YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

.... .' ',¦>,.  :  r.  ^  ¦  J— 

¦ LIFE AND ITS RECORD IN THIS GENERATION. ,

A^HIVE:aS5iRY ADDRESS

DELIVEREiy BEFORE THE, '

"•: /¦-' ',,¦¦;,': ''-NEW^;"'V0'R:K ¦ ¦ ' ,

Genealogical AND Biographical Society,

April iith, 1878::; . -'"

¦'¦X ' ''.- ',.-/' ' ' ^^ , ,.''>- :.

SAMUEL OSGOOD, D;D;,LL.D.^

. ;'/\NEWYbRli : ¦ ¦.,' ¦

PR I NT E 15 F p R T H E S 0 CI E T Y ,

• >' , , " , 64 MApispN .AviajDE.- ¦

¦ / '¦¦ '¦,:¦¦¦ "1878. ' ¦ . ,'"¦.•:'

LIFE AND ITS. RECORD IN THIS GENERATION.

AN

ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

NEW YORK
Genealogical and Biographical Society,
April iith, 1878.

SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D., LL.D.

NEW YORK :
PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY,
64 Madison Avenue.
1878.

2 Life and its Record in this Generation.
Yet Greece had its own type of absolutism ; held its own people by an iron
bond ; put its boldest and noblest thinker to death, and called the whole
outside world barbarian. Even Homer's heroes are fierce clansmen, and
their personal will is subject to ancestral precedent and its fated destiny.
The whole people called themselves Hellenes and their land Hellas, after
their great ancestor, Hellen ; and if their pride of race had been backed up
by purity of household moralit)', they might have kept their culture with a
lasting nationality. But Greece was mastered by Rome, and in the Ro
man empire and the Roman Church the man was lost in the corporate
body, until modern times called him to himself again in brave protest
against all despotism, whether of the crown or the crosier.
I. We consider now our life in itself and its essential conditions. What
gives to each man his peculiar personality or constitutes his individuality it is
not easy to decide, and whilst the old theologians asked how far each soul
came from a direct creation, and how far from transmitted vitality, the new
science tends to rest more upon transmission and to account for individual
traits by hereditary combinations. It is enough for us now to accept the
fact of an inborn individuality, which is to be developed by experience,
and whose history is biography ; and accepting this personal factor, we are
free to consider the conditions of its development. The life is called by
Herbert Spencer the continuous adjustment of internal to external rela
tions, and the study of modern life, therefore, requires us to consider care
fully the outward conditions of each personal career. Modern thinking
starts with the individual, and asks for the influences that form him.
In this respect we Americans are intensely modern, and our nation be
gan with a repudiation of all tyranny and a declaration of the equal rights
of men. I will not now repeat the common places of our political history,
but I would use history to illustrate the elements of our personal life. We
all feel the influence of the currents of the discussions and events of our
national career, and in a very important sense the whole century belongs
to our family record. What is the whole century but the term of three
generations, of which this generation is the third, that of the fathers is the
second, and that of the grandfathers is the first ? There has been, indeed, a
great deal of controversy as to the length of a generation, but without
going into that arena, it is enough to accept the common historical stand
ard, and going upon the principle that the length of a generation is the
difference between the average ages of sons and the age of their fathers, we
may consider three generations of thirty-three and a third years each as fill
ing out a century. In this way we bring our national century home to our
families and ourselves, and we are better able to estimate the factors of our
personal lives. We may if we please build for ourselves a goodly family
mansion, even if we have only fancy to furnish materials for it. There is
grandfather's room, with the furniture, books, pictures, etc., that belong
to the first generation, 1 776-1809. Then cross the hall, and you come
to the father's room with its more abounding, yet not more precious,
memorials of the second generation, 1809- 1842. Open the folding-doors,
or part the curtains, or cross the gallery, and you enter the rooms of the
children, and you see the signs of the culture and luxury, perhaps the self-
indulgence and vanity of this third generation, 1842-1876. It is to be
hoped that these apartments connect easily and pleasantly with each other,
for the occupants are next akin, and may all be-on hand at o\\c(t, as here
in this assembly. Number one, two, or three, may in turn be ready to re-

Life and its Record in this Generation. 3
ceive the neighbors, ^nd as years are counted now, the grandfather and
grandmother, who date birth before 1809, may be genial and loving
enough to cheer the heart of the youngest child among the grandchildren.
This chapel to-night brings the three generations together, and it is grand
father's, father's, and children's room.
It would be a very interesting task for an artist with scholarly resources
to furnish these fancied three apartinents or suits of apartments duly, so as to
represent fairly the manners, customs and associations of each of the three
generations ; but we have a less charming, but equally important work to
do. It is our business now to consider the contributions which each of
these generations make to the life that we call our own, and which are the
materials for the biography of this generation.
I. A great deal of fun has been poked at grandfathers and at persons
who venture to make mention of these worthies; and on the other hand, it
is said, that the difference between families is, that some have grand
fathers, and some have them not. The fact, however, is that we all have
or have had grandfathers, and that we owe most of what is best in our
birthright to them. Our America is very rich and strong in the grand-
fatherly element; and it may be that in some cases the nation has felt the
power of that principle of atavism by which nature jumps over one genera
tion, and the grandfather's blood and genius reappear in the grandchildren.
Certainly, those old patriots were with us in the great struggle of this
generation, and their blood cried out to us, not only from the ground, but
from the veins of their grandchildren.
Those patriots and tneir predecessors and associates settled essentially
what may be called the status of our American life, and gave each of us
the birthright that is beneath every biography. They discussed a great
many questions, and did a great many things. But the main question that
they discussed was the right of man to liberty ; and the main thing they did
was to settle this question upon the basis of constitutional citizenship.
There were, indeed, wide differences of opinion as to the proper limits of
liberty and the qualification of individual rights by civil duties ; but prac
tically the leading parties came to the same conclusion, and gave us our
present status 'as Americans. The liberty men sometimes ran wild iii
their speculations, and caught some of the follies of European radicals.
Rousseau, the most eloquent of writers, and most radical of thinkers, had
much to do with forming the early opinions of Jefferson and his school,
especially with spreading the notion that nature is better than civilised so
ciety, and freedom is rather a natural right than a result of law. Thomas
Paine had not a Uttle influence, and in some respects a wholesome influ
ence, for his preposterous attack upon Christianity was not his chief work,
but it was his defence of the reason and the rights of man that gave him
significance ; and in his coarse and vigorous way he rendered to the
thought of the age something of the same service as his great contem
porary in Europe, Immanuel Kant, the author of the " Critic of Reason,"
the most epoch-making of modern books, in its appeal to the human mind
as the tribunal of judgment, the book which has won for Kant the name of
the Copernicus of Philosophy. The ultra liberals had their season of
craze, and there were fears of its spreading throughout the people and of
its making us Erench radicals, instead of Anglo-Saxon constitutionaUsts.
But the practical sagacity of our grandfathers prevailed, and the great inspi
rations of liberty accepted and animated the safeguards of law ; the sanguine

