CYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LITERATURE from the modesty which characterized him through life, it was not until 1826 that he finally decided to enter the ministry. He commenced his preparatory studies at the General Theological Seminary in New York, where, owing to ill health, he remained but a short time. After passing a brief period at New Haven he went to Hartford, where he edited, with Mr. now Bishop Doane, a religious newspaper, The Episcopal Watchman. He commenced his poetical career in the columns of this journal with a number of sonnets and short poems, which were much admired and widely copied. At the end of the second year of their joint editorship Mr. Doane removed to Boston to become the rector of Trinity church, and Mr. Croswell retired to devote himself exclusively to his studies. In 1828 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Brownell of Connecticut. He has described the emotions of this solemn event in one of the most beautiful of his compositions: THE ORDINAL. Alas, for me, could I forget The memory of that day Which fills my waking thoughts, nor yet In dreams I still renew the rites And none can part again. How oft the Bishop's form I see, The heart for God alone! While he above me stands, When many a voice its utterance lost, cup, The hangings, the baptismal font,- To serve the Lord, from first to last, And I have sworn, with pledges dire, O Thou, who in Thy holy place Thou mayst be honored, and in love In 1829 Mr. Croswell was admitted to the priesthood, and became rector of Christ church, burial-ground, Boston. He continued his poetian ancient edifice in the vicinity of Copp's Hill cal contributions, which were almost exclusively on topics connected with church ordinances, or the duties and affections of Christian life. A portion of these were collected and appended by Bishop Doane to the first American edition of Keble's Christian Year. In 1840 Mr. Croswell resigned the rectorship of Christ's, and accepted that of St. Peter's church, Auburn. He remained in this parish for four years, and during that period married, and became the father of a daughter. In 1844 he returned to Boston to take the rectorship of a new parish, in process of formation by a number of Episcopalians and distinguished men of that city, among whom may be mentioned Mr. Richard H. Dana and his son, on the principle of a rigid adherence to the rubrics of the prayer-book in its worship, an enlarged system of parochial charity, and a provision by collections and subscriptions in the place of pew rents for the support of the rector, leaving the seats of the church free to all comers. An upper room was fitted up in an appropriate manner, and on the first Sunday in Advent, 1844, the new rector commenced the services of the parish, which, from this commencement, took the name of the Church of the Advent. Morning and evening prayer was henceforward continued every day of the year. In conducting divine service, the rector, during the mutual acts of prayer and praise turned in the same direction with, instead of, as usual, facing the other worshippers, and preached in the surplice instead of changing it for a black gown. These practices gave great offence to the bishop of the diocese, Dr. Eastburn, who at the close of his first confirmation service in the church, expressed his disapprobation, coupled with a censure of a gilt cross placed over the communion table. This was followed in a few days by an official letter to the same effect addressed to the diocese by the bishop. Dr. Croswell, believing himself unjustly censured, responded in a letter, citing authorities from the primitive and subsequent ages of the church in defence of his plan. He also complained of the bishop for uncanonical conduct in publicly censuring a presbyter without giving the opportunity of defence by means of a trial. Both parties believing themselves in the right, no accommodation was made of the matter; the bishop refused to visit the church unless the practices he objected to were discontinued, and the parish held their course. of this, candidates for confirmation were obliged, In consequence accompanied by their rector, to resort to other churches to receive the rite. In spite of this unhappy difficulty the parish prospered. The rector was indefatigable in the discharge of the duties of charity, sallying forth at all hours and in all weathers to relieve the poor and needy, visit and comfort the sick and dying. During sea-ons of pestilence he remained in the city, continuing his church services as usual and redoubling his care of the sick, with the energy and devotion required by the crisis. Such a career soon won its just meed of boundless honor and love from all who came within its sphere. It was, however, destined to be as brief as beautiful. Seven years had thus passed from his arrival at Boston to become rector of the Church of the Advent, and the upper room had been exchanged for an edifice purchased from a congregation of another denomination, possessing no architectural beauty, but spacious and commodious, when in the delivery of a sermon to the children of the congregation at the afternoon service of Sunday, November 9, 1851, the rector's voice was observed to falter. He brought his discourse to an abrupt close, and gave out the first stanza of the hymn Soldiers of Christ, arise And put your arinor on, Strong in the strength which Christ supplies, Through his eternal Son. This he announced instead of the lxxxviii., as the