and the legendary pane may be broken before this for aught I know. At least, I have named no names except the beautiful one of the supposed hero of the romantic story.

It was a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by such recollections, with harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast territory of four or five acres around it to give a child the sense that he was born to a noble principality. It has been a great pleasure to retain a certain hold upon it for so many years; and since in the natural course of things it must at length pass into other hands, it is a gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for a new tenant, like some venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a neighbor of condition. Not long since a new cap of shingles adorned this ancient mother among the village now city- - mansions. She has dressed herself in brighter colors than she has hitherto worn, so they tell me, within the last few days. She has modernized her aspects in several ways; she has rubbed bright the glasses through which she looks at the Common and the Colleges; and as the sunsets shine upon her through the flickering leaves or the wiry spray of the elms I remember from my childhood, they will glorify her into the aspect she wore when President Holyoke, father of our long since dead centenarian,1 looked upon her youtnful comeli

aess.

1 Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, who died in 1829, aged 101

ears.

The quiet corner formed by this and the neighboring residences has changed less than any place I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd, and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town as constable and auctioneer,1 and who bids fair to become the oldest inhabitant of the city, was there when I was born, and is living there to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so tenaciously and fondly to the place and its habitations will have died with those who cherished them.

Shall they ever live again in the memory of those who loved them here below? What is this life without the poor accidents which made it our own, and by which we identify ourselves? Ah me! I might like to be a winged chorister, but still it seems to me I should hardly be quite happy if I could not recall at will the Old House with the Long Entry, and the White Chamber (where I wrote the first 2 that made me known, with a pencil stans pede in uno, pretty nearly), and the Little Parlor, and the Study, and the old books in uniforms as varied as those of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company used to be, if my memory serves ne right, and the front yard with the stars of Bethlehem growing, flowerless, among the grass, and the dear faces to be seen no more there or anywhere on this earthly place of farewells.

verses

1 Royall Morse.

2 Were not these Old Ironsides?

I have told my story. I do not know what special gifts have been granted or denied me; but this I know, that I am like so many others of my fellowcreatures, that when I smile, I feel as if they must; when I cry, I think their eyes fill; and it always seen.s to me that when I am most truly myself I come nearest to them and am surest of being listened to by the brothers and sisters of the larger family into which I was born so long ago. I have often feared they might be tired of me and what I tell them. But then, perhaps, would come a letter from some quiet body in some out-of-the-way place, which showed me that I had said something which another had often felt but never said, or told the secret of another's heart in unburdening my own. Such evidences that one is in the highway of human experience and feeling lighten the footsteps wonderfully. So it is that one is encouraged to go on writing as long as the world has anything that interests him, for he never knows how many of his fellow-beings he may please or profit, and in how many places his name will be spoken as that of a friend.1

1 A pleasant paper of reminiscences of Cambridge will be found in Lowell's Fireside Travels, entitled Cambridge Thirty Years Ago. See also Dr. Holmes's Cinders from the Ashes, and a short paper on The Old Court-House, by his brother, John Holmes, in The Cambridge of 1776; and T C. Amory's Old Cambridge and New, already referred to.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

INTRODUCTION.

T has sometimes seemed to the casual observer that Lowell has had a divided interest in his literary life, passing from poetry to prose, and back to poetry, as if he found it difficult to determine in which direction his power lay. But a closer student will remark how very large a proportion of Lowell's prose is the record of his studies in poetry. His first venture in literature was poetic, when he published, not long after graduation from college, the volume of poems, A Year's Life; but the opening words of the dedication of that book hint at studies which had been begun long before, and have been carried on with unflagging zeal ever since. Three years later he published Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, a book now out of print; and any one reading the titles of the papers which comprise the four volumes of his prose writ ings will readily see how much literature, and especially poetic literature, has occupied his at 'ention. Shakspere, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Car

lyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne, Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, these are the principal subjects of his prose, and the range of topics indicates the catholicity of his taste.

It is more correct, therefore, to regard Lowell as primarily a poet, who has published also the results of a scholarship which has busied itself chiefly about poetry. The comments of a poet upon other poets are always of interest, and the first question usually asked of a young poet is: What master has he followed? The answer is generally to be found in the verse itself which betrays the influence of other and older poets. It is not too much to say that while here and there one may trace special influences in Lowell's poetry, as, for example, of Keats, the more noticeable influence is in the converging force of the great features of historic poetry, so that there is no echo of any one poet or conscious imitation of a poetic school; but poetry as interpreted by the masters of song, in consenting form and spirit, reappears in his verse.

It must not be inferred from this that the source of Lowell's poetic inspiration is wholly or in great part literary. It is only to say that as a poet he has also been a profound student of poetry; the great impulses under which poets have been stirred have moved him also. These impulses are nature, humanity, and literature; we have noticed briefly his studies in literature; there the immediate result is less distinguishable in his poetry than in his prose, the great bulk of which, as noted, is composed of