Man. May it come, I say with all my heart, but I do 
 not see the proof of it, or, rather, if I were called upon to point out 
 any sign of its approach, I could mention no other than the change 
 which criticism has undergone in speaking of your writings. Beyond 
 this I discern no favorable indication. The edition of my poems 
 published by Bliss is all sold but a handful of copies. ... I think of 
 publishing another edition soon, and will get you, when I am ready, 
 to inquire what your booksellers will give for being allowed to pub 
 lish a thousand copies." 
 
 "NEW YORK, OCTOBER 17, 1833: Will you see your booksellers, 
 Russel, Odiorne & Co., and ask whether they will give me two hun- 
 
296 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 dred and fifty dollars for one thousand copies of my book. Mr. Bliss 
 has offered me a check for two hundred dollars as soon as I put the 
 book into his hands. If your booksellers do not offer me more, I 
 shall let him have it. If they should not care to do anything about 
 it, will you inquire what my volume could be printed for at Cam 
 bridge, and let me know when you write. I shall probably add to it 
 half a dozen pages, not more. My manuscript poem, of which you 
 speak, was not finished, and was not quite good enough to publish. 
 Will you resolve a critical doubt for me ? John Wilson finds fault 
 with the passage in the Forest Hymn, 
 
 No silks 
 
 Rustle, nor jewels shine, nor envious eyes 
 Encounter 
 
 as out of place, and I am rather inclined to think him right."* 
 
 "NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 2, 1833: I have completed the bargain 
 with Mr. Odiorne, and have given him my book with such corrections 
 and additions as I have been able to make. I shall avail myself of 
 your kindness to look over the proofs. As most of the type-setting 
 is to be done from printed copy, I hope it will not give you much 
 trouble. Should anything occur to you respecting my book, whether 
 in the way of objection to any parts, or otherwise, you will do me a 
 favor to write to me about it. I need not say how much I am obliged 
 to you for making the bargain with the publishers for me. I have a 
 little piece by me in blank verse entitled The Prairies, for which I 
 have directed room to be left. It is not yet quite finished ; the con 
 clusion gives me some perplexity. The winding up of these things 
 in a satisfactory manner is often, you know, a great difficulty. I have 
 sometimes kept a poem for weeks before I could do it in a manner 
 with which I was at all pleased. All this is in favor of your advice to 
 write a long poem. I will do it one of these days. I will write a 
 poem as long, and, I fear, as tedious, as heart could wish. I congratu 
 late you on having become a centre-table poet. Your verses will be 
 repeated by youths and maidens, and you will be their poet through 
 life." 
 
 * The lines were omitted in later editions. 
 
DANA S CRITICISMS. 
 
 297 
 
 "NEW YORK, NOVEMBER u, 1833: I am much obliged to you, 
 certainly, for giving yourself so much pains about my verses. Since 
 you think so ill of * The Robber as to place it below everything I 
 have written, it shall not go into my book, and I formally authorize 
 you to take the proper measures for excluding it. 
 
 " The phrase in * The Past (wisdom * disappeared ) I am not 
 quite certain is a defect. I have sometimes thought it was a bold 
 ness. Disappeared is used nearly in the sense of vanished, departed, 
 passed away ; but with more propriety than vanished, since that relates 
 to a sudden disappearance. At all events, I do not find it easy to 
 alter the stanza without spoiling it. 
 
 " It was the Edinburgh Review which remarked on the rhyme 
 boughs and bows in the * Evening Wind. The grammar in the three 
 last lines in that stanza is probably not clear, for the critic blundered 
 in copying it, and made nonsense of the passage. Suppose the rhyme 
 and construction be amended in this manner : 
 
 1 Go, play beneath the linden that o erbrows 
 The darkling glen where dashing waters pass, 
 And stir in all the fields the fragrant grass. 
 
 And let the second line in the same stanza read thus : 
 
 Curl the still fountain bright with stars, and rouse, etc. 
 
 " As to the passage in the Forest Hymn, remarked upon by Wil 
 son, I see that, in attempting to mend it, I have marred the unity and 
 effect of the passage. The truth is, that an alteration ought never to 
 be made without the mind being filled with the subject. In mending 
 a faulty passage in cold blood, we often do more mischief, by attend 
 ing to particulars and neglecting the entire construction and sequence 
 of ideas, than we do good. I think a better alteration than I made 
 would be this : 
 
 * Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, 
 These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride 
 Report not. No fantastic carvings show, etc. 
 
 "As to the other passage in the same poem, about life, and 
 
 * blooms and smiles, I remember very well when I wrote the word 
 
 * blooms that I had a vague idea of its impropriety, but I did not 
 
298 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 know why until you showed me. I have rung half a dozen changes 
 on the faulty line. You shall choose : 
 
 1 yea, seats himself 
 
 Upon the tyrant s throne the sepulchre 
 As in defiance, on the sepulchre 
 In loneliness upon the sepulchre 
 
 " The words that to the graves seem, in the second line of * The 
 Prairies, strike me as feeble. I wish the commencement of that 
 poem to stand thus : 
 
 * These are the gardens of the desert, these 
 The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 
 And fresh as the young earth ere man had sinned * 
 The prairies, etc. 
 
 * To sup upon the dead I do not like. Bosom and blossom 
 are in Wordsworth, whose rhymes are generally correct : 
 Fill your lap and fill your bosom, 
 Only spare the strawberry blossom. 
 
 " But I will think of it. I have cleared away the rubbish, as far 
 as I am able, from the first part of the volume at least, and, since you 
 have kindly undertaken to read the proofs for me, I will give you the 
 trouble to see that the changes noted above are duly made." 
 
 Mr. Dana s answer was from Cambridge, December 7, 
 
 1833: 
 
 "The printing of your volume has gone on rather slowly. . . . 
 They will make a handsome volume of it, I think. You delivered up 
 1 The Robber like a man. After writing you, I felt a little troubled 
 about it, lest I had taken too great a liberty. True, I would gladly 
 have received a like advice from you, whether I finally determined to 
 follow it or not ; but, then, you are a master in these matters, and I 
 scarcely so much as a learner in them. Allston was up here to see 
 me after I received your letter, and I told him that you had directed 
 
 * This verse is not now in the poem, but in its place : 
 
 " For which the speech of England has no name." 
 
A SUPPRESSED POEM. 299 
 
 its omission. He said he was glad you had, and added : It is the 
 only thing of Bryant s that has not pleased me. " 
 
 * This ballad was first printed in the " Mirror," where it was highly commended 
 by Mr. N. P. Willis. As my readers would no doubt like to compare their own 
 judgments with those of Dana, Allston, and Bryant, I shall enable them to do so by 
 copying what they suppressed : 
 
 "THE ROBBER. 
 " Beside a lonely mountain-path, 
 
 Within a mossy wood, 
 That crowned the wild, wind-beaten cliffs, 
 
 A lurking robber stood. 
 His foreign garb, his gloomy eye, 
 
 His cheek of swarthy stain, 
 Bespoke him one who might have been 
 
 A pirate on the main, 
 Or bandit from the far-ofi" hills 
 Of Cuba, or of Spain. 
 
 " His ready pistol in his hand, 
 
 A shadowing bough he raised ; 
 Glared forth, as crouching tiger glares, 
 
 And muttered as he gazed : 
 Sure, he must sleep upon his steed 
 
 I deemed the laggard near. 
 I ll give him, for the gold he wears, 
 
 A sounder slumber, here ; 
 His charger, when I press his flank, 
 
 Shall leap like mountain deer. 
 
 " Long, long he watched, and listened long, 
 
 There came no traveller by ; 
 The ruffian growled a harsher curse, 
 
 And gloomier grew his eye ; 
 While o er the sultry heaven began 
 
 A leaden haze to spread, 
 And, past his noon, the summer sun 
 
 A dimmer beam to shed ; 
 And on that mountain summit fell 
 
 A silence deep and dread. 
 
 " Then ceased the bristling pine to sigh, 
 
 Still hung the birchen spray, 
 The air that wrapped those massy cliffs 
 Was motionless as they. 
 
300 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 " Your substitute for boughs and bows did not suit me much better 
 than it did you ; and I thought that, rather than injure the beautiful 
 
 Mute was the cricket in his cleft. 
 
 But mountain torrents round 
 Sent hollow murmurs from their glens 
 
 Like voices underground 
 A change came o er the robber s cheek, 
 
 He shuddered at the sound. 
 
 " Twas vain to ask what fearful thought 
 
 Convulsed his brow with pain. 
 4 The dead talk not, he said at length, 
 
 And turned to watch again. 
 Skyward he looked ; a lurid cloud 
 
 Hung low and blackening there, 
 And through its skirts the sunshine came, 
 
 A strange, malignant glare ; 
 His ample chest drew in with toil 
 
 The hot and stifling air. 
 
 " His ear has caught a distant sound, 
 
 But not the tramp of steed ; 
 A roar as of a torrent stream 
 
 Swol n into sudden speed. 
 The gathered vapors in the west 
 
 Before the rushing blast, 
 Like living monsters of the air, 
 
 Black, serpent-like and vast, 
 Writhe, roll, and, sweeping o er the sun, 
 
 A frightful shadow cast. 
 
 " Hark to that nearer, mightier crash ! 
 
 As if a giant crowd, 
 Trampling the oaks with iron foot, 
 
 Had issued from the cloud ! 
 While fragments of dissevered rock 
 
 Come thundering from on high, 
 And eastward from their eyrie cliffs 
 
 The shrieking eagles fly, 
 And, lo ! the expected traveller comes 
 
 Spurring his charger by. 
 
 " To that wild warning of the air 
 
 The assassin lends no heed. 
 He lifts the pistol to his eye, 
 He notes the horseman s speed. 
 
CRITICISMS CONTINUED. 301 
 
 original, it had better be left as it was, judging from your expressing 
 yourself, rather doubtingly, that, as the public had already seen it, it 
 might run once more. For another edition you may perhaps alter it 
 to your mind, or conclude to let it stand. The word o crbrows, in 
 your alteration, sounded affectedly to me. I know well that it was 
 with you a forced put* at a change. What you say about making 
 alterations * in cold blood is true enough. If you feel it, who are so 
 much master of the art, you may rely upon it, it has made my head 
 and heart ache in trying to give harmony to my rough metre, or to 
 change an expression to my mind. 
 
 " My objection to disappeared, in The Past/. was not what you 
 suppose, and I like your remarks upon the distinctive meaning of it. 
 My objection was, that, although merely an elliptical expression, it 
 affected me like a participle /ftffftv, and this impression was probably 
 deepened by the rhyming word. The alterations in the Forest 
 Hymn have been made according to your directions. In the sec 
 ond, as you left a choice, I took, without hesitation, the first proposed 
 change : 
 
 * Yea, seats himself 
 Upon the tyrant s throne the sepulchre. 
 
 " The change in The Prairies introduced as you directed. In 
 * The Lapse of Time/ fourth stanza, besides the rhyming words glow 
 and gOj you have Could I forego the hopes/ etc. I had no time to 
 
 Firm is his hand and sure his aim ; 
 
 But, ere the flash is given, 
 Its eddies, filled with woods uptorn, 
 
 And spray from torrents driven, 
 The whirlwind sweeps the crashing wood, 
 
 The giant firs are riven. 
 
 " Riven and rent from splintering cliffs, 
 
 That rise like down in air. 
 At once the forest s rocky floor 
 
 Lies to the tempest bare. 
 Rider and steed and robber whirled 
 
 O er precipices vast, 
 Mong trunks and boughs and shattered crags, 
 
 Mangled and crushed, are cast. 
 The catamount and eagle made 
 
 That morn a grim repast ! " " New York Mirror," 1833. 
 
3 02 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 write you about it, so you must forego a change this time, and let it 
 go. In your new piece, The Arctic Lover, you have, as a rhyming 
 word, bespread. I don t believe that this is a word after your own 
 heart, and guess it was used because you could not make out your 
 line to your mind by the simple spread without more trouble than you 
 were willing to give it at the time. Where used at all, I believe it is 
 applied to smaller things, such as flowers and the like, but fur hides 
 are rather too sizable articles. You can think of it against your next 
 edition. I have played the critic enough for the present. You may 
 think it would have been quite as well if I had begun my work early 
 enough for you to have passed judgment upon my suggestions before 
 printing." 
 
 "JANUARY 10, 1834: Buckingham applied to me for a review of 
 your book for his monthly. I declined on the score of health. It 
 was indeed a reason, but not the reason. For us poets, as Judge Story 
 would say, to be exhibiting ourselves before the public in the charac 
 ter of reviewers of one another, strikes me unpleasantly. A friendly 
 paragraph or so in the newspapers, or an incidental well-speaking of 
 one another, is right, and may do good, in so far as it will show a 
 curious world that it is possible for two men to follow the same art, 
 and not hate each other; anything beyond that might be taken ac 
 cording as it was. You may remember that I pointed out in your 
 Agricultural Ode, p. 204, 
 
 * Till men of spoil disdained the toil. 
 In Jupiter and Venus, 
 
 Kind influences. Lo! their orbs burn more bright. 
 
 It troubled me to read it as measure. You may be amused at my 
 objecting to a movement in your measure. But my ear^ I hope, 
 has always been more musical than my tongue ; besides, your own 
 excellence in these things gives a queerness to any defects in you. I 
 may walk over Parnassus in a shag Petersham people expect nothing 
 better of me ; but it won t do for you, my dear sir nothing short of 
 superfine broadcloth must you be abroad in. You may have seen a 
 review of me in the American Monthly by Longfellow ; it is re 
 spectable in point of talent, but what I liked it for was a certain air of 
 
DANA S POEMS. 
 
 303 
 
 frankness and heartiness. As for my versification, I am as sensible of 
 my defects as he can be. Mr. Felton, Greek Professor at Cambridge, 
 has reviewed me in the * Christian Examiner. The article is a differ 
 ent one, and an abler, than I expected. He made me feel that he 
 had stretched his praise too far in parts, which gives me always a 
 feeling of pain which I can t describe. Still, he has been free in his 
 objections, which takes off from this feeling of excess. I feel grateful 
 to him, I am sure. 
 
 "Times are changed since your review of me was rejected by 
 certain gentlemen connected with the * North American, and I wish 
 the hearts of those individuals were changed toward me. The kind 
 feeling toward me which these late instances have shown have touched 
 me even to sadness; as praise I have hardly thought of it, it has gone 
 so straight to my heart." 
 
 "NEW YORK, APRIL 22, 1834:* It is some time since I went 
 through your book for the purpose of noting such passages as ap 
 peared to me capable of amendment though, from my delaying to 
 write, you might think that I had neglected it. You shall have my 
 animadversions since you ask for them, though I do not place much 
 stress on them. The line, page 33, 
 
 I feel its sunny peace come warm and mild 
 
 To my young heart, etc., 
 
 strikes me as faulty. The epithet mild I think tautologous as ap 
 plied to peace. It is much like * mild and gentle sympathy in my 
 Thanatopsis. In * Thoughts on the Soul I am certain I found a 
 bad rhyme when I read the first edition. I have gone over it two 
 or three times in search of it, but can not find it. I have marked 
 the line, 
 
 1 Life in itself, // life to all things gives, p. 89, 
 
 as a harsh inversion. In the Husband and Wife s Grave, the line, 
 Of uncreated light have visited and lived, 
 
 is an Alexandrine, which rarely has a good effect in heroic rhyme, 
 and is not used at all in blank verse, and, as I think, with good 
 reason. 
 
 * From Mr. Bryant to Mr. Dana. 
 
304 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 "Page 118: 
 
 Dear Goddess, I grow old, I trow ; 
 My head is growing gray. 
 
 " In this passage the word grow is repeated without any beauty 
 of effect. 
 
 " Page 134 : 
 
 * Nor live the shame of those who bore their part, etc. 
 " Is not this passage obscure ? 
 " Page 141 : 
 
 Quere as to the phrase go and care 
 
 "Page 128: 
 
 1 But fluttered out its idle hour. 
 
 " Can the word * flutter be applied to a flower in this manner? 
 
 " These are all the verbal faults which I have found in reading 
 over your poems several times. I am sorry I have not a better list to 
 present to you, for the sake of gaining credit for my diligence; but 
 we must take things as they are. . . . 
 
 " I am sorry your health continues so bad. My own is much better 
 than usual. I have gradually discontinued the uses of coffee and tea, 
 and now I have given them up altogether. I have also, by degrees, 
 accustomed myself to a diet principally vegetable, a bowl of milk and 
 bread made in my house of unbolted wheat at breakfast, and another 
 at noon, and nothing afterward. This is not my uniform diet, but 
 nearly so. Its effect upon me is so kindly that, while it is in my power 
 to continue it, I do not think I shall ever make any change. All indi 
 gestion, costiveness, slight obstructions of bile at one time, and the 
 excessive production of it at another, disagreeable sensations in the 
 head, nervous depression, etc., etc., are removed by it, while the capa 
 city for intellectual exertion without fatigue is much increased; in 
 short, I do not recollect that I have enjoyed better health or more 
 serene spirits since my childhood than I have done for more than six 
 months past. I mention these things that you may think of them 
 though I know it is said that what is one man s meat is another 
 man s poison. 
 
 " The line you remark upon as faulty, 
 
 Kind influences lo, their orbs burn more bright, 
 
DANA CRITICISED. 305 
 
 is not to my ears unmanageable. I thought that I had a parallel for 
 it in Milton, but I do not find it. Some critic in Buckingham s Mag 
 azine, I believe, noticed the line as harsh, but I paid no attention to 
 the criticism, being in the habit of disregarding all that is said about 
 my versification.* But since it seems faulty to you, who are quite as 
 great a heretic as I am in this matter, I will consider of it and perhaps 
 amend it. It is only leaving out the 5, you know. I thank you for 
 the other passages you have marked, and will not fail to profit by 
 your animadversions." 
 
 " MAY Qth : . . . Since I wrote the foregoing, I have packed up my 
 goods, broken up housekeeping, and accompanied my wife and chil 
 dren to Berkshire, where I left them the latter part of last week, and 
 now I am again without a home, ready to wander whithersoever my 
 inclination may lead provided I can raise the wind. But I must have 
 a word with you concerning the question you put anent your versifi 
 cation. In this art I think you have a manly taste, and a vigorous, and 
 ofttimes a happy, execution. In this it appears to me that you have 
 the advantage of most of our writers in verse. The only fault that I 
 find with you is, that you sometimes adopt a bad order of the words for 
 the sake of the measure, or rather you let the bad order stand, for 
 want of diligence to overcome the difficulty. Perhaps, however, you 
 do right. I have sometimes been conscience-smitten at wasting so 
 much time in making a crabbed thought submit to the dimensions of 
 the metre, to frame a couplet or a stanza, so that the tune of it per 
 fectly pleased my ear, at the same time that the expression, the 
 thought, was the most perfect that I could command. I fear that the 
 process has been attended with a loss of vigor and freshness in the 
 composition. Your general system of versification pleases me in 
 that of Mr. Longfellow, I see nothing peculiar. So do not let them 
 plague you about your versification." 
 
 Judging by the tone of these letters, one might suppose the 
 writer of them in the midst of a quiet and contented literary 
 leisure. But Mr. Bryant was really living in the very vortex 
 of a popular tumult. The April in which some of them were 
 
 * Edgar A. Poe condemned it also in " Godcy s Lady s Cook." 
 VOL. i. 21 
 
306 THE BATTLE WITH THE BANK. 
 
 written saw the outbreak of an election riot, which could only 
 be quelled by calling out the troops ; and three months later 
 began those violent assaults upon the abolitionists, which ended 
 in conflagrations and murders. In the latter of these, the 
 " Evening Post " was constantly threatened by the mob.* 
 
 * The " Evening Post " of July nth, referring to these events, says : " The fury 
 of demons seems to have entered into the breasts of our misguided populace. Like 
 those ferocious animals which, having once tasted blood, are seized with an insati 
 able thirst for gore, they have had an appetite awakened for outrage, which nothing 
 but the most extensive and indiscriminate destruction seems capable of appeasing. 
 The cabin of the poor negro and the temple dedicated to the service of the living 
 God are alike the objects of their blind fury. What will be the next mark of their 
 licentious wrath it is impossible to conjecture. If the unprincipled journal which has 
 raised this storm is capable of directing it, we ourselves may expect to feel the ven 
 geance of a mob, mad with passion, or drunk with the mere excitement of their au 
 dacious proceedings." 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. 
 
 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 A. D. 1834-1836. 
 
 THE fiercest of the abolition riots Mr. Bryant escaped by 
 a voyage to Europe, which he says he had resolved upon 
 provided his journal should not be knocked to pieces by the 
 mob or merchants. He seems to have concluded that there 
 was no danger on that score, and on the 24th of June set 
 sail with his family in the good ship Poland, Captain Anthony, 
 for Havre. For once, and the only time in his life, he applied 
 for an office. He asked the Secretary of State, Mr. McLane, 
 through Verplanck and Cambreling, congressmen from the 
 city, to be appointed bearer of despatches, a place that carried 
 no emoluments with it, but offered certain facilities of entrance 
 on landing, etc. He was promised it, but it never came, and 
 the State Department had some difficulty in explaining the why 
 and wherefore to his friends. After a windy and cold, but 
 not protracted, voyage, he reached France on the twentieth 
 clay. Among his fellow-passengers he mentions the notorious 
 Madame Lalaurie, who, a little while before, was driven from 
 New Orleans by a mob, because of her excessive cruelty to her 
 slaves. " She was a portly, polite Frenchwoman," writes Mr. 
 Bryant, " and her husband, who seemed a good sort of man, 
 was devoted in his attentions to her, though she diverted her 
 self from the time we sailed by gambling with a vulgar, dis 
 agreeable Frenchman." Her story had preceded her to 
 France, and when she went to the theatre at Havre, her pres 
 
308 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 ence becoming known, she was hissed by the audience, greatly 
 to the delight of some of her American fellow-passengers. 
 More agreeable companions were found in a young Swiss, the 
 Count de Portalis, and Mr. J. H. Latrobe,* his travelling tutor. 
 The journey from Havre to Rouen was made by the Seine a 
 route not now frequented and they reached Paris in the midst 
 of the festivals of July, which enabled them to see the great 
 city in all its splendor and gayety. 
 
 Mr. Bryant s original intention had been to spend his time 
 chiefly in Spain, by the language and literature of which he 
 was singularly fascinated ; but that country was in the midst 
 of one of its chronic convulsions, and he turned his face toward 
 Italy. After tarrying several weeks in the French metropolis, 
 he went by way of Lyons, Marseilles, and the beautiful Cor- 
 niche road along the shores of the Mediterranean to Genoa. 
 He passed a month in Rome and one in Naples, two months in 
 Florence and four in Pisa, mingling much in the Italian so 
 ciety of all, and then came back by way of the Tyrol to Mu 
 nich, where he remained three months, and to Heidelberg, 
 which kept him four months. As some account of these move 
 ments is to be found in the " Sketches of Travel," which will 
 form a part of his collected works, I shall here insert but 
 three extracts from his private correspondence. The first is 
 to the Rev. William Ware, giving his impressions of Italian 
 scenery : 
 
 " FLORENCE, OCTOBER 1 1, 1834 : Talking of pictures reminds me of 
 Cole s fine little landscape taken from the bridge over the Arno, close 
 to the lodgings which I occupy. You may recollect seeing it in the 
 exhibition two years since. It presented a view of the river travelling 
 off toward the west, its banks shaded with trees, with the ridges of the 
 Apennines lying in the distance, and the sky above flushed with the 
 colors of sunset. The same fine hues I witness every evening, in the 
 very quarter and over the very hills where they were seen by the artist 
 
 * Mr. J. H. Latrobe, of Baltimore, v:ith whom an acquaintance was formed, 
 which was continued in after years. 
 
ITALIAN SCENERY. 309 
 
 when he made them permanent. There has been a great deal of 
 prattling about Italian skies the skies and clouds of Italy do not 
 present such a variety of beautiful appearances as those of the United 
 States but the atmosphere o>{ Italy, at least about the time of sunset, is 
 more uniformly fine than ours. The mountains then put on a beauti 
 ful aerial appearance, as if they belonged to another and fairer world 
 and a little after the sun has sunk behind them the air is flushed 
 with a radiance that seems reflected upon the earth from every point 
 of the sky. Most of the grand old palaces in Florence are built in a 
 gloomy, severe style of architecture, of a dark-colored stone, massive 
 and lofty ; and everywhere the streets are much narrower than with 
 us, so that the city has by no means the cheerful look of an American 
 town ; but at the hour of which I am speaking the bright warm light 
 shed upon the earth fills the darkest lanes, streaming into the nar 
 rowest nook, brightens the sombre structures, and altogether trans 
 forms the aspect of the place. ... 
 
 " Thus far I have been less struck with the beauty of Italian scenery 
 than I expected. The forms of the mountains are more picturesque, 
 their summits more peaked, and their outline more varied than those 
 of the mountains of our own country ; and the buildings, of a massive 
 and imposing architecture, or venerable from time, seated on the 
 heights, add much to the general effect. But, if the hand of man has 
 done something to embellish the scenery, it has done more to deform 
 it. Not a tree is suffered to retain its natural shape, not a brook to 
 flow in its natural channel ; an exterminating war is carried on against 
 the natural herbage of the soil ; the country is without woods and 
 green fields ; and to him who views the vale of the Arno 4 from the 
 top of Fiesole or any of the neighboring heights, grand as he will 
 allow the circle of the mountains to be, and magnificent as the edifices 
 with which it is embellished, it will appear a vast dusty gulf, planted 
 with ugly rows of the low, pallid, and thin-leaved olive, and of the still 
 more dwarfish and closely pruned maples on which the vines are 
 trained. The simplicity of natural scenery, so far as can be done, is 
 destroyed ; there is no noble sweep of forest, no broad expanse of 
 meadow or pasture-ground, no ancient and towering trees clustering 
 with grateful shade round the country seats, no rows of natural shrub 
 bery following the course of the rivers through the valleys. The 
 streams are often but the mere gravelly beds of torrents, dry during 
 
310 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 the summer, and kept in straight channels by means of stone walls 
 and embankments ; the slopes are broken up and disfigured by ter 
 races, and the trees kept down by constant pruning and lopping, 
 until somewhat more than midway up the Apennines, when the limit 
 of cultivation is reached, and thence to the summits is a barren steep 
 of rock without soil or herbage. The grander features of the land 
 scape, however, are beyond the power of man to injure : the towering 
 mountain summits, the bare walls and peaks of rock piercing the sky, 
 which, with the deep, irregular valleys, betoken, more than anything I 
 have seen in America, an upheaving and engulfing of the original crust 
 of this world. I ought in justice to say that I have been told that in 
 May and June the country is far more beautiful than it has been at 
 any time since I have seen it, and that it now appears under particu 
 lar disadvantages in consequence of a long drought. . . ." 
 
 The next is addressed to Horatio Greenough, the sculptor, 
 who was engaged on his statue of Washington, ordered by the 
 Government, and who appears to have consulted Mr. Bryant 
 as to certain intimations given him from home : 
 
 " PISA, FEBRUARY 27, 1835 : I am glad to hear that you are so far 
 advanced with your statue. Never mind as to what Mr. Everett says 
 about the necessity of sacrificing your taste to what he may suppose 
 to be the taste of the public. As you are to execute the statue, do it 
 according to your own notions of what is true and beautiful, and when 
 Mr. Public wants a statue made after his own whims, let him make it 
 himself. If you undertake it, give us a Greenough; the statue de 
 serving it, the popularity will come sooner or later. Mr. Everett talks 
 like a politician, but a politician of a bad school, nor has he gained 
 much by following his own maxims. I hope to be permitted to see 
 your model when I come to Florence." 
 
 The third, written the day after that to Mr. Ware, is the 
 close of a note to Miss Sands, which sums up his general im 
 pressions, under an evident feeling of home-sickness : 
 
 "FLORENCE, OCTOBER 12, 1834: I am tempted to ask what I am 
 doing so far from my native country. If one wants to see beautiful or 
 majestic scenery, he needs not go out of the United States ; if he is 
 
SUDDEN RETURN HOME. 3 1 1 
 
 looking for striking and splendid phenomena of climate (I say nothing 
 of uniformity of temperature, for there Europe has the advantage), he- 
 needs not leave the United States; if he delights in seeing the great 
 mass intelligent, independent, and happy, he must not leave the United 
 States ; if he desires to cultivate or gratify his taste by visiting works 
 of art, there are some means of doing so in all the great American 
 cities, and they are all the time increasing. If he wishes to make the 
 comparison between a people circumstanced as are those of a republic 
 and the nations which live under the rickety governments of the Old 
 World d la bonne heure, as the French say let him do it, and, after 
 having made the comparison, if he is a just and philanthropic person, 
 who looks to the good of the whole, and not to the gratification of his 
 individual tastes, he will be willing to return and pass the rest of his 
 life at home. If he dislikes being plagued with beggars, if he hates 
 idleness and filth, if he does not like to feel himself in a vast prison 
 wherever he travels in consequence of what is called the passport 
 system, which subjects him to constant examinations and delays in 
 going from one place to another, he must not go to France or Italy ; 
 and if he cannot bear being cheated and defrauded by rapacious 
 hotel keepers, servants, and shopkeepers, who are desirous, as the 
 phrase is here, to profit by circumstances, he must not travel in 
 Europe at all. Do not suppose, however, by this that I have finished 
 my travels, and am coming back. I am only making a plain state 
 ment of inconveniences, to which I am willing to submit, temporarily 
 at least, for the sake of gratifying my curiosity." 
 
 At Heidelberg his residence was rendered particularly 
 pleasant by introductions to English, American, and German 
 families ; but it was interrupted by news of the dangerous 
 illness of his colleague, Mr. Leggett. Resolving to return 
 home at once, although it was in the depth of winter, he left 
 his family in the care of friends until the spring should bring a 
 safer time for travel. On the 2 5th of January he set out for 
 Havre, in order to take the first packet for New York. It 
 was not among the least of the regrets occasioned by this 
 abrupt departure that it deprived him of the society of Mr. H. 
 \V. Longfellow, who had joined his circle a few days before. 
 
3 I2 
 
 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 Beyond a dinner or two, and some strolls in the pine forests, 
 the poets found few opportunities for communion. Mr. Bryant 
 had all the more occasion to feel how much enjoyment he had 
 lost when his friend, a year or two later, imparted his Eu 
 ropean impressions to the public at large in the charming 
 pages of " Hyperion." 
 
 On arriving in Havre, Mr. Bryant secured a passage by 
 the packet ship Francis I, which was advertised to sail on the 
 2d of February, 1836, but, owing to head winds, did not leave 
 port for a week. When the winds became more favorable 
 she put to sea, but, as they suddenly chopped round again, 
 blowing a gale, she was driven into Plymouth, where she re 
 mained for another week. Mr. Bryant, availing himself of the 
 detention to land in England, was able to see a few commercial 
 towns, but not the rural interior which he desired. At length 
 they got off, but the weather turned up rough again, and he 
 was kept ill almost from shore to shore, making a dreary and 
 irksome passage of nearly fifty days on the water. He reached 
 New York on the evening of the 26th of March, to find that 
 his publisher, Mr. Burnham, had died in the interval, and that 
 his colleague, Mr. Leggett, though a little better, was still very 
 ill. A few days after landing, he was met by the following 
 invitation to a public dinner : 
 
 " NEW YORK, March 31, 1836. 
 " To WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 " DEAR SIR : Learning with pleasure your arrival in New York, 
 and desiring to express our high sense of your literary merits and esti 
 mable character, we beg leave to congratulate you upon your safe re 
 turn, and to request that you will name a time when you will meet 
 your friends at dinner. 
 
