gton, where, in
1821, he married Miss Frances Fairchild. Of this lady, who survived
until within a few years, there are several graceful and touching
memorials in the poetry of her husband. She was the ideal celebrated
in the poem beginning, "Oh, fairest of the rural maids;" and it is to
her that "The Future Life" and "The Life that Is" are addressed.
Whether Mr. Bryant was a successful lawyer, we are not told; but, as
he lived at Great Barrington nine years in the practice of law, it is
to be supposed that he was. However this may be, he still cultivated
his poetry, which was now bringing him into notice. "Thanatopsis" was
published in 1816 in the _North American Review_, though not
precisely as we have it now; as was also the "Inscription for the
Entrance to a Wood"--a study from nature, at Cummington, and the
well-known lines "To a Water-fowl," which were written while he was
studying his profession at Bridgewater.

The next four or five years of Mr. Bryant's life were comparatively
unproductive; at least, we hear of nothing from his pen until 1821,
when he delivered "The Ages" before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at
Cambridge. It was published there during the same year, at the
suggestion of some of his friends, in a little volume which contained,
in addition to the three poems already mentioned, the pleasant
pastoral, "Green River," previously contributed to Dana's "Idle Man."
That law had by this time become distasteful to him, we gather from
its concluding stanza:

"Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen."

In 1824 we find him writing for the _Literary Gazette_, a favorite
weekly published at Boston, and edited by Theophilus Parsons. His
contributions to this journal were "The Murdered Traveller," "The Old
Mans' Funeral," "The Forest Hymn," and the spirited lyric "March." The
next year he removed to New York, and became one of the editors of the
_New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine_. It was the wisest step that
he could have taken, although New York, at that time, was of less
importance in the literary world than Boston or Philadelphia. The
_Review_ was not a success, so it was merged, in 1826, in a work of
similar character, _The United States Review and Literary Gazette_,
which closed with the second volume in September, 1827. Mr. Bryant's
brief residence in New York had enlarged his circle of friends, among
whom were Robert C. Sands, who was assoc