A Life and its Record in this Generation.
visions of progress looked forward in the paths marked out by experience,
and we Americans became a new nation without breaking loose from the
historical line of civilization. We von new privileges, yet we kept our
status of family authority and civil order. There was a certain conservatism
even in measures that seemed radical ; and, as in the abolition of the laws
of primogeniture and securing equal rights of person and property to all
citizens, there was a return to the old Anglo-Saxon principle as well as a
repudiation of feudal tyranny.
Do we not feel in our very blood the power of that reconciliation of lib
erty with order ? Does not that old enthusiasm for ideal right rise within us
anew in vigorous union with the loyalty that accepts the Constitution and
the law and makes us a nation ? This consummation goes into our very
life, and through it we enter into the life of that first generation that closed
in 1809, when Jefferson retired from the Presidency. Jefferson, the head
of the democrats, or of the republicans, as they were then called, owed
as much as any man to the careful scholarship and wary wisdom of his
conservative rivals, and not least to the great New Yorkers, whom he fol
lowed more in his practice than in his profession. Jay and Hamilton pre
vailed when they seemed to be rejected ; and Madison, their associate in the
authorship of the Federalist, on taking the presidential chair in 1809,
brought into the second generation the essential conservatism of the first
generation, and connected the grandfathers with the fathers. May I not add
that Rufus King, of New York, a native of Maine, noble example of the
old conservatism, Federalist as he was, was with Madison the democrat
in defence of the country, and did as much as any man to keep the old
loyalty alive in the new generation. Did not the name expose me to the
imputation of speaking from family pride, I might dwell upon the good
service here of another New Englander, Samuel Osgood,'" who came from
JVIassachusetts, in 1785, to be head of the national treasury, and who re
mained in public service till his death in 1813. Those men and their
movements and measures belong not only to history, but to biography,
and to life itself, as we all know it. They settled our personal status, and
before we did anything of ourselves, we began where they placed us.
Honor, then, to that first generation, and let us rise up and 'call our grand
fathers blessed. Through their thought and work, we began not only with
liberty, but with law, not only with new hope, but with an old birthright,
not only with our individual effort, but with a family life and national
order in the line of historical civilization. Citizens we are and were born
such, and thus our life began. Citizenship with the statesmanship that secured
it, this is the beginning of life and its record here. So, then, the new life
of liberty that stirred our grandfathers deepened, as it grew, the roots of the
old fidelity, and the whole tree, root and branch, comes to us with our birth
right. So the American spirit began in that first generation, and confirms
our principle that our true American life is also sure to be reverent as it
*Samuel Osgood, a distant kinsman of the author of the address, was born in Andover, Mass., February
14, 174^, was graduated at Harvard University, in 1770, served as Captain in the battle of Lexington, in
April, 177s, and was Colonel and Aid to General Ward, at the time of the Bunker Hill battle. He was delegate
to the Continental Congress of 1774, and he was member of the Old Congress, 1781-84, first Commissioner
01 the Treasurer in 1785-^9, Postmaster-General under Washington, 1789-91. He was afterwards Speaker
of the House of Representatives, N. Y., and from 1803 till his death, he was Naval Officer of the Port of
New York. He was author of several treatises on theology, history and philosophy, and sometimes tried his
hand at vers.% He was, I believe, a steadfast member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and he was buried
at the corner of Nassau and Ueekman. He was the friend and correspondent of Washington, Franklin,
Adams, Jefferson and Madison.

Life and its Record in tliis Generation. c
becomes free, and every just exodus from bondage is bound in the same
book with the genesis of faith and reverence.
2. Look to the second generation, which we have called that of the
P'athers, for illustration of the same idea. As the first generation began
with the enthusiasm of hberty, and settled itself upon the foundation of
constitutional citizenship, the second generation busied itself more with
the industrial development of the country, stirred the people to the due
choice of the proper calling for themselves and their children, and tried to
regulate the power of choice by the influence of education. After the war
with Great Britain, which closed in 1815, there was a peace of thirty years,
which gave our men jjower to carry their liberty into their business ; and
]3erhaps this fact with what came of it is the most remarkable character
istic of that generation. The territory of the nation was not essentially in
creased during that generation, since the session of Florida in 1819 was the
only new acquisition ; but the virtual gain of domain by migration and
settlement was enormous. Nine new states were added — among them,
Illinois, Eouisiana, Mississippi, and Missouif, and the population went up
from seven millions to over seventeen millions.
The question now before us is not how rich our people became during
that generation, and what place did our country hold in comparison with
other nations, but what effect had that time upon personal life, and what
material did it furnish for biography and genealogy ? It is certain that
great pressure was put upon personal ambition and adventure ; that young
people were tempted to leave the old home for new settlements ; and rare
opportunities were at hand for bringing out all the talent there was in the
people. During most of that generation there was comparatively little
help or competition from foreigners, and according to the best estimates,
the number of emigrants during the ten years from 1810 to 1820 — 1 14,000 —
was less than one-third of the number that came over in the single year
185 1, which was 379,000. Our people then had a broad field, and full and
fair play, and they were not backward in doing their part.
The great thing was to choose wisely ; and probaby never before in the
world was so much scope given to the power of choice. Where to live,
where to go, what to do, what trade or profession to follow, what or whom
to vote for, what party or what sect to join, which of the new opinions or
philosophies to accept ; these were the practical questions, and the history of
that period is the answer. Probably the most obvious result of the choice
made appeared in the rise of the great industries under the influence of the
new mechanism ; and statesmanship in a great measure turned upon the
balance of power as affected by industries. The rivers and lakes of the
West would have been too distant and too vast to be available but for
Fulton's help, and the use of steam ; whilst the cotton fields of the South
and the water privileges of New England would have been of little service
without the aid of the cotton gin and the power loom. The statesmen of that
time took their prestige in a great degree from their relation to the indus
tries of their constituents. De Witt Clinton is remembered less as a candi
date for the Presidency of the United States than as the father of the Erie
Canal ; and Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, stand in history as representa
tives of the industry as well as of the people of the East, the West and the
South ; and the great questions of state which they argued had much of
their motive in industrial considerations, however deeply their reasoning
dealt with principles of constitutional law. The new growth of industry, of