 " Very respectfully and sincerely, your obedient servants, 
 
 "WASHINGTON IRVING, 
 
 " F. G. HALLECK, 
 
 "A. B. DURAND, 
 
 "G. C. VERPLANCK," etc.* 
 
 * The other names attached to the letter were William Dunlap, Samuel F. B. 
 Morse, Thatcher G. Payne, Robert Sedgwick, W. T. McCoun, Henry James Ander- 
 
DECLINING A DINNER. 
 
 To this offer Mr. Bryant modestly replied as follows: 
 
 " NEW YORK, April 2, 1836. 
 
 " GENTLEMEN : It is unnecessary for me to say how much the honor 
 you have done me has increased the pleasure of my return to my na 
 tive land, and how high a value I place on such a testimony of kind 
 ness from hands like yours. I cannot but feel, however, that although 
 it might be worthily conferred upon one whose literary labors had 
 contributed to raise the reputation of his country, yet that I, who have 
 passed the period of my absence only in observation and study, have 
 done nothing to merit such a distinction. This alone would be a 
 sufficient motive with me, even were there no others which I might 
 mention, to decline your flattering invitation. 
 
 " I am, gentlemen, with greatest consideration and regard, 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "WM. C. BRYANT." 
 
 A few brief extracts from letters to his wife will now best 
 show how he was occupied after his return : 
 
 " APRIL i4th : On arriving at New York I went to the American 
 Hotel, where I was put into a little room containing two beds. I went 
 to the other hotels and could find no better accommodations. Mr. 
 Payne came to make me a thousand apologies for not answering my 
 letter and to invite me to his house, saying that his wife had enjoined 
 it upon him not to return without me. Mrs. Ware (her husband was 
 then absent) insisted upon my staying with them till I could find lodg 
 ings. I told Payne I would go to his house, where I am still. Just 
 as he had gone, Dr. Anderson came to ask me to occupy a chamber in 
 his house. 
 
 " I think I told you in my last that I found New York much 
 changed the burning of one of the finest quarters of the city,* and 
 
 son, II. Inman, John W. Francis, Theodore S. Fay, George D. Strong, C. Fenno 
 Hoffman, C. W. Lawrence, Prosper M. Wetmore, George P. Morris, Henry Ogden, 
 Edward Sanford, Morgan L. Smith, J. C. Hart, and J. K. Paulding. 
 
 * On the night of the i6th of December, 1835, the coldest that had been known 
 for fifty years, a fire broke out, which, after raging for three days, consumed more 
 than six hundred houses ; among them the Merchants Exchange a fine marble 
 structure the old South Dutch Church, and nearly all the banks of \Vall Street. 
 The loss was estimated at nearly twenty millions of dollars. 
 
314 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 the building of many elegant new houses, churches, and other public 
 buildings,* have given it quite a new aspect. Astor s new hotel is an 
 edifice of massive granite, and the new university, in the Byzantine 
 style of architecture, is the finest public building in the city. Every 
 thing in New York is become exorbitantly dear wages, rents, provi 
 sions the latter have risen one half; but, now that the Hudson is open 
 (it was closed till three days ago), it is thought they will decline some 
 what in price. People of small fixed income complain that they can 
 not live as formerly, and some talk of going abroad to find a cheaper 
 country." 
 
 "NEW YORK, APRIL 2yth : Miss Martineau is yet in town, and is 
 the great lioness of the day. Mr. Ware is a great admirer of hers. 
 She goes on the 2d of May to Stockbridge, and from Stockbridge to 
 Niagara, and from Niagara to Chicago ; in June she will return again 
 to New York, and in August sail for England. Miss Martineau is a 
 person of lively, agreeable conversation, kind and candid, but rather 
 easily imposed upon, and somewhat spoiled, perhaps, by the praises 
 she has received, and the importance allowed to her writings. She 
 came out with a Miss Jeffrey as her companion, who returned to Eng 
 land the first of this month. Miss Martineau s friends fear that she 
 intends to anticipate Miss Martineau by publishing the journal of her 
 travels. She has seen exactly what Miss Martineau has, and as she 
 has two good ears, which Miss Martineau has not, she has heard a 
 great deal more." . . . 
 
 " MAY 6th : I am going this afternoon to Great Barrington, and 
 this letter will be carried by the packet of the 8th. Since I wrote 
 what you have read of Miss Martineau, I have been told by Miss 
 Sedgwick that she has some queer notions about this country, and 
 some strange stories about our people, and that we are likely to get 
 into the book she is going to write. Among the stories is one about 
 General Jackson s cheating somebody in a most outrageous manner. 
 She will come out with the story at a very bad time for the success of 
 her book in this country. The prejudices against the old man are 
 very much softened already, and the moment he withdraws from 
 
 * The Croton Aqueduct was begun this year, but was not available for the great 
 fire. 
 
J/AV.V 
 
 315 
 
 public life he will be, by general consent, one of the best men that 
 ever lived. She has also a story about a plot formed by Jackson and 
 l>enton to steal Texas from the Mexicans, in order to keep up the 
 power of the slave-holding States. Besides these, she has picked up 
 various facts, as she calls them, relating to the abolition question, 
 some of which are exceedingly improbable. While at Boston she fell 
 in with Dr. Follen and his wife. Follen is a German ; he came to this 
 country with high expectations ; they were disappointed, and he be 
 came exceedingly discontented. Miss Martineau has adopted his 
 views, about the country, which are quite unfavorable, and, in some 
 instances, grossly mistaken ; and when she has once taken up an opin 
 ion, which she often does very hastily, there is no reasoning her out 
 of it. At Boston the abolitionists took possession of her. She is now 
 going to Niagara with Dr. Follen and his wife and another lady, a 
 zealous abolitionist, whose name I do not recollect. . . ". 
 
 "As to my returning to Europe, I can say nothing further, except 
 that I do not see any prospect of it at present. Mr. Leggett s health 
 is improving ; he is at New Rochelle, and some time must pass before 
 he is able again to attend to the management of the paper. It is very 
 important that the paper should not again be left in the state in which 
 it has been for the last six months. I thought, when I was on board 
 the Francis I, that I would on no account go to sea again ; but now, 
 if it were in my power, I would embark to-morrow and join you 
 again at Heidelberg. I fear, however, that I shall not see Europe 
 again." . . . 
 
 Miss Martineau, during her visit to this country, directed a 
 great deal of interest to the subject of copyright for foreign 
 authors, and, on her return to England, got up a petition to 
 Congress, which was largely signed by prominent English 
 writers. She enclosed it to Mr. Bryant, with notes from 
 Wordsworth, Lord Brougham, Miss Edgeworth, and others, 
 adding, " You can help us both as author and editor, and I 
 beseech you to operate with all your might." The request 
 was scarcely needed, for the " Evening Post " had already 
 taken up the question. The book press of the country was 
 pouring forth reprints of English works with astonishing fer- 
 
3 i6 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 tility, and few but English authors were read, inasmuch as the 
 publishers, having nothing to pay them, could afford to sell 
 their productions at a much cheaper rate than those written 
 on this side of the Atlantic, even when written with the same 
 degree of talent and attractiveness. The " Evening Post," 
 however, placed no stress on the scheme for an interna 
 tional copy-right law, which Miss Martineau urged, but, 
 consistently with its course on all commercial questions, main 
 tained that, if literary property is to be recognized by our 
 laws, it ought to be recognized without regard to the legis 
 lation of other countries ; that the author who is not natural 
 ized deserves to be protected in the enjoyment of it equally 
 with the citizen of the republic, and that to possess ourselves 
 of his books simply because he is a stranger is as gross an 
 inhospitality as if we denied his right to his baggage or the 
 wares he might bring from abroad to dispose of in our 
 market. The public mind seemed to be prepared for abolish 
 ing any unequal distinction in the right of property founded 
 on birth or citizenship, and the publishers and booksellers, 
 who had at first been averse to the measure, were at length 
 brought to give it their assent. But the members of Con 
 gress were not ready. They did not understand the ques 
 tion ; no party purpose was to be served by studying it, or 
 supporting any measure connected with it ; no disadvantage 
 was likely to accrue to either party from neglecting it, and 
 for this reason, as Mr. Bryant said, politicians by profession 
 always yawned when the subject happened to be broached. 
 Up to this time it has remained untouched by the national 
 Legislature. 
 
 I now continue the extracts from Mr. Bryant s correspond 
 ence : 
 
 " NEW YORK, MAY 23d : I have made a bargain with the Harpers 
 for publishing my poems. They are to do it in a neat manner, and 
 with a vignette in the title-page. I have written to Wier to furnish a 
 design. They will pay me twenty-five cents a copy ; the work is to 
 be stereotyped, and an impression of twenty-five hundred is to be 
 
LETTERS TO MRS. BRYANT. 3x7 
 
 struck off at first. For these I shall be paid six hundred and twenty- 
 
 dollars.* 
 
 r. Charles Mason f has assisted me in the management of the 
 
 r till now, but he will leave me in a few days. It is my intention 
 to employ some young man to relieve me of a part of the drudgery, 
 such as looking over the mail papers and getting out the local news, 
 etc. Do not give yourself any trouble about me ; I am in excellent 
 health never better and am fatter than when I left Europe. I met 
 Mr. Halleck the other day ; he enquired about you, as he always does. 
 He says the world is going back ; that nothing is talked of but stocks 
 and lots and speculations ; that many of his old acquaintances, who 
 were formerly rational companions, are now so sordid in their conver 
 sation that it is absolutely intolerable, and therefore he has forsworn 
 society altogether. I have seen Mr. Cooper several times since my 
 return ; he appears quite discontented, and talks of going back to 
 Europe. He has just published a book about Switzerland. I have 
 not read it. Mr. Halleck says it is a good book." 
 
 " NEW YORK, MAY 3ist : J An apology as usual. I have been much 
 engaged in various affairs since my return, and have carried your 
 letter for a long time in my coat pocket, hoping that the time would 
 arrive when I could collect my thoughts and answer it in a better 
 manner than I shall now do. I had heard before you wrote, and was 
 glad to hear, that you had found an occupation for the winter in 
 Boston. Why should you dwell upon the ungrateful part of it ? 
 Here am I, who have been chained to the oar these twenty years, 
 drudging in two wrangling professions one after the other; and it as 
 tonishes me to hear a man of your tastes talk of the misery of being 
 obliged to point out the beauties of the English poets. As to the 
 effect of analysis, it is doubtless just as you say, but there is a pleasure 
 annexed to it that of the discovery of truth. I have often wished 
 that I could tell why I am pleased with this or that fine passage or 
 poem. It would have been a joy unspeakable to my wife and me 
 
 * They were published in a neat one-volume edition. 
 
 f Afterward, I think, Chief Justice of Iowa. 
 
 t To R. II. Dana. 
 
 Lecturing on the poets. 
 
3i8 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 could it have been in our power to read one of your pleasant letters 
 in the midst of the solitude which surrounded us in the cities of 
 strangers. . . . 
 
 " Plans for the future I have none at present, except to work hard, 
 as I am now obliged to do ; I hope, however, the day will come when 
 I may retire without danger of starving, and give myself to occupa 
 tions that I like better. But who is suffered to shape the course of 
 his own life ? I have bargained for printing a third edition of my 
 book. They will stereotype it, and allow me the same compensation 
 that was paid me by Russell, Odiorne & Co. I am to have a vignette 
 for the title-page from a design by Wier, illustrating the little poem 
 called * Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood. It is a copy of a 
 little landscape at West Point. 
 
 " Cooper, you know, has published a book about Switzerland ; I have 
 not read it, but it seems more likely to take than his last. Verplanck 
 is getting up an edition of one of his public discourses, with illustra 
 tions by Wier. I saw the illustrations before I went to Europe. They 
 were a mere outline in pen and ink, in a broad margin of the book, a 
 sort of running pictorial commentary on the text ; a new idea, and in 
 many parts strikingly executed. They are to be published precisely 
 in the same manner." . . . 
 
 " NEW YORK, JULY 4th : * I employ the leisure which this day gives 
 me in beginning a letter which must be sent on the 8th of this month. 
 Day before yesterday Saturday I went to Orange Spring for the 
 purpose of passing Sunday and the 4th of July. I found the place 
 uncommonly beautiful. The season has been so rainy that the vege 
 tation was exceedingly luxuriant, and the verdure the most brilliant 
 that can be imagined ; but the weather was very hot, and you know 
 how sultry Orange is in the summer ; the mosquitoes were very nu 
 merous and very hungry; my chamber, which was in the third story, 
 just under the roof, was un volcan dc fuego, as Salazar f used to say, 
 and the house, which is badly kept, was crammed with fashionable 
 company. So the next morning, which was Sunday, I paid my bill, 
 took my umbrella, and a paper containing a clean shirt and a razor, in 
 
 * To Mrs. Bryant. 
 
 f A Spanish gentleman with whom Mr. Bryant once lodged. 
 
AFFAIRS OF THE "EVENING POST." 
 
 319 
 
 my hand, and walked to Newark. Arrived at Newark, I found that 
 no public conveyance was to be had to New York, and, accordingly, I 
 concluded to finish my journey on foot. When about three miles from 
 Hoboken, I was overtaken by a man in a gig, who asked me to ride, 
 which, being a little tired, I accepted, and got to New York by dinner 
 time, and here I am again in my own chambers when I thought to be 
 rambling the woods on the mountain-side of Orange. . . . Mrs. Cole- 
 man s proceedings against Leggett resulted in his making over to her 
 one entire third part of the establishment of the Evening Post, so 
 that she comes in as partner, with a voice in the control of the paper. 
 I had no objection to this, because Leggett sometimes needs a curb. 
 Dr. Anderson has taken much interest in the paper since my return ; 
 he has frequently written for it, and his articles are excellent both for 
 matter, style, and temper. Mr. Leggett is yet at New Rochelle, im 
 proving in health, but not rapidly. I do not believe he will return to 
 the paper till cool weather. In the mean time, I have nobody to as 
 sist me except Dr. Anderson, whose assistance is a secret ; nor, in 
 truth, do I feel much need of any assistance. My health is excellent; 
 I work harder than I ever did before, but I was never so well able to 
 work hard before. I think I should be quite stout if study did not 
 keep me down ; as it is, my digestion is always perfect, my head clear, 
 and my mind serene. I only want you and the children back, to be 
 as contented as I can be while harnessed to the wain of a daily paper. 
 The Evening Post was a sad, dull thing during the winter, after 
 Sedgwick * left it, and people were getting tired of it. I have raised 
 it a good deal, so that it begins to be talked about and quoted. It 
 needed my attention very much. ... I must now apply myself to 
 bringing it up to its old standard, after which I shall look for a pur 
 chaser. Dr. Anderson says he will find me one. I think, from the 
 attention he pays to politics, visiting frequently, talking much, and 
 coming to the office to read the papers we receive in exchange, that 
 he may possibly become a purchaser himself. But he will not confess 
 that he has any such thoughts." . . . 
 
 * Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., a distinguished young lawyer, son of the Theodore 
 Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, named on p. 178, and a nephew of Miss C. M. Sedg 
 wick, who assumed temporary control of the " Evening Post " during Mr. Leggett s 
 illness. He wrote for it, also, several masterly essays on public questions under the 
 signature of " Veto." 
 
320 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 "JULY 5th: Mrs. Van Polanen is really going to Holland. Mr. 
 Ware thinks she is going to be married. She has offered me her 
 house at the rate of five hundred dollars a year, which is reasonable 
 enough as rents go ; but she wants me to take it from next August, 
 which is three months earlier than I want it, as I suppose you will not 
 leave Heidelberg earlier than September, in which case, if you stop a 
 little at Paris or London, you will not arrive here till the ist of Novem 
 ber. She expressed, however, a willingness to make some deduction 
 on that account. I think that, if she will make it equally cheap to me, 
 or nearly so, I will furnish a room in that house, and live there till 
 you return. She wants you to return by way of Holland, and to pass 
 through the Hague, where she will reside." * 
 
 " NEW YORK, JULY 2oth : Now for myself, and the promise I made 
 you to get somebody to help me in the paper. This promise is liter 
 ally fulfilled. I have got Dr. Anderson to help me, and a very able 
 helper he is. The varieties from foreign journals which you see in 
 the Evening Post are all compiled by him, and now and then a very 
 able leading article is from his pen. The paper is in better odor than 
 when I returned, but I do not see that the subscribers increase, al 
 though everybody praises it. Mr. Leggett is yet in the country. My 
 own health is excellent ; I sleep well, eat with a regular appetite, and 
 
 * The Mrs. Van Polanen here referred to will be remembered by older residents 
 of New York as the wife of Mr. Roger Gerard Van Polanen, who for many years 
 represented his native country, Holland, in the United States, as Consul General in 
 Washington s time, and as Minister in Jefferson s. Before coming here he had held 
 high official stations in Asia, as the head of the Judiciary in the Dutch Colony of 
 Batavia, in Africa at the Cape of Good Hope, and in South America in Dutch Guiana. 
 His varied experiences in these positions, together with his intimate acquaintance 
 with nearly all the literatures of Europe German, French, Italian, and English 
 rendered him a most agreeable companion ; and, as he had been personally acquainted 
 with Voltaire, Gibbon, and Fox, his reminiscences were delightful, particularly his 
 stories of Gibbon s weekly dinners at Lausanne, where he met the most illustrious 
 scholars and statesmen of Europe. Mrs. Van Polanen, his wife, was, like himself, a 
 native of Holland, and almost equally accomplished. She became a Unitarian in the 
 course of her residence in this country, and built a pretty church for that faith at 
 Bridgeport, in Connecticut. They were both of them early attracted to Mr. Bryant, 
 who found the greatest pleasure in their society. 
 
MARTIN VAN BUREN. 321 
 
 work hard. My book will be out in about a fortnight. The engrav 
 ing for the title-page is neatly executed. . . . 
 
 " I went to-day to see Mr. Van Buren. He looks a little older 
 than when I saw him last ; the newspapers say he is about to be mar 
 ried to a literary lady one paper named Miss Martineau. He 
 laughed. Miss Martineau, you know, has a very bad opinion of him. 
 He said he was told it was Mrs. Willard. I found the little magician 
 at the Astor Hotel. He was in a parlor facing the South ; the sun 
 was blazing against the shutters, which were nearly closed, and the 
 room was a furnace of heat. I told (Judge) Oakley, who was with 
 me, that I believed this was a contrivance to shorten the calls of his 
 visitors. These politicians, you know, are politic in everything; they 
 even drink tea by stratagem. The vice-president s son, Major Van 
 Buren, was with him, a handsome, manly looking young man. Matty 
 very familiarly asked how old I was. 
 
 " The world is running very much into novels the literary world, 
 I mean. Here are three in one week. * Elsawatawa, I believe that 
 is the name, by a Virginian, said to be no great matter; * Lafitte, by 
 Mr. Ingraham, a professor in some institution of learning turned 
 planter, born in Maine, and living at Natchez, with whom I travelled 
 two days in a stage-coach in Virginia, and did not find very agreeable; 
 the book is said to be tolerable ; and, finally, my friend Dunlap s 
 novel called the Water Drinker, of which I have heard no opinion. 
 Of course, I have no time to read them. Miss Sedgwick is engaged 
 in publishing a work in continuation of the little book called Home. 
 1 Home is her most popular production ; five or six editions of it have 
 gone off; it was published at Boston ; the continuation is published 
 here by the Harpers. I have read Miss Sedgwick s The Linwoods 
 since I came ; it is interesting, but not the best of her works in point 
 of talent by any means. Simms * is here for the purpose of publish 
 ing a novel." . . . 
 
 Mr. Bryant had returned to the distractions of the press 
 with reluctance ; and the plan of disposing of his interest in it, 
 
 * Mr. Gilmore Simms, of South Carolina, writer of a book of poems, and of sev 
 eral popular novels. The people of Charleston, while I write, are erecting a monu 
 ment to his memory. 
 VOL. i. 22 
 
322 THE FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE. 
 
 alluded to above, was seriously entertained. In September, 
 1836, he wrote to his brother John in Illinois to look out for a 
 modest home for him in the West. He said : 
 
 " DEAR BROTHER : I think of making some disposition of my in 
 terest in the * Evening Post and coming out to the western country 
 with a few thousand dollars to try my fortune. What do you think of 
 such a plan ? What could I do next summer or next fall with a little 
 capital of from three to five thousand dollars ? Will you write me at 
 large your views of the probability of my success, and of the particu 
 lar modes of investment which would yield the largest profit ? I am 
 inclined to think that I might make money as fast as I can do it here, 
 and with much less wear and tear of brains. Write me fully, but do 
 not go too much into conjecture ; speak only of what you know, or of 
 what has actually happened. I have not been much pleased since my 
 return with New York. The entire thoughts of the inhabitants seem 
 to be given to the acquisition of wealth ; nothing else is talked of. 
 The city is dirtier and noisier, and more uncomfortable, and dearer to 
 live in, than it ever was before. I have had my fill of a town life, and 
 begin to wish to pass a little time in the country. I have been em 
 ployed long enough with the management of a daily newspaper, and 
 desire leisure for literary occupations that I love better. It was not 
 my intention when I went to Europe to return to the business of con 
 ducting a newspaper. If I were to come out to Illinois next spring 
 with the design of passing the year there, what arrangements could be 
 made for my family ? What sort of habitation could I have, and what 
 would it cost? I hardly think I shall come to Illinois to live; but I 
 can tell better after I have tried it. You are so distant from all the 
 large towns, and the means of education are so difficult to come at, 
 and there is so little literary society, that I am afraid I might wish 
 to get back to the Atlantic coast. I should like, however, to try the 
 experiment of a year at the West. 
 
 "You ask whether the paper is doing well. I found affairs in 
 some confusion and embarrassment on my return, in consequence of 
 there being no responsible and active person to look to the business 
 part of the establishment, but I retrieved them shortly. The subscrip 
 tion also had diminished somewhat during Mr. Leggett s illness, but 
 not materially, and we are now going on very well again. Mr. Leg- 
 
LOOKING WESTWARD. 333 
 
 gett has recovered, and returned to the office about the beginning of 
 this month. We think here there is no doubt concerning Mr. Van 
 Buren s success so little doubt, indeed, that we do not fret ourselves 
 much with electioneering. He is certain of the vote of this State.* 
 
 " My book is out. It contains some thirty pages more than the 
 last edition, and is better printed. I had a letter from my wife the 
 other day, dated August 2d. She was still at Heidelberg. She had 
 made a little excursion to the Rhine, visited Coblentz and Ems, and 
 some other watering-places. f She was to go to London by way of 
 Paris, and return to America either by the London or the Liverpool 
 packet. It is very likely that she is now on her voyage. 
 
 " Mother in her letter to me her first letter praised the health- 
 fulness of the situation. It seems to me, however, from what I have 
 learned in one way and another, that bilious fevers are considerably 
 prevalent among you, and this is rather a bad form of fever. Whether 
 your being without physicians is much disadvantage, I doubt. Nat 
 ure is, I believe, a better physician than most of the physicians whom 
 we call in, in vain reliance on what we suppose to be their superior 
 knowledge. The practice of physic is here undergoing a considerable 
 revolution. Physicians begin to think that a vast many patients have 
 been drugged out of the world within the last fifty years, and the let- 
 alone system is becoming fashionable. I am so far a convert to it 
 that I distrust a physician who is inclined to go to work with large 
 quantities of medicine." J 
 
 * As a candidate for the Presidency, 
 f This was in company with Mr. Longfellow. 
 
 \ He was, in fact, an entire convert to the homoeopathic methods, to which he ad 
 hered for the rest of his life. 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. 
 
 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 A. D. 1836. 
 
 IT is not surprising that a man of sensibility should en 
 deavor to get out of the hurly-burly of politics. Jackson s 
 " Experiments upon the Currency," as his efforts to save the 
 Government and the nation from a deluge of paper money 
 were called, infused new acrimony into party passions by 
 transferring discussion to the channels of trade. There can 
 be little doubt that by withholding the public deposits from 
 the federal bank, and scattering them among a multitude of 
 local banks, the Government had encouraged a vast ex 
 pansion of credit, which, with other causes, produced an ex 
 tremely florid but factitious prosperity, shown in all sorts of 
 extravagant speculations. " No scheme," said the " Evening 
 Post," " seems too vast to stagger popular credulity. Plans 
 the most impracticable are received as easy of accomplish 
 ment, and entered upon with undoubting confidence. The 
 thought obtrudes itself apparently into no man s mind that 
 there is a stopping-place for all this motion, or that the ma 
 chine, urged to too great a velocity, will at last fall to pieces. 
 No one seems to anticipate that there must come a time 
 when the towering fabric which speculation is building up, 
 grown too huge for its foundations, will topple on the heads 
 of its projectors and bury them in its ruins." To rebuke 
 a frenzy at its height, by predicting a collapse, is always 
 dangerous, and the " Evening Post " incurred no little odium 
 
WAR UPON CORPORATIONS. 
 
 325 
 
 in consequence. Hut that was not its worst offence. Be 
 sides denying the utility of the national bank, it questioned 
 whether special banking corporations of any sort were com 
 patible with the best interests of society. The business of 
 trading in money, it maintained, was like every other busi 
 ness, and ought to be permitted on the same conditions as 
 any other business. Special charters for such purposes arc 
 an invasion of the equal rights of the people, inasmuch as 
 they create a class distinguished from others by peculiar 
 privileges.* 
 
 A small number of persons went with the journal in these 
 opinions, but much the larger number, even of its democratic 
 allies, regarded them as an assault upon existing institutions, 
 created by State authority, and they denounced the promul- 
 gators of them as enemies of vested rights and supporters of a 
 disguised agrarianism. This was an exaggeration of igno- 
 
 * Mr. Bryant and Mr. Leggett confined their editorial opposition to acts of spe 
 cial incorporation, but they seem, both of them, to have perceived, much in advance 
 of others, the evils likely to flow from the very principle of incorporation for trading 
 purposes. They had no objection to the simple association of men for trading pur 
 poses, but they were unwilling that such associations should derive any peculiar 
 character or privilege from the law. They saw the old contest between Power 
 and Freedom here revived but revived, strange to say, in the name of freedom. 
 Shall not men be free, it was asked, to combine their efforts and their resources in 
 joint enterprises for their own good? Certainly, the Locofocos replied but then 
 they must combine as individuals, without requiring the State to give them any 
 guarantees and immunities in their corporate capacity. The immense advantages to 
 be derived from the organized concentration of wealth, talent, and industry in bank 
 ing, railroading, manufacturing, etc., they did not deny ; but they held that these 
 combinations should never be allowed to absorb their individual members in the 
 general and abstract whole which had, in the slang of the day, "nobody to be 
 kicked nor soul to be damned." Have not the developments of time justified their 
 fears? Incorporations have conferred prodigious maternal benefits upon the nation ; 
 but are they not the masters of the nation? the modern Frankensteins which have 
 got the better of their creators? Are not the great railroad, banking, and insurance 
 companies more powerful than the State? Have they not forced upon us the 
 ion, whether the State shall assume control of these corporations, thereby 
 dangerously augmenting its powers, or whether the masses of the people shall 
 not interfere in a way not very satisfactory to the best interests of public stability 
 a/ul order. 
 
326 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 ranee and fear, for in a few years the reasonableness of the 
 " Evening Post s " position was acknowledged, and became 
 so apparent that, in 1838, a general banking law was passed 
 by the Legislature of New York, the principle of which 
 has since been adopted in our national banking system, 
 whose friends extol it as among the best, if not the best, in 
 the world. 
 
 Among the minor topics which the " Evening Post " treated 
 in a way to augment its unpopularity were inspection, con 
 spiracy, and usury laws. Enactments requiring the inspection 
 by public authority of products offered for sale tobacco, 
 flour, beef, pork, salt, etc. remained on the statute books, 
 which needlessly enlarged the powers of the Government by 
 the creation of swarms of office-holders political janisaries 
 who interfered in elections and otherwise controlled the free 
 action of the people. By the decisions of the courts also 
 it had been determined that agreements among workingmen 
 to fix rates of wages were conspiracies against trade, and sev 
 eral persons had been prosecuted and condemned in conse 
 quence in different parts of the State. The " Evening Post " 
 regarded such laws as violations of individual rights, and it 
 battled against them with great energy. It had the satisfac 
 tion, sooner or later, of seeing them all swept from the codes, 
 with the exception of the usury laws, relics of mediaeval igno 
 rance, which, although abolished in Massachusetts and other 
 more enlightened New England States, are still in force in 
 New York. 
 
 The dispute in regard to corporations before it was settled 
 occasioned a great division in the Democratic Republican 
 party of New York, which extended to other parts of the 
 Union. Those of its members who held to strict constitutional 
 notions, with the mass of the young men, adopted the doc 
 trines maintained by the " Evening Post," while the older men, 
 and particularly such as were attached by personal interest to 
 the existing system, and the timid, who fear all changes be 
 cause they do not see the consequences, arranged themselves 
 
F.XCOMMUNICA TED. 3 2 7 
 
 on the other side. The strife grew more and more impassioned 
 every day, despite the anxiety of those who desired to com 
 promise " to keep the party together," as the phrase went 
 by reconciling the extremes. No adjustment could be effected, 
 the factions fell apart, and the journal which was so largely 
 instrumental in bringing about the split was visited with the 
 obloquy that always falls upon instigators of revolt in an or 
 ganized camp. 
 
 The " official gazette " at Washington, speaking for the 
 general Administration, solemnly excommunicated it as heter 
 odox in faith and a worker of mischief in practice. The 
 organs of the State Administration were no less explicit and 
 exclusive in their denunciations ; and the Tammany Hall Com 
 mittee, which controlled the political movements of the city, 
 refused to recognize it any longer as belonging to the true 
 church. Only a small number adhered to its fortunes, com 
 posed chiefly of workingmen, who saw in the great corporations 
 their active enemies and oppressors, and enthusiastic young 
 men, ardent doctrinarians, whose generous impulses were not 
 yet benumbed by contact with the cold business of life.* 
 The recalcitrants came to be kno\vn in the phrase of the day 
 as Locofocos, because of an attempt they had made to get 
 possession of Tammany Hall, the Democratic head-quarters. 
 A public meeting having been called in that place, they packed 
 the room at an early hour; but their opponents found it out, 
 and turned off the gas which supplied the building, in the hope 
 of leaving them in total darkness. But they were prepared 
 for the emergency, and pulling the recently invented matches, 
 known as Locofocos, with some candles, out of their pockets, 
 they continued the proceedings. 
 
 These agitations were natural among a people enjoying 
 full and free political life. Fierce, disturbing, bitter as they 
 were, they could and would be settled in the end by the 
 
 * At the election for Mayor in 1836 they gave a vote of 2,712 out of a total vote 
 of more than 26,000. 
 
