free from the blemishes which obscure the fame of many poets of higher genius; but he is far from having the giant limbs which evince a competitor on the course to whom any feat is possible. Thus, with boundless variety, there is no grandeur of imagery: with abundance of ideas there is no sublimity of conception; and, though he often strikes the chords of the heart, it is gently-leviore plectro; never with such force or spirit as to communicate an overpowering thrill and make the majesty of genius to be felt.

His poetry may be compared to a river which flows on musically with copious tide. Its waters are transparent, fresh, and lively. Some feet beneath them stones grown over with every variety of moss, and pebbles of every colour, glimmer to the surface: a multitude of water-flowers dot the current, and the hollow of the ripple, where the wave eddies round their expanded leaves, reflects the rays of the sun with prismatic effect. The stream now glances in the sunshine-now runs beneath a canopy of arched trees: anon it pours down over some grey rocks in a sparkling cascade, every shivered drop a fragment of light: again it winds on, and, as far as the eye can extend its vision, the smiling verdure of the meadows marks its meandering channel. There is extreme picturesqueness-the very air is salubrious and jocund and the traveller responds to its influences; but who could mistake the beautiful cascade for the thundering Niagara, or conceive the river peacefully dimpling on its course to be the Orinoco or Amazon ?

The poem which will best sustain Longfellow's fame, and is the most national in its character, is "Evangeline." It refers to the year 1713, when Nova Scotia, or Acadia, was ceded to Great Britain by France. The manners of the French colonists and their mode of life are sketched; and, instead of Acadia, the reader would suppose he was regarding a picture of Arcadia :

"Cheerily neighed the steeds, with dew on their manes and their fetlocks,

While aloft on their shoulders the wooden and ponderous saddles,
Painted with brilliant dyes, and adorned with tassels of crimson,
Nodded in bright array, like hollyhocks heavy with blossoms.
Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and yielded their udders
Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular cadence
Into the sounding pail the foaming streamlets descended.

Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the farm yard,
Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness.
Heavily closed, with a creaking sound, the valves of the barn doors,
Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a season was silent.

In-doors, by the wide mouth fire-place, idly the farmer

Sat in his elbow chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke

wreaths

Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him,
Nodding and mocking along the wall with gestures fantastic,
Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness.
Faces clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair,
Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the
dresser

Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine.
Fragments of song the old man sang and carols of Christmas,
Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him,
Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards.
Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated,
Spinning flax for the loom that stood in the corner behind her.”

This scene of happiness and rustic innocence, like most scenes of the same kind which exist in story, is soon effaced. Grand Pre is reduced to ashes, and the French are expelled on account of a conjectured complicity in the military designs of their countrymen and some Indian tribes against their British masters. All this is graphically narrated, and then the tale unfolds in its most touching incidents. In the general scattering of friends and relations, Evangeline and her lover are cruelly parted without either being furnished with a clue to the other's destination; and the rest of the poem is occupied with the interesting detail of Evangeline's many and longcontinued endeavours to discover her severed lover. there is a glimpse of nationality, for there is no country in which the young ladies so early fling off restraint and take the management of affairs into their own hands as America. Our heroine's bitter destiny is described to have something of the same effect on her :

Here

"As if a morning of June, with all its music and sunshine,
Suddenly paused in the sky, and fading, slowly descended
Into the east again, from whence it late had arisen."

Many suitors press to win her hand, and tell her she is "too fair to braid St. Catherine's tresses;" but she resolutely remains faithful to her early and first choice, in which constancy the words of Father Felician prove her encouragement; and very beautiful and true they are:-

-O, daughter, thy God thus speaketh within thee! Talk not of wasted affection-affection never was wasted; If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment. That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain."

A band of exiles pass down the Mississippi in quest of their lost "kith and kin" to the "prairies of fair Opelousas;" and with them goes Evangeline in the hope of lighting on the object of her search. We are compelled to omit many highly picturesque passages descriptive of the Mississippi and its banks, and must hasten to the reception given the wanderers by Gabriel's father, "Basil the blacksmith" of Acadia, now metamorphosed into a flourishing farmer :

"When they beheld his face, they recognised Basil the blacksmith.
Hearty his welcome was, as he led his guests to the garden.
There, in an arbour of roses, with endless question and answer
Gave they vent to their hearts, and renewed their friendly embraces,
Laughing and weeping by turns, or sitting silent and thoughtful.

