him by the school children of Cambridge. This gift made him very happy and called forth the poem:

"Am I a king, that I should call my own

This splendid ebon throne?"

Beside it stands another chair, called Charles Sumner's chair," and the sight of it recalls those evenings when the two friends sat till midnight by the glowing fire and held sweet converse together.

The study is full of beautiful things. From the orange tree in the window to Coleridge's inkstand everything is full of interest because Longfellow's hand has touched it.

Many precious associations linger about this room. It was here that “ Evangeline” was written; here he met the "Dante Club" week after week; and it was here that he wrote those last words his dear hand ever penned :

"Out of the shades of night

The world moves into light;
It is daybreak everywhere."

There is not one of our masters of song who has so touched the heart of the people as has Longfellow, or who is held by them in such affectionate remembrance. He is the poet of the fireside, and his songs are familiar to every household.

Longfellow's life has always seemed to me like a sweet, tuneful poem. His happy youth at Portland; the years abroad, so well spent in study and travel; his teaching at Bowdoin and Harvard, where he shaped so many young lives by his own manly example; his perfect married life.

in the old Craigie House, which all too soon was darkened by that terrible tragedy which took from him his dearest earthly possession; and, finally, those last peaceful years, blessed by the love of children and friends—all these seem to me like the perfect stanzas of a noble poem-joyous in part and in part sad and pathetic-but all fitted into one harmonious and beautiful whole.

REMINISCENCES AND

CRITICAL STUDIES

SELECTED.

LONGFELLOW AND HIS MOTHER.

LONGFELLOW was said to be very like his mother. His brother wrote of him: “From her must have come to Henry the imaginative and romantic side of his nature. She was fond of poetry and music, and in her youth, of dancing and social gayety. She was a lover of nature in all its aspects. She would sit by a window during a thunderstorm enjoying the excitement of its splendours. Her disposition, through all trials and sorrows, was always cheerful, with a gentle and tranquil fortitude." No words could describe her son's nature more nearly.—MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS, in "Longfellow, 1807-1882," in "Authors and Friends" (Hou.).

LONGFELLOW AS A CHILD.

The great sensitiveness of Longfellow's nature, one of the poetic qualities, was observed very early, and the description of him as a little boy was the description of the