THE NATIONAL PERIOD. 1830 to the Present Time. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 1794-1878. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, one of America's best poets, was born in Cummington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. His father was an eminent physician, who acquired also a great degree of literary culture, which no doubt accounts for the early display of literary talent made by the younger Bryant. William Cullen Bryant at the early age of ten wrote an original poem, which he recited at school, paraphrased the first chapter of the book of Job and wrote translations of some of the Latin poets. These first efforts, though necessarily immature in thought and in mechanical construction, were published in the Hampshire Gazette. At the age of fourteen Bryant wrote The Embargo, a political satire remarkable both on account of the youth of the writer and because of its vigor of style. The poem became so popular that a second edition was demanded, which was afterward published in connection with other poems. When Bryant was only eighteen years old he wrote Thanatopsis, the poem on which his fame was founded. fhis poem is still regarded as one of the best specimens of reflective poetry that can be found in English lit erature. Bryant attended Williams College, but left witho graduating. He then read law, and for ten years devoted his time diligently to his profession; but in 1825 he moved to New York, and, having abandoned law, he with a friend established The New York Review, in which many of his poems appeared. Having decided to make literature his profession for life, he became principal editor of The New York Evening Post, which position he held to the time of his death. Bryant went to Europe for the first time in 1834, and after that made five trips abroad. His country residence during much of the latter part of his life was at Roslyn, Long Island, but he still retained his city residence in New York and often visited the old homestead at Cummington, Massachusetts. Besides his editorial duties and his poetical writings, he made a translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which, in metrical arrangement as well as faithful translation, compares favorably with Pope's version of the same author. Bryant may also be classed as a historian, for during the last years of his life he was engaged on a History of the United States. Bryant was such a lover of nature that he has sometimes been called the American Wordsworth, after the English poet whose works are characterized to so great an extent by this same love of everything that is attractive in the natural world. One of Bryant's best poems is The Flood of Years, which, although written when he was in his eightysecond year, bears evidence that his mental strength had in nowise diminished. The poet, having delivered an oration in Central Park, New York, on the occasion of erecting a statue to the memory of the Italian patriot Mazzini, was soon thereafter prostrated by a sunstroke, from the effects of which he died on the 12th of June, 1878. EXTRACTS. To him who in the love of Nature holds Thanatopsis. So live, that when thy summons comes to join To that mysterious realm where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Thanatopsis Loveliest of lovely things are they A Scene on the Banks of the Hadson Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again: The Battlefield 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 sound of anthems-in the darkling wood, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks Forest Hymn. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 1807-1882. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was born at Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February, 1807. He was the son of the Hon. Stephen Longfellow, an eminent lawyer in Portland. At the age of fourteen H. W. Longfellow entered Bowdoin College, from which he graduated with high honors in 1825. While a student at Bowdoin, Longfellow, though not yet eighteen years old, wrote some of the most popular of his early poems, among which are Sunrise on the Hills, The Spirit of Poetry, Hymn of the Moravian Nuns and Woods in Winter. After graduating at Bowdoin, Longfellow spent three years in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, with the view of fitting himself the more fully for the professorship of modern languages, which had been offered to him by his alma mater, and upon the duties of which he entered in 1829. He made a second tour of Europe in 1835, this time extending his travels through Denmark, Sweden, Holland and Switzerland. During this tour Longfellow made a special study of the languages of the North, in order to qualify himself for the chair of modern languages in Harvard College, to which he had been elected on the resignation of Professor George Ticknor. He assumed the duties of the new position in 1836, and continued there seventeen years. During this time he lived in Cambridge, in what was known as the "Craigie House," made famous in history for having been the headquarters of Washington during the Revolution. Mrs. Craigie, having become reduced in circumstances, gave rooms in the grand old mansion to college professors and students, among whom were Longfellow, Worcester, Everett and others. The Craigie mansion, having become doubly interesting to Longfellow on account of historical and college reminiscences, was purchased by him in 1843, in which year he was married a second time, his first wife having died in Holland in 1835. The poet's second wife died in 1861 under most distressing circumstances. While playing with |