Officers of the Society,Elected January, 1870. President, Thomas De Witt, D.D.First Vice-President, Gulian C. Verplanck, LL.D.Second Vice-President, John A. Dix, LL.D.Foreign Corresponding Secretary, John Romeyn Brodhead, LL.D.Domestic Corresponding Secretary, William J. Hoppin.Recording Secretary, Andrew Warner.Treasurer, Benjamin H. Field.Librarian, George H. Moore, LL.D. The life of him in honor of whose memory we are assembled, was... more...

Letter I. First Impressions of an American in France. Paris, August 9, 1834. Since we first landed in France, every step of our journey has reminded us that we were in an old country. Every thing we saw spoke of the past, of an antiquity without limit; everywhere our eyes rested on the handiwork of those who had been dead for ages, and we were in the midst of customs which they had bequeathed to their descendants. The churches were so vast, so... more...

THE AGES. I. When to the common rest that crowns our days,Called in the noon of life, the good man goes,Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, laysHis silver temples in their last repose;When, o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind blows,And blights the fairest; when our bitter tearsStream, as the eyes of those that love us close,We think on what they were, with many fearsLest goodness die with them, and leave the coming years: II. And... more...

The ancestry of William Cullen Bryant might have been inferred from the character of his writings, which reflect whatever is best and noblest in the life and thought of New England. It was a tradition that the first Bryant of whom there is any account in the annals of the New World came over in the Mayflower, but the tradition is not authenticated. What is known of this gentleman, Mr. Stephen Bryant, is that he came over from England, and that he... more...