and he has once or twice expressed himself in prose in a way that seems to show that he recognizes the artistic mistake in the construction of his earlier poems. The omission of the moral envoi from so many of his maturer creations strengthens one in this surmise. In 1867 Whittier published the following letter in the New York Nation:

"To the Editor of the Nation:

"I am very well aware that merely personal explanations are not likely to be as interesting to the public as to the parties concerned; but I am induced to notice what is either a misconception on thy part, or, as is most probable, a failure on my own to make myself clearly understood. In the review of 'The Tent on the Beach' in thy paper of last week, I confess I was not a little surprised to find myself represented as regretting my life-long and active participation in the great conflict which has ended in the emancipation of the slave, and that I had not devoted myself to merely literary pursuits. In the half-playful lines upon which this statement is founded, if I did not feel at liberty to boast of my anti-slavery labors and magnify my editorial profession, I certainly did not mean to underrate them, or express the shadow of a regret that they had occupied so large a share of my time and thought. The simple fact is that I cannot be sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence that so early called my attention to the great interests of humanity, saving me from the poor ambitions and miserable jealousies of a selfish pursuit of literary reputation. Up to a comparatively recent period my writings have been simply episodical, something apart from the real object and aim of my life; and whatever of favor they have found with the public has come to me as a grateful surprise rather than as an expected reward. As I have never staked all upon the chances of authorship, I have been spared the pain of disappointment and the temptation to envy those who, as men of letters, deservedly occupy a higher place in the popular estimation than I have ever aspired to.

"Truly thy friend,
"John G. Whittier.

"Amesbury, 9th, 3d mo., 1867."

One is reminded by this letter that Wordsworth once said to Dr. Orville Dewey, of Boston, that, "although he was known to the world only as a poet, he had given twelve hours' thought to the condition and prospects of society for one to poetry." In a letter read at the third decade meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, Mr. Whittier said: "I am not insensible to literary reputation; I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good-will of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book."

In his earlier years our poet was wholly ignorant of the fact that an artist should love beauty for its own sake. The simple-hearted Quaker and Puritan farmer-youth thought it almost a sin to spend his time in the cultivation of the beautiful. In his dedication of the "Supernaturalism of New England" to his sister, he says:—

"Poor fellow!" we say at first. And yet there is something refreshing and noble in such a spirit. It is with difficulty that the Germanic mind can bring itself to the study of the beautiful as something of co-equal worth with the moral. Let us leave that, says the Teuton, to the nation whose word for love of art is "virtue." How Whittier would have abhorred in his youth and early manhood the following sentiment by one of the Latin race:—

"The arts require idle, delicate minds, not stoics, especially not Puritans, easily shocked by dissonance, inclined to sensuous pleasure, employing their long periods of leisure, their free reveries, in harmoniously arranging, and with no other object but enjoyment, forms, colors, and sounds." (Taine's English Literature, II. 332.)

Or the following from the same work:—

"The Puritan destroys the artist, stiffens the man, fetters the writer, and leaves of artist, man, writer, only a sort of abstract being, the slave of a watchword. If a Milton springs up among them, it is because, by his wide curiosity, his travels, his comprehensive education, and by his independence of spirit, loftily adhered to even against the sectarians, Milton passes beyond sectarianism." (I. 397, 398.)

Here is another passage from Whittier on this same subject. It is almost a pity to give it, since the author has apparently repudiated the sentiment by omitting the lines from his complete works. In the introduction to "Supernaturalism of New England" he says:—

"If in some few instances, like Burns in view of his national thistle, I have—

'Turned my weeding-hook aside,
And spared the symbol dear,'

I have been influenced by the comparatively innocent nature and simple poetic beauty of the traditions in question; yet not even for the sake of poetry and romance would I confirm in any mind a pernicious credulity, or seek to absolve myself from that stern duty which the true man owes to his generation, to expose error whenever and wherever he finds it."

