which are our schoolmasters. Sumner is the nearest and warmest
thing I can send you. When you have him you will think you have me,
he can tell you so much of me."

To this early group were added, later on, Agassiz, Lowell, Dana, James
T. Fields, Norton, Dr. Holmes, and others; but those mentioned were his
real intimates throughout life. With Emerson he maintained a calm and
admiring friendship, but saw less of him than of the others. Bryant and
Whittier and George W. Curtis he loved and admired, but they were more
distant and not his every-day companions. Dr. Samuel G. Howe belonged,
if not exactly to the earliest group of friends, yet among friends both
early and late. These men are all historic now, and it seems strange to
find Longfellow writing of them as he does in letters and journals. For
instance:--

"Also Mr. Emerson, a clergyman, with new views of life, death, and
immortality; author of 'Nature,' and friend of Carlyle. He is one
of the finest lecturers I ever heard, with magnificent passages of
true prose poetry. But it is all dreamery, after all."

Strange, too, to find Carlyle writing to the young poet after the
receipt of a volume of his poems, before reading them, as is said to be
the fashion of great men when they wish to let unknown authors down
easily and gracefully:--

"About the same time there came an indistinct message that a copy
of your poems had been left for me at Fraser the bookseller's. It
now beckons to me from one of my shelves, asking always, 'When wilt
thou have a cheerful, vacant day?'"

Very natural it seems, though, to find that Carlyle is already writing
from "a hideous immeasurable treadmill, a smoky, soul-confusing
Babylon," and that he addresses "only one prayer to the heavens,--that
he were well out of it before it takes the life out of him."

Pleasantest and strongest perhaps of all his friendships was that for
Charles Sumner, who was lecturing at the Law School when Mr. Longfellow
first came to Cambridge. Begun when both were young men just launching
forth on their great but so different career, it continued until death
separated them, without a shadow of estrangement or disloyalty, but with
ever increasing ardor of affection. Sumner was inclined to literature at
that time, and indeed for many years afterwards, his political career
being rather forced upon him by the stormy times. A club was formed at
this time, called the