Nations." The poem owes something, also, to Mrs. Longfellow, who walked round the arsenal with her husband when they were on their wedding tour, and startled him by remarking that the gun-barrels ranged upon the walls looked like an organ for death to play.

"Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys !
What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies!"

We must not forget that this solemn strain was full of prophecy.

"The Arrow and the Song" is short, simple, perfect. Another poet, in developing its idea, might have drawn upon a larger vocabulary; but here nothing but the simplest words are necessary. I think that no poet could find in this little song anything at which to cavil. The mingling of lyric with epigram somewhat recalls the happiest efforts of Walter Savage Landor.

THE ARROW AND THE SONG.

I SHOT an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where ;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where,
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

114

LIFE OF LONGFELLOW.

These lines were composed while Longfellow was strolling through "Norton's Woods" at Cambridge.

"To a Child," the first of the poet's studies of infancy, contains oft-quoted words about Washington :—

"Once, ah, once, within these walls,

One whom memory oft recalls,
The Father of his Country, dwelt.
And yonder meadows, broad and damp,
The fires of the besieging camp
Encircled with a burning belt.

Up and down those echoing stairs,
Heavy with the weight of cares,
Sounded his majestic tread ;
Yes, within this very room
Sat he in those hours of gloom,

Weary both in heart and head."

In "Rain in Summer" an eye that dilates less in excitement than Walt Whitman's, nevertheless looks upon nature, for once, after the manner of that earth-intoxicated rhapsodist. Yet the passage least like Whitman is the best

"These, and far more than these,
The Poet sees!
He can behold

Aquarius old

Walking the fenceless fields of air,

And from each ample fold

Of the clouds about him rolled

Scattering everywhere

The showery rain,

As the farmer scatters his grain."

This is not Whitman, but Wordsworth.

CHAPTER VIII.

HAT should it be called?

WH

"Gabrielle," or "Celestine," or "Evangeline"? The new tale that Longfellow had been putting into hexameters eventually appeared in 1847, with the title of "Evangeline; a Tale of Acadie."

In 1755 Nova Scotia—or Acadia-which for more than thirty years had been nominally a British province, was inhabited by some thousands of French colonists, who were exempt from military service under France, and were termed "French Neutrals." Their real sympathies lay with the land of their birth, not with the Government under whose half-contemptuous protection they lived. In Europe, commissioners had for some time been trying to settle a satisfactory boundary between New France and Nova Scotia, when matters were brought to a crisis by the French in America, who erected two forts on a neck of land at the head of the Bay of Fundy. Massachusetts-this was before the Revolution, be it remembered-sent out three thousand men to capture these forts, and the thing was done. In the garrisons were found three hundred of the Neutrals, and therefore the Acadians were held con

demned as rebels against the English Crown. What was to be done with them? The Governor of Nova Scotia, the Chief Justice of the province, and two British Admirals, met in council in July, and resolved that the entire population must be cleared out of that part of the country, and this deportation was to be carried out in such a way as to disperse the captives among the English of the other provinces. Of course it was not easy to execute an edict like this upon a widely-scattered population; but stratagem prevailed with these simple people, who had lived peacefully for two hundred years in this land, feeding sheep and tilling the soil rudely. Governor Lawrence issued a proclamation ordering all the males of the colony, "both old and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age," to assemble at the church of Grand-Pré on a certain Friday, to learn His Majesty's pleasure, "on pain of forfeiting goods and chattels in default of real estate." On the Friday appointed, September 5, 1755, four hundred and eighteen unarmed men met within the church. The doors were closed upon them, and guarded by soldiers; and then this mandate was read to the snared farmers: "It is His Majesty's orders, and they are peremptory, that the whole French inhabitants of these districts be removed. Your lands and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the Crown, with all your other effects, saving your money and household goods; and you yourselves are to be removed from this province. I shall do everything in my power that your goods be secured to you, and that you are not molested in carrying them off; also, that

whole families shall go in the same vessel, and that this removal be made as easy as His Majesty's service will admit. And I hope that, in whatever part of the world you may fall, you may be faithful subjects, a peaceful and happy people. Meanwhile you are the king's prisoners, and will remain in security under the inspection and direction of the troops I have the honour to command."

Unbroken silence greeted this cruel edict, until after the lapse of a few minutes a moan broke from the stunned Acadians, and their cry of grief was echoed in bewilderment by the anxious women waiting with their children outside. On the 10th of September the inhabitants of Grand-Pré-nineteen hundred and twenty in number-were marched to the water's side at the point of the bayonet, and embarked in Government ships. In spite of some show of care on the part of the authorities many parents were separated from their families and driven into different vessels; husbands and wives lost each other, and maidens parted from their lovers for ever. The vessels were not able to accommodate all the emigrants, so some of these remained till fresh transports carried them away from their homes in cheerless December, and then Acadia was left desolate, and the Acadians never gathered together again. Small knots of the wanderers settled, and have left descendants, at Clare, at Minudie, in parts of Prince Edward's Island, and on the north coast of New Brunswick. In these days, we English hear much of the Crofter question; but we never spoiled humble folk of land as we did in 1755, by the help of Massachusetts guns.