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Cornell University Library 
 PS 1185.G59 1879 
 
 The Bryant Memorial meeting of the Goeth 
 
 3 1924 021 974 625 
 
 THE 
 
 BRYANT MEMORIAL MEETING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GOETHE CLUB of the CITY of NEW YORK 
 
|)^cer^' pfl %, •mcrellie _^yliilj* 
 
 PRESIDENT, 
 
 ANTO'INE RUPPANER, M. D. 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENTS, 
 
 Ex-Consul-General FREDERICK KUHNE, 
 
 PARKE GODWIN, Esq. 
 
 TREASURER, 
 
 OSCAR YENNI, Esq. 
 
 SECRETARY, 
 
 Prok. theodor g. glaubensklee. 
 
 CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 
 JOHN . ELDERKIN, Esq. 
 
 counsellors, 
 
 Rev. O. B. FROTHINGHAM, 
 
 T. L. JAMES, Esq. 
 
 COMMITTEES 
 
 Chairman of the Committee on Science and .Art, 
 Rev. "WILLIAM R. ALGER. 
 
 Chairman of the Committee on Literature, Exercises and Translations 
 "T. B. WAKEMAN, Esq. 
 
 Chairman of the Committed on Entertainments and Rooms, 
 Hon. WILLIAM H. STINER. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021974625 
 
'l(/'uj.n,_ 'Al/'/^'. 
 
 Jh/M)l t 
 
THE 
 
 BRYANT MEMORIAL MEETING 
 
 GOETHE CLUB of the CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 Wednesday, October joth, 1 8 J 8 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 182 Fifth Avenue 
 
 1879 
 
 '^U 
 
Press of 
 G. P. Putnam* s Sons 
 New York. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Resolutions .... 5 
 
 Introductory Address, 
 
 By Antoine Ruppaner 7 
 
 Part Song — " Resurgam," 
 
 By the Vocal Union of New York . 10 
 
 Bryant Among His Countrymen, 
 
 By Rev. Samuel Osgood. D.D. . 11 
 
 Song — " The Stream of Life," 
 
 Mrs. Imogene Brown 43 
 
 Bryant the Consecrator, 
 
 By T. B. Wakeman . . . 44 
 
 Part Song — "Evening Hymn." 
 
 By the Vocal Union of New York . 54 
 
 Invited Guests ..... 55 
 
At a special meeting of the Goethe Club, of the City of New 
 York, held June 20th, 1878, the following resolutions, offered by 
 Rev. William Rounseville Alger, were unanimously adopted : 
 
 Whereas : We, the members of the Goethe Club, having always 
 felt honored by the deep interest in our association of our late 
 fellow member, William Cullen Bryant, manifested by his 
 constant attendance at its meetings and his generous co-operation, 
 cannot withhold some simple expression of our grief at his death. 
 Wherefore, it is 
 
 Resolved: That we sympathize profoundly with his family 
 and immediate friends over their irreparable loss. We, also, in 
 common with the general public, lament the calamity which, in 
 his removal, has befallen the great moral and social interests of 
 the community ; for no sacred cause but suffers a loss in the 
 departure of one so distinguished as a thoughtful and honored 
 poet, an incorruptible politician, a model citizen, a cosmopolitan 
 scholar and man. We shall ever gratefully cherish the legacy of 
 his writings, his character and his example. Deeming it specially 
 becoming that the first meeting of the club, in the autumn, be 
 devoted to a memorial service in honor of Mr. Bryant, we 
 authorize the appointment of a committee of three, to make 
 arrangements for such a service. 
 
 Prof. Theodor Glaubensklee, Courtlandt Palmer and John 
 Elderkin were appointed to act as a committee, in accordance 
 with the resolution. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
 
 BY 
 
 ANTOINE RUPPANER, M. D., 
 
 PRESIDENT. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : — Twelve short months ago, 
 lacking a few days, the Goethe Club, their friends and 
 guests opened the season of 1877 to 1878 by uniting in a 
 public reception to our late fellow-member, William Cullen 
 Bryant, upon his eighty-third birthday. To do homage to 
 his public and private worth we were then assembled. 
 
 Again, as late as the evening of the tenth of May last, 
 most of the members of this association will recall Mr. 
 Bryant as presiding at a banquet tendered to one of its 
 ofificers about to embark for Europe. How full of life — 
 how genial and active — his memory fraught with amusing 
 and instructive anecdote — how captivating and felicitous in 
 his post-prandial address as presiding officer — who of those 
 present will ever fail to remember ? 
 
 However, obedient to the laws of an inscrutable Provi- 
 dence, time and events, travelling swiftly, scatter misfortune 
 and sadness as well as glad tidings in their train. One 
 short month only from the evening we parted from him, 
 and the places where we used to meet our old friend and 
 fellow-member knew him no more. In the beautiful month 
 of June — the month he like a youthful lover courted the 
 most — all that was mortal of William Cullen Bryant was 
 consigned to mother earth. 
 
« INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
 
 Great as is this loss to the moral, literary and social inter- 
 ests not of this community only, but of every household, 
 where rules supreme the love of truth, the beautiful and 
 high moral worth ; to us, his late associates, his loss, if not 
 greater, is still irreparable. 
 
 Who shall take his place now vacant in our circle? Who 
 fill the void thus made since he is gone to 
 
 " The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns." 
 
 But good men, like noble thoughts and heroic actions, never 
 die. The exemplary citizen, the versatile cosmopolitan — 
 the incorruptible journalist — the disinterested co-worker 
 on the common public weal — the conscientious historian of 
 his country — and last but not least, the sweet-toned master 
 minstrel of nature, the bard who tempted even Homer's 
 lyre — the poet, who in some of his most felicitous couplets 
 painted so exquisitely and calmly the lot that awaited not 
 only him, but inevitably awaits us all, — though he has gone 
 to his long rest, yet in our hearts and in the memory of us 
 all he still lives and will live till our own eyes grow too dim 
 to read his chosen favorite lines. 
 
 To honor a living name then, have the members of the 
 Goethe Club resolved to dedicate this first of their regular 
 meetings this season to the memory of their late fellow- 
 member ; who took a special interest in this organization 
 and its progress ; whom we all loved with the fondness of 
 children ; whom we delighted to consult, that we might 
 drink from the fountain of his mature wisdom ; that we 
 might bask in the sunshine of his teachings ; whose mem- 
 ory our guests and friends — aye, every good citizen delights 
 to honor, as is evinced here to-night by the presence of this 
 large audience which fills this hall in every part. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 9 
 
 He, who stood like a pyramid among his fellow-men, 
 needs no statue to commemorate his fame and worth. His 
 work done will be his proudest monument. 
 
 Apart from his published poems, addresses and notes of 
 travel, our late associate's almost daily contributions to the 
 current history of the last fifty years or more, would fill 
 many volumes were they collected. 
 
 " I would rather have been the author of Gray's ' Elegy,' 
 than to have won this victory to-day," General Wolfe is 
 said to have exclaimed, as he lay mortally wounded upon 
 the battlefield, after the storming of the Heights of Quebec. 
 What battle won, or what fortress stormed by a victori- 
 ous general will outlive in ages to come the lustre that has 
 been shed upon English literature by the author of that sin- 
 gle poem, — the poem of his early manhood — " Thanatopsis." 
 What nobler monument to his fame, to be recited in com- 
 ing ages by yet unborn generations ? 
 
 Covered with forget-me-nots and violets — adorned with the 
 roses of spring-time and summer — caressed by the falling, 
 many-colored, mellow leaves of autumn, and fresh with the 
 evergreen of winter, let his grave be pointed out to the 
 pensive, sad, or curious passer-by, by a tablet as modest and 
 simple as his own good life was modest and simple, bearing 
 only in bold characters these words and advice of Pliny, 
 whose noble teaching William Cullen Bryant constantly 
 followed and fully illustrated throughout his long and suc- 
 cessful career : 
 
 " Do what may deserve to he wtitten. 
 And write what may deserve to be read." 
 
The Vocal Union of New York. 
 
 PART SONG.—"Jiesurgam." 
 
 LESLIE. 
 
 I watched the glorious sun go down, 
 
 In splendor 'neath the distant wave, 
 While far above a golden crown 
 
 Hung radiant o'er his ocean grave. 
 I could not mourn that grand farewell. 
 
 O'er sea and sky a voice then rang, 
 A voice that charmed me like a holy spell. 
 
 And in my ear triumphant sang 
 Resurgam ! 
 
 I stood beside a good man's bed. 
 
 Whose bright and honest course was run, 
 A halo round his agdd head 
 
 Show'd passion conquered, duty done. 
 I could not mourn that parting sigh ; 
 
 The rest was gained, the conflict o'er. 
 And like a trumpet note on high, 
 
 I heard th' exulting sound once more, 
 
 Resurgam ! 
 
 — J. Endeessohn. 
 
BRYANT AMONG HIS COUNTRYMEN ; 
 
 THE POET, THE PATRIOT, THE MAN. 
 AN ORATION 
 
 BEFORE THE GOETHE CLUB, 
 WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 30, 1878, 
 
 By SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 OUR loved and venerated friend, the illustrious poet, 
 the patriarch of our American literature, went from 
 us in June, the month in which he had wished to die in 
 God's own time. Our whole people mourned. All who 
 could enter crowded the church and joined tenderly and 
 reverently in the fitting solemnities there. A few friends 
 with the family followed the body to Roslyn and commit- 
 ted it to the ground among the trees and flowers, that had 
 learned hymns from him. The leaves are falling there, the 
 flowers are fading and dying in that forest cemetery. That 
 is their nature and they have kept their sacred watch at the 
 grave as long as they could. We are not to try to change 
 that nature or to force the bloom of earth to put on the 
 immortality of Paradise. We are concerned now with 
 other growths of art and letters that do not die, and we do 
 not meet now at the grave. Death is not here, but life. 
 This is not a funereal, but rather a festal hour, not a mor- 
 tuary, but a natal occasion, so near to the poet's birthday 
 and so fittingly celebrated as the new birth of his fame, 
 now that his country accepts him anew among her immortal 
 sons, who have said their good word and done their great 
 
12 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 work and gone to their rest. His spirit is with God, with 
 whom are the souls of the faithful, and so in a serious and 
 a sacred sense it is with us, in our fellowship with that 
 communion of letters and humanity which belongs to the 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 This Goethe Club, which is given to the higher literature 
 under the greatest name in German poetry and which has 
 received our venerable poet with its highest honors, justly 
 calls you now to unite with them in this welcome of Bryant 
 to his lasting place in his country and mankind. 
 
 In treating, as I am to try to do, of his hold upon his coun- 
 trymen, I would do it in the most generous and comprehen- 
 sive sense and look upon all who live with us as our people, 
 and all of every land who love good letters and fine art as of 
 our kindred. This was his feeling always, student, traveller, 
 citizen of the world as he was, and we seem almost to see 
 him among us with his white head and benign face and 
 persuasive lips as when you so cordially received him ; and 
 he seems now to approve every hearty word for fraternity 
 among men and peace between nations. American he was 
 and yet none the less cosmopolitan. In fact, because truly 
 American, he can more fully take and give our fellowship 
 with all races. Here to-night Bryant receives honors from 
 the countrymen of Goethe and the countrymen of Bryant 
 rejoice in the homage and return it. 
 
