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rich harvests, the bounty of Heaven, and the reward of industry, consumed in a moment, or trampled under foot, while famine and pestilence follow the steps of desolation. There the cottages of peasants given up to the flames, mothers expiring through fear, not for themselves but their infants; the inhabitants flying with their helpless babes, in all directions, miserable fugitives on their native soil! In another part you witness opulent cities taken by storm ; the streets, where no sounds were heard but those of peaceful industry, filled on a sudden with slaughter and blood, resounding with the cries of the pursuing and the pursued; the palaces of nobles demolished, the houses of the rich pillaged, and every age, sex, and rank mingled in promiscuous massacre and ruin!

IX. - WINTER.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, an American poet and man of letters, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 2, 1819. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1838. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but never practiced his profession. He has been for many years professor of belles-lettres in Harvard College. He is a man of original genius, and in variety of intellectual power has no equal among our men of letters. He has very rare powers of wit and humor. His "Fable for Critics" is a brilliant satire. He has published two series of "Biglow Papers," so called, the first of which has had great popularity both in Eugland and America. No one has ever used the Yankee dialect with so much skill and effect as he. His serious poems are remarkable for their vigor, originality, and depth of thought. Many of them have been called forth by the antislavery conflict. His descriptions of nature are vivid and beautiful. He has published two volumes in prose, called "Among my Books" and "My Garden Windows," which contain much admirable criticism. The following extract is from "The Vision of Sir Launfal," a poem founded upon the Legend of King Arthur.

OWN swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

Dow

From the snow five thousand summers old;

On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;
It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;
The little brook heard it and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams

*

He groined his arches and matched his beams;
Slender and clear were his crystal spars

As the lashes of light that trim the stars;
He sculptured every summer delight

In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;

Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew ;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear

For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops

And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
Which crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one;

No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this winter-palace of ice;
'T was as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day,
Each flitting shadow of earth and sky,

Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry
By the elfin builders of the frost.

*Groined: adorned with intersecting arches.

[graphic]

Within the hall are song and laughter,

The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel* and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly;

Corbel: a niche in a wall.

Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide;
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap,'

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind;
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,

Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little troops of silent sparks, Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks Like herds of startled deer.

But the wind without was eager and sharp,
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp,
And rattles and wrings

The icy strings,

Singing in dreary monotone,

A Christmas carol of its own,

Whose burden still, as he might guess,
Was

"Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"

The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch,
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold,
Through the window-slits of the castle old,
Build out its piers of ruddy light

Against the drift of the cold.

X. THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.

LONGFELLOW.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW is a native of Portland, Maine, and was graduated at Bowdoin College in 1825. Soon after leaving college he went to Europe, and remained there till 1829. He then returned home and assumed the duties of professor of modern languages at Bowdoin College. He resigned his post in 1835, and visited Europe again, and upon his return in 1836, was appointed to a similar professorship in the University at Cambridge. Here he has resided ever since, but he resigned his professorship in 1854.

Mr. Longfellow holds a very high rank among the authors of America, and is one of the most popular of living poets. He has written “ Evangeline," "The Golden Legend," "The Song of Hiawatha," and ". Courtship of Miles Standish," narrative poems of considerable length; "The Spanish Student," a play; and a great number of smaller pieces. He has a fruitful imagination, under the control of the most perfect taste, and a remarkable power of illustrating moods of mind and states of feeling by material forms. He has a great command of beautiful diction, and equal skill in the structure of his verse. His poetry is marked by tenderness of feeling, purity of sentiment, elevation of thought, and healthiness of tone. His readers are more than admirers; they become friends. And over all that he has written there hangs a beautiful ideal light, the atmosphere of poetry, which illuminates his page as the sunshine does the natural landscape.

Mr. Longfellow has also won enduring praise as a prose writer. His "Outre-mer," a collection of travelling sketches and miscellaneous essays, his "Hyperion," a romance, and his "Kavanagh," a domestic story, are marked by the same traits as his poetry. He is a "warbler of poetic prose," and would be entitled to the honors of a poet had he never written a line of verse. His "Hyperion," especially, is full of beautiful description, rich fancy, and sweet and pensive thought. He is also a man of extensive literary attainments, familiar with the languages of modern Europe, and a great master in the difficult art of translation.

OMEWHAT back from the village street
mands the old-fashioned country-seat;

Across its antique portico,

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;

And from its station in the hall,

An ancient timepiece says to all,—

"Forever - never!

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