William Cullen Bryant, a man who has worthily ranked* for so many years as the first and greatest poet upon this side of the Atlantic. You, Sir, doubtless, appreciate and revere him both intellectually and morally as one of the leading and most prominent literary minds as well as one of the most honest politicians in the present period of our National History. You, Sir, have undoubtedly the volume of his poetry enthroned in the first place upon your book-shelves, or rather in your library, for I conclude, that one so deeply immersed in the politics and literature of his time, possesses a most extensive library. If so, Sir, I do not blame you. Genius is genius whatever moral tergiversations it may be guilty of. But I unblushingly tell you, that I have swept out his poems from my library. That man, Sir, William Cullen Bryant, has treated my, I had almost said, adoration of his talents in a manner as disgraceful as it was contemptible. Yes, Sir, that man, great as his genius is, condescended to filch from the MS. of the poet who has now addressed you.

Some years since, Sir, when Mr. Bryant had become so immersed in politics that his song was no longer heard, I being personally unacquainted with him, addressed to him a poem which I inclosed to the office of his journal. In my modesty I thought, Sir, that it might not be unworthy of pub. lication. In vain did I look at the file of the Ecening Post, when I visited Richmond, for many weeks. Neither my poem nor the slightest notice of it ever appeared; and at length I suffered it to pass from my remembrance, regarding it as something which he had considered unworthy of notice. Perhaps my vanity was a trifle wounded; at all events, I will not undertake to say that it was not. Suffice it that it did at length pass away from my memory, and although my son swore at Mr. Bryant most lustily, when I narrated this incident to him, I would not permit myself to value his undoubted genius less highly than I had before done.

It however would seem, Sir, that my poem had very coolly been placed by this gentleman in his private desk, or haply it may have been committed by him to memory and the original MS. destroyed, in order to remove every chance of detection.

He then suffered himself to wait for several years, it is to be presumed, for the purpose of seeing whether I might possibly publish the poem; for William Cullen Bryant would appear to be not at all deficient in a certain craftiness of judgment, which it must be owned, my previously high opinion of the mental nature of the man had by no means led me to expect. Finding that the writer exhibited no sign of immediate vitality, and that to all intents and purposes the poem itself seemed to have utterly departed from this life, he then made up his mind to use it himself. This, Sir, he has done. Free am I to confess, for I am a modest individual, that his adaptation of it under the title of the "Voice of Autumn" is immeasurably superior to my

We have not the honor of knowing Mr. Bryant, but must most cordially concur with the high eulogiums our correspondent heaps upon him.-ED. U. S. R.

poem, both in general character and individual finish; yet mine is so good, that it pierced my heart with an undeniably bitter pang of jealousy when I first read his. Now, great, Sir, as we perforce all of us must admit Mr. Bryant to be, was it not cruel of him to ravish from me my one pet lamb? My eldest boy, when I first saw his scandalous appropriation of it, offered to visit NewYork, Sir, and then and there incontinently cow-hide him for his unworthy treatment of his dear and revered old sire, but I could not allow him to do So. I had too long reverenced the name of William Cullen Bryant. To cow-hide him, Sir, would have been like a desecration of the altar of my younger love.

I feel, Sir, that I have trespassed so deeply upon your time, I ought to conclude my letter, and I accordingly do so without again alluding to the last great grievance which I have felt constrained to chronicle. With such a man as William Cullen Bryant, the exposure will be ample punishment. Has he not with his own hand pulled down the temple reared to him within my heart, and freely, by his own will, abjured the homage which I had for so many years voluntarily offered to his genius? I forgive the man, Sir, on the score of his high and most unmistakable talent, but I can no longer venerate him on the score of his poetry, while my son glances at me with an indignant sneer whenever I say so, as if to ask me wherefore I should feel inclined to do so. He, alas! Sir, is still but a boy in feeling, and although naturally keenly alive to his parent's individual powers, despises all of my old and settled worships, enjoying the contemptible works of a wretched Northern or Western writer called Q. K. Philander Doesticks, far more than he venerates the writings of a Bryant, a Morris, or a Simms, which last-named writer is, I am proud to say, a Southern poet, and one who I am pleased to tell you with all the legitimate pride of a man born in the Old Dominion and Southern in birth, education, and sentiment, has never yet condescended to steal from me one leaf to twine amongst his own laurels.

