ing earth's sublimity. My steps were slow, and I paused long at every turn of the descent, as one lingers and pauses who discerns a brighter and brightening excellence in what he must soon behold no more. The solitude of the old wilderness now reigned over the whole vicinity of the falls. My enjoyment became the more rapturous, because no poet shared it, nor wretch devoid of poetry profaned it; but the spot so famous through the world was all my own! JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, of Quaker birth in Puritan surroundings, was born at the homestead near Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. Until his eighteenth year he lived at home, working upon the farm and in the little shoemaker's shop which nearly every farm then had as a resource in the otherwise idle hours of winter. The manual, homely labor upon which he was employed was in part the foundation of that deep interest which the poet never has ceased to take in the toil and plain fortunes of the people. Throughout his poetry runs this golden thread of sympathy with honorable labor and enforced poverty, and many poems are directly inspired by it. While at work with his father he sent poems to the Haverhill Gazette, and that he was not in subjection to his work is very evident by the fact that he translated it and similar occupations into Songs of Labor. He had two years' academic training, and in 1829 became editor in Boston of the American Manufacturer, a paper published in the interest of the tariff. In 1831 he published his Legends of New England, prose sketches in a department of literature which has always had strong claims upon his interest. No American writer, unless Irving be excepted, has done so much to throw a graceful veil of poetry and legend over the country of his daily life. Essex County, in Massachusetts, and the beaches lying between Newburyport and Portsmouth blossom with flowers of Whittier's planting. He has made rare use of the homely stories which he had heard in his childhood, and learned afterward from familiar intercourse with country people, and he has himself used invention delicately and in harmony with the spirit of the New England coast. Although of a body of men who in earlier days had been persecuted by the Puritans of New England, his generous mind has not failed to detect all the good that was in the stern creed and life of the persecutors, and to bring it forward into the light of his poetry. In 1836 he published Mogg Megone, a poem which stood first in the collected edition of his poems issued in 1857, and was admitted there with some reluctance, apparently, by the author. In that and the Bridal of Pennacook he draws his material from the relation held between the Indians and the settlers. His sympathy was always with the persecuted and oppressed, and while historically he found an object of pity and self-reproach in the Indian, his profoundest compassion and most stirring indignation were called out by African slavery. From the earliest he was upon the side of the abolition party. Year after year poems fell from his pen in which with all the eloquence of his nature he sought to enlist his countrymen upon the side of emancipation and freedom. It is not too much to say that in the slow development of public sentiment Whittier's steady song was one of the most powerful advocates that the slave had, all the more powerful that it was free from malignity or unjust accusation. Whittier's poems have been issued in a number of small volumes, and collected into single larger volumes. Besides those already indicated, there are a number which owe their origin to his tender regard for domestic life and the simple experience of the men and women about him. Of these Snow-Bound is the most memorable. Then his fondness for a story has led him to use the ballad form in many cases, and Mabel Martin is one of a number, in which the narrative is blended with a fine and strong charity. The catholic mind of this writer and his instinct for discovering the pure moral in human action are disclosed by a number of poems, drawn from a wide range of historical fact, dealing with a great variety of religious faiths and circumstances of life, but always pointing to some sweet and strong truth of the divine life. Of such are The Brother of Mercy, The Gift of Tritemius, The Two Rabbis, and others. Whittier's Prose Works are comprised in three volumes, and consist mainly of his contributions to journals and of Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, a fictitious diary of a visitor to New England in 1678. SNOW-BOUND. A WINTER IDYL. "As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common VVood fire : and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this COR. AGRIPPA, Occult our Fire of VVood doth the same.". Philosophy, Book I. ch. v. "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, EMERSON, The Snow-Storm. THE sun that brief December day 10 |