6 Life and its Record in this Generation.
course, demanded a corresponding increase of educated men, and also fur
nished the means required for schools, academies, and colleges.^
It is an interesting study to trace out in connection with the increase of
enterprise and wealth the progress of iiopular and classical education.
The great revival of common school education is dated from 1817, and
its movement continued throughout that whole generation, and entered
into the third generation, which we call especially our own. There was
in connection with this movement a rise of interest in classical study that
had so much importance as to be fitly called a renaissance of letters.
Old New Yorkers are better able than f am to trace out the history of this
renaissance in New York, under the influence of such scholars as Anthon,
McVickar, Verjjlanck, Bethune, Alexander, and others. I am most faniil-
iar with the history of classical learning in New England, especially in its
oldest seat. Harvard University. Classic culture there, may be said almost
to have begun with the last generation in the endowment of the Professor
ships of Latin and Greek in 181 1, and in the endowment of the Professor
ship of Greek Literature in 1815, and the call of Edward Everett to the
chair, the most brilliant young man of his day. With this rising taste
came the new culture of Massachusetts, which has so made its mark upon
'history, poetry, romance, ethics, and theology. It was virtually the
rebirth of the classic spirit, and especially of the Greek thought under the
old Puritan rule ; and with it there came the search for the standard of truth
and duty in the very nature of things instead of the old appeal to personal
and dogmatic authority. They who took the name of liberals boasted
most of having the new culture, and not wholly without reason ; but the
severer Puritans had their share and made their learning tell upon the
churches. Moses Stewart and Nathaniel Taylor were as eager to do jus
tice in their way to the human mind, as William Ellery Channing and
Andrews Norton, and the result of the whole movement has been to carry
the new culture into Christian life and to bring the Greek ideality into
reconciliation with the Hebrew faith, to make the modern spirit accept the
ancient revelation, and to enlighten and enlarge the old piety by the fresh
humanity. New York felt the same influence in many ways. Such scholars
as Bishops Hobart and Wainwright did something of this work of recon
ciliation between the old times and the new, and they found helpers from
Puritans with whom they had no open fellowship. Thus it was a marked
date, when in 1819, May i6th. Dr. Channing first preached in New York,
i;i Barclay Street, in the hall of the Medical College, with such men to
favor him as Dr. John W. Francis, and it was an equally marked date when
in 1834 Dr. William Adams came from Brighton, Mass., to the pulpit of
Broome Street Presbyterians and brought with him so much of the new
humanity that has given to the great Presbyterian body its union and its
power, and which now shows its fruits in the great theological seminary
which has no peer in weight of learning and numbers in this countr)', and
hardly a superior in Christendom. By these men and their associates the great
matter was to lead the new liberty to accept the essential authority and to
unite freedom of choice with the recognition of the grounds of right choos
ing. This was the issue in all quarters of the new life — in the pol
icy of trade, in the adjustment of interests, the settlement of litigation,
the criticism of laws, the revision of ethics, physiology and theology.
The party of progress often crossed swords, or arguments, rather, with
the party of conservatism, and neither gained the day, but both won. The

Life and its Record in this Generation. 7
new spirit did not die out, but breathed in the organic life of the peo]3le,
the nation and the Church. A certain assimilation was going on that
was bej'ond the power of any man to check or to complete. We can see
now the general tendencies at work and their general result in American
thought and action ; but we cannot wholly define their nature or limit the
result. There was a reverent acceptance of history with all the resriess
eagerness for the opening future. Scholars cared more to know what the
old sages thought, whilst they ventured to think for themselves upon the
new issues. Family ties were more sacred, and the departure for new homes
gave the charm of distance as well as the attraction of regret to the homes
left behind. Constitutional law was earnestly studied in its connections
with the history of men and nations and the power of morals and religion.
So the new exodus again kept its place with the old genesis, and the fresh
life looked up eagerly to the ancient genealogy.
Literature, and, not least, romance helped forward this consummation.
There was in the Waverley novels, 1814-1825, a call to the thoughtful
survey of the old faith and civilization ; and thus the very fiction that was
scouted, by the old devotees as the enemy of sobriety and reverence, was
found to rebuke radicalism and to invite young readers to the old shrines
and thrones. Irving undoubtedly helped on this tendency to a certain
extent, and, little of an aristocrat as he was, his charming sketches and his
tories did much to steady the feverish haste of the new generation by win
ning pictures of the serener life of the old country and its lords and people.
In a certain sense Br)'ant was allied with Irving in his love of English
literature, and he brought with him to New York, in 1825, the delight in
-nature which is the charm of Wordsworth and his brother bards. Yet Bryant
did much to breath the indomitable Puritan spirit into the easy conformity
of the prevailing literature, and for more than half a century here he has
been the representative New Englander in New York, in his patriotism
and morals, as in his piety, uniting the Greek culture with the devout
Hebrew faith. Nor has he been alone in this work, and New England has
had noble scholars, orators, and statesmen here to speak for her in men of
all creeds and schools, from Orville Dewey to Henry B. Smith, from Steijhen
H. Tyng to Richard S. Storrs, from George Bancroft to WiUiani M. Evarts,
from John A. Dix to John Bigelow, from Edwin D. Morgan to Willard
Parker, from Samuel F. B. Morse to George Ripley, and others without
number. More and more New England is giving its stirring thought to New
York, and receiving in return generous fellowship, and solid and edifying
church order. The great New England liberals, Channing and Bushnell,
were honored here in their lives and after their deaths. So too were New
Englanders of another and sterner type ; Jonathan Edwards, who came
here to preach in his youth one hundred and fifty years ago, and Samuel
Johnson, who came from Connecticut to the chair of King's College a cen
tury and a quarter ago, and Gardiner Spring, who ministered here from 1810
The new humanitarian literature did its part in the new reconciliation,
and the Massachusetts historians, under the lead of Prescott, exhibited the
struggles and triumphs'of the new civilization in such a way as to give
great prominence to the moral principles that are the defence of nations
as well as the safeguard of men. Theology joined in this good work.
When Dr. Channing died in 1842, among the Berkshire Hills, with that
call to the kingdom of Christ, he closed a life which his country could call

