James Russell Lowell. Here he is to be considered only as a prose writer: for notices and specimens of his poems we refer to Allibone's Every-Day Book of Poetry and Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. Outre-Mer : : a Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, New York, 1835, 2 vols., 4th edit., 1850, 16mo; Hyperion, a Romance, New York, 1839, 2 vols. 12mo, 13th edit., Bost., 1853, 12mo; Kavanagh, a Tale, Bost., 1849, 16mo. Prose Works, Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1857, 2 vols. 32mo: vol. i., Outre-Mer; DriftWood: a Collection of Essays; vol. ii., Hyperion; Kavanagh. land landscape. Around you are forests of fir. Overhead hang the long fan-like branches, trailing with moss, and heavy with red and blue cones. Underfoot is a carpet of yellow leaves; and the air is warm and balmy. On a wooden bridge you cross a little silver stream; and anon come forth into a pleasant and sunny land of farms. Wooden fences divide the adjoining fields. Across the road are gates, which are opened by troops of children. The peasants take off their hats as you pass; you sneeze, and they cry, "God bless you!" The houses in the villages and smaller towns are all built of hewn timber, and for the most part painted red. The floors of the taverns are strewed with the fragrant tips of fir-boughs. To the North American Review Longfellow has contributed the following articles: Origin and Progress of the French Lan-In many villages there are no taverns, and guage, vol. 32: 227; Defence of Poetry, 34: 56; History of the Italian Language and Dialects, 35: 283; Spanish Language and Literature, 36: 316; Old English Romances, 37: 374; The Great Metropolis, 44: 461; Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, 49: 59; Tegnér's Frithiofs Saga, 45: 149; AngloSaxon Literature, 47: 90; The French guage in England, 51: 285; Clark's Literary Remains, 59: 239. the peasants take turns in receiving travellers. The thrifty housewife shows you into the best chamber, the walls of which are hung round with rude pictures from the Bible; and brings you her heavy silver spoons-an heirloom-to dip the curdled milk from the pan. You have oaten cakes Lan-baked some months before, or bread with aniseseed and coriander in it, or perhaps a little pine bark. "He [Dom Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil] made some remarks on Irving, Cooper, and Prescott, showing an intimate acquaintance with each. His eye falling upon the name of Longfellow, he asked me, in great haste and eagerness, Monsieur Fletcher, avez vouz les poemes de M. Longfellow?' It was the first time that I ever saw in Dom Pedro simplicity resembled the warmth of childhood when about to possess itself of some long-cherished object. I replied, 'I believe not, your Majesty.' 'Oh,' said he, 'I am exceedingly sorry, for I have sought in every book-store of Rio de Janeiro for Longfellow, and I cannot find him. I have a number of beautiful morceaux from him; but I wish the whole work. I admire him so much.' Mr. Fletcher II. an enthusiasm which in its earnestness and afterwards presented him with the Poets and Poetry of America, informing the emperor that it contained some choice selections from the American poet whom he so much admired, and whom he called My Longfellow. Afterward, at the palace of S. Christopher, when Mr. F. took leave of the emperor, the latter said to him, 'When you return to your country have the kindness to say to Mr. Longfellow how much pleasure he has given me, and be pleased to tell him combien je l'estime, combien je l'aime."-Brazil and the Brazilians, in Historical and Descriptive Sketches, by Rev. D. P. Kidder and Rev. J. C. Fletcher, Phila., 1857, 8vo. RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. There is something patriarchal still lingering about rural life in Sweden, which renders it a fit theme for song. Almost primeval simplicity reigns over that northern land, almost primeval solitude and stillness. You pass out from the gate of the city, and as if by magic, the scene changes to a wild wood Meanwhile the sturdy husband has brought his horses from the plough, and harnessed them to your carriage. Solitary travellers come and go in uncouth one-horse chaises. Most of them have pipes in their mouths, and hanging around their necks in front a leather wallet, in which they carry tobacco, and the great bank-notes of the country, as large as your two hands. You meet also groups of Dalekarlian peasant women, travelling homeward, or townward in pursuit of work. They walk barefoot, carrying in their hands their shoes, which have high heels under the hollow of the foot, and soles of birch bark. Frequent, too, are the village churches standing by the road-sides, each in its own little garden of Gethsemane. In the parish register great events are doubtless recorded. Some old king was christened or buried in that church; and a little sexton, with a rusty key, shows you the baptismal font or the coffin. In the church-yard are a few flowers, and much green grass; and daily the shadow of the church spire, with its long tapering finger, counts the tombs, representing a