XXXVIII

The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 1878 (LETTERS 2549 TO 2602)

IN FEBRUARY 1878 BRYANT WAS ELECTED an honorary member of the Ameri• can Library Association, lately founded at Philadelphia. Very likely its presi• dent Justin Warner, an historian then librarian of Harvard College, knew of Bryant's gifts of libraries to Cummington and Roslyn, and was instrumental in securing the honor for him. By coincidence, during the week in which Bryant was informed of this election, President Hayes wrote him from Washington that he had been charged with securing plans for a proposed library in his hometown of Fremont, Ohio, and, hearing Bryant had built a library "somewhere in Massachusetts," asked if he might see pictures and plans of that building. Bryant sent these to Hayes, scarcely conceiving of the ultimate import of his act, for the Hayes Library, later housed in limestone and aided by state funds, was the forerunner of other Presidential libraries, and to this extent the little Bryant Library in Cummington became their prototype! In the spring of this year the second volume of the Popular History was in print. Although Bryant had written a preface to the first volume, that for this one was done by his associate. Bryant's insistence that Gay sign his work may be accounted for by the comment therein that the "oldest living and most distinguished American scholar ... has given to every line-read in proof before printing-the benefit of his careful criticism, his ripe judgment, and his candid discrimination." His concern with the History suspended temporarily, Bryant took up other matters. He sat to several portrait painters, notably Wyatt Eaton, a founder with the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens of the Society of Ameri• can Artists, where the picture was shown in April. He declined to write an ode for Lincoln's birthday-any such verses would have been anticlimactic after his elegy of 1865---or poetry to accompany a ghoulish sketch by cartoonist Thomas Nast of a skeleton in soldier's uniform. But he was persuaded by New Yorkers of Spanish descent to compose a poetic tribute to their compatriot Cervantes, and wrote verses for Washington's birthday. He was beset with requests that he speak or preside at ceremonies. One of these was a Century Club dinner for an old friend, the artist John G. Chapman-it may be remembered that, at the age of eighty-three, Bryant was still the president of the Century. He addressed an Episcopal clergymen's club. And, he complained to Leonice Moulton in April, although he longed for the country, "I have so many dinners to eat and receptions to attend in honor of The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 415

Bayard Taylor that it is impossible to get away long enough to look at Roslyn." A popular travel writer and poet, Taylor, a member of the Century, had been named minister to Prussia and was sent off in April after being breakfasted and dined and given a "Commers" (German students' beer party) at which Bryant spoke, as did others, in German. Perhaps he felt a special responsibil• ity for Taylor whom, when an unknown Pennsylvania printer, he had encour• aged to try his pen in the world of New York journalism. There were as usual miscellaneous invitations: to a literary congress in Paris, a Vineland festival, an organizing meeting of the Chatauqua Associa• tion. And, as Bryant complained to Mrs. Moulton, there were the autograph seekers, the beggars, the would-be poets, the office seekers needing recom• mendations-"the annoyances and miseries which ... only cease with death." Heaviest of all pressures that spring was that urged on him by his daughters and son-in-law to consent to a radical restructuring of the Evening Post's fiscal affairs. Bryant's loyalty to his business partner Isaac Henderson had remained constant for many years in the face of the suspicions of Parke Godwin, who had cautioned Bryant eight years before against this "most subtle, adroit, and thorough rascal ... who in less than ten years will, in ways that you will hardly suspect, defraud you of the better part of your interest in the Evening Post." Now it became evident that Godwin's warning had been prescient. A year earlier Bryant had been persuaded to tell Henderson that his own attorney Andrew H. Green would examine the Evening Post's books, while assuring him that this implied "no interruption of the good understanding which has subsisted between us." But after a long inspection of the paper's affairs, first by Green and later by Judge John J. Monell, it was made painfully clear to Bryant that his associate of nearly thirty years had credited to his own account over two hundred thousand dollars which were rightfully Bryant's. As a result, Henderson was forced to resign his post as publisher, and to pledge controlling shares in the firm as security for his indebtedness to Bryant, who, though remaining as editor, turned over the presidency of the company to Monell. Thus control of the property was assured to Bryant's heirs. Suffering that spring under the painful disillusionment of these devel• opments, and beset by attacks of lumbago and a persistent cold, Bryant complained to an editorial assistant one day late in May, "People expect too much of me-altogether too much." There was one more expectation, how• ever, to which he acceded, though reluctantly. For many years he had been the speaker most in demand to honor writers and other public men in New York City. In Central Park, with which his name had been associated since its inception, he had often been the orator at the unveiling of statues. When he accepted the invitation of several Italian-American societies to join a commit• tee planning a monument to the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, it was to be expected that he would speak the main address at its dedication in the park on May 29. Doubtless Bryant recalled with satisfaction an evening in London in 1845 when he had been asked to meet Mazzini after his hostess had characterized the two men as "specimen[s] of the best American" and the "best Italian." 416 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

On Tuesday, May 28, Bryant came in to the city from Roslyn, and on Wednesday morning went to his office, as was still his custom when in town. Here he held a long conversation with the Evening Post's literary editor, George Cary Eggleston, who later termed it a "critical history of American literature in miniature." After a light lunch Bryant was driven in his carriage to a site near the southwest corner of Central Park, where a bronze bust of Mazzini stood on a granite base ready for unveiling. It was a hot, sunny day. Bryant stood in the shade of an elm tree during preliminary ceremonies and speeches. When it came time for his oration, he mounted the platform, and as a bystander tried with difficulty to shield his bald head from the sun with an umbrella, he stepped forward from under this cover to close with the impassioned peroration, "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 and duties of human brotherhood shall be acknowledged by all the races of mankind." Years earlier, Bryant had consoled Christiana Gibson on her mother's serious illness, and added, "I hear, with a sort of selfish distress, of the sufferings of people in the decline of life; they seem like a menace of what I must expect. I shrink from the thought of passing to the new life along a path in which Pain is to be my principal companion, and there is nothing which makes such rigorous demands upon our exclusive attention as pain. I therefore ask for myself and for my aged friends that, when our time comes we may 'be with ease I Gathered, not harshly plucked.' " When he had concluded his oration Bryant seemed to some observers to be exhausted, wrote Parke Godwin, and should have been allowed to go straight home, but "a gentleman with whom he had a slight acquaintance ... invited him to go to his house, at a considerable distance across the park." This "gentleman" was James Grant Wilson, a former Chicago journalist who had assiduously cultivated Bryant's acquaintance since coming to New York in 1865. As Wilson later recounted their progress across the Sheep Meadow, along the Mall to the Bethesda Fountain, and out the Seventy-Second Street gate to his brownstone house on East Seventy-Fourth Street, he said, Bryant had shrugged off his offer of a carriage, saying, "I am not tired, and prefer to walk." According to Wilson, Bryant chatted cheerfully and with animation during this ramble of a mile or more, on subjects ranging from the park shepherd and his sheep, and the statues of Halleck, Morse, and others which he had dedicated in past years, to anecdotes of the British nobility, and the shrubs and flowers along their route. Reaching Wilson's home east of Fifth Avenue "arm in arm," they climbed the steep stone front steps. "Disengaging my arm," Wilson continued, "I took a step in advance to open the inner door, and during these few seconds, without the slightest warning of any kind, the venerable poet, while my back was turned ... fell suddenly backward through the open outer door, striking his head on the steps." Wilson, who seems not to have noticed before in Bryant either the The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 417

weakness or the exhaustion remarked by others, now "supposed that he was dead," and had him carried into the house. Later, regaining partial sense, Bryant begged to be taken home, and his host, again in lieu of a carriage, took him by slow horse car three miles down Madison A venue to Seventeenth Street, whereupon they negotiated the few blocks to Bryant's house by cab. Bryant's only relatives then at home were his granddaughter Minna Godwin and niece Anna Fairchild, his daughter Fanny Godwin being in Europe with her family and Julia at Atlantic City. During the next few days, according to his longtime physician John F. Gray, Bryant walked about the library or sat in his favorite chair, though it was uncertain whether he recognized Julia when she returned, or others. But on the eighth day after his fall he suffered a brain hemorrhage and paralysis, or hemiplegia, down his right side. From then on he was usually comatose, unable to speak or swallow, until his death at five-thirty on the morning of June 12, two weeks after the accident. Her father had told Julia that he wished his funeral to be as quiet as possible, with burial beside her mother at Roslyn, but his pastor Henry Bellows persuaded Julia that Bryant "was a public man and a private funeral would be inappropriate." So a compromise was reached: there would be no procession and no honorary pallbearers. Yet Bryant's illness and death had been reported across the land, and in New York, wrote John Bigelow, "the flags of the city ... and of the shipping were raised at half-mast, his portrait was displayed in all the shop windows, and his writings were in special demand at every bookstore and library." As a result, an hour before his funeral was to begin, on June 14 in All Souls Unitarian Church at Fourth Avenue and Twentieth Street, hordes of people blocked the entrance, toward which the coffin bearers had to push their way. When the doors were opened the police strained to control the masses who crowded into the pews, the balcony, and the aisles. There were many distinguished mourners, among them artists, clergymen, members of the Associated Press, ex-governors Morgan and Tilden, and naturalist John Burroughs and poet Walt Whitman. In his eulogy Dr. Bellows expressed ajudgment which later memorialists echoed, saying of Bryant, "It is remarkable that with none of the arts of popularity a man so little dependent on others' appreciation, so self-subsistent and so retiring, who never sought or accepted office, who had little taste for co-operation, and no bustling zeal in ordinary philanthropy, should have drawn to himself the confidence, the honor of a great metropolis, and become, perhaps it is not too much to say, our first citizen." Bryant's body was taken to Roslyn in a special train carrying family members and close friends, as well as members of the Evening Post's staff. Here Bellows read the graveside prayers and selections from Bryant's verses, and the Sunday School children circled the grave throwing flowers onto the coffin until it was covered. As they did so, the conclusion of Bellows' eulogy must have lingered in the minds of mourners when, at the earlier service, he had read the lines of Bryant's youthful poem "June," in which he imagined such a scene. 418 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

