Sweet affections, tenderness, patience, love, and, above all, trust in Nature and God, are the virtues that chiefly inspire his song. It is for this reason, that amidst his most striking and picturesque descriptions there is always something to soften and improve. Not the tempest, the earth-quake, or the torrent move him, but nature, in her gladness and smiles. With every phase of the external world he has connected some noble moral, or some beautiful religious or philosophical sentiment. Indeed, these are so many and so touching that it is equally a matter of amusement and instruction to trace them. Thus, in the deep slumber of the woodlands he finds an emblem of the inward peace that marks the life of virtue, twilight hues, “lingering after the bright sun has set,” are like the memory of good men gone; the perishing flowers of autumn recall those who “in their youthful beauty died;” the golden sunlight that follows the tempest anticipates the day when “the voice of war shall cease, and married nations dwell in harmony;” the unconscious flow of the rivulet shows how changeless nature is amid all her change; the flight of the lone bird amid the air tells of that power that in “the long way that we must tread alone, will guide our steps aright;” while “morn and eve, whose glimmerings almost meet,” indicate the spread of the light of that knowledge and justice which is destined to “Crowd back to narrow bounds the ancient night.” It must be confessed, however, speaking of the spirit of Mr. Bryant’s poetry, that many of his readers feel the absence of a deep and fervid interest in humanity. They have complained, and we think in some degree justly, that he exhibits too little of human passion. His mind, to use a distinction of the Germans, has been too objective, and not enough subjective; the forms and appearance of the outward world have absorbed his attention almost to the exclusion of the feelings and sentiments of the inward being. Not that he has been wholly wanting in sympathy for his race, for in the “Ages,” the “Old Man’s Funeral,” the “Living Lost,” the “Fairest of the Rural Maids,” and other of his poems, there are to be found passages of the most touching and subduing pathos; but that the truths of man’s existence; his experience on earth; the mysteries of his condition; the trials of his life; his deathless affections; his sublime hopes of a future state; and other topics of that character, have been neglected. They have wished that one who could discourse so truthfully and genially of stars, and skies, and flowers, and forests, should speak to them, out of the depths of his own nature, of that quickening principle which is more lovely in itself, of higher worth, and more lasting, than the whole outward world—the human soul. They have wished that he who has been able to interpret in such beautiful meaning the language of nature, would apply the same noble and accomplished skill to the interpretation of the heart.