nounced enough to make us modify our conception of Bryant as a cold "elementary" poet. The desire "to dream for aye," it should be added, was not the usual effect of the caress of the wind. His brooding on death and the grave is offset by his pleasure in the "flowing air," the token of life. "Oh Life! I breathe thee in the breeze" is almost as typical of his poetry as the view of nature as “the great tomb of man." More than anything else in nature, he endows the wind with spirituality, calling it "heaven's lifebreathing wind" or "the breath of God." In his accuracy in the details of external nature, Bryant is of the nineteenth century; in his sensuousness, which, though not negligible, lacked the abandon characteristic of most latterday poetry, he is rather of the age of Cowper; in his general attitude toward life and nature, he is still less modern-is, indeed, Puritan. If Bryant's attachment to nature was in large measure the result of his boyhood environment, so also was his conception of nature and God. In the secluded village of his birth, religion, though not the whole of life, was a most substantial part of it. The intensity and narrowness of Puritanism had just begun to subside. Dr. Bryant, the poet's father, had been converted, it is true, to the more liberal doctrines of Unitarianism, and Bryant himself was attracted by these doctrines early in his life. Yet he was brought up under the influence of Calvinism, supposing it "to be the accepted belief of the religious world," and spent most of his early years in the home of his grandfather, Ebenezer Snell, a devout and learned Puritan; with the result that, however strong his subsequent revolt from the harshness of Calvinism, he never passed from its shadow. William A. Bradley, in his admirable study of Bryant, rightly emphasizes the metamorphosed Puritanism that was essential in the poet throughout his life—a Puritan mood quite other than that of Transcendentalism and more striking. It is observable in all his acts and in all his writings: and it is clearly observable in his attitude toward nature. To the earliest Puritan immigrants, America was usually "an horrible Wilderness," an uncouth, shaggy region, that the Evil Spirit might well have made peculiarly his own. As time went on, and the new land became in some degree home, the alien ruggedness of the country was viewed more favorably; most Puritans, though they did not care to repress their inherited attachment to the gentle lawns and flowing downs of "the best Island in the Universe," were ready enough to extoll the virtues of the new England. Yet they could not look upon the primitive wildness of their environment with unvarying composure: a sense of mystery, of awe, now and again stilled their hearts as they traveled in the silent, towering forest. When the peace of midsummer filled the interminable expanse of beech and oak and pine, it brought to those who passed into the woods, we may imagine, a kindred but not unalloyed peace-ever, in the soft air fit fully wandering, in the fragrance of moss and fern and tree, in the white pine sprays swaying over water, there was a suggestion of something inscrutable, that excited while it quieted. These were the works of God, symbolizing his transcendent beauty and at the same time his unimaginable power. They were pleasant to behold, they roused aspiration and pious thought, but they might at any moment awake something that was almost fear-a profound and desolating sense of awe. In some such manner did the Puritans look upon the great natural world about them, and in some such manner did Bryant, though he lived in the age of Wordsworth and Emerson, look upon it. Born of parents both of whom were descended from Mayflower ancestors, bred in the parochial seclusion of a village pervaded with the spirit of Puritanism and surrounded by the virtually intact primeval forest, he never outgrew the strong influences of his early life-never assimilated contemporary ideals and modes of thought, never was more than superficially affected by modern tendencies, never, in short, became modern but always remained essentially Puritan. Puritanism, rather than Blair and Kirke White, lingers in the sonorous lines and sombre emotion of "Thanatopsis"; if it is "pagan," as is often said, it is so mainly because the boyish mood of the poet was overwhelmed by the universality of death and not by the omnipotence of the Creator. New England Puritanism, rather than Wordsworth, makes fundamental contributions to the poems of nature that follow "Thanatop sis." Although Wordsworth doubtless roused a thousand unsuspected springs in Bryant's heart, and fertilized his genius, Bryant never repeated, save in the most casual way, the mystical side of Wordsworth. Here and there a whole poem suggests the author of "Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower," and "To the Daisy," here and there a single line or a passage reminds one of the author of "Tintern Abbey"; but generally the resemblance is to the phrasing rather than the feeling. In "A Forest Hymn" occur these verses: Thou art in soft winds That run along the summit of these trees Is not this "the motion and the spirit" that "rolls through all things?" One is inclined to assert that here speaks once more the tranquil, anointed Wordsworth. Yet no one can read the entire poem, or half a dozen other poems by Bryant, without perceiving the great gulf fixed between them, without perceiving that, after all, Bryant walks erect in the faith of his fathers. A paternal God, the resurrection, and the life everlasting, with the Decalogue as a guide for this life, are more or less directly the themes of most of his poetry. Save in his youth, his eyes were for the most part fondly fixed on the sapphire gate of Heaven, on the "Dim battlements shining faintly, And a throng of faces there." Despite Wordsworth, despite Transcendentalism, he always regarded nature as the unspiritual product of the same God that Cotton Mather worshipped . Father, thy hand Hath reared these venerable columns, Thou Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down All these fair ranks of trees." This is the essential Bryant, the belated voice of New England Puritanism, clear and firm as the morning-Puritanism part ly freed from its excessive Hebraizing and finding, in poetry and nature, an incentive toward aesthetic expression. The rapt adoration of the Puritan in his deeper hours, his passionate vision of God and God's ineffable loveliness and magnificence, no creature of the nineteenth century could well have; instead Bryant gazed with joy and awe upon the spectacle of God's work, nature. The Puritan's horrible fear of Hell, of the unendurable, unending tortures that sinners were sure to suffer at the hands of an angry God, this likewise no creature of the nineteenth century could well have; instead, Bryant meditated, with a morbidness that owes more to his forbears than to eighteenth century sentimentalism, on the “neverending Flood of Years," on the pitiless call of the grave. For the spiritual aspiration of the Puritan divines he substituted an awed regard for nature; for their emphasis on the terrors of Hell he substituted the sombre certainty of the grave. The substitutions are important, it is true; but they do not involve an essential shift in temper. More distinctly than any other of the greater American poets, Bryant brings into our literature the Puritan spirit. Political and Social Aspects of Luther's Message WILLIAM K. BOYD Professor of History in Trinity College Every genius in the world's history has been a mediator, standing before the heritage of the past and pointing the way to a coming epoch. By necessity he is the creature of old as well as the projector of new forces. This is notably true of the leaders of the so-called reformation of the sixteenth century. Moreover that movement was not strictly religious; it was, in fact, only one phase of a vast political, intellectual and social transformation which swept over western Europe. Therefore before considering Luther's message it is necessary to review briefly those forces which made possible its inception and its acceptance. I Germany in the sixteenth century was not one country but a hodgepodge of feudal states and cities; archduchies, like Austria; margravates, like Brandenburg; duchies, like Saxony, Bavaria and Wurtemburg; counties, like the Palatinate; and scores of free cities, baronies, and domains. These were loosely associated under the Holy Roman Empire; but the emperor had neither a standing army, nor a system of taxation, nor a judicial system reaching all classes. This was something exceptional; for all over Europe feudalism was giving way to well organized states with absolute monarchs whose policies were shaped by a new and prosperous middle class, the slogan of which came to be nationality; that is, England for Englishmen, France for Frenchmen, Spain for Spaniards. The sentiment for a new political organization and for the spirit of nationality was not unknown in Germany. Von Ranke has described in great detail the efforts to establish a uniform system of justice, to revise the financial system, and to create a national army. They failed for two reasons. In 1519 a new emperor was elected, Charles of Spain, the Netherlands, and the New World, and Germany suddenly became |