One more instance. In one of his sketches he is describing an old custom called "Pope Night," which has been kept up in the Merrimack Valley in unbroken sequence from the time of the Guy Fawkes plot. The plot is commemorated by bonfires and effigies of the Pope and others, and Whittier quotes these lines of a song which is sung on the occasion:—

Mr. Whittier was so broad-minded in regard to all matters pertaining to true growth, and withal so conscientious a student of the best versification, that is, the most natural, that we soon find him striving, at least, to free himself from all these minor faults.

Consequently his mannerisms more and more drop away. He is a born preacher. And presently we see in him a decided advance toward the delineation of what is simply true and beautiful, without the appreciable pause by the way, "to point a moral and adorn a tale." For a preacher is not a poet; and true poetic fire must be dimmed at once, and the divine afflatus be a lack-lustre thing, when appeals by pious exhortation are brought in to fill out rhyme and metre. Many of Whittier's purely religious poems are the most exquisite and beautiful ever written. The tender feeling, the warm-hearted trustfulness, and the reverent touch of his hymns speak directly to our hearts. The prayer-hymn at the close of "The Brewing of Soma" ("Dear Lord and Father of mankind," etc.), and such poems as "At Last" and "The Wish of To-day," are unsurpassed in sacred song. Some one has said that in Whittier's books we rarely meet with ideas expressed in such perfection and idiosyncrasy of manner that ever afterward the same ideas must recur to our minds in the words of this author and no other; that is to say, there are few dicta, few portable and universally-quoted passages in his writings. But exception must be made in favor of his best hymns. Their stanzas haunt the mind with their beauty, and you are obliged to learn them by heart before you can have peace. These purely religious productions show Whittier's work at high-water mark, and as long as the English language is spoken, they will be employed by those who require a vehicle for thought, by which the true worship may be served. There is only one poet in the world whose works will not suffer by reading his entire poetical productions in consecutive perusal, and that is Shakspere. Poetry should be read solely for the refreshment and elevation of the mind, and only when one's mood requires it. Unquestionably, if so read, all mannerisms that Mr. Whittier might have been accused of at an early stage in his authorship would not appear so conspicuous.

One of the mannerisms of our poet is his inclination toward the four-foot line with consecutive or alternate rhymes. Almost all of Burns's poetry is written as just described; and it is evident Mr. Whittier's ear was naturally inclined to it, from his early love for Burns, his patron saint, as it were, in those then untrodden fields. An ear educated by Tennyson, and the other Victorian poets, might be unable to grasp even the beauty of thought unless conveyed by their especial methods. One is pleased when rhymes are so masked, so subtly intertwined, and parted by intervening lines, that each shall seem like a delicate echo of that which preceded it,—the assonance just remembered, and no more.

A minor mannerism of Whittier is his frequent use of the present participle in ing, with the verb to be; "is flowing," "is shining," etc. The jingle of the ing evidently caught the poet's rhyme-loving ear, and sometimes it really has a very pretty effect. Certain it is he has used it with great skill, and given his readers insight into another of his versatile gifts.

As to the originality of our poet there is this to be said: He has a distinctively national spirit or vision; he is democratic in his feelings, and treats of indigenous subjects. His vehicle, his poetic forms and handling, he has treated as minor subjects for thought. He is democratic, not so powerfully and broadly as Whitman, but more unaffectedly and sincerely. He has not the magnificent prophetic vision, or Vorstellungskraft, of Whitman, any more than he has the crushing mastodon-steps of Whitman's ponderous rhythm. But he has thrown himself with trembling ardor and patriotism, into the life of his country. It is this fresh, New-World spirit that entitles him to be called original: he is non-European. He has not travelled much, nor mingled in the seething currents of Western and Southern life; but his strong sympathy has gone forth over the entire land. He also reflects faithfully the quiet scenes of his own Merrimack Valley. From his descriptions of these scenes we receive the impression of freshness and originality; and we recognize a master hand that can so portray them as to make us see the same places, though only on the printed page.

