the restless, feverish, ambitious heart be still, but for a moment still, and yield itself, without one further-aspiring throb, to its enjoyment, then were I happy,-yea, thrice happy! But no; this fluttering, struggling, and imprisoned spirit beats the bars of its golden cage,-disdains the silken fetter; it will not close its eye and fold its wings as if time were not swift enough, its swifter thoughts outstrip his rapid flight, and onward, onward do they wing their way to the distant mountains, to the fleeting clouds of the future; and yet I know, that ere long, weary, and wayworn, and disappointed, they shall return to nestle in the bosom of the past!

"This day, also, I have passed at Acqua Paola. From the garden terrace I watched the setting sun, as, wrapt in golden vapour, he passed to other climes. A friend from my native land was with me; and, as we spake of home, a liquid star stood trembling like a tear upon the closing eyelid of the day."

Here we end with one of the similes with which Longfellow sinned against taste occasionally. It is, at least, a doubtful simile, although not so distinctly bad as the metaphor about the stars being "forget-me-nots of the angels." It is worth noticing, however, that Longfellow had hardly yet recognized his vocation to poetry, and did not seek imagery so persistently as he afterwards did. For this reason the style of "Outre-Mer" is really much better than that of "Hyperion's " overladen periods.

IT

CHAPTER V.

T was not easy for any man to succeed Ticknor as a Professor of Languages: for that gentleman, although his literary performances have shown more industry than originality, was certainly one of the bestinformed students of European tongues and literature in his time. In order that he might enter on his duties at Harvard with confidence, it was necessary for Longfellow to make himself still more intimately acquainted with German thought and books, and his desire was to add to this knowledge a mastery of Scandinavian languages. Accordingly he proceeded to Europe with his wife in April of 1835.

First of all, on arrival in the East, Longfellow gave himself a pleasant holiday of three weeks in London, to which city he had already paid a flying visit ere concluding his former European tour. As became a man now of some note, furnished with good introductions, he went into the best society in London; and his days and nights in the English metropolis were full of intellectual gaiety. He breakfasted with Sir John Bowring; dined with the Lockharts; at Babbage's met Jane Porter, Lady Morgan, Abraham Hayward, and the sister beauties-Mrs. Black

wood and Lady Seymour. At Lady Dudley Stuart's he listened to the singing of Rubini and Grisi; and one day Carlyle came to talk delightfully to the poet and his wife for half-an-hour. Carlyle had them home to tea, and took them to visit Chantrey's studio. On the whole, the Longfellows were most struck with Mrs. Carlyle, whom they described as "a lovely woman, with simple and pleasing manners,” and as accomplished as modest. During this London sojourn Mr. Bentley arranged for an English edition of "Outre-Mer," and when this appeared, The Spectator was not long in declaring that "either the author of the 'Sketch Book' has received a warning, or there are two Richmonds in the field."

In June, the American Professor found himself a wakeful inhabitant of cities far north, on which the sun hardly set. Sweden altogether satisfied his mind. At Lydköping he read books in the public squares towards midnight, waiting to see the watchman stretch himself towards the four quarters of heaven, on the church-tower, crying: "Ho, watchman, ho! Twelve the clock has stricken. God keep our town from firebrand, and the enemy's hand." As he journeyed through the land, he never tired of the recurrent groves of pine and drooping fir-trees with rose-coloured cones; the little crowds of white-haired boys and girls about the school doors; the wooden houses all painted red, and the calm paleness of the night, "which like a silver clasp, united the day with yesterday." The peasantry, however, struck him as peculiarly cloddish; and he wondered at the clergymen smoking in the streets, drinking punch in the publichouses, and playing cards on Sundays.

The Swedish tongue Longfellow studied at Stockholm, with Professor Lignel of Upsala. He found the language easy to read, and soft and musical like the lowland Scotch, but difficult to speak grammatically. Finnish he acquired from a poet-parson named Mellin; and afterwards at Copenhagen he read Danish with Mr. Bolling, librarian of that city.

So passed nearly six months, until the time came for descending to Holland for the Dutch. The tour was made by Amsterdam, the Hague and Delft: but in Rotterdam, Longfellow's wife fell ill, and on the 29th of November she died there, peacefully, but after long suffering. This bereavement was one of the two great shocks which made ravages in the poet's inner happiness, and the extent of which he concealed, even from his closest friends, by a resolute reticence. We all know, however, how beautiful a sigh escaped him, when he endeared the memory of Mary his wife to all the world, in "Footsteps of Angels."

"Oh, though oft depressed and lonely,

All my fears are laid aside,

If I but remember only,

Such as these have lived and died."

It was in Heidelberg chiefly, that the widower sought distraction from his lonely thoughts.

he had stopped to spend a day at

On the way thither Bonn with August Wilhelm Schlegel, whose pomposity seems on this occasion to have thawed several degrees. At Heidelberg the traveller established himself in the house of Frau Himmelhahn, near the end of the Hauptstrasse, towards he Karls Thor. From his window he could look over

the brown windings of the Neckar, as he afterwards looked from his cosy study at Cambridge over the sweep of the clearer river Charles. Mittermaier, the lawyer, leader of the Liberals, was very kind to him at Heidelberg; there also he formed friendships with Gervinus, the Shakespearean scholar; Schlosser, the Professor of Modern History and butt of De Quincey's ridicule; ReichlinMeldegg, who was lecturing on Schiller; Thibaut, who discoursed on the Pandects; and that Pope of the rationalist clergymen, Dr. Paulus. Furthermore, it was at Heidelberg that Longfellow first met his great countryman, Bryant; and Mr. Samuel Ward, of New York, became a most valuable acquaintance. With the Bryants and Mr. Ward, or with a Russian, Baron von Ramm, he daily walked about the pleasant environs of the old town, and to Handschuhsheim, to the mill at Rohrbach, to the tower of Königsstuhl, or to the heights of the Wolfsbrunnen. The loveliness of the place, and the quiet strength of German thought, he was absorbing every moment; but each day furnished him with settled hours of dogged study, in which Goethe, Herder, Tieck, Hoffman, and Richter were the spirits whom he conjured.

Next July, Longfellow was in the Tyrol, where the pines, and timber houses, and fences, and bridges, and fields of Indian corn, all reminded him of New England; and from the Tyrol he passed to the Alps of Switzerland. It was at Interlaken, in Switzerland, that Longfellow met Mr. Appleton, a cheery and rich fellow-countryman, with whom were his wife and family. The Appletons felt drawn to their slender and courtly-mannered Harvard Professor, and he went about with them a great