328 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 ballot-box. But there was another question far more formi 
 dable, to which the ballot-box might not be competent ; it 
 hovered now as a storm-cloud on the horizon, " its lightnings 
 sheathed, its thunders silent, but gathering with every moment 
 angrier force and more appalling fury" the question of 
 slavery. The democratic press might have forgiven the vaga 
 ries and excesses of the " Evening Post " on subjects of com 
 merce and currency, and condoned its refusal to march to the 
 music of party, if it had stopped there ; but it did not. It was 
 lending a more or less eager ear to a new and hateful sect, 
 called " The Abolitionists." " It openly and systematically," 
 screamed the official organ, with horror in its face, " encourages 
 those miscreants."* 
 
 Ever since the origin of the Government slavery had been 
 our skeleton in the closet. Some of us tried to persuade our 
 selves that it was no skeleton, but a form of heavenly beauty ; 
 and others, who had their misgivings, were for the most part 
 too cowardly to utter them ; or, if they did utter them, it was 
 in secret and with bated breath. At length a set of simple- 
 hearted men arose, who said plainly that it was a skeleton, and 
 a gigantic one, and, what was more, that it ought to be taken 
 from the closet and instantly buried forever out of sight. 
 
 In 1832 they formed the New England Anti-Slavery So 
 ciety ; a year later the City Anti-Slavery Society, of New 
 York ; and finally the American Anti-Slavery Society. The 
 sentiment embodied in these associations rose like the Afrite 
 of the Eastern tale, which, springing out of a bottle a small 
 ink-bottle in this case swelled so rapidly that the whole 
 welkin was filled by its monstrous shape. Of course the 
 South, where slavery existed, took alarm, and the North, com 
 mercially allied to the South, was scarcely less terrified. 
 Here were men who, believing in the old religious dogma 
 that all sin is to be repented of at once, asserted that slav 
 ery was sin, and ought to be immediately and uncondition- 
 
 * " Washington Globe," September 18, 1835. 
 
POPULAR VIOLENCE. 329 
 
 ally abandoned. It is impossible, at this day, to conceive the 
 tempest of indignation and hatred that greeted their first ap 
 pearance. Their meetings were broken up, their lecturers 
 stoned, their schools dispersed, their homes set on fire, and 
 their more conspicuous leaders hunted from town to town, 
 with a price upon their heads. Not in the great cities alone, 
 with their excitable and turbid populations, but in quiet New 
 England villages, the mob assumed the upper hand, and con 
 ceived itself chartered to commit any sort of outrage upon 
 these innovators. The magistrates, sworn defenders of public 
 order, were powerless against it, because they shared its pas 
 sions and approved its doings. The rights of a free press, of 
 free speech, of free assemblage, went down before its clamors 
 and violence, yet they closed their eyes to the crime, while the 
 respectable classes clapped their hands, and the churches sang 
 
 :tms. 
 
 In the earlier days of this agitation, neither Mr. Bryant nor 
 Mr. Leggett was disposed to take part in it. In common with 
 nearly all the people of the North, and with many of those of 
 the South, as recent debates in the Virginia House of Delegates 
 after the bloody insurrection of slaves under Nat. Turner 
 proved,* they cherished the delusion that slavery, though an 
 unmitigated evil, was in the process of extinction. Human 
 reason and the sense of justice, they thought, would gradually 
 alleviate its abuses, while the rapid material advances of the 
 nation, rendering it unprofitable as a mode of industry, and 
 more and more feeble as a political and social force, would 
 ultimately reduce it to nothingness, as in the Northern States. 
 Besides, as strict constructionists of the power of the general 
 Government, they held that only municipal law could properly 
 deal with what they regarded as an exclusively municipal 
 institution. But they were never perverted by their political 
 tendencies and alliances into that tortuous morality which 
 justified inaction within the States, or which denied to citizens 
 
 * These were published at length in the " Evening Post" 
 
330 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 of the free States the right to subject the system to criticism, 
 remonstrance, and rebuke. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the aspects in which emancipation 
 was first presented were not of a kind to allure the co-opera 
 tion of sober and moderate minds. One speaks with reluctance 
 at this day of the errors of men who, actuated by the most 
 generous sympathies, confronted hatred, contempt, suffering, 
 and death, in a work which time has crowned and consecrated 
 by a glorious consummation. But history declares that a 
 great deal of the obloquy which befel the early Abolition 
 ists was provoked by their own overwrought zeal. In their 
 devotion to the divinest and highest of all truths human 
 freedom they sometimes overlooked the lesser truths by 
 which it is best recommended. They did not always cherish 
 the gentleness and sweetness which are the inmost essence 
 of wisdom, and among its most effective weapons. Rightly 
 indignant at the indifference and sordidness of the public 
 conscience, they were too apt to denounce, with intemperate 
 severity, all who did not at once accord with them in senti 
 ment, both as to their objects and their methods although 
 those objects were not clearly defined by themselves, and 
 their methods but imperfectly apprehended by the people. 
 No institution of Church or State seemed to be sacred in 
 their eyes so long as Church and State tolerated or refused 
 to move .in active aggression against a social anomaly so 
 widely pernicious, so flagitiously sustained ; and they flung 
 their battle-axes into the ancient structures, little heeding 
 where they fell. 
 
 For this reason many persons looked upon them rather 
 as the enemies of order than as the friends of the slave. 
 They might, perhaps, have remained for a long time what 
 they were in the beginning an obscure and despised sect, 
 but for the frenzy of the South, which insisted upon their 
 extirpation, not by law only, but by violence ; the intrigues 
 of Northern party leaders, eager to conciliate the South by 
 any degrading compliance ; and the cowardice of the trad- 
 
LEGGETTS ZEAL. 33 ! 
 
 ing classes, whose tills were menaced by the withdrawal of 
 Southern patronage. All these combined in the demand for 
 the most despotic supprcssive legislation and in fomenting 
 the malignant passions of the populace. They, however, over 
 shot the mark. The North was yielding and it was trucu 
 lent, but it was not wholly debased. Men of courage and con 
 viction were still left, who were unwilling to see the rights 
 of citizens trampled in the drtst, or extinguished in blood, to 
 save the interests of a class which, at best, but represented an 
 atrocious and cruel wrong. Mr. Bryant and Mr. Leggett were 
 among them. Few as the Abolitionists were in number, feeble 
 in power, offensive as they had made themselves by indiscre 
 tion and arrogance of speech, they were only using the dearest 
 rights of free men in defence of imperilled humanity, and the 
 " Evening Post " raised its voice in their behalf. It condemned 
 the violence of the mob and the indifference of the authorities, 
 and it opened its columns to an unfettered discussion of the 
 real character and dangerous influences of the so-called " do 
 mestic institution." 
 
 During Mr. Bryant s absence in Europe, Leggett had been 
 unsparing in his denunciations of the action of the Govern 
 ment in authorizing a violation of the mails by the postmasters 
 on the pretext of discovering incendiary publications. He 
 had been no less earnest in his defence of the rights of free 
 speech and of petition. The country was in the midst of the 
 bitter contest when Mr. Bryant returned. Congress in both 
 branches had decreed that no remonstrance against slavery in 
 the District of Columbia, no demands for its removal, should 
 be received ; the venerable John Quincy Adams in the House 
 of Representatives was waging a stubborn, invincible war for 
 the right of the constituent to be heard ; and even churches, 
 moved to their depths, were about to be split asunder by 
 a debate which should never have arisen among the disciples 
 of the Son of God. Mr. Bryant, in his treatment of the matter, 
 was more subdued and suasive than Leggett, but none the less 
 decided. His position and tone may be learned from the fol- 
 
332 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 lowing remarks on the speech of a Mr. Tallmadge in Con 
 gress: 
 
 " Mr. Tallmadge has done well in vindicating the right of indi 
 viduals to address Congress on any matter within its province a 
 right springing from the nature of our institutions, and never denied 
 till now. For this we thank him. This is something, at a time when 
 the Governor of one State demands of another that free discussion on 
 a particular subject shall be made a crime by law, and when a Senator 
 of the Republic, and a pretended champion of liberty, rises in his 
 place and proposes a censorship of the press more servile, more 
 tyrannical, more arbitrary than subsists in any other country. It is a 
 prudent counsel also that Mr. Tallmadge gives to the South to be 
 ware of increasing the zeal, of swelling the ranks and multiplying the 
 friends, of the Abolitionists by attempting to exclude them from the 
 common rights of citizens. For this counsel he deserves the thanks 
 of the South. Yet it seems to us that Mr. Tallmadge, who, on other 
 occasions, has shown himself not to be wanting in boldness and free 
 dom of speech, might have gone a little further. It seems to us that 
 the occasion demanded that he should have protested with somewhat 
 more energy and zeal against the attempt to shackle the expression 
 of opinion. It is no time to use honeyed words when the liberty of 
 speech is endangered. In vindicating the North from the charge of 
 sharing in the designs of the Abolitionists, he might have deplored and 
 condemned, in the strongest terms, the excesses to which the people 
 of the North have been led by a fanatical hatred of that party. He 
 has shown how the rival parties eagerly sought to clear their skirts 
 from the stain of abolitionism; but, instead of representing this spirit 
 as in all respects laudable, he should have added with what a wolfish 
 rage they fell upon a small association of benevolent and disinterested 
 enthusiasts, and discharged the coarse fury of party spirit upon 
 those whose only fault was to maintain and seek to propagate opinions 
 which thousands of benevolent men had maintained and expressed 
 before them, not only in our own, but in all countries of the globe. 
 He might have added how, in this very city, the law had been violated 
 by a postmaster erecting himself into a censor of the press, and re 
 fusing the aid of the mail in conveying publications which he deemed 
 objectionable. He should have condemned those acts of violence 
 
A PERSONAL REMIXISCENCE. 333 
 
 and tumult which made the friends of despotism abroad to exult, and 
 which covered with shame the faces of those who were looking to our 
 country as a glorious example of the certainty with which good order 
 and respect for personal rights are the fruits of free political institu 
 tions. There should be no compromise with those who deny the 
 freedom of debate within or without the walls of Congress, in conver 
 sation, at public meetings, or by means of the press. If the tyranni 
 cal doctrines and measures of Mr. Calhoun can be carried into effect, 
 there is an end of liberty in this country ; but carried into effect they 
 cannot be. It is too late an age to copy the policy of Henry VIII ; 
 we lie too far in the Occident to imitate the despotic rule of Austria. 
 The spirit of our people has been too long accustomed to freedom to 
 bear the restraint which is sought to be put upon it. Discussion will 
 be like the Greek fire, which blazed the fiercer for the water thrown 
 to quench it. It will scorn the penalties of tyrannical laws; and if 
 the stake be set and the faggots ready, there will be candidates for 
 martyrdom." * 
 
 Thus day after day the "Evening Post" uttered its senti 
 ments, in the face of a hostile public prejudice ; but, while it 
 s;i\\* its own fortunes crumbling about it, it was only the more 
 fixed in its devotion to what it deemed the highest good of 
 the Republic. 
 
 It was during these fierce conflicts, shortly after Mr. 
 Bryant s return from Europe, that chance made me acquainted 
 with him ; and this is, perhaps, the best place in which to refer 
 to the incident, as it will explain to my readers how I am able 
 to speak of him henceforth from personal knowledge. A 
 briefless barrister in the great city, I had been led to a modest 
 boarding-house at No. 316 Fourth Street, where for some time 
 I was almost the only inmate. But one evening, on entering 
 the common room, the owner, a native of Great Barrington, 
 introduced me to a gentleman, whose name I did not hear, as 
 
 * " Evening Post," April 21, 1836. 
 
334 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 about to become a member of our small and select family. He 
 was of middle age and medium height, spare in figure, with a 
 clean-shaven face, unusually large head, bright eyes, and a 
 wearied, severe, almost saturnine expression of countenance. 
 One, however, remarked at once the exceeding gentleness of his 
 manner, and a rare sweetness in the tone of his voice, as well 
 as an extraordinary purity in his selection and pronunciation 
 of English. His conversation was easy, but not fluent, and he 
 had a habit of looking the person he addressed so directly in 
 the eyes that it was not a little embarrassing at first. A cer 
 tain air of abstractedness in his face made you set him down 
 as a scholar whose thoughts were wandering away to his 
 books ; and yet the deep lines about the mouth told of struggle 
 either with himself or with the world. No one would have 
 supposed that there was any fun in him, but, when a lively 
 turn was given to some remark, the upper part of his face, 
 particularly the eyes, gleamed with a singular radiance, and a 
 short, quick, staccato, but hearty laugh acknowledged the 
 humorous perception. It was scarcely acknowledged, how 
 ever, before the face settled down again into its habitual 
 sternness. Of public affairs this gentleman spoke with 
 great decision as one who thoroughly comprehended them, 
 and had no fear of the ultimate issues. I was not told, 
 until he had gone, that this was Mr. Bryant, the poet and 
 journalist. 
 
 He was for some weeks in the house before I saw him 
 again, going very early in the morning to his office, taking 
 long solitary walks in the afternoon, and confining himself to 
 his room in the evenings. On Sunday one managed to get a 
 little talk with him, which, though he was courteous when ap 
 proached, he neither invited nor repelled. He was always a 
 patient listener, but seldom initiated any topic. His greeting 
 of strangers was cold and formal, and he never stopped to 
 prolong a conversation. As soon as the immediate subject of 
 remark was despatched he turned away to his own musings. 
 Once or twice, I think, he asked me of his own accord to stroll 
 
MR. fiKYAXT AV PRIVATE. 
 
 333 
 
 with him in the open fields, now the upper part of the city, 
 but even in these rambles he preserved a singular reticence. 
 The only observation of the time I now recall related to 
 Jones s Wood, on the East River, which, he insisted with much 
 earnestness, should be reserved as a place of recreation and 
 amusement. " In a few years," he said, " the city will have 
 grown up beyond this, and then it will be too late." * His 
 love of trees and flowers was obvious, and, as he looked upon 
 them, he would murmur to himself some appropriate verses, 
 such as John Mason Good s lines to the Daisy, 
 
 " Not worlds on worlds in phalanx deep 
 Need we to tell that God is here," f 
 
 or Burns s address to the same flower, or a line or two from 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 When his family, consisting of his wife and two young 
 daughters, came back from Europe, in the autumn of 1836, he 
 showed himself more sociable. Mrs. Bryant was a person of 
 such lively sympathies, and so breezy a cheerfulness, that she 
 seemed to inspire him, as she did others, with some of her own 
 animation. He became chatty and playful, but never familiar. 
 Even in telling a story or anecdote he maintained his reserve, 
 which seemed to say, Do not presume upon it if I deign to 
 jest with you. His children, of whom he was fond, he treated 
 with great consideration and tenderness, but he always exacted 
 their obedience. He prattled with them commonly in the 
 foreign language which they happened to be learning, and he 
 amused them and himself very much by turning the old 
 nursery rhymes or the popular songs of the day into the 
 idioms of France, Germany, Spain, or Italy. 
 
 Knowing his fame as a poet, I was surprised to observe 
 
 * lie afterward took up this subject in his journal, and persisted in writing about 
 it until public interest was awakened in it, and our fine Central Park was the result. 
 
 f He was apparently very fond of these lines, and he repeated them very often to 
 friends with whom he walked. 
 
336 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 how few habitual visitors he seemed to have. His acquaint 
 ance with the artists he preserved by means of the Sketch 
 Club, and I learned that Cooper and Halleck, and some of the 
 more prominent politicians Dix, Marcy, Wright, Flagg, B. F. 
 Butler, and a young man named Tilden paid their respects 
 to him at the office ; but none of them came to the house. 
 General society he avoided, and, though he had written for 
 his fellow New-Englanders of the New England Society the 
 lines on " The Twenty-second of December," 
 
 " Wild was the day ; the wintry sea 
 Moaned sadly on New England s strand," 1 
 
 he seldom or never shared in their jollifications, or sought their 
 companionship. Joseph Curtis, the earnest advocate of free 
 schools, f Isaac T. Hopper, the Quaker philanthropist, and 
 George Arnold, the Unitarian Minister to the Poor, occasionally 
 sought him out, and counselled with him ; but otherwise he 
 lived alone. 
 
 This seclusion was due partly to choice and partly to the 
 exacting nature of his professional labors, but largely also to 
 the fact that his political opinions involved him in a mist, if 
 not a cloud, of prejudices and dislikes. The more opulent and 
 cultivated classes of the city were " Whigs," who detested 
 Democrats as agrarians and levellers. Even the most charita 
 ble among them found it difficult to understand how a gentle 
 man of education and refinement, impelled by no craving for 
 office or leadership, could take the side of an unkempt and un 
 washed multitude, whose popular name of Locofocos was sup 
 posed to indicate their inflammatory character. Mr. Bryant 
 was not, however, very much disturbed by this mild social 
 ostracism ; his sources of happiness lay in himself, and in that 
 noble companionship of books, " which never come unduly and 
 
 * For the anniversary dinner of 1829. 
 \ See his Life, by Miss Sedgwick. 
 
OSTRACISED BY RESPECTABILITY. 
 
 337 
 
 never stay too long"; while his estimate of himself was too 
 modest to exact personal homages.* 
 
 But he would have been more than man if he had been 
 wholly insensible to the vituperations which the party news 
 papers showered upon him a scurrility which our best and 
 purest men have been exposed to and have affected to disre 
 gard ; but to which no man, however conscious of rectitude, is 
 wholly inured. Mr. Bryant never replied to such abuse ; he 
 never even complained of it in conversation ; but that he felt 
 it is clear from his poem of " The Battle Field," written at 
 this time, which refers to 
 
 " A friendless warfare ! lingering long 
 
 Through weary day and weary year, 
 A wild and many-weaponed throng, 
 
 Hang on thy flank, and front, and rear." \ 
 
 Our little family in Fourth Street was gradually enlarged 
 by that of the Rev. Dr. Dewey, by Mr. Ferdinand Field, a 
 relative of Charles Lamb s Baron Field, and by others. Call 
 ers became more frequent ; among them were Mrs. Jameson, 
 on her sad voyage to Canada, and Miss Sedgwick, ever 
 beaming with intelligence and goodness. The latter was 
 
 * Yet he had too much self-respect to be wholly indifferent to the mode in which 
 he was treated by "good society." I remember in 1842, when Charles Dickens was 
 here, Mr. Bryant was invited by a prominent citizen to meet him at dinner, but de 
 clined. " That man," he said to me, " has known me for years, without asking me 
 to his house, and I am not now going to be made a stool-pigeon, to attract birds of 
 passage that may be flying about." 
 
 f "Democratic Review," October, 1837. The stanza in this poem, beginning, 
 " Truth crushed to earth will rise again," which everybody knows from the frequency 
 with which it has been repeated, was first quoted by the late Benjamin F. Butler, 
 Attorney-General under Jackson and Van Buren, in a speech made in Tammany 
 Hall. As he closed, a voice of unmistakable brogue shouted out, " Hurrah for 
 Shakespeare ! " " No," responded Mr. Butler, " not Shakespeare, but a pupil of 
 his in the school of Nature and truth our own Bryant," when the building rang 
 v ith cheer on cheer. 
 
 ; See " Memoirs of Anna Jameson." 
 VOL. i. 23 
 
33 8 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 deeply interested at that time in the Italian prisoners of State 
 recently exiled, and she found in Mr. Bryant a ready coad 
 jutor. He busied himself in getting up a public dinner to the 
 Count Confalonieri, the most notable of the victims of des 
 potism, who was yet too much a sufferer from long incarcera 
 tion to be able to accept the attention.* The noble old man, 
 Felix Foresti who, after sixteen years of the dungeon, still 
 carried with him the freshness and simplicity of youth re 
 joiced in his friendship ; and others Piero Maroncelli, the com 
 panion of Silvio Pellico,f Albinola, Tenelli, Argenti shared in 
 his active sympathies. Miss Sedgwick made him acquainted 
 also with Dr. Follen, to whom a slighting allusion occurs in 
 one of his letters, J but whose erudition, talent, and disinter 
 estedness he quickly learned to prize. No one of the acquaint 
 ances of that time, however, was more endeared to him than 
 Miss Eliza Robbins, an elderly unmarried sister of his father s 
 friends, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Lyman. She was a person of 
 extraordinary intellectual endowments, engaged in the teach 
 ing of young women at their homes or in the public schools, 
 and the writer of several school-books of great utility. Her 
 knowledge was varied and accurate, particularly in the line of 
 old English literature, and her ability to converse surpassed that 
 of any person that I ever heard, reminding me of what I had read 
 of the wonderful powers in that respect of Burke, Madame 
 De Stael, and Coleridge. Her talk, indeed, was a continuous 
 and full stream of narrative, argument, criticism, anecdote, 
 and pathos. " I called to see Miss Robbins," writes Miss Sedg 
 wick, in one of her letters, " on my way home. She lamented 
 her brother s death (Governor Robbins, of Boston) with the 
 eloquence of an old Hebrew. If your eyes were shut, you 
 might fancy that it was a supplemental chapter of Job. I 
 thought I should have remembered some of it, but I might as 
 well have tried to catch a pitcher of water from the Falls of 
 
 * The correspondence with him I find in the " Evening Post." 
 \ See " Le Mie Priggione." 
 \ See ante, p. 315. 
 
HIS OFFICE HABITS. 339 
 
 Niagara." But, like all voluble talkers, she was at times given 
 to " words of learned length and thundering sound," and it 
 was an amusement to see the poet taking her vocabulary to 
 pieces. * 
 
 After several months of casual intercourse, I had formed 
 no real intimacy with him, nor had I reason to suppose that 
 he took the slightest interest in my affairs; when one day he 
 surprised me not a little by saying: " My assistant, Mr. Ul- 
 shoeffer " (a son of the late Judge Ulshoeffer), " is going to 
 Cuba for his health ; how would you like to take his place ? " 
 I replied that I had never been inside of a newspaper office 
 in my life, and would make but a sorry fist at the business. 
 " Well," he replied, in a friendly way, " you can learn ; and I 
 think you the very man for it." He then went on to say that 
 he had been a lawyer himself, but had found the life of an 
 editor quite as agreeable, and infinitely more useful. " Come 
 and try." I went to the office within a few days, and tried, 
 and the result was, as . young Ulshoeffer died in the inter 
 val, that I have remained there ever since now nearly fifty 
 \vars. Mr. Leggett came in once or twice after I had joined 
 the force ; but he had already projected a periodical of his 
 own, to be called " The Plaindealer," to which he soon de 
 voted his entire attention. Unfortunately, the " Evening Post " 
 was not in a condition to pay for varied or effective services; 
 and the editorial department was reduced to three persons, f 
 Mr. Bryant wrote the leading articles and reviews of books; 
 his first assistant took in hand the exchanges and the theatres ; 
 and the third person acted as a general reporter, with occa 
 sional aid from other reporters, while ship news was gathered 
 
 * On one occasion, in later years, she was sitting in his library alone, when a 
 cabinet-maker brought back a rocking-chair he had taken to mend. When Mr. 
 Bryant came in, Miss Robbins said: " The mechanic has returned your chair, and 
 expressed the hope that its equilibrium had been properly adjusted." " Did 1:. 
 that," replied Mr. Bryant ; "he never talked so to me ; what did he really say? " 
 " Well, if you must know," rejoined Miss Robbins, " he said he guessed the rickety 
 old concern wouldn t joggle any more." 
 
 f It now consists of about twenty. 
 
340 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 by pilots in the common employ of the several evening joui% 
 nals. As the staff was so small, the labor was very severe ; 
 but it fell most heavily upon Mr. Bryant, who had taught his 
 public to expect every day some disquisition worthy to be 
 read. I remember with what delight we hailed the arrival of 
 a foreign packet early in the morning it was before the days 
 of steamships because it enabled us to fill our columns with 
 European intelligence cut directly from the English papers. 
 Our hours were from seven o clock A. M. to about four P. M. ; 
 and promptly every morning Mr. Bryant was at his desk, 
 working without intermission till the paper had gone to press. 
 He was then very impatient of interruption, even irascible at 
 times, but uniformly courteous toward his colleagues and the 
 printers. His articles, always prepared in the office, were 
 written, like Pope s " Homer," on the first scrap of paper that 
 came to hand the backs of old letters, or the reverse side of 
 former articles. Writing slowly and carefully, with many 
 erasures and corrections, but in a neat and graceful script, 
 his proofs required very little rectification. Often the fore 
 man of the printing-room would stand over him, snipping off 
 line by line as he wrote, in order to be in time for the 
 " make-up." 
 
 Commonly he began his disquisition, whatever it might 
 be, with an anecdote or story illustrative of the theme, which 
 caused a witty opponent whom he had castigated to say that 
 the " Evening Post " always opened with a stale joke and 
 closed with a fresh lie. His ready memory of the poets and 
 essayists helped him to apt quotations wherewith to enliven 
 or enforce his argument. He seldom surpassed a half-column 
 of print in getting his thought well out, in which respect he 
 differed from Mr. Leggett, who was fond of expatiating 
 through entire columns. From Leggett, too, he differed in 
 other respects, seldom indulging in the discussion of general 
 principles, but taking up the particular aspects of each ques 
 tion, and cultivating greater suavity of tone. Delicate irony 
 or ridicule was his favorite weapon ; but, when the occasion 
 
MANNER OF WRITING. 34 ! 
 
 served, he could be excessively sharp and stinging. Readers 
 familiar with his journal only in its later days, when age had 
 tempered its passions, and prosperity invited it to conserva 
 tism, know nothing of the aggressive ardor and fiery vehe 
 mence it displayed in former times. * The " Evening Post " 
 had gradually come to be the leading defender and represen 
 tative of the more liberal creed of democracy, and it was 
 compelled to maintain the initiative and bearing of a leader. 
 The country journals looked to it for their cues ; the lesser 
 politicians were guided by it ; and the more prominent states 
 men of its party were glad to get its support. Its opponents 
 charged it with an excess of partisanship ; but, however great 
 its zeal, it was always studiously decorous in its modes of 
 expression. Mr. Bryant held that a gentleman would be a 
 gentleman in his public utterances no less than in his private 
 demeanor ; and he endeavored never to write under the influ 
 ences of passion. " You answer that fellow," he would often 
 say to me, " for I dislike him so much that I might not be 
 courteous or do him justice." As his political convictions 
 were sincere and earnest, he felt it to be his duty to uphold 
 them earnestly ; and, if his likes and his dislikes were strong, 
 passing into obstinacy, if not prejudice, in certain cases, 
 they were never founded upon the relations of the objects of 
 them to himself. In his judgments of men he first disclosed 
 to me what the old Swedish seer Swedenborg means when 
 he says that the better angels see in others not their per 
 sons but their human quality. He estimated the people he 
 met with, in private as in public, not by their external advan 
 tages, but by their purely inward worth. Always prepared 
 to do full justice to everybody s virtues, or genius, or wit, 
 and very quick to discern merit or excellence of any kind, he 
 was yet principally impressed by manliness and sincerity of 
 character. When these were found, he gave a willing hom- 
 
 * It was curious to remark, in the notices of Mr. Bryant that appeared just after 
 his death, how the writers estimated his poetical character by his earliest pieces, and 
 his editorial character by his later writings. 
 
342 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 age ; when they were not, he turned away without regard 
 to any social or adventitious distinctions. For this reason he 
 was never in much favor with the little great men of politics, 
 for some of whom the mere managers of political machinery 
 he never disguised his dislike ; while as to others of more 
 mark Van Buren, Wright, Marcy, Tilden or, afterward, 
 Seward, Chase, and Sumner though he respected and ad 
 mired them, he seldom gave heed to their notions of policy. 
 
 Mr. Leggett, as I have said, soon left us to establish a peri 
 odical of his own, " The Plaindealer," of which the first number 
 appeared in December, 1836. It was not long before his inde 
 pendence and ardor embroiled Mr. Bryant unpleasantly with 
 his eminent contemporary, Washington Irving, the only literary 
 controversy, if it may be called such, in which he was ever 
 engaged. Discussing a practice, w^hich obtained among the 
 publishers of the day, of mutilating important passages in 
 foreign works in deference to pro-slavery prejudices, Mr. 
 Leggett departed a little from the strict line of his argument 
 to charge the amiable essayist with " pusillanimity " because 
 he had changed a verse in Mr. Bryant s " Song of Marion s 
 Men," 
 
 "The British soldier trembles,"* 
 
 in order to conciliate English feeling. This charge naturally 
 gave offence to Mr. Irving, who made a dignified reply, in 
 the course of which after a full and frank explanation of 
 the motives of his proceeding he said that, if he had evinced 
 any timidity of spirit, it was wholly in Mr. Bryant s behalf, 
 and that " he was little prepared, after all that he had done, 
 to receive a stab from his (Mr. Bryant s) bosom friend." 
 Leggett appended to this reply a complete exoneration of 
 
 * Mr. Irving made it read, 
 
 " The foeman trembles in his camp." 
 
LETTER FROM IRVING. 343 
 
 Mr. Bryant from any complicity in his remarks, directly or 
 indirectly, and acknowledged further that he had " on vari 
 ous occasions heard Mr. Bryant express the kindest senti 
 ments toward -Mr. Irving for the interest he had taken in the 
 publication of the poems, and for the complimentary terms in 
 which he had introduced them to the British public." To 
 leave no doubt in regard to the sincerity of this feeling, Mr. 
 Bryant himself hastened, in the next number of " The Plain- 
 dealer," to say that, although he would not have made the 
 alteration, he had never complained of it, having no doubt it 
 was done with the kindest intentions ; but he expressed his 
 surprise at one or two unguarded passages of Mr. Irving s 
 note, which seemed to connect him with the attack. 
 
 Mr. Irving rejoined as follows in the "New York Ameri 
 can": 
 
 " To WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, Esq. 
 
 " SIR : It was not until this moment that I saw your letter in The 
 Plaindealer of Saturday last. I cannot express to you how much it 
 has shocked and grieved me. Not having read any of the comments 
 of the editor of * The Plaindealer on the letter which I addressed 
 to him, and being in the country, out of the way of hearing the com 
 ments of others, I was totally ignorant of the construction put upon 
 the passages of that letter which you have cited. Whatever construc 
 tion these passages may be susceptible of, I do assure you, sir, I never 
 supposed, nor had the remotest intention to insinuate, that you had 
 the least participation in the attack recently made upon my character 
 by the editor of the above-mentioned paper, or that you entertained 
 feelings which could in any degree be gratified by such an attack. 
 Had I thought you chargeable with such hostility, I should have made 
 the charge directly and explicitly, and not by innuendo. 
 
 " The little opportunity that I have had, sir, of judging of your 
 private character, has only tended to confirm the opinion I had formed 
 of you from your poetic writings, which breathe a spirit too pure, ami 
 able, and elevated, to permit me for a moment to think you capable 
 of anything ungenerous and unjust. 
 
 * " Plaindealer," December 28, 1836. 
 
344 THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM. 
 
 "As to the alteration of a word in the London edition of your 
 poems, which others have sought to nurture into a root of bitterness 
 between us, I have already stated my motives for it, and the embar 
 rassment in which I was placed. I regret extremely that it should 
 not have met with your approbation, and sincerely apologize to you 
 for the liberty I was persuaded to take a liberty, I freely acknowl 
 edge, the least excusable with writings like yours, in which it is diffi 
 cult to alter a word without marring a beauty. 
 