One regrets using a critical pen at all in discussing such a writer. It would be ungracious to call to a severe account one who places the most modest estimate upon his own work, and who has distinctly stated that, up to "about the year 1865, his writings were simply episodical, something apart from the real object and aim of [his] life." It is hard to criticise severely one who is unjust to himself through excess of diffident humility. In the exquisite Proem to his complete poems he would fain persuade us that he cannot breathe such notes as those of—

But not so, O gentle minstrel of Essex! There are poems of thine which thousands prefer to the best of Spenser's or Sidney's, and which will continue to exist as long as beauty is its own excuse for being. Thou too hast been in Paradise, to fetch thence armfuls of dewy roses for our delight; not mounting thither by the "stairway of surprise," but along the common highway of daily duty and noble endeavor, unmindful of the dust and heat and chafing burdens, but singing aloud thy songs of lofty cheer, all magically intertwined with pictures of wayside flowers, and the homely beauty of lowliest things. And thou hast imparted to us the "groping of the keys of the heavenly harmonies," that no one who loves thy songs, ever loses from his life.

CHAPTER III.

Among the three or four critical papers on Whittier that have up to this time been published, there is one that is marked by exceptional vigor; namely, the admirable philosophical analysis by Mr. David A. Wasson, published in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1864. The author gladly acknowledges his indebtedness to this paper for several things,—chiefly for its keen aperçu into the nature of Whittier's genius, and the proper psychological grouping of his poems. Mr. Wasson's classification can hardly be improved upon in its general features. He divides the literary life of the poet into three epochs,—The Struggle for Life, The Culture Epoch, and The Epoch of Poetic Realism; and between each of these he places transitional periods. The lines of his classification, however, are too sharply drawn, and the epochs seem too minutely subdivided. Moreover, the present writer would add an introductory or preparatory period; in other respects it seems to him that the grouping is as correct as such mathematical measurements of a poet's development can be. Suppose we group and name the poet's mental epochs as follows:—

First Period.—Introductory. 1830-1833.

During this quiet, purely literary epoch, Whittier published "Legends of New England" and "Moll Pitcher," and edited the "Literary Remains of Brainard."

Second Period.—Storm and Stress. 1833-1853.

The beginning of this period was marked by the publication of "Justice and Expediency," and during its continuance were written most of the anti-slavery productions, the Indian poems, many legendary lays and prose pieces, religious lyrics, and "Songs of Labor." The latter, being partially free from didacticism, leads naturally up to the third period.

Third Period.—Transition. 1853-1860

This Mr. Wasson calls the epoch of culture and religious doubt, the central poems of which are "Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life." We now begin to see a love of art for art's sake, and there are fewer moral stump-speeches. The indignation of the reformer is giving place to the calm repose of the artist. And such ballads as "Mary Garvin" and "Maud Muller" form the introduction to the culminating (or fourth) epoch in the poet's creative life.

Fourth Period.—Religious and Artistic Repose. 1860-

During this time have been written nearly all the author's great works, namely, his beautiful ballads, as well as "Snow-Bound" and "The Tent on the Beach." The literary style is now mature. The beautiful is sought for its own sake, both in nature and in lowly life. It is a season of trust and naïve simplicity.

The works produced during the Introductory period have already been discussed in the biographical portion of this volume.

