AMERICAN LITERATURE.

POETS.-Bryant-Longfellow-Other Poets. HISTORIANS. Prescott-Bancroft-Motley-Other Historians. NOVELISTS. Cooper-Haliburton-Hawthorne. ESSAYISTS, &c.—Channing -Everett-Emerson-Other Essayists. WRITERS ON RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS.-Jonathan Edwards, and Others. MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.—Franklin-Irving-Other Miscellaneous Writers. SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.-Audubon-Maury. WRITERS ON TRAVEL.

WILLIAM CULLen Bryant (b. 1794) was the son of a physician. At the age of thirteen he commenced to write poetry, and when he was eighteen he published his most important poem, the Thanatopsis, or View of Death, a solemn and impressive work in blank verse. Bryant was educated at William's College; and, becoming a member of the American bar, he practised for several years with tolerable success. He afterwards abandoned the law, and became the founder of the New York Review, to which he contributed many of his poems. He is still engaged in literature; and the newspapers with which his name is associated are noted for their healthiness, and purity of tone. In addition to the Thanatopsis, Bryant has written many poems of great excellence, among which may be noted the Death of the Flowers, The Prairies, the Battlefield, and the poem quoted below. He is remarkable for his power of painting American scenery, as well as for the clearness and beauty of his style.

THE INDIAN AT THE BURIAL PLACE OF HIS FATHERS.

"It is the spot I came to seek

My father's ancient burial place,

Ere from these vales, ashamed and weak,
Withdrew our wasted race.

It is the spot-I know it well--
Of which our old traditions tell.

"For here the upland bank sends out
A ridge towards the river side;
I know the shaggy hills about,

The meadows smooth and wide;
The plains that, towards the eastern sky,
Fenced east and west by mountains lie.
"A white man, gazing on the scene,

Would say a lovely spot was here,
And praise the lawns so fresh and green,
Between the hills so sheer.

I like it not I would the plain
Lay in its tall old groves again.

"The sheep are on the slopes around,
The cattle in the meadows feed,
And labourers turn the crumbling ground,
Or drop the yellow seed,

And prancing steeds, in trappings gay,
Whirl the bright chariot o'er the way.

"Before these fields were shorn and tilled,
Full to the brim our rivers flowed;
The melody of waters filled

The fresh and boundless wood;

And torrents dashed, and rivulets played,
And fountains spouted in the shade.

"Those grateful sounds are heard no more:
The springs are silent in the sun,

The rivers, by the blackened shore,
With lessening current run;

The realm our tribes are crushed to get,
May be a barren desert yet!"

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (b. 1807) was born at Portland, Maine. After receiving a college education he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages, in Bowdoin College; and, in order to qualify himself for his duties, he spent three years in European travel. In Harvard College, and afterwards in Cambridge, Mass., he held similar professorships, and finally, in 1854, retired from public life. His first collection of poems appeared

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

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in 1841, and was entitled Voices of the Night, and these were followed at intervals by many others--the most remarkable being Evangeline, Hiawatha, Miles Standish, Tales of a Wayside Inn, Translation of Dante, and Aftermath, the last of his poems. He has also written several prose poems, the longest and best of which is entitled Hyperion. Longfellow is the American Tennyson, and resembles him principally in the elegance and purity of his language, and in the music of his verse. His writings are characterized by simplicity and tenderness of thought and expression.

THE BROOK AND THE WAVE.

From Aftermath.

"The brooklet came from the mountain,
As sang the bard of old,
Running with feet of silver
Over the sands of gold!

"Far away in the briny ocean

There rolled a turbulent wave,
Now singing along the sea beach,
Now howling along the cave.

"And the brooklet has found the billow,
Though they flowed so far apart,

And has filled with its freshness and sweetness
That turbulent, bitter heart!”

AFTERMATH.

"When the Summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the flelds we mow

And gather in the aftermath.

"Not the sweet new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;

Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds

In the silence and the gloom."