 " Believe me, sir, with perfect respect and esteem, very truly yours, 
 
 " WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 "THURSDAY MORNING, Februaryib y 1837." 
 
 This slight collision left " no root of bitterness " in the heart 
 of either of the parties to it, and, whenever they happened to 
 meet at the houses of common friends, which was not very 
 often, as they both lived out of the city, their intercourse was 
 marked by the greatest affability and kindness. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. 
 
 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 A. D. 1837, 1838. 
 
 MR. BRYANT was too much absorbed in the political dis 
 cussions of the time to be able to give any attention to per 
 sonal disputes, even if he had been inclined to that sort of 
 warfare which he was not. Out of the agitation of aboli 
 tionism another question had arisen, in which he took a deep 
 interest. It was that of conferring the right of suffrage on 
 negroes, who in the State of New York were emancipated 
 from bondage, but not yet admitted to the full privileges of 
 citizenship. Of course, it was easily confounded with the 
 more general antislavery movement, and provoked much of 
 the same kind of hostility. Mr. Bryant endeavored to show 
 that they were essentially different questions. He said : 
 
 " It appears to us that it is very unwise to connect this question 
 with that of the principal object of the Abolitionists, which is, to do 
 away with slavery in the Southern States. The great objection brought 
 against their course hitherto has been that they were meddling with a 
 matter with which they had no concern, and which their interference 
 might make worse for both master and slave. There is not the least 
 ground for either of these objections in the case of the petition in 
 question. We recognize the blacks as citizens, and we have a perfect 
 right to say how easy we will make the condition of their citizenship. 
 The moment we allow ourselves to be restrained in legislating on this 
 subject by a regard for what is or may be said at the South or any- 
 
346 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 where else, we submit to external interference, we allow a power from 
 without to dictate what shall be the qualifications of our voters." 
 
 The distinction was gradually recognized by the people ; 
 and the negroes, in spite of the fierce opposition they encoun 
 tered, were qualified at the next revision of the Constitution, 
 in 1845. It was a considerable advance in public opinion, and 
 shows that a wiser and better feeling was beginning to work. 
 
 A more general reason for Mr. Bryant s earnest interest in 
 politics was the election of his personal, though not intimate, 
 friend, Mr. Martin Van Buren, to the Presidency. In the par 
 tisan journals that leader was universally represented as a 
 crafty and trickish politician, who gained his successes by the 
 low arts of the politician rather than by the liberal methods of 
 the statesman ; but Mr. Bryant, who had known him for some 
 years, had always found him to be a gentleman of broad gen 
 eral views, of remarkable sagacity, unstained honor, and win 
 ning courtesy of manner. He was cautious in action, and more 
 disposed to rely upon party machinery than Mr. Bryant en 
 tirely approved, but he had given him no occasion to suspect 
 the sincerity of his convictions or his disinterested patriotism. 
 Jackson s preference of Van Buren perhaps influenced him 
 somewhat, as he still retained a high admiration for the " old 
 hero." " Faults he had, undoubtedly," Mr. Bryant, when Jack 
 son left office, wrote ; " such faults as often belong to an ar 
 dent, generous, sincere nature the weeds that grow in a rich 
 soil. He was hasty in his temper, and, though sagacious gen 
 erally in his estimate of human character, apt to be led by the 
 warmth of his friendships into great mistakes. He appointed 
 men in several instances to places for which they were quite 
 unfit. Notwithstanding this, he was precisely the man for the 
 period in which he filled the Presidential chair, and well and 
 nobly discharged the duties demanded of him by the times. 
 If he Avas brought into collision with the mercantile classes, it 
 was more their fault than his own. No man, even the most 
 discreet and prudent, could, under the same circumstances, 
 
VAN BUREN S ADMINISTRATION. 347 
 
 have done his duty without exasperating them against him. 
 The immediate and apparent interests, though not the- p-.Tina- 
 nent and true interests of trade, were involved in the contro 
 versy with the national bank; and, as men are apt to l<><ik 
 principally to the convenience of the moment, the attack upon 
 it naturally offended the mercantile classes. Artful party 
 leaders exaggerated the cause of offence until they were al 
 most entirely alienated from his administration. This, and not 
 hatred of Jackson, was the true cause. Had Zeno himself 
 been President, the result would have been the same."* . . . 
 
 The administration of Van Buren as the successor, or, as 
 they used to say, the pet of Jackson inherited all the difficul 
 ties of the original Jacksonian policy, to which time had added 
 some of its own. The prosperity of 1836, produced by an in 
 fatuated commercial confidence in speculative enterprise, was 
 followed, as many foresaw, and the " Evening Post " predicted 
 it would be, by the inevitable revulsion. Already, at the close 
 of the year 1836, there were many signs of coming distress 
 but the bubble did not burst till the summer of 1837. A panic 
 began then, which, for its sudden and disastrous arrest of the 
 business of an entire community, has seldom been equalled in 
 a time of peace. Merchant after merchant failed, the most 
 substantial houses going by the board ; the banks suspended 
 the payment of specie ; credit and money alike disappeared ; 
 manufactories were stopped, and large classes of working-men 
 thrown out of employment. 
 
 It was in vain that the " Evening Post " and other authori 
 ties argued that these catastrophies were the result of a pre 
 vious state of debauchery ; that our foreign credits had been 
 enormously expanded ; that a fall in the markets abroad had 
 been followed by an unexampled fall in the domestic markets ; 
 and that a deficient harvest at home had for the first time com 
 pelled us to resort to an importation of corn and bread-stuffs. 
 Men who suffer seldom reason. They had lost their fortunes, 
 
 * " Evening Tost," December 3, 1836. 
 
348 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 and it was easy to find a scapegoat on which to cast the burden 
 of their own sin. Nor were they wholly destitute of plausible 
 pretexts. Jackson s specie circular, as it was called a man 
 date forbidding the receipt of gold and silver in payment for 
 purchases of public lands, one of the principal objects of pre 
 vious speculation no doubt, aggravated the distress. It was, 
 Jiowever, an aggravation of symptoms only, and not a source 
 of disease. That lay much deeper, but the mercantile commu 
 nity refused to see it. They raged and howled at the party in 
 power. Deputation after deputation from the commercial 
 centres waited upon Mr. Van Buren to implore a repeal of 
 the offensive order ; clamorous meetings were held all over 
 the country; great orators, like Clay and Webster, lent the 
 force of their eloquence to the popular ferment, but Mr. Van 
 Buren remained firm. In the face of the remonstrances of 
 committees, of the denunciations of newspapers, and of the 
 threats of overheated young men, who wanted to take up arms 
 to dislodge the Government by force, he not only adhered to 
 the policy of his predecessors, but he recommended a step for 
 ward. It was the total separation of the finances of the Gov 
 ernment from the paper-money banks, which he regarded as a 
 main source of the prevailing evil. In the estimation of the 
 traders this was like giving an additional turn to the screw, 
 which was already excruciating their bodies, and their outcries 
 grew into a deafening and terrific roar. 
 
 As the proposed change was in a direction which the 
 "Evening Post" had long advised, of which, in truth, that 
 journal was, if not the author, the earliest and most strenuous 
 advocate, it was bound to support the measure with all its 
 force. Contending, as it had always done, that the business of 
 dealing in money, or of lending credit to individual enter 
 prises, was, like every other business, a matter of private con 
 cern, which required no further interposition of law than to 
 prevent fraud, it was delighted to find the federal Government 
 making an advance in the right direction. In proposing to 
 become the custodian of its own funds, it released one of the 
 
THE RIGHT OF PETITION. 349 
 
 most important functions of commerce from its direct super 
 vision, and it paved the way to other equally important ad 
 vances in the sphere of commercial freedom. The defence of 
 this scheme for an independent treasury, by the " Evening 
 Post," contributed not a little to its formal acceptance by pub 
 lic opinion, but at the cost of the journal. 
 
 Nevertheless, devoted as Mr. Bryant was to the general 
 policy of the administration, he could not give it an unquali 
 fied approval. Antislavery was no longer the voice of one 
 crying in the wilderness. It was pressing forward, in one 
 shape or another, into the political arena. Petitions to Con 
 gress to put an end to the evil in the District of Columbia, 
 and in the territories where the general Government was sup 
 posed to have a right of control, were multiplying every day, 
 and they grew by the very means adopted to suppress them 
 the refusal to receive them by the national Legislature. 
 
 " Must Congress," asked Mr. Bryant, " open its ears to 
 every private claim for mere pecuniary redress, and yet ex 
 clude the petitions of thousands of men directed against what 
 they deem a most flagrant and crying abuse ? Nothing can be 
 simpler than the course both reason and equity prescribe. 
 Let the suggestion of the petitioners be candidly investigated 
 and discussed. If their requests have no foundation in justice 
 and truth, it is easy enough to establish the point, and dismiss 
 the plaintiffs with the satisfactory knowledge that their decla 
 rations have been at least heard. Or, if they have raised a 
 question in the face of the Constitution and laws, give them 
 the evidence of their error, that they may retire from a con 
 test which must be utterly hopeless. Whether right or wrong, 
 there will be no end to their remonstrances so long as they 
 shall be treated with cavalier or cold contempt. The very 
 fact that they are served in this manner can only strengthen 
 their determination and add fresh zeal to their perseverance. 
 Will it not excite the suspicion that there are other causes for 
 this abrupt procedure than the bare impracticability of what 
 they demand? None shrink from discussion but those who 
 
350 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 are afraid of the truth, and none seek to veil their deeds in 
 darkness and silence unless apprehensive that the light will 
 reveal some wickedness." In a few months after these words 
 were spoken (January, 1838), the Democratic young men of 
 New York held a meeting to condemn the gag-resolutions 
 presented to Congress by one Patton, and the Legislature of 
 the State of New York denounced, with all its authority, the 
 rejection by Congress of the popular demands. 
 
 The slave-holders were too keen-sighted not to foresee that 
 any discussion of slavery was perilous, and were therefore not 
 satisfied with demanding a suppression of the right of peti 
 tion. They insisted that abolitionism itself should be silenced 
 by law. Their legislatures called upon the legislatures of 
 northern communities to make it illegal to agitate the sub 
 ject. Governor Ritter, of Pennsylvania, was the only north 
 ern governor who peremptorily refused to communicate their 
 wishes to the legislative body of the State to which he be 
 longed. The others acquiesced, or were silent. But among 
 the masses of the people this acquiescence or silence was less 
 and less approved. It was felt, by increasing numbers of them, 
 that the haughty pretensions of the slave-holders ought to be 
 resisted. Assuredly, in v the neutral District of Columbia and 
 in the territories, they had a right to intervene ; and they 
 would intervene. This undercurrent of feeling the politicians 
 and statesmen were slow to perceive ; and Mr. Van Buren was 
 so ignorant of it that, in his inaugural address, he had pledged 
 the whole power of the Government to an active hostility to 
 the designs of the antislavery agitators. 
 
 It was a sore trial to the " Evening Post " devoted as it was 
 to the financial projects of the administration, and vindicating 
 it warmly, as it did, in many points of moment, such as its 
 controversy with Great Britain on the northeastern boundary, 
 and its efforts to maintain the supremacy of law on our north 
 ern frontier, where a wide-spread sympathy with Canadian 
 revolt led to alternate armed invasions from either side to be 
 obliged to throw itself into opposition on nearly every ques- 
 
MURDER OF LO VEJO Y. 35! 
 
 tion in which slavery was implicated. But it did not 1. 
 tate. That question was assuming a greater magnitude and 
 more menacing aspects every day, and it would not blind it 
 self to the importance of the struggle. 
 
 In spite of the successes of the slave-holders in Congress, in 
 the press, and in vulgar public sentiment, the party of freedom 
 had been enlarged and strengthened by recent events. At the 
 close of the year 1837 a mob, in its blind fury, had murdered 
 the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, and destroyed his presses, at Alton, 
 Illinois ; and the outrage sent a shudder of indignation through 
 out the free States. Freedom was now baptized in blood, and 
 consecrated by its first martyr. Men like Dr. Channing, Wen 
 dell Phillips, Salmon P. Chase, William Leggett, and Gerrit 
 Smith raised the banner of free speech, as the precursor of a 
 more universal freedom. Mr. Bryant was already committed. 
 A year before, when Cincinnati was disgraced by a meeting 
 which resolved to put down the Abolition press of J. G. Birney 
 by violence, he had said : " There is no tyranny exercised in 
 any part of the world more absolute or more frightful than 
 that which they (the Cincinnati meeting) would establish. So 
 far as we are concerned, we are determined that this despotism 
 shall neither be submitted to nor encouraged. In whatever 
 form it makes its appearance, we shall raise our voice against 
 it. We are resolved that the subject of slavery shall be, as it 
 ever has been, as free a subject for discussion, and argument, 
 and declamation, as the differences between whiggism and 
 democracy, or the differences between Arminians and Calvin- 
 ists. If the press chooses to be silent on the subject, it should 
 be the silence of free-will, not the silence of fear." * Now again 
 its voice was raised, all the more forcibly for the calm deter 
 mination with which it was uttered. "The right," said the 
 " Evening Post," " to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by 
 the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine 
 and animadvert on all political institutions, is a right so clear 
 
 * " Evening Post," August 8, 1836. 
 
352 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 and certain, so interwoven with other liberties, so necessary, 
 in fact, to their existence, that without it we must fall at once 
 into despotism or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopu 
 lar opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that 
 if he expresses them in public he has only himself to blame if 
 they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, 
 is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of law, and 
 to justify or extenuate all crimes. We approve, then, we ap 
 plaud we would consecrate, if we could, to universal honor 
 the conduct of those who bled in this gallant defence of the 
 freedom of the press. Whether they erred or not in their 
 opinions, they did not err in the conviction of their right, as 
 citizens of a democratic State, to express them ; nor did they 
 err in defending their right with an obstinacy which yielded 
 only to death/ * 
 
 These words are common words now ; but they were golden 
 words when they were written. The spirit of slavery had so 
 infused itself into the minds of even educated men that law 
 yers of distinction, and clergymen from their pulpits, argued 
 that the fate which had overtaken Lovejoy was deserved ; and 
 that every one who shared his opinions, or condemned the 
 manner of his death, ought to be subjected to the same pun 
 ishment. 
 
 Nothing shows more clearly the utter degradation of pub 
 lic feeling, and the manly independence of Mr. Bryant, both 
 of party and opinion, than his course in regard to the case of 
 the Amistad negroes,f which produced at the time a great 
 deal of excitement. This was the case of a small number of 
 poor Africans who had been stolen from their native land 
 and sold as slaves in Cuba, but who, in a voyage from Havana 
 to Principe, on the schooner Amistad, rose upon their pur 
 chasers, killed several of the crew, and compelled the others 
 to navigate the vessel, as they supposed, toward their homes. 
 
 * " Evening Post," November, 1837. 
 
 f This was in 1839, but it is convenient to refer to it here. 
 
HOT CONFLICTS. 353 
 
 They were deceived, and she was brought into American 
 waters (Long Island Sound), where she was seized, and the in 
 surgents imprisoned as criminals. Mr. Bryant, after causing 
 the law to be investigated by his friend, Theodore Sedgwick, 
 Jr., who prepared an elaborate argument for the " Evening 
 Post," insisted that they could not be held. They are not 
 slaves, he argued, but freemen ; not malefactors, but heroes. 
 Mr. Forsyth, the Secretary of State, and Mr. Grundy, Attorney- 
 General, did what they could, officially and otherwise, to get 
 the miserable creatures delivered up, on claim of the Spanish 
 minister, which meant their surrender to a hopeless bond 
 age ; but the courts adopted the view the " Evening Post " 
 had taken, and the captives were at length restored to their 
 friends. 
 
 Not unwilling to leave slavery to its fate within the States, 
 in the assurance that it would be ultimately crushed to death 
 by the progress of our democratic civilization, Mr. Bryant was 
 wholly averse to the toleration of it where it could be reached, 
 or to the extension of its boundaries. But this attitude, mod 
 erate as it was, was hardly satisfactory to any of the existing 
 parties. It w r as too moderate to please the more zealous Abo 
 litionists ; not moderate enough to meet the wishes of their 
 antagonists ; and in every way offensive to professional poli 
 ticians, who desired to see the subject removed entirely from 
 the field of discussion. Yet his journal held on its way, giving 
 and getting blows on all sides. The fiercest passions were 
 often engendered by these conflicts, and 
 
 " . . . Wrath, that fire of hell, 
 Which leaves its frightful scars upon the soul," 
 
 was not an infrequent guest of the bosom of the poet, who 
 would far more willingly have listened to other and more 
 harmonious voices. 
 
 Back of the scheme for the seizure of Texas, which the 
 slave-holders began to avow, Mr. Bryant discerned their pur 
 pose to establish a great slave-holding empire in the south- 
 
 TOL. I. 24 
 
354 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 west in the event of their defeat within the Union. The vig 
 orous blows of Jackson had disposed of nullification for the 
 nonce ; but the spirit of it lived in these sectional projects. 
 He thought it important to counteract their effects by vig 
 orous appeals to a national sentiment, and in that view he 
 consented to take part in the proceedings of the New York 
 Historical Society when it celebrated the fiftieth anniversary 
 of the inauguration of Washington. Mr. John Quincy Ad 
 ams was chosen the orator, and Mr. Bryant the poet, of the 
 occasion (April, 1838). Averse as he was to occasional writ 
 ing, he would not, under the circumstances, allow his re 
 pugnance to overcome his sense of duty. Mr. Adams, it 
 was understood, was prepared to make a powerful plea in 
 behalf of the Constitution and the unity of the nation, and, 
 although he did not wholly agree with Mr. Adams in polit 
 ical sentiment, he was glad to contribute his influence and tal 
 ent to the general object. He wrote a poem, in four stanzas, 
 to be sung by the choir, beginning, 
 
 " Great were the hearts, and strong the minds, 
 
 Of those who framed in high debate 
 The immortal league of Love that binds 
 Our fair, broad empire, State with State," 
 
 which answered its purpose, and was widely published in the 
 newspapers of the day, but which, owing to certain slight 
 technical defects, he refused to incorporate in his works.* 
 
 Other contributions to patriotic sentiment had already ap 
 peared when the Union was threatened, such as " The Green 
 Mountain Boys," intended to recall the daring of New Eng 
 land heroes ; " The Song of Marion s Men," in which we hear 
 the tramp of the gallant partisan warriors of the South ; and 
 " Seventy-Six," which glowed with the fire of the revolution 
 ary sires. 
 
 Allusions to his occupations and interests at this time are 
 
 * The repetition, I suspect, of similar rhymes in two different stanzas. 
 
FAMILIAR LETTERS. 
 
 355 
 
 to be found in these extracts from his private letters, with 
 which I close the chapter : 
 
 "NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 27, 1837:* You have kindly suggested 
 the true reason of my not writing to you before, or, rather, one of the 
 reasons. My newspaper is really a task which takes up all my time, 
 and the affairs of the republic give me no little trouble. You cannot 
 imagine how difficult it is to make the world go right. The gains you 
 talk of I wish I could see. The expenses of printing and conducting 
 a daily paper have vastly increased lately, and there is no increase in 
 the rate of advertisements, etc., to make it up. I should be very glad 
 of an opportunity to attempt something in the way I like best, and 
 am, perhaps, fittest for; but here I am a draught-horse, harnessed to a 
 daily drag. I have so much to do with my legs and hoofs, struggling 
 and pulling and kicking, that, if there is anything of the Pegasus in 
 me, I am too much exhausted to use my wings. I would withdraw 
 from this occupation if I could do so and be certain of a moderate 
 subsistence, for, with my habits and tastes, a very little would suffice. 
 I am growing, I fear, more discontented and impatient than I ought 
 to be at the lot which has fallen to me. The improved health which 
 I enjoy ought to make me contented with almost any occupation. I 
 am sorry to hear that yours is not better. . . . 
 
 " For the literary world, I am afraid you know more about it than 
 I do. I see the outside of almost every book that is published, but I 
 read little that is new. I, too, hear a good report of Astoria, and /, 
 too, have not read it. Ion I have read, and think there is justice in 
 the remark you make on reading the extracts. Besides, it is not dra 
 matic in the manner ; I wonder that a man of sense should write a 
 play so. It is full of lyrical flights and misplaced rhetoric. Cooper 
 has a book in press relating to some part of Europe France, I believe. 
 I see Cooper occasionally in his visits to town, for he lives in the 
 country. He is a restless creature, and does not seem well satisfied 
 with his position in this country, though his great reputation, his 
 handsome fortune, his fine health, and his very amiable family, ought 
 to make him so. Verplanck I see occasionally; he is as entertaining 
 as ever, but is growing fat. Do you read the novels of Simms, Bird, 
 
 * To Richard H. Dana. 
 
356 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 and Kennedy? Verplanck speaks highly of Horse-shoe Robinson. 
 But what can one do amid such a deluge of new things ? Did you 
 see the engraving of Halleck ? a fine likeness. The same engraver 
 is now at work upon a drawing of me, by the same painter, Inman. 
 I have had my portrait taken several times, but owing, I suppose, to 
 the fault of the original, I have never liked any of them. This draw 
 ing in water-colors by Inman is, perhaps, as good as any, but it does 
 not please me. I shall see in a few days what the engraver makes 
 of it. . . ." 
 
 " NEW YORK, MAY 22, 1837 : * I am glad you are situated so com 
 fortably as you appear to be from your description. I hope you will 
 pass a pleasant summer, and wish, with all my heart, I could be with 
 you. But of that it is idle to think. I have enough to do, both with 
 the business part of the paper and the management of it as editor, to 
 keep me constantly busy. I must see that the Evening Post does 
 not suffer by these hard times, and I must take that position in the 
 great controversies now going which is expected of it. There is much 
 agitation here ; the greater part of the merchants are gone over to the 
 Whigs, and, being unfortunate in their enterprises, prefer laying the 
 blame on the Government to laying it on their own want of prudence. 
 Van Buren needs all the management which has been ascribed to him 
 to weather this storm. I say management, but I think firmness is the 
 best management, and of this I must do him the justice to say he 
 shows a good deal. He is not yet driven from his purpose by all their 
 fury and all their threats, and I think will not be. He knows them 
 well enough to know that they must have their fit of unreasonable 
 rage, and when that is over they will be quiet again. 
 
 " I had a letter the other day from Dana. He says to me : * Keep 
 eye and heart upon poetry all that you can amid the bustle and anx 
 iety. As to reforming the world, give all that up. It is not to be done 
 in a day, nor, on your plan, through all time. Human nature is not 
 fitted for such a social condition as your fancy is pleased with. 
 
 " NEW YORK, MAY 25th : f Specie is not less scarce here than 
 with you ; and the merchants have been making a terrible uproar 
 about it. They are ready to bite off the heads of all who do not 
 
 * To Mrs. Bryant, in the country. f To Miss Julia Sands. 
 
FAMILIAR LETTERS. 
 
 choose to think exactly as they do in this matter. Swartwout made 
 a speech at the Merchants Exchange, and told them that he would 
 take the responsibility of receiving bank notes, on which they voted 
 him thanks and a service of plate. He has since backed out from 
 this in consequence of new orders from Washington. Some of his 
 friends, however, say that he never made the promise, and that the 
 merchants were mistaken. If he gets the plate he will get it for noth 
 ing. In the mean time we have had a great deal of wrath and cab 
 bage, as you call it here ; hot blood and high words ; but people are 
 now becoming soberer. I understand that the clergymen have been 
 taking the people to task for their Union Meetings, as they are called, 
 for their greediness for gain, their gambling speculations, excessive 
 use of credit, and extravagant living. These things have almost per 
 suaded some that the specie circular is not the cause of their misfor 
 tunes." 
 
 "NEW YORK, MAY 29th:* I cannot allow this opportunity to 
 send you a hurried letter by Mr. Dewey escape me. Even in your 
 philosophic retreat, I suppose you are willing now and then to hear 
 from the noisy, agitated world you have left. A different world it now 
 is from what it was when you quitted it noisy and agitated still, but 
 with the working of fiercer though not stronger passions. I often 
 envy you your quiet retirement, in which you hear no more of this 
 uproar than you please. Yet, let me tell you that the world has 
 mended in some respects. If it has not grown more amiable, it has 
 grown less luxurious and less ostentatious. Many people have given 
 up the idea of living by their wits, and have undertaken, as the saying 
 is, to live by work. Here are two important instances of amendment. 
 
 " My wife and children are gone into the country to Great Bar- 
 rington. I, in the mean time, am chained so fast here that I do not 
 know when I shall be able to visit them, f 
 
 * To the Rev. William Ware. 
 
 f Mrs. Bryant, writing to Mrs. Ware about that time, says : 
 
 " Mr. Bryant has gone to his office. You cannot think how distressed I am 
 about his working so hard. He gets up as soon as it is light, takes a mouthful to eat 
 it cannot be called a breakfast, for it is often only what the Germans call a stick 
 of bread ; occasionally the milkman comes in season for him to get some bread 
 and milk. As yet, his health is good, but I fear that his constitution is not strong 
 enough for such intense labor." 
 
358 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 " I suppose you have heard that Mr. Leggett has established a 
 weekly periodical called * The Plaindealer, which is much liked here, 
 not that it can be called exactly popular, but it is much sought after, 
 read, and talked of, and, of course, exerts considerable influence. It 
 is thorough on the Abolition question. But I dare say you have met 
 with it. He is now the editor of a daily twopenny paper called The 
 Examiner, which he supplies with the greatest portion of the leaded 
 articles. How he finds time and words to write so much I know not. 
 ... I am about to read the Palmyrene letters, which I hear are yours. 
 Miss Martineau, I remember, said they formed a new era in Ameri 
 can literature, but it was throwing them away to put them into the 
 Knickerbocker. " 
 
 "NEW YORK, JUNE i8th:* I am very glad you find something 
 to interest you in the country. I remember when a residence there 
 was to you a perpetual holiday. I hope you will stick to your rid 
 ing on horseback till you have made yourself mistress of the ac 
 complishment. You have shown a commendable degree of courage, 
 and have now only to acquire ease and dexterity. As to the want of 
 society of which you complain, you must endeavor to make yourself 
 amends for it by passing more of your time in that society of the wise 
 and good of all ages which you will find in your mother s library. 
 You like Mrs. Hemans s Life, you tell me ; the extracts from the 
 letters are interesting, but the rest of the work is not written with 
 much grace or discrimination. I have bought you Retzsch s Outlines, 
 illustrative of Hamlet and Macbeth, together with those designed 
 from Schiller s Combat with the Dragon. Your instance of ludi 
 crous translation from Shakespeare I have heard related in another 
 manner : // n y a pas un rat qui trotte. Certainly the Germans have 
 rendered Shakespeare better than any other people whose language I 
 am acquainted with. ..." 
 
 " NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER pth : f Your desire for the Selections 
 from the German Classics shows that you are disposed to retain 
 what you have already acquired. You will never, I hope, allow a 
 dislike of exertion or a love of amusement and frivolous occupation 
 
 * To his daughter Fanny. f To the same. 
 
FAMILIAR LETTERS. 
 
 359 
 
 to obtain the ascendency over you. You are now arrived at years 
 of discretion, as they are called the time of life when your own reason 
 is strong enough, if you will follow it, to show you what you ought to 
 do to form your own character and intellect. You have, as we all 
 have, three enemies to contend with laziness, selfishness, and ill- 
 temper and you must master them, or they will master you. Now is 
 the time to put them in chains for the rest of your life. After you 
 have once fairly subdued them, they will give you no further trouble. 
 If allowed to get the upper hand, they become the parents of almost 
 every kind of wickedness and every kind of suffering. I do not speak 
 of them thus because I think you more in danger than many others 
 from these evil propensities. You have your share of them, doubt 
 less; but I thank God that you have a strength which, if rightly 
 employed, will enable you to overcome them. In this work you will 
 find great support from religious motives, from cultivating a reverence 
 for the Supreme Being and a desire to do what is pleasing to Him, 
 and from studying the beautiful and tender example given in the 
 life of Jesus Christ." 
 
 "NEW YORK, AUGUST 2ist:* My friends, when they meet me, 
 congratulate me on being yet alive. You will ask what this means. 
 On Saturday last I received a challenge. A good-natured, well-bred 
 man, Reynolds, who formerly lectured on Captain Symmes s * Theory 
 of the Earth, and who has been appointed historiographer of the ex 
 pedition now fitting out for the South Seas, walked into the office on 
 * unpleasant business, as he called it, and presented me a written in 
 vitation to fight a duel, from a man named Holland, one of the editors 
 of the * Times newspaper. Holland had taken offence at something 
 which appeared in the Evening Post on the subject of the Times, 
 and wrote to me for an explanation. My answer did not satisfy him ; 
 he wrote again ; I declined giving any other answer, and so he asked 
 me to fight. I told Mr. Reynolds that when Mr. Leggett, a gentleman 
 of strict honor, was associated with me in the conduct of the Evening 
 Post, he wrote Holland word that he was a scoundrel ; which he chose 
 to take quietly. I said that Holland must settle that affair first, and 
 that then I would consider whether his note deserved any further 
 
 * To Mrs. Bryant, at Great Barrington. 
 
360 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 reply. Reynolds was very anxious to persuade me to give some other 
 answer, and said that the affair might easily be adjusted. He would 
 not take back my note to Holland, so I wrote down what I have given 
 above as my answer, and sent it by a boy. When you come down you 
 shall see the correspondence. My friends are much amused at my 
 having got into such a scrape, and laugh heartily at the idea that a 
 popinjay \vho curls his whiskers should think to engage me in a duel." 
 
 What amused them more than his getting- into the scrape 
 was his adroit way of getting out of it. Mr. Leggett retained 
 enough of the spirit of the naval officer to be willing, if not 
 somewhat eager, to void his quarrels at the end of the sword, 
 or with the pistol, a fact very well known in society ; and Mr. 
 Bryant s reference of his would-be antagonist to one who was 
 not, like himself, a non-combatant, was thought to be a clever 
 piece of strategy. 
 
 " NEW YORK, OCTOBER 2Qth : * I am very happy to hear that 
 you and your mother like the President s Message so well. I always 
 knew that Mrs. Sands judged candidly when both sides of a question 
 were presented to her. I like the political economy of the first of your 
 two last letters very much. It is quite orthodox and clear, but that of 
 the second letter is misty . . . The lines alluded to by the Scotch 
 clergyman I manufactured for Mr. Verplanck. They are a translation 
 from the ^Eneid, and are found in a note to one of his public dis 
 courses, I forget which. Here they are : 
 
 " Patriots were there in Freedom s battle slain, 
 
 Priests whose long lives were closed without a stain, 
 Bards worthy him who breathed the poet s mind, 
 Founders of arts that dignify mankind, 
 And lovers of our race, whose labors gave 
 Their names a memory that defies the grave. 
 
 " I was at Mr. Verplanck s some ten evenings since, at a meeting 
 of the Sketch Club, and a pleasant time we had of it. The late 
 member was quite entertaining, and there was Mr. Gleddon (is that 
 
 * To Miss Sands. 
 
FAMILIAR LETTERS. 361 
 
 his name ?), the Egyptian, and Professor Holland, of Washington Col 
 lege, who wrote the life of Van Burcn, a well-informed, agreeable man. 
 By the by, have you heard of my affair of honor with the other Hol 
 land, late editor of the late Times ? 
 
