tion, the sureness of insight and the delicacy of
fancy necessary to great poetry. He was rather a sentimentalist to whom
study and practice had given an exceptional command of rhythm. The
prevailing note of his best-known lyrics is one of sentimental
sorrow--the note which is of the very widest appeal. His public is
largely the same public which weeps over the death of little Nell and
loves to look at Landseer's "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner."
Longfellow and Dickens and Landseer were all great artists and did
admirable work, but scarcely the very highest work. But Longfellow's
ballads "found an echo in the universal human heart," and won him an
affection such as has been accorded no other modern poet. His place is
by the hearth-side rather than on the mountain-top--by far the more
comfortable and cheerful position of the two.

The year of Longfellow's birth witnessed that of another American poet,
more virile, but of a narrower appeal--John Greenleaf Whittier.
Whittier's birthplace was the old house at East Haverhill,
Massachusetts, where many generations of his Quaker ancestors had dwelt.
The family was poor, and the boy's life was a hard and cramped one, with
few opportunities for schooling or culture; yet its very rigor made for
character, and developed that courage and simplicity which were
Whittier's noblest attributes.

What there was in the boy that moved him to write verse it would be
difficult to say--some bent, some crotchet, which defies explanation.
Certain it is that he did write; his sister sent some of his verses to a
neighboring paper, and the result was a visit from its editor, William
Lloyd Garrison, who encouraged the boy to get some further schooling,
and afterwards helped him to secure a newspaper position in Boston. But
his health failed him, and he returned to Haverhill, removing, in 1836,
to Amesbury, where the remainder of his life was spent.

He had already become interested in politics, had joined the
abolitionists, and was soon the most influential of the protestants
against slavery. Into this battle he threw himself heart and soul. It is
amusing to reflect that, though a Quaker and advocate of non-resistance,
he probably did more to render the Civil War inevitable than any other
one man. During the war, his lyrics aided the Northern cause; and as
soon as it was over, he labored unceasingly to allay the evil passions
which the contest had aroused. He lived to the ripe age of eighty-fiv