"THE PRAIRIES." Page 228.

Mr. Bryant first saw the great prairies of the West in 1832, while on a visit to his brothers, who were among the early settlers of the State of Illinois. This poem was the result of his visit.-EDITOR.

Page 228, line 13:

The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye."

The prairies of the West, with an undulating surface, rolling prairies, as they are called, present to the unaccustomed eye a singular spectacle when the shadows of the clouds are passing rapidly over them. The face of the ground seems to fluctuate and toss like billows of the sea.-AUTHOR.

I have seen the prairie-hawk balancing himself in the air for hours together, apparently over the same spot, probably watching his prey. -AUTHOR.

Page 230, lines 3 and 4:

"-These ample fields Nourished their harvests."

The size and extent of the mounds in the valley of the Mississippi indicate the existence, at a remote period, of a nation at once populous and laborious, and therefore probably subsisting by agriculture. -AUTHOR.

Page 223, line 6:

"The rude conquerors

Seated the captive with their chiefs."

Instances are not wanting of generosity like this among the North American Indians toward a captive or survivor of a hostile tribe on which the greatest cruelties had been exercised.—AUTHOR.

"EARTH." Page 238.

The author began this poem in rhyme. The following is the first draught of it as far as he proceeded, in a stanza which he found it convenient to abandon :

"A midnight black with clouds is on the sky;

A shadow like the first original night

fair time so early lost,

Aives in poet's strains,

riwind, flood, or frost

ast, or earthquakes whelmed thy plains,

ddering ground was spilt,

A disease and guilt?

ve for those who die? nated awhile thy face,

eaven, and now they lie

eless dust the wild winds chase?

r never on thy sphere

cens and faces reappear.

and more thrilling tone, around me: 'tis the cry

song, the eternal moan sening and long-suffering sky, and heat grows faint,

es pt great complaint."

"THE CHILD'S FUNERAL." Page 250.

The incident on which this poem is founded was related to the author while in Europe, in a letter from an English lady. A child died in the south of Italy, and when they went to bury it they found it revived and playing with the flowers which, after the manner of that country, had been brought to grace his funeral.-AUTHOR.

"

"LIFE." Page 262.

'Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run

Through the dark woods like frighted deer."

Close to the city of Munich, in Bavaria, lies the spacious and beautiful pleasure-ground called the English garden, in which these lines were written, originally projected and laid out by our countryman Count Rumford, under the auspices of one of the sovereigns of the country. Winding walks of great extent pass through close thickets and groves interspersed with lawns; and streams, diverted from the river Isar, traverse the grounds swiftly in various directions, the water of which, stained with the clay of the soil it has corroded in its descent from the upper country, is frequently of a turbid-white color.-AUTHOR.

"THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYs." Page 266.

This song refers to the expedition of the Vermonters, commanded by Ethan Allen, by whom the British fort of Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, was surprised and taken in May, 1775.-AUTHOR.

Shortly before the death of Schiller he was seized with a strong desire to travel in foreign countries, as if his spirit had a presentiment of its approaching enlargement, and already longed to expatiate in a wider and more varied sphere of existence.-AUTHOR.

Third stanza, line 2.

Fifth stanza, line 3:

Originally :

"-the bearded Tartar."

"Till death set free his soul of fire

To plunge into its fitting sphere."-Ed. 1842.

VOL. 1.-23

m the reader that these verses were adpoet. There is a pendent to them, called ten nineteen years later, in vol. ii. In conpoems, the poem entitled "October, 1866," volume, may be read, with the note refer

"OR.

FOUNTAIN." Page 282.

"The flower

a, from whose brittle stem
> fell like blood."

adensis, or bloodroot, as it is commonly
hite flower of a musky scent, the stem of
distils a juice of a bright-red color.-AU-

by tomahawks. The woods-"—Ed. 1842.

thrill the cry of chanticleer."-Ib.

Reverie," "Noon," and several others printed as parts of "an unfinished to be found among the poet's papers; what way they were to be joined in a velled a great deal in all parts of our e experiences of settlers in different red that he contemplated a poem in ature and life as they are seen from he prairies of the great West should Connected by a narrative of per

sonal adventures, as Wordsworth has connected the principal parts of his "Excursion" by the story of his pedler. He never, however, disclosed his plan to any one, and even this suggestion is mere guesswork.

Mr. Bryant projected, at different times in his life, poems of greater length than any he had written, but was so absorbed in actual occupations that he never went far with them. One of these was an Indian poem, which he merely began in his youth, and abandoned. Another was the story of a hermit, who in his hut in the depths of the woods relates his experiences to certain lads who had in some way discovered his retreat. A third was to be founded on the story of a spectre ship, told by Cotton Mather in his "Magnalia Christi," but from this, he says in a letter, he was diverted because he found that Mr. Irving had handled the same subject. I do not discover to what story of Irving he refers, unless it be that of "The Storm Ship," introduced into the narrative of Dolph Heylinger, where it is merely said, in a note, that the fancy of a solitary vessel that came from year to year, bringing supplies to the needy colonists, like the raven in the wilderness, was a common superstition along the American coast (Irving's Works, "Bracebridge Hall," p. 425, ed. 1860). One of these -the same, doubtless, that Mr. Bryant had in his mind-Mr. Longfellow has briefly versified. See

"In Mather's 'Magnalia Christi,'

Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend

That is here set down in rhyme."

-EDITOR.

"IN MEMORY OF LEGGETT." Page 292.

William Leggett, who for many years was an associate of the poet in the editorship of the New York "Evening Post," died in 1839, leaving behind him a great reputation as a journalist. him, written for that paper, Mr. Bryant said:

In a notice of

He wrote with

"As a political writer Mr. Leggett attained a high rank. great fluency and extraordinary vigor. He saw the strong points of a question at a glance, and had the skill to place them before his readers with a force, clearness, and amplitude of statement and illustration rarely to be found in the writings of journalists. When he became warmed with his subject, which