family down to the present time, the last of the race dying but two years ago. Losing their fortune, they became inn-keepers; and for a century the Red-Horse Inn has flourished, going down from father to son. The place is just as I have described it, though no longer an inn. All this will account for the landlord's coat-ofarms, and his being a justice of the peace, and his being known as "the Squire," things that must sound strange in English ears. All the characters are real. The musician is Ole Bull; the Spanish Jew, Israel Edrehi, whom I have seen as I have painted him, etc. etc.

It is easy to fill up the etc. of Mr. Longfellow's catalogue. The poet is T. W. Parsons, the translator of Dante; the Sicilian, Luigi Monti, whose name occurs often in Mr. Longfellow's Life as a familiar friend; the theologian, Professor Daniel Treadwell, a physicist of genius who had also a turn for theology; the student, Henry Ware Wales, a scholar of promise who had travelled much, who died early, and whose tastes appear in the collection of books which he left to the library of Harvard College. This group was collected by the poet's fancy; in point of fact three of them, Parsons, Monti, and Treadwell, were wont to spend their summer months at the inn.

The form was so agreeable that it was easy to extend it afterward so as to include the tales which the poet found it in his mind to write. The Second Day was published as one of the Three Books of Song in 1872; The Third Part formed the principal portion of Aftermath in 1873, and subsequently the three parts were brought together, as now, into a complete volume. The third part,

begun on the last day of December, 1872, was finished on his sixty-sixth birthday, February 27, 1873. The recital in melodious verse of those various stories, which had a special charm for the poet as he grew older, and the graceful, easy, half careless arrangement of all as the imaginary discourse of friends, was a diversion as well as a poetic task to one whose own experience had in a measure withdrawn him from the free, happy social intercourse of his manhood. When one considers the dates of the earlier formation of the Tales of a Wayside Inn, one sees with what exclusion of his deeper self the poet entered in spirit into the story-telling company that warmed itself before Squire Howe's blazing logs. It was at the same time that he was entrusting himself to the ghostly companionship of Dante.

The persons who were charged with the storytelling were so individualized by nationality or profession as to afford a generous scope in the character of the tales. By means of a Norwegian musician the poet was enabled to draw upon his knowledge of Northern legend; his Sicilian may well, in person, have reminded him of the stories which had their origin in Boccaccio or in Italian folk-lore; the Spanish Jew gave him an opportunity to draw upon the Talmud, which his friend Mr. Scherb had opened to his view; and the Poet, the Student, and the Landlord increased the range of his material. The only story which was wholly of Mr. Longfellow's invention was The Birds of Killingworth. In accordance with the general plan of this edition, the several tales are furnished with

head-notes only when Mr. Longfellow's own memoranda give some account of the circumstances under which he wrote. In the notes at the end of the volume will be found further explanation of the origin of the several tales, and occasional elucidation of historical points. An interesting monograph appeared in Berlin, 1884, under the title: Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn und ihre Quellen nebst Nachweisen und Untersuchungen über die vom Dichter bearbeiteten Stoffe, by Hermann Varnhagen. Recourse has been had to this for some critical suggestions.

TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN

PART FIRST.

PRELUDE.

THE WAYSIDE INN.

ONE Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn

Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves

Their crimson curtains rent and thin.

As ancient is this hostelry

As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;

A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.

A region of repose it seems,

A place of slumber and of dreams,

Remote among the wooded hills!
For there no noisy railway speeds,

Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds,
But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shade below,
On roofs and doors and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through the wide doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro,
And, half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign.
Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode
Deep silence reigned, save when a gust
Went rushing down the county road,
And skeletons of leaves, and dust,
A moment quickened by its breath,
Shuddered and danced their dance of death,
And through the ancient oaks o'erhead
Mysterious voices moaned and fled.

But from the parlor of the inn
A pleasant murmur smote the ear,
Like water rushing through a weir:
Oft interrupted by the din

Of laughter and of loud applause,
And, in each intervening pause,
The music of a violin.

The fire-light, shedding over all
The splendor of its ruddy glow,
Filled the whole parlor large and low;
It gleamed on wainscot and on wall,