the editorship of the newly founded Atlantic Monthly, a position that he held until 1861. The year 1857 was made memorable also by his marriage to Miss Frances Dunlap, a much-valued friend and the governess of his daughter. In 1864 he became joint editor of the North American Review, and in this magazine continued the second series of the Biglow Papers, begun in the Atlantic Monthly, the series in which is expressed his finest power as a poet-patriot. Of the same excellence is the famous Commemoration Ode written for memorial ceremonies held at Harvard College in honor of the students who had fallen during the war. Among other contributions to these periodicals were numerous studies of poets and poetry— essays that rank among the best of their kind. Thus did Lowell prove himself to possess a rare combination of the powers of original composition and of criticism. So ably had he served the best interests of his country through his writings, that in 1877 he was appointed Minister of the United States to Spain, and served here until 1880, when he was sent as Minister to England. These high trusts, it proved, had not been wrongly placed. Lowell's devotion to the truest American principles, together with his large experience in public affairs, made him a most successful diplomat. He was given high honors by British universities, and he made many friends in England. After his return to America in 1885 he withdrew gradually from his former active life. Occasionally he wrote and lectured, and several times he made trips to England where he always received a cordial welcome. It was in his much loved Elmwood that death came to him August 12, 1891. Lowell was a man of wide learning, and has a prominent place in American literature for his exceptional critical ability and delightful wit, and for the artistic excellence of both his prose and poetry; but the secret of his power lies not so much in these things as in the sincerity and vigor of thought that rise above all bookishness, and in the warm human feeling that reached out for the love of his fellow-men rather than for fame and distinction. Probably that which most endears him to his countrymen is the quality he attributes to others in these words of admiration: "I am sure that both the President (Hayes) and his wife have in them that excellent new thing we call Americanism, which, I suppose, is that 'dignity of human nature' which the philosophers of the last century were always seeking and never finding, and which, after all, consists, perhaps, in not thinking yourself either better or worse than your neighbors by reason of any artificial distinction. As I sat behind them at the concert the other night, I was profundly touched by the feelings of this kingship without mantle and crown from the property-room of the old world. Their dignity was in their very neighborliness, instead of in their distance." Certainly in the realm of American literature, there is no one better entitled than Lowell to this "kingship without mantle and crown." A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD TH By ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING HEY say that God lives very high, But if you look above the pines You cannot see our God, and why? And if you dig down in the mines You never see Him in the gold; God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across His faceLike secrets kept, for love, untold. But still I feel that His embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place. As if my tender mother laid On my shut lids, her kisses' pressure, Half-waking me at night, and said, "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?" 418 ELIZABETH BARRETT R BROWNING OUND the young life of Elizabeth Barrett was so much of illness and dreariness, that we have accustomed ourselves to thinking joy came to her only with her marriage, and we forget, often, that her childhood was not unhappy. Few children, it would seem, were ever born with greater promise of a bright life. Her father was wealthy and generous; she had brothers and sisters near her in age and congenial in tastes, and she was, at least, a fairly strong, active child. She was born on March 6, 1806, at Coxhoe Hall, in the county of Durham, and when she was but three years old, her father removed to Hope End, in Herefordshire. The estate which he purchased there was a beautiful one, and the house, with its Turkish windows and Oriental-looking decorations, was most picturesque. That the scenery which surrounded her in her youth made on Elizabeth an impression which remained with her all her life is shown clearly in various passages in her poems: "Green the land is where my daily Dappled very close with shade; Summer-snow of apple-blossoms running up from glade to glade." Of all the brothers and sisters, Elizabeth was her father's favorite, and he encouraged her constantly in her precocious studies and in her childish attempts at composition. Long before she was able to read Homer in the original, she came upon Pope's translation of the Iliad, and it took a rare hold upon her. She showed its influence and her own bent toward poetry by composing, before she was fourteen, an epic on the "Battle of Marathon," of which her father, to whom it was dedicated, thought so highly that he had it printed and circulated it among his friends. But she also showed the influence of her beloved Iliad in a much more childish way, of which she has written delightfully in a poem called Hector in the Garden. A great flower bed, roughly shaped like a man and bordered about with turf, was made for her, and this she named after Hector, the Trojan hero and her great favorite. "Eyes of gentianellas azure, "Brazen helm of daffodillies, Breathing perfumes west and south; And a sword of flashing lilies, Holden ready for the fight: "And a breastplate made of daisies, |