He will be remembered as a scholarly man of sweet, rare character. His contributions to Christian hymnology possibly constitute his chief claim to remembrance, though he devoted nearly twenty years of his life to public speaking and writing. While James K. Polk was President, Doctor Bethune was offered the appointment to the chair of Moral Philosophy at West Point, which he felt obliged to decline, as he also did the chancellorship of New York University, to which he was chosen as the successor of Mr. Frelinghuysen. He lived just long enough to make a stirring address at the great Union meeting, held in New York on the 20th of April, 1 86 1, departing soon after that to Italy, where he died. The name of Alfred B. Street belongs to the Hudson. He was born at Poughkeepsie, passed many years of his life in Albany, was descended from an old

Literary Associations of the Hiulson 279

Hudson River family, -- the Livingstons, -- and did not neglect to celel:)rate with his ])en the wilder ])eauties of his native region. Street's poems, particularh" those dealing with the sterner asj^ects of nature, ga\'e him an earh' rank among the liest American ijoets. In his day, among both poets and |)ainters, there was a painstaking fashion of presenting minutiae. Breadth of effect was apt to be sacrificed to delicacy of detail. He wrote as artists of his day painted; every leaf on every last twig was described with conscientious care. His almost ])assionate love for nature was retained through the cares and acti\'ities of professional life, and the influence of the wild, rugged scenery amidst which several years of his boyhood were passed never deserted him. He loved to sing of "sweet forest odours" that Have their birth From the clothed boughs and teeming eartli ; "Where pine-cones dropp'd, leaves piled and dead, Long tufts of grass, and stars of fern.