8 Life and its Record in this Generation.
blessed, and which the educated mind of the nation has reverently studied,
and whatever view may be held of his theology, which in its historical and
biblical interpretations was in the light of comprehensive scholarship
strangely defective, there can be little doubt of his great service to
American culture by his union of the Greek with the Hebrevy elements, in
his character and ministry, the modern humanity with the ancient faith, the
recognition of God within man, and of God over all, God immanent, yet
transcendent. Liberal as he was, and the boasted leader of a conspicuous
sect with whose sectarianism he had little sympathy, he belonged to the old
Puritan stock and he never broke his vital relation to the law that was
given by Moses or to the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. He,
as much as any man, helped to keep the new life in the old loyaUy, and
to prepare the nation for the eventful and startling period that was to open
with the third generation. I remember well meeting here an English bishop
who was on his way to his diocese in the West Indies, and who stopped
here that he might go to Boston to see this light of American culture.
The second generation closed with presenting its stout child, the great
West, to his full freedom in the nation, and by electing him to the virtual
leadership of the country by choice of the first western President, General
Harrison, 1841. This child was not perfect, and has yet many things to
learn. But when he reached majority he had good cause to rejoice that he
had the benefit of such wise and good teachers, and that rich as his depart
ment of biography is, he has no reason to be ashamed of his genealogy or
to neglect the study of it. In fact the great West was the child of the
East, and in the passion of its new freedom in its boundless domain, the
'\\"est carried with it enough of the old birthright and the new schooling to
rule liberty by law, and to keep its power of choice above mere impulse,
with not a little deference to the loyalties of society and religion.
3. It is of course a difiicult matter to treat of the life of this third
generation, alike because the subject is so extensive and so exciting, and
because it concerns so directly ourselves and our children. But we who
wear the shoe ought to know where it pinches most, and we cannot but be
interested in relieving the pinch. We do well if we seek out the main
points of contrast, and we may perhaps find that the bane and the antidote
are closely related.
What is the most conspicuous characteristic of this generation in its start
ing enthusiasm, and what is the most prominent lesson that has come with
its sober experience from 1842 to 1878, and to the present time? Man
has always been an acquisitive creature, and the American has never been
deficient in this trait, yet has not this been the conspicuous passion of our
time, the desire to acquire all kinds of goods, especially land and money ?
There were surely abundant motives and occasions for this desire, and
many circumstances combined tci break up the quiet old order of things,
and to stimulate the thirst for gain. The opening of steam navigation with
Europe, the invention of the electric telegraph, the rush of European peo
ple to build our railroads and to buy our land, the eagerness of European
capital to find investment here, the annexation of Texas, with its pastures,
and California with its mines, and various other causes tended to stir our
countrymen as they had never been stirred before, and to inflame desires
far beyond the probable range of fulfilment. The result was a great craze
for riches, such as has never been known in a great nation, and such as we
shall probably never feel again, surely not until after the long years that

Life and its Record in this Generation. g
are likely to follow before we recover from the consequences of that mad
ness. Perhaps the fever culminated in the middle of the century and
raged for ten years, from 1850 to the beginning of the war for the Union,
with which the passion for acquisition had not a little to do. Men and
communities went mad for extension of territory and accumulation of
property, and East, West, North, and South had each its own visions of
wealth, power, and conquest. It would not be fair to say that there were
no more generous elements in the great movement, since the whole life of
the people was jirofoundly stirred, and there was a signal advance in cul
ture and refinement, with eagerness to develop all i)ersonal gifts, and to
master all art and science. Yet it is none the less true that the passion
for acquisition was the predominant trait of this, generation, as it came into
the field of labor and ambition.
Something of this tendency was and is due to the remarkable precei^tor
that Providence has assigned especially for the education of this generation,
I mean the press, especially the daily newspaper. Of course the press is
an old story and has been at work for more than four hundred years ; and
the daily paper is no new thing, the first daily newspaper. The L)aily Coiir-
rent, being started in London in 1709, and the first in America, The Penn
sylvania Packet, starting in 1784. But what was the old hand press of
14s 7 to the great power press of our day, and what were the little gossip
ing sheets of 1709 and 1784 in comparison with the eight and twelve page
dailies of our time, which give in every issue a volume of solid reading, with
reports from all lands and people by lightning flashes over continents and
under oceans. Think of the increase of American newspapers from 1840
to 1870, in thirty years, from 1,631 to 5,875, with a yearly circulation of
15,000,000,000. The press is the peculiar educator of this generation, and it has won its
great triumph in the period under consideration. The oldest of our exist
ing New York papers, the Commercial Advertiser (1797) and the Evening
Post (1801), have risen to new power with the new generation, and of the
present morning dailies, two, the Times (1850) and the World (i860), were
established within this time, and three dailies of an older date, the Sun
(1830), the Herald (1835), and the Tribune (1841), had httle of their
present dimensions and power before 1842. How great is the influence of
these sheets upon the purposes and character of our people, as well as upon
their- intelligence and their opinions ! Not the least of the offices of the
press is its agency as the great market book of the country, the printed and
pictorial fair which opens every day anew with a new stock of goods, and
advertises to the whole city and nation whatever of importance is to be
bought and sold anywhere throughout the land, perhaps throughout the
world. Thus the press stirs and in a certain sense educates desire by setting
before the family the things most likely to be desired, with not a little valu
able information as to what is really desirable. Every life is more or less
shaped in this way, and not only the follies that tend to extravagance, but the
tastes and aspirations that seek culture and refinement, depend upon the
great advertiser to tell them what to buy. Thus books and pictures are
made to enlighten and cheer homes and go on missions of civilization to
backwoods villages and frontier settlements, whilst in this way, also, it
must be confessed that unwise desires for many a costly dainty or rare
trinket may be stimulated, and people spend the money that they had
better keep.

