Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/126

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS of Mr. Bryant. It is that which was old with the ancients, and is young in these later times—the pure philosophy of nature's lessons, the reflex of her visible forms.

Nor has Mr. Bryant's muse been restricted in her seldom flights to the petty limits of local scenery and fact. As befits a poet of this metropolis, his perception is catholic and has a broad horizon. Aloof from cliques, their influences have not confirmed him in his faults, nor led him to insensibly exaggerate the merits of his own vicinage and associates. The injurious effects of the converse situation painfully impress those who observe the self-constituted Mecca of our New England school. There, fine minds and noble characters have been dwarfed and warped by mutual flattery and cohesion. As they grow older, their crotchets are more crotchety, their poetry is less original, their philosophy more awry. But when Mr. Bryant writes of patriotism, he does not confine the splendor of its displays to Lexington and Concord, nor to the valor of a single tribe. His "Conqueror" is one who overcometh the world. His religion smacks of no university creed; and his sympathies are unnarrowed by either his political or æsthetic faith. Independent of any year or place, his verses should commend themselves, so long as the grass grows, and the water runs, and the winds breathe through the forests of the land in which he writes. If his affections have any local limit, it is one no less than his native country. For he is peculiarly an American poet. [112]