 I. Bryant was first to take hold of his countrymen by tak- 
 ing hold of the country itself and by presenting our land, its 
 scenery and growths in the charmed light of poetry. He 
 first entered this America by the Gate Beautiful, and left it 
 open to all who came after him. It is of course unwise to 
 say that there was no poetic sentiment here before him, 
 no earnest love of nature, for these belong to the civilized 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 1 3 
 
 human mind, and especially to the English or Anglo-Ger- 
 man race which has lived here for two centuries and a half. 
 There were lovers of scenery and makers of verse here 
 from the beginning of our colonies, but it is quite remarka- 
 ble that no classic poet appeared until he came, and that 
 a Green Mountain Boy at eighteen years began American 
 poetry with immortal verse. 
 
 The Pilgrims of the May Flower in 1620 might have 
 brought with them hither the master-pieces of Spenser and 
 Shakspeare from the mother country, and the Puritans of 
 the Arabella in 1630 were under the lead of graduates of 
 Old Cambridge, and some of them fellow-students there 
 with Milton himself. When the Bryants came in an after- 
 voyage of the May Flower, to the Old Colony about the 
 year 1640, a year which Germans may well remember as 
 the date of the accession of that Great Elector, Frederick 
 William of Prussia, who started what we call Modern Ger- 
 many, they left Milton in England at the age of thirty- 
 two, author of " Comus," " Lycidas," "II Penseroso " and 
 " L'Allegro," just returning to London from the country to 
 begin his political career, as our Bryant began his in New 
 York, at about the same age, nearly two centuries afterward. 
 Does it not seem as if the Bryant forefather, Stephen, must 
 have brought with him some spark of that Milton's fire, and 
 that it was kept smouldering on the family hearth, until it 
 kindled into flame, when " Thanatopsis " sprang to life. 
 
 If we ask why so gifted a people as the New England 
 race could live nearly two hundred years in this new 
 and beautiful country without originating any enduring 
 poetry, we may specify some reasons that lighten if they 
 do not quite explain the difficulty. In the first place, 
 it must be remembered that for a long time these people 
 
14 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 had to struggle for very life, and that moreover when they 
 conquered peace, and won comfort, they were bent on 
 building up and extending civil order, reclaiming the wil- 
 derness, or planting their great domain with farms and 
 homesteads and giving what in their eyes was beauty to 
 the stern reality of life, instead of revelling in visions of 
 the ideal. Again if they wanted poetry, they could import 
 it from England in plenty and a much better article than 
 any that their pedantic versifiers were likely to produce, 
 and they could import it also in better shape and at lower 
 prices than those of the domestic product. 
 
 But perhaps the dearth of native poetry in America may 
 be quite as much explained by the fact that the dominant 
 Puritan belief was unfriendly to such literature by its pecu- 
 liar interpretation of the Bible as the only revelation from 
 God and its contempt for nature and mankind as both 
 fallen from God and incapable of giving light to the soul ; 
 whilst the dominant liberals who rejected this stern creed 
 went for a time far wrong the other way and under the 
 teachings of Locke and his school and of the French Ma- 
 terialists who came after him, they denied or ignored the 
 intuitive and ideal faculties of man and were blind to the 
 Spirit of God in nature and the world. 
 
 Yet the soul of poetry was in the race, and it was only a 
 question of time, when it should speak out. There was 
 evidently a kind of uniformity, a sameness in the thought 
 and life of New England, that was not favorable to poetry 
 and the new spirit could come only with some protest or 
 antagonism. Sameness is death, and a certain difference 
 always goes with vitality, whether in the bursting of a bud 
 into flower, or the opening of an age into its ideas and arts. 
 When poetry came, a new culture challenged the old the- 
 
BRYANT AMONG HIS COUNTRYMEN. 1 5 
 
 ocracy, and as Greece broke away from the Oriental rule of 
 priest and king, so the rising literature here came out from 
 the old Puritan theocracy, and claimed to hear God's Spirit 
 in the woods and the waters as well as in the Bible and the 
 pulpit. We cannot but note this tendency in Bryant's 
 earliest poems. He was never a radical in the distinctive 
 sense of this word either in religion or politics, yet he 
 began with a virtual protest against the old absolutism of 
 the dogma and priesthood ; and he appeals to nature and to 
 mankind as witnesses to God. His first characteristic poem, 
 " Thanatopsis," is reverent, religious, not unchristian, yet it 
 makes no reference to church, preacher or Scripture, and in 
 its affirmation of the universality of death, it rebukes the 
 reigning assumption that death, in its material sense, was an 
 afterthought of the Creator, and came with an act of trans- 
 gression in Eden a few thousand years ago. He meditates 
 upon death as a fact of nature to be met tranquilly by man, 
 not as an accident that might have been shunned, or as a 
 curse that should not have been. He keeps in this poem, 
 as always, his piety. He is the Puritan still, who begins 
 and ends all things with God, although he does not name 
 Him. Yet he is a Puritan Greek as he always was, and 
 with his sense of God over all he united a steadfast convic- 
 tion of God's presence in nature and man and of the worth 
 of this visible world. 
 
 In some respects Bryant's love of nature was peculiar, 
 and it differed much from that of other poets who are often 
 named with him, especially Cowper and Wordsworth, who 
 were in some points his masters. Nature was Bryant's first 
 love, and he wooed her before he saw the world, whilst 
 Cowper and Wordsworth had tried the world and had their 
 fill of it before they took to the woods and waters ; Cowper 
 
l6 riR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 having for a while lost his wits under its coaxing agitations, 
 and Wordsworth having escaped with his head from the 
 revolutionary mob of Paris and the threat of the guillotine. 
 If it is said, as it surely may be, that Bryant had none of 
 the excitements and temptations that met those gifted 
 men, and that with him the choice was between nature as a 
 school of poetry and no school at all, we must allow a cer- 
 tain truth to the statement. Yet how honorable is this 
 serious truth ! With no masterpieces of art around him, 
 no old halls and temples, no pictures and sculpture, with 
 little color in costume or in house decoration, with few 
 books, little if any good music, little artistic society, instead 
 of Oxford or Cambridge and their favored fellowships for 
 life, with only two years of study in William's College, 
 which was only one year older than he was, when he entered 
 it at the age of sixteen, in 1810; with all these limitations, 
 Bryant, when about eighteen years of age, wrote a poem of 
 nature which the English language cannot spare, any more 
 than it can spare the masterpieces of Cowper and Words- 
 worth. 
 
 He loved nature none the less because he loved her first, 
 and he had her love in return, and a certain elemental 
 power came to him from her and went into his verse. Of 
 course he carried his own life, his own thought and feeling 
 to nature, but he did not carry the passions of the world 
 and the agitations of a stormy career to her, that she might 
 comfort him for the loss of other loves or help him fight 
 the old battles, and tell the old stories, and paint the old 
 pictures over again. Herein he differs widely from Byron 
 who came out as a poet at about the same time, and whose 
 " Childe Harold " runs parallel in date with Bryant's early 
 poems. " Childe Harold," if not the most remarkable, is cer- 
 
BRYANT AMONG HIS COUNTRYMEN. 1/ 
 
 tainly the most celebrated English poem of the Nineteenth 
 Century, and it has made the most mark upon men ; yet we 
 Americans do not shrink from naming our poet's early 
 pieces in their calm wisdom and reverent beauty in the 
 same breath with that impassioned and marvellous Ro- 
 maunt. Bryant had not Spain, Switzerland, Greece and 
 Italy to roam over and to put into song ; but the mountain 
 boy looked as deeply into nature as the petted English 
 Lord, and he did not make the mistake of transferring to 
 her face the blood-shot gleam of his own eyes and of con- 
 founding his passions with her moods. 
 
 Bryant had not seen Santa Croce or written like Byron : — 
 
 " In Santa Croce's holy precincts lie 
 Ashes which make it holier, dust which is 
 Even in itself an immortality." 
 
 There were no stately tombs or temples around his village 
 home or within his range of village burying grounds, but 
 he saw death in its majesty, and what a sepulchre he dis- 
 covered : — 
 
 " The hills 
 Rock ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 The venerable woods — rivers that move 
 In majesty and the complaining brooks 
 That make the meadow green ; and poured round all 
 Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste — 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 Of the great tomb of man." 
 
 He had not St. Peter's Church before him — 
 
 " Christ's mighty shrine before his martyr's tomb." 
 
 Nor could he say of it with Byron : — 
 
 " But thou of temples old and altars new, 
 Standest alone with nothing like to thee — 
 Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. 
 
 Majesty, 
 Power, Glory, Strength and Beauty all are aisled 
 In this eternal ark of worship undefiled." 
 
1 8 DH. OSGOOD'S OR A TION. 
 
 So wrote Childe Harold, but we Americans can say our 
 prayers as well at the call of our Childe William in his 
 " Forest Hymn," and he found a place of worship grander 
 far:— 
 
 " The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
 To hew the shaft and lay the architrave 
 And spread the roof above them — ere he framed 
 The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
 The sounds of anthems ; in the darkling wood 
 Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down 
 And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
 And supplication. 
 
 Be it ours to meditate 
 In these calm shades thy milder majesty 
 And to the beautiful order of thy works 
 Learn to conform the order of our lives." 
 
 So the comparison might run on not wholly to the disad- 
 vantage of our bard whose faith like his own " Waterfowl " is 
 divinely guided, whilst poor Harold strays tempest-tossed. 
 Truly, Bryant wrote in that early time, and it was always 
 true of him : 
 
 " 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." 
 
 The forty poems which expressed Bryant's genius and 
 experience before he came to New York in 1825 show what 
 rich lessons he learned in his studies and rambles in that 
 hill country of Western Massachusetts, and these speci- 
 mens prove their dominant tone. He was certainly a poet 
 because God made him so, and he did his best probably 
 before he knew what he was doing. Perhaps it is wisest to 
 leave there the definition of poetry, and to say simply that 
 it comes from poets as apples come from apple-trees. We 
 may define the two things, the poetry and the apples, but 
 we must have them before we define them and the things are 
 better than the definitions. All the familiar definitions of 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS COUNTR YMEN. I9 
 
 poetry have a certain truth, but none has the whole truth. 
 It is, as is often said, the ideal in literature, but not the 
 ideal only or always ; for much strong and kindling poetry 
 deals with the most positive and sensuous reality, and this 
 is the present turn of the muse. Nor does poetry always 
 put beautiful thought into beautiful words, for much thrill- 
 ing verse presents frightful images in terrible words, and 
 tragedy goes as far as it can with terror without parting 
 company with pity, which subdues fear and so purifies emo- 
 tion. Aristotle, with his marvellous good sense, comes very 
 near the mark when he distinguishes poetrj' from history by 
 its dealing with things as they may be, instead of as they 
 are, and by its treating of the whole instead of the parts. 
 For certainly the poet is looking to what may be, and he 
 is always trying to make the least word or sentence tell the 
 whole of the matter. But without spending time in com- 
 bining and condensing definitions, we may safely say, that 
 poetry comes from a certain fulness of spirit that over- 
 flows in new forms, and that the poet is he who is moved 
 to make things new from what is in him and the world. 
 The poet is he who sees and seizes the life of things and 
 puts it into pictured and musical words. This life like all 
 fulness of life tends to rhythm, and the muse dances more 
 or less gaily or solemnly as all overflowing life dances. 
 There was this overflow in young Bryant, and if there was 
 not as much voluptuous sweetness or high-wrought music 
 in his strain as in other gifted bards, and if he tended more 
 to solemn rhythm, than to luxurious melody, it was because 
 his temper was serious ; and moreover because his teacher 
 in verse was nature more than schools, and nature tends 
 to rhythm more than to melody, and her rivers and forests 
 and winds and oceans sing a very plain chant, and the 
 
20 DR. OSGOOD'S ORA TION. 
 
 birds themselves do not go far into the airs of Mozart 
 and Mendelsohn. 
 
