USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume IV > Part 18
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Johnson, president of Columbia College, and of Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury, first Episcopal bishop of Connecticut. His learning and ability brought him degrees from Trinity Col- lege and Columbia University, and he was for years the historian of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. He died in 1881, greatly beloved, honored, and missed.
The talent of the Dwight family was seen in Dr. Sereno Edwards Dwight, who published the "Life and Works of Jonathan Edwards;" in Dr. Benjamin Woolsey Dwight, who wrote the first treatise on "Chronic Debility of the Stomach;" and in Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight, who compiled very careful and extensive genealogical works on the "Dwight Family" and the "Strong Family."
In the middle and later part of the nineteenth century, the intellectual atmosphere was fairly illuminated by some divines of extraordinary endowments-Nathaniel W. Taylor, Leon- ard Bacon, Horace Bushnell. There was so much besides the literary element in the greatness of these men that they may be classed in many ways; but while they rose beyond the sphere of mere authorship, it is in their published writings that they most easily speak to succeeding generations.
Leonard Bacon was of Connecticut family, parentage, and residence, although he happened to be born in Detroit, his father then being in the van as a missionary to the Indians there; and his energetic individuality so impressed itself on his surroundings that he still seems to be identified with them. He was a classmate of President Woolsey, having entered college at fourteen. He afterwards studied theology at Andover. Dr. Taylor, whose commanding talents, fine voice, symmetrical face, figure, and character, had made him the very model of perfection to his people, had resigned his charge as the pastor of the Center Church in New Haven;
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and the boyish young minister, Leonard Bacon, assumed the responsibility of being his successor when he was barely twenty-three years old. He must have been aroused to put forth all his powers in such a pulpit, and in preaching to a congregation that included Noah Webster, Eli Whitney, James Hillhouse, Dr. Jonathan Knight, Stephen Twining, and such lawyers as Seth P. Staples, Samuel J. Hitchcock, and Dennis Kimberly; and others eminent in the college, in the town, and in the professions. His faculties responded to the demand by outpouring thought of living force, clothed in a style unsurpassed for elegance, flexibility, and power. Words were his trained servants, and arranged themselves at his bidding without hesitation, in sentences epigrammatic or melodious as best suited the idea to be conveyed.
To commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of his church, he prepared "Thirteen Historical Discourses," which have become classics in New England history. With patience unwearied, he sought his material at fountain head; and by the alchemy of his genius transformed dry records into thrilling accounts of men and women who breathed again with the living glow of his historic insight. This masterly performance, accomplished at a time when it was possible to catch the garments of the vanishing Past, and sketch her picture among the shadows, established his reputation as a writer, and placed him with Henry Dexter and J. Hammond Trumbull among authorities in early local history.
His activity overflowed beyond pulpit and pastoral work of the most acceptable nature, into paths of outside literary effort; and many an article, sometimes written at a heat, appeared in the Christian Spectator, in the New Englander,- of which he was practically the founder, contributing to it sixty-three articles in eighteen years,-and the Independent,
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of which he was one of the four original editors; a Connec- ticut man, Henry C. Bowen, being another of the four, and for many years the owner. In these and other periodicals, he was a champion of many reforms, of home and foreign missions; and often perceptibly directed public opinion and action. The anti-slavery movement did not please him at first; but when the Civil War brought him face to face with the great question, he gave his influence on that side. As his life deepened and broadened his experience, his words gained in value. He knew the New England families well, and was deeply versed in the history of Congregationalism, so that his "Genesis of the New England Churches" is a valuable author- ity. His last completed article was a charming sketch of society in the latter part of the eighteenth century; and on his table, left when he went to his last sleep, was an unfinished paper on the Mormon question. His facility with the pen did not cause him to lean on it too much, for he had equal ease in "thinking on his feet," and was always a prompt debater, and a powerful, witty, and effective public speaker.