dialplate of human life, on which the hours and minutes are the graves of men. The stones are flat, and large, and low, and perhaps sunken, like the roofs of old houses. On some are armorial bearings; on others only the initials of the poor tenants, with a date, as on the roofs of Dutch cottages. They all sleep with their heads to the westward. Each held a lighted taper in his hand when he died; and in his coffin were placed his little heart-treasures, and a piece of money for his last journey. Babes that came lifeless into the world were carried in the arms of gray-haired old men to the only cradle they ever slept in; and in the shroud of the dead mother were laid the little garments of the child that lived and died in her bosom. And over this scene the village pastor looks from the window in the stillness of midnight, and says in his heart, "How quietly they rest, all the departed!" Near the church-yard gate stands a poorbox, fastened to a post by iron bands, and secured by a padlock, with a sloping wooden roof to keep off the rain. If it be Sunday, the peasants sit on the church steps and con their psalm-books. Others are coming down the road with their beloved pastor, who talks to them of holy things from beneath his broad-brimmed hat. He speaks of fields and harvests, and of the parable of the sower that went forth to sow. He leads them to the Good Shepherd, and to the pleasant pastures of the Spirit-land. He is their patriarch, and like Melchizedek, both priest and king, though he has no other throne than the church pulpit. The women carry psalmbooks in their hands, wrapped in silk handkerchiefs, and listen devoutly to the good man's words; but the young men, like Gallio, care for none of these things. They are busy counting the plaits in the kirtles of the peasant girls, their number being an indication of the wearer's wealth. It may end in a wedding. I will endeavour to describe a village wedding in Sweden. It shall be in summertime, that there may be flowers, and in a northern province, that the bride may be fair. The early song of the lark and chanticleer are mingling in the clear morning air, and the sun, the heavenly bridegroom with golden locks, arises in the cast, just as our earthly bridegroom, with yellow hair, arises in the south. In the yard there is a sound of voices and trampling of hoofs, and horses are led forth and saddled. The steed that is to bear the bridegroom has a bunch of flowers upon his forehead, and a garland of corn-flowers around his neck. Friends from the neighbouring farms come riding in, their blue cloaks streaming to the wind; and finally the happy bridegroom, with a whip in his hand, and a monstrous nosegay in the breast of his black jacket, comes forth from his chamber; and then to horse and away towards the village, where the bride already sits and waits. and wedding guests, half of them perhaps with pistols and guns in their hands. A kind of baggage-wagon brings up the rear, laden with food and drink for these merry pilgrims. At the entrance of every village stands a triumphal arch, adorned with flowers, and ribands, and evergreens; and as they pass beneath it, the wedding guests fire a salute, and the whole procession stops: and straight from every pocket flies a blackjack, filled with punch or brandy. It is passed from hand to hand among the crowd: provisions are brought from the wagon, and, after eating and drinking and hurrah ing, the procession moves forward again, and at length draws near the house of the bride. Four heralds ride forward to announce that a knight and his attendants are in the neighbouring forest, and pray for hospitality. "How many are you?" asks the bride's father. "At least three hundred,” is the answer; and to this the last replies, "Yes; were you seven times as many you should all be welcome: and in token thereof receive this cup." Whereupon each herald receives a cup of ale; and soon after the whole jovial company comes storming into the farmer's yard, and riding round the May-pole, which stands in the centre, alight amid a grand salute and flourish of music. In the hall sits the bride, with a crown upon her head and a tear in her eye, like the Virgin Mary in old Church paintings. She is dressed in a red bodice and kirtle, with loose linen sleeves. There is a gilded belt around her waist; and around her neck strings of golden beads, and a golden chain. On the crown rests a wreath of wild roses, and below it another of cypress. Loose over her shoulders falls her flaxen hair; and her blue innocent eyes are fixed upon the ground. Oh, thou good soul! thou hast hard hands, but a soft heart. Thou art poor. The very ornaments thou wearest are not thine. They have been hired for this great day. Yet thou art rich, rich in health, rich in hope, rich in thy first, young, fervent love. The blessing of Heaven be upon thee! So thinks the parish priest, as he joins together the hands of bride and bridegroom, saying in deep solemn tones, “I give thee in marriage this damsel, to be thy wedded wife in all honour, and to share the half of thy bed, thy lock and key, and every third penny which you two may possess, or may