During succeeding weeks, as a steady flow of tributes to Bryant appeared in the nation's press, and plans were made for memorial meetings, indigna• tion arose among his friends at the role Wilson had apparently played in his mortal injury. Publicly, this was confined to comments such as one in the Evening Post under the caption "Biographical Penny-a-lining," which, noting the announcement of a forthcoming "Memorial Edition" of Bryant's Library of Poetry and Song, with a "Biographical Memoir" by Wilson, predicted that this would be "hack work" by a writer who had no access to family papers. Soon afterward, perhaps to offset this project, the Post compiled and circu• lated a seventy-two-page pamphlet of biographical articles and tributes appearing in the paper since Bryant's fall. Privately, Bryant's friends distrusted Wilson's account of that needless journey across the park on May 29, and suspected that it and his description of Bryant's fall were evasive. Noting Doctor Gray's opinion that Bryant's emotion and walk had "exhausted him and led to the swoon," they thought Wilson guilty of both carelessness and callousness. They felt that after his speech Bryant should have been allowed to go directly home in his own carriage, which had brought him to the park and which was presumably waiting there. Some suspected that Wilson's account of "disengaging" his arm from Bryant's at the head of the steep stone steps was disingenuous; that he must actually have jarred the dazed old man into falling backward. And they were sharply critical of Wilson for taking him downtown in a slow horse car rather than a carriage or a cab. Some of Bryant's closest friends voiced such sentiments privately. The most outspoken and bitter in his comments was John Gourlie. "It broke my heart to learn the news," he wrote John Bigelow, "and it made me indignant to think he was not permitted to go directly home after the ceremony.... [Wilson's] toadyism and self exaltation have disgusted all who know him. If he could know what he is thought of, he would seek obscurity. The sad event of Mr. Bryant's death opens to his fancy a vista of renown, which he could never otherwise have attained." In reply, Bigelow confirmed Gourlie's belief that the feeling of its members was that Wilson should be forever barred from membership in the Century Club. During the six months following his death Bryant was the subject of eulogy at memorial meetings of the many organizations to which he had belonged. At a special meeting of the Associated Press its members resolved to attend in a body the funeral of "one who up to yesterday was the oldest member of their profession." On the same day, in Boston, Robert Waterston eulogized Bryant before the Massachusetts Historical Society, whose members chose a delegation including Holmes and Longfellow to attend his funeral. Other memorials were held at the New-York Historical Society, the Goethe Club, and the Century. At the first of these, to which the President and Mrs. Hayes came from Washington, George W. Curtis declared, "Whoever saw Bryant saw America .... His character and life had a simplicity and austerity of outline that had become universally familiar, like a neighboring mountain or sea." .{\t the Century Club John Bigelow called him "the most symmetrical The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 419 man I have ever known." Bigelow might well have repeated a judgment on his friend which he had recorded in his journal six years earlier. Therein he had called Bryant "the only man in the United States who cannot be replaced, whose death would leave the country substantially poorer in genius, in character, in moral judgment and purpose." 420 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

2549. To Henry W. Longfellow New York. No. 24 West 16th Street January 3d 1878. Dear Mr. Longfellow. The Goethe Club of this city numbers as many admirers of your writings as it has members. They are desirous of seeing you among them in person, and of taking by the hand one whom they have long held in reverence.' You will have a formal invitation to that effect, and I have been asked to accompany it with a few words of entreaty that you will give it a favorable consideration.2 You will certainly nowhere meet with those who more delight in what you have written, or who would receive greater pleasure from your visit. If you do not care to come on your own account, let me beg you to consider whether you will not come for their sake. I am, dear sir, faithfully yours. W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: HCL ADDRESS: H. W. Longfellow Esq. I. It has been said of Longfellow that the greatest foreign influence on his verse writing was that of Goethe and the German romantics. It is uncertain, although it seems unlikely, whether Longfellow attended this meeting of unspecified date. 2. Bryant had long been an active member of the Goethe Club, which had honored him with special meetings on his birthdays in 1876 and 1877. After his death it remembered him in a formal ceremony, and published the proceedings in The Bryant Memorial Meeting of the Goethe Club of New York, Wednesday, October 30th, 1878 (New York: Putnam's, 1879).

2550. To Frederic De Peyster1 New York No 24 West Sixteenth Street Janr 7th, 1878 Dear Mr. De Peyster I have looked over the M. S. poems of James Wallis Eastburn2 which you have put into my hands. So far as I can judge, none of them have appeared in print and I think that you may safely rely upon that conclusion. I am, dear sir, faithfully yours W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYHS ADDRESS: Frederic De Peyster Esq.

I. Frederic De Peyster (179~1882, Columbia 1816), a lawyer and philanthropist, was president of the New York Historical Society, 1864-1866, and 1873-1882. The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 421

2. The Reverend James Wallace Eastburn (cl798-1819, Columbia 1815?) had been a youthful literary associate of Bryant's early friend Robert C. Sands. See 211.3.

2551. To Leonice M. S. Moulton New York Office of the Evening Post January lOth 1878. Dear Mrs. Moulton. The verses which you sent me cannot by any possibility have been written by Mr. Longfellow. The first of these which you quoted in your letter is so bad that he would have a deadly quarrel at once with any body who should think of making him responsible for it. You will remember that in the printed paragraph which precedes them it is stated only that "the following stanzas are said to have been found in manuscript in the poet's study."1 I have written thus far with a loose jointed pen which made writing a perplexing labor to me, and now I am doing better. I agree with you that the good people of Roslyn might spend their time especially holy time, better than in consulting mediums. You have doubtless before this written some words of admonition to the princi• pal offender. I am glad that you have so much reason to rejoice in your great grandchildren. There is a beautiful passage in Virgil, where he speaks of Berecynthia another name for the goddess Cybele-the mother of a vast posterity, beholding with delight this numerous race of which she was the parent.2 When I get Virgil into my hands again, I must look up the passage and see how it applies to your case. There is little doing here which will much interest you. The great topic of conversation is the marriage of old Thomas Lord, and Mrs. Hicks, and what keeps up the interest of that event is that the newly married pair have hid themselves somewhere-either on ship board or in some house in the city, while the children of Mrs. Lord are planning to get the marriage declared as the lawyers say "null and void." It is much doubted whether they can invalidate it by any legal proceeding. 3 The sufferings of the poor in New York this winter are very great. I have a prodigious number of applications for aid-some perhaps undeserving-but others from people in deep distress. If I were as rich as the richest man in New York there would be ample occasion for giving away all I had. Kind regards to all Yours very truly W C BRYANT. 422 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-Bryant-Moulton Letters ADDRESS: Mrs. L. M. S. Moulton. 1. The verses have not been identified. Mrs. Moulton's letter is unrecovered. 2. Cybele was the Phrygian goddess of fecundity, in Greek mythology known as Rhea, wife of Chronos (Saturn) and mother of Zeus and other principal gods and goddesses. 3. A case apparently then much in the news.

2552. To Frederic De Peyster New York Jan. 12th 1878. Dear Mr. De Peyster, I happened to mention to Miss [Julia] Sands the other day that you were engaged in a Memoir of James Wallis Eastburn. She has since sent me the accompanying manuscript1 which she desired me to put into your hands. Yours truly, w. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYHS ADDRESS: Frederic De Peyster. 1. Unidentified.

2553. To Julius E. Francis 1 New York, January 22d, 1878 Dear Sir, I am sorry that I cannot take part in the way which you suggest in celebrating the birthday of Lincoln. I have had of late several applica• tions to write odes for public occasions, which I have declined on account of want of time, and the plea of old age. I am obliged therefore to decline the request with which you have honored me having at present a greater number of engagements of a literary nature than I can fulfil without great fatigue. 2 You will therefore I am sure excuse me. Yours respectfully W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society ADDREss: Julius E. Francis Esq. 1. Apparently an officer of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. His communication to Bryant is unrecovered. 2. In addition to a half dozen speeches Bryant made during the first five months of the year, he wrote prefaces for at least two books by friends: Joseph Alden's Thoughts on the Religious Life (1879), and Jerusha Dewey's Helps to Devout Living (1879?). And of course he expected soon to be at work on the third volume of the Popular History. The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 423

2554. To John H. Bryant New York, January 25th 1878 Dear Brother I suppose you have wondered why I have not written to you before this. It was not only because I have been very busy with many matters, but because also I [had?] nothing to say that was very pleasant. Julia had taken on herself to write about the account you sent me and thank you for the trouble which you have taken with the notes and so forth, and for your judicious stewardship generally. I am greatly indebted to you for the faithful management continued through many years, of my interests in your state. I did not want to tell you what was done with the lines about Lincoln, but I must sooner or later and I may as well tell you now. I sent them with a note to Dr. Holland,1 and he returned them with a note the purport of which was that but for your name with them, he would not have thought of considering them. I was mortified by such an answer. If I had been in his place I should have inserted them and thought that I was giving the public a pretty fair poem. Julia is of the same opinion, and she is not a bad judge. I thought of sending them to the Atlantic Monthly but the fear of another rejection prevented me. The Thanksgiving hymn I did not like so well. If I had offered it to some minister of the gospel he would have had to get it printed for the use of the congregation on that day, or I should have offered to have it printed at my own expense and that would be interpreted as showing a strong desire to have it used-a desire which induced me to pay for the opportunity, and I did not want the hymn accepted for the sake of obliging me but rather on its own merits. 2 There-! have got rid of an unpleasant task by performing it. I write between nine and ten o'clock at night-the close of a calm pleasant day like spring and not a particle of ice in the streets-kind regards to all. Julia's love goes with them. Yours affectionately W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT: "Bryant and Illinois; Further Letters of the Poet's Family," ed. Keith Huntress and Fred W. Lorch, New England Quarterly, 16 (December 1943), 647. 1. Josiah G. Holland (Letter 1955), editor of Scribner's Monthly. 2. These two poems were apparently included in The Life and Poems of john Howard Bryant, ed. E. R. Brown (Elmwood, Illinois [1894]). 424 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

2555. To Maggie B. Harvey1 New York January [25?] 1878. Dear Miss Harvey. Your poem has merit in passages, but it has this defect, that its design is somewhat obscure, so that it requires more than one reading to see its drift. You ask whether Harper or Scribner would accept it. For the reason that I have mentioned, and also its great length I fear that neither of them would. A new contributor of poetry should begin with shorter poems carefully written. I do not, however, send any poems, not my own to the magazines. I have tried it in several instances, and have had the mortification to see the poems which I had sent, rejected, and therefore determined not to try again. But when you desire to appear in print, send directly to the editors of those periodicals. If one does not accept what you send, another may, for tastes differ. Yours truly, W. C. BRYANT. P.S. I have your manuscript2 and can send it back if you desire it. W.C.B.

MANUSCRIPT: UVa ADDREss: Miss Maggie B. Harvey. I. Unidentified. 2. Unrecovered.

