Down the long street she passed with her chaplet of beads and her missal,

Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle of blue, and the earrings

Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heir

loom,

Handed down from mother to child, through long generations. But a celestial brightness-a more ethereal beauty—

Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

Kavanagh, a Tale, "an idyllic prose companion" to Evangeline, was published in 1849. Two years later, The Golden Legend was issued-a "quaint anecdotal poem of the Middle Ages." In 1854, Longfellow resigned his professorship at Harvard, and the following year gave Hiawatha to the public.

This is a poetic romance, woven of Indian myths. The poet can claim but little originality in the matter of leading events and plot, these being borrowed, with slight variations in their applications, from the grotesque legendary and traditionary tales of the North American Indians, as reported by Mr. Schoolcraft, Mr. Catlin, and others.

But the quaint and aboriginal characteristics of figure, diction, and rhythm; images that palpitate with hardy Algic life, and words that dart like arrows, leap and brawl and tumble like cascades, or murmur and wail with the primeval forest, these mark this poem as the most unique and American of all Longfellow's writings. Here is what may be termed

HIAWATHA'S WEDDING-TOUR.
FROM the wigwam he departed,
Leading with him Laughing Water;
Hand in hand they went together,
Through the woodland and the meadow,
Left the old man standing lonely
At the doorway of his wigwam,

Heard the Falls of Minnehaha
Calling to them from the distance,
Crying to them from afar off,
"Fare thee well, O Minnehaha ""

And the ancient Arrow-maker
Turned again unto his labor,
Sat down by his sunny doorway,
Murmuring to himself, and saying:
"Thus it is our daughters leave us,
Those we love, and those who love us!
Just when they have learned to help us,
When we are old and lean upon them,
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
With his flute of reeds, a stranger
Wanders piping through the village,
Beckons to the fairest maiden,

And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger!"

Pleasant was the journey homeward,
Through interminable forests,
Over meadow, over mountain,
Over river, hill, and hollow.

Short it seemed to Hiawatha,

Though they journeyed very slowly,

Though his pace he checked and slackened
To the steps of Laughing Water.

Over wide and rushing rivers
In his arms he bore the maiden;
Light he thought her as a feather,
As the plume upon his head-gear;
Cleared the tangled pathway for her,
Bent aside the swaying branches,
And a bed with boughs of hemlock,
And a fire before the doorway
With the dry cones of the pine tree.

"Happy are you, Hiawatha, Having such a wife to love!"

Sang the robin, the Opechee,

"Happy are you, Laughing Water, Having such a noble husband!"

From the sky the sun benignant
Looked upon them through the branches,
Saying to them, "O my children,
Love is sunshine, hate is shadow,
Life is checkered shade and sunshine;
Rule by love, O Hiawatha!"

From the sky the moon looked at them,
Filled the lodge with mystic splendors,
Whispered to them, “O my children,

Day is restless, night is quiet,
Man imperious, woman feeble;

Half is mine, although I follow;

Rule by patience, Laughing Water!"

Thus it was they journeyed homeward;
Thus it was that Hiawatha

To the lodge of old Nokomis

Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
Brought the sunshine of his people,

Minnehaha, Laughing Water,

Handsomest of all the women

In the land of the Dacotahs,

In the land of handsome women.

In 1858, Miles Standish was given to the public-a charm. ing idyl of Colonial New England. Could painter desire a more graphic or suggestive theme for his pencil than that afforded by the following extract?—

PRISCILLA AT THE SPINNING-WHEEL.

So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the autumn,
Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her dexterous fin-

gers,

As if the thread she was spinning were that of his life and his fortune,

After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound of the

spindle,

"Truly, Priscilla," he said, "when I see you spinning and spin

ning,

Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others, Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a mo

ment;

You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner." Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and swifter; the

spindle

Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped short in her

fingers;

While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mischief, con

tinued:

"You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the queen of Helvetia;

She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of Southampton, Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and meadow and

mountain,

Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed to her saddle She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into •9

proverb.

So shall it be with your own, when the spinning-wheel shall no

longer

Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its chambers with

music.

Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it was in their childhood,

Praising the good old times, and the days of Priscilla the spinner!"

Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puritan maiden, Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose praise was

the sweetest,

Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning, Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering praises of

Alden:

"Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives, Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands. Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, ready for knitting;

Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have changed and the manners,

Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old times of John Alden!"

Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted,

He, sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended before him, She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread from his fingers,

Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of holding, Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares—for how could she help it?

Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in his body.

Five years later (1863) was published Tales of a Wayside Inn, a series of seven variously themed and rhythmed poems. Our poet's best-sustained effort at Scandinavian versification is here met with. As an extract from the sweetest and also the most original of these tales, we offer the following from

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.
THE PRECEPTOR'S SPEECH, AND THE SEQUEL.
WHEN they had ended, from his place apart,
Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,
And, trembling like a steed before the start,
Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;
Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart

To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,
Alike regardless of their smile or frown,

And quite determined not to be laughed down.

"Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,

From his Republic banished without pity The Poets; in this little town of yours,

You put to death, by means of a Committee, The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,

The street-musicians of the heavenly city, The birds, who make sweet music for us all In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.