 As to the material of Bryant's early and characteristic 
 poetry, it evidently deals more with nature than with 
 human life. It is landscape-painting with few figures 
 introduced, yet always with tender feeling for men, per- 
 haps more feeling for them than with them. The speech- 
 less babe and the gray headed man, the matron and the 
 maid appear to him as he meditates upon the dying ages ; 
 and in his "Winter Piece" the herbless field and the spoiled 
 shades were still sought and precious : — 
 
 " I loved them still ; for they seemed 
 Like old companions in adversity." 
 
 He was more at home with landscape and nature than with 
 persons, and it is quite memorable that even in his thought- 
 ful and elaborate poem of "The Ages," delivered at Cam- 
 bridge in 1821, in which History is his theme, he gives 
 about as many lines to his description of Boston Harbor, 
 with its islands, as to the sketch of Greece and Rome, with 
 their heroes and sages. Yet persons gain more and more 
 ground upon his canvas, and he cannot look upon the cold 
 and solemn North Star without feeling for the sailor, half- 
 wrecked, his compass lost, and for the lost travellers in 
 perilous wastes, who find safety in that light. 
 
 As to the ideas that run through these early poems, we 
 may say what we have already hinted, that they are of the 
 Hebrew-Greek type ; that is they start from the existence 
 of God over all nature and life, and they recognize the 
 presence of His spirit in all creation, thus combining in a 
 certain way faith in the Transcendent and in the Immanent 
 God. Yet he is rather with Cowper than with Wordsworth 
 in his limited sense of the full immanence of the divine life 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 2 1 
 
 in nature ; and he looks more with the eye of the Hebrew 
 than that of the Greek, or may we not say more with the 
 eye of Isaiah than that of a modern German Hke Goethe 
 on the universe. He philosophizes upon the universe more 
 with Newton than Spinoza, and to him God is more First 
 Cause than Eternal Substance. Herein he is all the more 
 American, for we start in our thinking from the God of 
 our fathers, and we shrink from whatever looks like the 
 pantheist vision of nature as the Supreme. Yet the poet 
 keeps his faith firm in God in all as well as over all, and he 
 is Greek as well as Hebrew in this. In his " Ages" he 
 speaks of the Greek illumination thus : — 
 
 " And the pure ray, that from thy bosom came, 
 
 Far over many a land and age has shone 
 
 And mingles with the light that beams from God's own throne." 
 
 To him too nature unmistakably reveals the mind of 
 God, and he accepts the ancient faith that the Polar Star 
 instead of relentless force presents in its beams — 
 
 " A beauteous type of that unchanging good, 
 That bright eternal beacon by whose ray 
 The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.'' 
 
 Such in their leading traits were Brj'ant's early poems, 
 and by them he took hold of his countrymen by taking first 
 hold of the country, winning the people with the land 
 which his muse conquered. I can only add briefly under 
 this head, that in thus taking the landscape, he took hold 
 of the people also by two leading ideas, which are essen- 
 tially American— first the idea of firm citizenship under 
 civil justice, and secondly the idea of fair play to the 
 human mind by full freedom to bring out its powers. The 
 young poet from boyhood was a sturdy patriot, and flamed 
 up in verse on Independence days ; and in vindicating his 
 own right to be a poet, he vindicated the right of all true 
 
22 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 culture in a day when narrowness pinched the schools as 
 well as the churches. Those who can look back as far as 
 1825, the year when Bryant came to New York, can re- 
 member those early poems in our school books, and what 
 an impression we who were at school then had of the poet 
 and of the man. In the name of the school boys of that 
 day, of whom I was one, and of the school girls who will 
 allow me to speak for them, I express our filial reverence 
 for the poet of our childhood and our youth, whose verses 
 became a part of our very being, and beat with our hearts, 
 and moved in our step in their grace and power. This is 
 not the trick of rhetoric, but the offering of earnest grati- 
 tude. How many thoughtful men and women, who read 
 his verses when they were at school, can rise up and call 
 William Cullen Bryant blessed for what he has been and 
 done for them and their children. His name is blessed 
 here to-night. 
 
 H. But now a great change came to him, and with it no 
 small trial of his spirit and purpose. Why he left his 
 country home and law office in Great Barrington for the 
 more stirring life and opportunity of a great city, we can 
 readily see ; but we do not so readily understand why he 
 came here to New York instead of going to Boston where 
 he had been so honored, and where his Puritan temper was 
 more at home. Nearness and the easy drift of rivers be- 
 tween New York and Western Massachusetts, and the 
 wishes of cordial friends who lived there and here, had 
 much to do with his choice undoubtedly ; yet there was a 
 destiny in it that drew him to the great center of com- 
 merce, enterprise, and ultimately of arts and letters. When 
 he came here, however, this city had little of its present 
 standing, and Boston and Philadelphia disputed its pros- 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 2 3 
 
 pective superiority even in population and trade. It was 
 then comparatively a provincial city, great indeed, hoping 
 soon to complete its second hundred thousand of inhabi- 
 tants under the spur of the Erie Canal, which then opened 
 into this harbor for the first time the waters and the wealth 
 of the great lakes. Great and tingling was the promise of 
 growth and power, but not greater than was accomplished 
 in twenty-five years. If the Erie Canal made this city 
 metropolitan in 1825, the ocean steamers, California gold, 
 the railroads and the electric telegraph made her cosmo- 
 politan about a quarter of a century afterwards ; and our 
 rural poet came to live and work and be author, editor and 
 citizen in all this turmoil and chase. What will become 
 of him, the ready question is? What did become of him, 
 we who have known him here in his career for fifty years, 
 more or less, can say with considerable unanimity. 
 
 It is well to consider how he was received here as a man 
 of letters, this Puritan bard upon this Knickerbocker ground, 
 and among a people whose choice society was little Puri- 
 tanic, and to a considerable extent quite churchly and 
 Anglican. He might have found apparently more con- 
 genial society in Boston, and it is not easy to say how his 
 genius would have shaped itself with those cultivated and 
 gifted men, Ticknor and Longfellow and Lowell, under the 
 elms of Harvard, and whether this village Milton might not 
 have added his mature epic poem, his Paradise Lost, to his 
 early miscellaneous pieces. But he did not go to Boston 
 or Cambridge, and he did come here ; and he found work 
 and home and friends and fame in some respects new. 
 The time was in certain respects favorable here for author- 
 ship, and here, as also in Boston, there was a rriemorable 
 awakening in literature, although this city had the start in 
 
24 DR. OSGOOD'S ORA TION. 
 
 classic letters of the English school, and even in history, 
 Irving was in advance of Prescott and Bancroft, and the 
 noble Boston historical school. Bryant dates the new 
 literary movement from 1821, when Cooper first won fame 
 by his " Spy," when Irving's " Sketch Book " was completed, 
 when Miss Sedgwick began her charming series of domestic 
 novels, and Percival and Halleck published their poems. 
 Boston was not far behind, and perhaps in certain scholastic 
 studies in advance of New York; and Dana's " Idle Man" 
 was completed, and Bryant's " Ages," and a few other 
 poems came out that same year in the Pilgrim City. 
 
 Yet it must be remembered that the literary atmosphere 
 of Boston was then in some respects more heavy and schol- 
 astic than that of New York, and less favorable to the 
 genial English taste that prevailed in the best circle here. 
 Dana's love for Shakespeare and Coleridge and Words- 
 worth was not much liked among the old school liberals 
 of Boston, who had been brought up upon Locke and 
 Pope ; and a very superficial philosophy and criticism shut 
 out the leading thinkers and authors of New England then 
 from communion with the best mind of England ; whilst a 
 certain theological prejudice estranged theologians from the 
 great lights of the English and Latin Church until Chan- 
 ning broke the spell by his Essays on " Milton and Fenelon" 
 (1826-1829), and claimed for the best literature of Christen- 
 dom a place among the inspirations of God. Had Bryant 
 gone to Boston, he might have joined in the renaissance 
 there, and he might not only have accepted, as he did the 
 Channing movement for humanity, but he might have 
 favored the more radical transcendental movement headed 
 by Emerson in 1832, which was perhaps more Germanic 
 than English or American in its idea and tendency ; al- 
 
BRYANT AMONG HIS COUNTRYMEN. 2$ 
 
 though he disliked this movement to a certain extent, and 
 often he has said to me that the Boston and Cambridge 
 men Germanized too much. But he stayed here, and he 
 brought his Puritan severity and his Greek culture to bear 
 upon the revived old-school literature here ; and he was 
 cordially received by its leaders, especially by Cooper and 
 the circle of scholars and gentlemen who composed the 
 weekly club which Cooper had founded, many of whose 
 faces we can recall, such as Chancellor Kent, Wiley the 
 bookseller, Henry D. Sedgwick, Morse, Durand, Professor 
 H. J. Anderson, Halleck, Verplanck and Charles King. The 
 place of the meeting, the old Washington Hotel, near our 
 City Park, and on the site of Stewart's great marble store, 
 shows how close his quarters were, and how New York has 
 grown since those days. The influence of those associates 
 must in some respects have been wholesome for a man re- 
 served and introspective as Bryant was ; and it did much to 
 make him in the best sense a Neiv York man, and some- 
 what different from the noted and excellent Boston and 
 Cambridge type of character, which was so subjective, 
 scholastic, sedentary, and until of late so little muscular 
 and artistic, far more fond of books than of nature, and of 
 print than pictures and sculpture. He had had enough of 
 the East wind, and, grateful for the bracing air, he was 
 evidently not sorry now to be nearer the Western breezes ; 
 and he was not afraid of a Southern exposure, for he knew 
 how to take it without harm. 
 
 Probably his life here did much to give him hold upon 
 reality, to warm his poetry with sunshine, to animate it 
 with personality and action, and to give it more body than 
 before. If Bryant and Emerson are the two great American 
 interpreters of nature, and we honor them both as they 
 
26 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 honored each other, may we not say that nature is more 
 completely interpreted by their difference as well as by 
 their likeness, and that Emerson's subjective and intro- 
 versial sense is helped out by Bryant's open vision and 
 objective reality. They stand together now two sons of 
 Massachusetts, two good New Englanders, who in different 
 schools have interpreted nature to our time and to the 
 ages. The most telling tribute ever paid to the dead poet 
 was paid by the survivor fourteen years ago, when both 
 met at Bryant's seventieth anniversary and Emerson was 
 the guest of honor there. 
 