2556. To Fanny Bryant Godwin New York, January 28 1878. Dear Fanny. The contract with Mr. Lawrence Smith1 which I have found says that Mr. Smith was to have for boarding the brood mare on the farm from May 1st 1877 seventy five dollars a year and for the colt fifty dollars. I had expected to pay up to the first of November, the rest was for you to pay but the mare died about the beginning of Novem• ber. So I infer that there is not much to pay on the last half year for her. I will look to that. Affectionately &c W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDRESS: Mrs. F. B. Godwin. 1. A Cummington farmer, then caretaker of the God wins' Cummington summer home. The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 425

2557. To Leonice M.S. Moulton New York, February 2, 1878

... What you say of your grand children, with their rosy and happy faces reminds me of a fine passage in Virgil in which he speaks of Cybele, some times called the Mother of the Gods, as the Berecynthean Mother, "Berecynthea Mater," looking upon her numerous posterity and rejoicing in their multitude and their beauty. I have Dryden's Virgil by me here but cannot find the place. I only remember one of the lines of the English version "A hundred sons and every son a God." As the Olympian Gods were immortal and went on multiplying it was an easy matter to fill the heavens with the grandchildren of Cybele, especially as the Gods not only never died but never grew old. Even without that advantage I do not see what is to prevent you from peopling Baltimore with your descendants. The marriage of that coeval of mine Thomas Lord is again the subject of everybody's talk, it having been discovered that the happy pair have been passing their honeymoon shut up all this time in Mrs. Hicks house in fourteenth street and her servants telling lies innumer• able about them, stoutly denying that they knew what had become of them. At present, since the publication of the affidavits of the two physicians Flint and Parker, testifying to Lords sanity, and ascribing his physical helplessness to an accident which had lamed him, the advantage seems to be on his side. 1 Today being Candlemas day the proverb says that Winter is half gone, yet when I look into the streets I see that it has just begun. Yesterday the snow fell all day and the sleigh bells began to be heard in the streets. On Thursday evening which was a gloomy one, the Geographical Society had a meeting in Chickering Hall to discuss the question of the Arctic colony, an outpost of observation north of eighty one degrees of north latitude from which excursions could be made towards the North Pole! There was a goodly company and Lord Dufferin the Governor General of Canada,2 who has been in his yacht within the Arctic Circle, was present and was proposed by Bayard Taylor3 as an honorary member and elected by acclamation. He answered in a graceful speech, thanking the members. Then he went to the Charity Ball-the annual festivity-and opened it with Lady Sykes. Who she is I do not know-but he is, you probably know the [grand]son of Sheridan the orator and wit4 and nephew of the poetess Mrs. Norton.5 Thus far I have written to Mrs. Moulton at Baltimore. I now write 426 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

to Mrs. Moulton at Roslyn-for Mr Cline, has come to town and has informed me of your return. Could you not have come without bringing such a storm with you? I shall have occasion by and by to come to Roslyn, but I think I must wait until there is less snow on the ground .... MANUSCRIPT: Unrecoverd TEXT (partial): William D. Hoyt, Jr., "Some Unpublished Bryant Correspondence (II)," New York History, 21 (April 1940), 202-203. 1. See Letter 2551. 2. Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple Blackwood, First Marquis of Dufferin and Ava (1826-1902), Governor General of Canada, 1872-1878. 3. American travel writer (632.1). 4. Tom Sheridan (1775-1817), son of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816); and grandson of Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788), actor, author, and elocutionist. 5. Caroline E. S. Norton, Lady Stirling Maxwell (1808-1877).

2558. To C[hristopher?] H[arrison?] Payne 1 New York. February 13, 1878. Dear Sir. I never had any regular system of reading, and have no time to frame one. My rule has been to read what I learned were the best books, as they came within my reach, and my advice to others is to do likewise, not neglecting the good old books for the new. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT. MANUSCRIPT: Boston Public Library ADDRESs: Mr. C. H. Payne. 1. Probably the Negro clergyman, lawyer, and diplomat Christopher Harrison Payne (1848-1925). 2559. To Rutherford B. Hayes New York, February 14th 1878. Dear Sir. Mr. William Radde of this city at whose desire I write this is an old acquaintance of mine, having been a resident of this city for more than forty years. He is a respectable man, of good standing in this community, where he is favorably known as a publisher, bookseller and importer of German books-a business in which he has been engaged with credit ever since I first knew him. 1 I am sir with great regard Your ob' Servant, w. C. BRYANT. This old gentleman, Mr. Radde, has a plan for paying the National debt without [cost to the state!?] The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 427

MANUSCRIPT: RBHL ADDRESS: To the President of the United States, Mr. Hayes. 1. Radde has not been further identified.

2560. To L. W. Akerly1 The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street. New York, February 28, 1878 Dear Madam. The name of Andrew Marvell was given, as that of the author of the Hymn of which you speak, by some inadvertence. The right of Addison to be regarded as its author has been questioned, but I doubt whether with sufficient evidence, and the next edition of the book which you have named gives it to him.2 Yours respectfully W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: HCL ADDRESS: Miss L. W. Akerly. 1. Unidentified. 2. Miss Akerly's communication is unrecovered. The hymn was probably that of three stanzas beginning with the line "The spacious firmament on high" which appeared in The Spectator periodical essays (1711-1714), Number 465, by Joseph Addison (1672-1719). Andrew Marvel (1621-1678) was a Cavalier poet and satirist now perhaps best remembered for such stylish verses as "To His Coy Mistress." The mistaken attribution to which Bryant refers was made in the first edition of his A Library of Poetry and Song, but corrected in later editions. 2561. To Horatio N. Powers [New York? cMarch 1, 1878]

... I entered Williams College a year in advance, that is to say, I was matriculated as [a] sophomore, never having been a freshman. I remained there two terms only, but I pursued my studies with the intent to become a student at Yale, for which I prepared myself, intending to enter the junior class there. My father, however, was not able, as he told me, to bear the expense. I had received an honorable dismission from Williams College, and was much disappointed at being obliged to end my college course in that way ....

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Bigelow, Bryant, p. 18n. 2562. To Leonice M. S. Moulton The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street. New York, March 2d 1878. My dear Mrs. Moulton. Is there a penny post, do you think, in the world to come? Do people there write for autographs to those who have gained a little 428 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

notoriety? Do women there write letters asking for money? Do boys persecute literary men with requests for a course of reading? Are there offices in that sphere which are coveted and to obtain which men are pestered to write letters of recommendation? If any thing of this kind takes place in the spirit world it may, perhaps, be of a purgatorial nature-or, perhaps, be the fate of the incorrigible sinner. Here on earth this discipline never ends, and if it exists at all in the other world it is of a kind which never ceases. On that account I am inclined to believe that the punishment for sin may be of endless duration-for here the annoyances and miseries which I have mentioned only cease with death, and in the other world where there is no death, they will of course never come to an end. Have you read the North American Review in which six doctors of divinity give their views of the future punishment of those who do not repent and amend their lives in this world? It is remarkable how the opinions of the clergy have changed upon that point within the last twenty years. I believe that the great majority of the ministers of the Episcopal church in this country no longer hold that the misery which sin entails upon the wicked is endless. At all events they no longer insist upon that point of doctrine, which of course they would do if they supposed it to be taught distinctly in the scriptures. What beautiful weather we have and what smiles old Winter puts on. There are no icicles on his chin this season, and the artist who now takes his portrait cannot represent him with a snow white beard and silvery hair. He is a middle aged gentleman, of lusty figure, and in a drab-colored suit. Do you suppose that we are to have such winters in the land to which we are going? Or are they to be a little more genial• enough so to bring out the flowers of Paradise and to ripen the Hesperian apples?' Looking over what I have written I see that I have said nothing worthy of the trouble of reading. Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-Bryant-Moulton Letters ADDREss: Mrs. L. M.S. Moulton. l. In Greek mythology, the Hesperides were nymphs who watched over golden apples given to Hera, mother of the gods, on her marriage to Zeus. These were seized by Hercules after he killed the dragon guarding them.

2563. To Daniel Ricketson' New York, March 5th 1878. Dear Sir, Your letter has conferred upon me a real pleasure. I laid my poems before the public in the hope that they might not be without a The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 429 good influence in the thought which they should suggest to the reader and it is a satisfaction to find that my hope has not entirely deceived me. I thank you for taking the trouble to say that you like my verses. Yet I must say that a few more such letters would make me vain. 2 I infer that you are much younger than I, and in all probability will long survive me. A long life ending in a healthful and serene old age is a blessing, and I hope it will be yours. One misfortune which you have met with-that of losing your wife, ha[s] as you say, cast a shadow over your path-but I hope it ha[s] not wholly intercepted the sunshine. Yours truly, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG (copy, not in Bryant's holog;raph) ADDRESS: Daniel Ricketson Esq. 1. Daniel Ricketson (1813-1898), a New Bedford, Massachusetts poet and histo• rian, was a friend of Henry Thoreau and other New England writers. Among his verses was a poem titled "Free Trade, Free Soil, Free Men," the slogan used by the Evening Post in the campaigns of 1848 and 1856. 2. Ricketson's letter is unrecovered.

2564. To Rutherford B. Hayes New York March 9th. 1878. Dear Sir. I thought to have sent you before this a plan of my building for a Library at Cummington for which I wrote, some time since, to that place.' I shall no doubt have it soon and will forward it immediately. I am sir truly yours W. C. BRYANT.2

MANUSCRIPT: RBHL ADDREss: His Excy. R. B. Hayes. ENDORSED: Executive Mansion Files. I WRITER. I Bryant, W. C. I Residence, N.Y. I Date, March 9, 1878. I INTERESTED PARTY. I SUBJECT: I Will forward his plan I for building a Library I at Cummington as soon I as received by him. 1. On February 23 President Hayes had written Bryant (NYPL-BG) that he sought plans for a library to be built at Fremont, Ohio. He had heard, he wrote, of Bryant's building "some library ... somewhere in Massachusetts," and asked for a picture of it. Bryant's letter requesting a plan of the building is unrecovered, but see Letter No. 2573. The Hayes Memorial Library, formally established in 1912 in a fireproof building constructed with the aid of state funds, thus became the forerunner of later presidential libraries. 2. In April 1872 Hayes, then governor of Ohio, was introduced to Bryant, who was returning to New York after his visit to Mexico, at a reception given the poet! editor in Cincinnati, Ohio. In his diary and in a letter to his uncle Sardis Birchard, Hayes commented at some length on Bryant's appearance, manner of speaking, and anecdotal conversation, and gave his general impression of the guest of honor. "His 430 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

looks and manners," Hayes noted enthusiastically, "are very winning and lovable. His intellect is clear, his talk vigorous, interesting, pithy, and friendly. Modesty, kindness, and serenity possess him, or he possesses them." Hayes was especially taken with Bryant's manner of relating anecdotes, "imitating Yankee and negro peculiarities of tone and pronunciation," and was much amused, after Bryant had impressed him as having a "patriarchal look," to hear this justified by the poet's report of the greeting given him by an old Irish servant in his Havana hotel, who had exclaimed, "Oh sir, I welcome you back; you are like one of the old Saints!" Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes, ed. C. R. Williams (Columbus, Ohio: F. J. Heer, 1922-1926), III, 199, 201.