 " Campbell s Letters from the South I have not read, except 
 some parts of them in one of the English magazines, where they first 
 appeared. You are right in entertaining great expectations from the 
 electro-magnetic machine, but its claims to attention are now eclipsed 
 by the wonders of animal magnetism and the curiosities of the Fair 
 of the American Institute. I have a report, lately made to the French 
 Academy of Medicine, translated partly by myself, which I mean to 
 publish. I will send it to you. It is a very curious affair. A mag- 
 netizer challenged the enemies of the science to witness the proof, 
 and promised to convince them of its truth. The Academy appointed 
 a committee of shrewd fellows, who had their eyes open, who saw 
 through all the tricks of the magnetizer, thwarted all his arrange 
 ments, and witnessed the entire failure of every one of his experi 
 ments. I have no doubt that animal magnetism is the flam of 
 flams. 
 
 " I heard Mr. Dewey s address, and a noble discourse it was.* 
 Buckingham, the English traveller in the East, is here, and is to lec 
 ture a most eloquent and interesting man in his particular way, they 
 say, but a certain English friend of mine does not give him as much 
 credit for principle as for talent, and he certainly makes too much 
 parade of his sufferings in his appeal to the American public. His 
 sufferings consist in being exiled from India by the East India Com 
 pany, on whose government he had animadverted in the * Calcutta 
 Journal, of which he was proprietor. He lost the property of the 
 journal in consequence, but he has since been a very successful lec 
 turer in England, and is by no means in a starving condition, as I 
 hear. His sufferings are equal to those of a prosperous blacksmith 
 whose landlord turns him out of his shop, and who thereupon becomes 
 a thriving shoemaker. 
 
 " How can you ask whether I have read the Letters from Pal 
 myra when you say in the same breath that I have puffed it? Why 
 do you not ask whether I have not picked somebody s pocket since I 
 
 * On " The Unitarian Belief," probably. 
 
362 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 saw you ? Read it ! yes and think it a glorious book. Martineau 
 as a lady of my acquaintance calls her Martineau is a little ex 
 travagant in her raptures about it, but certainly the letters are a noble 
 composition, and do the author infinite honor. The Unitarian clergy 
 men are ready to tear Miss Martineau into rags for treating them so 
 badly. I do not know how her friend Mr. Ware takes her general 
 censure of the class to which he belongs." 
 
 " NEW YORK, OCTOBER 25th : * I am very much obliged to you for 
 your kind offer, and if I were at liberty I should like nothing better 
 than to pass a year in Illinois. But I am fastened here for the pres 
 ent. The 4 Evening Post cannot be disposed of in these times, and, 
 on accounc of the difficulty of making collections, its income does not 
 present an appearance which would enable me to sell it for its real 
 value, even if I could find a purchaser. I am chained to the oar for 
 another year at least. The prospects of the journal are, however, im 
 proving, though I am personally no better for it at present. I am 
 very much perplexed by the state of my pecuniary affairs. I have 
 taken a house in town at as moderate a rent as I could find, and ex 
 pect my family from the country in a very few days.f I am obliged to 
 practice the strictest frugality but that I do not regard as an evil. 
 The great difficulty lies in meeting the debts in which the purchase of 
 the paper has involved me." 
 
 "NEW YORK, JUNE 28, 1838 :J . . . You are so kind as to wish 
 to be informed about my literary projects. I have no time for such 
 things. When I went to Europe the * Evening Post was producing 
 a liberal income ; Mr. Leggett, who conducted it, espoused very zeal 
 ously the cause of the Abolitionists, and then was taken ill. The busi 
 ness of the establishment fell into the hands of a drunken and saucy 
 clerk to manage, and the hard times came on. All these things had a 
 bad effect on the profits of the paper, and when I returned they were 
 reduced to little or nothing. In the mean time, Mr. Leggett and myself 
 had contracted a large debt for the purchase of the Evening Post. 
 He retired, and the whole was left on my shoulders. I have been 
 
 * To his brother John. 
 
 f The house was in Carmine Street a not very fashionable neighborhood. 
 To R. H. Dana. 
 
NO TIME FOR POETRY. 363 
 
 laboring very diligently to restore the paper to a prosperous state, and 
 begin to have hopes that I shall retrieve what was lost during my 
 absence in Europe by careful attention to the business of the paper, 
 properly so called. I cannot leave the establishment till I have put it 
 in good order. Nobody will buy it of me. With so much to pay, and 
 with a paper so little productive, I have been several times on the 
 point of giving it up, and going out into the world worse than penni 
 less. Nothing but a disposition to look at the hopeful side of things 
 prevented me, and I now see reason to be glad that I persevered. 
 
 " I have no leisure for poetry. The labors in which I am engaged 
 would not, perhaps, be great to many people, but they are as great as I 
 can endure with a proper regard to my health. I cannot pursue in 
 tellectual labor so long as many of a more robust or less nervous tem 
 perament. My constitution requires intervals of mental repose. To 
 keep myself in health I take long walks in the country, for half a day, 
 a day, or two days. I cannot well leave my business for a longer 
 period, and I accustom myself to the greatest simplicity of diet, re 
 nouncing tea, coffee, animal food, etc. By this means I enjoy a 
 health scarcely ever interrupted, but when I am fagged I hearken to 
 Nature and allow her to recruit. I find by experience that this must 
 be if I would not kill myself. What you say of living happily on 
 small means I agree to with all my heart. My ideas of competence 
 have not enlarged a single dollar. Indeed, they have rather been 
 moderated and reduced by recent events, and I would be willing to 
 compound for a less amount than I would have done three or four 
 years since. If I had the means of retiring, I would go into the 
 country, where I could adopt a simpler mode of living, and follow the 
 bent of my inclination in certain literary pursuits, but I have a duty 
 to perform to my creditors. . . . Mr. Verplanck I see only now and 
 then ; I used to see him almost daily, and if I do not now, it is because 
 he will have it so. He is kind, however, and entertaining when I see 
 him. Sedgwick is at Rockaway, getting better, I am told, rapidly in 
 the sea air. Morse is gone to Europe. Cooper does not live here ; 
 he is at Cooperstown ; but he calls at the office of the Evening Post 
 when he comes to town." 
 
 Mr. Dana s reply was so full of sympathy and good sense 
 that a part of it is worth citing. 
 
364 POLITICAL WARFARE. 
 
 " Some portions of your letter have made me feel for you. I had 
 taken it for granted that you had all along been doing well in your 
 paper, and that, if your desires did not enlarge along with your means, 
 you would, in a very few years at farthest, go back into the country, 
 and chime song once more with your own Green River. Ah, said 
 Allston to me a few days ago (or, rather, nights, for he and I play 
 the owl when we meet), * I read over " Green River " the other night. 
 That man is a true poet, his heart is in it. What he gives you comes 
 from his own spirit. I don t like thinking of it. It makes me sad 
 whenever it comes into my mind that you are laboring on the broad, 
 dusty, public highway, and your flower-plot all the while lying waste. 
 Yet I do not see how, at present, you can choose but do it. You have 
 energy and perseverance, and these, I trust, will help you back again, 
 sooner than you may now look for, to a situation in which you may 
 live your true life. ... I am sorry that Verplanck should estrange 
 himself from you.* I hope it is only in appearance so. Surely he 
 would not let politics come in between him and you. It is evil enough 
 that moral differences should sometimes divide us as they do. We 
 might for the most part, in such cases, not only be courteous to one 
 another, but like one another also, without harm to our virtue. And 
 must difference of opinions make the faces of friends strange to one 
 another ? It gives one the heartache to think on t. Why, what would 
 poor I do, who, believing in the Triune, and unwounded by those who 
 hold my Divine Master to be nothing but a man, a little more know 
 ing and better than themselves, mayhap ? Or who, either earthing 
 themselves in materialism, or pleasing their fancies with a bigger air- 
 bubble called spiritualism, have worked themselves clear of nearly all 
 that gives life to faith, and power and sanctity to the Word of God ? 
 What should I do, who, living in a country like this, am head and 
 heart an old-fashioned monarchist, and who, if an Englishman, should, 
 aside from expediency, be in heart a stiff Tory, rather than a yielding 
 Conservative. If there are points in which we can sympathize, why 
 should we not break off the anti-pathetic points, and go along quietly 
 together without goading one another ? " 
 
 * This estrangement was political, not personal, and grew out of Mr. Verplanck s 
 course in respect to the United States Bank. When he was nominated for office by 
 the friends of that institution, Mr. Bryant felt it to be his duty to oppose him. 
 
CHAPTER NINETEENTH. 
 
 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 A. D. 1839. 
 
 MR. BRYANT S labors, of which he complains, were certainly 
 harder during these years than at any period of his life, be 
 fore or since ; but they were not without reliefs, and even 
 compensations. They did not wear upon him as they might 
 have done otherwise, because of his habit of never carrying 
 the shop with him. The moment he stepped outside the office 
 its cares and anxieties were cast aside. At his home he utterly 
 refused to talk of public affairs, or to hear others talk of them, 
 and any one who persisted in thrusting such topics upon him 
 was silenced. His leisure he regarded as a time sacred to 
 his books, his family, and his friends. In this way he kept his 
 mind fresh and alert ; the jaded faculties were relieved by 
 pleasant gambols in the realms of fancy ; the imagination was 
 supplied with new materials ; and the affections warmed and 
 solaced by the sweet amenities of the home. 
 
 A good deal of the leisure that fell to him in these busy 
 days he spent in the study of the German language, with which 
 he had made a beginning at Heidelberg. The lectures given 
 by Dr. Charles Pollen on the German poets perhaps quickened 
 his zeal in this direction, but more decidedly the singular en 
 thusiasm of his teacher, the Baron Ludwig von Mandlesloe. 
 This was a simple-hearted, self-sacrificing, noble-minded man, 
 who had abandoned to younger brothers a considerable herit 
 age at home, to share the fortunes of this republic, which he 
 
366 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 
 admired. Pursuing the precarious life of a teacher, he yet 
 gave his scanty gains, his time, his health even, to the poor, 
 the sick, and the ignorant. His native literature he loved 
 almost as much as he loved his kind, and he found in Mr. 
 Bryant an eager and sympathetic pupil. Their walks together 
 beyond the suburbs were made vocal with the strains of 
 Goethe, Schiller, Riickert, Heine, which the good baron rolled 
 out at the top of his voice. But not in the fields alone they 
 walked ; their steps often turned to the wharves, where newly 
 arrived emigrants needed his care, or to the thickly peopled 
 tenements of the eastern side, whither he went to carry aid 
 and consolation. Through him Mr. Bryant was led to that 
 warm concern for the German race which, to the end of his 
 life, he was quick to manifest. The good baron s privations 
 and labors, however, soon wore him out. He was sent to 
 Berkshire for his health, where he fell into the kind hands 
 of the Sedgwicks, who ministered to his sufferings till he 
 died.* 
 
 Another recreation Mr. Bryant found in the long pedes 
 trian tours to which he devoted his summer vacations. Every 
 day he spent two or three hours in exploring on foot the im 
 mediate vicinity of the city Westchester, Hoboken, and Long 
 Island ; but when he could get a week or more to himself, he ex 
 tended his excursions to the Palisades, to the Delaware Water 
 Gap, to the Catskills, and to his own beautiful valleys of Berk 
 shire. He generally went alone, but preferred a companion, 
 if he could procure one. Mr. Ferdinand E. Field, now of Eng 
 land, speaks of him in a letter to me as the " most indefatiga 
 ble tramp that he ever grappled with. A baker s biscuit and 
 a few apples seemed to suffice him for food ; and he put up 
 cheerfully with the rude fare of wayside inns and laborers 
 cottages. His knowledge of soils and seasons, and his interest 
 in agriculture, and the modes of life and opinions of the 
 farmers, soon got him into pleasant chats with the people we 
 
 * Miss Scdgwick wrote a long memoir of him for one of the magazines. 
 
FEN/MORE COOPER. 367 
 
 encountered." It would be impossible, says Mr. Field, to de 
 scribe his delight in wild flowers and trees, every one of which 
 seemed to be an old acquaintance.* 
 
 Mr. Bryant used to complain that so many Americans go 
 to Europe to drive or walk over Wales, Scotland, or Switzer 
 land, who have never taken the trouble to visit scenes of al 
 most unequalled natural beauty and magnificence within sight 
 of their windows. " The western shore of the Hudson, for 
 example," he once wrote, " is as worthy of a pilgrimage across 
 the Atlantic as the Alps themselves. You are kept in perpet 
 ual surprise by the bold beauty of the sylvan paths along the 
 breast of the mountains, and by the perpetually changing com 
 binations of wood, water, rock, and hills ; while, from time to 
 time, an interest of another kind is awakened by numerous 
 remains of old fortifications, which, in the revolutionary war, 
 crowned nearly all the prominent points." Mr. Bryant wrote 
 glowing descriptions of these trips for his journal, which must 
 have had an effect in exciting a more general appreciation and 
 love of our own landscape. Certainly the trips themselves 
 helped to make him that loving and truthful painter of its 
 beauties that he was in his poetry, justifying the praise of 
 Emerson, " that he first, and he only, made known to mankind 
 our northern nature its summer splendors, its autumn russets, 
 its wintry lights and glooms." f 
 
 Nor was it all hard work within the office, as many distin 
 guished visitors came to relieve its monotony by their talk. 
 Among them was Cooper, who, as Mr. Bryant says, always 
 
 * On one of these tours, Mr. Field narrates, they stopped over night at the inn 
 of a small village, when the landlord, by some means or other, discovered the name 
 of one of his guests. Word was soon passed to all his Democratic cronies of the vil 
 lage that the great New York editor, Bryant, was in town, which brought the whole 
 of them in quick time to the hotel. Then, after a loud hurrah for Bryant, they set up 
 a shout for a speech, a speech, which annoyed the poet very much. lie was doubtful 
 for a time whether he should fly out upon them in anger or skulk away by the back 
 door ; but his companion was enabled to allay the little storm by explaining that 
 " the great editor " was tired to death with a long day s work, and had gone to bed. 
 
 f A-.klre.ss at the Century celebration, in 1864. 
 
368 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 
 called when he was in town. The difference between the two 
 men was very striking, and yet their intercourse was singu 
 larly c6urteous and agreeable. Cooper, burly, brusque, and 
 boisterous, like a bluff sailor, always bringing a breeze of 
 quarrel with him ; Mr. Bryant, shy, modest, and delicate as a 
 woman they seemed little fitted for friendship. Yet Bryant 
 admired not only the genius, but the thorough-paced honesty 
 and sturdy independence of Cooper ; and Cooper, while he 
 appreciated the finer vein of the poet, was won by his able and 
 fearless vindication of opinions with which he himself did not 
 always agree. " We others," Cooper once said, " get a little 
 praise now and then, but Bryant is the author of America." 
 In spite of his positive and, at times, overbearing manner, the 
 novelist was a fascinating companion. Having seen much of 
 the world first, as a naval officer, who had traversed the 
 greater part of its surface, then, as the friend of Lafayette, in 
 Paris, who procured him an entrance to the best French soci 
 ety, and, finally, as somewhat of a literary lion in London he 
 was able to fill his conversation with pictures and anecdotes 
 of the men and things he had seen. He had a great deal to 
 say of Sir Walter Scott, whom he really admired ; but, having 
 been called, according to a silly prevalent fashion, the Scott 
 of America, he seemed to resent it as a reflection upon his 
 originality, and indulged in some sharp criticisms of the great 
 novelist. Lockhart, he averred, had tampered with the diaries 
 of his father-in-law in preparing the " Life of Scott," and fell 
 under his severest animadversions. But the great objects of 
 his dislike were the French romancers, of whom Eugene Sue 
 was then a chief, and whose descriptions of society he pulled 
 to pieces with an unsparing sarcasm and ridicule. 
 
 A very different view of French literature was taken by 
 another habitual caller, Major Auguste Davezac a brother-in- 
 law of Edward Livingston who had been an aide-de-camp of 
 Jackson at New Orleans, and remained an ardent admirer and 
 trusted friend of the old hero to the day of his death. He was 
 a bachelor or widower, with time and means enough to make 
 
J. J. AUDUBOX. 369 
 
 himself familiar with nearly all the recent products of the 
 French press, and ready to repeat their contents with an ex- 
 haustless memory, and a facile and impressive elocution. It 
 was like listening to one of the best of the French romances 
 or memoirs, read aloud, to hear him talk ; and, though an 
 intense democrat in his political convictions, his reading had 
 been so wide, and his tastes were so choice, that, whatever 
 his subject, he was invariably delightful. He commonly timed 
 his visits to the exigencies of the office, but, come when he 
 would, all pens were dropped, and all ears opened, to catch 
 some of his sprightly or fervid utterances.* 
 
 Another visitor, about that time, whom we were always 
 glad to see, was John L. Stephens, the traveller a small, sharp, 
 nervous man full of his adventures in Arabia Petrsea, Nu 
 bia, and elsewhere in the Old World, and among the buried 
 cities of Central America. His books, now mostly forgotten, 
 had considerable vogue then, and we were permitted to an 
 ticipate the public in a considerable part of their contents. 
 But Stephens was suffering from the effects of a fever caught 
 at Chagres, which speedily carried him off, to the great loss 
 of our literature of travel. 
 
 More captivating than Stephens was the venerable Au- 
 dubon, the naturalist, still fresh from his wanderings over the 
 continent, from Labrador to the capes of Florida, and from 
 the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. He was a tall, well- 
 formed, athletic figure, as straight as an Indian, with a face 
 bronzed by exposure, eyes as bright as those of any of his own 
 birds, an eagle beak, and tresses of white hair that fell upon 
 his shoulders. His voice was soft and gentle, but with an ac 
 cent and vivacity derived from his French blood. He never 
 wearied in telling, nor was the listener wearied in hearing, of 
 his exploits in the solitudes of the forests among wild beasts 
 or wilder Indians, or of his meetings with distinguished men in 
 Europe Goethe, Cuvier, Champollion, Lucien Bonaparte, 
 Wilson, Louis Philippe and other crowned heads such as are 
 
 * He was afterward our minister at the Hague. 
 VOL. i. 25 
 
370 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 
 described in the narratives prefixed to his volumes. He got 
 up an exhibition of his original drawings of birds, in the Ly 
 ceum rooms, which was wonderfully beautiful ; and, old as 
 he was, contemplated new visits to the woods, to paint the 
 quadrupeds, as he had painted the birds, of America. His 
 house, in a small park, beyond the skirts of the city, on the 
 banks of the Hudson, was a delightful place to visit, and 
 strollers of a Sunday morning, who happened in upon the 
 venerable artist, found him at his easel hard at work, but 
 always ready to pour out his descriptions of his long and 
 solitary journeys. 
 
 Other literary men were rather occasional than habitual 
 visitors : Bancroft, drawn by the double sympathy of literature 
 and politics ; Wm. G. Simms, of South Carolina, a voluble 
 talker, who desired to set us right on the Southern question ; 
 Edgar Poe, if I mistake not, once or twice, to utter nothing, but 
 to look his reverence out of wonderful lustrous eyes, besides 
 a host of the lesser lights from the eastward, reflecting the in 
 spirations and affectations of Thomas Carlyle. That luminary 
 had risen only a little before upon the horizon. " Have you 
 read Carlyle s Miscellanies?" wrote Bryant to Miss Sands;* 
 " you will like them better than his History. In Boston they 
 are all agog after him, and they will take up Kant next." Not 
 in Boston only, but everywhere young men sat up of nights 
 to master the fascinating but nebulous philosophy of Teufels- 
 drockh. Mr. Bryant was not caught by the rage. He read 
 Carlyle attentively, and was not insensible to his Rembrandt- 
 like power of portraiture, or his broad floods of sardonic hu 
 mor, mingled with tender touches of pathos here and there ; 
 but his taste was offended by the too obvious gymnastics of 
 Carlyle s style, and his cynical worship of force of the gun 
 powder kind. He allowed his younger assistants to ventilate 
 their admiration of the Scotchman as of one destined to ex 
 plode all shams, and crush out all evil, but with a furtive, in- 
 
 * July 20, 1838. 
 
ll RITERS. 
 
 371 
 
 credulous smile as he read their proofs. Nor was he at all 
 involved in that contemporary fog of thought called Trans 
 cendentalism which pervaded the New England hills. For 
 Kmerson the chief, whom he regarded as greatly superior to 
 Carlyle in clearness and depth of insight as in grace of dic 
 tion, he always expressed strong admiration, but he took no 
 pleasure in his mere metaphysical subtleties. 
 
 <% What pleasure lives in heights, the shepherd said, 
 In height and cold, the splendor of the hills." 
 
 His interest in Emerson, I think, was rather in the American 
 writer than the philosopher. Nothing likely to exalt our lit 
 erary rank ever escaped him. " Have you read (he once said 
 to me) the tales of one Hawthorne (almost an unknown writer 
 then) in the Democratic Review ? They are wonderful, and 
 the best English written on either side the Atlantic." To the 
 Rev. Mr. Ware, who had just collected his " Letters from Pal 
 myra" into a volume, he wrote (September 19, 1838): 
 
 " MY DEAR WARE : I should have written earlier to thank you for 
 your last beautiful and eloquent work, but you know how to make 
 allowances for one who is daily obliged to write more than he cares 
 for, and has no way of indemnifying himself but by bilking his corre 
 spondents. I am glad that you have spoken to the public through 
 the press. Everybody reads and admires your books. You are much 
 better known here than when you lived among us. Your old hearers 
 now plume themselves not a little upon your new reputation, and hold 
 their heads high, I assure you." 
 
 A little while before this, when Mr. Prescott s " Ferdinand 
 and Isabella" appeared (April, 1838), having read it with de 
 light, he took great pains to commend it to public favor in a 
 long and elaborate article which anticipated most of the Re 
 views. Mr. Prcscott was a stranger to him, but he saw in the 
 work a new triumph for American letters ; and, when his friend 
 Miss Robbins was on a visit to the East, he charged her par- 
 
372 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 
 ticularly to tell him all about Prescott. To this injunction we 
 probably owe the following letter from Nahant, August 26th, 
 which shows the historian at home : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIENDS : . . . Last evening (but one) I went to see 
 Mr. Prescott, who is our next neighbor. I have come, from having 
 much curiosity about great people, to regard them with utter distaste ; 
 but I must say the historian of * Ferdinand and Isabella is an excep 
 tion. He is made to be loved, so amiable, unaffected, and even 
 youthful, does he appear. I will not say * childlike, I have heard that 
 word so often used in mere affectation. Mr. Prescott, though the 
 father of a family, has never left his paternal home. His beautiful 
 wife and pretty children are cherished with the fondest love by the 
 venerable heads of the house. Both, like the good man whose 
 * Funeral you have so exquisitely described, are prepared by pure 
 and useful lives for whatever is to come. We fell to talking at Mr. 
 Prescott s of the late Admiral Coffin, who happened to be a rela 
 tive of both our families, and I I could not help it ran into end 
 less genealogies, with which Mr. Prescott helped me, and we were 
 all amused with the pleasant traditionary lore which each furnished. 
 Mr. Prescott spends about ten hours of the twenty-four in his studies, 
 always indebted to other eyes than his own. At early morning he 
 educates his children, and at evening may generally be found with 
 his father and mother. They give no parties, and all live the life of 
 
 * Miss Robbins adds, what I cannot forbear from quoting : 
 
 " Yesterday I read Dr. Bowditch s memoir, prefixed to the translation of the 
 Mechanique Celeste. I will tell you how his son has affixed your name to this 
 great work, now in possession, by the gift of the author s family, of the most distin 
 guished persons living. In his library and in his great mind he had a poet s cor 
 ner. Among the poets of America, Bryant was his favorite. He has often said that 
 he thought The Old Man s Funeral was one of the most beautiful pieces in the 
 English language. Never can it be hereafter perused by us without recalling one of 
 the most interesting and touching scenes at the close of his own life. His love of 
 poetry was such that it entered into his most familiar thoughts. The last draught 
 of water he ever took, he exclaimed, Delicious ! I have swallowed a drop a drop 
 from 
 
 Siloa s brook that flowed 
 Fast by the oracle of God. 
 
Tll O YEARS BEFORE THE .VAST." 3^3 
 
 One of his services to literature at this time was rend 
 through the son of his friend Dana, who, in the year 1834, had 
 been compelled by an affection of his eyes to abandon his 
 studies at Harvard and undertake a sea voyage. Instead of 
 going to Europe, as most young men would have done, Dana 
 resolved on a trip, by way of the South Seas, to California, 
 then quite unknown. In order to get the full benefit of his 
 expedition, he shipped before the mast, and kept a diary of his 
 experiences which he condensed into a book called " Two 
 Years before the Mast." The elder Dana sent it to Mr. Bryant 
 with a request that he would read it, and get a publisher for 
 it if he approved. Mr. Bryant was so struck by its originality, 
 vigor, and truth, that he at once set about bringing it before 
 the public. But he found that the trade was quite indisposed 
 to take hold of the book, and his letters relating to his efforts 
 are interesting as showing what a parturition good books are 
 sometimes compelled to go through. He wrote to the father, 
 June 24, 1839: 
 
 " I will now tell Mrs. Eryant what he said of his wife, to whom the Me"cha- 
 nique Celeste is dedicated. This translation and commentary are dedicated, by 
 the author, to the memory of his wife, Mary Bowditch, who devoted herself to her 
 domestic avocations with great judgment, unceasing kindness, and a zeal which 
 could not be surpassed, taking upon herself the whole care of her family, and thus 
 procuring for him the leisure hours to prepare the work, and securing to him, by her 
 prudent management, the means for publication in its present form, which she fully 
 approved ; and without her approbation the work would not have been undertaken. 
 This lady consented that $12,000 of their small property, with no prospect of reim 
 bursement, should be appropriated to the work in question. Dr. Bowditch particu 
 larly honored the female sex. Seventy-five pages of the translation were the work 
 of his accomplished daughter-in-law. I like that women should receive their due, 
 from great men especially. At Cambridge I found Mr. and Mrs. Ware, dwelling in 
 great content among their own people. I wish you were both here. Mr. Bryant is 
 so much admired at Boston, I am afraid he would be worried with homages, but they 
 would be honest. Mr. Grattan (author of Highways and By-ways ) is here, and 
 says (he is an Irishman) that he is astonished and delighted with the refinement, 
 cordiality, and apparent happiness of American society. The absence of mendicity 
 and a degraded lower order is a perpetual delight to one from the other side, if he 
 is a man and a brother! " 
 
374 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 
 " I am sorry that I have no better account to give of my success in 
 the commission with which you intrusted me. I have seen the Har 
 pers, and do not find them disposed to publish the book at all at pres 
 ent. Three of the brothers were together there are four of them in 
 all and the one who had the conversation with your friend, Mr. 
 Woods, after saying a few words, went out. The others then told me 
 that James Harper, who had made the offer to Mr. Woods, had never 
 laid the matter before them, that they did not object to the book, that 
 they had no doubt a publisher might be found for it, etc., and that 
 the best way would be for me to write to you and advise that, since 
 two chapters were to be written, the author should finish the work and 
 offer it to them, or to Carey, Lee & Blanchard, of Philadelphia, in the 
 autumn. I told them that the two chapters might be written off-hand, 
 that the book was, in fact, finished already, and that I had come to 
 make final terms. They were engaged with so many publications 
 some new, but the principal part the old publications which are 
 stereotyped that really they could not engage to get out your son s 
 work at present ; they thought they should be very glad to do so in 
 the autumn, but could not now make any bargain." 
 
 He next applied to Appleton, then to Coleman, to Wiley 
 & Putnam, and " they all with one accord made excuse." 
 Finally, he turned to Philadelphia, and October 2d again 
 wrote to the father : 
 
 " I have been obliged to give up the idea of effecting the publica 
 tion of your son s work. I wrote to Lea & Blanchard, of Philadelphia, 
 stating as fully as I was able its merits and its prospects of applause 
 and success. They returned a polite answer, in which they declined 
 publishing it on account of the depressed state of the trade of the 
 country. They were compelled, they said, to avoid making new 
 literary engagements unless they were of a nature of the success of 
 which they could not doubt. Books of voyages and travels, they 
 added, do not often pay the publisher, much less the author. Finally, 
 with an apology for offering their advice, they say that, in their opin 
 ion, the best thing Mr. Dana can do is to find some publisher in Bos 
 ton, where his family connection is so well known, who would under 
 take its publication, etc." 
 
DEATH OF LEGGETT. 375 
 
 Repulsed on every side, Mr. Bryant was yet determined 
 not to yield; and he resumed negotiations with the Harper 
 Brothers, who were induced to bring out the book the next 
 year (1840). Mr. Bryant gave it a good send-off in the " liven 
 ing Post," and procured one review of it by his friend 
 Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., for the " New York Review," and 
 another, by another hand, for the " Democratic Review." But 
 these friendly services were needless. The book spoke for 
 itself, and the public recognized its merits as soon as it was 
 issued. Old seamen bore witness to its fidelity, the public 
 schools ordered it for their libraries, and preachers even men 
 tioned it from their pulpits as an admirable cure for that form 
 of youthful sea-sickness which consists in a frenzied desire to 
 go to sea. Ten thousand copies were speedily sold in this 
 country ; and in England, where it was republished, the sale 
 was quite as great. Since then, edition after edition of it has 
 been printed, and the work may be said to have taken its 
 place among the classics of adventure.* 
 
 Just before the receipt of Mr. Dana s first letter, Mr. Bryant 
 was called upon to deplore the loss of his old colleague, Leg- 
 gett, whose health had been impaired by too assiduous labor 
 while he was in the " Evening Post," and whose attempt to 
 manage a periodical of his own only increased the disorder. 
 It brought on bilious attacks, accompanied by great suffering 
 and an utter prostration of strength. A timely retirement to 
 his country seat in New Rochelle mitigated his pains, and it 
 was thought that he was sufficiently recovered to accept the ap 
 pointment of Chargt d Affaires to Guatemala, in Central Amer 
 ica, which Mr. Van Burcn, whom he had often assailed, mag 
 nanimously tendered him ; but on the eve of his departure an 
 attack of more than usual malignity supervened, and he died 
 in less than three days, in the thirty-ninth year of his age 
 (May, 1839). M r - Bryant, besides celebrating his virtues in 
 
 * I endeavored to procure from the Messrs. Harper the precise number of copies 
 sold, but, owing to a loss of some of their early accounts by fire, they could not com 
 ply with my request. 
 
