nd so long
distracted by the commotions and uncertainties of war.

Later, his days of toil over, the old soldier sat him down, in restful
content, by his own peaceful fireside, while, with the old musket in its
honored place above the tall wooden mantle, he fought over again, in
memory, his old-time battles, and to sons and grandsons taught, in
thrilling, patriotic words, the great lesson to love and revere their
country next to their God.

As a boy, no doubt, young Bryant had listened to many of the tales of
these honored veterans, and had drank in, with the air of his own native
village, long draughts of their fervid patriotism, that animated his
writings down to the latest years of his life.

That he had seen with his own eyes some of the leading spirits in that
great national struggle, who still lived to honor and be honored by the
nation that they had fought so bravely to free from a foreign yoke, is
shown by an extract from one of his few humorous poems, in which he
says:--

"I pause to state
That I, too, have seen greatness--even I--
Shook hands with Adams, stared at Lafayette,
When, barehead, in the hot noon of July,
He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him,
For which three cheers burst from the mob before him."

Patriotic, religious, philosophical, and a true lover of nature, yet
Bryant cannot, in any mood, be styled one of our fireside poets, like
Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell.

Perhaps he failed to see in the then bare loneliness of the typical
New England home a beauty worth the attention of his fastidious and
lofty-minded muse. And that New England homes, at that time, were bare
of what we, to-day, deem the absolute necessities of life, no student of
the past pretends to deny.

The long war had drained and impoverished the country; our manufactures
and commerce were then in their infancy; the whole machinery of our
recently organized government was new, and the hands that worked it,
however wise and brave they might be, were untried, and had much to
learn before the ponderous works could be brought into perfect running
order.

Worst of all, President Jefferson, in 1807, laid an embargo upon
American shipping, thus unwittingly striking a terrible blow at our
foreign commerce, in his endeavor to force England into an amicable
settlement of certain difficulties that had arisen between her and the
young Republic. This, and the two years' war with England, that br