6 6 tinued for his life. He resigned office in 1886 to be nominated Emeritus Professor. During those thirty years the department of modern literature was under Mr. Lowell's 'general administration, excepting during his journeys in Europe and his diplomatic residence in Madrid and London.' In every stage of his life Lowell was not only an interesting and delightful personality--he stands out as a type. Just as he had been a type of the New England student, of the man of culture of the Eastern States, of the advancing tide of American intellect, so he was now a type of the academical teacher across the Atlantic-cultivated, sagacious, energetic, and eager, bringing to the teaching of the literature of the past the vigour of the New World, too often in other occupations devoted to the mere collection of wealth. How he appreciated England is shown by a passage in a letter which he wrote soon after he took up his work at Cambridge, touched by that feeling for English landscape which has been in these later days best expressed in the poems of Matthew Arnold: 'I will envy you,' he writes, 'your delightful two months in England; and a picture rises before me of long slopes washed with a cool lustre of watery sunshine, a swan-silenced reach of sallow-fringed river, great humps of foliage contrasting taper spires, cathedral closes, grey Gothic fronts elbowed by red-brick deaneries, broad downs clouded with cumulous sheep-nay, even a misty, murky morning in London, and the boy with the pots of porter, and the hansom cab just losing itself in the universal grey.' The Englishman accustomed to the appearance of his own island and little appreciative of its charm (to which,' said Hawthorne, 'our countrymen are more susceptible than ' are the people among whom it is of native growth') is apt sometimes to smile at the enthusiasm of the American for our landscapes and buildings. But it is an appreciation which begets international friendship; it is only because so few had the same opportunities as Lowell of knowing not only England but the English, that delight in the scenery of the British Islands has not been equalled by the cordiality of American friendship. It is an appreciation for which we ought to be grateful, since the more widely it increases the stronger become the bonds of sympathy between the two distant but kindred peoples. Not To return, however, to Lowell's work at this time. only was he a professor at Harvard, he was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly' from its foundation in 1857, and on resigning that post after four years of strenuous labour 6 he took up the joint editorship of the North American Review.' He worked upon the new literary venture with steadfast diligence, watching over it with extraordinary interest. Thus he is markedly identified with the rise of the periodical literature of the United States, which has now so much influence and circulates so widely over the Continent. During this period Lowell had a good deal of work to do which was irksome. Our professors,' he said, in his admirable address delivered on the 250th anniversary of the foundation of Harvard, have been compelled by the neces"sities of the case (as we are apt to call things which we ' ought to reform but do not) to do too much work not properly theirs, and that of a kind so exacting as to consume the energy that might have been ample for higher service. They have been obliged to double the parts of professor and tutor.' In these words he succinctly states the character of his work at Harvard. He preferred letters to scholarship. If I must choose,' he said, in the same address, I had ' rather a young man should be intimate with the genius of the Greek dramatic poets than with the metres of their (choruses.' It resulted, therefore, that Lowell, when he addressed a large audience on a purely literary subject, was more effective than when he was acting in the minuter academic business of a tutor. It was in the midst of this life that the Civil War broke out. Of the graduating class of 1860 sixty-four enlisted, and thirteen of them were killed. Lowell saw young men of the highest promise, boys whose budding lives as students or relations he had watched growing to manhood, gallantly devote themselves to their country's service 6 'Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street I hear the drummers makin' riot, Thet follered once an' now are quiet; Thet never know'd the paths o' Satan, 'Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee? Three likely lads ez wal could be, Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? I set an' look into the blaze Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, An' half despise myself for rhymin'. 'Wut's words to them whose faith and truth For the gret prize o' death in battle? Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, Thet rived the Rebel line asunder? ''Tain't right to hev the young go fust, To try an' make b'lieve fill their places; Ther's gaps our lives can't never fay in, It is not surprising that under all the circumstances-his personal interest in so many who were fighting for the North, his passionate belief in the righteousness of the cause, his appreciation of the Mother country from which New England had sprung-he should bitterly feel the sympathy which in many quarters was manifested in Great Britain for the South, though the extent of that sympathy was, we think, exaggerated in America. When material interests are regarded as international ties it is well to bear in mind the relations between England and America. It was the want of sympathy for the North, the real bone and marrow of the United States, which produced an international coolness for thirty years between the two nations; it was the sympathy of England in the Spanish War which finally healed the sore which was produced in the Civil War. I share,' wrote Lowell in 1866 to Mr. Leslie Stephen, 'with the great body of my countrymen, in a bitterness (half resentment and half regret) which I cannot yet get over. I do not mean that if my heart could be taken out after death Delenda est Anglia would be found written on it, for I know what the land we spring from and which we have not disgraced is worth to freedom and civilisation; but I cannot forget the insult so readily as I might-the injury of the last five years. But I love my English friends none the less-nay, perhaps the more because they have been her friends too, who is dearer to me for her trials and for the victory which, I am sure, she will be great enough to use gently.' Lowell somewhat later, as we shall tell, did much to hasten the re-establishing of more cordial relations between the two countries, relations which it may well be hoped will not again be disturbed. He represented the quick, sympa thetic temperament of the American people, eager for sympathy, susceptible of its denial. In public discussionsmore especially by the English Press-this temperament is too often forgotten, and things are sometimes said, and in a tone, which may do great harm on the other side of the Atlantic. Americans and English, who are personal friends, understand the natures which are beneath the manners; but a thing written by an anonymous writer of a leading article cannot be explained to millions of people. It is not possible to draw an indictment against a whole nation, but a nation may be influenced by an irresponsible writer in a morning journal to a degree which is often underestimated. It is well, too, to remember that a national temperament which is sympathetic and demands sympathy, which is keenly appreciative of the goodwill of other countries, is necessarily equally quick to feel coldness, and even to magnify it into an active dislike, and to perceive in strenuous opposition evident hostility. The same temperament is inclined also to resent a tone of patronage, and to be suspicious of too ardent advances of prominent politicians on this side of the Atlantic. Thus, whilst Great Britain cannot set too high a value on the friendship of the United States it is short-sighted to suppose that it cannot be interrupted or that incidents may not at any moment occur which may try the forbearance and the patience of both nations. With Lowell, and many whose thoughts he expressed, it was less material injury from the fact that munitions and vessels of war found their way from England to the Confederates which caused this anger and regret, as disappointment at an absence of sympathy among many Englishmen for the cause of union and freedom.* In that one of the 'Biglow Papers' entitled 'Jonathan to John' Lowell expressed the feeling with a remarkable union of passion and humour: The same disappointment runs through Whittier's lines To Englishmen,' though it is expressed less with anger than with regret, as in the following stanza : 'O Englishmen, in hope and creed, And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed 'We know we've got a cause, John, We thought 'twould win applause, John, Ole Uncl S. sez he, "I guess His love of right," sez he, "Hangs by a rotten fibre o' cotton : There's natur' in J. B. Ez wal 'z in you and me." In the summer of 1872 Lowell went to Europe, and he lived in Paris during the winter, and really learned something of the French and their ways.' He made the usual visit to Italy, to places in France, and to England, not returning to Boston until July 1876. The stay in Europe had a curious effect upon him; it turned Lowell into a politician. It matters little how he was induced to take this new departure. It is, however, a proof at once of his versatility and his energy that at a comparatively late period of life he, a man of letters and a student, could begin to take an active interest in political affairs, and to face the resentment which he aroused. He began by writing two pieces of verse The World's Fair, 1876,' and Tempora Mutantur.' They attracted great notice, and considerable hostile criticism. They were sincere attempts to point out shortcomings in the American body politic. 'Show 'em your Civil Service, and explain Show your new bleaching process, cheap and brief, Show your State Legislatures; show your Rings; As high officials, sitting half in sight To share the plunder, to fix things aright; At such advance in one poor hundred years.' Dr. Hale thinks that Lowell took a pessimistic view of public affairs in the United States at this time. It was a period, however, of the most rampant corruption. Honourable men had been shocked by the disclosures in regard to the Whiskey Ring, even General Grant's private secre |