376 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 
 verse, prepared a brief memoir of him, which was published 
 in the " Democratic Review," and he assisted Theodore Sedg- 
 wick, Jr., in compiling two volumes of his editorial writings, 
 which were issued the next year.* 
 
 The winter of 1839 promised to be more than usually 
 pleasant for Mr. Bryant, for one of his friends, Dr. Follen, 
 was completing a highly instructive course of lectures on the 
 life and poems of Schiller; another, w r ho was staying with 
 him, Mr. Dana, had come on from Boston to deliver a course 
 on the dramas of Shakespeare (full, as I recollect them, of pro 
 found remark and nice criticism) ; and a third, Mr. Longfellow, 
 was delighting brilliant audiences with his graceful delinea 
 tions of the characters of Moliere. Once, when the two latter 
 were Mr. Bryant s guests at a dinner, they were joined by 
 Halleck, and thus the four most famous poets that our litera 
 ture had yet produced were brought together, and their con 
 versations, we may well suppose, if they could have been 
 reported, would have added a lively chapter to the best 
 chronicles of table-talk. Dana and Halleck were men of the 
 past in politics and religion ; Bryant and Longfellow men of 
 the present and future ; and, while there was a good deal of 
 
 * " The Political Writings of William Leggett." New York : Harper & Brothers, 
 1840. For the Democratic young men who erected a monument to his memory at 
 New Rochelle he also wrote this inscription : 
 
 TO WILLIAM LEGGETT, 
 
 THE ELOQUENT JOURNALIST, 
 WHOSE GENIUS, DISINTERESTEDNESS, AND COURAGE 
 
 ENNOBLED HIS PROFESSION ; 
 WHO LOVED TRUTH FOR ITS OWN SAKE, 
 
 AND ASSERTED IT WITH MOST ARDOUR 
 WHEN WEAK MINDS WERE MOST DISMAYED BY OPPOSITION; 
 
 WHO COULD ENDURE NO TYRANNY, 
 AND RAISED HIS VOICE AGAINST ALL INJUSTICE, 
 
 AGAINST WHOMSOEVER COMMITTED 
 AND WHOEVER WERE ITS AUTHORS 
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC YOUNG MEN OF NEW YORK, 
 SORROWING THAT A CAREER SO GLORIOUS 
 
 SHOULD HAVE CLOSED SO PREMATURELY, 
 HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT. 
 
CHARLES POLLEN. 
 
 3/7 
 
 reciprocal admiration among them, there was contrast and 
 antagonism enough to bring out many a fiery spark. But 
 the intercourse of the poets was suddenly dashed by the mel 
 ancholy death of Charles Pollen, who was known to all, and 
 an esteemed friend of two of them Bryant and Longfellow. 
 Follen was a passenger on the steamer Lexington, on her voy 
 age from New York to Providence, during a dark, cold, and 
 tempestuous night, when she was burned to the water s edge, 
 and nearly all on board perished in the flames, or by cold, or 
 amid crushing fields of ice (January 13, 1840). Well known 
 in Boston and New York, haying formed many friendships 
 among their more distinguished citizens, the shock of the 
 calamity was felt in both cities. Only a little while before the 
 event, Mr. Bryant had written a vigorous article on the want 
 of proper precautions for the safety of passengers on these 
 very steamers, and his words came back to him as prophe 
 cies. Follen was a native of Hesse Darmstadt, early distin 
 guished for his learning and liberal sentiments. Connected 
 with the Burschenschaft, and author of several patriotic odes, 
 he fell under the suspicion of the government, and was driven, 
 first from Giessen, then from Jena, and finally from Switzer 
 land, because of his opinions. Coming to the United States, 
 he secured appointments at Harvard, and ultimately married 
 an eminent American lady, Miss Eliza Lee Cabot, by whom 
 his memoirs were written. " He was," says Mr. Bryant, who 
 respected him highly, and became strongly attached to him, 
 " a man of vigorous intellect, much cultivated in the various 
 departments of knowledge, and of calm and solid judgment. 
 His experience of the evils of arbitrary government, joined to 
 a feeling of universal good-will, and the genial spirit of hope, 
 which was ever strong in him, led him to embrace the purest 
 democratic principles. The world had not a firmer, a more 
 ardent, a more consistent friend of human liberty. His pas 
 sions, naturally energetic, were all so perfectly subjected to 
 the control of the higher qualities of his character, that, al 
 though you saw they were not extinct, you saw, also, that they 
 
378 RECREATIONS, VISITORS, ETC. 
 
 were held in place and overruled by justice and benevolence. 
 No man could have known him, even slightly, without being 
 strongly impressed by the surpassing benignity of his temper. 
 He is taken from us by a mysterious Providence, in the midst 
 of his usefulness. 
 
 " It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 
 
 Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, 
 That sank so low that sacred head of thine. " 
 
CHAPTER TWENTIETH. 
 
 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. 
 A. D. 1840, 1841. 
 
 MR. VAN BUREN S administration, though it had been con 
 ducted with great dignity and prudence, achieving at home its 
 principal measure, the emancipation of the Government from 
 dependency upon banks,* and maintaining harmony abroad 
 against serious difficulties and complications,! came to an end 
 in a frenzy of disfavor. Coincident with a period of wide 
 spread commercial distress, for which it was made respon 
 sible, although the same depression of trade and industry pre 
 vailed in England and on the continent, it was not credited 
 with the revival when it began. The opposition was saga 
 cious enough to take advantage of the prevalent discontents, 
 and to promise a change. But, to make sure of success, it was 
 necessary to combine the many dissatisfied factions by adopt 
 ing a policy of non-committalism, both as to its candidates 
 and its cause. Mr. Clay, their traditional and most brilliant 
 leader, was intrigued out of the Presidential nomination, J and 
 a new man, a military chief, General Harrison, put in his place. 
 To this rather unmeaning figure-head a Virginia abstraction 
 ist, Mr. Tyler, who was but nominally a Whig, was joined as a 
 candidate for the Vice-Presidency. No declaration of prin- 
 
 * The Independent Treasury Bill was passed July 4, 1840. 
 f The disturbances on the Canada frontier. 
 
 J The nominating convention was held at Harrisburg, December 4, 1839, an( l 
 voted by States, according to their electoral power, and not by popular delegation. 
 
380 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. 
 
 ciples or of purposes was made, and a campaign was begun 
 which, for noise, display, and debauchery, was never before 
 paralleled in the history of the nation. As Harrison had once 
 lived in a log cabin, and was reputed to be a drinker of hard 
 cider, the cabin and the cider-barrel were made the unseemly 
 symbols of political faith. " If you could imagine," says a 
 contemporary writer,* " a whole nation declaring a holiday, 
 or season of rollicking, for six or eight months, giving itself up 
 to the wildest freaks of fun and frolic, caring nothing for busi 
 ness, singing, dancing, carousing, night and day, you might 
 have some notion of the extraordinary scenes of 1840." Mr. 
 Bryant was at first disposed to treat this immoral tomfoolery, 
 which the most respectable classes promoted by a personal 
 participation in it, with serious and indignant argument. But 
 he soon saw that he might as well attempt to reason against 
 the northwest wind or the tides of the sea. The only answer 
 would have been a hurrah and a horse-laugh, and so he took 
 the times in their own spirit, and flung at them the keenest 
 shafts of banter and ridicule. On no other occasion were his 
 humorous powers so frequently called into play ; and his hits 
 at the muzzled candidate, the mouthing orators, the immense 
 parades, and the junketings, though ineffective, were among 
 the best sallies of his pen. 
 
 " The enemies of the Democratic party," he said, describing the 
 turn that the controversy had assumed, " threaten to put it down by 
 singing. They have pointed at it the whole artillery of the gamut. 
 We are all to undergo solmization ; we are to be destroyed by * the 
 sweet and contagious breath/ as Sir Andrew Ague-cheek has it, of 
 our adversaries. . . . The readers of the American and the read 
 ers of the * Star, the drawing-room and the tap-room, are united on 
 this point. While the one set trill their Tippecanoe ballads to the air 
 of di tanti palpiti, the other thunders them out to the tune of Come, 
 let us all be Jolly. A regular organization has been set on foot for 
 this purpose. Tippecanoe clubs are forming, not only in the various 
 
 * N. Sargent, " Public Men and Events," vol. ii, p. 107. 
 
SLICING AND JUNKETING. 381 
 
 wards of the city, but throughout the country, to drink hard cider and 
 sing songs in praise of Harrison. Stores of ballads have been pro 
 vided to serve as heavy ordnance for the political campaign ; glees 
 and catches are ready to be thrown into our camp like hand-grenades 
 and Congreve rockets ; the Whig poets are at work like armorers and 
 gunsmiths fabricating election rhymes, and we scarcely open a Whig 
 newspaper without finding one or two Harrison songs. The plan is 
 to exterminate us chromatically, to cut us to pieces with A sharp, to 
 lay us prostrate with G flat, to hunt us down with fugues, overrun us 
 with choruses, and bring in Harrison by a grand diapason." 
 
 In this strain lie kept it up for most of the campaign. He 
 was very glad to get out of it, however, when he could, and, as 
 his assistants had increased in number and efficiency,* he was 
 able this year to begin his country trips as early as April. He 
 visited, in the course of the summer, his old home at Cum- 
 mington, whence the family was now departed ; the eastern 
 parts of the State of Pennsylvania, which are remarkably 
 lovely ; and the Catskill Mountains, with every cleft and crev 
 ice of which he became as familiar as he was with the leafy 
 retreats in the nearer neighborhood of New York. Allusions 
 to some of these trips are contained in the following letters 
 to his friends Field and Dana : 
 
 "XEW YORK, MAY 6, 1840:! I regret exceedingly to hear that 
 you have suffered lately from ill health. We must have you out again 
 to America for the benefit of the air. I agree with Mr. Cooper in his 
 last novel, The Pathfinder which, by the way, I like very much, 
 
 * His friend J. K. Paulding, who expected to be released from office as Secretary 
 of the Navy by the defeat of Van Buren, wrote to him as follows : " You have fought 
 ably, nobly, and untiringly for the good cause, which is not lost, but only mislaid for 
 a while, I hope and trust. The manner in which the Evening Post is conducted 
 its staid and sober dignity, and its freedom from the base slang, and still baser false 
 hood, with which so many newspapers are debauched and disgraced, makes me proud 
 to remember that I have a humble claim to be associated with its honors." \Vhen he 
 returned to New York, Mr. Paulding contributed a good deal of editorial matter to 
 the journal. 
 
 f To Ferdinand E. Field, who had now returned to England. 
 
382 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. 
 
 particularly the concluding part that the climate of America, although 
 it is the fashion to find fault with it, is as good as any climate, and 
 better than many. Another walk on the Palisades would put you to 
 rights again, for a week at least. Or you might go with me, where I 
 went three weeks since, to Bethlehem, a beautiful little town inhabited 
 by Moravians, twelve miles west of Easton, in Pennsylvania. Mr. 
 Parker accompanied me.* You would have been delighted with the 
 place, its appearance of thrift, its neat habitations, its orderly popula 
 tion, even to the boys in the streets, its charming situation on a hill 
 sloping down to the Lehigh, its broad, shallow, rapid river, with firm, 
 dry shores, bordered with forest-trees, and shagged here and there 
 with thickets of the kalmia and rhododendron. Along the banks are 
 beautiful shaded walks, leading to a great distance, and near the town 
 is a little island covered with ancient trees of immense size, and car 
 peted with green turf, whither the people of the place repair to cele 
 brate, after the German manner, their birthday festivals. On our 
 return we walked to Easton along the Lehigh, among rich farms and 
 beautiful hills and groves. Easton we only saw in the evening, but it 
 appeared to be situated in a very picturesque country. From the 
 bridge over the Delaware we had one of the most glorious moonlight 
 views I ever beheld. But I suppose Mr. Parker has written you all 
 about our excursion. 
 
 " We have left the house in Carmine Street, after inhabiting it for 
 two years and a half, and have taken a house in Ninth Street, near 
 the Sixth Avenue, not far from Brevoort s house, which you remember, 
 doubtless, a kind of palace in a garden. Our little dwelling is a com 
 fortable two-story house, quite new and very convenient. ... In most 
 other respects the world goes on much as it did when you were here. 
 The greatest change that I perceive in New York is the introduction 
 of cabs and mustachios, and in some instances beards as long as those 
 worn by the Bunkers. As I advance in life the world widens in some 
 respects and contracts in others ; I have more acquaintances and fewer 
 intimates. But I begin to moralize, and, for fear of being tiresome, 
 as well as because I am at the end of my sheet, I will stop short." 
 
 " NEW YORK, JUNE 9, 1840 : f The newspapers say that you are at 
 New Haven delivering your lectures. I think of coming up, and 
 
 * Mr. Reginald Parker, of England. \ To R. Ii. Dana. 
 
RAMBLES. 383 
 
 taking this occasion to look at the place in summer, which I have- 
 never yet done. If the weather is fair, I shall set out in the Thursday 
 morning s boat ; if not, perhaps I shall come on Friday. I shall stay- 
 but a night or two. . . . The story you saw or heard of in one of the 
 weekly prints is an old affair of mine, written, I believe, nine years 
 ago, and published by the Harpers, in a volume with some others. I 
 have done with writing tales, for the present at least. . . . My wife 
 and I often talk of you, and recollect your visit to New York as an 
 agreeable interruption to the seclusion of our lives. I met Halleck 
 the other day. He seems to have liked you very much, and spoke of 
 the pleasure he received from your conversation, although at that time 
 his hearing was much more imperfect than usual. When I saw him 
 the other day his deafness was hardly perceptible. ... If you are 
 with Mr. Hillhouse, or should see him before I come up, please to 
 remember me to him, and to Mrs. Hillhouse." 
 
 " NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER i2th:* I have made two journeys into 
 the country. Once I went to New Milford, in Connecticut, by steam 
 boat and railroad, and then walked up along the Housatonic through 
 Kent, Cornwall, Canaan, and Sheffield, to Great Barrington, fifty 
 miles. Here I saw my daughters, and then walked to Pittsfield, from 
 which I wandered over to Hampshire County, to Worthington, where 
 I studied law, and to Cummington, where all that is left of my father 
 rests in a burying-ground, on the summit of one of the broad highlands 
 of that region. Do you know how beautiful the Canaan Falls are ? 
 I never saw anything like them in New England. And yet I lived 
 within eighteen miles of them for ten years, without making them a 
 visit. I always thought that they were mere rapids. Yet they are 
 extraordinarily beautiful, the wild Housatonic pouring over the pre 
 cipice in two broad, irregular sheets of snowy whiteness, with a little 
 island of trees and shrubs hanging from the brow of the rock between 
 them. My next visit was with my wife to Bethlehem, a Moravian 
 settlement in Pennsylvania, nearly ninety years old a peaceful, indus 
 trious, orderly, comfortable little community. It is situated on the 
 Lehigh, a rapid and most beautiful river, with an island in the midst, 
 shaded with old oaks and elms and drooping birches, whose twigs 
 
 * To the same. 
 
384 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. 
 
 hang down to the water. This is the pleasure-ground, the place for 
 their little assemblies, their birthday commemorations, coffee-drink- 
 ings, and musical parties for music is a passion with these people. 
 They announce a death with plaintive music from their church-tower; 
 they accompany a corpse to the grave with music, and they hate the 
 sound of a bell so much that they never allow their church-bell to strike 
 more than a dozen times to call their population to worship. One of 
 the pastors of the congregation was a fellow-passenger with my wife 
 when she came out from Havre. I am glad you think of republishing 
 your writings. It is time. I see no reason why you should not put 
 in the reviews. Some of them are among your most characteristic 
 compositions ; nor do I perceive any reason for leaving out the short 
 ones. Your success at New Haven, I have no doubt, will bring you 
 invitations to lecture at other places, though probably at your own 
 risk, which seems to be the turn the fashion of lecturing is now 
 taking." 
 
 The Catskill trip was taken in July, in company with 
 Thomas Cole, the artist, who had removed from the city and 
 fixed his abode on the banks of the Hudson, near the shadows 
 of the great hills. He was a modest, thoughtful, sweet-tem 
 pered man, whose love of nature was as deep as that of Mr. 
 Bryant, and they took great pleasure in sauntering together 
 among the mountains, scaling their heights, or threading their 
 thickets, from dawn to dark. To some of the less frequented 
 coves deep chasms between perpendicular precipices, shaggy 
 with rocks and trees, and echoing with the roar of hidden cas 
 cades they ventured to give appropriate names, which, it is 
 understood, they still retain. Cole derived from these wan 
 derings some of the most impressive effects of his pictures, 
 and they enabled Mr. Bryant to commend the attractive re 
 gion to public admiration in the columns of his journal. In 
 one of his poems the " Catterskill Falls " he has endeavored 
 to incorporate the popular belief that they who perish by 
 cold enjoy in their last moments singularly splendid and fan 
 tastic visions of life. 
 
 All through the summer the noise and nonsense of the 
 
JOHN TYLER. 385 
 
 political farce continued, until the defeat of Van Buren at the 
 polls in November. Harrison, the successful candidate, was 
 inaugurated the next March (1841) amid salvos of rejoic 
 ing, but the poor man had barely a month to enjoy his tri 
 umph. He died on the 4th of April. It was the first time- 
 that a President had died in office, and there was something 
 pathetic as well as ghastly in such a termination of such a 
 campaign. Mr. Bryant remarked upon it as his view of the 
 circumstances suggested; he was respectful, but not pane 
 gyrical, in what he said of the dead chief magistrate ; but 
 his coldness of tone gave great offence to the adherents of 
 the new reign. What chiefly provoked their resentments was 
 his refusal to conform to a prevalent practice, by reversing 
 the column-rules of his journal, to put it in the black of 
 mourning. He thought it a piece of " typographical fop 
 pery," beneath the dignity of an enlightened press, and re 
 frained. Such a storm of obloquy thereupon broke forth from 
 other journals that, if he had been the " vampire " or the 
 " ghoul " which they called him, it could scarcely have been 
 more violent. 
 
 Tyler, who, as Vice-President, succeeded Harrison, and 
 whose political tendencies were not those of the party by 
 which he had been elected, was soon involved in acrimoni 
 ous squabbles with its leaders. To the Democrats these fur 
 nished matters of amusement, and to Mr. Bryant a great 
 relief, as he was now no longer called upon to defend an 
 administration with which he was not in entire accord. He 
 could once more fling his arrows of assault where they could 
 be most effective. He had no great confidence in Tyler, and 
 still less in the opposition to him, and he saw that the rupture 
 was a sure presage of dissolution to the Whig party. 
 
 "Mr. Tyler s character and temperament," he said, "unfit him to 
 become the favorite of any one party or of the people at large. He 
 is well-meaning; he would be glad to administer the Government 
 beneficially for the people ; but his want of clear notions on many 
 
 VOL. i. 2! 
 
386 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. 
 
 subjects, and of definite information upon others, coupled with a cer 
 tain credulous readiness to adopt opinions presented to him in a 
 plausible manner, makes him a very uncertain, irresolute, and unsafe 
 politician. He cannot be made the passive tool of any party : for 
 that he has too much candor and too much uprightness of intention ; 
 neither is he a man to be guided by the independent conclusions of his 
 own mind ; for that he has not either sufficient clear-sightedness or 
 sufficient decision. In matters where he has already expressed a posi 
 tive opinion he is firm nay, obstinate for he prides himself on his 
 consistency; in other matters he is haunted by a perpetual distrust of 
 his own capacity to arrive at a just judgment a judgment which the 
 people will ratify. He, therefore, asks counsel on all sides, becomes 
 confused by the comparison of conflicting arguments, and pronounces 
 at last an accidental verdict. So it is that in his public acts he is 
 sometimes with one party and sometimes with another ; not exactly 
 because he is a political eclectic, who takes something from each, ac 
 cording to a fixed principle of selection, but because of a certain in 
 firmity of judgment. ... It was both the duty and the policy of the 
 majority in Congress to make the best of his peculiar character, to 
 give the best play to his virtues, to veil as much as possible his defi 
 ciencies, to yield him every proper facility in the management of public 
 affairs, to co-operate with him in making the Whig rule as acceptable 
 to the people as possible, and, at the close of his four years, allow 
 him to pass into an honorable retirement." 
 
 But they chose to criticise, to thwart, to bully, and de 
 nounce him ; in a word, to engage in president baiting, as Mr. 
 Bryant called it, greatly to Tyler s discomfort, but also at 
 their own cost. Every blow they struck at him seemed to 
 dislocate their own shoulders ; or, as in the case of Hudibras, 
 
 u The gun they aimed at duck or plover 
 Was sure to kick the owner over." 
 
 In May of this year (1841) Mr. Bryant made a briei visit 
 to Illinois to see his mother and brothers, going by way of 
 Chicago, no longer a little village in a wet marsh, but a noisy 
 and bustling town, giving promise already of its marvellous 
 
THE BLACK TARIFF. 387 
 
 future. On the prairies the wolves were still howling in soli 
 tary places; yet trn years had made a vast difference in the ap 
 pearances of a frontier settlement.* He found his brothers- 
 four of them now no longer living in log huts in the midst of 
 unbroken plains, but in handsome brick houses, with orchards 
 and grain-fields about them, and churches, schools, and court 
 houses filling up the neighborhood. His venerable mother 
 was still active and vigorous, trying for a second time the life 
 of the pioneer, but now rejoicing in a family of stalwart sons, 
 one of whom had achieved a national distinction, while the 
 others were substantial and prosperous citizens, at times the 
 law-makers, of a rapidly growing State. 
 
 lie did not think it prudent, however, to take his usual 
 rambles this summer. A new party was in power which he 
 thought needed watching. The controversy in regard to the 
 national bank was getting exhausted ; Jackson, like another St. 
 George, had given that Dragon of Wantley a fatal wound ; 
 and its enemies might exclaim : 
 
 " Thy pomp is in the dust ; thy power is laid 
 Low in the pit thine avarice hath made." 
 
 But extraordinary schemes for new protective legislation were 
 broached, and Mr. Bryant wished to be on hand. The Com 
 promise Tariff of 1832, a strictly revenue tariff, was not satis 
 factory to the manufacturers, and a more efficient measure 
 was proposed in its place. This was so exorbitant in its pro 
 visions that it got the name of the Black Tariff. It was the 
 original pretext of the protectionists that they wanted the aid 
 of the government only while their enterprises were \oung and 
 precarious, and that, once established, they would dispense 
 with its further fostering care. But experience had shown 
 that the needs of this class grew by what they fed on. The 
 effect of the artificial stimulus given to particular branchr 
 trade had been to augment the domestic competition in them, 
 
 * Sec " Sketches of Travel," vol. v. of collected works. 
 
388 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. 
 
 or to nourish them, not into a stable, vigorous life, but into 
 a spasmodic state of alternate strength and weakness. After 
 thirty years of governmental coddling, here they were again 
 at the doors of Congress, demanding a prodigious increase 
 of privileges and favors. Mr. Bryant fought the project tooth 
 and nail ; and he was encouraged in his opposition to it by 
 the brilliant successes already achieved by the great anti-corn- 
 law movement in England over hostile opinions. He thought 
 it a shame that any monarchy should be allowed to outstrip 
 the republic in liberality of action. 
 
 " All the tendencies of the times, throughout the civilized world," 
 he said, " are directed toward a condition of larger freedom not only 
 to freedom of thought and speech, but to freedom of intercourse. 
 Liberty of trade is getting to be a popular rallying cry wherever 
 there is any approach to a free expression of popular opinion. The 
 emancipation of commerce from the shackles of legislation is but a 
 continued manifestation of the same spirit which broke the yoke of 
 the feudal system, and which is leading the masses of every civilized 
 nation to fret under the restraints of partial and aristocratic govern 
 ments. Free-trade is thus a part of the grand movement of mankind 
 toward a nobler condition of social existence. Humanity is weary of 
 the narrow notions and confined habits which have produced so much 
 of its misery in the past. It looks to the whole world as the proper 
 theatre for its future exertions. Commerce is one of the modes by 
 which man communes with man, and, like the sea over which its 
 products are freighted, it must be broad and boundless. Everywhere 
 are the walls of caste and sect crumbling before the generous enthu 
 siasm of freedom and progress, and it would be idle to expect that the 
 feeble and disgraceful prejudices and jealousies which separate nations 
 can escape the general overthrow." 
 
 In these sanguine expectations, however, Mr. Bryant was 
 deceived ; selfishness was stronger than logic or sentiment, 
 and he was again compelled to see the old system of injustice 
 revived. Another form of contemporary error, which took 
 the name of Native Americanism, was spreading widely, and 
 he opposed it ; but he deemed it only a transient outbreak of 
 
A VISIT TO VAN BUREN. 
 
 339 
 
 bigotry, and not half so pernicious as the schemes of the pro 
 tectionists. 
 
 It was not until September that he was able to get his run 
 in the fields, and he chose for his excursion the charming re 
 gion in the environs of Lebanon Springs. They were near the 
 birthplace of his young friend Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, already 
 a politician of marked sagacity and comprehensive knowledge, 
 whom he visited, and by whom he was accompanied on a visit 
 to ex-President Van Buren, at his country seat near the vil 
 lage of Kinderhook. A letter to his journal, of September 
 1 8th (1841), gives some account of their interview. 
 
 "NEW LEBANON, SEPTEMBER iSth : The crowd of summer com 
 pany which was collected at the Springs has flown, and 1 have these 
 beautiful valleys to myself, and the woody hills with the glorious views 
 they command. I ramble for hours on the summits, and do not fall 
 in with a living creature. The other day I was led by curiosity to 
 visit Kinderhook, which I had never seen before. It is one of the 
 pleasantest of villages, situated amid a circle of swelling uplands 
 and fresh meadows that skirt the winding streams. On one of these 
 upland swells, just high enough to make the elevation perceptible, 
 stands the village, its broad streets embroidered with elms, and its 
 clean, comfortable dwellings half hidden by fruit-trees and shrub 
 beries. . . . About two miles south of the village is the dwelling of 
 ex-President Van Buren, where he employs himself in the cultivation 
 of his newly purchased acres. Thus far the farm does credit to his 
 skilful administration. The ex-President begins the day with a ride 
 on horseback of ten or fifteen miles ; after breakfast he is engaged 
 with his workmen till he is tired, and he then takes himself to his 
 library. In these occupations, and in friendly intercourse with his 
 old friends and neighbors, the farmers of Kinderhook, he passes his 
 time. I suppose he must like now and then, 
 
 through the loop-holes of retreat, 
 
 to peep at the great Babel of the world, and to speculate on what 
 they are doing at Washington ; but he is so absorbed in his agri 
 cultural work that he appears to have no more time to think of poli 
 tics than any other well-informed man not a politician by profes- 
 
390 
 
 THE HARD-CIDER CAMPAIGN, ETC. 
 
 sion. I was glad to find him so free from the pedantry of party men, 
 and to know that his mind could so readily command resources 
 beyond the occupations in which so large a part of his life has been 
 engaged. When, however, the conversation is directed to political 
 subjects, he expresses himself with frankness and decision, and with 
 that penetration into the minds and motives of men which is one of 
 the most remarkable of his faculties. His style of conversation is 
 lively, idiomatic, and simple, giving much matter in few words very 
 different from that of most men trained in the forum or in legislative 
 debate, who are apt to fall into a diffuse, speech-making, wearisome 
 manner." 
 
 Mr. Bryant was more pleased with the ex-President than 
 he shows in his letter, which was intended for the public. He 
 had known him before only amid the responsibilities of official 
 position, which rendered him cautious and reticent ; but here, 
 in the leisure and abandonment of private life, he was unre 
 strained and communicative. His stores of anecdotes, relating 
 to the distinguished men he had seen on both sides of the At 
 lantic Jefferson, Madison, Burr, the Livingstons, and many 
 of the prominent statesmen of Europe were inexhaustible, 
 and he told them in a piquant way, very much in contrast 
 with his cumbrous written style. Mr. Van Buren corre 
 sponded afterward with Mr. Bryant, but his letters are lost. 
 
 A month later he was the guest of his friend Dana, whose 
 summer retreat was at Rockport, Cape Ann, a wild and 
 craggy nook on the extreme eastern point of Massachusetts. 
 " Woods and waters, waters and woods," said Dana, describ 
 ing it in the letter of invitation ; " beautiful woods, and 
 mossy, filled with birds all song, and again jagged and lofty 
 rocks, and breakers on the shore, or under the trees of oak, 
 pine, and maple." Mr. Bryant went by the way of Cam 
 bridge, where he was glad to renew his acquaintance of the 
 old Review days with the Channings, Allston, and others ; 
 to see again the Rev. William Ware in a new home, and pos 
 sibly to encounter Longfellow and Lowell, if they were then 
 returned from the country. It was this brief sojourn on the 
 
A //I J/.V OF THE . 
 
 391 
 
 shores of the ocean that suggested to him the " Hymn of the 
 
 Sea," which, with the following letter, he sent sonic months 
 later to Mr. Ware, editor of the " Christian Examiner " : 
 
 4< NE\v YORK, MAY, 1842 : As you are making a Ice to furnish out 
 the first number of your periodical in its new form, I shall contribute 
 my assistance, such as it is, along with the rest of your neighbors. 
 You may rely upon my doing something. I am sorry to hear that the 
 
 * Christian Examiner is not so successful as it ought to be. The 
 cause to which you ascribe it is doubtless the true one that of its 
 having taken the review form, which is too solemn and didactic for 
 the public taste. It is wonderful what success some of our magazines 
 the lighter sort have had. The publishers of the Lady s Book and 
 
 * Ladies Companion talk, and I believe with truth, of their ten thou 
 sand subscribers and more. * Graham s Magazine has also a very 
 large circulation. ... I hope another cause of the falling off in the 
 subscribers of the * Christian Examiner is not any decline in the 
 numbers of our denomination. Yet it must be admitted, I believe, 
 that we do not multiply as we did a few years since. Is the increase 
 of the Unitarians at the present time in proportion to the increase of 
 the population ? I am not able to judge with much precision. Be 
 twixt the neologists on the one side, and the archaists on the other, I 
 fear that sober and sensible notions of religion are not making much 
 progress just now; at least, not in the shape in which they are re 
 ceived by us." * 
 
 * When the Hymn was published, it was found to contain a curious error of tran 
 scription, which Mr. Bryant thus corrected in writing to Mr. Ware, long afterward: 
 
 "Xi:w YORK, SEPTEMBER 27, 1842: I made a blunder in the Hymn of the 
 Sea which surprised me when I perceived it. 
 
 " The long wave rolling from the Arctic pole 
 To break upon Japan 
 
 is not what I meant ; it does not give space enough for my wave, nor does it place 
 my new continent or new islands in the widest and loneliest part of the ocean. I 
 meant the Southern or Antarctic pole, and by what strange inattention to the mean 
 ing of the word I came to write Arctic I am sure I cannot tell. I corrected the 
 error and published the poem in the Evening Post, as extracted from the Christian 
 i:\aininer. It has been in most of the newspapers since, but I perceive they copied 
 from my copy." 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. 
 
 NEW POEMS. 
 A. D. 1842. 
 
 AMONG Mr. Bryant s more intimate personal friends in New 
 York was the Rev. Orville Dewey, his pastor, second as a 
 divine to Dr. Channing only in his denomination, and a preacher 
 of profound thoughtfulness, culture, and eloquence. It was 
 to him that the following letter was addressed, which, as it 
 gives a lively account of what was going on in the city at the 
 time, is worth copying.* 
 
 "NEW YORK, JANUARY n, 1842: I fully meant to have seen you 
 off on your sailing for Europe, but I arrived at the wharf just in time, 
 as the saying is, to be too late. The steamboat had left the wharf a 
 few minutes before, and I had nothing to do but to go back again, 
 feeling, as you may suppose, very silly. No less, I am glad to hear 
 such good accounts of you and your family ; for your acquaintances 
 here gather up and repeat to each other all the particulars that are 
 told in the letters that any of you write. You are now, I suppose, 
 immersed in the amusements of Paris such of them, at least, as you 
 have a taste for ; wearying yourself, and your wife and daughter, with 
 running after sights, with a comfortable and cheerful home awaiting 
 you when you are fairly tired out. New York, in the mean time, is 
 by no means dull, I can assure you. You are in Paris to be sure, but 
 you must not suppose that everything worth taking an interest in is 
 to be found at Paris. You shall judge. 
 