lO Life and its Record in this Generation.
As the great reporter, as well as advertiser, the press evokes lite at every
point. No generation was ever reported as ours has been, and whatever
is said anywhere, that has any sort of public interest, is at once caught up
by this ever-watchful reporter, and borne upon the wings of the wind. In
this way good and bad opinions and deeds are spread broad-cast through
the land ; yet the better spirit is gaining ground, and relatively more share
is constantly given to the best representatives of science and art, morality
and religion ; and the Monday papers preach more sermons to a larger
audience than all the pulpits in the country. Consider in this connection
the influence of the great religious weekhes, which have risen to such power
in this generation, and which are often conducted with signal ability on the
part of editors and contributors, and certainly we must own that the press
has had much to do with shaping the life of our time. Yet even here, whilst
speaking of its influence on intelligence and morality, we must not lose
sight of the point in view, nor deny that the press, even the religious press,
stimulates intense desire among readers, and that the price-current, with
frequent offers of rapid gains, is quite prominent everywhere, and the greed
for speedy and extravagant profits is often met as readily as the thirst for
knowledge or excellence.
Consider the relation of the new powers of our civiUzation, the recent
development of science and art, with the press, and we have new convic
tions of its influence. Science has found a most effective mouth-piece in
the newspaper, and the scientists of this country and Europe have thus
been made household names by full reports of their chief essays and lec
tures. Art discussions are becoming equally attractive, and by the help of
pictorial papers and magazines, our people are not only receiving vivid
descriptions of prominent persons and events, but they are having an im
portant kind and degree of art education, with considerable knowledge of
the master-pieces of contemporary and historical masters. Undoubtedly,
the surfeit of print has created an appetite for form and color; and wood-
engraving has won a high place in the entertainment and education of this
generation. A daily paper. The Graphic (1875), has this as its especial char
acteristic. Wood-engraving has been especially ser-viceable to biography
and genealogy, and, with the help of the photograph, it enables this genera
tion to record itself and its fathers and grandfathers in visible form. Thus
we are portrayed as well as reported as no other generation ever was, and
not only are personal affection and curiosity thus gratified, but we have a
healthy reaction of objective reahtyfrom the excessive attention to subjec
tive feelings and ideas. Surely, the press is a marvellous power in our
modern life. It is a kind of university of the people, which numbers more
graduates than all others, and it has been called the modern cathedral. If
so, its service is daily, morning and evening, without intermission, and its
pulpit finds no reluctant or nodding hsteners. Yet, great as it is, it is not
supreme. It is not God, nor is it in itself lord of men. Journalists must
obey a law beyond themselves. They own the presses, but they do not
own the power of the press. Its power is the power of the human mind
under providential conditions, even as the power of the water of the river
or the sea is not made or owned by the owner, but comes from Him who
poured out the seas, and moves them by tides, and lifts them by celestial
attractions. The press must obey the paramount law of God and humani
ty, or it is nought. The sea may jest at the lash of Xerxes or the broom
of Mrs. Partington, but there is a power which can say to its waves, thus

Life and its Record in this Generation. \ \
far and no further, and there shall thy proud waves be stayed. So it is
with the power of the press.
Allowing all these merits to the press, with its print and its illustration,
we still must say that it has tended j;o stir, to excess, the desire for acquisi
tion, and that for a while the new flood of display and rage of excitement
were more obvious than the development of practical power. The press
did a great deal to make us what we were, and perhaps are — the most rest
less and greedy people on the face of the earth, wanting every thing in the
world without corresponding power to get what we want, and sometimes
losing what we have in our haste to grasp at what we have not and cannot
have. The result has been a bitter experience, and after years of mad in
flation, the balloon has burst and let us down to our mother earth. With
our disappointment in our greed to have the whole world, we are learning
that there is something more than acquisition to be looked to, and that
what really good thing we acquire, we must seek on solid ground, or raise
it from old roots or seeds.
Here I must call attention to the memorable tendency of this generation
to correct the error of its desire by its sober second thought. Let us see
how effectively the passion for acquisition has been checked and enlight
ened by a rising sense of the principle of inheritance, or the law of heredi
ty. The clash of arms in the war for supremacy between North and South,
moved, as it was, by the new desire for acquisition, was in great part set
tled by the power of inheritance. The nation claimed its first birth-right — ¦
the citizenship of liberty and law — from the grandfathers, and held it. The
nation kept its schooling of industry and education under the fathers, espe
cially its sense of ideal principle and spiritual authority above mere material
things ; and a certain ideal and ethereal enthusiasm went with the loyal
cause, and triumphed with its flag. When peace came, the people insisted
upon the old inheritance, and they have had it, and they will have it in the
reconstructed country and the restored constitution. The new America
felt the old America in his veins as well as in his schooling, and here again
the new departure restored the old States, the new exodus stuck to the old
genesis. But the recognition of the fact of inheritance has gone further than his
torical ]3recedent and taken its stand upon a scientific principle. In a
wonderful way the new science that was thought to be so radical and destruc
tive when set forth by Mr. Darwin, in 1859, has taken a sober and conser
vative turn in favor of what it calls the lav\'of heredity. Sceptical persons,
who once would hardly believe that their individual character and opinion
depended upon anything but their own will or intelligence, are now ready
to find the whole of themselves in their ancestry, or, at least, to ascribe to
each generation but a little part in shaping itself. The facts of descent are
studied carefully with an earnest eye to the two great factors, stability and
change. It is seen that each race, like each man, has a certain fixed con
stitution, and that each generation, by selection, tends to bring out certain
powers or dispositions, and to depress others. Even they who claim most
resolutely that, in addition to the constant and the variable elements in the
race, there is also a persisting (irogressive spirit that is evolving the plan of
God from the races of men, still allow that this spirit acts according to a
plan, and thus combines constancy with change, and makes each new age
the product of its predecessor. Our generation is accepting this great
truth, and correcting the frenzy of its acquisitiveness by serious thought of