 As a poet he kept his hold of his countrymen, and he 
 strengthened it not by any new and startling bursts of 
 genius, but by keeping the old ground and growing from 
 the old root. His poetry widened its range, ripened its 
 beauty and sweetened its humanity and exalted its faith ; 
 but it did not change its essential type of calm medita- 
 tion and descriptive art. New subjects came into his field 
 of vision in his new home, whilst he kept open his old base 
 of supplies of rural images from the fields and woods and 
 rivers and hills of his early days. His verse feels the power 
 of the near ocean and speaks as neighbor to the Western 
 prairie ; it stirs with the rush of the waters of the noble 
 Hudson, and is not unmindful of the rush of human life in 
 the currents of noble Broadway. He catches the pulse- 
 beat of the great nations here, and answers to it in trans- 
 lations of choice gems of the French, Spanish, German and 
 Portuguese muse and in original odes to the genius of Dante 
 and Schiller. He does not forget Nature, and his exqui- 
 site studies of the flowers and the seasons, the clouds and 
 stars and winds and woods, the seas and mountains, grow 
 into such completeness that a Bryant Year of Nature might 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 2/ 
 
 rival in beauty and favor Keble's " Christian Year." Yet life, 
 in its struggle and pressure, came in for its share of his 
 thought, and his later poems deepen in pathos for human 
 grief and sometimes ring with enthusiasm for patriotism 
 and humanity. Religion becomes a more positive convic- 
 tion and emotion, and what is sometimes said of Marcus 
 Aurelius Antoninus, the last of the great Stoics, may be 
 said with added meaning of him. It was said of Marcus 
 Aurelius that he brought Stoicism so neat to Christianity 
 that after him it died out and Christianity took its place. 
 In Bryant the change was made before death, and his poems 
 are the record that in his life he passed from the Stoic into 
 the Christian, and so embodied the lessons of ages in his 
 experience. 
 
 Yet his poetry kept its essential intellectual type and did 
 not glow with passion or burn with martial fire. He had 
 neither epic fulness nor dramatic compass and force. This 
 is but saying that he belonged to his own time and people 
 and school and temperament ; for the New England that 
 schooled him was essentially intellectual and meditative in 
 its literature, and even in theology it reasoned out Heaven 
 and Hell by calm logic, and left passion and force to other 
 and more worldly fields. He was in his way scholastic in 
 his poetry, a disciple of his own set school ; and with his 
 wonderful sense of beauty, he never ventures to lose his 
 calmness or in any way to be unwise. He never said a 
 foolish thing and rarely, if ever did an unwise one. Even 
 love, which makes so many men fools, made him thoughtful ; 
 and his one sacred love went forth in calm idyls and rose 
 into godly hymns, and never burned with wasting fires. 
 Yet this we may and must say in truth of the calmness of 
 his verse and of a certain want of the will element in his 
 
28 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 muse, that his active life made up for that want. His Hfe 
 was epic and drama too, true to the supreme justice that 
 follows the Epos of Providence, and brave for the sovereign 
 right that works out and fights out the Ethos of mankind. 
 We must look to him as to the patriot and the man in 
 order to appreciate the worth of the ideal expression and 
 force that he gave, and to show that poetry is not word 
 only but action also. 
 
 His poetry was little personal, and shy of men and women 
 he was more at home, especially in early life, with nature. 
 Herein he differs signally from Goethe who always delighted 
 in persons, and who put his whole poetic and ideal experi- 
 ence into such personal forms as Werther, Faust and Wil- 
 helm Meister. " Faust," Goethe's masterpiece, and the great 
 poem of modern times since " Hamlet," is not only Goethe 
 himself, but the modern man as Thinker under trial from 
 Passion, Doubt and Care and as Conqueror by the Spirit of 
 Beauty and the power of Action. Bryant did not put him- 
 self and his age into any such ideal embodiment. He saw 
 much of the modern man, and lived the modern life, but 
 not as Goethe did. He was the new Puritan, the modern 
 Independent in face of Death, Tyranny and Superstition. 
 Conqueror by the charm of Nature, and by the power of 
 Faith and Duty. This Puritan Greek lived out his idea 
 grandly, and he did not dramatize it, as Goethe dramatized 
 his. Bryant apparently did not have a hard struggle with 
 passion as Goethe did, but he knew Doubt and Care and 
 conquered them. If he was not compelled to fight hard 
 with the flesh, he saw something of the world and the devil. 
 How could he help it, all those fifty years here in this 
 tumult — and his victory was constant, noble and inspiring. 
 If he did not put the poem of his life into verse, he left the 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 29 
 
 materials as a legacy to us, and Time is already beginning 
 to shape these materials into form and to breathe into them 
 a soul. The Puritan Greek is the name of that life-poem. 
 
 Dwell a little now upon Bryant's career among us as a 
 patriot, which is very much the same with his course as an 
 editor. Editors are not always saints, even in New York, 
 where we have the best of them. He was not quite saintly 
 in his temper always, yet the wonder was that when there 
 was so much to tempt an editor to play the Satan in re- 
 venge, he grew in courtesy and lost the gall from his pen 
 without losing its point. I do not propose and I am not 
 qualified to go into the record of his political career. Not 
 a partisan myself, and believing him to have been a sincere 
 patriot, I will content myself, and I hope to make you con- 
 tent with the simplest statement of his public career, and 
 of the work which he did for his country by his pen and 
 voice. If my remarks are too general and sweeping to suit 
 practical politicians, set it down to my professional habit or 
 philosophical infirmity. 
 
 Bryant, as a patriot, belongs to what may be called in the 
 largest sense, the second cycle of our national history ; and 
 in this cycle he was the foremost citizen, who served and 
 ruled the country without official power. From 1775, when 
 Washington took command of our army at Cambridge, to 
 1825, when John Quincy Adams became President of the 
 United States, Virginia had been, in a sense, the dominant 
 state in the Union, and her men tended to the chief place. 
 All the Presidents with the exception of the single term of 
 John Adams, of Massachusetts, who was elected by the 
 vote of Maryland, (1797-1801) were Virginians, and in 1825, 
 when Bryant came to New York, the power of the Old 
 Dominion was broken, the old parties were virtually dead ; 
 
30 DR. OSGOOD'S ORA TION. 
 
 new issues arose under the spur of new local and industrial 
 interests, and the new cycle of American politics had be- 
 gun. The two states that had always followed close upon 
 Virginia and tried to take from her the Presidency, were 
 Massachusetts and New York, with South Carolina close 
 upon their heels. Massachusetts with the help of New 
 York and the West, carried the day in 1825 for Adams, but 
 after that New York changed the whole course of things by 
 reaching down, not to South Carolina for a Calhoun, or 
 Mississippi for a Jefferson Davis, but to the South-west for 
 a new man, and the election of Jackson, of Tennessee, in 
 1829, with Van Buren as the Vice-President afterwards, was 
 started in her counsels. Here Bryant's political career be- 
 gan with the new democracy, which has been so much 
 dominated by New York ; and his interest in the movement 
 was not for the partisanship and greed for spoils which so 
 damaged it, but from his interest in the opposition to false 
 centralization and his wish to guard against the prostitution 
 of the national power to local schemes or class aggrandise- 
 ment. The popular party in the first cycle of fifty years, 
 changed its name from Republican to Democrat, and in the 
 second cycle it changed its name back again from Democrat 
 to Republican with his sympathy. He had a great sense of 
 individual right, and of the necessity of guarding against 
 every infringement of liberty. He, who had so assailed the 
 Jefferson democracy in his boyish rhymes, had become 
 quite Jeffersonian in his ideas, and looked upon govern- 
 ment as chiefly valuable, as it lets people and states alone, 
 and as it secures them the freedom to be let alone, and to 
 do their best to help themselves. Protective tariffs for 
 special branches of business, and financial corporations with 
 exclusive privileges he disliked. He went for free states, 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 3 1 
 
 and free trade under the National Union ; and when in 
 1832, South CaroHna undertook to show her teeth and 
 threaten nullification, Bryant approved President Jackson 
 alike for showing the guns of the frigate Constitution near 
 Fort Sumter, and for abating the high tariff that had given 
 Carolina much of her provocation. His aim was the free- 
 dom of the States, and also the right of the Union ; and 
 the key to his whole career is in his estimate of the just 
 relation between the central and the sectional, the centri- 
 petal and centrifugal forces of the nation. The States and 
 the Nation, God hath joined them together, let not man 
 put them assunder ; this was his political creed. 
 
 He has been essentially right, and he has triumphed. He 
 triumphed when the rightful flag of our fathers was put 
 back upon repentant Fort Sumter, and he triumphed when 
 the army was withdrawn from the insurgent states, and 
 local law was left to its own jurisdiction. He will tri- 
 umph if ever that madness is renewed and insurgents again 
 anywhere assail the fortresses and the flag of our country. 
 He triumphs now, that under the scourge of pestilence, 
 good will binds North and South together ; and we hope for 
 peace and prosperity in the restored republic, with the law 
 of the nation unbroken, and its credit untarnished, with the 
 honest dollar the money of the honest man. That he made 
 no mistakes I will not say, for he was human, and the field 
 of politics is not all patriotism or humanity. But he kept 
 justice uppermost ; he took no bribes and sought no station ; 
 and I call him calmly the first citizen of our country in our 
 time. I am certain that his patriotism exalts his poetry, 
 and joins him more closely to the great bards, who have 
 felt their country in their inspiration, with Dante, father of 
 modern letters at their head, who in Bryant's own words : 
 
32 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 " Scattered far as sight can reach 
 The seeds of free and living thought 
 On the broad field of modern speech." 
 
 Allow me to recall the fact that after he wrote this ode to 
 Dante on the sixth centennial of his birth, in 1865, he 
 brought me with his own hand, at my request, the root of a 
 choice clematis, to be planted as a Dante memorial in some 
 country grounds ; and that last June, when he was taken ill, 
 it bloomed, and when he died, the flower faded and fell. 
 
 Bryant's patriotism was more memorable, because he was 
 not an enthusiast for institutions and organizations, but a 
 lover of independence and self-control ; or to use an em- 
 phatic distinction, which is said to divide men into separate 
 classes, he was an individualist, not a multitudinist, more 
 earnest for the one in his freedom, than for the many in the 
 mass. But his individualism made him patriotic by con- 
 necting the liberty of persons with the union of states and 
 the law of the nation. How he differed from Webster 
 in temperament and schooling, and who of us who were 
 there can forget their meeting at the Cooper Commemora- 
 tion, in 1852, when Webster presided and Bryant was 
 orator, — those two men, the burly iron bound Constitution- 
 alist and the lithe, slight, wiry Free Soiler and Free 
 Trader. Yet God had a use for them both, and he has 
 been bringing them and their ideas together. The nation 
 is stronger because of that statesman and that poet ; and 
 Bryant and Webster live with us to-day in the freedom of 
 the States and the union of the nation. Webster's oration 
 at Plymouth, in 1820, against the slave trade chimes well 
 with Bryant's ode in 1866, on the " Death of Slavery" : 
 
 " A glory clothes the land from sea to sea, 
 For the great land and all its coasts are free." 
 
