Another group of ballads comprises "Cobbler Keezar's Vision," "Amy Wentworth," and "The Countess."

In the first of these, old Cobbler Keezar, of the early Puritan times, by virtue of a mystic lapstone, sees a vision of our age of religious tolerance, and wonders greatly thereat:—

The ballad of "Amy Wentworth" treats of the same subject as "Among The Hills," namely, a superior woman, of the white-handed caste, falling in love with and marrying a broad-shouldered, brown-handed hero, with a right manly heart and brain.

Many and many a poem of Whittier's is spoiled by its too great length,—a thing that is fatal in a lyric. The long prelude to "Amy Wentworth" should have been omitted.

The scene of the lovely poem entitled "The Countess" is laid in Rocks Village, a part of East Haverhill, and lying on the Merrimack, where—

Whittier dedicates his poem to his father's family physician, Elias Weld, of Rocks Village. The story which forms the subject of the poem is a romantic one, and exquisitely has our poet embalmed it in verse. From a sketch by Rebecca I. Davis, of East Haverhill, the following facts relating to the personages that figure in the poem have been culled:—

The Countess was Miss Mary Ingalls, daughter of Henry and Abigail Ingalls, of Rocks Village. She was born in 1786, and is still remembered by a few old inhabitants as a young girl of remarkable beauty. She was of medium height, had long golden curls, violet eyes, fair complexion, and rosy cheeks, and was exceedingly modest and lovable. It was in the year 1806 that a little company of French exiles fled from the Island of Guadaloupe on account of a bloody rebellion or uprising of the inhabitants. Among the fugitives were Count Francis de Vipart and Joseph Rochemont de Poyen. The company reached Newburyport. The two gentlemen just mentioned settled at Rocks Village, and both married there. Mary Ingalls was only a laborer's daughter, and of course her marriage with the count created a sensation in the simple, rustic community. The count was a pleasant, stately man, and a fine violinist. The bridal dress, says Miss Davis, was of a pink satin, with an overdress of white lace; her slippers also were of white satin. The count delighted to lavish upon her the richest apparel, yet nothing spoiled the sweet modesty of her disposition. After one short year of happy married life the lovely wife died. Assiduous attention to a sick mother had brought on consumption. In the village God's-acre her gray tombstone is already covered with moss.

The count returned to his native island overwhelmed with grief. In after years, however, he married again. When he died he was interred in the family burial-place of the De Viparts at Bordeaux. He left several children.

Mr. Stedman, in his fine synthetic survey of American poetry, published in The Century, has remarked that most of our early poetry and painting is full of landscape. The loveliest season in America is the autumn, when, as Whittier beautifully says, the woods "wear their robes of praise, the south winds softly sigh,"—

We have plenty of idyls of autumn color, like Buchanan Read's "Closing Scene," and portions of Longfellow's "Hiawatha." But American winter landscapes are as poetical as those of autumn.[27] It is probable that the scarcity of snow-idyls hitherto is due to the supposed cheerlessness of the snow. But with the rapid multiplication of winter comforts, our nature-worship is cautiously broadening so as to include even the stern beauty of winter. There are already a good many signs of this in literature. We have had, of late, lovely little snow-and-winter vignettes in prose by John Burroughs of New York, and Edith Thomas of Ohio; and there is plenty of room for further study of winter in other regions of the United States. The most delicate bit of realistic winter poetry in literature is Emerson's "Snow-Storm." Mr. Whittier is an ardent admirer of that writer—as what poet is not?—and his own productions show frequent traces of Emersonianisms. He has prefixed to "Snow-Bound" a quotation from the "Snow-Storm," and there can scarcely be a doubt that to the countless obligations we all owe Emerson must be added this: that he inspired the writing of Whittier's finest poem, and the best idyl of American rural life. It is too complex and diffusive fully to equal in artistic purity and plastic proportion the "Cotter's Saturday Night" of Burns; but it is much richer than that poem in felicitous single epithets, which, like little wicket doors, open up to the eye of memory many a long-forgotten picture of early life.

"Snow-Bound" was published in 1860, and was written, Mr. Whittier has said, "to beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber." The poet has obeyed the canon of Lessing, and instead of giving us dead description wholly, has shown us his characters in action, and extended his story over three days and the two intervening nights,—that is to say, the main action covers that time: the whole time mentioned in the poem is a week. It is unnecessary to give here any further account of the idyl than has already been furnished in the account of Whittier's boyhood.

"The Tent on the Beach" is a cluster of ballads. In accordance with a familiar fiction, they are supposed to be sung, or told, by several persons, in this case three, namely, the poet himself, "a lettered magnate" (James T. Fields), and a traveller (Bayard Taylor). All of the poems are readable, and many of them are to be classed among Whittier's best lyrics. "The Wreck of Rivermouth," "The Changeling," and "Kallundborg Church" are masterpieces in the line of ballads. In "The Dead Ship of Harpswell" we have the fine phrase,—

Whittier has now become almost a perfect master of verbal melody. Hearken to this:—

There is a light and piquant humor about some of the interludes of the "Tent on the Beach." The song in the last of these contains a striking and original stanza concerning the ocean:—

"Among the Hills" is a little farm-idyl, or love-idyl, of the New Hampshire mountain land, and bearing some resemblance to Tennyson's "Gardener's Daughter." It is an excellent specimen of the poems of Whittier that reach the popular heart, and engage its sympathies. In the remotest farm-houses of the land you are almost sure to find among their few books a copy of Whittier's Poems, well-thumbed and soiled with use. The opening description of the prelude to "Among the Hills" could not be surpassed by Bion or Theocritus. In this poem a fresh interest is excited in the reader by the fact that the city woman falls in love with a manly farmer, thus happily reversing the old, old story of the city man wooing and winning the rustic beauty. The farmer accuses the fair city maid of coquetry. She replies:

In "Lines on a Fly-Leaf," the author of "Snow-Bound" gives in his hearty adherence to that movement for the elevation of woman, and the securing of her rights as a human being, which is perhaps the most significant and important of the many agitations of this agitated age.

The poem "Miriam," like "The Preacher," is one of those long sermons, or meditations in verse, which Whittier loves to spin out of his mind in solitude. It contains in "Shah Akbar" a fine Oriental ballad.

The narrative poem called "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim," published in 1872, has no striking poetical merit, but is valuable and readable for the pleasant light in which it sets forth the doings of the quaint people of Germantown and the Wissahickon, near Philadelphia, nearly two hundred years ago. It introduces us to the homes and hearts of the little settlements of German Quakers under Francis Daniel Pastorius, the Mystics under the leadership of Magister Johann Kelpius, and the Mennonites under their various leaders. "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim" is a poem for Quakers, for Philadelphians who love their great park and its Wissahickon drives, and for antiquarian historical students. We may regret, if we choose, that the poet has not succeeded in embalming the memory of the Germantown Quakers in such felicitous verse as other poets have sung the virtues and ways of the Puritans, but we cannot deny that he has garnished with the flowers of poetry a dry historical subject, and so earned the gratitude of a goodly number of students and scholars.

In "The King's Missive, and Other Poems," published in 1881, the most notable piece is "The Lost Occasion," a poem on Daniel Webster, finer even than the much-admired "Ichabod," published many years previously. "The Lost Occasion" is pitched in a high, solemn, and majestic strain. It is a superb eulogy, full of magnanimity and generous forgiveness. Listen to a few stanzas:—

The poem of "The King's Missive" calls for such extended discussion that a brief chapter shall be devoted to it.

CHAPTER IV.

So run the opening lines of the historical poem contributed by Whittier to the first volume of the Memorial History of Boston (1880). While the governor is thus sitting, in comes Clerk Rawson with the unwelcome news that banished Quaker Shattuck, of Salem, has returned from abroad. The choleric governor swears that he will now hew in pieces the pestilent, ranting Quakers. Presently Shattuck is ushered in: "Off with the knave's hat," says the governor. As they strike off his hat he smilingly holds out the Missive, or mandamus, of Charles II. The governor immediately asks him to cover, and humbly removes his own hat. The king's letter commands him to cease persecuting the Quakers. After consultation with the deputy governor, Bellingham, he obeys, and the then imprisoned Quakers file out of jail with words of praise on their lips.

The poem fascinates us, for the incident is dramatic, and focusses in a single picturesque situation all the features of that little historical episode of two hundred years ago, i. e., the persecution of the Quakers by the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A brief setting forth of the facts connected with this persecution will not only be full of intrinsic interest, but is indispensable to a right understanding of the Quaker poet's inherited character, as well as to a comprehension of his prose and poetry. One whose ancestors have been persecuted for generations will inherit a loathing of oppression, as Whittier has done. And this hatred of tyranny will be intensified in the case of one who is thoroughly read in the literature of that persecution, and is in quick and intimate sympathy with the victims, as Whittier is.

But first a word more about the "King's Missive." Joseph Besse, in his "Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers" (a sort of "Fox's Book of Martyrs," in two huge antique volumes), says [II., p. 226] that the principal instrument in procuring the royal mandamus (styled by Whittier the King's Missive) was Edward Burroughs,[28] who went to the king and told him that "There was a Vein of innocent Blood open'd in his Dominions, which if it were not stopt might over-run all. To which the king replied, 'But I will stop that Vein.'" Accordingly, in the autumn of 1661, Samuel Shattuck was selected to bear a letter to America. The London Friends hired Ralph Goldsmith, also a Friend, to convey Shattuck to his destination. They paid him £300 for the service. The ship entered Boston Harbor on a Sunday in the latter part of November, 1661.

"The Townsmen," says Besse, "seeing a Ship with English Colours, soon came on board, and asked for the Captain? Ralph Goldsmith told them, He was the Commander. They asked, Whether he had any Letters? He answered, Yes. But withal told them, He would not deliver them that Day. So they returned on shore again, and reported, that There were many Quakers come, and that Samuel Shattock (who they knew had been banished on pain of Death) was among them. But they knew nothing of his Errand or Authority. Thus all was kept close, and none of the Ship's Company suffered to go on shore that Day. Next morning Ralph Goldsmith, the Commander, with Samuel Shattock, the King's Deputy, went on shore, and sending the Boat back to the Ship, they two went directly through the Town to the Governour's House, and knockt at the Door: He sending a Man to know their Business, they sent him Word, that Their Message was from the King of England, and that they would deliver it to none but himself. Then they were admitted to go in, and the Governour came to them, and commanded Samuel Shattock's Hat to be taken off, and having received the Deputation and the Mandamus, he laid off his own Hat; and ordering Shattock's Hat to be given him again, perused the Papers, and then went out to the Deputy-Governour's, bidding the King's Deputy and the Master of the Ship to follow him: Being come to the Deputy-Governour, and having consulted him, he returned to the aforesaid two Persons and said, We shall obey his Majesty's Command. After this, the Master of the Ship gave Liberty to his Passengers to come on shore, which they did, and had a religious Meeting with their Friends of the Town, where they returned Praises to God for his Mercy manifested in this wonderful Deliverance."

The persecution, it is true, only ceased for about a year (the next recorded whipping-order bearing date of December 22, 1662). But the Quakers were greatly encouraged by the interposition in their favor.

In an address before the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dr. George E. Ellis, of Boston, read a paper criticising Mr. Whittier's "King's Missive." This address was published in the Proceedings of the Society for March, 1881. In the "Memorial History of Boston" [I., p. 180] he asserts that the Quakers were all "of low rank, of mean breeding, and illiterate." He says that they courted persecution, and that they were a pestilent brood of ranters, disturbers of the public peace, and dreaded by the leaders of the infant Commonwealth as they would have dreaded the cholera. He quotes Roger Williams, who wrote of the Quakers that they were "insufferably proud and contentious," and advised a "due and moderate restraint of their incivilities." Dr. Ellis, it is true, takes the theoretical ground of "the equal folly and culpability of both parties in the tragedy," but seems entirely to nullify this statement by his apparently unbiassed, but really partisan treatment of the subject. When you have finished his paper you perceive that the impression left on your mind is that the really bitter and unrelenting Puritan persecutors were long-suffering, angelic natures, while their victims, the Quakers, were mere gallows' dogs. His theoretical position is summed up in the following words:—

"The crowning folly or iniquity in the course of the Puritans was in following up their penal inflictions, through banishments, imprisonments, fines, scourgings, and mutilations, to the execution on the gallows of four martyr victims. But what shall we say of the persistency, the exasperating contemptuousness and defiance, the goading, maddening obstinacy, and reproaching invectives of those who drove the magistrates, against their will, to vindicate their own insulted authority, and to stain our annals with innocent blood?"—Memorial History of Boston, I., 1882.

Dr. Ellis is right in holding that some of the Quakers were gadflies of obstinacy, and full of self-righteous pride; but he fails to tell us of the patience, Christian sweetness, and meekness of character of the majority of them; and it is only when we turn to the pages of Fox and Besse that we see the inadequate character of such a picture as that drawn by Dr. Ellis. In the plain, naïve annals of Besse, the hard-heartedness and haughty pride of the Puritan magistrates (traits still amply represented in their descendants) are thrown into the most striking relief. They glower over their victims like tigers; they are choked with their passions; they spurn excuses and palliatives; they demand blood.

In the Boston Daily Advertiser for March 29, 1881, Mr. Whittier published a long reply to Dr. Ellis, in which he fortified the positions taken by him in his ballad, showing that he did not mean to hold up Charles II. as a consistent friend of toleration, and that there must have been a general jail delivery in consequence of the receipt of the mandamus. He says:—

"The charge that the Quakers who suffered were 'vagabonds' and 'ignorant, low fanatics,' is unfounded in fact. Mary Dyer, who was executed, was a woman of marked respectability. She had been the friend and associate of Sir Henry Vane and the ministers Wheelwright and Cotton. The papers left behind by the three men who were hanged show that they were above the common class of their day in mental power and genuine piety. John Rous, who, in execution of his sentence, had his right ear cut off by the constable in the Boston jail, was of gentlemanly lineage, the son of Colonel Rous of the British army, and himself the betrothed of a high-born and cultivated young English lady. Nicholas Upsall was one of Boston's most worthy and substantial citizens, yet was driven in his age and infirmities, from his home and property, into the wilderness."

Mr. Whittier further remarks:—

"Dr. Ellis has been a very generous, as well as ingenious defender of the Puritan clergy and government, and his labors in this respect have the merit of gratuitous disinterestedness. Had the very worthy and learned gentleman been a resident in the Massachusetts colony in 1660, one of his most guarded doctrinal sermons would have brought down upon him the wrath of clergy and magistracy. His Socinianism would have seemed more wicked than the 'inward light' of the Quakers; and, had he been as 'doggedly obstinate' as Servetus at Geneva (as I do him the justice to think he would have been), he might have hung on the same gallows with the Quakers, or the same shears which clipped the ears of Holder, Rous, and Copeland might have shorn off his own."

Let us look a little more closely at the evidence on both sides.

In the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia" we have a specimen of Quaker rant. After stating that he is opposed to the capital punishment of Quakers, but advises shaving of the head, or blood-letting, the proud and scornful old doctor concludes as follows:—

"Reader, I can foretell what usage I shall find among the Quakers for this chapter of our church-history; for a worthy man that writes of them has observed, for pride and hypocrisie, and hellish reviling against the painful ministers of Christ, I know no people can match them. Yea, prepare, friend Mather, to be assaulted with such language as Fisher the Quaker, in his pamphlets, does bestow upon such men as Dr. Owen; thou fiery fighter and green-headed trumpeter; thou hedgehog and grinning dog; thou bastard that tumbled out of the mouth of the Babilonish bawd; thou mole; thou tinker; thou lizzard; thou bell of no metal, but the tone of a kettle; thou wheelbarrow; thou whirlpool; thou whirlegig. O thou firebrand; thou adder and scorpion; thou louse; thou cow-dung; thou moon-calf; thou ragged tatterdemallion; thou Judas; thou livest in philosophy and logick which are of the devil. And then let Penn the Quaker add, Thou gormandizing Priest, one of the abominable tribe; thou bane of reason, and beast of the earth; thou best to be spared of mankind; thou mountebank priest. These are the very words, (I wrong them not!) which they vomit out against the best men in the English nation, that have been so hardy as to touch their light within: but let the quills of these porcupines fly as fast as they will, I shall not feel them! Yea, every stone that these Kildebrands throw at me, I will wear as a pearl."

As an offset to this quaint and amusing tirade, and to the charges of Dr. Ellis, one may read the following words of Whittier, and, by striking a general average between all the speakers, get a tolerable approximation to the exact truth. Mr. Whittier says:—

"Nor can it be said that the persecution grew out of the 'intrusion,' 'indecency,' and 'effrontery' of the persecuted.

"It owed its origin to the settled purpose of the ministers and leading men of the colony to permit no difference of opinion on religious matters. They had banished the Baptists, and whipped at least one of them. They had hunted down Gorton and his adherents; they had imprisoned Dr. Child, an Episcopalian, for petitioning the General Court for toleration. They had driven some of their best citizens out of their jurisdiction, with Ann Hutchinson, and the gifted minister, Wheelwright. Any dissent on the part of their own fellow-citizens was punished as severely as the heresy of strangers.

"The charge of 'indecency' comes with ill-grace from the authorities of the Massachusetts Colony. The first Quakers who arrived in Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, were arrested on board the ship before landing, their books taken from them and burned by the constable, and they themselves brought before Deputy Governor Bellingham, in the absence of Endicott. This astute magistrate ordered them to be stripped naked and their bodies to be carefully examined, to see if there was not the Devil's mark on them as witches. They were then sent to the jail, their cell window was boarded up, and they were left without food or light, until the master of the vessel that brought them was ordered to take them to Barbadoes. When Endicott returned, he thought they had been treated too leniently, and declared that he would have had them whipped.

"After this, almost every town in the province was favored with the spectacle of aged and young women stripped to the middle, tied to a cart-tail and dragged through the streets and scourged without mercy by the constable's whip. It is not strange that these atrocious proceedings, in two or three instances, unsettled the minds of the victims. Lydia Wardwell of Hampton, who, with her husband, had been reduced to almost total destitution by persecution, was summoned by the church of which she had been a member to appear before it to answer to the charge of non-attendance. She obeyed the call by appearing in the unclothed condition of the sufferers whom she had seen under the constable's whip. For this she was taken to Ipswich and stripped to the waist, tied to a rough post, which tore her bosom as she writhed under the lash, and severely scourged to the satisfaction of a crowd of lookers-on at the tavern. One, and only one, other instance is adduced in the person of Deborah Wilson of Salem. She had seen her friends and neighbors scourged naked through the street, among them her brother, who was banished on pain of death. She, like all Puritans, had been educated in the belief of the plenary inspiration of Scripture, and had brooded over the strange 'signs' and testimonies of the Hebrew prophets. It seemed to her that the time had arrived for some similar demonstration, and that it was her duty to walk abroad in the disrobed condition to which her friends had been subjected, as a sign and warning to the persecutors. Whatever of 'indecency' there was in these cases was directly chargeable upon the atrocious persecution. At the door of the magistrates and ministers of Massachusetts must be laid the insanity of the conduct of these unfortunate women.

"But Boston, at least, had no voluntary Godivas. The only disrobed women in its streets were made so by Puritan sheriffs and constables, who dragged them amidst jeering crowds at the cart-tail, stripped for the lash, which in one instance laid open with a ghastly gash the bosom of a young mother!"[29]

We may conclude this discussion by giving a few instances of Quaker persecutions, in addition to those mentioned by Mr. Whittier. In England the members of the sect suffered a whole Jeremiad of woes: they were dragged through the streets by the hair of the head, incarcerated in loathsome dungeons, beaten over the head with muskets, pilloried, whipped at the cart's-tail, branded, their tongues bored with red-hot irons, and their property confiscated to the State. One First Day, George Fox went into the "steeple-house" of Tickhill. "I found," he says in his Journal, "the priest and most of the chief of the parish together in the chancel. I went up to them and began to speak; but they immediately fell upon me; the clerk got up with his Bible, as I was speaking, and struck me in the face with it, so that my face gushed out with blood, and I bled exceedingly in the steeple-house. The people cried, 'Let us have him out of the church.' When they had got me out, they beat me exceedingly, threw me down, and threw me over a hedge. They afterwards dragged me through a house into the street, stoning and beating me as they dragged me along; so that I was all over besmeared with blood and dirt. They got my hat from me, which I never had again." Fox was at various times thrust into dungeons filled ankle-deep with ordure, and was shot at, beaten with stones and clubs, etc.

One evening he passed through Cambridge: "When I came into the town, the scholars, hearing of me, were up and exceeding rude. I kept on my horse's back, and rode through them in the Lord's power; but they unhorsed Amor Stoddart before he could get to the inn. When we were in the inn, they were so rude in the courts and in the streets, that the miners, colliers, and carters could never be ruder. The people of the house asked us what we would have for supper. 'Supper!' said I, 'were it not that the Lord's power is over them, these rude scholars look as if they would pluck us in pieces and make a supper of us.' They knew I was so against the trade of preaching, which they were there as apprentices to learn, that they raged as bad as ever Diana's craftsmen did against Paul."

In the declaration made by the Quakers to Charles II. it appears that in New England, up to that time, "thirty Quakers had been whipped; twenty-two had been banished on pain of death if they returned; twenty-five had been banished upon the penalty of being whipped, or having their ears cut, or being branded in the hand if they returned; three had their right ears shorn off by the hangman; one had been branded in the hand with the letter H; many had been imprisoned; many fined; and three had been put to death, and one (William Leddra) was soon after executed."

Besse, in his "Sufferings of the Quakers," states that one William Brand, a man in years, was so brutally whipped by an infuriated jailer, in Salem, that "His Back and Arms were bruised and black, and the Blood hanging as it were in Bags under his Arms, and so into one was his Flesh beaten that the Sign of a particular Blow could not be seen." And the surgeon said that "His Flesh would rot from off his Bones e'er the bruized Parts would be brought to digest." To all this must be added the humiliating fact that four persons were hanged on Boston Common for the crime of being Quakers. Their names were Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, William Leddra, and Mary Dyer.

CHAPTER V.

There is nothing in American literature, unless it be the anti-slavery papers of Thoreau, which equals the sevenfold-heated moral indignation of Whittier's poems on slavery,—a wild melody in them like that of Highland pibrochs; now plaintively and piteously pleading, and now burning with passion, irony, satire, scorn; here glowing with tropical imagery, as in "Toussaint L'Ouverture," and "The Slaves of Martinique," and there rising into lofty moral atmospheres of faith when all seemed dark and hopeless. Every one knows the power of a "cry" (a song like "John Brown's Body," or a pithy sentence or phrase) in any great popular movement. There can be no doubt that Whittier's poems did as much as Garrison's editorials to key up the minds of people to the point required for action against slavery. Some of these anti-slavery pieces still possess great intrinsic beauty and excellence, as, for example, "Toussaint L'Ouverture," "The Farewell," "The Slave Ships," and "The Slaves of Martinique." In these four productions there is little or none of the dreary didacticism of most of the anti-slavery poems, but a simple statement of pathetic, beautiful fact, which is left to make its own impression. Another powerful group of these slavery poems is constituted by the scornful, mock-congratulatory productions, such as "The Hunters of Men," "Clerical Oppressors," "The Yankee Girl," "A Sabbath Scene," "Lines suggested by Reading a State Paper wherein the Higher Law is Invoked to Sustain the Lower One," and "The Pastoral Letter."[30] The sentences in these stanzas cut like knives and sting like shot. The poltroon clergy, especially, looks pitiful, most pitiful, in the light of Whittier's noble scorn and contempt.

"Randolph of Roanoke" is a noble tribute to a political enemy by one who admired in him the man. The long poem, "The Panorama," must be considered a failure, poetically speaking. Its showman's pictures and preachings do not get hold of our sympathies very strongly.

The Tyrtaean fire in Whittier was so thoroughly kindled by the anti-slavery conflict that it has never wholly gone out. All through his life his hand has instinctively sought the old war-lyre whenever a voice was to be raised in honor of Freedom. The formal close of the anti-slavery period with him may be said to be marked by "Laus Deo," a triumphant, almost ecstatic shout of joy uttered on hearing the bells ring when the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery was passed.

Naturally, the war poems of a Quaker—and even of our martial Whittier—could not be equal to his peace poems. Still there are many strong passages in the lyrics written by Whittier during the civil war of 1861-65. At first he counsels that we allow disunion rather than kindle the lurid fires of fratricidal war:—

So he wrote in January, 1861. But afterward he becomes a pained but sadly approving spectator of the inevitable conflict:—

As a Friend, he and his brethren could not personally engage in war. But they could minister to the sick and dying, and care for the slave.

he says,—

"Barbara Frietchie" is, of course, the best of these war lyrics. The "Song of the Negro Boatmen" was set to music and sung from Maine to California during the war days:—

After "Voices of Freedom," in the complete edition of Whittier's poems, come a cluster of Biblical, or Old Testament poems,—"Palestine," "Ezekiel," "The Wife of Manoah to her Husband," "The Cities of the Plain," "The Crucifixion," and "The Star of Bethlehem." The best of these, perhaps, are "Cities of the Plain," and "Crucifixion,"—the former intense and thrilling in style, and suggesting the "Sennacherib" and "Waterloo" of Byron; the latter a high, solemn chant, and well calculated to touch the religious heart. Whittier has drawn great refreshment and inspiration from the thrice-winnowed wheat and the living-water wells of Old Testament literature.

Allusion has already been made to the hymns of our poet. Hymn-book makers have had in his poems a very quarry to work. The hymn tinkers, too, have not spared Whittier even while he was alive, and many of his sacred lyrics have been "adapted" after the manner of hymn-book makers. Dr. Martineau's "Hymns of Praise" (1874) contains seven of Whittier's religious songs; the "Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book" (1868) also has seven; the Plymouth Collection (1855) has eleven, and Longfellow and Johnson's "Hymns of the Spirit" (1864) has twenty-two.

The Essex minstrel has written quite a number of children's poems, such as "The Robin," "Red Riding Hood," and "King Solomon and the Ants." He has also compiled two books of selections for children, as has already been mentioned.

Like many authors, Whittier has been attracted, in the autumn of his life, to the rich fields of Oriental literature. His Oriental poems show careful and sympathetic study of eastern books. "The Two Rabbis" and "Shah Akbar" are especially fine. The little touch in the former of "the small weeds that the bees bow with their weight" is a very pretty one. In "The King's Missive" we have a few "Oriental Maxims," being paraphrases of translations from the Sanscrit. "The Dead Feast of the Kol-Folk," and "The Khan's Devil," are also included in the same volume.

Mr. Whittier has also made successful studies in Norse literature, for which his beautiful ballads, the "Dole of Jarl Thorkell," "Kallundborg Church," and "King Volmer and Elsie" are vouchers.

CHAPTER VI.

That particular era is now passed. The great secular heart is now in its diastole, or relaxation. Hence it is that the philanthropic themes discussed by Mr. Whittier thirty years ago (and most of his essays are of a philanthropic character) possess but a languid interest for the present reading public. The artistic essays, however, are charming, and possess permanent interest. Let us except from these the long productions, "Margaret Smith's Journal" and "My Summer with Dr. Singletary." Some have thought these to be the best papers in the collection. But to many they must appear frigid and old-fashioned in the extreme. They seem aimless and sprawling, mere esquisses, tentative work in a field in which the author was doubtful of his powers. They would ordinarily be classed under the head of Sunday-school literature. It has been suggested that the idea of "Margaret Smith's Journal" might have been derived from the "Diary of Lady Willoughby," which appeared about the same time. "The Journal" is a reproduction of the antique in style and atmosphere, and is said to be very successful as far as that goes. But certainly the iteration of the archaism, "did do," "did write," etc., gets to be very wearisome. The "Journal" purports to be written by a niece of Edward Rawson, Secretary of Massachusetts from 1650-1686. The scene is laid in Newbury, where Rawson settled about 1636. We have pleasant pictures of the colonial life of the day, of the Quakers and Indians and Puritans, and, on the whole, the sketch is well worth reading by historical students.

"Old Portraits and Modern Sketches" consists chiefly of newspaper articles on modern reformers. They were originally contributed to the National Era. The portraits drawn are those of John Bunyan, Thomas Ellwood, James Nayler, Andrew Marvell, John Roberts, Samuel Hopkins, Richard Baxter,—and, among Americans, William Leggett and Nathaniel Peabody Rogers,—both anti-slavery reformers and journalists; and, lastly, Robert Dinsmore, the rustic Scotch-American poet of Haverhill. The last three papers mentioned are the best.

The second volume of Mr. Whittier's prose writings bears the title "Literary Recreations and Miscellanies," and consists of various reviews, thumb-nail essays, and indigenous folk-and-nature studies, made in the region of the Merrimack. These last are of most interest, and indicate the field which Mr. Whittier would have cultivated with most success. In the reviews of the volume the newspapery tone and journalist diction are rather unpleasantly conspicuous. As a critic, our poet is not very successful, because he is too earnest a partisan, too merciless and undistinguishing in his invective or too generous in his praise. For example, what he says about Carlyle, in reviewing that author's infamous "Discourse on the Negro Question," is true as far as it goes. But of the elementary literary canon, that the prime function of the critic is to put himself in the place of the one he is criticising,—of this law Mr. Whittier has not, practically, the faintest notion. He considers everything from the point of view of the Quaker or of the reformer.

Numerous specimens of Mr. Whittier's prose have already been given in various parts of this volume, but for the sake of illustration we may add two more. For an example of his serious style take the following from "Scottish Reformers": "He who undertakes to tread the pathway of reform—who, smitten with the love of truth and justice, or, indignant in view of wrong and insolent oppression, is rashly inclined to throw himself at once into that great conflict which the Persian seer not untruly represented as a war between light and darkness—would do well to count the cost in the outset. If he can live for Truth alone, and, cut off from the general sympathy, regard her service as its own 'exceeding great reward'; if he can bear to be counted a fanatic and crazy visionary; if, in all good nature, he is ready to receive from the very objects of his solicitude abuse and obloquy in return for disinterested and self-sacrificing efforts for their welfare; if, with his purest motives misunderstood and his best actions perverted and distorted into crimes, he can still hold on his way and patiently abide the hour when 'the whirligig of Time shall bring about its revenges'; if, on the whole, he is prepared to be looked upon as a sort of moral outlaw or social heretic under good society's interdict of food and fire; and if he is well assured that he can, through all this, preserve his cheerfulness and faith in man,—let him gird up his loins and go forward in God's name. He is fitted for his vocation; he has watched all night by his armor.... Great is the consciousness of right. Sweet is the answer of a good conscience. He who pays his whole-hearted homage to truth and duty,—who swears his life-long fealty on their altars, and rises up a Nazarite consecrated to their service,—is not without his solace and enjoyment when, to the eyes of others, he seems the most lonely and miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the multitude know not of; 'a serene heaven which they cannot discern rests over him, glorious in its purity and stillness.'"

For a specimen of our author's vein of pleasantry take the following bit of satire on "The Training": "What's now in the wind? Sounds of distant music float in at my window on this still October air. Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones, wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, each martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow, regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly beneath me. Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and tinselled uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,—the United States of America, and possibly Texas. They look out with honest, citizen faces under their leathern vizors (their ferocity being mostly the work of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples and turnips without so much as giving a glance at the procession. Probably there is not one of them who would hesitate to divide his last tobacco-quid with his worst enemy. Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon-hearing, Sabbath-keeping Christians; and yet, if we look at the fact of the matter, these very men have been out the whole afternoon of this beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as busily at work as Satan himself could wish in learning how to butcher their fellow-creatures, and acquire the true scientific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican on a bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile in the brain of some unfortunate Briton, urged within its range by the double incentive of sixpence per day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine tails on his back!"

Part III.

TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL.

CHAPTER I.

The passing away from earth of John Greenleaf Whittier occurred on September 7, 1892, at four-thirty A. M., at Hampton Falls, N. H., in the very heart of the region he has immortalized by his ballads. The hour was just as the reddening east was mingling its light with that of the full harvest moon. Around his bedside were numerous relatives and friends. He fell asleep in an unconscious state, after an illness of a week. Let us now go back and, taking up the thread of the narrative where it was dropped on page 152, run over the incidents that have intervened in the decade since 1882 in the life of this pleasant singer—this plain Quaker farmer, who drew such soul-thrilling strains from his home-made rustic flute as to concentrate upon himself the attention of the whole world.

In 1883 (January 7) died, in Boston, Whittier's brother, Matthew Franklin Whittier, whose daughter Elizabeth, before her marriage to Samuel T. Pickard, was house-keeper for a number of years for her uncle, the poet, at Amesbury. "Frank," as his associates called him, obtained, it is said, his position in the Boston Custom House through the influence of his brother. Says a friend (Mr. Charles O. Stickney):—

"Frank was not a poet, and being of a practical turn of mind, had the good sense not to attempt the impossible; but he was a man of intellect, an omnivorous reader, was well posted, and, though inclined to seclusion and taciturnity, was nevertheless genial and companionable; his conversation spiced with his quiet, quaint humor, which bubbled up in some happy mot, neat fun, or well-turned bit of satire which raised a laugh, but left no sting behind." His quaint, humorous dialect articles, over the signature "Ethan Spike," are said to have given Nasby and Artemus Ward their cue. They were chiefly contributed to the Portland Transcript, the Boston Carpet Bag, and New York Vanity Fair. They all purported to emanate from "Hornby," a "smart town" in Maine—"a veritable down-east wonderland, whose wide-awake citizens were up to the times and ready to settle any great question of the day at 'a special town meetin'.'" Mr. Spike was as intense in his anti-slavery views as his brother Greenleaf. Specimens of his work may be found in the Portland Transcript, January 10, 1846, the Carpet Bag, October 14, 1850, and November, 1851.

In 1884 Whittier's seventy-seventh birthday was observed at Oak Knoll, when the genial old bachelor received with courtesy and hospitality all who called. Gifts of flowers poured in to serve as foil to the two huge birthday cakes from relatives.

An editorial writer in one of Boston's chief dailies thus describes a visit to Mr. Whittier, made in 1884:—

"Mr. Whittier met us at the door of the pleasant house at Oak Knoll. He came out on the piazza, and shook us each by the hand, and said, 'I am glad to see thee.' He concerned himself about our rubbers and waterproofs in the hall-way, and said that we were kind to come. I had taken a great fit of shyness on seeing him, and was surprised to hear my friend speaking to him in the same quiet tone that she had used when alone with me. I listened, and reveled in silence as the old poet and the young artist spoke together. He led us into the parlor, and they talked of a landscape on the wall, of pictures, and of a portrait.

"Presently he said: 'It is a little cold here. Shall we go into my room?' He led the way to the bright library where most of his days are now spent. Mr. Whittier happened to glance from the window as we stood for a moment speaking with him: he saw our cab waiting for us on the drive. The rain had begun again. Then a wonderful thing befell.

"He forbade us to go away within the quarter hour; he forbade us to go for three hours. He went out and sent the cabman away, then he took us into the library. We sat down in front of the cheery open fire, and Mr. Whittier talked with us. He spoke of the claims of young people on life, it was different from any talk I had heard; in the face of my poets, I used to think that all good people believed that life is our creditor and hard taskmaster."

On October 24, 1884, a portrait of Whittier was presented by Charles F. Coffin, of Lynn, Mass., a devoted friend and admirer of his, to the Friends' School of Providence, R.I. It was painted by Edgar Parker, of Boston, and represents Whittier sitting in an arm-chair in an attitude of peaceful thought.

It is hung in Alumni Hall, between busts of Elizabeth Fry and John Bright, and is considered to be a worthy memorial of the poet. Letters on this occasion were read from James Russell Lowell, Dr. Holmes, E. P. Whipple, John Bright, George William Curtis, Boyle O'Reilly, Matthew Arnold, and others. From Mr. Whipple's letter the following is an extract:—

"I have had the privilege of knowing him intimately for many years, and of doing all I could through the press to point out his exceptional and original merits as a writer. My admiration of his genius and character has increased with every new volume he has published and every new manifestation of that essential gentleness which lies at the root of his nature, even when some of his poems suggest the warrior rather than the Quaker. One thing is certain: that the reader feels that the writer possesses that peculiar attribute of humanity which we instinctively call by the high name of soul; and, whether he storms into the souls of others or glides into them, his hot invectives equally with his soft persuasions mark him as a man; a man, too, of might; a man whose force is blended with his insight, and who can win or woo his way into hostile or recipient minds by innate strength or delicacy of nature."

In 1885 the poet's birthday was again quietly celebrated at Oak Knoll, and in the afternoon Mr. Whittier's portrait was unveiled before a large audience in the Town Hall of Haverhill.

In September, 1885, occurred a most interesting festival—the reunion of the graduates of the old Haverhill Academy, for whom the poet cherished to the end of his life an earnest and outspoken affection. It was here that Whittier got all the scholastic education he ever had outside of the district school; the reunion was thoroughly enjoyed therefore by him, although it was in his honor. For his health was pretty good, and he was in fine spirits. An interesting letter was received from the aged Miss Arethusa Hall, a preceptress in the Academy when Whittier attended it. Among others, Dr. Holmes wrote: "The class of 1829 [Harvard] has a bright record; but how much brighter it would have been if we could have read upon the triennial and quinquennial catalogues: Johannes Greenleaf Whittier, A. B., A. M., LL. D., etc! But what, after all, can all the degrees of all the colleges do for him whose soul has been kindled by that 'ae spark of Nature's fire,' which Burns caught from her torch on the banks of Ayr, and Whittier among the mists that rise from the Merrimack?"

Mr. Whittier presented photographs of himself with his autograph to his school-mates, promised to think over the sitting for an oil portrait, and entered with zest into any bit of mirthfulness that sparkled out during the evening, although, as will be seen from the following description of a representative of the Boston Advertiser, he could scarcely understand the situation:—

"In the company was one man who seemed neither to accept nor to comprehend the situation. That man was John G. Whittier. His face and demeanor that day would have afforded study for a psychologist. That it was fifty-seven years since he entered Haverhill Academy he remembered with a certain sweet melancholy. That everybody was vying with everybody else in making love to him he could not help observing. But what it was all about, and why people should persist in talking of him when he wanted other, more congenial topics to be uppermost—these questions evidently puzzled him. A countenance on which was a look of shyness, of surprise, of perplexity; withal, a countenance irradiated by reciprocal affection and pleasure in seeing others pleased—if any one of the present artists could have caught and delineated those features, the painter would have been destined to share the immortality of the poet. On such a subject the temptation to indulge in reminiscence is strong. But space will permit me to mention only two or three characteristic incidents. A gifted vocalist had just sung a composition prepared for that day; and Mr. Whittier, turning to her, said, 'Friend, I wish that I could write a song for thee to sing.' An elocutionist of note read aloud one of the author's poems. He listened eagerly, as if it was wholly new to him; and a little mist gathered in those deep, dreamy eyes at the lines beginning,

'I mourn no more my vanished years,'

but there was an answering gleam at the words,

'The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.'

"Two circumstances made that one of the few red-letter days in the memory of the present writer. I had known in Kansas a lady who belonged to that band of Haverhill Academy pupils whose boast and joy it was to have studied and played with the Quaker poet. On mentioning this lady's name, I found myself instantly accepted as her proxy. For some minutes Mr. Whittier seemed to have no other interest than to learn all possible particulars of her and send to her all possible expressions of regard.

"The other circumstance was the result of my connection with the Advertiser. Taking me into one corner of the room, he asked me to sit beside him on the sofa. Then, drawing from his pocket the manuscript of the poem which he had written for that occasion and on portions of which the ink was not yet dry, the author, in a manner irresistibly winning, seemed to take his humble brother of the pen-craft into confidence, explaining the motive for various lines and passing on to speak of those boyhood days which the poem and the occasion recalled."

December 17 again came round in 1886, and found Whittier receiving friends, presents, and congratulatory telegrams at Oak Knoll. Wendell Phillips, for example, sent him a handsome cane, and some one else sent a great frosted cake and a basket that strained its sides to hold the gift of fruit it contained.

In December, 1887, it occurred to a young lady journalist on the staff of the Boston Advertiser (Miss Minna C. Smith) that it would be a good idea to have a "Whittier number" of that journal. The thought was a fertile one and was put into execution in great haste, but with eminent success. Poems were contributed by Walt Whitman, Dr. Holmes, James Jeffrey Roche, Hezekiah Butterworth, Herbert D. Ward, Minot J. Savage, Margaret Sidney (Mrs. D. Lothrop), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and others, and there was a great array of letters from other writers and eminent persons. Edward Everett Hale told the story of Whittier's Kansas "Emigrants' Song," how it was sung en route and in the West by brave pioneers of New England. James Parton, of Newburyport, Whittier's Amesbury neighbor, wrote that Whittier was carrying his burthen of eighty years "with considerable ease and constant cheerfulness." He continued:—

"I am sometimes asked, 'Is the poet Whittier really a Quaker or only one by inheritance?' He is really a Quaker. He wears, it is true, a silk hat of the kind familiarly called the stove-pipe, which gleams in the brilliant sun of winter, and seems to indicate at once the man of Boston and the man of the world. But it is not the broad-brimmed hat that makes the Quaker. The poet does actually keep a Quaker coat for Sundays and other dress occasions, which coat was made by a firm of Orthodox Friends in Philadelphia, the metropolitan city of the gentle sect. He also uses the thee and thou in conversation, although without attaching the least importance to these trifles. But he is also a Friend from heartfelt conviction. A few miles from his home is one of the smallest meeting-houses in New England, standing alone in a land of farms and fields. It is painted white, and looks a little like a small school-house. This edifice will seat perhaps forty persons, but the usual congregation numbers about fourteen, who on winter Sundays dwindle often to seven and sometimes to three. This is the meeting-house which the poet Whittier attends whenever he is at home, unless prevented by the weather.

"What an extraordinary thing is this! The poet who has most deeply felt and most beautifully expressed the sentiment and soul of New England is a member of the sect to which New England was so intolerant and so cruel! When the essential New England has ceased to exist, it will live again, and live long, in Whittier's poems; and he a Quaker! Was there ever before a revenge so complete and so sublime?"

Mr. Charles M. Thompson sent for this octogenarian birthday a fine poetical stanza:—