recognising no superior but God. Whittier knew the Massachusetts farmer's life as well as any man who ever lived: and no one has ever expressed it better than he. His poetic realism is both external and internal. He gives us naïvely all the details of the farm, together with the spirit of the New England home. Busy men in city offices, who had been born and bred in the country, read SnowBound in a golden glow of reminiscence. The picture is simply final in its perfection, without and within. Not only is it perfect in outline, but perfect in its expression of the castlelike security and proud independence of the Home. The right word to describe the inner meaning of this poem is unfortunately not in the English language, and it is rather curious that we must seek it in the French. The French, as has been wearisomely pointed out, have no word for home; but we have no word that exactly expresses the significance of foyer. It is, however, the real basis of Whittier's greatest poem.

Finally, in the wide field of Religious Poetry, Whittier achieved true greatness. Someone has said that the Puritans represented the Old Testament, and the Quakers the New. Surely, no religious sect in the world has ever had a finer history in virtues of omission and commission than the Society of Friends. Whittier is primarily a

Christian poet, a child of faith. He fulfils one of the highest functions of the poet - he not only inspires us in the midst of the daily work and drudgery, but he comforts and sustains weary and sore hearts. He followed the gleam. Like that old Churchman, George Herbert, Whittier's intense piety did not restrict one iota the bounds of his immense charity. The same spirit that kept him from hating the slaveholders made him a genuine admirer of men whose religious principles he could not follow. His poem, The Eternal Goodness, embraces a larger number of true Christians than the Apostles' Creed. On the more positive side, it is pleasant to note his manly, sturdy defence of his sect in the verses called The Meeting. I have always believed that this particular poem was inspired by Browning's Christmas Eve. The definite attitude toward religious worship taken by both poets is precisely similar. They both cheerfully recognise the ignorance and uncouthness of the pious band; but there each chose to abide, for there each thought he found the largest measure of sincerity.

It is a splendid tribute to the essential goodness of popular taste that Whittier has triumphed and will triumph over all the modern sensational poets who delight in clever paradoxes, affected forms of speech, and in mentioning the unmentionable. The

Complete Poetical Works" of Whittier are aglow with the divine fire of a great Personality a per

sonality whose influence makes for everything that is best in civilisation, and which had to so high a degree the childlike simplicity of the Kingdom of Heaven.

VII

NOTES ON MARK TWAIN

ONE does not naturally associate the names of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) and Mark Twain, yet there is a curious parallel between a section of the Religio Medici (1642) and Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion, by our American humorist. The latter sketch gives an amusing dialogue between a profane old sea-captain, Hurricane Jones, and a well-known New England clergyman, who figures in the story as "Peters." The captain did not know that Peters was a minister, so he undertook to explain the Bible miracles to his passenger, and "wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated speech." In particular the captain gave a delightful exegesis of the discomfiture of the prophets of Baal by Elijah. The fact that the captain called Elijah "Isaac" is merely an unimportant detail, and does not in any way vitiate the value of his interesting commentary.

"Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the afternoon, and never raised a spark. At

last, about sundown, they were all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.

"What does Isaac do, now? He steps up and says to some friends of his, there, 'Pour four barrels of water on the altar!' Everybody was astonished, for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, 'Heave on four more barrels.' Then he says, 'Heave on four more.' Twelve barrels, you see, altogether. The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads, measures,' it says; I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray; he strung along, and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the sister churches, and about the State and the country at large, and about those that's in authority in the Government, and all the usual program, you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about something else, and then all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water? Petroleum, sir. PETROLEUM! That's what it was!"

"Petroleum, captain ?"

"Yes, sir; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go prayerfully to work and sipher out how't was done."

Now in the nineteenth section of Browne's Religio Medici, the author is talking gravely of his