There comes a day in the intellectual lives of most poets when their powers cease to be progressive and productive, or are productive only in the forms to which they have accustomed themselves, and which have become mannerisms. It was not so with Mr. Bryant. He enjoyed the dangerous distinction of proving himself a great poet at an early age; he preserved this distinction to the last, for the sixty-four years which elapsed between the writing of "Thanatopsis" and the writing of "The Flood of Years" witnessed no decay of his poetic capacities, but rather the growth and development of trains of thought and forms of verse of which there was no evidence in his early writings. His sympathies were enlarged as the years went on, and the crystal clearness of his mind was colored with human emotions. To Bryant, beyond all other modern poets, the earth was a theatre upon which the great drama of life was everlastingly played. The remembrance of this fact is his inspiration in "The Fountain," "An Evening Revery," "The Antiquity of Freedom," "The Crowded Street," "The Planting of the Apple-Tree," "The Night Journey of a River," "The Sower," and "The Flood of Years." The most poetical of Mr. Bryant's poems are, perhaps, "The Land of Dreams," "The Burial of Love," "The May Sun sheds an Amber Light," and "The Voice of Autumn;" and they were written in a succession of happy hours, and in the order named. Next to these pieces, as examples of pure poetry, should be placed "Sella" and "The Little People of the Snow," which are exquisite fairy fantasies. The qualities by which Mr. Bryant's poetry are chiefly distinguished are serenity and gravity of thought; an intense though repressed recognition of the mortality of mankind; an ardent love for human freedom; and unrivaled skill in painting the scenery of his native land. He had no superior in this walk of poetic art--it might almost be said no equal, for his descriptions of nature are never inaccurate or redundant. "The Excursion" is a tiresome poem, which contains several exquisite episodes. Mr. Bryant knew how to write exquisite episodes, and to omit the platitudes through which we reach them in other poets. It is not given to many poets to possess as many residences as Mr. Bryant, for he had three--a town-house in New York, a country-house, called "Cedarmere," at Roslyn, Long Island, and the old homestead of the Bryant family at Cummington. He passed the winter months in New York, and the summer and early autumn months at his country-houses. No distinguished man in America was better known by sight than he. "O good gray head that all men knew"