2565. To Curtis Guild 1 New York March 12th 1878. Dear Sir. I was first employed on the Evening Post in the summer of the year 1825.2 Not long afterward, I became a partner, owning a small share of the concern. I became, in 1827, I think, a proprietor of a larger share, and have been one of the principal proprietors ever since. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: MHS ADDRESS: Curtis Guild Esq. 1. Curtis Guild (1827-1911) was an author, and editor of the Boston Commercial Bulletin from 1859 to 1898. 2. Actually, in July 1826; see 145.6.

2566. To Henry Barton Dawson1 New York, March 19th, 1878. Dear Sir. I would cheerfully do what you seem to have expected when you wrote me this morning,2 if I were in the same condition pecuniarily, that I was in a year since. But I now require every dollar within my reach to satisfy some unexpected claims that are made upon me and that will absorb all my means and compel me to observe a strict economy for some time to come. Under these circumstances you will not think it strange that I excuse myself. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: Minn PL ADDREss: Henry B. Dawson Esq. 1. Dawson (1821-1889) was a British-born American historian who edited the Historical Magazine, forerunner of the American Historical Review, from 1866 to 1876. 2. Dawson's letter is unrecovered. The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 431

2567. To Bayard Taylor1 New York, March 19, 1878 Dear Sir, Your fellow-citizens, without distinction of party, have been prompt to acknowledge the eminent fitness of your appointment as the representative of this nation at the court of Berlin. 2 They feel that their government has acted most worthily in thus designating for important service an American whose purity of life and character is in keeping with his reputation as a scholar, writer, and observer of affairs. In recognition of these facts, and as a mark of our personal affection and esteem, we invite you to accept a public dinner before your departure for that country which has already extended to you a welcome, with which you are connected by the closest ties, and with whose politics and literature you are so familiar. 3 Requesting you to name a day that will suit your convenience, we have the honor to be Your friends and obedient servants, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT and others4

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT: Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, ed. Marie Hansen• Taylor and Horace E. Scudder (Boston, 1885), II, 729. 1. See 632.1. 2. Taylor, appointed minister to Germany early in 1878, died in Berlin later that year. 3. This dinner was apparently held at Delmonico's Restaurant early in April. Three days before this letter was written, Bryant had presided over a dinner given Taylor by his fellow members of the Century Club. As an example of Bryant's familiar speaking style in his eighty-fourth year, his words on that occasion follow (MS, Century Association): 3/16178 Gentlemen: I should be sorry to cast even the smallest shadow over the festivities of this occasion. We are here to do honor to our fellow member Mr. Bayard Taylor whose voice you all desire to hear, and I find myself obliged to entreat of him that he will use it in the way of explaining a little matter in which he is concerned. I have not much doubt that he will be glad of the opportunity. Gentlemen, this Century Club is the foster mother of us all. We have, in a manner been nourished at her breasts and owe her our constant love. We must stand by her whenever her rights are brought in question. We must see that she is deprived of nothing which adds to her respectability even in appearance. We must not let any body pick the good lady's pockets or slip off her necklace or bracelets, or wrench the jewels from her ears. And what, my brethren, are her jewels? They are like those of the mother of the Gracchi-her sons are her jewels. One of the most brilliant and eminent of these is the gentleman who sits at my right hand, and he is about to steal himself from her. He who has delighted the world with the charming narratives of his journeys in the remotest parts of the globe; whose graceful poems have bewitched our maidens and who has transplanted into our 432 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

language the greatest poem of the greatest poet of Germany, rendering it with a fidelity strength and grace which Goethe himself might wonder at-he is about to desert that kind and indulgent mother under whose roof he has passed so many pleasant social hours with his brethren, and smoked so many bundles of cigars, without hearing a murmur of admonition. He leaves her, proud as she is of him and his writings after having so long nestled in her affectionate lap, and wanders off to a distant country to be an ambassador. I know it may be said that our guest is but one of many, and that one diamond more or less in the cluster which crowns the brow of the Century may not affect essentially her prosperity. Let this be granted: the principle of the thing is to be considered. If one of her children may desert her in this manner, another and another may, until all are gone--dispersing to Europe, to the East-to Texas to California, and thus the Century, the best club in the world, will perish by the patricidal act of her children. Her fate will be like that of the old people of some parts of India, whose families when their parents have become helpless with age convey them to the brink of the Ganges and leave them there to either die of hunger or be swept away by the first flood that swells the current of the sacred river. Such is the state of things-the situation in modern phrase which I would give our guest the opportunity of explaining. What has he to say to it? And while he is meditating what answer to make I propose that we drink his health with three cheers and a tiger. [Shriek or howl of prolonged cheer.] 4. Bryant's signature led those of a number of prominent New Yorkers in various fields.

2568. To Carl Schurz 1 The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street New York, March 23 1878. My dear sir. Now that the bill making appropriations for detecting trespasses on the public lands, and certain other purposes has passed the Senate and will probably be signed by the President it is likely that there will be certain clerkships to be filled by appointment from the Office of Secretary of the Interior. Allow me to recommend for one of these appointments Captain Andrea Fontana, who is a gentleman of worth and intelligence who served with credit in the Union Army during the late civil war.2 He is competent to any clerical work that may be given him and will serve the country faithfully in the capacity of clerk as he has done in a military capacity. He is an Italian by birth, and has some claim for consideration on that score since with an Italian emigration to this country which comes, in point of numbers, next after the Irish and the German, no Italian that I can hear of has yet received an appoint• ment to office from the federal government. Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT. The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 433

MANUSCRIPT: LC ADDRESS: To the Hon. Carl Schurz, Secretary of I the Interior. 1. The German revolutionary Carl Schurz (1829-1906), after coming to the United States in 1852, was a diplomat, Union general, journalist, and United States senator from Missouri, 1869-1875. From 1877 to 1881 he was Secretary of the Interior under President Hayes. 2. Fontana has not been further identified.

2569. To Sydney H. Gay New York, March 26th 1878. Dear Mr Gay The preface is finely written, and in an independent spirit which will bear down adverse criticism. But it must have your signature• that is indispensable. 1 Yours faithfully, W C BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: CU ADDRESS: S. H. Gay Esq. I. Bryant's insistence on Gay's signature in this preface to the second volume of the Popular History is explained by its final paragraph: "To the first volume of this History, as well as to this, it is due to say that the oldest living and most distinguished American scholar, whose name it bears, has given to every line-read in proof before printing-the benefit of his careful criticism, his ripe judgment, and his candid discrimination. The title of the work implies that it has passed already a far more rigid censorship, both for its matter and its manner, than any other reader is ever likely to exercise."

2570. To Leonice M. S. Moulton New York April 3d 1878. Dear Mrs. Moulton, I am longing for the sunshine and pure air of the country-yet is the sunshine very beautiful here. I cannot come outjust yet. I have so many dinners to eat and receptions to attend in honor of Bayard Taylor that it is impossible to get away long enough to look at Roslyn and see what I want done in the way of little improvements such as the transplantation of trees &c. And besides these honors to Bayard Taylor there is a reception for the artist Chapman 1 at the Century on Saturday evening which I must attend. In the mean time the house in Sixteenth Street has become an infirmary. Judge Monell and his wife have been staying with us for some days2 and about the middle of last week she had a severe attack of pneumonia which came on in the night and made the immediate attendance of a doctor necessary. She is now more comfortable but still quite ill and the doctor's visits-Dr. Paine's-are quite frequent. 434 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

In the midst of all this what does Julia do but become ill also, and requires the physician as much as Mrs. Monell. She has been obliged to keep her bed for several days past, and Dr. Paine was so much puzzled with her and his other patient that he found it necessary to consult with some other physician and Dr. Gray was called in. So that we have quite a sick list-two out of the five in sick rooms. I am sorry that they cannot be abroad to take the benefit of this beautiful weather. How very fine it is-such a glorious golden sunshine and such a genial temperature as if every thing was beginning to grow-the flowers longing to open and the leaves to push aside their sheaths. I have been moved to write a pretty long article for the Evening Post on the Season, which you will see and cannot help knowing it is mine.3 Julia's illness is a fever with night sweats, and it does not readily yield to the physician's prescriptions. He is not the Dr. Martin Paine. That gentleman I think died not long since. This is one who for some time practised at Newburgh. I hope to get out to Roslyn in a very few days. I have got but two dinners-real dinners, more to eat, one tomorrow a great one and one on the tenth and then, on the next morning Mr. Taylor sails for his destination. Regards to Prof. Ordroneaux. I am, dear madam, very truly yours W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-Bryant-Moulton Letters ADDRESS: Mrs. L. M. S. Moulton. 1. John G. Chapman; Letter 526. 2. John J. Monell had married Fanny Godwin's one-time schoolmate Caroline (DeWint) Downing, widow of Andrew Jackson Downing, the landscape architect (628.1 ). At this time Monell was making a detailed examination of the EP's accounts, at the instigation of Parke Godwin. At its conclusion Bryant appointed Monell president of the Evening Post Company, while retaining the editorship for himself. Nevins, Evening Post, pp. 420, 433-434. 3. This editorial article, titled "The Season," remarking on the mild weather enjoyed during the winter and early spring just past, was printed on April 3.

2571. ToT. P. Johnson' The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street. New York, April 5th 1878 Dear sir. I suppose one might inquire through a whole lifetime without being able to discover the author of the lines of which you speak. They The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 435

have probably the same origin as the nursery rhymes which are attributed to Mother Goose, and some of which are doubtless as old as the language.2 Yours respectfully W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYHS ADDRESS: Mr. T. P. Johnson. 1. Unidentified. 2. A note on the manuscript, not Bryant's, names these verses as the anonymous prayer beginning "Now I lay me down to sleep," which first appeared in the New England Primer (1781).

2572. To Martha J. Lamb New York April 6th 1878. Dear Mrs. Lamb.

Excuse me for not answering your note1 sooner. I have been exceedingly busy and occupied with some perplexing matters. I cannot at present answer your note in the way I could wish. I have read parts of your history which I found written in a manner to engage the attention and thought that they gave proof of research. But I have not the work here to look at again and more carefully so that I may speak of it with a satisfactory degree of knowledge. I left your history in the country. When I go back I will examine it more minutely and shall be glad to speak of it favorably. If I forget to do this I shall be glad if you will take the pains to remind me of what I now say. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: UVa ADDREss: Mrs. Martha J. Lamb. 1. Her note is unrecovered, but apparently Mrs. Lamb had asked from Bryant an endorsement of her History of the City of New York (1877-1881). See Letter 1839.

