With life and nature; purifying thus A grandeur in the beatings of our hearts." Ten years after the little dinner in the Quartier Latin, the American found himself once more in Paris, and met Jules Janin on the Boulevard des Italiens. He was asked to dinner again. The host was as kind as ever; the house was large, and furnished in sumptuous disorder. Madame Janin of course made her appearance. "How changed!" whispered Longfellow, by and by, to the host; "I should not have recognized her." "How?" cried Janin, eagerly. "When did you meet her?" "Why, it must have been ten years ago.” "Great heavens! Are you serious?" said the Frenchman, with a queer look. And then after a pause he added, "Who can count the Mesdames Janin since then?" " said Longfellow, coldly. "And this one "Ah, bah! This time, mon cher, I have been caught myself, and the real Madame Janin stands before you ; but- " and here the voice seemed different from the voice that cracked the jokes in the Quartier Latin"nothing before her about that little dinner, you know, or that ménage !" To the story Longfellow was accustomed to add this sentence: "Janin thought it a fine joke, but I see no beauty or decency in such an irregular life, although he had many a laugh at what he called my puritanical innocence." This innocence was as essential in Longfellow's nature as oil in the feathers of a bird; evil poured away from him like water off a duck's back. Naturally his good mother fondly worried herself about him, but hinted her anxieties in the encouraging form of trustful expressions. "It is true, Henry," she writes, "your parents have great confidence in your uprightness, and in that purity of mind which will instantly take alarm on coming in contact with anything vicious or unworthy. We have confidence; but you must be careful and watchful. But enough. I do not mistrust you." Henry writes back in such a way as to lay all his parents' fears at rest. At length, on the 19th of February, 1827, he rather joyfully announces his departure for Spain :— "It is now exactly eight months since my arrival in Paris. And setting all boasting aside, I must say that I am well satisfied with the knowledge I have acquired of the French language. My friends all tell me that I have a good pronunciation, and although I do not pretend to anything like perfection, yet I am confident that I have done well. I cannot imagine who told you that six months was enough for the French. I shall leave Paris for Spain on Wednesday, day after to-morrow. health continues excellent." My Among all these letters there is but one at all remarkable for any descriptive power, and this was afterwards expanded into a paper which shall be quoted from "Outre-Mer," by and by. He makes no reflections of value on French life; the notes he jots down do not suggest much that is picturesque or characteristic; and even the Louvre, with its boundless wealth of ancient and modern art, is dismissed with this irritatingly raw remark: "In the Louvre there is a painting of Venus which is an exact portrait of Miss K-" Here it may be noticed that, although he developed a considerable taste for sculpture, Longfellow all through life exhibited indifference to the works of the great painters. It is well known that scenes and incidents which make little impression upon us during our childhood may recur in our memory with power; and the poem quoted in our first chapter is only one of many instances proving that this process often occurred in Longfellow's mind with the happiest results. The reproductive workings of his mental nature went further, however, than they do in most men; and both in prose and poetry he often, after the lapse of years, manufactured into verse facts of mature experience that in a less retentive memory would have been allowed to pass out of consciousness for ever. Thus it was that, although the notes he made during his first continental travels were devoid of general interest, he was enabled, on returning to America, to recogitate his Eastern experiences, and faithfully reproduce their details in really graphic style. After a prolonged tour in Spain,' during which the language of the country was studied daily, the professorelect started from Marseilles for Italy on December 15, 1827, travelling by way of the Riviera. This last journey was made in the company of George Washington At Madrid, he had the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted with Washington Irving, then in his fortieth year, and engaged on his "Life of Christopher Columbus." Greene, a young fellow-countryman who remained one of Longfellow's closest friends till death severed the two men in their old age. Staying far into the summer at Rome, young Longfellow caught the malarial fever, and was only rescued by skilful nursing from the consequences of his imprudence. From Italy his letters. were frequent, as they were a year thereafter, when he wrote from Germany. Still, we find little in the letters, or in the journals kept up contemporaneously. We might be apt to think from them that the writer was destined to be a cultivated Portland lawyer after all, or a conscientious teacher of languages, and nothing more. At length the traveller returned to his native land, and in September, 1829, Bowdoin was able to confer the full dignity of Professor of Modern Languages on one of the youngest scholars, probably the most accomplished scholar, in America. Longfellow went into residence at Brunswick almost immediately. He was now twenty-two, handsome, well-mannered, and altogether remarkably lovable and full of promise. At once he set to work with his classes in earnest, and, finding no French grammar that pleased him, he translated one-L'Homond's-and also brought out a selection of "Proverbes Dramatiques," and a Spanish Reader. He had assistants to teach the elements of the languages, but made it a point to watch his pupils at every stage of their studies, and tradition tells that there never was a more gentlemanly, a more industrious, or more beloved professor at Bowdoin than the first Professor of Modern Languages. He rose at six in the morning, and as soon as dressed, heard French recitation by the "sophomores." At seven he breakfasted, and then he was his own master till eleven, when he gave a lesson in Spanish to the juniors. Then came lunch, with half an hour in the library amid his pupils. At five he had another French class; at six he took coffee; then he walked and visited till nine; studied and corrected exercises till twelve; and so to bed. This was his daily routine, in which he found time to write out systematic courses of lectures on the French, Spanish, and Italian literatures. His work was really all-absorbing, and it never reached a higher rate of remuneration than the salary of a thousand dollars per annum. In April of 1831 the Professor began a connection with The North American Review, and in the following September he married a beautiful girl, Mary Storer Potter, daughter of his father's neighbour at Portland. And now he was to relish four perfect years-years of scholarly labour in a congenial position, carried forward in a happy home, with a refined and affectionate wife always watching beside him. One entry in his diary, redolent of enjoyment, pictures him sitting at his table by the window through which come soft morning breezes that make him dream of Spain. The tesselated shadow of honeysuckle lies motionless on the study floor, as if it were a figure on the carpet; and the fragrance of the wild brier and the mock-orange pervades the room. Unseen birds sing in the trees, and their shadows betray them as they flit above the window. The grateful murmur of bees, the cooing of doves on the roof, and the whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in the honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy to meet the rising |