inherit, and all the rights which Upland's laws provide, and the holy King Erik gave." The dinner is now served, and the bride sits between the bridegroom and the priest. The spokesman delivers an oration after the Foremost rides the spokesman, followed ancient custom of his fathers. He interlards by some half-dozen village musicians. Next it well with quotations from the Bible, and comes the bridegroom between his two invites the Saviour to be present at this groomsmen, and then forty or fifty friends | marriage-feast, as He was at the marriage feast of Cana of Galilee. The table is not sparingly set forth. Each makes a long arm, and the feast goes cheerily on. Punch and brandy pass round between the courses, and here and there a pipe is smoked, while waiting for the next dish. They sit long at table; but, as all things must have an end, so must a Swedish dinner. Then the dance begins. It is led off by the bride and the priest, who perform a solemn minuet together. Not till after midnight comes the last dance. The girls form a ring around the bride, to keep her from the hands of the married women, who endeavour to break through the magic circle, and seize their new sister. After long struggling, they succeed; and the crown is taken from her head and the jewels from her neck, and her bodice is unlaced, and her kirtle taken off, and, like a vestal virgin, clad all in white, she goes,but it is to her marriage-chamber, not to the grave; and the wedding guests follow her with lighted candles in their hands. And this is a village-bridal. Nor must I forget the suddenly changing seasons of the northern clime. There is no long and lingering spring, unfolding leaf and blossom one by one; no long and lingering autumn, pompous with many-coloured leaves and the glow of Indian summers. But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in the corn, when winter, from the folds of trailing clouds, sows broadcast over the land snow, icicles, and rattling hail. The days wane apace. Ere long the sun hardly rises above the horizon, or does not rise at all. The moon and the stars shine through the day; only, at noon, they are pale and wan, and in the southern sky a red fiery glow, as of sunset, burns along the horizon, and then goes out. And pleasantly under the silver moon, and under the silent, solemn stars, ring the steel shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices, and the sound of bells. And now the northern lights begin to burn, faintly at first, like sunbeams playing on the waters of the blue sea. Then a soft crimson glow tinges the heavens. There is a blush on the cheek of night. The colours come and go, and change from crimson to gold, from gold to crimson. The snow is stained with rosy light. Twofold from the zenith, east and west, flames a fiery sword; and a broad band passes athwart the heavens like a summer sunset. Soft purple clouds come sailing over the sky, and through their vapoury folds the winking stars shine white as silver. With such pomp as this is merry Christmas ushered in, Swedish peasants dance on straw, and the peasant girls throw straws at the timbered roof of the hall, and for every one that sticks in a crack shall a groomsman come to their wedding. Merry Christmas, indeed! For pious souls there shall be church-songs and sermons, but for Swedish peasants brandy and nut-brown ale in wooden bowls; and the great Yule-cake, crowned with a cheese, and garlanded with apples, and upholding a three-armed candlestick over the Christmas feast. They may tell tales, too, of Jons Lundsbraka, and Lunkenfus, and the great Riddar-Finke of Pingsdada. And now the glad leafy midsummer, full of blossoms and the song of nightingales, is come! Saint John has taken the flowers and festival of heathen Balder; and in every village there is a May-pole fifty feet high, with wreaths and roses, and ribands streaming in the wind, and a noisy weathercock on the top, to tell the village whence the wind cometh and whither it goeth. The sun does not set till ten o'clock at night, and the children are at play in the streets an hour later. The windows and doors are all open, and you may sit and read till midnight without a candle. Oh, how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but a sunless yet unclouded day, descending upon earth with dews, and shadows, and refreshing coolness! How beautiful the long mild twilight, which, like a silver clasp, unites to-day with yesterday! How beautiful the silent hour, when morning and evening thus sit together, hand in hand, beneath the starless sky of midnight! From the church tower in the public square the bells toll the hour with a soft musical chime; and the watchman whose watch-tower is the belfry, blows a blast on his horn for each stroke of the hammer, and four times, to the four corners of the heavens, in a sonorous voice he chants: "Ho! watchman, ho! Twelve is the clock! From his swallow's-nest in the belfry he can see the sun all night long; and farther north the priest stands at his door in the warm midnight, and lights his pipe with a common burning-glass. Preface to Longfellow's translation of The Children of the Lord's Supper. RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., though only a single star heralded the first born 1807, Archbishop of Dublin, 1864, is Christmas. And in memory of that day the ❘ the author of many valuable works,-Bibli cal, theological, poetical, and philological, ica. "Teachers of all grades will find it an invalua ble aid both to their own private improvement and the instruction of their scholars. . .. Nobody can think the study of words, as pursued by this writer, is dry or barren."