Forcible in argument, he yet had sympathy with both joy and sorrow, and was a peacemaker; indeed, the memorable and bitter dispute between the "Taylorites" and "Tylerites" was ended by one of his "Views and Reviews," in which he showed twenty-six vital points of agreement between the two. His name was heard all over the world. Pope Gregory XVI. issued a bull against one of his forcible productions; and, a more momentous tribute to his pen, Lincoln told him that his essay on "Slavery Discussed" converted him to the Abolition movement. He retained his office in the church until 1866, when forty-one years of ceaseless activity made it best for him to resign and accept the position of pastor emeritus. With Yale College he was intimately connected, as a member of the
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Corporation for years, and in the later part of his life, as a professor in the Divinity School. His active form, bright eye, and cheerful demeanor made his presence in his sunny old age everywhere welcome. Some of his hymns are lasting favorites, as "Hail, tranquil hour of closing day," and the Forefathers' hymn, "Oh God, beneath thy guiding hand." It has been said of him that he "never proved unequal to an emergency;" and his memorial tablet declares justly that "the world was better for his having lived in it."
This was the famous period when the great thinker from Litchfield County, Horace Bushnell, was leading on religious thought to new views of everlasting truths. Many disap- proved his utterances, some trembled at his fearless handling of doctrine; but a few years enabled the world to see him clearly after the mists of controversy had melted away; and now he ranks unquestioned as, next to Jonathan Edwards, America's greatest thinker on religion. He was born near Bantam Lake, in Litchfield, in 1802; and he had the great blessing of a father and a mother unswervingly faithful to their ideals of right. The careers of Bacon and Bushnell, born in the same year, were parallel in many points, but had some wide divergences. Each graduated from Yale with distinction; each served only one church as a pastor, and that during the whole working period of his life; and each was a central figure in one of the two capitals of the State, with far-reaching influence. But Bushnell entered college at twenty-one, Bacon at fourteen; Bushnell had planned and studied for the law, had been a favorite tutor in his own col- lege, called the most popular man next to President Day, and had won instant success (in New York, as an editor of the Journal of Commerce) before, through great doubts and struggles, he had accepted Christianity in his twenty-ninth
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year. Then he cast aside the nearly-completed law studies, and entered the Divinity School some years after Bacon had begun to preside over the Center Church.
While Dr. Bacon was blessed with vigorous health, Dr. Bushnell was fighting a long battle against disease. By Dr. Bushnell's marriage with Miss Mary Apthorp, the descen- dant of John Davenport, he was linked with one of the founders of the New Haven colony; and when Dr. Bacon married Miss Catherine Terry he became connected with some of the leading families of Hartford. Through these similiarities and dissimiliarities, the lives of these remarkable contemporaries flowed on in harmony and friendship.
In 1833 Dr. Bushnell was ordained as pastor of the North Church in Hartford. Very quickly it was discerned that his people had secured no ordinary preacher. His eloquence and spiritual insight gained for him never-failing attention; and his published writings soon aroused the interest of the world. His convictions were his own, and expressed fearlessly; but he was truly modest, and any posing for effect would have been abhorred by him.
His power of expression was remarkable. He never seemed at a loss for the word that exactly conveyed his meaning; and whether in public address or in the most informal private conversation, his language flowed as pure, steady, and sparkling as one of his Litchfield County streams, bearing the original and uplifting thought that made him to many men on both sides of the Atlantic the most inspiring spiritual force of the nineteenth century.
From his heights, he had visions of Truth which were not such as those seen from the well-worn path, and his portrayal of what he saw aroused a storm of hostile criticism. "Chris- tian Nurture" brought on the general engagement in the
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theological field. It was widely read and discussed, and although in a way going back to old doctrines, it brought down on the author's head severe disapproval from the "old- school" men; and for many years, everything that Bushnell wrote or said was subjected to suspicious scrutiny. For years, many of his ministerial brethren felt constrained to refuse to affiliate with him. This was to him a trial probably keener than he admitted, while enduring it; but he bore it with astonishing courtesy and patience, and was ready to hold out the olive-branch first. None could dispute the matchless beauty of his style, the soaring nature of his thought, the purity and lovableness of his character, or the value of his services as a citizen; and as the religious world loosened its prejudices, the heresy seemed to fade out from his writings, and only the uplifting influence of genius has remained. Among his books, "God in Christ," "Christian Theology," "The Moral Uses of Dark Things," "The Vicarious Sacri- fice," "Work and Play," all excited great interest. "Nature and the Supernatural" perhaps ranks as the culminating thought of his life. His last published work was "Forgive- ness and Law." Dr. Bushnell was often called on to deliver addresses on great occasions; and he never failed to bring to his audiences such treasures of his mind and eloquence as made the occasion memorable. Of these "Barbarism the First Danger," given in Boston, New York, and many other places in behalf of the American Home Missionary Society ; the address at New Haven, commemorative of the Yale men who fell in the Civil War; and that prose idyll, the "Age of Homespun," delivered at the Litchfield Centennial Cele- bration in 1851, made a profound impression. The last is by good judges considered one of the most charming things he ever wrote. In it he portrayed the vanishing simplicity and
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integrity of country-life, in the glow of retrospective fond- ness; and we who read do not wonder that his crowded audi- ence hung on his words spell-bound for two hours.