clxxxviii., which contains the following stanza : Determined are the days that fly The numbered hour is on the wing The choir, however, following directions previously given, sang the former. At its conclusion he knelt in his ordinary place at the chancel rail, and said from memory, his book having dropped from his hand, a collect. He then, still kneeling, in place of as usual standing and facing the congregation, delivered, in a faltering voice, the closing benediction. A portion of the auditory went to his assistance, and bore him helpless to the vestry-room and in a carriage to his home. He was conscious, but unable to speak distinctly, and uttered but a few words. Apprised by his physicians of his imminent danger he closed his eyes as if in slumber. His friend, the Rev. Dr. Eaton, was soon by his bedside, and finding him unable to speak, and apparently unconscious, took his hand, and offered the "commendatory prayer for a sick person at the point of departure," provided by the Book of Common-Prayer. "As the word, amen, was pronounced by the venerable priest, the last breath was perceived to pass, gently, quietly, and without a struggle." The beautiful harmony of the death with the life of Dr. Croswell, combined with the respect felt for his talents and example, called forth many expressions of sympathy with his bereaved family and congregation. At his funeral his body was carried from his house to the church by eight of his parishioners, and accompanied by a committee of wardens and vestrymen to the cemetery at New Haven, where it was buried, in conformity with the wishes of the deceased, "deep in the ground." The affecting scene of the ninth of November is commemorated regularly on the annual recurrence of the day by an appropriate sermon. In 1853 a biography of Dr. Croswell, by his father, was published in one octavo volume. It contains, in addition to selections from his correspondence, a collection of his poems, scattered through the narrative in the order in which they were written, and in connexion with the events by which they were, in some cases, occasioned. These poems were never collected by their author, and have not appeared in a separate collective form since his death. Notwithstanding that their religious as well as poetic beauty demand their issue in a cheap, popular form, we should almost regret their severance from the connexion in which a wise and loving parental hand has placed them. As we meet them in turning over the pages of the biography they seem to us like the beautiful carvings, the string-courses, corbels, pendants, brackets, niches, and tabernacle work of a Christian cathedral, adorning and strengthening the solid fabric, while placing the ornamental in due subordination to the useful. Although Dr. Croswell's poems were almost exclusively on topics suggested by the memorial seasons and observances of hallowed Christian usage or devoted to friendship, he occasionally wrote in a playful vein. His New Year's verses in the Argus for 1842, "From the Desk of Poor Richard, Jr.,” are a clever reproduction with improvements of his own of that sage's maxims Poor Richard knows full well distress And yet life's bitterest ills have less Of bitter than they seem. Meet like a man thy coward pains, And some, be sure, will flee; Nor doubt the worst of what remains Will blessings prove to thee. In 1848 he was called upon to deliver a Commencement poem at Trinity College. The poem may be said, in the language of his biographer, "to be a metrical essay on the reverence due to sacred places and holy things, and an exhortation to the cultivation of such reverence, especially in the church and its academical institutions." He reverts to his Alma Mater, Yale, with this allusion to its patron Berkeley. There first we gazed on the serene expanse CYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. In his ideal picture of a university, he pays a tribute to several living authors. Thus in the morning, far from Babel's dust, TO MY FATHER. My father, I recall the dream Of childish joy and wonder, When thou wast young as I now seem, Say, thirty-three, or under; When on thy temples, as on mine, Time just began to sprinkle His first grey hairs, and traced the sign Of many a coming wrinkle. I recognise thy voice's tone As to myself I'm talking; And this firm tread, how like thine own, In thought, the study walking! As, musing, to and fro I pass, A glance across my shoulder Would bring thine image in the glass, Were it a trifle older. My father, proud am I to bear Thy face, thy form, thy stature, Then for the day that I was born Its trouble or its sorrow; For my complete inheritance THIS ALSO SHALL PASS AWAY. When morning sunbeams round me shed In darkling lines that dim each ray When murky clouds o'erhang the sky, 'Mid shades: " This, too, shall pass away." Blest words, that temper pleasure's beam, And lighten sorrow's gloom, That early sadden youth's bright dream, That world which shall not pass away. PSALM CXXXVII. By the waters of Babel we sat down and wept, And our harps that in joy we so. often had swept Then they that had carried us captive away, And ringing out mirth from our sadness, would say, "Sing the strains that to Zion belong." O, how shall we sing the ineffable song If the minstrels of Salem could do her such wrong, Let my tongue to the roof of my mouth ever cling, Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, Her ramparts and battlements raze with the sword, O daughter of Babel! thy ruin makes haste; Thy