356 JOSEPH HENRY. 



be inscribed on the roll of the worthies of the nation. He had seen 

 his country grow from comparative feebleness to a great power, and he 

 had had a share, not only in influencing its political tendencies, but in 

 determining its moral ideals. The last was his more important work, 

 and it is as a poet who gave appropriate, elevated, and refined ex- 

 pression to the moral sentiment of the community that he will be 

 chiefly remembered. His verse bears the stamp of New England. It 

 is the outcome of the grave piety, the sober joys, the reflective serious- 

 ness, of the elder mood of the country. In this sense it belongs rather 

 to the past than to the present; but the truth and felicity with which 

 they express common and natural feelings and emotions will secure to 

 the most widely known of Mr. Bryant's productions a permanent 

 place in the pages of the household book of American poetry. 



It is not needful here to give even a summary of Mr. Bryant's biog- 

 raphy. This work has been done well where it might be done more 

 appropriately. For his intellectual activity displayed itself chiefly out- 

 side the fields cultivated by this Academy. It is required only of us 

 to bear our testimony of honor to the memory of a poet and public 

 servant, who, born in Massachusetts, has, at his death, been claimed 

 by the nation for its own. 



JOSEPH HENRY * 



Joseph Henry, who was united with this Academy as an Associate 

 Fellow on May 26, 1840, was born in Albany, N. Y., on December 17, 

 1799, and died in Washington, D. C, on May 13, 1878, in the pleni- 

 tude of his years, his labors, and his honors. The child is always 

 father to the man : but there was nothing in the childhood or youth of 

 Henry to proclaim the advent of one whose life would be a blessing to 

 mankind, and whose death would be felt as a nation's loss. Descended 

 from Scotch ancestors, who had recently emigrated to this country, 

 and losing his father at an early age, he passed a large part of his 

 youth under the care of his maternal grandmother, at Galway, in 

 Saratoga County. Here he attended the district school until he was 

 ten years old. Then he was taken into a store, where he was treated 

 kindly and allowed to be present at the afternoon session of the school. 

 Obtaining access to the village library, at first by accident, afterwards 

 by stealth, and finally by permission, he revelled in an ideal world of 



* The death of Professor Henry, although reported last year, took place so 

 near the time of the annual meeting, that this notice was necessarily deferred 

 until the present Report. 



