too cultivated a poet to cater for popular applause by spasmodic exaggeration.

Of pathos and feeling Longfellow possesses a large share-an infinite capacity for sympathizing with sorrow and suffering, and a rare intuitive perception of the secret griefs of the heart. But his mournfulness never degenerates into morbid melancholy. To him life is a battle-field, a struggle in which each = human being is bound to bear a part. "Be a hero in the strife!" is his motto. To act in the living present, with no mournful looking back on a past that will not return, or overstrained anticipation of a future whose promise may be unfulfilled, is the lesson. he continually enforces. He has the capacity to understand the trials and temptations that so often beset the path of life, the thorns by the wayside that spring up and choke the good seed; but he has also a belief in the capacity of man for good, and in the infinite mercy of Heaven. He believes

That the feeble hands and helpless,

Groping blindly in the darkness,

Touch God's right hand in the darkness,
And are lifted up and strengthened.

The exceptionally complete philological lore of Longfellow, his acquaintance with the poetry of various

countries, gained during successive periods of travel and sojourn in different lands, lends a distinct charm to his works. Thus he became thoroughly imbued with the sterling worth of the old fifteenth and sixteenth century ballads and songs of Germany, by Melchior Pfinzing, Simon Dach and Hans Sachs, and the French rondels, Swedish and Danish warsongs, &c. He was one of the pioneers of foreign literature; one of the earliest to point out (as Addison did in the Spectator with respect to the old English ballads) how much genuine poetry was contained in the quaint effusions of the old Minnesänger and Trouveres.

The impression made by Longfellow's works was gracefully and heartily expressed, years ago, by Miss Mary R. Mitford, in her "Recollections of a Literary Life." "I do not know," she says, 66 a more enviable reputation than Professor Longfellow has won for himself in this country-won, too, with a rapidity seldom experienced by our native poets. The terseness of diction and force of thought delight the old, the grace and melody enchant the young; the unaffected and all-pervading piety satisfies the serious, and a certain slight touch of mysticism carries the imaginative reader fairly off his feet. For my own part, I confess not only to the being captivated by all these qualities (mysticism excepted), but to the further

fact of yielding to the charm of certain lines-I cannot very well tell why-and walking about the house repeating such fragments as this:

I give the first watch of the night

To the red planet Mars,

as if I were still eighteen. I am not sure that this is not as great a proof of the power of the poet as can be given." And since those lines were written, the power of the poet has been vindicated by new and more valuable proofs.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a scion of an English family long settled in Massachusetts. In 1676 William Longfellow, a native of Hampshire and the direct ancestor of the poet, emigrated to Massachusetts, where he established himself at Newbury He died in 1690. From him was descended the Hon. Stephen Longfellow, lawyer and member of Congress, who married a lady descended from Stephen Alden, one of the pilgrim fathers, and the first who landed on the shore of Massachusetts from the Mayflower in 1621. The poet was born in Portland, in the state of Maine, on the 27th of February, 1807. He graduated at Bawdoin College, Brunswick, where he greatly distinguished himself. After taking his degree, he occupied himself for a time in law work in

his father's office. But his predilections were far more towards literature than law; and, on receiving the appointment of Professor of Modern Languages in Bawdoin College, he gave up the idea of a legal career, and betook himself to Europe, to prepare for the more congenial career of a professor of literature by travels in Europe and investigations into the literary productions of various nations. Before this time he had already begun, like the majority of young aspirants for literary fame, by contributing to magazines. Thus various poems from his pen appeared in the United States Literary Gazette; these contributions were afterwards reprinted in "Voices of the Night," a book of verses published in 1839. The North American Review also printed various critical articles contributed by him.

His travels in Europe occupied more than three years, and in their course he visited Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Holland, and England, profiting to the fullest extent by the opportunities thus afforded him for studying especially the poetical productions of those countries at various periods. It is impossible to overlook the influence of the literature of Northern Europe, and still more of Germany, on his productions. For instance, in the "Building of the Ship" and the "Hanging of the Crane" we have a reminis

cence, not to be mistaken, of Schiller's "Song of the Bell," while the idyllic style of Voss and the influences of Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea" are apparent in "Evangeline." In 1829 Professor Longfellow returned to America, to enter upon the duties of his office at Bawdoin, and in 1831 married his first wife.

The recollections of his tour in England were turned to excellent account in his prose romance "Hyperion," in which especially the old legends of the Rhineland, such as "The Christ of Andernach" and the life of the German students, were graphically sketched. His first volumes had already appeared, before "Hyperion," in the shape of an essay on Spanish Poetry, and a translation of the "Coplas" of Jorge Manrique, a sixteenth century poet of Spain. In 1835 Professor Ticknor, famous by his excellent "History of Spanish Literature," resigned the chair of Belles Lettres in Harvard University, and Longfellow was appointed to the vacant post. The acceptance of this honourable office was the occasion of a second tour in Europe. This time the ardent student of philology betook himself to Sweden and Denmark, the home of the old Scandinavian learning. Thence he proceeded to Holland and Germany, and in 1836 he passed the spring and summer in Tyrol