of human experience, exquisite taste, a powerful imagination, and a manly and genuine sincerity. He excels as an artist in portraying features that are most intensely suggestive, and in so preserving the natural relations of things described that their vitality strikes us where we are most susceptible and receptive. From all literary trickery of every sort he is utterly free. With his fervor and energy, he has a calm and majestic repose. In some of his more serious poems he shows a Miltonic grandeur, yet with no signs of effort. The accusation of poetic frigidity that was once in fashion against him was long ago abandoned as unjust. Those who feel deepest, and see down where flow the undercurrents of life, know full well that there is a divine heat in the poet's soul. But it does not produce bubbles, or fog, or roil, or sputter, or even glittering pyrotechnics. His has a solemn and sweet dignity which is never betrayed into rant or declamation. Every line is a jewel. The range of his topics is wide, and, though his original poems are not voluminous, yet he has treated just those themes that have the deepest significance to us, life and death, home and country, liberty and religion, while no poet has ever given more perfect delineations of nature in her varying moods.

His ethics are pure and elevating. In his narratives of life, his prophecies of liberty, his pictures of human disenthrallment and progress and aspiration, he shows a philosophic insight and comprehensiveness, a devout spirit, and a temper of genuine philanthropy. The inspirations of his poetry are, therefore, of the highest and

finest quality. In all he has written there is no line appealing to a base passion, not a suggestion that is indelicate, not a sentiment that can be used in the support of any evil or injustice. As pure as the snowflake, yet as warm as the tropic wind, is the spirit out of which is born his glorious song. Those who wish clearest visions, walk most reverently with nature, and who, in the sympathies of a tender and strong humanity, aspire most sincerely for virtue and freedom and brotherhood, never cease to find strength and refreshment in his noble strains. They come with an invigorating vitality, moving, consoling, and replenishing life in its soundless depths. We feel in "the great miracle that goes on around us "that infinite love is ever working and benignant. And so the earth and its companionships are more sacred, and our existence becomes a more expressive note in the high harmony of the universe.

As a man, Bryant presents whatever is cultivated, useful, and admirable in human character and life. To his splendid genius he joins the noblest virtues. Whatever the temptation, he has never abused his powers and opportunities for unworthy ends. No one can point out in his career an act of injustice, the betrayal of a trust, the advocacy of a doctrine or support of a candidate that his own selfish interests might be secured. He has devoted his long and laborious life to the highest culture, and to a beneficent service that has never swerved from its high aim. What is never to be ignored in the estimate of the man is the truth, honor, justice, philanthropy - the high Christian conscience—that he has carried into every field

of his endeavor, and which consecrates his renown.

He

has lived constant to his ideal. As Holmes says of

him :

How shall we thank him that in evil days
He faltered never, - nor for blame nor praise,
Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays ?
But as his boyhood was of manliest hue,
So to his youth, his manly years were true,

All dyed in rough purple through and through.

One might say that such a life has been singularly fortunate, but the word does not convey the correct idea of it. It is the result of the obedience to divine law, and is, therefore, a splendid example of manhood. Filling, as this life does, such a space in the affections of men, so grand in its simplicity, so rich in its fruitage, so manifold in its utilities, so harmonious in its symmetry, "like perfect music set to noble words," Bryant may well have to-day the reverent homage of a grateful generation.

-HORATIO N. POWERS, Lecture, November, 1874.

LIST OF EDITIONS OF BRYANT'S POEMS

The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times, 1808.

The Embargo, the Spanish Revolution and Other Poems, 1809. Poems, 1821.

Poems, 1832. (Also published in England.)

Poems, 1834.

Poems, 1836.

Poems, 1839.

The Fountain and Other Poems, 1842.

The White-Footed Deer and Other Poems, 1844.
Poems, 1847.

Poems, 1854. (Two volumes. Also published in England.)
Thirty Poems, 1864.

Poems. 1871.

Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant, 1876.

The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant, 1883. (Two volumes.)

Homer's Iliad, 1870.

(Translation.)

Homer's Odyssey, 1871. (Translation.)

LIST OF BIOGRAPHIES AND CRITICISMS

William Cullen Bryant (Biographies), Parke Godwin; A. J. Symington; Ray Palmer; John Bigelow, in the American Men of Letters Series; D. J. Hill in the American Authors Series.

William Cullen Bryant (Criticisms), Bayard Taylor, Critical Essays and Literary Notes; Edwin P. Whipple, Literature and Life, and Essays and Reviews; James Grant Wilson, Essays: Critical and Imaginative; George William Curtis, Literary and Social Essays; James Russell Lowell, Fable for Critics.