Dr. Bushnell's classic features and fine figure-wasted by disease-to be sure, in later years, but always animated by the beautiful spirit within, seemed to fit his character; he was very companionable, said to have been at home in any count- ing-room in Hartford; a lover of children, of music, of all things of beauty. Nature was to him a very fount of inspira- tion; he loved to steal a morning-hour for work in his little garden; and when the search for health drove him afar, his observing eye was alert for earth's charms. While he was in California, the presidency of the prospective Berkeley University was offered to him, as indeed had been that of Middlebury College; and although he did not decide to leave his work in Hartford, he bestowed much time and thought in planning for the infant college.
Surely one reason for the unvarying respect that Dr. Bush- nell commanded in his own city must have been that he was never in debt, having wisely resolved early in life to live unflinchingly on his income. He had little to do with public organizations, and yet was most fortunate in moving public opinion. His feeling of responsibility towards the city that was his home was so constant and effectual that his good citizenship is one of his most universally recognized traits. One of his sermons, "Prosperity our Duty," had much to do with the introduction of the Hartford Water Works. And to his prophetic vision, tact and taste, wise management, and unselfish, untiring effort, are owing the transformation of an unsightly dumping-place and railroad yard into the gem of Hartford, the beautiful little park that bears his name.
The theological controversies and charges of heresy
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passed like the black clouds on a summer day; but the love, the veneration, the proud sense of possession in their famous citizen, were permanent feelings in his city and State. The affection that was felt for him by all classes was never dis- closed more plainly than when Dr. Bushnell lay on his dying- bed, and the Common Council having passed the resolutions by which the park was to bear his name forever, the poor Irishman who was the messenger of the tidings that came just in time to give the intended pleasure, added: "This is how we all wanted it to be." Dr. Bushnell passed away in 1876; and yet his spirit is potent still. He strove to "find and maintain the truth," and this he did with those rare gifts of eloquence, of imagination, of the very flame of genius, that have made him one of the lasting glories of the State.
Of a different type was Samuel A. Goodrich, the brother of Chauncey A. Goodrich, endeared to generations of chil- dren as Peter Parley, who had the happy faculty of admin- istering knowledge to youthful minds in an entertaining way. His facile pen enabled him to achieve 170 volumes, 116 of them bearing the name of Peter Parley, a name that was unlawfully borrowed by many another less gifted writer. Besides these biographies, histories, and schoolbooks of vari- ious kinds, Mr. Goodrich edited "Merry's Museum" and "Parley's Magazine," both for young people. He traveled much, lived in Paris, for some years as our consul, had charm- ing homes in this country, and generally saw the sunny side of life. The admirers of Hawthorne must always link his mem- ory with the Token, edited by Mr. Goodrich from 1828 to 1842; for in those dear old-fashioned annuals, may be seen, often without the author's name, some of Hawthorne's famous tales, since "Twice told."
There are no very great poets to chronicle, although the
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From the Painting by Alexander
Lyder Huntley Sigourney.
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muse has not been without gifted votaries. Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, from the day when she left her birth- place, Norwich, till the end of her long life in Hartford, made a definite impression on her world, perhaps as much by her lofty character and unfailing goodness as by the quality of her poetry. Even if her graceful lines did not burn with the perennial fire, her gracious personality, overflowing into kind thoughts and good deeds, has made her memory fragrant. The fact that the Connecticut house at the St. Louis Exposi- tion was modeled after the fine old Sigourney house in Hart- ford, "with its columns facing the rising sun," is a pleasant tribute to that refined, high-bred life of which it was the cen- ter for long years.