BRYANT A MONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 3 3 
 
 But the man was the inmost fact and the man is upper- 
 most in our thought to-day. We knew him well, and he 
 did not keep himself aloof from us, and he was willing that 
 we should know him. The man was the soul of the poet 
 and the patriot, and his life was marvellously consistent, all 
 of a piece, his character and his works, " integer vitse sceler- 
 isque purus," whole and without stain indeed. His quick 
 and gentle eye, his delicate and vigorous senses, and his apt 
 and agile hand and foot showed the sensibility and strength 
 that marked his career, and enabled his pen to paint his 
 page with beauty, and to point it with truth and courage. 
 His intellect looked out of his refined and manly face, and 
 promised wise insight rather than elaborate analysis. He 
 was more of a practical sage than a speculative philosopher ; 
 more fond of seeing and showing the form and movement 
 of life than of anatomising its vitals. In his affections he 
 was kindly and constant ; and if somewhat reserved in so- 
 ciety, and not always open like the rose when it has 
 bloomed, he was like the water lily that opened always 
 anew at the touch of sunshine. He had many friends, and 
 kept and served them, and made sacrifices for them. He 
 never set himself above the lowliest of his associates, and 
 he was as free from arrogance as from servility. In his 
 way, indeed, he was a very proud man, the proudest that I 
 ever knew. He never sought out the great after the stan- 
 dard of this world's gold and rank, and he never turned 
 away from the poor and humble. He was never frightened 
 by numbers, position and wealth, whilst very sensitive to- 
 wards favor. I never knew him to be agitated but once, 
 and that was two years ago in this hall, when as he came to 
 receive a national tribute, that beautiful vase which was 
 given not by any cHque or club, but by people of every 
 
34 DR. OSGOOD'S ORA TION. 
 
 name and station from Boston to San Francisco, the whole 
 of the great assembly without a hint or a suggestion rose 
 up in reverence, and then the old poet trembled for a 
 moment like a child. 
 
 He was a good example of what we call dignity in 
 America, the dignity which comes not from flattening every 
 body up or down to the same dead level, but from modestly 
 being free to be yourself in your own gifts, tastes and sphere, 
 and leaving others to be free. Remember him as he went 
 up and down Broadway, to and from his daily work in plain 
 dress, a man among men, what dignity unasked and undis- 
 puted attended him. Germans, your Emperor William has 
 dignity in Berlin as he rides through the Unter den Linden 
 in his helmet and military cloak. Honor to him in his 
 rightful place and brave and truthful manhood, and con- 
 found eveiy assassin's hand that strikes at him, the lawful 
 chief. But equal majesty went with our citizen William as 
 he went down Broadway to his printing office to hold the 
 pen of Franklin, and to reach the nation and the world with 
 his thought. He too, in his way was a soldier and knew 
 how to use his weapon, and could hit the mark in his edi- 
 torials ; and if he did not please those dainty critics who 
 like to see the target sprinkled with clattering shot, he won 
 favor from the adepts who knew when " the bulls'-eye " is 
 pierced by the rifle ball. 
 
 If not naturally a very social man, he came to be more 
 than almost any other man in sympathy with his neighbors 
 and the community by his hold upon great principles and 
 interests. He was in his way as well as poet and editor, 
 farmer, forester, herdsman, chemist, physiologist, political 
 economist, moralist, artist, historian, and somewhat of a 
 theologian, and ready to say his word wherever he was duly 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 3 5 
 
 called and able to comply. His social life deepened with 
 advancing years ; and in his enthusiasm for public interests 
 and associations during the last twenty years he seemed to 
 have a second youth, more susceptible and sometimes more 
 impulsive than his first youth. In fact a new bloom appeared 
 to be budding within him, and to make us sometimes think 
 that this century plant was waiting for the hundred years 
 to bring out its final and full flowering. The last time that 
 I met him in society, it was on last May Day at a festive 
 reunion of clergymen, where he was the honored guest, and 
 he spoke with his accustomed grace and point. Of the 
 nearly fifty who were present, most were young men who 
 greeted him for the first time, and were cordially received 
 by him. The fellowship was generous and not bound by 
 sect, and I never saw him so happy as whilst the noblest utter- 
 ances of comprehensive religion such as that of the Rev Dr. 
 Prentiss on The Divine Fatherhood and Sonship were 
 made, and his face was rapturous in its delight. The last 
 evening that I spent with him, he dwelt much upon that 
 charming occasion, and he was full of the beauty and joy of 
 the country where he had been. His conversation was then 
 unusually various and significant, ranging from physiology 
 to literature and religion ; in his love of nature showing the 
 poet, and in his request for an article for his paper on an 
 important subject keeping his place in the editor's chair. 
 The remark that left most impression upon me was this, 
 " why should not a man however old be happy, so long as 
 he can enjoy nature and be free from pain." So the facts 
 and faculties of his being held together to the last, and 
 when he fell under the blazing sun with a plea for liberty 
 and national union on his lips in that lovely park which he 
 had helped to construct, it seemed as if that landscape all 
 
3^ DR. OSGOOD'S ORA TION. 
 
 around was presenting and interpreting his poems of nature, 
 and giving the scenery for the closing act of that Hfe which 
 had been a drama of justice and humanity. 
 
 There was something more and better than coolness and 
 slowness in the economy of his life. He lived long and 
 well, not because he lived slowly and scantly, but because 
 he lived fully and harmoniously. He was careful to receive 
 as much aliment as he needed to give out in action and 
 thought, and he found the aliment in nature, society and 
 religion, in a wise order of variety and constancy in the city, 
 by the seaside and among the hills. So in a measure he 
 interpreted the celestial Present of his " Flood of 
 Years." 
 
 *' In whose reign the change 
 
 That waits on growth and action shall proceed 
 
 With everlasting Concord hand in hand." 
 
 HI. Thus Bryant deepens the hold upon his countrymen, 
 which he first took by his mastering the country itself in 
 the spirit of poetry and patriotism. Is this hold to con- 
 tinue, or is it to stop in course of time, and be forgotten 
 as most men are forgotten ? Our feeling and conviction 
 say no. 
 
 His works are to live, and his work is not to die. There 
 are undoubtedly to be great changes in literature and taste 
 and art as in all things. Poets are seeing more tragedy in 
 nature than he saw, and they are telling of more sadness 
 and passion in life than he noted. But he looked with 
 keen and honest eyes, and said what he saw, and his word 
 answered to the fact before him. So the very changes that 
 come will add value to his works, because they are true to 
 him and to his time ; and they are moreover foundation 
 stones upon which the new culture must rest, and which 
 
BR YANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 37 
 
 its loftiest spires cannot disown any more than those min- 
 ster towers can ignore the walls upon which they stand. 
 Remember too that though modes may change, man and 
 nature remain, and God and Justice never die. His work 
 lives after him in the union of beauty and justice, as well 
 as liberty and truth, powers sometimes fearfully separated, 
 and which God has joined in this his servant's career. 
 Sacred Duty in him was wedded to ideal Grace, as when 
 of old grave Numa, who ruled the state with steadfast care, 
 sought solace in the groves from Egeria, the nymph of 
 heaven. 
 
 The man himself is in his works, and he works ever with 
 them. His gentleness was mated with strength that marked 
 his character, and looked out from his face. He was a very 
 mild, unpretending man, and not commanding in stature, 
 )^et it was hard to resist the impression of his having a 
 certain grandeur of form as of spirit, and artists generally 
 overdrew his figure and his face. It was not accident, but 
 a certain inherent dignity that made them do this. His 
 intimate friends revered him, and they who knew him 
 well, and saw him often and freely as I, for years — some 
 fifteen years his pastor and always his friend — did for some 
 thirty years, never presumed to any light familiarity with 
 him, and they would not put their hand on his shoulder 
 fondly, although any playful and confiding child might do 
 so, and not be rebuked. This impression followed him to 
 the last. On his death bed, the day before he died, when 
 I offered at his bedside the prayer for the dying, which I 
 knew that he loved, his head had the look of a Titan ; and 
 when it sank in the repose of death, and a few favored 
 friends were admitted to the sacred presence, his face in its 
 exquisite lines and noble features and silvery radiance was 
 
38 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 as one of God's own shining ones, and angelic in sweetness 
 and spirituality. That face is ours, and it belongs to our 
 country. It is everywhere with the faces of Washington 
 and Franklin, and no effort or neglect of man can tear it 
 out of the treasures of art and the custody of affection. 
 
 Is there not moreover a kind of environment, a sphere of 
 influence, a fellowship of powers and persons that goes with 
 and keeps him living with us ? How much there is in this 
 city to hold him to us, and us to him. The German Goethe 
 did much to build up Weimar in his fifty years' residence 
 there, and to train Duke Charles Augustus in taste and 
 wisdom. Bryant, in a different way, has done no less for 
 New York and for the promising and sometimes preverse, 
 but not incorrigible. Prince Gotham, who rules the city by 
 sovereign ballot, and who, we hope, although sometimes a 
 little wild, is not a bad fellow at heart, and has pretty much 
 sown his wild oats. Bryant meets us every where: Our 
 rural cemeteries in their sacred beauty began public art, 
 and they repeat " Thanatopsis" in their lawns and sculp- 
 tures. Our lovely parks interpret the " Forest Hymn" in 
 it's reverence and joy. 
 
 Our mighty press in its new and growing relations with 
 our social and religious life, is maturing the connection 
 which he formed between the secular and the sacred rela- 
 tions of this community, and mediating, without confound- 
 ing them, between the Church and the world. The beau- 
 tiful, and also the useful arts, are coming together under 
 the lead which he held more by the purity of his taste and 
 the largeness of his sympathy than by any new or profound 
 theory of art. Our artists are nearer to our best life and 
 favor here to-day, because he liked them and went with 
 them. Religion felt his influence, and unassuming and 
 
BRYANT AMONG HIS CO UNTR YMEN. 39 
 
 little dogmatic as he was, he rebuked the spirit of sect 
 and the pride .of caste, so that our church fellowship is 
 sweeter, more humane and godly because of his presence, 
 his hymns and his example. More and more he loved the 
 living Gospel and the living Christ, and the less he cared 
 for any of the sects that set themselves up in place of God 
 and his Christ. 
 
 He seemed in a remarkable way to carry the years with 
 him instead of being carried away by them, and the century 
 of years invested him with a certain majesty, and went with 
 him as a body guard. The " Flood of Years" did not 
 drown, but floated the man and his muse. The great prin- 
 ciples and tendencies which the eighteenth century, in its 
 impatient individualism, brought to the nineteenth century, 
 with its passion for reconciliation and unity, spoke in his 
 word and lived in his thought. Franklin and Adam Smith 
 led the way in that company, and Goethe and Manzoni, 
 Keble and Wordsworth, Peel and Lincoln, Cavour and 
 Thiers, Maurice and Channing followed in the great pro- 
 cession that ever seemed to attend him in his public ad- 
 dresses, and in fact to be around him in his quiet home, 
 and to help him in his unpretending conversation. To 
 those of us who were his neighbors, it was a great privilege 
 to visit him, and when we saw him, we met the whole 
 century in his presence. Old Homer too was his com- 
 panion, and helped him to hold his Greek culture with his 
 New Testament faith. So the ages joined to do him 
 honor, and to keep him true. 
 
 If I were asked to sketch a memorial or a monument 
 for Bryant's memory, I would not presume to do it, or pre- 
 tend to interfere with the proper artist's task. I would, 
 however, venture upon a hint to the competent artist. I 
 
40 DR. OSGOOD'S ORATION. 
 
 would say, put something of Delphi and Jerusalem into 
 your tribute to this Puritan Greek. Take from the Delphic 
 porch the head of Homer, and these two inscriptions, 
 Mr]6Ev ayav^ " No excess;" Fvcadi ffsavrov, " Know thy- 
 self," and then put a fitting statue in front. What shall 
 this be ? Not the Pythoness, with the tripod from the 
 cave beneath where intoxicating gases breathed the inebri- 
 ation that was mistaken for inspiration. Not that figure 
 or that art, but put our poet himself there on a granite 
 rock from his native hills, with one hand outstretched to- 
 wards the fields mountains, and waters, and with the other 
 hand lifted up, and holding a scroll of the everlasting 
 Gospel, and showing plainly the words of Christ, " The 
 truth shall make you free." So Delphi and Jerusalem, 
 Greece and Judea meet together in this man, and give him 
 hold on his country and the world. 
 