Before passing rapidly in review some of the more important detached poems of the three latter periods (reserving a number of poems for consideration by groups), we must be allowed to offer a few criticisms on the earlier poems in general, meaning by this the ones published previous to the "Songs of Labor" in 1850. These earlier productions are to be commended chiefly for two things: (1) the subjects are drawn from original and native sources, and (2) the slavery poems are full of moral stamina and fiery indignation at oppression. There are single poems of great merit and beauty. But the style of most of them is unoriginal, being merely an echo of that of the English Lake School. Whittier's poetical development has been a steady growth. His genius matured late, and in his early poems there is little promise of the exquisite work of his riper years, unless it is a distinct indication of his rare power of telling a story in verse. It must be remembered that when Whittier began to write, American literature had yet to be created. There was not a single great American poem, with the exception of Bryant's "Thanatopsis." The prominent poets of that time—Percival, Brainard, Trumbull, Joel Barlow, Hillhouse, Pierpont, Dana, Sprague—are all forgotten now. The breath of immortality was not upon anything they wrote. A national literature is a thing of slow growth. Every writer is insensibly influenced by the intellectual tone of his neighbors and contemporaries. Judged in the light of his early disadvantages, and estimated by the standard of that time, Whittier's first essays are deserving of much credit, and they have had a distinct æsthetic and moral value in the development of American literature and the American character. But their deficiencies are very grave. There is a good deal of commonplace, and much extravagance of rhetoric. There are a great many "Lines" called forth by circumstances not at all poetical in their suggestions. Emotion and rhyme and commonplace incident are not enough to make a poem. One cannot embalm the memory of all one's friends in verse. In casting about for an explanation of the circumstance that our poet has so often chosen tame and uninspiring themes for his poems, we reach the conclusion that it is due to his solitary and uneventful life, and to the subdued and art-chilling atmosphere of his Quaker religion. You get, at any rate, no true impression of the intellectual breadth of the poet's mind from many of the productions of the period we are considering: the theme is too weak to support the poetical structure reared upon it. The poems and essays are written by one untoughened and unvitalized by varied and cheerful intercourse with men and affairs, a state of mind that was changed considerably as Mr. Whittier emerged from his semi-obscurity into a larger comprehension of his own powers.

A minor fault of this period is the too frequent interruption of explanatory notes, that break and mar the free-flowing melody of versified thought. We find the same blemish in Longfellow's early work.

At the opening of the complete poetical works of Whittier stand two long Indian poems, with their war-paint and blood—like scarlet maples at the entrance of an aboriginal forest. The first of these poems, "Mogg Megone," is every way inferior to the second, or "The Bridal of Pennacook." "Mogg Megone" was published in 1836, and "The Bridal of Pennacook" in 1848. Mr. Whittier half apologizes for retaining the former of these in his complete works. There is, amongst much that, eliminated, might not be missed, a certain fresh and realistic diction, or nomenclature. It is picturesque, in portions somewhat dramatic and thrilling, and now is valuable as a link between the early stage of his authorship and the advanced culture of later years. In style it is an echo of Scott's "Lady of the Lake" or "Marmion."

In "The Bridal of Pennacook" we have an Indian idyl of unquestionable power and beauty, a descriptive poem full of the cool, mossy sweetness of mountain landscapes, and although too artificial and subjective for a poem of primitive life, yet saturated with the imagery of the wigwam and the forest. A favorite article of food with the Indians of Northern Ohio was dried bear's-meat dipped in maple syrup. There is a savor of the like ferity and sweetness in this poem. It is almost wholly free from the strongly-marked faults of "Mogg Megone," and (that test of all tests) it is pleasant reading. Its two cardinal defects are lack of simplicity of treatment, and tenuity or triviality of the subject, or plot. The story is sometimes lost sight of in a jungle of verbiage and description. In contrasting such a poem with "Hiawatha," we see the wisdom of Longfellow in choosing an antique vehicle, or rhythmic style. Aborigines have a dialect of their own; the sentences of an Indian brave being as abrupt and sharp as the wild screams of an eagle. The set speeches of the North American Indians are always full of divers stock metaphors about natural scenery, wild animals, totems, and spirits, and are so different from those of civilized life that an expert can instantly detect a forgery or an imitation, so that all incongruities that attribute the complex and refined emotions of civilized life to the savage, seriously mar the pleasure of the reader. The descriptions of natural scenery in these Indian legends of Mr. Whittier's are fine, as all such writing by his facile pen was ever felicitous. And by virtue of this descriptive power, these idyls will be held long in grateful remembrance.

