iated with him in the _New
York Review_, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Gulian C. Verplanck, and others;
and it had added to his popularity as a writer, the excellence and
variety of his poems embracing a wider range of subjects than he had
hitherto chosen. The most noticeable of these were "The African
Chief," "The Disinterred Warrior," "The Indian Girl's Lament," and
"The Death of the Flowers." It is not too much to say of the last that
it is the most exquisite poem of the kind in the language--as perfect,
in its way, as Keats' "Ode to Autumn," which it resembles in grace and
delicacy of conception, and surpasses in fidelity and picturesqueness
of description. It is interesting, also, from the light which it sheds
upon a painful incident in the life of the poet--the early death of a
beloved and beautiful sister:

"In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers."

There are other allusions to this "fair, meek blossom" in Mr. Bryant's
poems. The sonnet, "Consumption," was addressed to her; and she
mingled with his solemn musings in "The Past."

The _United States Review_ ceased, as we have seen, in 1827. Its
editor seems to have foreseen its fate in advance, and provided for
it; for, before it happened, he had become connected with the _Evening
Post_. This was in 1826, from which time dates Mr. Bryant's connection
with American journalism--a connection which he never relinquished,
and which, while it may have lessened his poetic productiveness,
undoubtedly added largely to his influence with his countrymen. The
_Evening Post_ had just completed the first quarter of a century of
its existence, and stood foremost among the journals of New York.
Perhaps it was the foremost, all things considered. But, however this
may be, it was a journal for which a gentleman could write. It was
respectable and dignified, and it was able and sarcastic. The age of
personalities, through which the American press is now passing, had
not commenced. Editors were neither horsewhipped in the streets, nor
deserved to be, and that impertinent eavesdropper and babbler, the
interviewer, was unknown. Happy age for editors--and readers!

The lives of editors, like the lives of most men of letters, are not
very interesting to the world, whatever