2573. To Henrietta S. Nahmer New York April 6th 1878. Dear Mrs. Nahmer. The person who wants the plan of the Cummington Library is Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes, the President of the United States. I infer and perhaps have been told that he is thinking of founding a library for some place in Ohio. A friend of his, Mr. James H. Briggs wrote to me about the plan of my Library for the President and I also received a short note from the President concerning it. 1 That is all that I know 436 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

about it. I am ready to say of you that you are very competent to make a catalogue of any English library or one of English and French. I shall remember what you have written concerning taking board• ers. It would be pleasant for my daughter and myself to have acquain• tances sojourning in the neighborhood of our place at Cummington and we will do what we can to get them for you. I am, Madam, very truly yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: RBHL ADDREss: Mrs. H. S. Nahmer. l. See Letter 2564. Briggs's letter is unrecovered.

2574. To Leonice M. S. Moulton New York, April lOth, 1878 Dear Mrs. Moulton. You desired me in your last note to point out the proper varieties of fruit for your plantation. I suppose that you mean apples for you probably have pears enough. I have not any book on the subject here, and therefore cannot be so precise as I should like to be. But I would at all events have one tree of the Titus Pippin, which always bears and the fruit keeps well. The Northern Spy should I think be one. You will require one tree of very early Apples. But the Harvest Apple is unhealthy as a tree, and the Red Astrachan is too sour, either for eating or for cooking. Perhaps Mr. Isaac Hicks1 could give you the name of some early fruit of milder flavor. I think that Mr. Cline could advise you in regard to these varieties more intelligently than I am able to do. I saw Bayard Taylor on Monday evening at the "Commers" given him by the Germans of New York.2 He looked very much jaded and expressed his sense of weariness in pretty strong terms. He will be glad to be on shipboard tomorrow. The symposium called by the name I have given above, was a curious affair. It was offered to Mr. Taylor by the German Social Science Association. There were five hundred people at fifteen tables in an immense dining hall, besides the [Arian?] singers in the gallery who in the clouds of tobacco smoke which ascended from the beer drinkers below looked like the gods on Olympus, as they are sometimes seen in pictures. The President of the Association next to whom I sat had an immensely long rapier and the Vice President another which they now and then, when the company were too noisy brought down upon the table with a terrible slap. Beer and cigars composed the bill of fare, and the exercise consisted of The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 437

sings and speeches. The sings were given with a will. Only think of five hundred Germans throats letting out their voices at once. They drank the health of the Nestor of American poets3 and the said Nestor thanked them in German for all the speeches were in the German language. The beer was a very light tipple, and it seemed to me that one must toss off a good many pots of it before becoming tipsy. I am to go to a private dinner tonight the last of the Bayard Taylor festivities and tomorrow or the next day I expect to come out to Roslyn in order to see what is to be done in the month of April• probably tomorrow. I heard the other day that professor Ordronaux was ill. I hope it is not a serious illness and that he has recovered by this time. Yours faithfully W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-Bryant-Moulton Letters ADDRESs: Mrs. L. M. S. Moulton PUBLISHED (in part): Life, II, 392-393. 1. Member of a numerous Roslyn family; see Goddard, Roslyn Harbor, passim. 2. A social gathering of university students at a public house (Ger. Kommers). 3. A term often applied to Bryant in his later years.

2575. To Charles Dudley Warner1 New York, April lOth 1878. My dear sir. It has often occurred to me that I ought, in this manner, to acknowledge the pleasure which I have derived from reading your little work entitled "Being a Boy." To any one who passed his boyhood in the hilly parts of Massachusetts it must be a source of a thousand agreeable recollections. The humorous aspect which you so happily give your narrations greatly heightens the charm of the work.2 I am, sir, Faithfully yours. W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: YCAL ADDREss: Charles Dudley Warner Esq. I Office of the Hartford Courant I Hartford I Connecticut POSTMARK: NEW YORK I APR 10 I 2:30 PM DOCKETED: W. C. Bryant. 1. Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1909, Hamilton 1851), a miscellaneous writer and collaborator with Mark Twain in The Gilded Age (1873), was from 1867 until his death associated with the Hartford Courant. 2. Warner had grown up in Plainfield, adjoining Cummington. His book of reminiscences of those years, Being a Boy (1877), bears resemblances to Bryant's account of his own boyhood in Life, I, [1]-37. 438 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

2576. To Gerhardt Schick 1 New York, April 13, 1878 Dear Sir.

I am sorry that you sent me your verses2 for my opinion, inasmuch as there are so many others who have done the same thing, probably for the same reasons, that I can give but little attention to each of them, and my opinion is for that reason among others of little value. Besides my eyes are not very good for the reading of manuscript, and I cannot judge of poetry by hearing it read. Your verses seem to me to have real poetic merit in this respect, that they are inspired by a genuine enthusiasm which is the basis of all excellence in that department of composition. There is also a certain originality of treatment in them, and your kind friend to whom you refer, as predicting favorably for your literary reputation, was not without reason for his anticipations. Such is the general conclusion which I have reached from looking over your verses. But there are several faults in the composition, some of which seem to be the result of haste and negligence such as bad rhymes like sense and events-others "allowable rhymes" like set and fate which are no rhymes at all. Other faults are the use of learned terms, like phonic and [?)3 and violations of grammar as "opiates doth" a plural nominative to a verb in the singular number. These faults would I think, cause any poem which you might send to a magazine with your name as an author. ...4 Your wisest way will be to begin with writing for the magazines and the literary weeklies, without being discouraged if by the editors of some of them your poems should not be accepted. Tastes you know differ and one poem might be rejected and the next accepted. But as you say, the life of a poet is not generally a prosperous life, so far as the reward of labor in that department is concerned. Cole• ridge advises that those who are inclined to literary pursuits should have some profession in other useful occupations by which to procure a subsistence. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDRESS: Gerhardt Schick Esq. I. Unidentified. 2. Unidentified. 3. Illegible word. 4. Incomplete sentence. The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 439

2577. To Richard H. Dana New York April 16th 1878. Dear Dana. I was very glad the other day to see your once familiar handwrit• ing again. It is true enough that we write to each other rarely, but I really believe the fault is more with you than with me, for unless I am greatly mistaken, I almost invariably answer your letters immediately. I hear of you now and then from Boston people or those who have visited Boston and generally hear of you as one on whom age has laid its hand gently, which I am glad to hear. You are fortunate in your posterity which are multiplying around you. As the old song goes you go wooing and getting married in your grandchildren. It must be a great unhappiness to have and to see about one a brood of degenerate and worthless descendants. Yours are of a different class, and to know that must take away from old age somewhat of the dreary feeling of solitariness which creeps over us when we see our contemporaries taking leave of us on the right hand and the left. What you tell me of the appointment of Kellogg does not surprize me at all. It is another example of the mistake of referring the appointment of men to office on the recommendation of members of Congress.2 I am quite ashamed of the little support that Mr. Hayes has in the endeavors he is making to put fit men into office. It is true enough that when he exercises his own judgment he is not always fortunate in his selections. If Mr. Evarts who is a better lawyer than a Cabinet Minister had not the misfortune to expect a nomination to the Presidency I should expect more from him although I do not think he is exactly fitted for his station.3 When I was asked who should be Secretary of State I said Richard H. Dana junr. I cannot say that Mr. Evarts has disappointed me on the contrary he has quite fulfilled my expectations. What they were you will infer from what he has done. We have had the last winter here in this latitude the pleasantest winter that I have experienced in the northern states-mild, sunny, free from ice and snow-so genial so steady in its temperature that one might think himself transported to a more benign latitude-and healthy too-very healthy until quite lately. The Board of Health has been bestirring itself lately peeping into the water closets and setting the owners of houses to repairing and putting in order the pipes that lead to the sewers. The doctors are ascribing almost every disease to unwholesome gases and call almost every ailment "malarial." Good drainage is all the fashion and I hope everything from it next summer when the Board of Health has persuaded every body to put their sewer pipes in order, the bad air 440 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

from which of late has poisoned us all, and which grows worse and worse the higher we build and the smaller the space into which we compress our population.4 The Spring called me to Roslyn, but Julia is not well enough to go being not fully recovered yet from an attack of what the doctors call a "malarial" fever. She thinks of making a visit to a place not far from Philadelphia called absurdly Atlantic City-where the good air cures every body.5 But how beautiful the country is in this neighborhood• the bright green grass, the young leaves of the trees the blossoms in the grass and on the shrubs. I long to be among them-Julia desires love to you all. Bring me also to their kind remembrance. Yours faithfully and immemorially W C BRYANT P.S. And I have had the lumbago for three days past. Is that too "malarial"? WCB

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDRESS: R. H. Dana Esq. PUBLISHED (in part): Life, II, 396-- 397. I. Dana's letter is unrecovered. 2. While it is uncertain to which appointment Bryant refers, the subject of his comment seems to be the controversial Carpet-bag Louisiana governor William Pitt Kellogg (1830-1918), an early crony of President Grant's brother. Kellogg had been elected to the United States Senate in 1877 by a legislature under his control, and seated in the Senate by a close party vote. 3. William Evarts (943.1) was Secretary of State in the Hayes administration. 4. For many years the Evening Post had agitated for better sanitary conditions and housing in New York City. See Nevins, Evening Post, pp. 370-376. 5. Merely a fishing village until the advent of a railroad in 1854, Atlantic City, New Jersey, soon became a fashionable resort for Philadelphians and New Yorkers. Its first boardwalk was built in 1870.

2578. To Gerhardt Schick New York April 16th 1878. Dear sir. I had sent off your verses accompanied by a letter of remarks, when I received yours of the 12th instant. I am not aware that I can add any thing to what I then said of material importance. That you possess a poetic mind is evident from the samples you have sent me. The defects of your verses arise from the impulse which leads you to throw off poetry in what may be called large masses without making an effort for the highest perfection in the expression. This I think, I indicated in the letter which you must have received. One little blemish The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 441

I did not speak of-the irregularity in some of the stanzas-which sometimes disappoint the ear by lines too long or too short. I cannot but repeat what I then said that in order to make the public familiar . . .1 to be either rejected, or to be amended by the editor before putting it to press. What I would recommend to you if you aspire to become a poet acknowledged as such by the reading world is this. Content yourself at first with short poems, send them to the periodicals-weekly or monthly-make them as perfect as you are able; if one rejects what you send try another, all have not the same tastes. When you have gained a reputation in this way you may venture on a volume and take a longer flight. But I would advise that you do not copy the faults and irregulari• ties of the poets of the time-learn as much as you please from contemplating their beauties, but avoid their negligences. Yours respectfully W C BRYANT. See postscript on the next page. P.S. I do not give you the names of any magazines or weeklies. They will print any thing I write, but nothing that I send them written by others. I have tried it again and again and have been mortified by refusals till I have resolved to send no more. The proprietors each have some person who is satisfied with his own opinion. W.C.B. 2d Postscript. Let me add this caution. The vocation of poet is not a lucrative one, as the most successful in our country have found. There is no literary labor which is so badly paid. W.C.B.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR (draft). 1. A portion of this letter seems to be missing, unless Bryant simply overlooked an incomplete sentence in beginning a new page.