J 2 Life and its Record in this Generation.
its dependence upon the men and events that were before. Thus it is th.it
hfe is becoming more reverent, and asking biography to take counsel of
genealogy. This "conviction has undoubtedly had much to do with the increase of
genealogical stud\- in this country and with the establishment of this Socie-
t^¦ and kindred institutions. Of course, there are personal and family con
siderations that enter into this movement, but even these are not wholly
free from more general influences, and we certainly are more interested in
knowing our ancestors and the circumstances and principles that marked
their lives and characters, the more we believe that we are bound to them
bv a more vital power of heredity than that which makes wills and trans
mits houses and lands. Your Society began in 1869, a time when the
excitement of the war had ceased, and thoughtful persons were startled
alike by the richness of the materials for biography that were at hand, and
by the pressing danger of leaving them to chance or destruction in the
pressure of new times, men and interests. You have done solid work
enough to justify your beginning, and if you had done nothing more than
to publish 3'our instructive journal, your position would be vindicated, and
your claim to favor would be clear.
There is surely need for careful thought and discriminating work in this
department of genealogy, and not only do we need to know the jjedigree of
our own kindred and friends, and of the leaders of letters, statesmanship,
science, art, morals, and religion, but we need to know what influences
formed each generation, and to what extent character, talent, and genius
go with the blood, and how far our American life agrees in its results with
life in the old world. It is said that the children here, on an average, are
less than twenty-five years younger than their parents, and thus a generation
counts less than twenty-five years. How far do we agree with the European
estimate of the average difference of the ages of sons from their fathers,
which, as has been said, is rated in Europe at thirty-three years and a third,
or a third of a century, or do our earlier marriages make the difference be
tween sons and fathers, or children and parents, in respect to age, less than
in Europe ? How far do sons inherit the mothers' mind and the fathers' dis
position, or vice versa? How far are talent and genius transmitted among
us ? How far do we confirm what is said by Mr. Galton to be the experi
ence of England, that in judges, statesmen, commanders, n-ien of literature
and men of science, the male influence in comparison with the female
counts as two to one, while in poets the male influence counts as ninet}'-
four to six, and in artists as eightj'-five to fifteen, whilst in divines the case
so changes as to make the male influence much less than half, or twenty-
seven to seventy-three ; a fact perhaps to be explained by the predomi
nance of religious dispositions in mothers, and also by their reading and
hearing and seeing examples of theological excellence.
With careful study of the genealogy of this generation, and of the science
of heredity which underlies it, we need to associate due regard for the me
morial art, which is the soul of biography and which should guide the culture
as well as the ])en of the biographer. What we want is the true art that puts
the individual before us in his best relations and most generous affinities, so
that his personality shall not be a matter of selfish egotism or family ex-
clusiveness, but a leaf out of the great book of nature and humanity, ^^'e
apply to the art of biography the sententious definition of all true art :
" Art is the way to put the spirit of things in such telling form that it sta}s

Life and its Record in this Generation. i 3
put and keeps on telling.'' Thus a good biography is like a good picture
or statue, which shows the individuality and does not forget the spirit
that should animate the man with loyalty to what he prized most.
Probably the charm of the best recent biographers is from the union of
these two elements, the personal and the universal ; and we have had
lately, Kingsley, Macaulay, Robertson, Norman MacLeod, William Ellery
Channing, Charles Sumner and others brought so vividly before us, be
cause the personal life comes out in such vital connections with society
and letters, politics, morals and religion. Letters, conversations and
diaries best give the personal features, whilst studied analysis of character
and careful thought may be necessary to do justice to the more general
relations of the hfe of the individual. Of course the personal portraiture
is the more interesting, as in the case of Boswell's Johnson, where a i)ara-
site blundered upon fame by letting his hero speak and act for himself and
making a drama out of the sayings and doings of a literary giant, whose
literary history in the abstract form might have been a bore.
It is a very interesting question for us to decide, how far the men whose
lives belong to this generation unite the great elements that are essential
to the best biography. How far especially do they combine an emphatic
individuality with a generous universality, a vigorous push for new acquisi
tion with a steadfast sense of the great inheritance. The question becomes
the more interesting, when we remember that the men who have figured
most in this generation have been new names, and most of them had no
mention in cyclopcedias and biographical dictionaries in 1842. Then the
l)ublic knew little or nothing of Cavour and Bismarck ; Pius Ninth was not
Po]3e, nor was Victor Emmanuel king either of Sardinia or of Rome ; Mar
shal MacMahon was lieutenant-colonel in the army of Algiers, and Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte was prisoner of Ham after his madcap raid at Bou
logne. Here at home reptitations have been of still more rapid growth,
and most of the men whose names have been most prominent in the great
struggle of the last seventeen years were never heard of, nor were their
families heard of, thirty or forty years ago. Yet all these new men have
been heirs of the ages as well as children of the present time, and with
their bold push forward, they have had seiious convictions of the power
that had gone before them. Nay, in some respects the boldest progres
sives have been most earnest conservatives, whilst perhaps the rashest
invasions of established institutions have been made in the name of ancient
prerogative. Thus Cavour and Bismarck claimed to be reconstructors of
Germany and Italy, not destroyers of national order ; and Victor Emmanuel
called upon f taly to rally around the ancient Roman standard, whilst Pius
Ninth and Antonelli, in their nominal conservatism, have been great radi
cals and have undertaken, not with success, to introduce ideas and meas
ures quite new to old Rome and Germany, and quite destructive to the
liberty of nations, we believe.
Our new men are most interesting studies in their relations to the old
times as well as to the new. Take for example Charles Sumner and Theo
dore Parker, as representatives of New England, and Abraham Lincoln
and General Grant, as representatives of the West. Sumner and Parker
came from a bookish, speculative, ideal community, with its old Puritan
theocracy transformed into a transcendental brotherhood of humanity.
They went for the equal rights of all men, whatever the color or tribe ; and
soiuetimes they spoke and wrote more after the manner of Rousseau, the