Mrs. Sigourney was well-endowed (she read at three, and wrote verse at seven), was well-educated, well-married, well- cared for all her life; but she had not a lazy fibre in her nature, and wrote as indefatigably as if her bread depended on it. During her life, extending from 1791 to 1865, she wrote partly or wholly 46 books and 2,000 articles, for over 300 periodicals. Her works were translated into French, and were much read in the Old World. Their titles seem hope- lessly old-fashioned,-"Weeping Willow," "Whispers to a Bride," "Letters to Young Ladies." The last reached five London editions; and the Queen of the French expressed her admiration by sending her a diamond bracelet.
Of much more power was another Hartford woman, Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke, the author of a singularly captivating volume of poems "The Two Villages" is best known but far from her best poem; and of stories of New England life, many of which go to the heart of its individuality. A deeper strain was sounded in the poems of Laura Bushnell, the daughter of Horace Bushnell.
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Connecticut's poet with the most glowing spark of the truly divine fire was Fitz-Greene Halleck, whose "Marco Bozzaris" has thrilled generations of schoolboys; whose "Burns" is a classic; and a verse of whose lines to his friend Joseph Rodman Drake is equally so. He was a New Lon- don man, although he lived in New York for seventeen years as the clerk of John Jacob Astor. He had a happy turn for society verse; but his eight volumes of melodious poems, in- cluding "Fanny," his most ambitious one,-the one poem modeled on Byron's "Don Juan" which rises above a mere echo, and is worth reading for itself,-did not impair his faithfulness in business; and the Astors, father and son, pro- vided for his support through life.
James A. Hillhouse, of New Haven, wrote some poems of merit, "Sachem's Wood" and "Percy's Masque." Through the same New Haven streets which inspired these tranquil musings, stalked the erratic genius, James Gates Percival, the poet-geologist, who could at times, show that he had the divine spark, and again, the exact scientific mind; and yet loved to shut himself up in a gloomy house of which the only entrance was in the rear, and of that, the key was in his pocket ! He was born in Kensington, his father being a noted doctor there; and he was precocious, reading an astronomy at five, writing an heroic poem at fourteen, and distinguishing himself in poetry and mathematics at Yale, where he was graduated at the head of his class, in 1815, his tragedy being performed on Commencement Day. In spite of his eccen- tricities, he had a many-sided mind, and was almost equally eminent as poet, geologist, philologist, botanist, chemist, geographer and mathematician, besides having decided musical ability and reading ten languages easily. The turn- ing wheel of his strange life brings him in view as a professor
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From a drawing by Henry Inman
+y. June Hattunk
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of chemistry at West Point, as a surgeon in the U. S. Navy, as helping Webster on his great dictionary, as making, with Professor Charles N. Shepard a geological survey of Connect- icut, which was a marvel of learning, and a most valuable sur- vey on the mining regions in Wisconsin, his last work.
His poems, "Clio," "Prometheus," "The Coral Grove," and "Seneca Lake," although elevated in style, are rather dif- fuse and abstract; in fact, he was really greater in science than in poetry. He delighted in hunting to its lair some hidden philological matter, or in any mental task that piqued him; but to his fellows he turned his unlovely side. Shy, untidy, of a difficult temper, this strange being seems to have belonged to the age of hermits and anchorites, and to have derived little pleasure from being in the midst of this urgent modern life.
A classmate of Percival was the gifted poet, John G. C. Brainard, who was a friend of Whittier. He was born in New London, and went to Hartford, where he edited the "Mir- ror," whirling off for "copy" songs that are gems, such as his beautiful "Epithalamium." When he died in 1828, Connecti- cut lost one who loved to celebrate her charms in real poetry. Another son of Yale, Edward Rowland Sill, died in mid- career, leaving some exquisite poems that caused his friends to lament that his time was so short.
