and Marryat, and the redeeming candour of his opinions, make poor amends for his abuse of talents that might have improved, rather than satisfied, the taste of the garish day. _William Cullen Bryant._--However different in aim and permanence from the last mentioned adherent of the “Knickerbocker School,” to the same general category may be assigned William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), who from 1826 until his death was an active force in the literary life of New York. The author of “Thanatopsis” and one of the best verse translations of Homer was born in Cummington, Massachusetts, attended a local school, was taught Latin and Greek by private tutors, two clergymen of ability, and studied for part of a year at Williams College, where the standard of scholarship was then low. Leaving that institution in 1811, he made ready to enter the profession of law. During his preparation he had an interval of experience as adjutant in the State militia. After that, he practised as a lawyer in his native State, at Plainfield and Great Barrington, until 1825, when he yielded to the strong propensity of nature, and took up literature for the business of life. As a mere child, Bryant showed an exceptional leaning toward poetry. He was unweariedly studious, and an omnivorous reader. He wrote verses before he was nine; in his youth, so he says, he varied his private devotions from the ordinary Calvinistic models, by supplicating that he “might receive the gift of poetic genius and write verses that might endure.” The gift came to him through the instrumentality of Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads” (the American edition of 1802), whose mastery over him he afterwards acknowledged, and bore witness to in his practice. At first, however, he was imbued with the tendencies of his own predecessors in America. A Federalist in his political sympathies, he opposed the aims of Jefferson’s administration--although later he grew to be a staunch supporter of “Jeffersonian Democracy.” Encouraged by his father, a well-known physician, who himself indulged in verse, young Cullen, before he was fifteen, saw in print his political satire “The Embargo” (1808), a work in the manner of Freneau and Trumbull, in which Jefferson was invited to resign the presidency. In Wordsworth, fortunately, Byrant had a model choicer than the satirists. He became acquainted with “Lyrical Ballads” in 1810. Sometime in the autumn of 1811, his inward eye having been taught to see the operation of a benign and healing spirit in the world of nature, this thoughtful youth, now about to begin the study of law, and, as it were, to commence the effort of life, was moved to record his sentiments on the all-pervading fact of death: the universal debt is not an evil; to pay it is as natural as to be born; and to obey the voice of nature, to confide in her will, is the source of human satisfaction. That is the burden of “Thanatopsis.”