children with famine and misery waste, A SUNDAY-SCHOOL HYMN. The sparrow finds a house, The little bird a nest; Deep in thy dwelling, Lord, they come, And fold their young to rest. And shall we be afraid Our little ones to bring Within thine ancient altar's shade, And underneath thy wing? There guard them as thine eye, There nurse them with thy love, There plume them for their final flight To blessedness above. HYMN FOR ADVENT. While the darkness yet hovers, The harbinger star Peeps through and discovers The dawn from afar; To many an aching And watch-wearied eye, The dayspring is breaking Once more from on high. O bright King of day! Hosannas to thee. She casts off her sorrows, In thy mercy upon her The blessing of peace. They shall meet thee in gladness TRAVELLER'S HYMN. "In journeyings often." Lord! go with us, and we go Safely through the weariest length, Travelling, if thou will'st it so, In the greatness of thy strength; In the self-controlling car, Flood without, and flood within, HORACE BUSHNELL. THIS eminent thinker and divine is a native of Connecticut, born about the year 1804, in New Preston, in the town of Washington, Litchfield county. He was, as a boy, employed in a fullingmill in his native village. He became a graduate of Yale in 1827. After this he was engaged for a while as a literary editor of the Journal of Commerce, at New York. He was, from 1829 to 1831, a tutor in Yale College; and, at this time, applied himself to the study of law, and afterwards of theology. In May, 1833. he was called to his present post of ministerial duty, as pastor of the North Congregational Church, in Hartford. He early became a contributor to the Storace Bushnell excess. higher religious periodicals. In 1837, he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration at New Haven, On the Principles of National Greatness. His series of theological publications commenced in 1847, with his volume, Views of Christian Nurture, and of Subjects adjacent thereto. In this he presents his views of the spiritual economy of revivals, in which he marks out the philosophical limitations to a system which had been carried to The "Organic Unity of the Family" is another chapter of this work, which shows the author's happy method of surrounding and penetrating a subject. This was followed, in 1849, by his book entitled God in Christ-Three Discourses, delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover, with a Preliminary Dissertation on Language. The view of the doctrine of the Trinity set forth in this book, met with discussion on all sides, and much opposition from some of the author's Congregational brethren, and was the means of bringing him before the Ministerial Association, with which he is connected. The argument was a metaphysical one, and pursued by Dr. Bushnell with his customary acumen. The main points of defence were presented to the public in 1851, in a new volume, Christ in Theology; being the Answer of the Author before the Hartford Central Association of Ministers, October, 1849, for the Doctrines of the Book entitled God in Christ. As an indication of the material with which Dr. Bushnell has to deal in these discourses, the enumeration of the elements of theological opinion may be cited from the Preface to this volume. "To see brought up," he writes, "in distinct array before us the multitudes of leaders and schools, and theologic wars of only the century past,-the Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians; the Arminianizers and the true Calvinists; the Pelagians and Augustinians; the Tasters and the Exercisers; Exercisers by Divine Efficiency and by Human Self-Efficiency; the love-to-being-in-general virtue, the willingto-be-damned virtue, and the love-to-one'sgreatest-happiness virtue; no ability, all ability, and moral and natural ability distinguished; disciples by the new-creating act of Omnipotence, and by change of the governing purpose; atonement by punishment and by expression; limited and general; by imputation and withont imputation; Trinitarians of a three-fold distinction, of three psychologic persons, or of three sets of attributes; under a unity of oneness, or of necessary agreement, or of society and deliberative council;-nothing, I think, would more certainly disenchant us of our confidence in systematic orthodoxy and the possibility, in human language, of an exact theologic science, than an exposition so practical and serious, and withal so indisputably mournful, so mournfully indisputable." The remaining theological writings of Dr. Bush nell are included in his contributions to the Reviews.* In another department of composition, that of the philosophical essay, mingling subtle and refined speculation with the affairs of every-day life, he has achieved distinguished success, in & manner peculiarly his own. With this class of his writings may be included a review of Brigham's Influence of Religion on Health in the Christian Spectator (viii. 51); an article on Taste and Fashion, in the New Englander, 1843; a Discourse before the Alumni of Yale College, 1843, on The Moral Tendencies and Results of Human History; an address before the Hartford County Agricultural Society, 1846; Work and Play, an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa, at Cambridge, 1848 and several special serinons, which have been printed, entitled Unconscious Influence; the Day of Roads-tracing the progress of civilization by the great national highways; a similar discourse, The Northern Iron; Barbarism