Should you think proper, Sir, to put these few remarks, (my boy says that they are far too few; might I ask whether you think so?)* to any use in the proximate number of your Review, I may, in all probability, feel inclined to trouble you with a few more examples of the exceedingly unprincipled manner in which my productions have been used by various of the more distinguished American poets. Byron, Sir, was never one half so justly incensed by the ridiculously asinine severity of Jeffrey, as I have

Most undoubtedly, my dear Sir, do we agree with your amiable son. His filial feelings, let us add, are perfectly exemplary. They undoubtedly do him very great honor.-ED. U. S. R.

been by their wanton disrespect for the rights of mental property in my own person.

Were I able mentally to crucify Nathaniel P. Willis, believe me, when I say that I would do so, for most thoroughly and certainly does he merit such a mental crucifixion. Poe, (to whom you are aware that I have previously alluded,) and Mrs. Osgood, although both of them are now dead, should also undergo at my hands, this process. So should Bayard Taylor, Sir, a young man in the former development of whose genius I was deeply interested, until it chanced that some six months since his "Poems of the Orient" fell into my hands, and I saw five verses which he chooses to call "The Arab Warrior," as well as the "Wisdom of Ali." Lowell and Holmes I do not speak of at present; but suffice it, that scarcely one prominent name of our modern poets or versifiers who has not degraded those talents which Heaven had given him, by his unconscientious use of my poetry. Sir, it grieves me to the soul to have taken this step, but my son justifies me in having done so, and has remonstrated with me frequently on the score of my long silence, which would not now have been broken through, but for my astonishment that a man of your great and unmistakable talent should have lent any credence to the charge made against Mr. Longfellow by a Puddlehead.

Having thus commenced, Sir, I feel inclined to go on and to deprive those poets who have so grossly and so undeniably injured me, of the borrowed plumes in which they have been parading.

Might I, therefore, intrude so much upon your time, (my son says that I may in this presume upon your kindness in some degree, from the mere circumstance of having been one of the earliest, steadiest, and most consistent supporters of your Review,) as to request you to find out for me a thoroughly respectable publisher, (I should like such a house as Appleton's or Redfield's, but my son says it must be a "go-ahead one," after the fashion of Derby, and if you agree with him* it certainly must,) who would undertake to do justice to me by publishing a series of these appropriations with their originals. Money, I feel that I need scarcely say, will not be of the slightest object to me in doing this work of retribution, and should you, Sir, think it necessary, I have the honor to assure you that my eldest sont shall come on to New-York immediately, to confer with you upon this subject.

Let me in conclusion, beg to assure you, with an expression of the most profound regret for the trouble which I am so unwarrantably imposing on you, that I remain, Sir,

Yours most obediently, etc., etc.,

T. JEFFERSON BOWIE.

This we most certainly do, and assure you that we shall always make a point of agreeing with such a right-thinking and highly amiable individual. ED. U. S. R.

We beg to say that it will be totally unnecessary. We would not wish to cause him the slightest trouble.-ED. U. S. R.

THE DYING CHILD.

BY R. D. PITCHER.

SMOOTH down the pillow gently, dearest wife, And look your last upon his changing brow;

The grasp of Death is on his little life;

Our boy is ours but for a moment now.

So young, so fair, 'tis hard that he must go,
Down to the silent tomb and be alone,
And we who watched his budding beauty grow,
Must mourn for all his infant graces gone.

'Tis past, the seal is set no time can break;

The eyelids close-now cross his little hands,

The farewell kiss imprint upon his cheek.

Our child has gone to join the angel-bands.

As beautiful as brief his sojourn here,

Like some frail flower, blooming but to fade: Oh! may it blossom in a brighter sphere,

And angels guide him in bright robes arrayed, Where blessed spirits are in peace conveyed, To that pure clime where sorrow is unknownThere may we meet with his departed shade, When our short pilgrimage on earth is done, And all the broken ties be mingled into one.