ned poet. His presence and
co-operation were indispensable in all great public functions or
humanitarian and intellectual movements. In 1864 his seventieth birthday
was celebrated at the Century Club with extraordinary honors. In 1875,
again, the two houses of the State Legislature at Albany paid him the
compliment, unprecedented in the annals of American authorship, of
inviting him to a reception given to him in their official capacity.
Another mark of the abounding esteem in which he was held among his
fellow-citizens was the presentation to him in 1876 of a rich silver
vase, commemorative of his life and works. He was now a wealthy man; yet
his habits of life remained essentially unchanged. His tastes were
simple, his love of nature was still ardent; his literary and editorial
industry unflagging.

Besides his poems, Bryant wrote two short stories for 'Tales of the
Glauber Spa'; and published 'Letters of a Traveler' in 1850, as a result
of three journeys to Europe and the Orient, together with various public
addresses. His style as a writer of prose is clear, calm, dignified, and
denotes exact observation and a wide range of interests. So too his
editorial articles in the Evening Post, some of which have been
preserved in his collected writings, are couched in serene and forcible
English, with nothing of the sensational or the colloquial about them.
They were a fitting medium of expression for his firm conscientiousness
and integrity as a journalist.

But it is as a poet, and especially by a few distinctive compositions,
that Bryant will be most widely and deeply held in remembrance. In the
midst of the exacting business of his career as an editor, and many
public or social demands upon his time, he found opportunity to
familiarize himself with portions of German and Spanish poetry, which he
translated, and to maintain in the quietude of his country home in
Roslyn, Long Island, his old acquaintance with the Greek and Latin
classics. From this continued study there resulted naturally in 1870 his
elaborate translation of Homer's Iliad, which was followed by that of
the Odyssey in 1871. These scholarly works, cast in strong and polished
blank verse, won high praise from American critics, and even achieved a
popular success, although they were not warmly acclaimed, in England.
Among literarians they are still regarded as in a manner standards of
their kind. Bryant, in his long march of over sixty-five years across
the