Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/153

130 Mr. Bryant spoke of Pierpont, Longfellow, Sprague, Holmes, Dana, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Lowell, and Willis, and wound up with a very charming compliment to Mr. Bancroft. Then followed letters and poems from Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Whittier, Lowell, Halleck, and one read by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which was full of fine points.

Then came the artists with a volume of sketches. I remember Cropsey, Stone, Huntington, Lang, Kensell, Hennessy, Benson, Durand, Leutze, Darley, Hays, McEntee, Vaux, Hicks, Launt Thompson, Church, Hazeltine, Coleman, Hall, and Cranch.

It was a delightful ovation, and calculated to give to every listener and spectator a love of literature and learning. It occurred in a gloomy moment of our civil war, but it was enlivening as taking our minds away for a moment from the horrors which were breaking our hearts. In the language of Bayard Taylor's noble hymn, written for the occasion:

My memories of Longfellow shall be confined to three interviews. One on the Rhine, when he was travelling with his daughters, and I could but remember The Pilgrims of the Rhine and his own pretty prose volume embodying his love affair. Again, at the house of George Abbot James, at Nahant, where, in the late seventies, I had the honor of meeting at lunch