-Lond. Athen., 1852, 378. See also 1855, 290; 1859, ii. 255. "It is a book which ought to be introduced into all normal schools."-Lon. Lit. Gaz., 1852, 278. THE ADVANTAGES TO BE DERIVED FROM A by the history of a word than by the history of a campaign." Impressing the same truth, Emerson has somewhere characterized language as "fossil poetry." He evidently means that just as in some fossil, curious and beautiful shapes of vegetable or animal life, the graceful fern or the finely vertebrated lizard, such as now, it may be, have been extinct for thousands of years, are permanently bound up with the stone, and rescued from that perishing which would otherwise have been theirs, so in words are beautiful thoughts and images, the imagination and the feeling of past ages, of men long since in their graves, of men whose very names have perac-ished, these, which would so easily have perished too, preserved and made safe forever. The phrase is a striking one; the only fault which one might be tempted to find with it is, that it is too narrow. Language may be, and indeed is, this "fossil poetry;" but it may be affirmed of it with exactly the same truth that it is fossil ethics or fossil history. Words quite as often and as effectually embody facts of history, or convictions of the moral common sense, as of the imagination or passion of men: even as, so far as that moral sense may be perverted, they will bear witness and keep a record of that perversion. There are few who would not readily knowledge that mainly in worthy books are preserved and hoarded the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which the world has accumulated; and that chiefly by aid of these they are handed down from one generation to another. I shall urge on you in these lectures something different from this; namely, that not in books only, which all acknowledge, nor yet in connected oral discourse, but often also in words contemplated singly, there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination, laid up,-that from these lessons of infinite worth may be derived, if only our attention is roused to their existence. I shall urge on you (though with teaching such as you enjoy, the subject will not be new) how well it will repay you to study the words which you are in the habit of using or of meeting, be they such as relate to highest spiritual things, or our common words of the shop and the market, and of all the familiar intercourse of life. It will indeed repay you far better than you can easily believe. I am sure, at least, that for many a young man his first discovery of the fact, that words are living powers, are the vesture, yea even the body, which thoughts weave for themselves, has been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquisition of another sense, or the introduction into a new world; he is never able to cease wondering at the moral marvels that surround him on every side, and ever reveal themselves more and more to his gaze.... A great writer not very long departed from us has borne witness at once to the pleasantness and profit of this study. "In a language," he says, "like ours, where so many words are derived from other languages, there are few modes of instruction more useful or more amusing than that of accustoming young people to seek for the etymology or primary meaning of the words they use. There are cases in which more knowledge of more value may be conveyed On the Study of Words. ON THE MORALITY IN WORDS. But has man fallen, and deeply fallen, from the heights of his original creation? We need no more than his language to prove it. Like everything else about him, it bears at once the stamp of his greatness and of his degradation, of his glory and of his shame. What dark and sombre threads he must have woven into the tissue of his life, before we could trace those threads of darkness which run through the tissue of his language! What facts of wickedness and woe must have existed in the one, ere such words could exist to designate these as are found in the other! There have never wanted those who would make light of the hurts which man has inflicted on himself, of the sickness with which he is sick; who would persuade themselves and others that moralists and divines, if they have not quite invented, have yet enor mously exaggerated, these. But are statements of the depths of his fall, the malignity of the disease with which he is sick, found only in Scripture and in sermons? Are those who bring forward these, libellers of human nature? Or are not mournful corroborations of the truth of these imprinted deeply upon every promise of man's natural and spiritual