 Poet, Patriot, Man, Friend of us all. Father of our Let- 
 ters, what shall we say as we part ! Farewell forever ? No. 
 Welcome forever ! Welcome to your lasting place in the 
 love and honor of your countrymen ! Welcome to your 
 home in the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven ! 
 
 THE POET'S LAST MAY-DAY. 
 
 May, 1878, came in with great beauty, and a company of Christian scholars, 
 after consecrating the occasion by the celebration of the Holy Communion, at 
 the Church of the Atonement, met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel for a social 
 breakfast. There were but few invited guests, and among this choice number 
 our poet held the place of honor, and sat at the right hand of the chairman. 
 He came accompanied by two clergymen, his personal friends, Drs. Osgood and 
 Powers, and was cordially welcomed by the whole company, most of whom had 
 never met him before. He was in full health and spirits, and entered into all 
 the life of the proceedings. The following is the charming little speech which 
 he made at the chairman's call : 
 
THE POETS LAST MA Y-DA V. 4I 
 
 " I obey the call which is made upon me, although in doing so I reverse the 
 ordinary mode of proceeding. It is the province of the clergy to address the 
 laity, and here am I, a layman, rising to address the clergy. Yet as the sermon 
 to the clergy — the concio ad clerum — is for one of their own cloth to deliver, I 
 shall take care, in what little I say, not to preach. 
 
 " When my friend Dr. Osgood told me the other day that if I accepted the 
 invitation to this breakfast I would be called upon to say something, he was 
 good enough to suggest as a subject the Christian poets of our language. This 
 seemed a good suggestion ; but in going over the list of our poets who had 
 treated largely of subjects connected with the Christian religion, I perceived 
 that the two most eminent among them — Milton and Cowper — were laymen. 
 If Wordsworth is to be included in the same class, and Coleridge besides, the 
 author of that glorious " Sunrise Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni," they were 
 laymen also. I was puzzled to know how to twist this circumstance into a 
 compliment to the clergy whose guest I was to be, who had graciously offered 
 me a seat with this reverend company, and to whom I naturally desired to say 
 something pleasant. I went over the list of Christian poets who were clergy- 
 men, from the two Fletchers, Giles and Phineas, down to the present day, an 
 illustrious brotherhood, but taking less lofty flights, and therefore belonging to the 
 class of minor poets. It then occurred to me that in passages of their writings 
 some of them had shown a genius which, if it had been guided principally in 
 the direction of poetry, might have placed them in the class of their more 
 eminent brethren. There is Young, a born poet if there ever was one, at whose 
 torch Byron was wont to kindle his poetic fire. I cannot rank him with 
 Cowper, for he had not the same delicate perception of beauty, the same just 
 sense of symmetry and proportion, and the same affectionate observation of 
 nature ; but what fine passages he has ! There is one which I have never seen 
 selected for commendation, in which he imagined the gloomy spectre of the 
 World before the Flood sorrowing for a whole generation of mankind engulfed 
 in the waters, and predicting another destruction, as general, by fire. Will 
 you hear it ? 
 
 " * Rut oh, Lorenzo, far above the rest, 
 
 Of ghastly feature and enormous size, 
 
 One form assaults mv sight, and chills my blood. 
 
 And shakes ray frame. Of one departed world 
 
 I see the mighty shadow ; oozy wreath 
 
 And dismal sea-weed crown her. O'er her urn 
 
 Reclined she weeps her desolated realms 
 
 And her drowned sons, and, weeping, prophesies 
 
 Another's dissolution, soon, in flames.' 
 
 " What a fine poem, short as it is, that of Croly on the " Genius of Death " as 
 
 represented on an ancient gem ! 
 
 " 'Spirit of the drooping wing 
 And the ever weary eye ! 
 Thou of all earth's kings art king ; 
 Empires at Thy footstool lie ; 
 Before thee strewed 
 Their multitude 
 Sink like waves upon the shore 
 Storms can never rouse them more.' 
 
 There is yet another stanza quite as fine, but I cannot repeat it. 
 
42 THE POETS LAST MA Y-DA Y. 
 
 " These and other passages in the works of poets who were of the clergy led 
 me to the true solution of the problem that had perplexed me. I reflected that 
 one important part of a clergyman's duty was the delivery of sermons, and that 
 when a striking thought, a grand idea, a conception capable of the highest 
 poetic expression, came into his mind, he had an immediate use for it. I 
 perceived that he needed it to enforce the message he had to deliver. Instead 
 of employing the time which should be given to parochial duties in the task of 
 giving these high thoughts a poetic form, for their preservation, the faithful 
 clergyman takes them into the pulpit with him, and launches them at the 
 audience winged with the living voice. He disinterestedly sacrifices present 
 fame to future usefulness ; his reputation as a poet to his duty as a preacher.'' 
 
Mrs. Imogene Brown. 
 
 SONG.—" The Stream of Life." 
 
 FITZHUGH. 
 
 Oh ! silvery streamlet of the fields, 
 
 That flowest full and free ! 
 For thee the rains of Spring return, 
 
 The summer dews for thee ; 
 And when thy latest blossoms die 
 
 In Autumn's chilly showers, 
 The Winter fountains gush for thee, 
 
 Till May brings back the flowers. 
 
 Oh stream of hfe ! the violet springs 
 
 But once beside thy bed ; 
 But one brief Summer on thy path 
 
 The dews of heaven are shed. 
 Thy parent fountains shrink away, 
 
 And close their crystal veins. 
 And where thy glittering current flowed 
 
 The dust alone remains. 
 
 — William Cullen Bryant. 
 
 Mr. Courtlandt Palmer then recited Mr. Bryant's poem 
 " Thanatopsis." 
 
BRYANT THE CONSECRATOR. 
 
 CLOSING ADDRESS BY 
 
 T. B. WAKEMAN, ESQ. 
 
 THE Future is so apt to forget ! Let then a few words be 
 heard, even at this late hour, to plead before the clear 
 cold intellect of Time, for the continuance of the fame that 
 now lives, and for the homage that springs from every heart. 
 
 In that Future our most distinguished member, though 
 great as an Editor, Statesman, Benefactor, and in his latter 
 years, easily the first of American citizens, will be an endur- 
 ing power in so far as he remains a living poet. How then 
 to estimate truly his worth and rank in the immortal world 
 of the Heart, is not only to be just to him, but to bring 
 rightly into view a most important element in the future of 
 American art and culture. 
 
 The need of such estimate is evident from assertions pub- 
 licly made that the influence and fame of the poet Bryant 
 can be but temporary, for that, he has left no one great 
 original work, nor created a new world of thought or feeling 
 as prophet or seer, and that not one single living character, 
 human or other, stands forth as the creation of his pen or 
 fancy. How different is all this, we are told, from the great 
 souls who have marked the great epochs of human growth, 
 as Homer and Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe ! 
 
£R YANT THE CONSECRA TOR. 45 
 
 Such criticisms are the symptoms of a profound misap- 
 prehension, to be removed as soon as possible, in regard to 
 the nature and worth of the two grand provinces of the 
 Poetic Art, the creative and the consecrative. 
 
 That the Poet is in his leading function, a maker and 
 creator, the great names just repeated, and even the origin 
 of the word Poet, is held to show, and with truth. He it is who 
 makes and embodies in religion or art a new state of mind in 
 which his fellows are wont to live, so that their earthly days 
 may seem more tolerable or hopeful. This creative faculty 
 when recognized by the masses of mankind becomes the 
 centre of a great spiritual empire through the ages. Thus the 
 great steps of the emotional progress of the civilized human 
 race are summed up in the four greatest creative poets of the 
 world just named. By their side sane ambition does not 
 aspire to stand. The centuries are the electors ! But un- 
 der their creative domains, as part and consequence of them, 
 the great consecrative function of the poet remains, humbler 
 perhaps, but as useful and still more endearing and popular. 
 Shakspeare was followed and completed by Burns, and by 
 the side of Goethe we always wish to see the consecrating 
 form of Schiller. These lesser lights seem to be the proper 
 ones to reveal and make sacred to us the common prosaic 
 world around us. They infuse into it the human feelings 
 of love, fear, hope, sympathy and admonition, till the com- 
 monest scenes and objects live as the ministers and symbols 
 of our higher life. Thus all is consecrated, that is as the 
 words mean, made sacred in covinion. We are touched by 
 an invisible hand, and find ourselves united as by magic, mem- 
 bers of a common, but invisible spiritual world. To become 
 aware of such a world, to pass readily into it, out of the 
 storm and stress of life, is at once solace and ennoblement. 
 
46 T. B. WAKEMAN'S ADDRESS. 
 
 To that world, consecrative poetry holds the key. To her 
 eye the Faust words are no mystery ; 
 
 "All the transitory 
 Is a symbol merely." 
 
 (AUes vergangliche 
 1st nur ein gleichniss.) 
 
 This contrast of the two great art provinces can hardly be 
 more strikingly seen, than in Goethe the Creator, whose name 
 we bear, and in Bryant the Consecrator whose memory to- 
 night we honor. 
 
 What the life and works of the greatest German man 
 mean in modern culture the world is beginning to dis- 
 cover. He was a creator from youth. His poetic eye had 
 a stereoscopic power that saw objects and even human lives 
 and spiritual and moral conceptions, as if solid and real. 
 From his hand as if from a Prometheus, have flowed forms 
 and characters, human, divine, devilish, that walk the earth 
 and live. We may say that from him has begun a new 
 way of looking at and realizing our existence. A new con- 
 ception of life, a new state of mind, has arisen from him 
 which future generations may well find the truest and best 
 in " the Sun and Star-lit Hall of Earth." He was essenti- 
 ally a transformer. Mythologies, religions, moralities sat on 
 trial before him. When a thinker arrives on this planet, we 
 are told, that all things are at stake ; but from the creative 
 poet they receive judgment. What he fails to accept dies, 
 for through him the feelings of mankind receive a new im- 
 pulse and direction. This is done by his veryhfe and almost 
 always unconsciously. Every little trivial thing which has 
 been touched by the Muse of Goethe is thereby annexed to a 
 new world, and glows with new light, or beams with new life ! 
 
BRYANT THE CONSECRATOR. 4/ 
 
 The creative poet is thus strongly allied to the Prophet, 
 Reformer, Discoverer. The consecrative poet is rather allied 
 to, and takes the place often of the Priest, Saint, Hiero- 
 phant. Thus Bryant, as a consecrative poet, had no call to 
 be a sceptic ; the religious beliefs of his time were his as 
 materials for the work required of him. But the formal 
 religion and morality of the creative poet is of the future. 
 To inquire, for instance, whether Goethe was a believer or 
 sceptic, religious or irreligious, moral or immoral is futile, 
 except to say, that he was both and all, because he was 
 more. Can you foretell the agricultural value of a volcano 
 or earthquake ? Socrates like, he spoke of his " demon " and 
 lived a brave, true, original life. Quiet it seemed on the 
 surface, yet within, volcanic, demonic, it created and carried 
 aloft, a vast table-land into the spiritual world of mankind. 
 The moral and religious, as we may say, the agricultural 
 value of that new world will be determined when it is better 
 settled, when the rocks and lava have disintegrated into 
 the richest soil, and send out corn and oil and wine. 
 