In plan the poem is like the "Decameron," the "Princess," the "Canterbury Tales," and "Tales of a Wayside Inn." The different portions are supposed to be related by five persons,—a lawyer, a clergyman, a merchant and his daughter, and the poet,—who are all sight-seeing in the White Mountains. The opening description, in blank verse, conveys a vague but not very powerful impression of sublimity. The musical nomenclature of the red aborigines is finely handled, and such words as Pennacook, Babboosuck, Contoocook, Bashaba, and Weetamoo chime out here and there along the pages with as silvery a sweetness as the Tuscan words in Macaulay's "Lays." At the wedding of Weetamoo we have—

The following stanza on the heroine, Weetamoo, is a fine one:—

The "Song of Indian Women," at the close of "The Bridal of Pennacook," is admirable for melody, weird and wild beauty, and naturalness. It is a lament for the lost Weetamoo, who, unfortunate in her married life, has committed suicide by sailing over the rapids in her canoe:—

There are two minor Indian poems by Whittier that have the true ring; namely, the "Truce of Piscataqua" and "Funeral Tree of the Sokokis." The latter well-known poem is pitched in as high and solemn a key as Platen's "Grab im Busento," a poem similar in theme to Whittier's:—

When the reader, who has worked gloomily along through Whittier's anti-slavery and miscellaneous poems, reaches the "Songs of Labor," he feels at once the breath of a fresher spirit,—as a traveller who has been toiling for weary leagues through sandy deserts bares his brow with delight to the coolness and shade of a green forest through whose thick roof of leaves the garish sunlight scarcely sifts. We feel that in these poems a new departure has been made. The wrath of the reformer has expended itself, and the poet now returns, with mind elevated and more tensely keyed by his moral warfare, to the study of the beautiful in native themes and in homely life. "The Shipbuilders," "The Shoemakers," "The Fishermen," and "The Huskers" are genuine songs; and more shame to the craftsmen celebrated if they do not get them set to music, and sing them while at their work. One cannot help feeling that Walt Whitman's call for some one to make songs for American laborers had already been met in a goodly degree by these spirited "Songs of Labor." What workman would not be glad to carol such stanzas as the following, if they were set to popular airs?

The publication of "The Chapel of the Hermits" and "Questions of Life," in 1853, marks (as has been said) the period of culture and of religious doubt,—doubt which ended in trust. In this period we have such genuine undidactic poems as "The Barefoot Boy."

Also, such fine poems as "Flowers in Winter" and "To My Old Schoolmaster;" as well as the excellent ballads, "Maud Muller," "Kathleen," and "Mary Garvin."

The period in Whittier's life from about 1858 to 1868 we may call the Ballad Decade,[26] for within this time were produced most of his immortal ballads. We say immortal, believing that if all else that he has written shall perish, his finest ballads will carry his name down to a remote posterity. "The Tent on the Beach" is mainly a series of ballads; and "Snow-Bound," although not a ballad, is still a narrative poem closely allied to that species of poetry, the difference between a ballad and an idyl being that one is made to be sung and the other to be read: both narrate events as they occur, and leave to the reader all sentiment and reflection.

The finest ballads of Whittier have the power of keeping us in breathless suspense of interest until the dénouement or the catastrophe, as the case may be. The popularity of "Maud Muller" is well deserved. What a rich and mellow translucence it has! How it appeals to the universal heart! And yet "The Witch's Daughter" and "Telling the Bees" are more exquisite creations than "Maud Muller": they have a spontaneity, a subtle pathos, a sublimated sweetness of despair that take hold of the very heart-strings, and thus deal with deeper emotions than such light, objective ballads as "Maud Muller" and "Skipper Ireson's Ride." But the surface grace of the two latter have of course made them the more popular, just as the "Scarlet Letter" finds greater favor with most people than does "The House of the Seven Gables," although Hawthorne rightly thought the "Seven Gables" to be his finest and subtlest work.