2579. To Leonice M. S. Moulton [New York, April 18, 1878?]

... The weather is so fine and the breezes so balmy that I long to be in Roslyn again. I cannot possibly remain here long, and shall be forced by the beauty of the season to see Roslyn again before the end of April. Yours faithfully W. C. BRYANT. 442 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-Bryant-Moulton Letters (fragment) ENDORSED (by Josephine Stewart?): This is from a letter dated April 18th 1878 two months before his death. If you don't care for it, it would be valuable to a collector of autographs.

2580. To Theseus A. Cheney New York, April 20th 1878 My dear sir. I have your postal card referring to a letter of yours written previously1 in relation to Catherine [Monteur?]. I also received that letter, but it did not seem to me that it was necessary to stir that matter a second time. If there was no intention of removing the remains of the [Indian?] Queen to the Havana Glen, why so much better for the owners of the Glen.2 If on the other hand, as is most likely, there was such a thing contemplated or at least discussed by them, why, they have become ashamed of it, and have relinquished it. In either case the sacrilege is not to be committed and that is all that the general public care to know-all that I certainly feel any interest in knowing. Yours truly W C BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG ADDREss: Dr. T. A Cheney. l. Neither card nor letter has been recovered. 2. This reference is obscure.

2581. To Calvin Durfee New York April 24th 1878 My dear sir.

My daughter to whom you refer in your letter1 would have answered it herself but she is too ill although not dangerously. She has not forgotten the request which you honored me by making that she would contribute a portrait of me to the gallery of the College and I believe has some plan of that kind to execute when the convenient time arrives. 2 With regard to the remainder of your letter I own that I have had a most pleasant experience of Williamstown hospitality and place it among the recollections to which I often recur. But I am too old to go much from home and find the attachment to familiar scenes growing upon me so that I part from them unwillingly. I thank you for what you say in that respect but fear that I shall not soon have the courage to revisit Williamstown. I am, dear sir, faithfully yours W. C. BRYANT. The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 443

MANUSCRIPT: WCL ADDRESS: Revd Dr. Calvin Durfee. 1. Unrecovered. 2. The Williams College Museum of Art does not possess such a portrait, no doubt because Bryant's death only six weeks after this letter was written precluded its execution.

2582. To William D. Wooden' The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street. New York, April 29th 1878. Dear Sir. It is scarcely possible for me to comply with your request to give you a list of all the persons who have been connected at any time with the Evening Post as proprietors or Editors. This journal was founded by William Coleman a Massachusetts man in 1801. Many distinguished men of the federal party gave it their support and wrote for it• among whom was Alexander Hamilton. Coleman was careless of its finances and in a year or two a practical printer, Michael Burnham of Connecticut was associated with him as proprietor and with his man• agement it became prosperous. In 1825 William C. Bryant began to write for it2 as an associate editor and shortly afterward became a proprietor along with Charles Burnham and Thomas Gill. On the death of Mr. Coleman which happened not long after, two or three years, perhaps, William Leggett was added to the proprietors and not long after became an associate editor, Mr. Gill having sold out. Mr. Leggett at first stipulated that he should not be expected to write upon political subjects, but in a few months became a zealous disputant on political questions. Mr. Bryant in 1834 went with his family to Europe and Mr. Leggett during his absence took part in the slavery question, espousing the cause of the Abolitionists. In the midst of the contro• versy when it was at its hottest he was taken ill and Mr. Bryant in 1836 was obliged to return, and resume the conduct of the paper, of which he became for some years the sole editor. Afterwards, Parke Godwin became one of the editors and also a proprietor, W. G. Boggs being the publisher as well as proprietor. He was succeeded by T. A. Howe who managed the business of the paper. On Mr. Howe's retiring, John Bigelow became part proprietor and one of the editors, and afterwards sold out to Isaac Henderson and Mr. [Godwin),3 Mr. Bryant having all along continued to be a proprietor, and never having laid down his editorial charge. During such changes there have been many persons engaged in the task of editing the paper who never became proprie• tors. Some of the most distinguished of these are as follows-William S. Thayer afterward American Consul General in Egypt, The Revd 444 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Joshua Leavitt Jno R. Thompson, Wm F. Williams Charles Nordhoff, Albert G. Brown jun. Sidney H. Gay, J. W Bartlett, Geo. Carey Eggleston, Newton F. Whiting, and W. J. Sperry who is now what is called the managing editor. 4 I believe that I have here set down what you desired me to state, and you can publish such parts of it as you please. Yours truly W. C BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: UVa ADDRESS: William D. Wooden Esq. 1. Unidentified. 2. Rather, in 1826. Bryant's "Reminiscences of the 'Evening Post'" from its founding by Alexander Hamilton and William Coleman in 1801 until 1851 was printed in the paper on November 15 of that year, and reprinted in Bigelow, Bryant, pp. [312]-342. 3. Here Bryant mistakenly wrote his own name. 4. For information about these editors see indexes in this and preceding volumes.

2583. To Christiana M. Gibson New York, No. 24 West 16th Street May [2?] 1878 Dear Miss Gibson, Your last gave us much pleasure as being a record of good news relating to the Gibson family, who seem destined to make a consider• able part of the population of Scotland. May all the junior branches, and the entire posterity, prove as good and as well endowed with all the graces of merit and character as the elder ones! I have not much to tell you about ourselves, save that Julia is confined to her room with an obstinate febrile attack. The doctor calls it malarial fever, but just now it is the fashion to call all disorders malarial. Whether it be diphtheria or even a severe cold it is ascribed to malaria. And to tell the truth, the city is badly drained in parts, and where the site is not unhealthy the apparatus of pipes and valves is often defective, as has been the case in some degree with this house. Then we have gone on as we did when you were here, building higher and higher, condensing the population, and obstructing the free circulation of air in the streets, so that the causes of bad air are multiplied. We ought to be out in the country, but Julia's illness keeps us all here. She will go--probably to Atlantic City as soon as she is strong enough-a place on the seacoast with a foolish name, but great purity of air. Mean time, the weather is, and all along has been charming. The whole country is in full bloom, and the grass is high and waving The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 445 in the softest airs, under the brightest sunshine. I am sure that I never knew such a winter in this latitude. Yesterday I was at a breakfast of the Clergymen's Clul:r-an association of some forty Episcopal ministers of this place. There were several invited guests besides myself among whom was Phillips Brooks, the Broad Church minister, 1 who makes so much stir in Boston, a man of gigantic size, towering head and shoulders above the tallest man at the board, and with a voice as soft and gentle as a zephyr. There was also the Presbyterian divine, Dr. Prentiss,2 who has just resigned his pastorate at Murray Hill, and who being called up to speak, expressed his extreme delight at this meeting with his Episcopal brethren, and related several anecdotes of Julius Hare3 and others of the Anglican Church with whom he had once passed some delightful days on a visit to England. A Dr. Fisher4 dwelt on the decline of intolerance among Christians of different denominations, and expressed a hope, that in time the only strife between them would be the amicable contention, as to which could do the most good and best exemplify an obedience to the law of love. I was called up among the rest, for a little speech, but no reporters for the press were allowed to be present, and so the fine things that were said will not come before the world. 5 I do not think of any thing further to tell you that will interest you, except to say that you must know already, by reading the news• papers, that the condition into which the country was brought by the late war gave great opportunities for rascality of almost every kind, the commission of which is every day coming to light and bringing disgrace upon the country. I am almost afraid to take up a newspaper lest I should see some new disclosure of enormous frauds. Meantime it is some comfort that the rogues are detected and branded with the infamy they deserve. Julia sends love. The Godwins are well, save that Godwin has the gout and talks of Carlsbad again. My regards to all and I am, dear Miss Gibson, Cordially yours W C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG ADDRESS: Miss Ch• M Gibson ENDORSED: Last Letter from Mr. Bryant I May. 1878. 1. Brooks (1835-1893, Harvard 1855) was the rector of Trinity Church, Boston, 1869-1891. 2. George Lewis Prentiss (1816-1903, Bowdoin 1835), Presbyterian clergyman and lecturer post-1871 at Union Theological Seminary. 3. Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855), British archdeacon and translator and author of religious works. 4. Perhaps this was George Park Fisher (1827-1909, Brown 1847, Andover Theological Seminary 1851), professor of divinity and history at Yale, 1861-1901. 446 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

5. However, Bryant's friend and former Unitarian pastor Samuel Osgood re• tained a copy of Bryant's remarks, which were later printed in The Bryant Memorial Meeting of the Goethe Club of the City of New York, Wednesday, October 30th, 1878 (New York, 1879) [11]-42. Bryant's speech, another example of the happy style of his later years, was reprinted in Life, II, 393-395.

2584. To Josephine Stewart New York, May 2d 1878 No. 24 West Sixteenth Street Dear Mrs. Stewart. I wish that Julia were well enough to answer your very obliging letter, but I am sorry to say that she is too ill either to answer the letter or accept the hospitable invitation it contains. She is pining for the air of the sea coast, but the night sweats to which she is subject leave her exhausted and weak to such a degree that we cannot think of letting her make even a shortjourney. She has been confined to her room for some time past and as soon as she is well enough she must take the shortest journey that will give her the needed change of air. Meantime she sends her love and thanks and with me desires to be graciously remembered by all those of your household. Yours faithfully w. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: MdHS ADDRESS: Mrs. L. J. Stewart.