 How very different the mission and duty of the youthful 
 Bryant. In free America no French Revolution called him 
 to body forth a new spiritual world by his life, but the 
 actual world before him was a waste and savage continent 
 to be wedded by the graces of poetic association and art to 
 the souls of the children of the Colonists and Traders, who 
 had hunted the Indian from its surface. The first settlers 
 had taken possession of the land physically only, they were 
 in heart and spirit children of Europe or of Heaven. But 
 with the next two generations the traditions of the mother 
 countries had faded ; the stern religion, and the sterner 
 
48 T. B. WAKEMJN S ADDRESS. 
 
 necessities of the colonists gave way ; and the consecration 
 of the wild American landscape, as the home and minister 
 of the human soul and its affections, was a necessity of 
 culture and of all higher life. 
 
 Our country was calling not for the Creator, but the 
 Consecrator, and he stood forth in the youthful author of 
 " Thanatopsis." That noble poem was but the beginning of 
 a career that has married a free people to a free land. 
 Never was a Consecrative Poet more needed, never has his 
 mission been more worthily or beautifully fulfilled. 
 
 The separated colonies had indeed been partly melted 
 together by the patriotism of the Revolution and the result- 
 ing national Union, but the separated religious sects left an 
 anarchy that forbade any very close union of religious 
 sentiment. 
 
 In this emergency the soul and muse of Bryant, far more 
 than any other cause, combined the feelings of the whole 
 people through a common sentiment of love and sympathy 
 for the beauty of the new Fatherland ; and hence arose also 
 a sense of the worth and dignity of the American life that 
 should be worthy of it. He " infused deep into Nature's 
 breast, as the spirit of her hues," the very emotions of our 
 life, and made her echo back to the common heart the 
 voices of sympathy that make us all a-kin. In that various 
 language, which he inspired, she spoke to all in gladness or 
 sorrow, with the eloquence of beauty and love that made it 
 no solitude to be alone, even in the primeval forest. 
 
 His poems, in this view, interpret our scenery with a 
 charm that none can resist. Under their spell 
 
 " The memory of sorrow grows 
 A lighter burden to the heart." 
 
BRYANT THE CONSECRATOR. 49 
 
 And although 
 
 " There is a sacred dread of death 
 Inwoven with the strings of life,'' 
 
 yet again and again the sympathy of the common fate of 
 nature and man brings its lesson of patience, duty and noble 
 resignation. Note, too, how original is this consecration of 
 Nature to man as his friend and ministering angel. For 
 with him the human is ever the higher interest and the 
 worthier. How different from the misanthropic nature- 
 worship of Byron or Shelley or even Cowper. Not to hide 
 in Nature, or to be absorbed in her life, not for a lodge in 
 some vast wilderness to escape the oppression and deceit of 
 man, is the object of his converse, but to bring her closer to 
 the human heart, as our aid and comforter in the very 
 struggle of life. That we may 
 
 ' ' — to the beautiful order of thy works 
 Learn to conform the order of our lives,'' 
 
 is the sum of his prayer to the God of Nature, as it is the 
 object of all science. 
 
 Thus science, sentiment and worship are combined in 
 this cosmic emotion which re-peoples the world with benevo- 
 lent powers and influences. We are embraced by the 
 evening-wind ; the forest and tempest, violet and gentian, 
 have their grand symphony of gentle voices in the life of 
 man. The changeful year but varies the lessons that the 
 love of nature spreads as a common language far beyond 
 those who have read the Poet's words. Some feeling be- 
 fore the beautiful and sublime in Nature is becoming more 
 and more instinctive among our people. The American 
 " tramp " is said to select his route with some regard to the 
 beauty of the country. We can hardly say of him, as 
 Wordsworth of his stolid Peter Bell, — 
 
50 T. B. WAKEMAirS ADDRESS. 
 
 " A primrose by the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him 
 And it was nothing more. " 
 
 To this beneficent and very general appreciation of Na- 
 ture as the hand-maiden and consoler of Man, the Muse of 
 Bryant has unceasingly cemtributed. From him we learn to 
 feel that all within the bound of '' old Ocean's melancholy 
 waste ; " the mountains and vales ; rivers and lakes ; forests 
 and flowers ; and all their life — to the falling leaf, or rab- 
 bit's tread — are sacred instances or symbols of the deep laws 
 and unities which bind man to his Mother Earth, and 
 make her children a brotherhood. 
 
 But not only was our Poet the Consecrator and Interpreter 
 of American scenery but also of our American life, aspira- 
 tion and history. He has woven a thread of consecrating 
 sympathy through the story of our national existence, and 
 which joins it worthily to the greater life of mankind. We 
 may trace it in the dusky Indian's lament ; the patriotism 
 of the Revolution ; the wonderful progress of the Republic ; 
 the growth and death of Slavery ; the heroism of the Civil 
 War ; the triumph of Liberty ; and the final dream of the 
 grand Federation of Man on Earth. In all these his Muse 
 is again the Interpreter and Witness of the common senti- 
 ment and hope that has made us one people, and which in 
 time will join us to all peoples in the greater Republic that 
 is to be. 
 
 His deep appreciation and sympathy with the processes 
 of Nature were crowned by an inspiring confidence in man- 
 kind, and a faith in their liberty, progress and ever-growing 
 triumph. His last public utterance was a beautiful expres- 
 sion of this sentiment, and a noble testimony to this faith. 
 
BRYANT THE CONSECRATOR. 5 I 
 
 It was a most fitting conclusion of his own life, when on 
 the 29th of May last, in dedicating the statue of the 
 Humanitarian Liberal, Joseph Mazzini, in our Central Park, 
 he stood forth with uncovered head in the bright sun, and 
 received his death stroke as he pronounced these memor- 
 able words : — 
 
 " Image of the illustrious champion of civil and religious 
 liberty, cast in enduring bronze to typify the imperishable 
 renown of thy original ! Remain for ages yet to come where 
 we place thee, in this resort of millions ; remain till the day 
 shall dawn — far distant though it may be — when the rights 
 aud duties of human brotherhood shall be acknowledged by all 
 the races of mankind ! " 
 
 This was the last, perhaps the worthiest word. The Sun 
 of his genius had shed the golden light and warmth of 
 loving reverence as far as one life could reach. It had 
 rendered sacred our world and life, from the " land of 
 groves" beneath our feet, up through the stages of human 
 endeavor and history, to the highest aspiration of the race. 
 His mission on earth could have had no nobler end. In 
 the very act of consecration, " The Flood of Years" bore 
 him on ! 
 
 To us, and to his grateful friends, pupils and admirers, 
 falls the duty to see that our great consecrator shall him- 
 self be worthily consecrated. That he become hereafter 
 recognized as he was, and is, in fact, the fundamental man 
 in our American unity of sentiment, art and culture. He 
 who rendered our life and its environment sacred, must 
 himself ever live with us as the sacred poet — " vate sacro." 
 His brother bards may well call forth the " mead of the 
 
52 T. B. WAKEMAN'S ADDRESS. 
 
 melodious tear," but their echoes soon die away. His 
 enduring monument — his poems, so simple and sublime, so 
 hearty, true and pure — where not a line needs to be changed, 
 nor a word erased — must be embedded in the hearts of our 
 children, that they may flow from the lips of age. Only 
 by their actual use in the school and family can the worth 
 of this great consecrating life be known and preserved. 
 The hearts thus nourished will never fail when the day 
 lowers, or the fatherland calls for support or sacrifice. 
 
 But one monument more there should be. It is one of 
 the cherished objects of our Society that some day the 
 statue of the glorious Goethe, the great modern creator, 
 shall stand in our Central Park. Americans will not do 
 their duty unless not far from him, as the complement of 
 him, the statue of Bryant, the American consecrator, shall 
 also stand in that " haunt of millions," which in fact we 
 owe to his suggestion and care, as one of the Genii of the 
 place. There, surrounded by the beauties of that Nature he 
 loved so well, he will continue to speak " for ages yet to 
 come." Years will but impress a deeper reverence upon 
 the generations as they rise and gaze upon his earthly 
 form, so graceful and venerable. Each, as they pass, can 
 but add new emphasis to the fitting inscription, nearly in 
 the words of the English bard, a favorite of his youth : — ■ 
 " Poet, and yet Saint ! For to Thee were justly given 
 Those two most sacred names of Earth and Heaven ! " 
 
The Vocal Union of New York. 
 
 PART SONG— '' Evening Hymn." 
 
 BLUMENTHAL. 
 
 The shadows of the evening hours 
 
 Fall from the dark'ning sky ; 
 Upon the fragrance of the flow'rs 
 
 The dews of evening lie. 
 Before Thy throne, O Lord of Heaven, 
 
 We kneel at close of day ; 
 , Look on Thy children from on high ; 
 
 And hear us while we pray. 
 
 Slowly the rays of daylight fade, 
 
 So fade within our heart 
 The hopes in earthly love and joy, 
 
 That one by one depart ; 
 Slowly the bright stars one by one 
 
 Within the heavens shine : 
 Give us, O Lord, fresh hopes in heav'n. 
 
 And trust in things divine. 
 
 Let peace, O Lord, — Thy peace, O God, 
 
 Upon our souls descend ; 
 From midnight fears and perils. Thou 
 
 Our trembling hearts defend, 
 Give us a respite from our toil, 
 
 Calm and subdue our woes ; 
 Thro' the long, long day we suffer, Lord, 
 
 Oh ! give us now repose. 
 
 — Adelaide Proctor 
 
BRYANT MEMORIAL MEETING OF THE 
 GOETHE CLUB. 
 
 At a meeting of the Goethe Club, held on June 20th, 1878, called to take 
 appropriate action with reference to the recent lamented death of its honored 
 member, William Cullen Bryant, a committee consisting of Prof. Theodor 
 G. Glaubensklee, Courtlandt Palmer and John Elderkin, was appointed to 
 make arrangements for a suitable memorial service to commemorate the virtues 
 and genius of the deceased. 
 
 The Vocal Union of New York, and Mr. E. J. Fitzhugh, its conductor, 
 kindly volunteered to assist with music. 
 
 Among those invited to be present and make addresses were : Prof. H. W. 
 Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John G. Whittier, George Bancroft and 
 George H. Calvert, all of whom, except Mr. Whittier, are honorary members 
 of the Club. It is a matter of great regret that not one of these gentlemen 
 could attend ; but all of their replies contained expressions of sympathy with 
 the objects in view and of admiration for Bryant. 
 
 John G. Whittier sent the following letter in response to an invitation to be 
 
 present : 
 
 Oak Knoll, Danvers, ) 
 
 Tenth, Mo., 17, 1878. ( 
 
 John Elderkin, Esq., 
 
 Cor. Sec'v Goethe Club. 
 I regret that the state of my health will not permit me to accept the invitation to the 
 meeting commemorative of my old friend, William Cullen Bryant, whose death is felt 
 everywhere as a great bereavement — a national loss. His genius, public services, and 
 pure life are deserving of all the honors which can be paid. Thanking, through thee, the 
 Goethe Club, for their kind invitation, and heartily sympathizing with the object of their 
 meeting, I am very truly thy friend, 
 
 John G. Whittier. 
 