Mark the Chaucerian freshness of the opening stanzas of "The Witch's Daughter":—

A companion ballad to "The Witch's Daughter" is "The Witch of Wenham," a poem almost equal to it in merit, and like it ending happily. These ballads do not quite attain the almost supernatural simplicity of Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray" and "We are Seven"; but they possess an equal interest, excited by the same poetical qualities. "Telling the Bees," however, seems to the writer as purely Wordsworthian as anything Wordsworth ever wrote:—

How the tears spring to the eyes in reading this immortal little poem! The bee-hives ranged in the garden, the sun "tangling his wings of fire in the trees," the dog whining low, the old man "with his cane to his chin,"—we all know the scene: its every feature appeals to our sympathies and associations.

"The Double-headed Snake of Newbury" is a whimsical story, in which the poet waxes right merry as he relates how—

A word about Whittier's "Prophecy of Samuel Sewall." It seems that old Judge Sewall made the prophecies of the Bible his favorite study. One of his ideas was that America was to be the site of the New Jerusalem. Toward the end of his book entitled "Phenomena Quædam Apocalyptica; ... or ... a Description of the New Heaven as it makes to those who stand upon the New Earth" (1697), he gives utterance to the triumphant prophecy that forms the subject of Whittier's poem. His language is so quaint that the reader will like to see the passage in Sewall's own words:—

"As long as Plum Island shall faithfully keep the commanded post, notwithstanding till the hectoring words and hard blows of the proud and boisterous ocean; as long as any salmon or sturgeon shall swim in the streams of Merrimac, or any perch or pickerel in Crane Pond; as long as the sea-fowl shall know the time of their coming, and not neglect seasonably to visit the places of their acquaintance; as long as any cattle shall be fed with the grass growing in the meadows, which do humbly bow down themselves before Turkey Hill; as long as any sheep shall walk upon Old-Town Hills, and shall from thence pleasantly look down upon the River Parker, and the fruitful marshes lying beneath; as long as any free and harmless doves shall find a white oak or other tree within the township, to perch, or feed, or build a careless nest upon, and shall voluntarily present themselves to perform the office of gleaners after barley-harvest; as long as Nature shall not grow old and dote, but shall constantly remember to give the rows of Indian corn their education by pairs; so long shall Christians be born there, and being first made meet, shall from thence be translated to be made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

Moses Coit Tyler, in his "History of American Literature," II., p. 102 (note), says: "Whittier speaks of Newbury as Sewall's 'native town,' but Sewall was born at Horton, England. He also describes Sewall as an 'old man,' propped on his staff of age when he made this prophecy; but Sewall was then forty-five years old."

There are two or three other ballads in which Whittier is said to have made historical blunders. It really does not seem of much importance whether he did or did not get the precise facts in each case. The important point is that he made beautiful ballads. But it will be right to give, in brief, the objections that have been brought against "Skipper Ireson's Ride" and "Barbara Frietchie." "The King's Missive" will be discussed in another place.

Apropos of Skipper Ireson, Mr. John W. Chadwick has spoken as follows in Harper's Monthly for July, 1874:—