I A Life and its Record in this Generation.
apostle of nature, than as students of law and champions of conservative
civihzation. Yet they never forgot the idea of inheritance in their enthu
siasm for progress, and whilst Parker never lost a certain Hebrew theocratic
faith, Sumner was more of a Roman jurist, and he would, if he could, have
drawn up the institutes for America in the name of God, as Justinian drew
up the institutes of Roman law. I knew well both of these men, and in
spite of their bitter invectives, they were at heart kindly, earnest souls, and
deserve honorable name in this generation, not least from those of us who
remember their great labors, trials, and provocations, and who perhaps
have a deeper sense than they had of the frailty of our human nature and
the need of us all to forgive and be forgiven. The}- were called radicals as
compared with Webster and Everett, yet they joined with these conserva
tives in defence of the nation, and the four names now unite in the work of
reconstructing the country.
Aiid the great men of the West, from whom we have hoped and feared
so much, what shall we say of them ? What record shall we make of Ab
raham Lincoln, that sad yet mirthful man, whose humor and pathos seemed
to be the garnered sunshine and cloud of the fortunes of our nation ? New
man he was and who of us had heard of him thirty years ago, or until his
first speech in Congress in 1848? With what feelings of hope and fear we
looked upon hin-i as he passed through this city on the way to Washington
in 1861, and four years afterward, with what emotion we paid our tribute
to our dead president as his body was borne on its way home ! Great
movement man that he was, and himself moved by the logic of events
more than by the code of reform, to be emancipator of foUr millions of
slaves, he was yet in his way chief of conservatives, and in life and death
he held the nation up to its birthright of liberty and law ; Our Abraham
in work as in name, and father of the restored nation.
Nor was his leading general and his successor in the Presidency less
memorable in his work. In 1843 General Grant was a West Point cadet,
ranking 2ist in a class of 39, and now he is the most famous living American,
and Jerusalem and Athens welcome him with honors never before bestowed
upon an American, after the courts of Europe had lavished upon him their
hospitalities. We must recognize his great service in the conservation of
our nation, alike in securing peace and in rebuking the financial folly that
would continue the mischiefs of war. We may and have criticized certain
traits of his administration and manners, but we nmst not fail to do justice
to his essential purpose. I must say in honesty, that from the first hour
when I looked into his clear, strong blue eye, and saw there that firm,
manly will, he seemed to me to be sent to us by that same power which
has given us the blue sky that appeared to be reflected in his glance and to
promise to watch over us as over our fathers. In honoring him, we are
not to forget those who stood by him in the great struggle and who strove
with Irim to reconstruct the nation. There was old and young blood also
in the veins of his associates, and the old and the new have helped to
combine dash with wisdom, the push for progress with the serious sense of
inheritance. Lincoln and Grant, the movement men of the West, have
joined with the men who were called conservatives, and Douglas and Clay
f, om their graves plead in fellowship with them for the nation and the
flag. Do we not need to carry out this reconstruction, and still more to mod
erate and exalt our eagerness for acquisition by the sentiment of heredity.

Life and its Record in this Generation. \ c
Are we not to study more reverently the sources of our power and wealth,
the roots of our history, the riches of our patrimony, and to accept with
gratitude the treasures of art and letters, of law and civilization which
came to us with our birthright, and open new gifts with our fidelity and
progress. The nation as well as each citizen has a genealogy and ours is
a goodly Hneage. That ancestry can never fail- us. That Old Guard will
never desert us if we let our blood beat true pulses in our march onward
to the new times coming.
This New York, which is the great market of the nation, and the great
arena of ambition and greed, needs to learn to moderate its passion for
gain and pleasure by a calm sense of its great heritage from the Old ';
World and the New. Our movement men, hke William H. Seward and
Horace Greeley, had calmer wisdom and gentler humanity, with the expe
rience of vears ; and they had a growing sense of the worth of the states
manship which Jay and Hamilton embodied in immortal words. We who
live in this great city, and who feel the rush of its throng and the pressure of
its cares, will do well to remember that there is much to keep as well as to
win, and that with simpler manners and more thoughtful ways, we may
make life here far richer in blessing by using well our great heritage of
privilege than by mad haste for wealth and luxury. With our citizenship,
our education, our personal and universal title to what is best in civilization,
we keep our birthright, and hand it on to those who come after us. Who
will say that it is going too far to accept our birthright from the Supreme
source, and begin our genealogy and derive our inheritance from Him,
who, by the creation and the incarnation, is parent and head of our human
family ?
II. Long as this address has been it is not wise or easy to leave it with
out a word of encouragement and counsel to this Genealogical and Bio
graphical Society whose anniversary we are keeping.
You have a specific work to do in collecting and publishing your impor
tant documents, and you also have the general interests of historical and
biographical study to promote. You have done good service in gathering
so much and so rich materials from the records of the old churches of New
York, and the numbers of ^our quarterly are full of dates, names, and facts
that are essential to the proper knowledge of the early settlers of this city,
and of the families who are identified with its welfare. It is sad that so
much of this material has been allowed to perish by fire, or to be lost by
carelessness, and that in many of the oldest churches of the country the
most ancient records are not to be found. Why not make it a matter of
conscience to gather and preserve all of these antiquarian stores, and to
encourage the old churches and families to furnish all the information at
their command ? Already a remarkable progress has been made in this
direction here and elsewhere, and within a generation the volumes of
family genealogies that have been published separately are enough to make
quite a library. I call attention to two- of your published anniversary
addresses as of permanent value : that upon genealogy by Dr. Henry R.
Stiles, and that upon biography by Mr. Charles B. Moore. \Miy not in
time have all families registered as in the ancient time, notfor the tax-
gatherer's eye, but for family interest and affection, and historical use ?
England does this in her way ; why should not America ? Life rises in
interest as it is seriously recorded, and every child is assured of being well
born if he reads his name on the roll of parents and members of good stock

