didacticism of most of the anti-slavery poems, but a simple statement of pathetic, beautiful fact, which is left to make its own impression. Another powerful group of these slavery poems is constituted by the scornful, mockcongratulatory productions, such as "The Hunters of Men," "Clerical Oppressors," "The Yankee Girl,” “A Sabbath Scene," "Lines Suggested by Reading a State Paper wherein the Higher Law is Invoked to Sustain the Lower One," and "The Pastoral Letter." The sentences in these stanzas cut like knives and sting like shot.— WILLIAM SLOANE KENNEDY. (Cf. above.)

"THE BURDEN AND THE VISION OF THE PROPHET WERE HIS."

Difficult as it is to recall the pangs of pain once past, to have the blood boil again over old wrongs when once righted, yet when those now unborn shall read Whittier's poems of that period 1 they will feel that there was something glorious in having lived in a time when such voices rang every day about one, dark and dreadful though the time may have been, and one where men felt that in pursuing their ends they carried their lives in their hands. Nothing can exceed, nothing can equal, the wild power of some of these songs, now soaring in scorn, now writhing in angry shame, rising with indignant outcry, burning in fiery eloquence, and all moving to the magic of music and the pathos of their undercurrent of sorrow. The

1 The anti-slavery agitation period.

singer would seem to have felt himself set apart for God's great purposes. He knew the burden of the prophet and the vision of Ezekiel had been his.-HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. (Cf. above.)

WHITTIER THE GREAT HIGH-PRIEST OF LITERATURE.

Whittier is the great high-priest of literature. But few priests at any time have had such an audience and such influence as he. The moral and religious value of his work can scarcely be overstated. Who can estimate the power which his strong words had in the days that are now but a fading memory-in the great conflict which freed the bodies of so many million slaves? And who can ever estimate the power his strong words have had throughout his whole career in freeing the minds of other millions from the shackles of old beliefs? His blows have been strong, steady, persistent. He has never had the fear of man before his eyes. No man has done more for freedom, fellowship, and character in religion, than he. Hypocrisy and falsehood and cant have been his dearest foes, and he has ridden at them early and late with his lance poised and steed at full tilt.-HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD. (Cf. above.)

WHITTIER'S IDYLS AND SONGS SECURE IN THEIR

IMMORTALITY.

Whittier's rank as a poet must depend more and more upon his lyrical studies of his native New England. His

songs of freedom, notwithstanding their vigour, are constantly losing their interest as the great events, of which they are a part, fade into the past; but his idyls and songs of humble life are as secure in their immortality as are those of Burns. Whittier won his place among American poets not in spite of his want of early culture, but rather on account of it. A broad education would have smoothed and refined his verses, but it would also have taken away much of the simple idyllic beauty which is now their chief charm. His were "native wood-notes wild," often crude in form, awkward in rhyme, and homely in thought, but nevertheless intensely original and sincere. He was near the soil, he knew by heart the "simple annals" of humble life, and he poured out, without a thought of books, the songs that came to his lips. Thus, though he covered minutely only one section, he is recognised both at home and abroad as the most national of our poets, a singer distinctively a product of American soil.-PROF. FRED. LEWIS PATTEE. (Cf. above.)

WHITTIER THE SIR GALAHAD OF AMERICAN SONG.

Taken for all in all, Whittier, "our bard and prophet best-beloved," that purely American minstrel, so virginal and so impassioned, at once the man of peace and the poet militant, is the Sir Galahad of American song. He has read the hearts of his own people, and chanted their emotions, and powerfully affected their convictions. His lyrics of freedom and reform, in his own justified lan

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guage, were words wrung from the Nation's heart, forged at white heat." Longfellow's national poems, with all their finish, cannot rival the natural art of Whittier's. They lack the glow, the earnestness, the intense characterisation of such pieces as "Randolph of Roanoke," "Ichabod," and " The Lost Occasion."-EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN, in " Poets of America." (Cf. above.)

SOME LITERARY QUERIES AND ANSWERS.

BY HARRIET L. MASON, A.M.,

Professor of English Literature, Drexel Institute, Philadelphia.

QUERIES.

I. How was Whittier enabled to defray his expenses at the academy where he finished his education?

2. Under what circumstances did Whittier say: "I understand how St. Paul felt when he was three times stoned"?

3. Of what fact was Whittier prouder than of all his verse?

4. In what respect was Whittier's life like that of Charles Lamb?

5. What promise made to his mother in early boyhood did Whittier always keep?

6. What reasons did Whittier once give as to why he never married?

7. A poem written to beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber is considered Whittier's masterpiece; name it.

8. What poem begun when Whittier was at Haverhill Academy remained unfinished for thirty years?

9. What poem of Whittier's did Dr. Holmes say was the most beautiful schoolboy poem in the language?

10. What poem is a study of a poor Acadian girl exiled as was Evangeline?

II. A book of poems given him by his schoolmaster marked a red-letter day in Whittier's life and kindled in his own heart the spirit of poetry. Whose poems were they?

12. What were Whittier's last words?