"In one of the queerest corners of the town [Marblehead], there stands a house as modest as the Lee house was magnificent. So long as he lived it was the home of 'Old Flood Oirson,' whose name and fame have gone farther and fared worse than any other fact or fancy connected with his native town. Plain, honest folk don't know about poetic license, and I have often heard the poet's conduct in the matter of Skipper Ireson's ride characterized with profane severity. He unwittingly departed from the truth in various particulars. The wreck did not, as the ballad recites, contain any of 'his own town's-people.' Moreover, four of those it did contain were saved by a whale-boat from Provincetown. It was off Cape Cod, and not in Chaleur Bay, that the wreck was deserted; and the desertion was in this wise: It was in the night that the wreck was discovered. In the darkness and the heavy sea it was impossible to give assistance. When the skipper went below, he ordered the watch to lie by the wreck till 'dorning'; but the watch wilfully disobeyed, and afterward, to shield themselves, laid all the blame upon the skipper. Then came the tarring and feathering. The women, whose rôle in the ballad is so striking, had nothing to do with it. The vehicle was not a cart, but a dory; and the skipper, instead of being contrite, said, 'I thank you for your ride.' I asked one of the skipper's contemporaries what the effect was on the skipper. 'Cowed him to death,' said he, 'cowed him to death.' He went skipper again the next year, but never afterward. He had been dead only a year or two when Whittier's ballad appeared. His real name was not Floyd, as Whittier supposes, but Benjamin, 'Flood' being one of those nicknames that were not the exception, but the rule, in the old fishing-days. For many years before his death the old man earned a precarious living by dory-fishing in the bay, and selling his daily catch from a wheelbarrow. When old age and blindness overtook him, and his last trip was made, his dory was hauled up into the lane before his house, and there went to rot and ruin.... The hoarse refrain of Whittier's ballad is the best-known example of the once famous Marblehead dialect, and it is not a bad one. To what extent this dialect was peculiar to Marblehead it might be difficult to determine. Largely, no doubt, it was inherited from English ancestors. Its principal delight consisted in pronouncing o for a, and a for o. For example, if an old-fashioned Marbleheader wished to say he 'was born in a barn,' he would say, he 'was barn in a born.' The e was also turned into a, and even into o, and the v into w. 'That vessel's stern' became 'that 'wessel's starn,' or 'storn.' I remember a school-boy declaiming from Shakspere, 'Thou little walliant, great in willany.' There was a great deal of shortening. The fine name Crowninshield became Grounsel, and Florence became Flurry, and a Frenchman named Blancpied found himself changed into Blumpy. Endings in une and ing were alike changed into in. Misfortune was misfartin', and fishing was always fishin'. There were words peculiar to the place. One of these was planchment for ceiling. Crim was another, meaning to shudder with cold, and there was an adjective, crimmy. Still another was clitch, meaning to stick badly, surely an onomatopoetic word that should be naturalized before it is too late. Some of the swearing, too, was neither by the throne nor footstool, such as 'Dahst my eyes!' and 'Godfrey darmints.' The ancient dialect in all its purity is now seldom used. It crops out here and there sometimes where least expected, and occasionally one meets with some old veteran whose speech has lost none of the ancient savor."

Now for "Barbara Frietchie." The incident of the poem was given to Whittier by the novelist, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, whose letter we append. The philanthropist, Dorothea Dix, investigated the case in Frederick, and she says that Barbara did wave the flag, etc. An army officer also made affidavit of the truth of the lines. A young Southern soldier has declared that he was present, and that his was one of the shots that hit the flagstaff!

On the other side are Samuel Tyler and Jacob Engelbrecht, the latter an old and greatly respected citizen of Frederick, and living directly opposite Barbara's house. Jacob wrote to the Baltimore Sun, saying that Stonewall Jackson's corps marched through another street, and did not approach Dame Frietchie's house at all. Lee's column did pass it, he says; but he, who stood watching at his window, saw no flag whatever at her window.

He says that when ten days later General McClellan passed through the town she did exhibit a flag.

Finally, General Jubal Early comes upon the witness stand, and testifies that as the Southern troops passed through Frederick, there were only two cases of waving of Union flags; one of these was by a little girl, about ten years old, who stood on the platform of a house and waved incessantly a little "candy flag," and cried in a dull, monotonous voice: "Hurrah for the Stars and Stripes! Down with the Stars and Bars!" No one molested her. The other case was that of a coarse, slovenly-looking woman, who rushed up to the entrance of an alley and waved a dirty United States flag.

"The Pipes at Lucknow" is a poem full of martial fire and lyric rush,—the subject a capital one for a poet. A little band of English, besieged in a town in the heart of India, and full of despair, hear in the distance the sweetest sound that ever fell upon their ears, namely, the shrill pibroch of the MacGregor Clan; and—