1 5 Life and its Record in this Generation.
and honest name, however much or little favored with this world's honors
and gold.
Here in this great city, where there is such a rush of numbers, and such
a press of events, we need especial care to save life from being trampled
down in its honorable struggles, and from being forgotten when it ends.
In a peculiar sense this city is new, and as such it is forgetfiil of what is
old. The old city has almost wholly passed away within this generation.
The buildings most associated with life, our homes and churches, have dis
appeared, being crowded out by the pressure of business. Hardly a man
lives where he lived thirty years ago, and few childien of mature years live
where their fathers lived before them. There is but one church of any
great importance (old St. Paul's) that is a century old, and our most con
spicuous churches have sprung up within a few years. The old city has
gone, and the new city has been built too much in a hurry to admit of its
being of a sufficiently memorial character. Our new wealth has not been
associated with high culture or artistic taste, and costly houses have been
built by the acre without much historical significance or aesthetic dignity.
With the rise of rents and the increase of luxury the great middling class,
which is so essential to the best interest and character of a community, has
suffered, and, to a great extent, been driven awa)'.
In this way, and in many ways, the city has lost its expected harvest of
culture and numbers, and its face does not tell its history. What a pity it
is that there is so little that meets the eye to remind us of the men who
have made their mark in the community, and of the nations that have built
up the city in its greatness. Those of us who have paid our public tributes
to Cooper, Irving, Verplanck, Bethune, and other noted men, of our own
citizens, and to the masters of European culture and civilization, would
especially like to see their names, and, if possible, their faces, in our public
]3laces. England has Shakespeare in bronze here ; New England has
Webster and Franklin ; Germany has Schiller and Humboldt ; France has
La Fayette ; Italy is to have Mazzini and Victor Emmanuel. When will
Holland have Rembrandt ? — Rembrandt, the father of the new human
ity in art ; the democrat of light, shade, color, and form ; who put upon
canvas what Dickens put into print, and who with his pencil affirmed the
Protestant right of private judgment, and brought out the man from the
pomp of courts and the conclaves of priesthoods into open day. Sons of
Holland, make room for your Rembrandt here !
Something has been done and is doing to meet this deficiency in our
great park. Some of our churches are testifying that we are a historical
people ; that we have persons and principles, ideas and events to remem
ber. But the true basis of memorial art is easily recognized, and all at
tempts to gather collections of art without a historical purpose and con
nection are meagre and unsatisfactory — either in danger of becoming affairs
of personal or family pride, or of dainty taste and capricious curiosity. "We
need the truer view of art that shall make the whole city historical, and
enable us to remember our national and local benefactors by generous as
sociation without obtruding private personality. Our halls, galleries, acad
emies, parks, churches, and our great stores and markets should tell a story
of the old time and the new. Art, that has all times for its own, should
make up for the lack of antiquarian relics ; and a great building dedicated
to History should be sacred to Art, which is the daughter of History, and
the recorder of hfe. In that building you should have your own depart-

Life and its Record in this Generation. \ 7
ment of Biography and Genealogy, and you should do your part to make
the whole edifice .a biography of our people, and a genealogy of our
race. With its reverses and disappointments this city keeps and exalts its
place as the centre of American life and thought and enterprise. Its
press and its pulpit, as well as its bar and medical faculty, its schools
and its commerce, gain power over the whole nation. With all of our
temptations and extravagances our people have not lost their head, nor
forgotten their birthright. The best men are finding each other out ; the
native American blood is assimilating the best foreign elements, and public
opinion is becoming more patriotic, and rehgion is more truly catholic.
You know how to put down a mob, and to crush a threatening treason, and
you are not likely to unlearn that well-tried manhood. There is an old-
fashioned loyalty to good institutions, with generous sense of what is due to
the spirit of the new age. There is a peculiar largeness and geniality here
that is correcting our excessive individualism, and giving promise of earnest
life and original spirit in our culture and fellowship. We have not forgot
ten the God of our fathers. He is with us as with them.
fn this faith we interpret life and its record in this generation.

THE DEATH OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
Since this address -was given, the poet and statesman, -who -was named with such re
spect and affection, has been called away, and our whole community has been in mourn
ing. The author of this address has already paid his tribute to his venerated friend by
dra-wing up Memorial Resolutions for the New York Historical Society, and he is to give
a public oration upon his Life and Work in the autumn. It is enough, therefore, now to
¦write here a few words of personal remembrance.
Bryant was, to his intimate friends, one of the most genial and communicative of men,
full of anecdotes and gems of poetry from all sources, and sometimes overflowing with
fun, laughing like a merry child, and telling stories with i-niniic illustrations of
character. He grew more social as he grew older, and he was especially fond of re
ligious society of the most generous and comprehensive kind. He expressed great plea
sure in the New York Church Congress, which he attended last October, and he was
present and spoke finely at a breakfast of clergymen on May Day, where prominent
Presbyterian and other scholars were entertained by Episcopalian ministers.
Bryant was the intimate friend and parishioner of Dr. Orville Dewey, of the Church of
the Messiah, and remained in that Church when it was under his successor, the present
writer, Dr. Osgood, until Mrs. Bryant's health forbade so long a walk. The present
writer always retained his friendship, and spent an evening with him a few days before
his last illness, saw him during his sickness, was one of the few who followed the
body to Roslyn, and he shares the regret of the only one of his children who was here,
that her expressed wish, that he should take part in the service at the grave, by some
misunderstanding was not carried out.
Friends will pardon some feeling in one who has lost his most intimate and venerated
friend, the remarkable man, who in his own person carried the life of the nation and the
experience of the nineteenth century.