 "Firstly. There is animal magnetism, which, since the publication 
 
 * Mr. Dewey had sailed for Europe in the latter part of 1841. 
 
NEW YORK NOVELTIES. 
 
 393 
 
 of the Rev. Mr. Townsend s book, has made great progress in America, 
 in New York and elsewhere. It is quite the fashion for people to 
 paw each other into a magnetic sleep. Physicians somnambulize their 
 patients and extract teeth literally without pain. 
 
 " A Dr. Buchanan, at Louisville, mixes up phrenology and animal 
 magnetism, puts certain faculties to sleep and excites others, operates 
 upon alimentiveness and makes people hungry, upon destructiveness 
 and makes them choleric, upon ideality and makes them talk poetic 
 ally, upon mirthfulness and makes them pleasant, upon love of appro 
 bation and makes them put on airs ; or paralyzes one of those organs 
 after the other, and makes the choleric man imperturbably good-nat 
 ured, the funny man as stupid as an oyster, etc. 
 
 " Secondly. There is Lord Morpeth, the Irish Secretary in the late 
 Whig ministry. Dinners and parties to Lord Morpeth have been all 
 the rage till within a few days, but they have now become impossible 
 by reason of his going to Washington. Proud and happy is the man 
 who can boast to have entertained a live lord. Lord Morpeth is a 
 quiet, well-bred, unassuming man, with an awkward person, sensible, 
 extremely cautious in his opinions, and not much given to talk. 
 
 " Thirdly. There are politics, which are particularly interesting 
 just now ; your good old Whig party breaking up like the ice in 
 March; the political world taking a short turn and darting off into the 
 empyrean of democracy as if it never meant to come back ; but all 
 this you will read in the newspapers.* 
 
 " Fourthly. There is homoeopathy, which is carrying all before it. 
 Conversions are making every day. Within a twelvemonth the num 
 ber of persons who employ homoeopathic physicians has doubled ; a 
 homoeopathic society has been established, and I have delivered an 
 inaugural lecture before it a defence of the system, which I am to 
 repeat next week. The heathen rage terribly, but their rage availeth 
 nothing. f 
 
 * Of seven States that voted for Harrison the year before, five had reverted to the 
 Democrats. 
 
 \ Mr. Bryant was by hereditary right interested in medicine ; and, when a friend 
 put in his hands a work upon the Hahnemannic theory, he was greatly impressed by 
 its simplicity, and its apparent scientific basis. He applied the system in a great 
 many cases of the smaller ailments that fell under his own observation, and became 
 in time thoroughly convinced of the efficacy of its remedial provisions. He ever after- 
 
394 
 
 NEW POEMS. 
 
 " Fifthly. There is literature, which is just now bursting into an 
 abundance of blossoms poetic blossoms, you understand. Mrs. Sig- 
 ourney has published a volume of poems, Miss Gould another, Mrs. S. 
 B. Dana another, Flaccus I do not know his real name another, and 
 there are five or six poets besides whose verses have appeared since 
 you left America, but whose names I do not recollect. I hope their 
 verses are all good; I have not had time to read any of them. Long 
 fellow has published Ballads and other Poems some of his best 
 things. Add to these the verses in the Lady s Book and the La 
 dies Companion, periodicals with a vast circulation; in the Ladies 
 Wreath, and in Mrs. Griffith s Family Companion ; in half a score 
 of annuals and other miscellanies, and you will allow that our poetic 
 literature is marvellously productive. The hedges are full of clover- 
 blossoms, and you cannot set your foot down without crushing a but 
 tercup. 
 
 " Sixthly. We have lectures. Public lectures were never so much 
 in vogue as this winter. The theatres are deserted for Mr. Eames and 
 for Mr. Sparks, and for Dr. Lardner and the steam-engine. ... I 
 could tell you of many other matters of equal importance here. Our 
 club (the Sketch Club) flourishes, meeting regularly, and entertaining 
 itself more agreeably than ever how ? You know that already. But 
 the end of my sheet is near, and I must stop. Now, what have you in 
 Paris to set off against all these things? ... If that iron hand is un 
 clenched that used to take such cruel hold of your head, write me a 
 line. Run off a few words at the end of your pen as you would do 
 from the end of your tongue if you should meet me in the street." 
 
 If Mr. Bryant had withheld his letter for a month, he might 
 have added to his catalogue of sensational things a more pro 
 digious sensation than Morpeth or animal magnetism the 
 arrival of the great Boz. Dickens was then at the height of 
 his popularity, both at home and abroad. In this country his 
 earlier books had been read by everybody that reads at all. 
 " Pickwick " was regarded as such a magazine of fun that you 
 
 ward resorted to it in the indispositions of his family, and of his working people, 
 when he retired to the country. His name and his lecture helped to commend it to 
 a more universal attention than it had yet received either in the faculty or with the 
 public at large. 
 
BOZ IX AMERICA. 395 
 
 had only to open the covers, in any society, to produce an ex 
 plosion of laughter. Its principal characters Pickwick him 
 self, Snodgrass and Tupman, old Weller, Mrs. Weller and Sam, 
 old \Vardle and the Fat Boy, the Rev. Mr. Stiggins and the 
 weeping Trotter were as well known to the most of us as any 
 oddities on Broadway, or on the boards of the Park and the 
 Bowery. The newspapers overflowed with the peculiar 
 forms of wit known as Wellerisms, and I am not sure that some 
 of them were not better than the originals. With this sort of 
 introduction, a spontaneous movement of welcome received 
 Dickens on his arrival in Boston. It was reported that his first 
 question on landing was, " Where is Bryant? " as if he thought 
 the poet must of necessity be an inhabitant of Boston. Mr. 
 Bryant seems to have been touched by the popular excite 
 ment, for he called upon the novelist as soon as he reached 
 New York; and, not finding him in, called a second time. 
 Dickens acknowledged these attentions in the following char 
 acteristic note : 
 
 " CARLTON HOUSE, February 14, 1842. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR : With one exception (and that s Irving) you are 
 the man I most wanted to see in America. You have been here twice, 
 and I have not seen you. The fault was not mine ; for on the even 
 ing of my arrival committee-gentlemen were coming in and out until 
 long after I had your card put into my hands. As I lost what I most 
 eagerly longed for, I ask you for your sympathy, and not for your for 
 giveness. Now, I want to know when you will come and breakfast 
 with me : and I don t call to leave a card at your door before asking 
 you, because I love you too well to be ceremonious with you. I have 
 a thumbed book at home, so well worn that it has nothing upon the 
 back but one gilt B, and the remotest possible traces of a y. My 
 credentials are in my earnest admiration of its beautiful contents. 
 Any day but next Monday or next Sunday. Time, half-past ten. 
 Just say in writing, My dear Dickens, such a day. Yours ever. 
 
 ; lyou? Your faithful friend, 
 
 "CHARLES DICKENS." 
 
 They breakfasted together at a time appointed, Ilalleck 
 and Professor Charles Felton, of Cambridge, being of the 
 
396 NEW POEMS. 
 
 party, and a lively time they had of it. Felton, writing to Mr. 
 Bryant afterward, says : " A breakfast with Bryant, Halleck, 
 and Dickens, is a thing to remember forever." The story 
 teller s exuberant animal spirits and frank boyishness of man 
 ner, to say nothing of his wit and nice observation of men and 
 things, took direct hold of Mr. Bryant s quieter temperament, 
 in spite of an unmitigated Cockneyism of dress.* Subse 
 quently he entertained Dickens at his own home, was of the 
 number of those who invited him to a public dinner at the 
 Astor House, and he even attended the ball given to him by 
 the fashion and wealth of the city at the Park Theatre.f More 
 than that, when a French contemporary journal $ made a little 
 fun of these extraordinary demonstrations, assigning as the 
 motive of them a desire to escape the imputation of money- 
 loving, and to get a good report from the visitor, he put a 
 more rational construction on the outbreak. 
 
 "We do not think our French critic," he said, "has gone to the 
 bottom of the matter. The main cause is the merit of the individual, 
 and an honest desire on the part of the community to testify their 
 appreciation of it. Many who take a more active part are, no doubt, 
 prompted by a vain curiosity, or by a paltry ambition to render them 
 selves conspicuous. But the great majority of them are sincere ad 
 mirers of the man and his writings. His more obvious excellences 
 are of the kind which are easily understood by all classes by the 
 stable-boy as well as the statesman. His intimate knowledge of char 
 acter, his familiarity with the language and experience of low life, his 
 genuine humor, his narrative power, and the cheerfulness of his phi 
 losophy, are traits that impress themselves on minds of every descrip- 
 
 * Dickens wore flashy waistcoats and a great deal of jewellery. 
 
 f Writing to Dana, April igth, he said : " You were right in what you said of 
 Dickens. I liked him hugely, though he was so besieged while he was here that I 
 saw little of him little in comparison with what I could have wished. It was a 
 constant levee with him ; he was obliged to keep an amanuensis to answer notes and 
 letters. I breakfasted with him one morning, and the number of despatches that 
 came and went made me almost think that I was breakfasting with a minister of state. 
 The " Courrier des Etats-Unis." 
 
I \TERNATIOXAL COPYRIGHT. 
 
 397 
 
 tion. But, besides these, he has many characteristics to interest the 
 higher orders of mind. They are such as to recommend him pecul 
 iarly to Americans. His sympathies seek out that class with which 
 American institutions and laws sympathize most strongly. He has 
 found subjects of thrilling interest in the passions, sufferings, and 
 virtues of the mass. As Dr. Channing has said, he shows that life 
 in its rudest form may wear a tragic grandeur, that, amid follies or 
 excesses provoking laughter or scorn, the moral feelings do not wholly 
 die, and that the haunts of the blackest crime are sometimes lighted 
 up by the presence and influence of the noblest souls. Here we have 
 the secret of the attentions that have been showered upon Mr. Dick 
 ens. That they may have been carried too far is possible ; yet we are 
 disposed to regard them, even in their excess, with favor. We have 
 so long been accustomed to seeing the homage of the multitude paid 
 to men of mere titles, or military chieftains, that we have grown tired 
 of it. We are glad to see the mind asserting its supremacy, to find 
 its rights more generally recognized. We rejoice that a young man, 
 without birth, wealth, title, or a sword, whose only claims to distinc 
 tion are in his intellect and heart, is received with a feeling that was 
 formerly rendered only to kings and conquerors. The author, by his 
 genius, has contributed happy moments to the lives of thousands, and 
 it is right that the thousands should recompense him for the gift."* 
 
 After Mr. Dickens had left the city, and reached Niagara 
 Falls, he entrusted to Mr. Bryant an address to the people of 
 the United States, urging the passage of an international copy 
 right law. With it he enclosed letters from Carlyle, Buhvcr, 
 Tennyson, Campbell, Talfourd, Hallem, Hunt, Milman, Sidney 
 Smith, Rogers, Foster, and Barry Cornwall, all of whom sec 
 onded his appeal. Mr. Bryant, in publishing the address, 
 commended the object of it ; but he founded his argument not 
 on the ground simply of justice due to foreign authors, but 
 on the fact that American literature itself had reached a state 
 of development in which our native authors required protec 
 tion from foreign pillage. He referred to recent works of 
 Irving, Cooper, Dana, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Sparks, Ban- 
 
 * " Evening Post," February 18, 1842. 
 
398 NEW POEMS. 
 
 croft, and Ware, as having lifted us to a higher place in the 
 republic of letters, of which we were no longer strangers at 
 the gate, but active denizens, and bound to its other members 
 by all the laws of justice, honor, and hospitality. 
 
 When Dickens returned to England and wrote his carica 
 tures of American life, Mr. Bryant thought it a shabby return 
 for the public hospitality he had consented to accept ; but he 
 did not share in the revulsion of feeling with which they were 
 greeted by the press. Of the famous "American Notes," he 
 simply remarked : 
 
 " Mr. Dickens was but four months in the United States, and, al 
 lowing him to make the best use of his opportunity, must have gone 
 back without knowing much of the country or its people. He repre 
 hends many things, it is true, very properly, and satirizes others 
 amusingly. Of the latter, what he says about the national abomina 
 tion of tobacco chewing and spitting is an example ; of the former, his 
 remarks on the ferocity and malignity of party spirit, and the licen 
 tiousness of the press. In regard to the newspaper press, however, 
 though its character is bad enough, he has overcharged his censures. 
 The journals of several of our principal cities Boston, Philadelphia, 
 and Charleston are quite as decorous, for aught we see, as the best of 
 the English journals. In this city the newspaper press is worse than 
 anywhere else in the United States ; but the example of two or three 
 presses in New York does not prove the general profligacy with which 
 all the newspapers in the Union are conducted. It is true that the 
 best of us, probably, have something to amend, and it is true, also, 
 that the standard, both of morality and decorum, is not sufficiently 
 high among the greater number of those who manage our newspapers. 
 Without attempting to justify them by the example of the London 
 journals, which, perhaps, would not be difficult, if comparison were a 
 fair mode of justification, we have no objection to see the scourge of 
 reproof well laid on, and let those wince who feel the smart.* 
 
 Mr. Bryant was engaged the while in getting out a new 
 volume of his poems. The Harpers had printed a fifth edition 
 
 * " Evening Post," November 9, 1842. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN AXD OTHER POEMS." 399 
 
 of the earlier volume, and to this he added another small vol 
 ume containing the crop of later growth.* Surprise has often 
 been expressed that he should have written so little poetrv. 
 but the real wonder is that he should have written any at all. 
 Considering- the nature of his daily occupation, its absorbing- 
 toils, its incessant and harassing distractions, the wide diver 
 sity of thought it exacted, and the inharmonious passions it 
 often aroused, we are astonished that he should have been able 
 to gather so many as twenty new poems in his new collection. 
 These we doubtless owe to his persistent banishment of the 
 anxieties of the desk from his hours of leisure, and to those 
 long pedestrian tours which racked off the lees of newspaper 
 conflicts, and allowed his poetic emotions to effervesce. It is 
 remarkable, indeed, how few traces of the agitations and sharp 
 collisions of his life are left on his poems. 
 
 Since his return from Europe, in 1836, he had \vritten, 
 " The Living Lost," " Catterskill Falls," " The Strange Lady," 
 " Earth s Children Cleave to Earth," " The Hunter s Vision," 
 " A Presentiment," " The Child s Funeral," " The Battle-Field," 
 11 The Future Life," " The Death of Schiller," " The Fountain," 
 " The Winds," " The Old Man s Counsel," " An Evening Rev- 
 cry," " The Painted Cup," " A Dream," " The Antiquity of 
 
 * Of this volume Mr. Dana wrote, December 2, 1842 :"...! have been greatly 
 pleased with your Return of Youth. It has not only your usual sentiment, truth, 
 and beauty of description and language, but more of strictly poetic fancy than many 
 of your later pieces. The first stanza, as a whole, serves very well for the opening, at 
 least with the exception of one line, which is to me a little too much after the order 
 of the manufacture which was carried on some half century ago and prompt the 
 tongue the generous thought to speak. The whole piece is most beautiful, and I 
 want you to substitute a line for this which shall be more in unison with the rest. 
 Should it require a change of one or two of its neighboring lines, no harm would 
 come of it. You can bear the toil of emendation, and, depend upon it, the whole 
 thing is worthy of it. Noon is beautiful, though not equal to Evening Rcvciy. 
 Have you a poem with some few passages of more stir and passion (I don t mean, of 
 convulsions) than these? If your poem is long, it will need to have here and there 
 a peak thrown up out of the level. Don t think me impertinent, and don t let me 
 bother you. After ail, every man must work on according to his natural workings 
 at the time, or he will hurt what is good by attempts. It will be beautifully serene 
 and meditative, though it should be without what I speak of." 
 
400 
 
 NEW POEMS. 
 
 Freedom," " The Maiden s Sorrow," " The Return of Youth," 
 and " A Hymn of the Sea," and it would be difficult to find in 
 any of these any loss of strength or delicacy in his poetic fibre. 
 In "The Fountain," "The Old Man s Counsel," "An Evening 
 Revery," and " The Antiquity of Freedom," the blank verse 
 of " Thanatopsis " and " The Forest Hymn " reappears in all its 
 solemn and stately beauty ; and in " The Battle-Field," " The 
 Future Life," " The Maiden s Sorrow," " The Child s Funeral," 
 and "A Dream," his favorite quatrains exhibit all the old seri 
 ousness and sweetness of thought, with perhaps an added music 
 and deeper human sympathies ; while " The Winds " and " Cat- 
 terskill Falls " disclose before unnoticed or unsuspected vari 
 eties of power. When the new volume appeared,* the critics 
 acknowledged its unabated charms. Professor C. C. Felton, 
 of Cambridge, in the " North American," said : f 
 
 " Mr. Bryant, during a long career of authorship, has written com 
 paratively little ; but that little is of untold price 6/Uyoi> re tfihov re 
 little, but precious and dear. What exquisite taste ! what a deli 
 cate ear for the music of poetical language ! what fine and piercing 
 sense of the beauties of nature, down to the minutest and most evanes 
 cent things ! He walks forth in the fields and forests, and not a green 
 or rosy tint, not a flower or herb or tree, not a strange or familiar plant, 
 escapes his vigilant glance. The naturalist is not keener in searching 
 out the science of nature than he in detecting all its poetical aspects, 
 effects, analogies, and contrasts. To him the landscape is a speaking 
 and teaching page. He sees its pregnant meaning and all its hidden 
 relations to the life of man " 
 
 Then, after praising his technical excellences, which are 
 put on a level with the lofty thought and sentiment, Professor 
 Felton added this : 
 
 " What a beautiful gift is this ! Here is a man whose life is cast 
 among the stern realities of the world, who has thrown himself into 
 
 * " The Fountain and Other Poems." New York : Wiley Putnam, 1842. 
 f " North American Review," October, 1842. 
 
rOETRY AND POLITICS. 
 
 4OI 
 
 the foremost line of what he deems the battle for human rights, who 
 wages a fierce war with political principles opposed to his own, who 
 deals with wrath and dips his pen daily in bitterness and hate, who 
 pours out from a mind, fertile in thought and glowing with passion, 
 torrents of invective, in language eloquent with the deepest convic 
 tions of the heart and keen as the blade of Damascus J yet able to 
 turn at will from this storm and strife and agony to the smiling fields 
 of poetry, where not a sound of the furious din with which he was 
 but just now surrounded strikes upon the ear; yet delighting to still 
 the tumult of daily conflict, and for a time to cherish those broad and 
 mighty sympathies which bind man to man and nation to nation in 
 one universal brotherhood of hearts. We gaze with wonder on the 
 change, and can scarce believe the poet and the politician to be the 
 same man. But so it is, and happy is it that the scorching stream of 
 lava passion which the central fires of politics pour over the fields of 
 life may be fringed by luxuriant verdure, gemmed with flowers of ex 
 quisite hues and richest fragrance ; and every man who loves the 
 muse, and longs to see the grace and charities of letters and refine 
 ment shedding their delights far and wide over the rugged scenes of 
 American life, may thank the poet-politician for teaching the often- 
 forgotten lesson that there is even in the republic something better 
 than the passions that fret their little hour in the columns of a news 
 paper, and then pass from the minds of men forever." 
 
 All this was meant to be, and was, complimentary, but it 
 shows how little Mr. Bryant was understood even by gentle 
 men of position and learning- who admired his abilities. Set 
 ting aside the exaggerations of Professor Felton s phrases in 
 regard to " torrents of invective," " bitterness and hate," and 
 " scorching streams of lava," it is evident that he did not see 
 that Mr. Bryant s political activity was animated by the same 
 broad and mighty sympathies that inspired his poetry. He 
 was, doubtless, deeply in earnest, and sometimes spoke of 
 those who perverted public trusts to ignoble ends with burn 
 ing indignation ; but the prevailing tone of his discussions was 
 calm, dispassionate, and dignified, and as impartial in their 
 judgments as those of a man who adopts a party can be. The 
 
 TOL. I. 27 
 
402 
 
 NEW POEMS. 
 
 general truth of those judgments was amply vindicated by 
 the progress of time. 
 
 No one was more keenly aware than Mr. Bryant himself of 
 the incongruity of his daily occupation with his finer faculty ; 
 and we have seen, by his letters, how he endeavored to get 
 away front it ; but he was by use and wont accustomed to the 
 fetters, and he found in his editorial life many compensations. 
 He had been taught from his youth up that every citizen is 
 bound to interest himself in public affairs, and the interest he 
 took, he had reason to believe, was of great and lasting benefit 
 to the community.* Not only had he raised the character of 
 the newspaper press, but he had by its agency reformed many 
 abuses, and prevented others. On one great evil that of sla 
 very his voice was a voice of power all over the land. Letters 
 came to him from good men and women, in every part of the 
 country, testifying their approval of his course ; and among 
 these he valued none more highly than those of Dr. Channing, 
 who frequently, by spoken messages or by writing,! en 
 couraged his efforts. Mr. Bryant had enjoyed few opportuni 
 ties of personal intercourse with the great moralist ; he made 
 his acquaintance, in 1821, in Boston, saw him several times 
 afterward, and always called upon him when he visited New 
 
 * To a friend, who adverted to this subject once, Mr. Bryant smilingly recalled 
 that fine passage of Milton; " It is manifest with what small willingness I endure," 
 " to leave calm and pleasing solitariness, to embark upon a troubled sea of noises 
 and harsh disputes ; put from beholding the bright countenance of Truth, in the quiet 
 of delightful studies ; but, were it the meanest underservice, if God by his secretary, 
 conscience, enjoin it, it were sad for me if I should draw back." 
 
 f I remember reading these letters, but they are not now recoverable. One of them 
 related to Mr. Bryant s habit of excluding reports of certain crimes from his journal. 
 In the beginning of his editorship he refused to publish any of the details of these 
 crimes, thinking that the tendency of it was to corrupt the public mind ; but, at a 
 later day, he took another view of the morality of the case, arguing that the best way 
 of convincing society of the need of reform was to let it know of the hideous ulcers 
 that were generated in its bosom. I do not think that he would ever have justified 
 the realism, in which certain French romancers have since indulged, although he had 
 strong faith in publicity as a means of cleansing polluted nooks. Let in the light, he 
 used to say, if you would drive away the bats, and owls, and other obscene birds. 
 
PR. U\ E. CH ANN ING. 
 
 403 
 
 York. For Channing s abilities and character he cherished 
 the highest admiration; often defended him in the journal, 
 and, when he died (October, 1842), deplored his loss as a great 
 public bereavement. A heart-felt notice of his career con 
 cluded thus : 
 
 "... It is not, however, the theological opinions of Dr. Channing 
 that we have at present to consider; our concern is principally with 
 his character as a political moralist, in which he has left behind him a 
 reputation that will not die while our language exists. In most of the 
 eloquent writings which he has given to the world within the last fif 
 teen years, his aim has been to recall the practice of government and 
 legislation to the strictest conformity with the highest standard of 
 right ; to banish from it whatever was inconsistent with justice, benevo 
 lence, and the most reverential regard for the natural equality of the 
 human race. It was in 1828, we think, that his essay on the American 
 Union appeared in an eastern periodical. In that essay he pointed 
 out, with great clearness, the true objects of government, and in par 
 ticular of the American government, insisting strongly upon a rigor 
 ous simplicity of legislation, and tracing a multitude of abuses to a 
 departure from that great and essential principle. Much of the lan 
 guage of that essay has since been familiar to those who are not aware 
 of the source from which it has been derived, and many of its views 
 have become incorporated with the public opinion of the day. Since 
 that time he has published tract after tract upon public questions 
 and public measures, all of them having in view the same great object 
 of bringing the national policy into a more perfect agreement with the 
 principles of benevolence and justice, and all of them instinct with a 
 fervid eloquence which seemed to grow more and more earnest and 
 intense with every successive publication. In several of them the 
 question of American slavery was discussed discussed with the per 
 fect freedom of one who poured out his thoughts without fear or re 
 serve, yet with a moderation and fairness which those who differed 
 with him did not always appreciate. It may be that, in his desire to 
 reach a great object, he did not always sufficiently estimate the prac 
 tical difficulties which were to be surmounted, but it were better to 
 err on that side than to abate anything of an essential principle. He 
 never belonged to any of the antislavery associations, and often re- 
 
404 
 
 NEW POEMS. 
 
 buked the Abolitionists for their ferocity, intolerance, and party spirit, 
 while he vindicated their right to the most perfect liberty of discus 
 sion, and agreed with them in maintaining the right of all men to per 
 sonal freedom. 
 
 " The eloquence of Dr. Channing s writings is of a peculiar and 
 original caste. It is fluent, clear and impassioned, enchaining, and 
 persuading the reader with all the power of the finest-spoken elo 
 quence. It is remarkably unadorned with figures, illustrations, and 
 comparisons; it is bare of those ornaments which make what is some 
 times called fine writing, and yet it is as far as can be imagined from 
 dry, jejune, and apothegmatic. Truths are stated, and reasonings are 
 urged in the most lucid and choice phrases of the language, and with 
 the most harmonious collocation of words ; to every idea the fullest 
 development is given, and view after view of the same thought is pre 
 sented to the mind, until the mind becomes familiar with all its as 
 pects, and filled with the impression that it is fitted to produce. So 
 admirable is his use of language that phraseology, which, when ana 
 lyzed, seems to have no character but that of simple propriety, has in 
 his hands a poetic effect, and an irresistible power of kindling emo 
 tion in the reader."* 
 
 A few days after the death of Charming, when the Uni 
 tarians of New York held a meeting in the Church of the 
 Messiah, to commemorate the life and character of their great 
 chief, Mr. Bryant contributed the hymn which was sung on 
 the occasion : 
 
 " While yet the harvest-fields are white, 
 
 And few the toiling reapers stand, 
 Called from his task, before the night 
 We miss the mightiest of the band." 
 
 * " Evening Post," October 5, 1842. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND. 
 
 A POLITICAL EMI .AKRASSMKXT. 
 A. D. 1843, 1844. 
 
 IT was an evidence of growing change in public opinion 
 that the " Evening Post " was increasing in circulation. The 
 merchants had abandoned it because of its financial opin 
 ions,* and the " dough-faces " f denounced it for its outspo 
 ken antislavery sentiments ; yet, instead of sinking under the 
 adverse gales, it was spreading a broader canvas to the wind,:f 
 and meeting the angry seas with a more contemptuous bold 
 ness. Although it refused to fall in with what was deemed the 
 patriotic view of the Right of Visitation and Search asserted 
 by England and the other powers in the quintuple treaty for 
 the suppression of the slave-trade ; although it condemned the 
 shameless treatment of Adams by the House of Representa 
 tives for his indomitable defence of the freedom of debate, and 
 of Geddings for his manly vindication of the freedom of the 
 high seas, it found itself actually getting into wider favor. The 
 calmer judgment of the North had been awakened ; men began 
 to ask themselves if the constitutional convictions of Northern 
 constituents were to be held only by the consent of slave barons 
 and slave bailiffs. Northern sentiment was, moreover, revolted 
 by the increasing severity of slave-holding laws, made under 
 
 * At one time it was so low that its publishers were obliged to borrow money of 
 private friends to pay its current exptr 
 
 f A name given to the timid and pliant adherents of party, who allowed their 
 opinions to be kneaded into shape by the pro-slavery leaders. 
 
 } It was greatly enlarged in size. 
 
 In the Creole case. 
 
4 o6 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 a pretence of resisting the aggressions of abolitionism. Manu 
 missions by will or bequest were forbidden in many South 
 ern States ; free negroes might be sold into slavery for the 
 slightest offences, and the penalties against attempted revolts 
 were multiplied and aggravated. Is such the system, it was 
 asked, that we are to uphold or connive at ? Even Northern 
 governors were emboldened by the growth of the free senti 
 ment to refuse the surrender of fugitive slaves ; and Northern 
 Legislatures demanded the repeal of the gag-law of Congress 
 (the 2oth Rule), which shut out antislavery petitions. 
 
 Mr. Bryant rejoiced in this return of prosperity, not only - 
 as a sign of reviving confidence in the principles of his 
 journal, but privately also, as it enabled him to gratify a hope 
 which he had long nourished of getting a home in the coun 
 try. Writing to his brother John (February 5, 1843), ne says : 
 " Congratulate me ! there is a probability of my becoming a 
 landholder in New York ! I have made a bargain for about 
 forty acres of solid earth at Hempstead Harbor, on the north 
 side of Long Island. There, when I get money enough, I 
 mean to build a house." Meanwhile, he thought it no waste 
 of these expected means to make a brief visit to the Southern 
 country, where he had never yet been. Some time before, his 
 friend Simms, of Charleston, had invited him thither, present 
 ing, perhaps, the most tempting allurement that could be 
 offered him the picture of a semi-tropical spring. " We 
 have some refreshing novelties at that season," wrote Mr. 
 Simms, " which will bring you singular renovation and delight 
 after a long winter of cold. Our country lies too level for 
 much that is imposing in scenery, but the delicate varieties of 
 forest green, the richness of the woods, their deep and early 
 bloom, and the fragrance with which they fill the atmosphere, 
 will awaken you to a more encouraging memory of youthful 
 hopes and dreams than any contemplation of the old, familiar 
 objects. There are no irregularities of rock and valley such 
 as your native hills everywhere present, but mystery clothes 
 the dense and tangled forests that lie sleeping around us. 
 
A VISIT TO THE SOUTH. 
 
 407 
 
 You will see the brown deer emerging from the thickets, and 
 fancy in the flitting of some sudden shadow that the red Indian 
 is still taking his rounds in the groves which hide the bones of 
 his family." 
 
 In March, 1843, ^ r - Bryant went South. Some of his 
 acquaintances were doubtful of his reception there, in the 
 agitated state of public feeling, with his known and pro 
 nounced opinions on the subject of slavery, but they knew 
 little of the openness and warmth of Southern hospitality, 
 lie went by way of Washington, where he had not been for 
 twelve years, and then to Richmond, which he greatly ad 
 mired, and afterward to Charleston, where he hoped to get an 
 opportunity to inspect the cotton plantations and the workings 
 of slavery in the seat of its power. He spent about a month 
 among the planters, hearing their defences of " the institution," 
 and witnessing the festivals and frolics of the negroes, when he 
 passed over into Florida to breathe the fragrance of the orange- 
 blossoms and enjoy the delights of summer, while his own 
 home had scarcely yet escaped from the snows. The terri 
 ble Indian war being over, travelling was everywhere unob 
 structed and without danger.* The splendor and luxuriance of 
 the vegetation, the abundance and variety of the flowers, the 
 grassy lakes of the everglades, the time-stained towns, which 
 seemed as if, like the chapel of Loretto, they had travelled from 
 an older continent, and the languages spoken, mainly those of 
 Minorca or Spain transplanted him into a new world. Every 
 day brought some surprise to the eyes ; and the people he en 
 countered seemed to be unable to do enough to render his 
 residence pleasurablc.f Throughout the South, instead of 
 the coldness and repulsion which had been predicted for him, 
 he met only with kindliest greetings. " Our visit to the South," 
 he wrote to Mr. Dana after his return, May 26th, " was ex 
 tremely agreeable. New modes of life and a new climate 
 could not fail to make it interesting, and the frank, courteous, 
 
 * See " Sketches of Travel," vol. ii. \ Ibid. 
 
