This remarkable poem was not published until 1816, when it appeared in the North American Review, then under the charge of Mr. DANA, who has himself since attained to such a signal eminence among the poets and essayists of America, and between whom and Mr. Bryant a singular unity of intellectual tastes laid the foundation for a cordial friendship, which has been maintained with a warmth and constancy in the highest degree honorable to the character of both parties. Meanwhile, Mr. Bryant had established himself in the profession of the law, in the beautiful village of Great Barrington, exchanging the mountain wildness of his native region, for the diversified and singularly lovely scenery of the Housatonic Valley, where he composed the lines "To Green Elver," "Inscription for an entrance to a Wood," "To a Waterfowl," and several of his other smaller poems, which have since hardly been surpassed by himself, and certainly not by any other American writer. The "Thanatopsis," viewed without reference to the age at which it was produced, is one of the most precious gems of didactic verse in the whole compass of English poetry, but when considered as the composition of a youth of eighteen, it partakes of the character of the marvelous. It is, however, unjust to its rich and solemn beauty to contemplate it in the light of a prodigy. Nor are we often tempted to revert to the singularity of its origin, when we yield our minds to the influence of its grand and impressive images. It seems like one of those majestic products of nature, to which we assign no date, and which suggest no emotion but that of admiration at their glorious harmony. The objection has been made to the "Thanatopsis," that its consolations in view of death are not drawn directly from the doctrines of religion, and that it in fact makes no express allusion to the Divine Providence, nor to the immortality of the soul. These ideas are so associated in most minds with the subject matter of the poem, that their omission causes a painful sense of incongruity. But the writer was not composing a homily, nor a theological treatise. His imagination was absorbed with the soothing influences of nature under the anticipation of the "last bitter hour." In order to make the contrast more forcible, the poem opens with a cold and dreary picture of the common destiny. Earth claims the body which she has nourished; man is doomed to renounce his individual being and mingle with the elements; kindred with the sluggish clod, his mould is pierced by the roots of the spreading oak. The sun shall no more see him in his daily course, nor shall any traces of his image remain on earth or ocean.