 Prof. Longfellow wrote : 
 " I should be happy to accept your very hospitable invitation, if it were in my power ; 
 but pressing engagements here render it quite impossible. The same causes prevent me 
 from undertaking to write a poem for the occasion expressive of my feeUng of admiration 
 and affection for Bryant." 
 
 Interesting letters were received from Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, George 
 H. Calvert and George Bancroft. Mr. Bancroft's recent accident prevented 
 his attendance at the meeting. 
 
BR YANT MEMORIAL MEF. TING. 5 5 
 
 The program of the exercises of the memorial meeting was successfully 
 carried out. After an appropriate and beautiful organ voluntary, Dr. Rup- 
 paner, the President of the Club, made a brief, but eloquent introductory 
 speech, and was followed by tlie orator of the evening, Dr. Samuel Osgood, 
 who dilated with that copious eloquence for which he is distinguished on the 
 rich suggestions of his theme. Mr. T. B. Walieman, who succeeded, pointed 
 out with fine discrimination the distinction between creative and consecrativ.B 
 poets, instancing the master German poet as the highest example the age had 
 afforded of the former, and according Bryant a high place among the latter. 
 Mr. Courtlandt Palmer, a member of the Goethe Club, recited " Thanatopsis," 
 and Mrs. Imogene Brown and the Vocal Union of New York sang at intervals 
 some of Bryant's harmonious numbers. The pannelling back of the stage was 
 tastefully draped in mourning, and on either side of the reader's desk were 
 placed the Bryant vase, kindly loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
 and Henry Linder's marble bust of the poet. The hall was well filled with 
 invited guests, who showed deep interest in the exercises of the evening. 
 
 A partial list of those invited to be present at the meeting included Mr. and 
 Mrs. Parke Godwin, Miss Bryant, Messrs. John H. Bi-yant and Arthur Bryant, 
 the Misses Godwin, Hon. Thurlow Weed, Chancellor Howard Crosby, Hon. 
 John Bigelow, Hon. Samuel J. Tilden, President F. A. P. Barnard, Hon. 
 Hamilton Fish, Prof. John W. Draper, Theodore W. Dwight, President and 
 Mrs. Webb, Samuel D. Babcock, Hon. George William Curtis, Joseph W. 
 Harper, Cardinal McCloskey, Mayor Ely, Mrs. George P. Putnam, Mr. and 
 Mrs. George Haven Putnam, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Linder, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. 
 Hayward, Rev. and Mrs. W. T. Clarke, Mr. and Mrs. David B. Reed, Peter 
 Cooper, Whitelaw Reid, Mr. and Mrs. Courtlandt Palmer, Cyrus W. Field, 
 Hon. and Mrs. Abram S. Hewitt, Dr. R. S. Storrs, Mr. and Mrs. George R. 
 Blanchard, Prof, and Mrs. T. G. Glaubensklee, Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair Tousey, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Frank Leslie, Mr. and Mrs. Edmund C. Stedman, Mr. and Mrs. 
 George Ripley, Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Stoddard, Hon. William Wood, Mr. and 
 Mrs. John Elderkin, Miss Elderkin, Miss Emily Hewitt, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph 
 Seligman, Mr. and Mrs. John Taylor Johnston, Miss Mary L. Booth, Mrs. 
 Wright, Mr. and Mrs. JohnB. Bouton, Mr. and Mrs. O. B. Frothingham, Hon. 
 Joseph H. Choate, Hon. Frederick Kiihne and lady. Postmaster Thomas L. 
 James and lady, Mrs. George C. Barrett, Mr. and Mrs. John Austin Stevens, 
 Judge and Mrs. Noah Davis, Mr. and Mrs. Emuel Southwick, Judge and Mrs. 
 Barrett, Samuel Shethar, Mrs. M. C. Ferrand, Mr. and Mrs. Mui-phy, of 
 Frankfort-on-the-Main, Gen. and Mrs. James Grant Wilson, Bishop Little- 
 john, Hon. J. K. Porter and Mrs. Porter, Hon. H. A. Schumacher, Consul 
 of the German Empire, and lady. Dr. and Mrs. J. G. Holland, Dr. and Mrs. 
 Rising, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin File, Mrs. ToUes, Herr Moritz, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Oscar Yenni, Mr. John Mack, Mrs. James Barrow, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Connolly_ 
 Mr. Morris Phillips, Daniel Huntington, Dr. and Mrs. Henry M. Field, 
 Clarence King, W. H. Appleton, Dr. Chapin, A. R. McDonough, Dr. H. W. 
 Bellows, General Hancock, William A. Camp, James Lenox, Luther R. 
 Marsh, Mr. and Mrs. James. A. Roosevelt, Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Roose- 
 
5^ BRYANT MEMORIAL MEETING. 
 
 velt, J. B. Putnam, A. P. Stout, Mr. and Mrs. William Walter Phelps, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Wesendonk, Judge Blatchford, Mr. and Mrs. B. H. Field, Isaac 
 Henderson, William G. Boggs, Mr. and Mrs. Oswald Ottendorfer, N. F. 
 Whiting, Albert B. King, Watson R. Sparry, William Stewart, Miss Stewart, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Moritz Ellinger, Rev. and Mrs. Moldehnke, Oscar Zolikoffer, 
 Gen. and Mrs. Uhl, Mr. and Mrs. S. L. M. Barlow, Miss Barlow, Mrs. Gen. 
 Meagher, Judge Charles P. Daly and Mrs. Daly, Judge and Mrs. John R. 
 Brady, Frederick De Peyster, President of the Historical Society, Hon. W. H. 
 Neilson, Mr. and Mrs. August Belmont, Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mr. 
 and Mrs. William B. Astor, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Astor, Dr. Theo. Tellkampf, 
 Alfred Schlesinger, Mr. and Mrs. F. W. Christern, Mr. and Mrs. T. B. 
 Wakeman, Hon. Edwin D. Morgan, Gen. John A. Dix, Dr. and Mrs. C. R. 
 Agnew, Mr. and Mrs. Erastus C. Benedict, Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Genniman, 
 George H. Moore, Mr. and Mrs. George Perry, Mr. and Mrs. A. Roelker, Mrs. 
 Kate Lobdell, Mr. and Mrs. J. Burling Lawrence, Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Johnson, 
 Miss Johnson, William Radde, Prof, and Mrs. V. A. Botta, F. Wiebush, Mr. and 
 Mrs. W. A. Kobbe, Mr. and Mrs. Edmund H. Miller, Dr. and Mrs. T. A. 
 Emmet, Judge and Mrs. Larremore, W. Adams, Gen. S. L. Woodford, Prof. 
 Hunter, Dr. and Mrs. T. M. Coan, Charlton T. Lewis, Hon. E. C. Cowdin, 
 Ellwood E. Thorne, H. R. Hinton, Mr. L. Funke and Miss Funke, Misses 
 Miller, Mr. and Mrs. Dutel, General di Cesnola, Mr. and Mrs. John Savage, 
 Mr. C. C. Buel, Mrs. C. H. Way, Gen. and Mrs. Charles C. Dodge, Miss 
 Chichester, of Brooklyn, Mr. and Mrs. Henry P. Townsend, Mr. and Miss 
 Protheroe, George H. Combs, George W. Clarke, Mr, and Mrs. Dexter 
 Hawkins, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Herrman, Mr. and Mrs. Henry A. Loop, 
 Mr. and Mrs. John A. Gwynne, Dr. Fuller-Walker, Mr. and Mrs. Phyfe, 
 Prof. Schlegel, Superintendent Kiddle and Mr. Hutchings. 
 
GOETHE CLUB. 
 
 LIST OF MHMUr.RS. 
 
 Al.GRR, Rev. \Vm. R. 
 AvKRv, Geo. A. 
 
 Bali., Ai.onzo B., M. D. 
 Bancroft, Hon. Gko. 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 B.VRN'ARD, HORACK 
 
 r. \uRF.Ti', Mrs, Geo, C, 
 15l\xci[.\ki), Geo. R. 
 Bredt, Ernst 
 f Bryant, \Vm. C. 
 
 BURNII \.M, T. L. 
 
 H. 
 
 Newport, R. I. 
 
 Calvekt, Hon. Geo. 
 
 CHAMUKRI-AIN, Cit\s. 
 CkaMRIlKS, JULIIS 
 
 Ckristern, F. \V. 
 Clarke, W'm. T. 
 Cotter] LL, Gi.u, W. 
 
 Dillingham, Chas. T. 
 Dlval, H. R. 
 Dvvigiit, Theo., LL. D. 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 Elderkin, John 
 Elunger, Moritz 
 EuN'iNG, Mrs. Elizabeth F. 
 Evans, Hen'ry 
 
 Kallmann, Prof. Wm. A. 
 FisK, Prof^ Willard 
 
 Cornell University. 
 FiSKE, Gen. Clinton B. 
 Fl.OTiENCE, Wm. B. 
 
 Frank, L. J. 
 Frothingham, Rev. O. B. 
 
 Gl.aubensiclee, 'J'heo. G. 
 Godwin, Parke 
 GoEPP, Hon. Chas. 
 Griffpn, Miss Julia 
 Grosse, Edward 
 
 Harper, MIssLizzie 
 Hawkins, Col. Rlsh C. 
 Hawkins, Dexter 
 h.wward, j. k. 
 ILww.'.RD, Mrs. Emmeline V. 
 Hedge. Rpv. Fred. H.; D.D. 
 
 Prafessor in Harvard University. 
 Herrmann, Henry 
 Hill, Fiiank .\. 
 Holmes, Oliver H., M. D. 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 HOTCHKISS, H. L. 
 
 t Deceased. 
 
 James, Hon. Tuos. L. 
 Johnston, J. H. 
 
 Kent, Major Edward LL 
 Kueiine, Fred. Consul Cieneral 
 Knaui II, Perci\ ai. 
 
 Leach, LIy. LL 
 Lew, Aug. H. 
 
 LOINES, Si'EPHEN 
 LONGFLLLOW, Prof. Hv. W. 
 
 Harvard University 
 
 M.\r,NK, Prof. ACHILLE 
 Marvin, F. R., M. D. 
 Miles, Chas. A. 
 I MoRiNG, LL L. 
 Morris, F. K. 
 Morris, L. W. 
 
 Osgood, Rev. Swuel, D.D. 
 
 Palmer, CorRTi,ANi>T 
 P,\rnell, Miss A. 
 PiRssoN, John W. 
 I'l.fMi;. I). S. 
 ■PuLHAM, Chas. PL 
 
 QUIGLEY, JaS. J. 
 
 Radhk, L. L. ( i. 
 Radue, Wm. 
 RAWsON,,l'rof. A. L. 
 Reid, Joiin'R. 
 Rii III r, Wm. i). 
 Roelker, Alfred 
 RlMTANER, A., ^LD. 
 
 Saxe-Weimar, Carl .Vlexanuer, 
 
 Grand Duke of 
 .Sei.igmann, Jos. 
 Stiner, Wm. LL 
 
 Bayard 
 Berlin, Germany 
 
 Taylor, Hon 
 Tuthill, D. W 
 
 Wakeman, Thad. B. 
 WiuiE, Andrew D., LL.D., 
 
 President Cornell University 
 WiEBi sen, Fred. 
 Wre,\ks, Chas. T. 
 
 Venm, Oscar 
 
 Zickel, S. 
 ZoLLiKoFFER, Oscar