About a quarter of a mile from the mansion, he pointed out a black-walnut tree, which was planted by Adam Smith, and first made its appearance above ground in 1713. It had attained a girth of twenty-five feet and an immense breadth of branches. It was the comfortable home of a small army of squirrels, and every year strewed the ground around its gigantic stem with an abundance of "heavy fruit.” The tree is alluded to in one of Mr. Bryant's poems :

"On my cornice linger the ripe black grapes ungathered;
Children fill the groves with the echoes of their glee,
Gathering tawny chestnuts, and shouting when beside them
Drops the heavy fruit of the tall black-walnut tree."

The taste displayed by the poet in the selection and adornment of his residence at Roslyn was more than equaled by the affection and veneration which fourteen years ago prompted him to purchase the old Bryant Homestead and estate at Cummington, which had some thirty years previous passed out of the family into other hands. The mansion is situated among the Hampshire hills, and is a spot that nature has surrounded with scenes calculated to awaken the early dreams of the poet, and to fill his soul with purest inspiration. In the midst of such scenes the young singer received his earliest impressions, and descriptive of them he has embodied some of his most cherished and home-endearing poetry. To a friend who requested information about the home of his boyhood, Mr. Bryant in 1872 wrote as follows:

"I am afraid that I can not say much that will interest you or any body else. A hundred years since this broad highland region lying between the Housatonic and the Connecticut was principally forest, and bore the name of Pontoosuc. In a few places settlers had cleared away woodlands and cultivated the cleared spots. Bears, catamounts, and deer were not uncommon here. Wolves were sometimes seen, and the woods were dense and dark, without any natural openings or meadows. My grandfather on the mother's side came up from Plymouth County, in Massachusetts, when a young man, in the year 1773, and chose a farm on a commanding site overlooking an extensive prospect, cut down the trees on a part of it, and built a house of square logs with a chimney as large as some kitchens, within which I remember to have sat on a bench in my childhood. About ten years afterward he purchased, of an original settler, the contiguous farm, now called the Bryant Homestead, and having built beside a little brook, not very far from a spring from which water was to be drawn in pipes, the house which is now mine, he removed to it with his family. The soil of this region was then exceedingly fertile, all the settlers prospered, and my grandfather among the rest. My father, a physician and surgeon, married his daughter, and after a while came to live with him on the homestead. He made some enlargements of the house, in one part of which he had his office, and in this, during my boyhood, were generally two or three students of medicine, who sometimes accompanied my father in his visits to his patients, always on horseback, which was the mode of traveling at that time. To this place my father brought me in my early childhood, and I have scarce an early recollection which does not relate to it.

On the farm beside the little brook, and at a short distance from the house, stood the district school-house, of which nothing now remains but a little hollow where was once a cellar. Here I received my earliest lessons in learning, except such as were given me by my mother, and here, when ten years old, I declaimed a copy of verses composed by me as a description of a district school. The little brook which runs by the house, on the site of the

old district school-house, was in after-years made the subject of a little poem, entitled 'The Rivulet.' To the south of the house is a wood of tall trees clothing a declivity, and touching with its outermost boughs the grass of a moist meadow at the foot of the hill, which suggested the poem entitled 'An Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.'

"In the year 1835 the place passed out of the family; and at the end of thirty years I repurchased it, and made various repairs of the house and additions to its size. A part of the building which my father had added, and which contained his office, had, in the mean time, been detached from it, and moved off down a steep hill to the side of the Westfield River. I supplied its place by a new wing with the same external form, though of less size, in which is now my library.

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The site of the house is uncommonly beautiful. Before it, to the east, the ground descends, first gradually, and then rapidly, to the Westfield River, flowing in a deep and narrow valley, from which is heard, after a copious rain, the roar of its swollen current, itself unseen. In the spring-time, when the frost-bound waters are loosened by a warm rain, the roar and crash are remarkably loud as the icy crust of the stream is broken, and the masses of ice are swept along by the flood over the stones with which the bed of the river is paved. Beyond the narrow valley of the Westfield the surface of the country rises again gradually, carrying the eye over a region of vast extent, interspersed with farm-houses, pasturegrounds, and wooded heights, where on a showery day you sometimes see two or three different showers, each watering its own separate district; and in winter-time two or three different snow-storms dimly moving from place to place."

