was home, and he always returned with kindling
spirit to the city of his love. There were all his happiest associations
and the delight of purest friendships,--W. Gilmore Simms and Paul Hayne,
and the rest of the literary coterie that presided over "Russell's
Magazine", and Judge Bryan and Dr. Bruns (to whom Hayne dedicated his
edition of Timrod's poems), and others were of this glad fellowship,
and his social hours were bright in their intercourse and in the cordial
appreciation of his genius and the tender love they bore him. These he
never forgot, and returning after the ravage of war to his impoverished
and suffering city, he writes, in the last year of his young life, "My
eyes were blind to everything and everybody but a few old friends."

Suited by endowment and prepared by special study for a professorship,
still all his efforts for the academic chair failed, and, finally, he
was compelled to become a private teacher, an office the sacredness of
which he profoundly realized. In his leisure hours he now gave himself
up to deeper study of nature, literature, and man. It was in these few
years of quiet retreat that he wrote the poems contained in the first
edition of his works, 1859-60, which, laden with all the poet's longing
to be heard, were little heeded in the first great shock of war. Indeed,
in such a storm, what shelter could a poet find? An ardent Carolinian,
devoted to his native State with an allegiance as to his country,
he left his books and study, and threw himself into the struggle, a
volunteer in the army. In the first years of the war he was in and
near Charleston, and wrote those memorable poems and martial lyrics:
"Carolina", "A Cry to Arms", "Charleston", "Ripley", "Ethnogenesis",
and "The Cotton Boll", which deeply stirred the heart of his State, and,
indeed, of the whole South. His was the voice of his people. Under its
spell the public response was quick, and promised largest honor and
world-wide fame for the poet. The project formed by some of the most
eminent men of the State, late in 1862, was to publish an illustrated
and highly embellished edition of his works in London. The war
correspondent of the "London Illustrated News", Vizitelly, himself an
artist, promised original illustrations, and the future seemed bright
for the gratification of his heart's desire, to be known and heard
in the great literary centre of the English-speaking world. But
disappointment again was his lot. Amid the in