2585. To an Unidentified Correspondent New York May 7th. 1878. Dear Sir. You are right in supposing that I left Williams College in the year 1811. The poem called Thanatopsis was first published-at least the much larger part of [it] in a fragmentary form in the North American Review for September 1817. With [it] appeared also the Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, with the title of "A Fragment." The lines "To a Waterfowl" were published in the North American Review for 1818. I did not publish translations from the Latin at ten years old, but at that age I wrote a school exercise in verse which was published in the Hampshire Gazette printed at Northampton, Massachusetts. I do not know how the error about my age could have crept into Allibone's account save by mistaking 4 for 7. 1 As to the four stanzas, which in the North American Review introduced the blank verse of Thanatopsis, the story told in the slip of printed paper, is perfectly correct-only I think my father handed them to Edward T. Channing who was Dana's colleague at that time in conducting the Review. 2 The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 447

The reason given in another printed slip for my leaving the profession of law is not quite according to the fact. The account of the law suit is accurate. By a piece of pure chicane, in a case the merits of which were with my client and were perfectly understood by the parties, the court, the jury and every body who heard the trial or heard of it, my client was turned out of court after the jury had awarded him damages and deprived of what they intended he should receive. 3 This did not much heighten my respect for the law, but if the more attractive pursuit of authorship had not through the agency of my good friend, Henry D. Sedgwick, presented itself, I might have continued in the profession which I had first chosen, and with a view to that possibility I was admitted to the New York bar as counsellor in the year 1825.4 I reenclose to you the clippings &c which were contained in your letter. It is remarkable how easily mistakes are made in statements which pass from hand to hand. I have several times been interrogated in regard to my personal history and have given accurate answers which I have rarely seen reproduced with perfect accuracy by the mqmrers. I am, sir, faithfully yours. W C BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: Lafayette College Library. 1. Samuel A. Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, 5 vols. (Philadelphia, 1858-1871, 1891). 2. See Volume I [62]; 44.3. 3. The case of Bloss vs. Tobey, 1824. See 92.1. 4. See Volume I, 122; 120.2.

2586. To Julia S. Bryant New York No. 24 W. 16th Street May 9th 1878 half past 9 am Dear Julia. The coachman has just come-wet as a drowned rat. He could not get here last night. I rather like his looks and way of talking. I began to be uneasy about him, but all now seems right. I have read to him his instructions. Nothing has been heard yet of the seventy five dollars but I am going in town as soon as the rain slackens a little and shall investigate the matter. I gave the new man Jager a dollar to buy a cotton umbrella which 448 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

I saw he needed very much-indeed he said so before I gave him the money. It is for the family-the other one having gone to pieces. Since writing thus far I find at the office of the Evening Post that the $75 had not been sent-the card having been mislaid. The rain is dropping fast. Yours affectionately W C BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: BLR ADDREss: Miss Julia Bryant I Atlantic City, I Atlantic County I New Jersey. POSTMARK: NEW YORK I MAY 9 I 130 PM.

2587. To Julia S. Bryant The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street New York, May lOth 1878. Dear Julia. The enclosed came to me last evening along with one addressed to myself. As they were in the same handwriting I took the liberty of divesting yours of its envelope in order to send it with this. Jager or Carl, or whatever his name may be-the new Coachman says that the well horse is not quite well-that his blood is in bad order and his hide covered with pimples and that he needs some purgative or laxative medicine-which I let him get. I go to Roslyn tomorrow not to be back until Tuesday, to which time the meeting of Trustees stands adjourned. 1 Affectionately yours W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: BLR ADDRESS: Miss Julia Bryant. I Atlantic City, I Atlantic County, I New Jersey. POSTMARK: NEW YORK I MAY 10 I 4 PM. 1. Presumably the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of which Bryant as a vice-president was a member.

2588. To Julia S. Bryant The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street. New York, May 14th 1878 Dear Julia, I thought I should have heard from you today, and learn how you were getting on and how you liked your quarters. I went down to Roslyn on Saturday morning and came in this morning to go out this afternoon. The weather has been unpleasantly cold there. A slip of The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 449

paper came from Sixteenth Street this morning which said that the horse that was hurt is better and that we could have him within two or three days. Since then Jager the coachman, has called and confirmed that statement. I expect to come into town on Friday again and stay overnight to go out again on Saturday morning. Regards to Annie and Miss Boggs. 1- Affectionately W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: BLR ADDRESs: Miss Julia Bryant. 1. Probably a daughter of Bryant's early business partner William G. Boggs (341.2), more recently the Evening Post's advertising manager. See Nevins, Evening Post, p. 431.

2589. To Fannie Day Butler' Roslyn Long Island N.Y. May 16th. 1878. Dear Miss Butler You ask on what occasions I have been in Pittsfield. I lived for nine years in Great Barrington practising as a lawyer before the year 1825 and not infrequently had occasion to visit Pittsfield on business. I came from New York to Pittsfield on the occasion of the great celebration called the Jubilee, and heard Oliver Wendell Holmes deliver his poem.2 I once since that time made a short stay in Pittsfield and from the observatory had a view of the very beautiful country in which the town is situated. I now pass through Pittsfield every summer on my way to Cummington where I pass two months, August and September. As to the presentation of the silver vase on my eightieth birthday it happened thus: The idea was started by the Rev Mr Osgood, who was active in obtaining subscriptions for the purpose. On my birthday he came to my house with several of my friends and Mr. Jonathan Sturges, a most worthy and excellent man, now no longer living, made a little address, in which the offer of a silver vase, commemorative of the day, was made. I answered with my thanks and such other words as occurred to me at the time.3 The vase was then designed and finished-several artists having sent in different designs for the work, from which a committee chose the one that best pleased them. 4 On a day appointed for the purpose a meeting was held in Chickering Hall, where the vase was delivered to me by Dr. Osgood, who made a brief speech, to which I returned an answer.5 The vase is now at the Metropolitan museum, at New York, where it will remain. I am yours truly W. C BRYANT. 450 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Berkshire Athenaeum ADDREss: Miss Fannie D. Butler. 1. Fanny Day Butler (1860-1945), a high school senior at Pittsfield, Massachu• setts, had written Bryant (letter unrecovered) asking him for personal information to be used for an essay she was to write. 2. On August 22-23, 1844. Holmes' poem was "Lines Recited at the Berkshire Festival." See The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Household Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin [1902]), pp. 35-36. 3. See 2242.3. 4. The various designs submitted in the Bryant Vase competition in 1875 were pictured and described in The Art journal for 1875, New Series, 1:I45-149. The winning design was described in detail by Samuel Osgood in "The Bryant Vase," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 53:245-252 (June-November I876). 5. See To William Cullen Bryant at Eighty Years, From His Friends and Countrymen (New York, 1876), pp. I4-24.

2590. To Messrs. Homer Lee & Co. 1 May 16th 1878 Gentlemen. I thank you for thinking of me as a contributor to your publica• tion.2 But it is morally and I might say physically impossible for me to comply with the request so obligingly made. I have arrived at that period of life when literary labor is performed with less facility than at an earlier period and when the invention begins to lose its fertility. I have more literary engagements in hand than I can well perform and besides I should have found it difficult at any period of my life to satisfy myself in writing a poem on a subject prescribed by others. I am gentlemen your obt Svt W C BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR (draft) ADDRESS: To Messrs Homer Lee & Co. I A New York firm of engravers and publishers. 2. About to publish a book entitled "Tic-Tacs" on life at West Point, this firm wrote Bryant on May II (NYPL-BG) asking him to compose a poem to accompany a sketch by Thomas Nast of a "skeleton in uniform of a private soldier of the U.S. Army, in the act of 'taking aim,' and holding above his head a tattered U. S. flag."

2591. To Julia S. Bryant New York, May 17th 1878. Dear Julia. I got Miss Boggs's letter of yesterday,' when I came into town this morning, and am sorry to hear that the change of air has not been so beneficial as was expected. Perhaps however, as you are growing stronger in that dry and bracing atmosphere, the strength may yet The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 451 predominate over the fever, and let you come back. I think, however, that you perhaps would do as well at Roslyn, as where you are. The air at this season is not damp there, and every body seems well. Mr. Graham has been in this morning and informs me that Fanny went away with Godwin yesterday.2 I understand from him that the lover made some strong objections to Minna's going with her father-so at the last moment her mother had to go. I have just despatched the long meditated letter to Judge Monell. 3 It has been very cold at Roslyn-part of the time windy with strong gusts from the east. Now however it is mild again and exceed• ingly pleasant. I have been run down this morning with women, beggars and poetesses, and have had more letters to write than usual-so that I am forced to write this in a hurry. Affectionately W C BRYANT. P.S. Miss Boggs mentions only one letter from me. I have written three before this-two addressed to you at Atlantic City only. W C.B.

MANUSCRIPT: BLR. 1. Letter unrecovered. 2. To Europe, for Parke Godwin's health. 3. See 2570.2.

2592. To John Heyl Vincent' New York. May 18 [1878] My Dear Sir: ... I cannot be present at the meeting called to organize the Chautau• qua Literary and Scientific Circle, but I am glad that such a movement is on foot, and wish it the fullest success. 2 There is an attempt to make science, or a knowledge of the laws of the material universe, an ally of the school which denies a separate spiritual existence and a future life; in short, to borrow of science weapons to be used against Christianity. The friends of religion, therefore, confident that one truth never contradicts another, are doing wisely when they seek to accustom the people at large to think and to weigh evidence, as well as to believe. By giving a portion of their time to a vigorous training of the intellect and a study of the best books, men gain the power to deal satisfactorily with questions with which the mind might otherwise become bewil• dered. It is true that there is no branch of human knowledge so important as that which teaches the duties that we owe to God and to each other; and that there is no law of the universe-sublime and wonderful as it may be-so worthy of being fully known as the law of 452 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT love, which makes him who obeys it a blessing to his species, and the universal observance of which would put an end to a large proportion of the evils which affect mankind; yet is a knowledge of the results of science, and such of its processes as are most open to the popular mind, important for the purpose of showing the different spheres occupied by science and religion, and preventing the inquirer from mistaking their divergence from each other for opposition. I perceive this important advantage in the proposed organization, namely, that those who engage in it will mutually encourage each other. It will give the members a common pursuit, which always begets a feeling of brotherhood; they will have a common topic of conversa• tion and discussion, and the consequence will be that many who, if they stood alone, might soon grow weary of the studies which are recommended to them, will be incited to perse' Tance by the interest which they see others taking in them. It may happen in rare instances that a person of eminent mental endowments, which otherwise might have remained uncultivated and unknown, will be stimulated in this manner to diligence, and put forth unexpected powers, and, passing rapidly beyond the rest, become greatly distinguished and take a place among the luminaries of the age. I shall be interested in watching, during the little space of life that may yet remain to me, the progress and results of the plan which has drawn from me this letter. ...

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 395-396. l. John Hey! Vincent (1832-1900), a Methodist clergyman, and secretary of the Sunday School Union in New York, initiated a Teachers Assembly at Lake Chautau• qua, New York, in 1874. 2. Vincent's four-year course for adult students, with examinations and diplomas, and studies in literature, science, and religion, organized in 1878 as the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, marked the beginning of home-study and correspon• dence schools in America. His summer courses at Chautauqua were the forerunners of college summer schools.