life, and on none more deeply than on his language? It needs but to open a dictionary, and to cast our eye thoughtfully down a few columns, and we shall find abundant confirmation of this sadder and sterner estimate of man's moral and spiritual condition. How else shall we explain this long catalogue of words having all to do with sin or with sorrow, or with both? How came they there? We may be quite sure that they were not invented without being needed, and they have each a correlative in the world of realities. I open the first letter of the alphabet; what means this 66 Ah," ," this "Alas," these deep and longdrawn sighs of humanity, which at once encounter me there? And then presently there meet me such words as these: "Affliction," ," "Agony," "Anguish," "Assassin," "Atheist,' Avarice," and a hundred more, -words, you will observe, not laid up in the recesses of the language, to be drawn forth on rare occasions, but many of them such as must be continually on the lips of men. And indeed, in the matter of abundance, it is sad to note how much richer our vocabularies are in words that set forth sins, than in those that set forth graces. When St. Paul (Gal. v. 19-23) would put these against those, "the works of the flesh" against "the fruit of the Spirit," those are seventeen, these only nine; and where do we find in Scripture such lists of graces as we do at 2 Tim. iii. 2, Rom. i. 29-31, of their contraries? 99 66 Nor can I help noting, in the oversight and muster from this point of view of the words which constitute a language, the manner in which its utmost resources have been taxed to express the infinite varieties, now of human suffering, now of human sin. Thus, what a fearful thing is it that any language should possess a word to express the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing. And yet such in more languages than one may be found. Nor are there wanting, I suppose, in any language, words which are the mournful record of the strange wickednesses which the genius of man, so fertile in evil, has invented. What whole process of cruelty are sometimes wrapped up in a single word! On the Study of Words. GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD, born at Machias, Maine, 1808, graduated at Harvard University, 1828, and was admitted to the Suffolk County (Boston) bar, 1833; died 1879. He was a member of the Com mon Council of Boston (of which he was for six months the president), of the Massachusetts State Legislature, and of its Senate, and was one of the best writers that the United States have produced. The Life and Adventures of Captain John Smith, Bost., 1834, 16mo (Sparks's Amer. Biog., Ser. 1, vol. ii.); Fourth of July Oration before the City Authorities of Boston, Bost., 1835; The Relation of the Poet to His Age, a Discourse, Bost., 1843, 8vo; Conneotion between Geography and History, Bost., 1846, 12mo; Address before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, Bost., 1850; Address before the New York Pilgrim Society, 1851; Discourse before the New England Society, New York, 1852, 8vo; Eulogy on Daniel Webster, 1852 (in A Memorial of Daniel Webster from the City of Boston, Bost., 1853, 8vo, edited by G. S. Hillard); Oration before the Inhabitants of Boston, July 4, 1853, Bost., 1853, 8vo; Six Months in Italy, Bost., 1853, 2 vols. 12mo, Lond., 1853, 2 vols. 12mo, and later edits. (a standard work of great excellence); Dangers and Duties of the Mercantile Profession, Bost., 1854, 8vo; A Memoir of James Brown, Bost., 1856, 8vo; First, Second, Third, and Fourth Class Readers, Bost., 1856-57, etc., 4 vols.; Address before the Norfolk Agricultural Society, 1860, Svo; The Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, 1865. He edited, with success, the Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Bost., 1839, 5 vols. 12mo; and also a Selection from the Writings of Henry Cleveland, Bost., 1844, 12mo, privately printed, and published a translation of Guizot's Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington, Bost., 1840, 16mo, and Selections from the Writings of W. S. Landor, Bost., 1856, 12mo. He was co-editor of The American Jurist, The Christian Register, and The Boston Courier, and contributed to The Christian Examiner, The New England Magazine, The North American Review (23 articles), and Appleton's New American Cyclopædia (articles Choate, Everett). He was urged by the present writer to publish a collective edition of his works, but was too modest to accede. "George S. Hillard is one of the most polished writers of New England. His taste is fastidious, and he is a fine rhetorician. He excels in arrangement and condensation, and has an imaginative expression. Of his numerous articles in the North American Review, one of the most brilliant is on Prescott's Conquest of Mexico [58: 157, Jan. 1844], but I think the happiest of his essays is that on the Mission of the Poet, read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society [of Harvard University, Aug. 24, 1843]."-R. W. GRISWOLD, D.D.: The Intellectual History, Condition, and Prospects of the Country, prefixed to his Prose Writers of America. |