by laying too much stress on the central idea, that the concrete fulness of the poet's thought may be boiled down to a formula, dried, labelled and pigeon-holed. Study the order and connection of ideas, but do not set up a logical guillotine, and imagine that when you have sliced a poem up you have communicated its spirit to your pupils. The most important part of method is the teacher's own preparation. Scudder, Longfellow's biographer, tells a pretty story about the poet's Maidenhood, which well illustrates the point: "Once when it (Maidenhood) was printed in an illustrated paper, it fell into the hands of a poor woman living in a sterile portion of the North-West. She had papered the walls of her cabin with the journals which a friend had sent her, and the poem with its picture was upon the wall by her table. Here, as she stood at her bread-making or ironing, day after day, she gazed at the picture and read the poem, until by long brooding over it she understood it and absorbed it as people rarely possess the words they read. The friend who sent her the paper was himself a man of letters, and coming afterwards to see her in her loneliness, stood amazed and humbled as she talked artlessly to him about the poem, and disclosed the depths of her intelligence of its beauty and thought." There is the true method suggested. Ponder what you are about to teach until you have absorbed it, and then artlessly disclose its beauty to your class. Saturated with the feeling and thought of the poem, and keeping clear the communication of that thought and feeling to your class as your main object, your intelligence and experience will readily suggest a method. It is not, of course, to be expected that what you have yourself won by long meditation reinforced by the accumulated reading of years, can be communicated in one or in many lessons, but an impetus can certainly be given to the better pupils that they will never afterwards lose. It is a common experience that the pieces of literature learned in youth are those to which we return with greatest pleasure in after-life, and the teacher who does not allow his own enthusiasm to die out need not despair of opening for his pupils a fountain to which in after-life they may again and again return for fresh draughts of joy and strength.

EVANGELINE.

A TALE OF ACADIE.

1847.

PREFATORY NOTE.

THE story of "EVANGELINE" is founded on a painful occurrence which took place in the early period of British colonization in the northern part of America.

In the year 1713, Acadia, or, as it is now named, Nova Scotia, was ceded to Great Britain by the French. The wishes of the inhabitants seem to have been little consulted in the change, and they with great difficulty were induced to take the oaths of allegiance to the British Government. Some time after this, war having again broken out between the French and British in Canada, the Acadians were accused of having assisted the French, from whom they were descended, and connected by many ties of friendship, with provisions and ammunition, at the siege of Beau Séjour. Whether the accusation was founded on fact or not, has not been satisfactorily ascertained; the result, however, was most disastrous to the primitive, simple-minded Acadians. The British Government ordered them to be removed from their homes, and dispersed throughout the other colonies, at a distance from their much-loved land. This resolution was not communicated to the inhabitants till measures had been matured to carry it into immediate effect; when the Governor of the colony, having issued a summons calling the whole people to a meeting, informed them that their lands, tenements, and cattle of all kinds were forfeited to the British crown, that he had orders to remove them in vessels to distant colonies, and they must remain in custody till their embarkation.

The poem is descriptive of the fate of some of the persons involved in these calamitous proceedings.

THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

1

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their

bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring

ocean.

5

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it

Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman ?

Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,

Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the wood

lands,

10

Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of

heaven?

Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!

Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October

Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er

the ocean.

Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of GrandPré.

15

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,

Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the

forest;

List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

PART THE FIRST.

I.

IN the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, 20 Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pré

Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,

Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number.

Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor

incessant,

Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the

flood-gates

25

Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the

meadows.

West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and

cornfields

Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward

Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic

30

Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended.

There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village. Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of

chestnut,

Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries.

Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables

projecting

35

Over the basement below protected and shaded the door-way. There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the

sunset