The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Arena, by Various

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Arena
Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891

Author: Various

Editor: B. O. Flower

Release Date: December 10, 2007 [EBook #23802]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARENA ***

Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Richard J. Shiffer
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

THE ARENA.

No. XXIII.

OCTOBER, 1891.

[Illustration: James Russell Lowell (signed J. R. Lowell)]

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

BY GEORGE STEWART, D. C. L., LL. D.

With loving breath of all the winds, his name
Is blown about the world; but to his friends
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame,
And love steals shyly through the loud acclaim
To murmur a _God bless you_! and there ends.

When Longfellow had reached his sixtieth year, James Russell Lowell,
then in his splendid prime, sent him those lines as a birthday
greeting. Lowell, since then, received in his turn many similar
tributes of affection, but none that seemed to speak so promptly from
the heart as those touching words of love to an old friend. To himself
they might well have been applied in all truthfulness and sincerity.
Of the famous group of New England singers, that gave strength and
reality to American letters, but three names survived until the other
day, when, perhaps the greatest of them all passed away. Whittier and
Holmes remain, but Lowell, the younger of the three, and from whom so
much was still expected, is no more to gladden, to delight, to enrich,
and to instruct the age in which he occupied so eminent a place.
Bryant was the first to go, and then Longfellow was called. Emerson
followed soon after, and now it is Lowell's hand which has dropped
forever the pen. At first his illness did not cause much uneasiness,
but those near him soon began to observe indications of the great
change that was going on. At the last, dissolution was not slow in
coming, and death relieved the patient of his sufferings in the early
hours of Wednesday, August 12th. Practically, however, it was conceded
that his l