2593. To Julia S. Bryant Roslyn May 19th 1878. Dear Julia I have Annie's Letter of the 17th of this month received yesterday. I am surprised at the obstinacy of the fever which behaves very badly after so many intimations that its room is more desired than its company. I hope it will turn out as Anna says that it is giving its last kick and is the more saucy because it sees that it has got to go. I suppose you have heard that Fanny instead of Minna went with Godwin. Mr. Graham saw them off and accounted for the change by The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 453

saying that Mr. Goddard remonstrated against Minna's going. 1 It was determined upon at the last moment. I have put the Wilson cottage2 into Ludlow's hands to let but hear nothing from him yet. A person sent from the steamboat has been to look at the place and likes it well enough to take it for three months at the rate of a hundred and twenty five dollars a month provided his wife likes it. She is to come and see it for herself. The horse I have directed to be delivered to Carl Jager the coachman in order to be returned to our stable. Jerry I hear has gone to keeping a saloon, a restaurant and a billiard table. Last evening John Cline brought with him a Miss Brown, a young lady with black slender eyebrows, who looks very much like an "en• gaged" person, apparently brought to be shown to the mother. It is beautiful here but solitary. Yours affectionately W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: BLR ADDRESs: Miss Julia Bryant, I Brighton Cottage, I Atlantic City, I New Jersey. POSTMARK: NEW YORK? MAY 20 I 1230 PM. 1. Minna Godwin later married Frederic N. Goddard. 2. Probably the house on Bryant's Roslyn property mentioned in Letter 861. Ludlow was apparently a real estate agent.

2594. To John Sherman1 New York May 19?, 1878. Dear Sir. I have been informed, I do not know how accurately, that several vacancies will occur in the clerkships and other offices connected with the New York Custom House, and that some of them will be filled by a direction from Washington. Allow me to recommend for appoint• ment to fill one of these vacancies Dr. William H. Whitley of Paterson New Jersey. 2 He is a respectable physician of that place, intelligent and capable, though little favored by fortune, and would, I think, perform the duties of such a post faithfully. Yours faithfully W C BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: SHSW ADDRESS: To the Hon. John Sherman I Secretary of the Trea• sury. l. John Sherman (1823-1900), United States senator from Ohio, 1861-1877, had been appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Hayes in 1877. 2. See Letter 2602. 454 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

2595. To [the Chairman of the Committee for the Mazzini Statue] [Roslyn?, ante-May 20, 1878]

I have before me your letter informing me of my election as a member of the Committee which has in charge the public honor to be paid to the memory of Giuseppe Mazzini. 1 I shall with pleasure cooperate in any mode of honoring the memory of so great a man and so disinterested a lover of his country and so fearless a champion of liberty- I am sir truly yours. [Unsigned]

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL--GR (draft). 1. This letter, notifying Bryant of his election to membership on the committee which was to unveil a monument by Giovanni Turini in Central Park on May 29 honoring the memory of the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), is unre• covered. We may recall that Bryant had apparently met Mazzini more than thirty years earlier in London; see 545.13; 559.3. Subsequent to this letter, Bryant was invited to make the principal address at the dedication. For this speech, see Prose, II, 343-346.

2596. To Albert B. King1 Roslyn, Long Island, May 20, 1878. Dear Sir. Please send a boy in my name to the Society Library in University Place to take out the Life of Mazzini by Garrison2 and keep it for me till I come in on Tuesday- Yours truly W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDREss: A. B. King Esq. 1. An employee of the EP. 2. joseph Mauini, His Life, Writings, and Political Principles, With an Introduction by William Lloyd Garrison (New York and Cambridge, 1872).

2597. To Julia S. Bryant Roslyn L.l. N.Y. May 21st 1878 Dear Julia. I have been to town today where I got Miss Boggs's letter-and I write this here in the evening. I found the plumbers hammering yet• they were occupied in the second story-that where I sleep is com- The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 455 pletely done. Yesterday the plumbers did not come, but a carpenter or two was there putting in some bits of board where the old frame was weak. It seems to me that the work will not be finished this week. When they were putting in the pipe Elizabeth 1 was sickened by the smell. The horse came home on Saturday. Charles Jager says that he is thin and looks delicate. I think I must take him and the other in a drive through Central Park. When I left New York after getting a dinner at Sixteenth Street to take him out on a short drive that same day, there were no brushes nor corncombs left by Jerry in the stable. Carl says that every thing was used up and that Jerry was using the things which belonged to the other coachman in the stable. I told him to get the things and he brought me a bill of five dollars and eighty eight cents. Mr. Monell did not come down today, but I got a letter from Mrs. Monell, who says that his hand is disabled, so that he cannot write. She desired her love to you &c, &c. Miss Leclerc2 has called at Sixteenth Street to inquire concerning you and so has Mrs. Cyrus Field,3 and a Mrs. Hudson4 left her card today, with an inquiry when you would return. I think I told you in my last that Fanny went to Europe with Godwin instead of her daughter Minna. _ Teresa5 asked me today whether you would not return tomorrow. Yours affectionately W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: BLR ADDRESS: Miss Julia S. Bryant I or rather without the S. l. A servant, doubtless. 2. Julia's childhood French teacher (798.2). 3. See 1371.1. 4. Unidentified. 5. Probably Bryant's cook.

2598. To Philip Snyder1 New York, May 21, 1878 Dear Sir.

Coming to town this morning I find here your obliging letter2 which, by some negligence, was not sent to me at Roslyn on Long Island, as it should have been. It is not practicable for me to attend your social meeting at the Baker House on the 24th instant. But I have no doubt that the occasion will be an interesting one. Vineland is a peculiar place with a peculiar history, and if I were a younger man with fewer cares on my hands, it 456 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT would give me pleasure to be present and see in what manner a Vineland festivity is conducted.3 At all events I wish that you and the others who take part in it may have a good time and retain pleasant recollections of the evening. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: MCL ADDRESS: Phillip Snyder Esq. I Chm &c &c. 1. Unidentified. 2. Unrecovered. 3. The occasion for and location of this festival is uncertain. In the first volume of their Popular History Bryant and Gay had described, in their third chapter, "The Norsemen in America," the visit in A.D. 1000 of Leif Erickson to Vinland (Vineland), supposedly on Narragansett Bay in what is now Rhode Island.

2599. To Julia S. Bryant The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street. New York, May 25 1878. Dear Julia. I came just now from the House in Sixteenth Street. The plumb• ing is all done, and every thing looks and smells comfortable. The whole house is as sweet as a nut. I left Roslyn buried in grass. The strawberries begin, so says Mr. Cline, to color a little, and next week we may expect them. Mr. Cline and his wife were to come in by a later train, and take a drive through the Park-the Central-with Carl for a driver. I have a cough, and called this morning to see Dr. Gray. He says every thing that is good of Frederick Goddard. Affectionately, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: BLR ADDREss: Miss Julia Bryant I Brighten Cottage I Atlantic City, I New Jersey. POSTMARK: NEW-YORK I MAY 25 I 430 PM.

2600. To Henry Evelyn Pierrepont1 Roslyn, Long Island N.Y. May 27th 1878. My dear sir.

I did write a letter in favor of Mrs. C. S. Wilson.2 When she came to the North, sometime since, Mr. Nordhoff then in the Evening Post,3 and myself, looked at her credentials, which were written attestations from Genl Grant and also Genis. Gilmore and Ingalls.4 They satisfied The Rights and Duties of Human Brotherhood 457

us at the time, and an article in her behalf was published in the Evening Post. As for my letter, it has brought me a good many inquiries like your own. Yours truly, W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: CU ADDREss: Henry E. Pierrepont Esq. I No. 1 Pierrepont Place I Brooklyn I N.Y. 1. Pierrepont (1808-post-1884) was a Brooklyn city planner, philanthropist, and president of Greenwood Cemetery. History ... of the County ofKings (New York [1884]), pp. 443-444. 2. Unidentified, except as in Letter 2545. 3. Charles Nordhoff, the EP's first managing editor, had left the paper in 1871. 4. Probably Quincy Adams Gilmore and Rufus Ingalls.

2601. To Richard Henry Stoddard1 Roslyn, May 27th [1878]

... I like your poem2 much, and am charmed with its beautiful ending. You ask for my criticism. It will not be of much value; but, since you desire it, I will point out a few places where I would make a change if I were the author. STANZA III.-"Their hearts rebellious cried"-an unpleasant in• version if rebellious be an adjective, and not very good grammar if it be an adverb. "Rebelling" would be better, me Judice. STANZA V.-Two "fors" in two successive lines. STANZA VI.-"And other horsemen." If for "other" one were to substitute some adjective in the comparative degree, as "fiercer," it would give the passage more force. STANZA X.-"Would never have permitted it so long" seems to me prosaic. STANZA XIII.-"Such strength as you displayed." "Displayed" for "put forth," or some such word, is not quite right. Stanza XVI.-"Superstructures." I should have preferred "struc- tures," with some alteration of the stanza to give it the required length. SAME STANZA.-"And batter against." Why not "beat"? STANZA XIX.-Second line, something omitted. STANZA XXII.-"Produces" for "brings forth." STANZA XIX.-Another phrase in this stanza which I do not like is, "and all triumphal strains." I do not quite see its pertinency. There is in Stanza IV a grammatical slip, the hand of God was lain." You see that, although I have read your poem several times over, 458 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

I have gleaned very little in the way of objection, and nothing as to the thought or plan, which is excellent. Looking again at Stanza V, the line, "And all men have submitted to his reign," strikes me as wanting in force. If the meaning were extended to every living thing, it seems to me that something would be gained in vigor of expression. But the blemishes I have noted are trivial ones, and all of them may not seem such to others. Faithfully yours, W.C.B.

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 398-399. I. Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903), a poet and critic, and his wife Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard (1823-1902), a novelist, were at the center of a literary group which included Bayard Taylor (632.1), Thomas B. Aldrich (1656.1), George H. Boker (1745.1), and Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1903), and which often gathered at the Stoddard home in New York. Several members of the circle had offered verse tributes to Bryant at the Century Club Festival in his honor in 1864 (Volume IV, 341- 342; Letter 1480). After Bryant's death, which occurred shortly after this letter was written, Stoddard paid tribute to him in verses with the title "The Dead Master." And his "Memoir" of Bryant's life was incorporated in The Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant .... Roslyn Edition (New York: Appleton, 1907), pp. ix-xxx. 2. Not identified.

2602. To William H. Whitley' The Evening Post, Broadway and Fulton Street. New York, May 28th 1878. My dear Sir I have written what you call an endorsement of your applications under each of them, and sent them off by mail. Yours truly W C BRYANT.2

MANUSCRIPT: Newark Public Library. ADDRESS: Dr. W. H. Whitley. I. Identified only as in Letter 2594. 2. In this, his last recovered letter in a correspondence of sixty-four years, Bryant is characteristically offering help to a casual acquaintance.