The soil of the whole of this highland region is disintegrated mica slate, for the most part. It has its peculiar growth of trees, shrubs, and wild flowers, differing considerably from those of the eastern part of the State. In autumn, the woods are peculiarly beautiful with their brightness and variety of hues. The higher farms of this region lie nearly two thousand feet above tide-water. The air is pure and healthful; the summer temperature is most agreeable; but the spring is coy in her approaches, and winter often comes before he is bidden. No venomous reptile inhabits any part of this region, as I think there is no tradition of a rattlesnake or copperhead having been seen here."

The serenity and dignity so manifest in Bryant's writings were notable also in his person. The poet was often depicted with pencil and pen. The phrenologists exhausted their skill upon his noble head, and the painters and engravers their art upon his face. The former believed him to approach the ideal of Spurzheim in his phrenological developments, and the latter deemed him to possess the fine artistic features of Titian and the Greek poet whom he translated. It is a consolation to age, when protected by a wise and orderly regulated life, that its inherent dignity supplies the want, if not the place, of youth, and that the veneration and serenity which surround it more than compensate for the passions which turbulence renders dangerous. To such an honored age as this Bryant attained; calm, circumspect, and sedate, he passed the perilous portals of Parnassus with his crown of laurel untarnished and unwithered by the baser breath that sometimes lurks like a poison within its leaves. To my conception, he more resembled Dante in the calm dignity of his nature, though happily not in the violent and oppressive affliction of his life, than any other poet in history.

Having passed, by more than three winters, what the Psalmist calls "the days of our years," and escaped the "labor and sorrow" that are foreboded to the strength that attains fourscore, Bryant continued to perform his daily editorial duties, to

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pursue his studies, and to give the world his much prized utterances, without exhibit. ing any evidences of physical or mental decay, although for a good part of half a century he was under whip and spur, with the daily press forever, as Scott expressed it, clattering and thundering at his heels." On the evening of January 31st, 1878, he walked out on the wildest night of the winter, when a blinding snowstorm kept many younger men at home, to address a meeting of the American Geographical Society, and to take part in the cordial welcome extended to the Earl of Dufferin, the accomplished Governor-General of Canada. When the president of the society sent for a carriage and urged the aged poet, at the close of the meeting, to make use of it, he sturdily refused, saying that he preferred to walk home.

Among Mr. Bryant's latest utterances was the following noble ode, written for Washington's last birthday, February 22d, 1878, for The Sunday School Times:

"Pale is the February sky,

And brief the mid-day's sunny hours;
The wind-swept forest seems to sigh
For the sweet time of leaves and flowers.

"Yet has no month a prouder day,

Not even when the Summer broods
O'er meadows in their fresh array,
Or Autumn tints the glowing woods.

"For this chill season now again

Brings, in its annual round, the morn
When, greatest of the sous of men,
Our glorious Washington was born.
"Lo, where, beneath an icy shield,

Calmly the mighty Hudson flows!
By snow-clad fell and frozen field
Broadening the lordly river goes.

"The wildest storm that sweeps through space,
And rends the oak with sudden force,
Can raise no ripple on his face

Or slacken his majestic course.

Still later (May 15th, 1878) Mr. Bryant wrote at Roslyn the following characteristic sentiment contributed to a Decoration Day number of The Recorder.

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In expressing my regard for the memory of those who fell in the late civil war. I can not omit to say that, for one result of what they did and endured-namely, the extinction of slavery in this great republic-they deserve the imperishable gratitude of mankind. Their memory will survive many thousands of the generations of spring flowers which men will gather to-day on their graves. Nay, they will not be forgotten while the world has a written history."

CHAPTER III.

"Or no distemper, of no blast he died,

But fell like autumn fruit that mellow'd long:
Even wonder'd at, because he dropt no sooner.
Fate seem'd to wind him up for fourscore years;
Yet freshly ran he on three winters more;
Till, like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still."
JOHN DRYDEN.

MAZZINI ADDRESS-LAST WORDS-ACCIDENT-SICKNESS-DEATH-BURIAL AT ROSLYNTRIBUTES TO HIS MEMORY.

In accordance with the expressed wishes of many personal friends of the patriarch of American poetry, who was so recently laid in his grave with many tears, and also remembering that posterity likes details in regard to the latest actions and utterances of eminent men, I have recorded, to the best of my recollection, some particulars of his conversation during the afternoon of Wednesday, May 29th, his last hours of consciousness. He was appointed to deliver an oration on the occasion of unveiling a bronze bust of Mazzini, the Italian revolutionist and statesman, in the Central Park. I met Mr. Bryant in the Park about half an hour before the commencement of the ceremonies, conversing with him during that time, and again for a similar period after those ceremonials were concluded. While I was walking with Mr. Bryant for the last time, he quoted an aphorism from his friend Sainte-Beuve, that "To know another man well, especially if he be a noted and illustrious character, is a great thing not to be despised." It was my good fortune to have enjoyed for nearly or quite a quarter of a century the privilege and pleasure of Mr. Bryant's acquaintance, and in all that time I never met him in a more cheerful and conversational mood than on the above-mentioned afternoon, and never saw him exhibit an equal depth and tenderness of feeling, either in his public utterances or in his private talk.

At the proper time Mr. Bryant took his seat on the platform-for he had been standing or seated under the welcome shade of adjoining eims-and presently he proceeded with the delivery of the last of a long series of scholarly addresses delivered in New York during the past thirty years. As I gazed on the majestic man, with his snow-white hair and flowing beard, his small, keen, but gentle blue eye, his light but firm lithe figure, standing so erect and apparently with undiminished vigor, enunciating with such distinctness, I thought of what Napoleon said of another great singer who, like our American poet, reached an advanced age to which but few attain, and which was equally true of Bryant : "Behold a man !"

The delivery of the oration, which affords most interesting evidence of the enthusiasm and mental energy of its aged author, it is to be feared drew too heavily on

the poet's failing powers. It was uttered with an unusual depth of feeling, and for the first time in his public addresses, so far as I am aware, he hesitated and showed some difficulty in finding his place in the printed slip which was spread before him, and in proceeding with his remarks. During the delivery of his speech he was but slightly exposed to the hot sun, an umbrella being held over his

"Good gray head, which all men knew,"

till he reached his peroration, when he stepped from under its shelter, and, looking up at the bust, delivered with power and great emphasis, while exposed to the sun, the concluding paragraph of his address :

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Image of the illustrious champion of civil and religious liberty, cast in enduring bronze to typify the imperishable renown of thy original! Remain for ages yet to come where we place thee, in this resort of millions; remain till the day shall dawn--far distant though it may be when the rights and duties of human brotherhood shall be acknowledged by all the races of mankind!''

At the conclusion, Mr. Bryant was loudly applauded, and resuming his seat again on the platform, he remained an interested listener to the address in Italian which followed his. At the close of the ceremonies, and when the poet was left almost alone on the platform, he took my offered arm to accompany me to my home, saying that he was perfectly able to walk there, or indeed to his own house in Sixteenth Street. Before proceeding, I again proposed that we should take a carriage, when the poet said, in a determined manner, “I am not tired, and prefer to walk." As we set off, I raised my umbrella to protect him from the sun, when he said, in a most decided tone, "Don't hold that umbrella up on my account; I like the warmth of the sunshine." He was much interested in the fine flock of sheep, together with the shepherd and his intelligent Scotch collie, that he observed as we passed across the green.

Mr. Bryant alluded to the death of Lord John Russell the day before, and asked if I had ever met him or heard him speak in public, adding: "For a statesman, he devoted a good deal of time to literature, and he appears to have been a man of respectable talents. How old was he?" "Eighty-six." 'Why, he was older than I am; but I expect to beat that and to live as long as my friend Dana, who is ninety-one." 66 Have you any theory as to the cause of your good health?"

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Oh, yes," he answered; "it is all summed up in one word-moderation. As you know, I am a moderate eater and drinker, moderate in my work, as well as in my pleasures, and I believe the best way to preserve the mental and physical faculties is to keep them employed. Don't allow them to rust." "But surely," I added, "there is no moderation in a man of eighty-three, after walking more than two miles, mounting eight or nine pairs of stairs to his office." "Oh," he merrily replied, "I confess to the two or three miles down-town, but I do not often mount the stairs; and if I do sometimes, when the elevator is not there, I do not see that it does me any harm. I can walk and work as well as ever, and have been at the office to-day, as usual.”