The "battle-laureate of the Union," Harry Howard Brow- nell, was an East Hartford man; and, being Farragut's pri- vate secretary, was inspired by the very breath of battle for his stirring "Battle of Mobile Bay," one of the finest lyrics of the war, and withal an accurate and graphic account of the fight. Well might it be, for through the thickest of the con- flict he sat on the quarter-deck, noting every incident of the passing of the forts. His prose, as in the "War of 1812,"
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was excellent. He lies in the burying-ground of the Center Church in Hartford.
The poet-banker-critic, Edmund Clarence Stedman, has shown that literary achievement can be united with business ability. He was born in Hartford, was one of Yale's famous class of '53, had a journalist's experience as an editor in Nor- wich and Winsted, as a member of the "Tribune's" staff, and as a war correspondent of the "World." A banker from 1864 to 1883, a member of the Stock Exchange from 1869 to 1903, he has during the same time written his poems, "Alice of Monmouth," "The Blameless Prince," his admirable "Victorian Poets," and anthologies of American and English poets, besides editing the "Library of American Literature." To Stedman Yale turned for a poem to commemorate her two hundredth anniversary; and the poet who had won the "Lit" prize for a poem on "Westminster Abbey," nearly fifty years before, was ready to sing a noble song in honor of "Mater Coronata." His "Hymn of the West" was written by request for the opening of the St. Louis Fair in 1904. His influence in elevating and directing public taste has been of great value through all the years of a busy life.
With the rapt look of those who see not as others see, Delia Bacon and Amos Bronson Alcott passed through this busy world. She, with remarkable intellectual powers, was a kind of literary lion in her day, by means of her "Tales of the . Regicides," and her lectures on literature, then unusual for a woman to give; but the world unfortunately remembers her best as smitten with the fever of the Bacon-Shakespeare con- troversy, prowling ghoulishly about the sacred grave at Strat- ford-on-Avon, and yet held back by native delicacy from despoiling it. Alcott, visionary, lovable, unpractical, the grandfather, so to speak, of "Little Women," since Louisa
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JAMES G. PERCIVAL
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May Alcott was his daughter, was born in Wolcott, in 1799. As one of the "transcendentalists," and famous "Concord Philosophers," he was doubtless able, in his "Concord Days" and "Table Talks of Emerson" to give faithful reproductions of the spirit of that group of thinkers.
Among volunteers in the Civil War, doing rather than writing was the rule; but besides Brownell, the army had the illustrious name of Theodore Winthrop, whose "Cecil Dreeme" and "Edwin Brothertoft" showed the world what might have been; and John William De Forest, born in Humphreysville, now Seymour, who was a captain of the Twelfth, sent home excellent reports of battles, which were literally written by an eye witness, since he was in one campaign under fire for forty-six days. He wrote a "History of the Indians of Connecticut," "Honest John Vane," and many other novels. And we cannot forget the gallant chap- lain of the Tenth, Henry Clay Trumbull, whose "Knightly Soldier," and "The Captured Scout of the Army of the James," were pictures of what he knew in days of war; who, as the author of "Kadesh-Barnea" and the long-time editor of the "Sunday School Times," filled a special niche among religious writers. Of Hartford birth is William Henry Bishop, the author of the "House of a Merchant Prince," who has in his works on Maine and Old Mexico treated of two regions widely sundered by climate and asso- ciations of race. Frederick H. Cogswell has dressed in the guise of fiction the story of the Regicides, whose memory is incorporated with the very map of New Haven. William H. H. Murray, of "Adirondacks" fame; Bailey of the Dan- bury News; Dr. George Beard, who in his short life made a great name as a writer on the brain and nerves; Sarah Knowles Bolton, who has grouped "famous" explorers, auth-
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ors, leaders and others, in very popular books; Alice Bacon, author of "Jinrickisha Days;" and Theodore Woolsey Bacon, a brilliant and versatile writer, are all of Connecticut origin.
So too is Donald G. Mitchell, known almost as well by the world as "Ik Marvel." From the time that his "Reveries of a Bachelor" made him famous, he has poured out from the treasures of his culture and experience, a delightful succes- sion of essays, critical sketches and historical works that have made "Edgewood," just outside of New Haven, classic ground.
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