last-named village he was elected a tithingman, charged with the duty of keeping order in the churches and enforcing the observance of Sunday.  Chosen town clerk soon afterwards, at a salary of five dollars a year, he kept the records of the town with his own hand for five years, and also served as justice of the peace with power to hear cases in a lower court.  These biographical items are of value, as showing his close relation to the self-government of the people in its simpler forms, and his early practical familiarity with the duties of a trusted citizen.

Meanwhile, however, he kept on writing at intervals, and in 1821 read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard a long poem, ‘The Ages,’ a kind of composition more in favor at that period than in later days, being a general review of the progress of man in knowledge and virtue.  With the passage of time it has not held its own as against some of his other poems, although it long enjoyed a high reputation; but its success on its original hearing was the cause of his bringing together his first volume of poems, hardly more than a pamphlet, in the same year.  It made him famous with the reading public of the United States, and won some recognition in England.  In this little book were contained, besides ’The Ages’ and ‘Thanatopsis,’ several pieces which have kept their hold upon popular taste; such as the well-known lines ‘To a Waterfowl’ and the ‘Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.’

[Illustration:  WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.]

The year of its publication also brought into the world Cooper’s ’The Spy,’ Irving’s ‘Sketch Book’ and ‘Bracebridge Hall,’ with various other significant volumes, including Channing’s early essays and Daniel Webster’s great Plymouth Oration.  It was evident that a native literature was dawning brightly; and as Bryant’s productions now came into demand, and he had never liked the profession of law, he quitted it and went to New York in 1825, there to seek a living by his pen as “a literary adventurer.”  The adventure led to ultimate triumph, but not until after a long term of dark prospects and hard struggles.

Even in his latest years Bryant used to declare that his favorite among his poems—­although it is one of the least known—­was ‘Green River’; perhaps because it recalled the scenes of young manhood, when he was about entering the law, and contrasted the peacefulness of that stream with the life in which he would be

     “Forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
     And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
     And mingle among the jostling crowd,
     Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud.”

This might be applied to much of his experience in New York, where he edited the New York Review and became one of the editors, then a proprietor, and finally chief editor of the Evening Post.  A great part of his energies now for many years was given to his journalistic function, and to the active outspoken discussion of important political questions; often in trying crises and at the cost of harsh unpopularity.  Success, financial as well as moral, came to him within the next quarter-century, during which laborious interval he had likewise maintained his interest and work in pure literature and produced new poems from time to time in various editions.