To a certain extent Bryant agreed with these writers. He did not believe journalism an unworthy or undignified occupation. In the _Evening Post_ of July 30, 1830, he gave reasons for holding the contrary opinion, descanting upon the value of the opportunity to guide the thinking of thousands. “In combating error in all shapes and disguises,” he wrote, it was ample compensation for an editor’s trials “to perceive that you are understood by the intelligent, and appreciated by the candid, and that truth and correct principles are gradually extending their sway through your efforts.” But he had no attachment as yet to the editorial career, he wanted with all his heart to have leisure for pure literature, and he meant to get out of the newspaper office as quickly and finally as possible. He bracketed it with the law as a “wrangling profession,” and talked of being chained to the oar. Always fond of travel, he escaped from his desk after 1830 as much as he possibly could. In January, 1832, he took a trip to Washington, making the establishment of a regular Washington correspondence his excuse, and had a conversation of three quarters of an hour there with Jackson. That spring he made an excursion to Illinois, to visit his brothers. During the summer of 1833 he went to Montreal and Quebec. When he took passage abroad on June 24, 1834, he hoped that the business capacity of Michael Burnham and the editorial capacity of William Leggett would make anything but intermittent attention by him to the _Evening Post_ thenceforth unnecessary. “I have been employed long enough with the management of a daily newspaper, and desire leisure for literary occupations that I love better,” he later wrote his brother. “It was not my intention when I went to Europe to return to the business of conducting a newspaper.” He hoped that his third share would support him. How these expectations were suddenly wrecked, and how Bryant was brought back by harsh necessity to rescue the _Evening Post_ from ruin, is a dramatic story. CHAPTER SIX WILLIAM LEGGETT ACTING EDITOR; DEPRESSION, RIVALRY, AND THREATENED RUIN One of the most popular pieces of sculpture the country has ever known, Horatio Greenough’s “Chaunting Cherubs,” was being widely discussed in the early thirties, as was Hiram Powers’s “Greek Slave,” a little later. In a witty moment the _Courier and Enquirer_ christened Bryant and William Leggett, for Leggett also wrote poetry, “the chaunting cherubs of the _Evening Post_.” The name had outward appropriateness, but it would really have been more fitting to call Leggett a spouting volcano. While Bryant controlled the journal, it abstained from any harsh abuse of other journals. His rule was to notice no personal attacks, and to make none in retaliation. Only once in fifty years did he, passing in the street an editorial adversary who had given him the lie direct, lose control of himself. The diarist Philip Hone tells the story under date of April 20, 1831: