"Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches Dwells another race, with other customs and language. Only along the shore of the mournful and mighty Atlantic In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Readers also become humanists with Longfellow and friends of the poet who had touched fountains where others had only stirred the surface of the pool. In America and in England he became "the writer of 'Evangeline" by distinction; and it was this idyl that led strangers to find the same humane elements in his minor productions and to love him as the expositor of hearth and home virtues and affection. It was an international poem in plot and scene, Homeric in measure and worldwide in sympathy. The author was by no means the maker of a single poem, since few have written more than he, but none have been so identified with their best. Next to this poem "The Song of Hiawatha" commends itself to American readers as the most agreeable reproduction of the aboriginal sources of our verse. "Hiawatha." The Indian in literature has generally taken the hue of the writer's imagination. He has been portrayed with inks of as many colors as his own war paint, red and blue and black. If, however, a cheerful dye could be found, Longfellow would be sure to dip his Indian in it. Accordingly the light that pervades the poem, or is best recalled, is that of the setting sun cast over a depart ing race. Down into this "long track and trail of splendor, into the purple mists of evening," the prophet and prince vanishes at last amidst the sad farewells of his people. But not until he had a vision of the nations forgetful of his counsels and warring with each other, scattered and swept westward, like the withered leaves of autumn. The whole poem is the swan song of a vanishing race, recounting its golden age of pristine happiness, its later decline, and finally the coming of an alien people "from the regions of the morning," followed by the crowding nations of many tongues. None better than our poet of all humanity could have sung this song so truly as to cherish the little sentiment that a conquering race can keep for the conquered. It was in accord with his own benignant holding, that "were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts given to redeem the mind from error, there were no need of forts and arsenals." The song of the invader was sung in "The Courtship of Miles Standish," which might have been entitled, the loves of John Alden and Priscilla and the redoubtable doings of the Pilgrim Julius Cæsar among the savages. It was the epos of the first encounter, to be drawn out into an epic of conquest in verse and prose, whose last book was "Hiawatha.” Its scenes are laid on the waterways from the Atlantic to the last of the great lakes, and from Plymouth to the Rocky Mountains. But the story begins in the Plymouth hamlet from which the "Mayflower" sailed away in the spring of 1621, and by the timber huts and the meeting-house and the spinning-wheel of Priscilla. In it also is the same touch of humanity that makes all in love with lovers once more, and with the poet of whose kindly heart they are the creation. Everywhere genial sunshine illumines his pages, even though the record be as a black letter chronicle of want and death in the Pilgrim settlement, or of exile and distress, as in Acadia, or of a dispersed people in the far northwest. And if this be true in the sadder phases of life, how much more in the glad experiences which he has filled with light and joy. For this reason, whatever position and rank as a bard in the present or future he may or may not hold, he will always be the best beloved of our American poets. His own words in the "Dedication" were prophetic of the affection which still flows toward him from all lands: "As one who, walking in the twilight gloom, Hears round about him voices as it darkens, "So walking here in twilight, O my friends! I hear your voices softened by the distance, pause, and turn to listen, as each sends "If any thought of mine, or sung or told, "Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, With the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations. "Therefore I hope, as no unwelcome guest, At your warm fireside, when the lamps are lighted, Nor stand as one unsought and uninvited!" Independency. XXV RALPH WALDO EMERSON A LIBERAL spirit which began to assert itself about the middle of the eighteenth century took definite form early in the nineteenth, with William Ellery Channing as its exponent. Emerson was following the latest pattern of theology, when the protesting habit of eight generations of clerical ancestors drove him to break with all ecclesiastical restraint and direction, and to become an independent such as had not been seen in New England. He was the legitimate product of two centuries of corporate individualism. The feature of it which shocked people was that the individual should shake himself clear of the corporation and assert his personal independence. If he had carried a small congregation with him, having a few articles of agreement and belief in common, he would have simply been following numerous precedents. But he chose to stand alone and apart and take the consequences. All this is interesting here only as related to the character of the contributions which he made to literature. These were by no means few nor unimportant. Another factor to be reckoned with is the general ferment of the time in which Emerson began his work. Reaction against a materialistic view of life of the Time. and its surroundings had started in Germany and passed through England to America. Prophets of Restlessness the ideal were making themselves heard. Coleridge and Carlyle, stirred by Goethe, were sending forth oracular sayings, which, if not always comprehended, set others thinking. The call was for higher thoughts of man and clearer views of nature and the intimate relation of the one to the other. Of this restatement of an old doctrine Emerson, in full sympathy with it, became the interpreter and expositor to his neighbors and fellow citizens of New England and the country at large. He began upon the lyceum lecture platform in the days when it was a sort of university extension movement with the first minds of the nation in its employ. The Popular Lecture. Information was not of so much account as inspiration. A race that had inherited the hearing ear through two centuries of sermonizing, and the understanding mind by discussing sharp points of doctrine at home was both fed and entertained by the half-ethical, half-secular discourse which was poured out every week through the winter in the cities and larger towns. The best thought of the time was furnished at the lowest price to each hearer. Moreover, people could afford to listen to speculations from the week-day platform which would not have been tolerated in the Sunday pulpit. If the speaker were only attractive, the audience and the lecture committee would take the risk of unorthodoxy in religion and politics. Emerson, as a pleasing lecturer, had no lack of opportunities to deliver his message all over the land. It was the form in which he first published it, his books being made up of what he had tested by oral speech to the people. He learned the value of this utterance and that by the response it got from the assembled intelligence |