certain lines of Kirke White, who had deeply stirred his imagination. Once again it was hard to persuade the literary world that young Bryant was the actual author. "Thanatopsis" and the "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood" were published in the _North American Review_ without signature, according to the usual custom. The editors had requested contributions from the elder Bryant, and he had found these verses unfinished at home and had sent them on after copying them in his own handwriting. The more famous poem so impressed the editors that, far from believing it the work of an American boy, Richard H. Dana, on hearing it read aloud, said to his colleague, "Ah, Phillips, you have been imposed upon; no one on this side the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." In the meantime Bryant had been admitted at fifteen to the sophomore class at Williams College, had withdrawn at the end of a year intending to enter Yale the next autumn, had been unable to carry out the plan through lack of funds, and had studied law and been admitted to the bar. While still in doubt as to his choice of profession he had written the "Lines to a Waterfowl," which were later published in the _North American_, following the acceptance of "Thanatopsis." He became a lawyer not through any love of the profession but because it seemed a reasonable way to earn a living in a period when one could not hope for support from his pen. He practiced for nine years, never with any real enthusiasm, describing himself in the midst of these years as forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud. His discontent was increased by the applause which came with his magazine poems and by the compliment of an invitation to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard in 1821. Finally, in 1825, he went down to New York in the hope of making a success of a new periodical there. In spite of his associate editorship _The New York Review and Athenæum Magazine_ was as shortlived as scores of others. It was a bad time in America for such a venture. The country was flooded with English publications and American pirated editions of English works. The public was not educated to the idea of magazines, nor the publishers to the methods of financing them. They were unattractive in form and as heavy in contents as the labored name of Bryant's ill-fated experiment. After the collapse he returned for a short time to the practice of law, but in 1826 he accepted the assistant editorship of the New York _Evening Post_, three years later became editor, and continued with it until his death in 1878. He was the first nineteenth-century man of letters to enter the field of American journalism, and he played a highly distinguished part in its history.