the First Danger, in allusion to emigration; Religious Music; and Politics under the Law of God. In 1849, Dr. Bushnell pronounced an oration, The Fathers of New England, before the New England Society of New York; and, in 1851, Speech for Connecticut, being an Historical Extimate of the State, delivered before, and printed by, the Legislature. AT, A LIFE OF FREEDOM.t Thus it is that work prepares the state of play. Passing over now to this latter, observe the intense longing of the race for some such higher and freer state of being. They call it by no name. Probably most of them have but dimly conceived what they are after. The more evident will it be that they are after this, when we find them covering over the whole ground of life, and filling up the contents of history, with their counterfeits or misconceived attempts. If the hidden fire is seen barsting up on every side, to vent itself in flame, we may certainly know that the ground is full. ceiving its own unutterable longings after spiritual play, proposes to itself the dull felicity of cessation, and drives the world to madness in pursuit of a counterfeit, which it is work to obtain, work also to keep, and yet harder work oftentimes to enjoy. Here, too, is the secret of that profound passion for the drama, which has been so conspicuous in the cultivated nations. We love to see life in its feel ing and activity, separated from its labors and historic results. Could we see all human changes transpire poetically or creatively, that is, in play, letting our soul play with them as they pass, then it were only poetry to live. Then to admire, love, laugh, then to abhor, pity, weep.-all were alike grateful to us; for the view of suffering separated from all reality, save what it has to feeling, only yields a painful joy, which is the deeper joy because of the pain. Hence the written drama, offering to view in its impersonations a life one side of life, a life in which all the actings appear without the ends and simply as in play, becomes to the cultivated reader a spring of the intensest and most captivating spiritual incitement. He beholds the creative genius of a man playing out impersonated groups and societies of men, clothing each with life, passion, individuality, and character, by the fertile activity of his own inspired feeling. Meantime the writer himself is hidden, and cannot even suggest his existence. Hence egotism, which also is a form of work, the dullest, most insipid, least inspiring of all human demonstrations, is nowhere allowed to obtrude itself. As a reader, too, he has no ends to think of or to fear,-nothing to do, but to play the characters into his feeling as creatures existing for his sake. In this view, the drama, as a product of genius, is, within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play. But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is more feeble. In the reading we invent our own sceneries, clothe into form and expression each one of the characters, and play out our own liberty in them as freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within him, finds all expectation balked, when he becomes an auditor ad spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat, the characters, defi Let it not surprise you, if I name, as a first illustration here, the general devotion of our race tonitely measured, have lost their infinity, so to money. This passion for money is allowed to be a sordid passion,-one that is rankest in the least generous and most selfish of mankind; and yet a conviction has always been felt, that it must have its heat in the most central fires and divinest affinities of our nature. Thus, the poet calls it the auri sacra fames,-sacra, as being a curse, and that in the divine life of the race. Childhood being passed, and the play-fund of motion so far spent that running on foot no longer appears to be the joy it was, the older child, now called a man, fancies that it will make him happy to ride! Or he imagines, which is much the same, some loftier state of being, -call it rest, retirement, competence, independence, -no matter by what name, only be it a condition of use, ease, liberty, and pure enjoyment. And so we find the whole race at work to get rid of work; drudging themselves to-day, in the hope of play tomorrow. This is that sacra fames, which, miscon speak, and thus their freedom, and what before was play descends to nothing better or more inspired than work. It is called going to the play, but it should rather be called going to the work, that is, to see a play worked, (yes, an opera! that is it !)— men and women inspired through their memory, and acting their inspirations by rote, panting into love, pumping at the fountains of grief, whipping out the passions into fury, and dying to fulfil the contract of the evening, by a forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble counterfeit of play, which some of us would call only "very tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. They are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they themselves know, were quickened into power, -namely, that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our nature is most clearly revealed. In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are resolvable principally into the same fundamental cause. Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. We must get above prudence and economy, into something that partakes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we call |