tten forever. The
small poets who are afraid of touching a moral question for fear of
ruining their poems would do well to compare Poe, who is the leader of
their school and its best exponent, with Mr. Whittier, and to ask
themselves which is the more likely to survive the test of time. Let
them also ponder the words of Principal Shairp, one of the finest
critics of the day, when he says of the true mission of the poet, that
"it is to awaken men to the divine side of things; to bear witness to
the beauty that clothes the outer world, the nobility that lies hid,
often obscured, in human souls; to call forth sympathy for neglected
truths, for noble and oppressed persons, for down-trodden causes; and to
make men feel that through all outward beauty and all pure inward
affection God himself is addressing them." They would do well also to
ponder the words of Ruskin, who believes that only in as far as it has a
distinct moral purpose is any literary work of value to the world. Is
not the opinion of such men as these to be considered of weight in this
matter? And is it not an impertinence in little men like some of those
who have lately written of Mr. Whittier, to speak in a patronizing and
supercilious tone of his work, as if the very qualities which
distinguish it from the work of the weaklings had ruined it as poetry?

It is perhaps to Mr. Whittier's ancestry that we may trace this intense
consecration of life to all its higher purposes; for he came of a people
who had endured persecution for conscience' sake for generations, and
who had loved liberty with a love passing that of woman, and sacrificed
much for her sake. The depths of feeling which Mr. Whittier has always
sounded when the persecutions of the Quakers have risen before his
vision can only be understood by those who are thoroughly familiar with
the details of these persecutions, and who know the harmless character
of the men and women thus outraged. Mr. Whittier knows this well, and it
stirs his blood to this day, as it stirred the blood of his father and
mother when they recounted these things to his childish ears. Though so
much deep feeling was latent in their natures, the outward lives of his
parents were serene and calm. Mr. Whittier has, in that exquisite little
idyl "Snowbound," given us a graphic and authentic picture of his
childhood's home, and in a measure of the life lived there. It is a
quiet little New England interior, painted by a master's hand fr