"There glad voices were heard, and up from the banks of the river,
Borne aloft on his comrades' arms, came Michael the fiddler.
Long under Basil's roof had he lived like a god on Olympus,
Having no other care than dispensing music to mortals.
Far renowned was he for his silver locks and his fiddle:
'Long live Michael (they cried), our brave Acadian minstrel !'
As they bore him aloft in triumphal procession; and straightway
Father Felician advanced with Evangeline, greeting the old man,
Kindly and oft, and recalling the past; while Basil, enraptured,
Hailed with hilarious joy his old companions and gossips,
Laughing loud and long, and embracing mothers and daughters.
Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the ci-devant blacksmith,
All his domains and his herds, and his patriarchal demeanour.
Much they marvelled to hear his tales of the soil and the climate,
And of the prairies, whose numberless herds were his who would

take them:

Each one thought in his heart that he, too, would go and do likewise. Thus they ascended the steps; and, crossing the airy verandah, Entered the hall of the house, where already the supper of Basil Waited his late return, and they rested and feasted together." Gabriel, however, is not there, but has gone on an expedition to the Ozark Mountains, striving to chase away the restlessness of his passion in

"Hunting for furs in the forest-on rivers trapping the beaver." Evangeline's immediate impulse is to follow him. She accordingly quits "Basil the blacksmith," retraces her way, and lingers for some time at a Jesuit mission, where Gabriel was found to have halted in his travels, in the expectation that he would rest there in his return journey. Here we have again to observe that we must not criticise Evangeline's conduct by the strict rules of ordinary female delicacy. The type is purely American. No Gabriel, however, comes: hope

dies in the maiden's heart and despondency succeeds. We next find her in the tents of the "meek Moravian missions," and anon among the children of "Penn the apostle by" the Delaware's waters.'

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"And her ear was pleased with the thee and thou of the Quakers, For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country."

Time progresses: her forehead begins to show streaks of grey-" dawn of another life;" and the desolate beauty of Acadia in middle age is habited in the garb of a Sister of Mercy. One Sabbath morn she enters the alms-house to pay her usual attentions to the sick and dying-but the finale must be given in the poet's own words:

"Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder,

Still she stood, with her colourless lips apart, while a shudder
Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from
her fingers,

And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning.
Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish
That the dying heard it and started up from their pillows.
On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man,
Long and thin, and grey were the locks that shaded his temples;
But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment
Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood:
So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying.
Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever,
As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals,
That the angel of death might see the sign and pass over.
Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted
Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness-
Darkness of slumber and death-for ever sinking and sinking.
Then through those realms of shade in multiplied reverberations,
Heard he that cry of pain; and through the hush that succeeded
Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like,
'Gabriel! O my beloved!' and died away into silence.

Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his childhood;
Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them,
Village, and mountain, and woodland; and, walking under their

shadow,

As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision.
Tears came into his eyes; and, as slowly he lifted his eyelids,
Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his bedside.
Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents unuttered
Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue would
have spoken.

Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside him,
Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom.

Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sunk into darkness,
As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement.

VOL. XXXI.-Z

"All was ended now-the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow.
All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience!
And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom,
Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, Father, I thank thee!""

We have only to regret that Longfellow should have followed the vicious example of Southey, and written a poem so beautiful as "Evangeline" in dactilic metre, which we can only compare to presenting a rare jewel in an uncouth and illfashioned casket. We have quoted so largely that our remaining extracts must be brief. Graphic picturesqueness of description, tenderness of feeling, a sympathetic response to every voice and echo of nature and art, and a versatile fancy, appear equally in all his works, whether of greater or less length. Of the last mentioned, which is undeniably his crowning excellence, in addition to the samples already exhibited, we shall adduce a few more specimens. How admirable are the following lines!—

"Lives of great men all remind us

66

We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again."

Equally apt is the same image applied to illustrate another subject:

"The past and present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,

Like foot-prints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side."

Of the old masters of poetry he exquisitely speaks, as those

"Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of time."

And not less fine is the conclusion of a short piece, "The Day is Done," which in happiness of expression and sweetness will bear comparison with any in the volume:—

"And the night shall be filled with music;

And the cares that infest the day

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away."

"The Slave's Dream" will also prove a favourite with most readers: it is written with more of vigour and spirit