4 o8 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 hospitable manner of the Southerners made it pleasant. What 
 ever may be the comparison in other respects, the South cer 
 tainly has the advantage over us in point of manners." In the 
 account of his journey written for his newspaper, Mr. Bryant 
 indulged in no criticisms of slavery. He regarded himself as 
 the guest of the kind people who had opened their houses 
 for his entertainment and comfort, and his sense of propriety 
 would not allow him to return their good-will with unfriendly 
 disclosures of what he had seen or heard. He was not, how 
 ever, as we shall soon see, beguiled by these generous atten 
 tions out of his settled judgments on the real character of 
 slavery. 
 
 Soon after his return, Mr. Bryant completed the purchase 
 he had bargained for on Long Island. It was near a little village 
 afterward called Roslyn, overlooking an estuary of the Sound 
 such a nook, indeed, as a poet might well choose, both for 
 its shady seclusion and its beautiful prospects ; embowered 
 in woods that covered a row of gentle hills, and catching 
 glimpses of a vast expanse of water, enlivened in the distance 
 by the sails of a metropolitan commerce. The estate was at 
 first confined to a few acres only, on which he proposed erect 
 ing a house according to his own taste ; but he was soon en 
 amored of a house already erected on it, and the next year 
 made it his own. It was an old-fashioned mansion, built by a 
 plain Quaker in 1787, containing many spacious rooms, sur 
 rounded by shrubberies and grand trees, and communicating 
 by a shelving lawn with one of the prettiest of small fresh 
 water lakes. It promised him not only a snug retirement, but 
 a retreat for the cultivation and nourishment of his friendships. 
 Curiously enough, he began to feel more and more the need of 
 intimate associations. The decided individuality of his charac 
 ter and the untoward circumstances of his early life had kept 
 him from mingling much with men ; but he appears to have felt 
 the isolation. Writing to Mr. Dana, who was still one of his 
 very few correspondents, he indulges in a lament on this 
 score : 
 
A COUNTRY 7/tU//:. 
 
 409 
 
 "You speak of the solitude in which you find yourself since All- 
 ston is gone.* Dr. Johnson said that we must keep our friendships 
 in repair; but there are some losses in friendships which can never be 
 made up. For my part, it has been my fate to live so long among 
 people with whom I have what Charles Lamb calls imperfect sympa 
 thies, that I have learned to be content with those respects in which 
 we can understand each other. I have never, however, had such an 
 associate as Allston. ... At last, I have house and lands on Long 
 Island a little place in a most healthful neighborhood, just upon the 
 sea-water a long inlet of the Sound overlooked by woody hills, and 
 near a village skirting several clear sheets of fresh water, fed by abun 
 dant springs which gush from the earth at the head of the valley. I 
 cannot come to you at Cape Ann, but you can come to me at Hemp- 
 stead Harbor, as you must. You shall have fruits of all kinds in their 
 seasons ; and sea-bathing, if you like it. I found it of great benefit to 
 me last summer ; but the water, I am sorry to say, is as still as a mill- 
 pond ; and you shall sleep a mornings till the sun is half-way on his 
 journey to noon." 
 
 In the interim, while preparing for his change of domicile, 
 he remembered that he was still a stranger to the northern parts 
 of his own New England, in one of the remotest hamlets of 
 which, moreover, lived a solitary relative. He passed two or 
 three weeks of July, accordingly, on the borders of Lake Cham- 
 plain, which for picturesque grandeur have, perhaps, few supe 
 riors on this continent. The spurs of the mountains from 
 which the State of Vermont is named are outlying rivals of 
 the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and possess many of 
 the same characteristics : vast silvery lakes reposing in the 
 bosom of wooded hills, and large fertile valleys running up to 
 the wildest of rocky passes on the heights. It was in the 
 depths of one of these valleys that he sought out the home - .1 
 an aunt, of whom he gives this account : 
 
 "If I were permitted to draw the veil of private life, I would 
 briefly give you the singular, and to me most interesting, history of 
 
 * He died July 8, 1843. 
 
4 IO A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in 
 their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and 
 how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has 
 subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for forty years, during which 
 they have shared each other s occupations and pleasures and works of 
 charity while in health, and watched over each other tenderly in sick 
 ness ; for sickness has made long and frequent visits to their dwelling. 
 I could tell you how they slept on the same pillow and had a common 
 purse, and adopted each other s relations, and how one of them, more 
 enterprising and spirited than the other, might be said to represent 
 the male head of the family, and took upon herself their transactions 
 with the world without, until at length her health failed, and she was 
 tended by her gentle companion, as a fond wife attends her invalid 
 husband. I would tell you of their dwelling, encircled with roses, 
 which now, in the days of their broken health, bloom wild without 
 their tendance ; and I would speak of the friendly attentions which 
 their neighbors, people of kind hearts and simple manners, seem to 
 take pleasure in bestowing upon them ; but I have already said more 
 than I fear they will forgive me for if this should ever meet their 
 eyes, and I must leave the subject." 
 
 These ladies, whose deaths long- since removed the re 
 straints which Mr. Bryant felt, were Miss Charity Bryant, his 
 father s youngest sister, and a Miss Sylvia Drake. Meeting 
 one another at Bridgewater when they were about twenty 
 years of age each, and forming the attachment spoken of in 
 the extract, they removed to Waybridge, where they set up 
 the romantic mode of life which was continued for more than 
 fifty years. Miss Charity died at the age of seventy-three, and 
 the other did not long survive her loss. 
 
 The years i843- 44 were among the most important in our 
 political annals, because they were those in which the con 
 science of the North was made to feel the true character of 
 slavery more vividly than ever before. The immediate cause 
 of this awakening was the series of intrigues by which the 
 province of Texas was wrested from the dominion of Mexico. 
 An invasion of it by emigrants from the United States was af- 
 
 
 
THE TEXAS QUESTION. 
 
 tenvard followed by a struck- for independence, which, when 
 independence was achieved through the assistance of sympa 
 thizers in the United States, led to a project for its admission 
 into the Union. In every one of these steps slavery was the 
 leading motive. Although at the outset it was ostensibly in 
 possession of the field, controlling all departments of the Gov 
 ernment, and mastering both the great political parties, yet, 
 as it was a battle against the moral sense of mankind, it. could 
 never feel itself wholly secure. The supremacy of the slave 
 holders was threatened by the rapid progress of the North in 
 population and wealth. This progress was only to be counter 
 balanced and overcome by the conquest of new regions in 
 which slavery could be introduced. Texas comprised a ter 
 ritory equal to that of six of the larger States, and, once in the 
 grasp of the slave-holders, might be used as a means of po 
 litical control for the future. The scheme was a stupendous 
 one, and it was carried out with equal cunning, fearlessness, 
 and energy. 
 
 Mr. Bryant had opposed it from its very inception, many 
 years before ; he continued his hostility at every new develop 
 ment of the plot, and, in fact, became so active and prominent 
 in his antagonism that his efforts require to be described in 
 more detail than we shall be able to give to other parts of 
 his political career. 
 
 He was not opposed to annexation in itself : on the con 
 trary, his confidence in the federative system was so strong 
 that he believed in the practicability of its indefinite exten 
 sion ; but that extension, to be entirely safe, required some 
 sort of assimilation or affinity between the parts to be feder 
 ated. The Democratic party was, he thought, right in its 
 general adherence to the gradual absorption by the republic 
 of neighboring peoples, but it was wrong in favoring that ab 
 sorption at the expense of a great war, of an enormous debt, 
 and of a consolidation of slavery. How clearly he saw tl it- 
 evils of the scheme may be illustrated by one or two extracts 
 from his paper : 
 
412 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 " THE ANNEXATION SCHEME. If there was no other objection to 
 the scheme for annexing Texas to the territory of the United States, 
 the unprecedented haste with which it has been urged upon the action 
 of the Senate should be reason enough for its rejection. It is admitted 
 on all sides that a measure of greater importance, either for good or 
 evil, has seldom claimed the attention of the country. Its very im 
 portance, then, Demanded that it should be dispassionately considered 
 before any decided step was taken. 
 
 " The annexation of Texas would change essentially the political 
 constitution of two separate nations. It would convert Texas itself 
 from an independent power, with a distinct and thoroughly organized 
 government, into the mere province of another nation, with a derived 
 and secondary government only, besides modifying in many ways its 
 commercial relations with the world. And as to the United States, it 
 would introduce a new member into the confederacy, materially affect 
 ing the present rights and relations of the older members, and prob 
 ably controlling their federal legislation for the future. 
 
 " Now, it is obvious to our minds that changes so important should 
 not be made without the deliberate sanction and consent of the people 
 of both the nations which are interested. Several years have passed 
 since the formal assent of the Texans was given to the project of an 
 nexation to the United States. This assent, in the first place, was 
 expressed through the Legislature of the nation, and not by an organic 
 act, as the case seemed to require, and it has not since been confirmed. 
 Whether the majority of the people are still in favor of the project, we 
 are left to infer from the silence, rather than the decided action, of 
 their authorities. But this is a question of little practical importance. 
 
 " The real issue to be decided is, whether the people of the United 
 States, whose rights are deeply involved, whose cherished sentiments 
 are likely to be violated, whose civil liberty and peace are endangered, 
 have been properly consulted in this matter. Has it not been sprung 
 upon them with the suddenness of surprise ? Have they had the time 
 to investigate the bearings of the question, or to ascertain the precise 
 nature of that new relation which they are to be forced to assume ? 
 Are they not called upon to enter into vast and momentous responsi 
 bilities, without being allowed the time which is requisite to weigh and 
 understand the tendencies of their untried position ? Surely, in an 
 affair of such wide-reaching influence, there is needed all the wisdom 
 
ANNEXATION OPPOSED. 413 
 
 and prudence which the collective intellect of the nation could bring 
 to bear upon the determination of it. 
 
 are the more surprised that the haste which has marked these 
 proceedings should have come from persons professing to be friendly 
 to the rights of the States. If we understand the doctrine of State 
 rights, it is that the different States are only members of a general 
 partnership, and not the elements of a consolidated government. 
 According to this theory, it is manifest, certainly, that no new partner 
 should be admitted into the firm until the older members had been 
 regularly consulted."* 
 
 As the treaty for the annexation of Texas was rejected by 
 the Senate, it was forced into popular controversy at the next 
 ensuing presidential election. Mr. Van Buren, the choice of 
 the Northern Democrats, because he had taken ground against 
 the project, was, notwithstanding his habitual deference to the 
 opinions of the South, defeated of a nomination in the National 
 Democratic Convention by Southern intrigues. An old rule, 
 requiring a two-thirds majority to effect a nomination, was re 
 vived, and, in consequence, Mr. Polk, a comparatively unknown 
 man, but a slave-holder, was nominated in Mr. Van Buren s 
 stead. The New York delegation opposed the proceedings 
 throughout, with great ability and earnestness, but it was both 
 out-generaled and out-voted. Mr. Bryant was inclined, for a 
 time, to withhold his approval of the nomination. But what 
 was he to do ? It was impossible for him to ally himself with 
 the whig opposition, whose fundamental measures of policy 
 he had always been foremost in denouncing; and yet his own 
 party was on the eve of surrendering itself into the hands of 
 leaders whom he depicted in this wise : 
 
 " The annexation of Texas means nothing more nor less than the 
 extension and perpetuation of slavery at the risk of war, and witli war 
 if it cannot be got without. It is the pure Southern Upshur-Tyler 
 scheme. It is the pill without the gilding, the dose without the sugar. 
 
 * " Evening Port," May 6, 1844. 
 
414 
 
 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 It is plain enough to see that, if this question had been committed at 
 the outset to men of mind large enough to take in all the interests of 
 this great nation, Mexico would have been satisfied, the question of 
 slavery avoided, and Texas annexed with honor and satisfaction to 
 the whole people. But, for our shame and misfortune, the matter fell 
 into the hands of a few fanatics, as crazy on the subject of domestic 
 institutions as the maddest Abolitionists in the Union men who be 
 lieve, or affect to believe, that the summum bonum of Republican free 
 dom lies in the possessing of a few hundred slaves and by these 
 slave-holding fanatics was the question of Texas, a great question of 
 extension of empire, dwarfed into one of enlarging the influence of 
 that pernicious institution which defaces and disgraces our otherwise 
 glorious country. 
 
 " This abortion, rejected with contempt and disgust by the whole 
 country, a few Northern Democrats are swaddling and nursing and 
 trying to coax into life. Now, we say it with mere reference to the 
 interests of the party interests which no wise person can overlook 
 that any Northern Democrat who seeks to identify the party with the 
 extension of slavery, and to make that the rallying question, is only 
 fit for bedlam; and no greater political insanity can be imagined. 
 Slavery is an old, decrepit, worn-out, feudal institution. Shall the 
 young Democracy, in its heroic youth, stifle its ardent nature by so 
 unnatural an alliance ? Where slavery and slave representation exist 
 under the Constitution, let them exist. It is the bargain, it is the 
 bond. But to extend these evils to another portion of the Western 
 hemisphere, and, above all, to make this the rallying cry of the party, 
 is evidently suicidal." 
 
 A choice of evils was thrust upon Mr. Bryant, but a choice 
 of extreme perplexity and embarrassment. In the end he con 
 cluded that it would be more practicable to guide his own 
 party into a better direction than it would be easy to recon 
 cile his life-long aims to a junction with his adversaries. He 
 was, of course, taunted with inconsistency ; but he justified his 
 position in this way, which, at this time, will seem more inge 
 nious than satisfactory : 
 
 " In supporting Mr. Polk we resist the pernicious project of a 
 National Bank, which will most certainly be carried into effect if the 
 
THE DEMOCRATS SUPPORTED, 
 
 Whigs obtain the ascendency in the Government. In supporting Mr. 
 Polk we withstand the project of distributing the proceeds of the 
 public lands a most corrupting and demoralizing project in its effect, 
 to say nothing of the constitutional objections to which it is exposed. 
 In supporting Mr. Polk we take the only method of procuring a 
 repeal of the present unjust tariff, though the Whigs declare their de 
 termination of maintaining it as it is, with all its oppressions and 
 abominations. In supporting Mr. Polk we support the scheme of a 
 treasury independent of banks and corporations, which all experience 
 has shown to be a measure of vital importance. In an election involv 
 ing such great issues, no man, no public press, taking the views of 
 them which we take, can with a safe conscience remain neutral, and 
 allow a national bank to be built up, the proceeds of the public lands 
 to be distributed among the States and scrambled for by speculators 
 and jobbers, and an iniquitous tariff, which crushes American indus 
 try, to remain in force, without using his best exertions to defeat the 
 party which comes forward with all these projects of mischief. 
 
 "But, it is said, do you regard the question of the annexation of 
 Texas as of no importance ? and will you support a candidate with 
 whom you disagree on that question ? We certainly consider the 
 Texas question as one of great moment ; but, if those who are un 
 friendly to immediate and unconditional annexation do their duty, we 
 need fear no danger from that quarter. The imminence of the peril 
 is already over, and, if we stand to the ground we have taken, every 
 hour diminishes it. There are enemies to the annexation scheme in 
 Texas itself, among whom we believe we may count its president 
 (Sam Houston) ; there are enemies to it in the South, even in South 
 Carolina, and the factitious zeal which has been awakened in its favor 
 elsewhere is already beginning to grow cool. We have only to act 
 conscientiously in this matter, to meet the question frankly whenever 
 it comes up, cause it to be well understood that we submit to no 
 attempt to force the annexation upon us as a party measure, and to 
 wait for the honest and unprejudiced formation of public opinion, 
 and the day of this scheme, we are fully assured, will soon be over. . 
 The establishment of a national bank and the consummation of the 
 other mischiefs contemplated by the Whigs are dangers of another 
 kind. If the Whigs succeed in the approaching election, these mis 
 chiefs will certainly be inflicted. 
 
4 i 6 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 " These considerations left us no alternative, when the subject first 
 presented itself to our minds, but the support of the Democratic nomi 
 nations. We are not in the habit of taking our ground lightly in 
 such cases, nor can we be easily driven from it."* 
 
 A great many of the New York Democrats coincided with 
 Mr. Bryant in this view. They were unwilling to abandon 
 their own party for another, to no one of whose principles 
 they could assent; and yet they were equally unwilling to 
 give countenance to their own party in the false attitude it 
 had been led to assume. They endeavored to extricate them 
 selves from the difficulty by organizing a movement within 
 the party to resist its fatal error. In order to ascertain how 
 far this was practicable, Mr. Bryant, in connection with six 
 of his friends, issued a private circular to such persons as 
 they supposed might be in agreement with them, soliciting in 
 formation, and proposing, in certain events, a concerted mode 
 of action. 
 
 " [Confidential] 
 
 u SIR : You will doubtless agree with us that the late Baltimore 
 Convention placed the Democratic party of the North in a position of 
 great difficulty. We are constantly reminded that it rejected Mr. Van 
 Buren and nominated Mr. Polk, for reasons connected with the im 
 mediate annexation of Texas reasons which had no relation to the 
 principles of the party. Nor was that all. The Convention went be 
 yond the authority delegated to its members, and adopted a resolution 
 on the subject of Texas (a subject not before the country when they 
 were elected ; upon which, therefore, they were not instructed) which 
 seeks to interpolate into the party code a new doctrine hitherto un 
 known among us at war with some of our established principles, and 
 abhorrent to the opinions and feelings of a great majority of Northern 
 freemen. In this position, what were the party at the North to do ? 
 Was it to reject the nominations and abandon the contest? or should 
 it support the nominations, rejecting the untenable doctrines inter 
 polated at the Convention, and taking care that the support should be 
 
 * " Evening Post," July 26th. 
 
THE SECRET CIRCULAR. 417 
 
 accompanied with such an expression of their opinion as to prevent 
 its being misinterpreted ? The latter alternative has been preferred, 
 and we think wisely; for we conceive that a proper expression of 
 their opinions will save their votes from misconstruction ; and that 
 proper efforts will secure the nomination of such members of Con 
 gress as will reject the unwarrantable scheme now pressed upon the 
 country. 
 
 " With these views, assuming that you feel on this subject as we 
 do, we have been desired to address you, and to invite the co-opera 
 tion of yourself and other friends throughout the State : 
 
 " i. In the publication of a Joint Letter, declaring our purpose to 
 support the nominations, rejecting the resolutions respecting Texas. 
 
 " 2. In promoting and supporting at the next election the nomina 
 tion for Congress of such persons as concur in these opinions. 
 
 " If your views in this matter coincide with ours, please write to 
 some one of us, and a draft of the proposed letter will be forwarded 
 for examination." 
 
 This circular was signed by William C. Bryant, George P. 
 Barker, John W. Edmonds, David Dudley Field, Theodore 
 Sedgwick, Thomas W. Tucker, and Isaac Townscnd. Of 
 course, when it found its way into print, it put the mere party- 
 men into a rage. They characterized the act " as treason foul 
 Abolition treason under the mask of philanthropy, federalism 
 under the guise of Democracy, falsehood under the covering 
 of truth," and they had no names for its authors more mild 
 than contemptible, wily, insidious, black-hearted plotters of 
 unimaginable mischief. 
 
 In reply to these denunciations, Mr. Bryant said : 
 
 " The confidential circular, which has made so much noise, was 
 only a preliminary to an immediate public declaration of opinion. It 
 was written to ascertain the opinion of the individuals to whom it was 
 addressed. Such of them as were favorable to the views expressed in 
 the circular were, as will be seen on reading it, to be invited to give 
 their signatures in a public declaration of the same views, to be pub 
 lished as soon as possible. Of course, an inquiry in regard to the 
 opinions of individuals must be private. Such things are not pub- 
 
 TOL. I. 23 
 
A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 lished in the newspapers. But, on the other hand, no part of the act 
 ual proceedings in resistance of the attempt to force the annexation 
 scheme down the throats of the Democracy was to be secret, or could 
 in its nature be secret. Their effect will be to make the Texas ques 
 tion an open question in the Democratic party of this State, and pre 
 sent to those who are unfriendly to annexation a ground on which 
 they can conscientiously vote for the Democratic nominations." 
 
 The proposed Joint Letter appeared in due time, and it is 
 here given in full, with the introduction of the " Evening Post " 
 (August 20, 1844), as an interesting part of the history of the 
 time: 
 
 " We publish to-day, as we promised, the Joint Letter which was to 
 have been sent to the persons answering the circular. By its posi 
 tions we are willing to abide. They have been carefully consid 
 ered. Taken with deliberate judgment, they will not be hastily 
 abandoned. 
 
 " We ask the Democratic electors of this State to read this letter. 
 We believe it contains unanswerable truth, and points out the only 
 course consistent with their integrity as Democrats and citizens. We 
 quarrel not with those who differ from us. They may be good men 
 and sincere Democrats. We give our own views with the same free 
 dom we yield to them. But, so far as we are concerned, or our coun 
 sel can have any influence, we advise our fellow-Democrats to support 
 the Baltimore nominations with all fidelity, with an energy and ear 
 nestness that know no rest, and at the same time set their faces like 
 flint against the * reannexation of Texas at the earliest practicable 
 period, or the mixing of that question with the struggles of party. 
 
 " To the Democratic-Republican Electors of the State of New York : 
 
 " FELLOW-CITIZENS : The present circumstances of the Democratic 
 party induce us to address you. It has been placed by the late Balti 
 more Convention in a position of difficulty, from which nothing can 
 extricate it but prudence, firmness, and a recurrence to its original 
 principles. 
 
 " The Convention rejected Mr. Van Buren, to whose nomination 
 a great majority had been pledged, and nominated Mr. Polk, for rea 
 sons connected with the immediate annexation of Texas, and then 
 
,/ VIGOROUS PROTEST. 419 
 
 passed a resolution, the purpose of which was to pledge the whole 
 party to the annexation at the earliest practicable period. This signifies 
 neither more nor less than the annexation as soon as it can receive 
 the forms of law, and pays no regard to our relations with other na 
 tions, to the debts of Texas, or to its slave institutions. 
 
 "In this position, ought the Democratic party at the North to 
 reject the nominations and abandon the contest, or support them, re 
 jecting the resolution respecting Texas, and taking measures to coun 
 teract its tendency ? The latter alternative has been wisely preferred. 
 But it ought not to be done silently. On the contrary, there is every 
 reason that upon a subject of such magnitude, where apparent ac 
 quiescence might be drawn into precedent, the voice of the whole 
 party should be made known. That we may do our part toward 
 this object, we have united in this address, not merely to make 
 known our own views, but to ask the co-operation of our fellow- 
 electors in measures to counteract the tendency toward immediate 
 annexation. 
 
 " We protest against the resolution, because 
 
 " It was an unauthorized act of the Convention. The members 
 had received from their constituents no instructions upon the subject. 
 They were elected before the question had been presented to the 
 country. They were elected for a definite and limited purpose. If 
 they had authority to pass any resolutions, they had none to go fur 
 ther than to reiterate the old-established, well-known principles of 
 the party. They were elected to select candidates for office, not to 
 promulge new creeds or annex provinces. 
 
 " But, if the members of the Convention had had the authority of 
 a majority of their constituents for its resolution, it would not have 
 bound the minority, because it was not an exposition of any principle 
 of the party, or of any measure which those principles require. 
 
 " The authority of party is as limited as its purpose. Men having 
 the same views of the principles of their government unite for the 
 purpose of putting those principles into practice. That union is a 
 party. It is founded on certain general principles, and is limited 
 to them. To adhere to them, and to concur in such measures as 
 they require, is the whole duty of party men. In other respects, 
 each may act and vote as he judges right, without complaint from his 
 associates. 
 
420 
 
 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 " The Democratic party has been in existence from the foundation 
 of the Constitution. Its principles are as old as the Government, and 
 have since been constantly repeated. They are * equality and free 
 dom ; equal rights to all ; no distinction of persons ; no special privi 
 leges, and no restraint of the individual, except so far as may be nec 
 essary to protect the rights of others. We regard every man as a 
 brother, having equal rights with ourselves. We are for the strictest 
 construction of all grants of power, and the strictest accountability of 
 and those only, which these principles require. So far, we hold our 
 selves bound as party men but no farther. 
 
 " The greatest danger to our institutions arises from the tendency 
 of party to engross every public question. This comes of the selfish 
 ness of mere partisans, who seek to turn everything to their own ends. 
 We see no more reason for submitting all our actions to its control 
 than to the control of fashion or sects. 
 
 " When, therefore, a convention of party men seek to pledge the 
 party to a measure not within these limits, we look upon the act as 
 of no greater force than the act of any other equal number of equally 
 respectable persons. As an opinion, we adopt or reject it as we think 
 it sound or otherwise ; as authority, we disregard it. 
 
 "For these reasons, though firmly attached to the Democratic 
 party, we hold ourselves not bound as party men by the resolutions 
 of the Convention. The resolution itself we consider unwise and 
 unjust. We condemn it, not because we are opposed to the extension 
 of our territory, or the admission into our Union of new communities 
 not that we would not resist the interference of any European 
 power in the affairs of the New World a policy to which this whole 
 people is devoted but because 
 
 " i. We have a treaty with Mexico, binding us to * inviolable peace 
 and sincere friendship. Texas is now engaged in war with Mexico, 
 and taking her, we take that with her, breaking our pledge of invio 
 lable peace. It is not an act of sincere friendship to take to our 
 selves a country which once belonged to her, which she has never 
 surrendered, and is now struggling to regain. Our recognition of the 
 independence of Texas admitted that her forces had actual possession 
 of the government of that country, but it admitted no more. It 
 neither admitted nor denied that Mexico had claims and rights in 
 respect to Texas. 
 
Till: REASONS FOR IT. 421 
 
 " 2. Texas has an enormous public debt, which she is unable t > 
 pay, the amount of which is unknown, and which must either 
 assumed by us, or left, as it now is, a dishonored claim upon an insol 
 vent State. In the latter case, we add another to the list, already too 
 
 ,<t, of insolvent or repudiating American States. In the former. 
 assume for the Union a debt not contracted by it or for it an act of 
 doubtful power and evil tendency. 
 
 "3. Texas is a slave country, and, if received with its institutions, 
 all magistrates and officers of what class soever. This is the Demo 
 cratic creed, and the whole of it. The measures of the party are those, 
 will claim admission into the Union with its slavery, its unequal rep 
 resentation, and its requisition upon the free States. We are not 
 Abolitionists, and have no sympathy with them. We are willing to 
 abide by the compromise of our fathers. We will not obliterate a line 
 of it. We will not stop short of it, but we will not go a step beyond 
 it. No threats, no reproaches, shall force us beyond it. We stand by 
 the Constitution of our country. But when it is proposed to extend 
 that Constitution and compromise to foreign countries, we take leave 
 to inquire what sort of countries they are, and by whom inhabited. 
 
 " It is said that the annexation of Texas will not increase the num 
 ber of slaves. If it were so, it would not remove our objection, for 
 the annexation would still increase our connection with slavery. Why 
 should we multiply our relations with it, even if the sum total remains 
 the same ? If we were proposed to bring under the American flag 
 all the slave communities in the world, would it overcome your re 
 pugnance to it to tell you that the number of slaves would not be 
 increased ? 
 
 "We are unwilling to give to any foreign slave-holding nation 
 those extraordinary and unequal privileges greater than our own, 
 which our forefathers gave to their brethren and companions in arms. 
 A citizen of Mississippi with five slaves has virtually as many votes 
 as four citizens of New York. If Texas ever comes into this Union, 
 no one of its citizens shall have, with our consent, more power than 
 a citizen of our own State. 
 
 " But they err who think that the annexation of Texas will not 
 increase slavery and the number of slaves. The annexation is pressed 
 upon us by a portion of the South as a new source of prosperity for 
 slave industry, and a new guarantee to their institutions. Do they 
 
422 A POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT. 
 
 not know their own interests better than we ? Political economy and 
 our own experience both teach us a different lesson. Slavery has 
 increased in Virginia and the Carolinas since the annexation of Lou 
 isiana. Slave breeding is always commensurate with slave markets. 
 Population expands with the means iof its subsistence and the de 
 mand for its industry. To increase the market and the value of 
 labor is to increase the population. No law of political economy is 
 more certain. 
 
 " For these reasons we are firmly and unalterably opposed to the 
 annexation of Texas, in any shape in which it has yet been offered to 
 the American people. But we cannot consent to see Whig candidates 
 elected, and Whig policy prevail in the general Government. Nor 
 shall that ever happen if any effort of ours can prevent it. The great 
 principles of our party were never more firmly rooted in the hearts of 
 a majority of the American people than at this moment, and, if the 
 election can be made to rest on them, we shall assuredly prevail. 
 How shall we separate the true issues from the false ? How to recon 
 cile the conflicting wishes and duties which the error of the Baltimore 
 Convention has created, is the question we have anxiously considered. 
 We see no means of doing so but to support the nominations made at 
 Baltimore, and, at the same time, promote the nomination of members 
 of Congress opposed to this annexation. The President can do noth 
 ing of himself if the two Houses are of a different opinion. To this 
 point, then, we invite your particular attention. You can, if you 
 choose, effectually counteract the tendency to annexation by electing 
 members of Congress opposed to it. You are about to elect thirty- 
 four members of the Lower House of Congress, and a State Legislature 
 that will elect one member of the Senate. If we might be allowed to 
 counsel you at this crisis, we would do so, and earnestly entreat you 
 not to falter in your support of the Baltimore nominations, but, at the 
 same time, to nominate for those elections no man who is committed 
 to this scheme this unwise, unjust, un-American scheme of adding 
 Texas to our dominions, without even a plausible pretext, with inde 
 cent haste, regardless of treaties and consequences, with its war, its 
 debt, its slave institutions, and their preponderating political power. 
 "July is, 1844." 
 
 This was an unsuccessful battle in its immediate effects. 
 It did not arrest the tendencies of the Democratic leaders. 
 
THE BATTLE LOST. 4 2 3 
 
 On the contrary, Mr. Calhoun, Secretary of State, acting in 
 conjunction with President Tyler, on the very last day ol 
 their tenure of office (March 3, 1845), procured authority, by a 
 joint resolution of Congress, to incorporate a foreign powrr 
 into the Union, without a single constitutional sanction, and 
 with the certain prospect of war. But the battle, though un 
 successful, was not fruitless. It aroused an opposition to slav 
 ery which was no longer confined to the moral convictions of 
 a few individuals, or of a small class. The contest passed into 
 national politics, where it became more and more dominant. 
 At the next presidential election the antagonists of slavery 
 were strong enough to make independent nominations, and, 
 within ten years thereafter, were able to rally to their side a 
 formidable array of intelligent and manly voters. / 
 
 END OF VOLUME FIRST. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPART//. 
 
 This book is 
 
 on the date to which ren 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 or 
 
 .Due end of $ . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 mi 75 
 
 WAY 1 1 
 
 LD21-35m-8, 72 
 (Q4189S10)476 A-32 
 
 (JD4E>t>>SJU;* <or> 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
 Berkeley 
 
 LD 21A-50m-9, 58 
 (6889slO)476B 
 

 
 216535