WILLIAM BELLOWS AM HENRY BELLOWS, an eminent American pulpit orator and 1832. He studied at the Harvard Divinity School, and, having been called to the Unitarian Church on Fourth Avenue, New York city, he soon became a distinct power in the religious and social life of the metropolis. He was an eloquent speaker and took an active part in all patriotic and philanthropic enterprises, especially in the formation and conduct of the Sanitary Commission at the time of the Civil War. He published a book entitled "On the Treatment of Social Diseases." He died January 30, 1882. ORATION AT THE FUNERAL OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT DELIVERED IN ALL SOULS' CHURCH, NEW YORK, JUNE 14, 1878 Τ TH HE whole country is bending with us, their favored representatives, over the bier that holds the dust of Bryant! Private as the simple service is that consignз the ashes of our illustrious poet and journalist to the grave, there is public mourning in all hearts and homes, making these funeral rites solemn and universal by the sympathy that from every quarter flows toward them, and swells the current of grateful and reverent emotion. Much as the modest, unworldly spirit of the man we mourn shrunk from the parade of public rites, leaving to his heirs the duty of a rigid simplicity in his funeral, neither his wishes nor theirs could render his death and burial less than an event of general significance and national concern. It is not for his glory that we honor and commemorate him. Public fame, for more than half a century, has made it needless, or impossible, to add one laurel to his crown. So long ago he took the place he has since kept in public admiration, respect, and reverence, that no living tongue could now dislodge or add to the security and mild splendor of his reputation. For three generations he has been a fixed star in our firmament, and no eulogy could be so complete as that which by accumulation of meaning dwells in the simple mention of his name. Few lives have been as fortunate and complete as his. Born in 1794, when this young nation was in its teens, he has been contemporary with nearly the whole first century of its life. If no country ever experienced in the same period such a miracle of growth, if none ever profited so much by discoveries and inventions-never before so wonderful as those made in the half century which gave us steam navigation, the railroad, and the telegraph — he saw the birth, he antedates the existence of every one of the characteristic triumphs of modern civilization, and yet he has not died until they became wholly familiar and nearly universal in their fruitful influence! Born and bred in New England, and on the summits of the Green Mountains, he inherited the severe and simple tastes and habits of that rugged region, and having sprung from a vigorous and intellectual parentage, and in contact with a few persons with whom nature and books took the place of social pleasures and the excitements of town and cities, his native genius made him, from a tender age, the thoughtful and intimate companion of woods and streams, and constituted him nature's own darling child. It was a friendship so unfeigned, so deep, so much in accordance with his temperament and mental constitution that it grew into a determining passion and shaped his whole life, while in the poetry to which it gave birth it laid the foundations and erected the structure of his poetic fame. |