and it expresses one detail of the charge between the Boston of the middle of this century and the Boston to which Lowell returned in June of 1885. Now, such a change affects social order; it affects conversation; in spite of you, it affects literature. Thus it affects philanthropy. The Boston of 1840 really believed that a visible City of God could be established here by the forces which it had at command. It was very hard in 1885 to make the Boston of that year believe any such thing.

But Lowell was no pessimist. He was proud of his home, and I think you would not have caught him expressing in public any such contrast as I have ventured upon in these lines. On the other hand, the letters which Mr. Norton has published in his charming volume confirm entirely the impression which Lowell's old friends received from him that he was glad, so glad, to be

MARGARET FULLER From an old daguerreotype.

at home; that he had much to do in picking up his dropped stitches; and that he liked nothing better than to renew the old associations. It was, so to speak, unfortunate that he could not at once return to Elmwood. In fact, he did not establish himself there for three years. But, on the other hand, at Southborough, five-and-twenty miles from Boston, where he lived at the home of Mrs. Burnett, his daughter, he had a beautiful country around him, and, what was always a pleasure to him, the exploration of new scenery.

I asked a near friend of his if Lowell were the least bit wilted after his return. "Wilted? I should say not a bit. Bored? yes; worried, a little. But," he added, as I should do myself, "the last talk I had with him, or rather listened to, I shall never forget."

He spent the winter of 1889 in Boston with his dear sister, Mrs. Putnam, from whose

recollections I was able to I give the charming account which he furnished to us of his childhood for the first pages of this series. And he was, of course, near his old friends and kindred: Dr. Holmes, John Holmes, all the Saturday Club, Dr. Howe, Charles Norton-his intimate and tender friendship with whom was one of the great blessings of his life. These were all around him. But there was no Longfellow, no Appleton, no Emerson, no Agassiz, no Dana; Story was in Europe.

For occupation, he had just as many opportunities for public speaking as he chose to use. He had to prepare for the press the uniform edition of his works, both in prose and in poetry. It seems to me that he was too fastidious and rigid in this work. I think he left out a good deal which ought to have been preserved there. And this makes it certain that the little side-scraps which the newspapers preserved, or such as linger in some else-forgotten magazine, will be regarded as among the treasures of

collectors. More

than that, many a boy and many a girl will owe to some such scraps inspirations which will last them through life. He occasionally published a poem, and occasionally deliv ered an address or lecture. But he took better care of himself than in the old days. There was no such crisis before the country as had engaged him then; and, in a way, it may be said that he enjoyed the literary leisure which he deserved.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

and you find in the letters allusions to attacks which kept him in agony, which sometimes lasted for six weeks in succession. Then the attack would end instantly; and then Lowell would write in the strain which has been referred to, as if he were a boy again, skating on Fresh Pond or tracing up Beaver Brook to its sources.

Simply, he would not annoy his friends by talking about his pains. If he could cheer them up by writing of his recovery, he would do so.

I remember that on the first visit I made him after he was re-established at Elmwood,

when I congratulated him because he was at home again, he said, with a smile still, "Yes, it is very nice to be here; but the old house is full of ghosts." Of course it was. His father and mother were no longer living; Mrs. Burnett, who was with him there, was the only one of his children who had survived; and the circle of his brothers and sisters had been sadly diminished. He and his brother Robert Lowell died in the same year. Still, he was here with his own books; he had the old college library under his lee, and he had old friends close at hand. Once or twice in

his letters of those days he goes into some review of his own literary endeavor. Certainly he had reason to be proud of it. Certainly he was not too proud; and I think he did have a feeling of satisfaction that his neighbors and his country appreciated the motive with which he had worked and the real success which he had attained.

As the great address at Birmingham sums up conveniently the political principles which governed his life, whether in literature or in diplomacy, so the address at the quartermillennium celebration of Harvard College at Cambridge may be said to present a summary of such theories as he had formed on education, and of his hopes and his fears for the future of education. There are two

or

three aphorisms there which I think will be apt to be quoted fifty years hence, perhaps, as they are not quoted to-day. In the midst of a hundred or more of gentlemen who had served with him in the college he had the courage to use the phrase I have already cited," Harvard has as yet developed no great educator; for we imported Agassiz."

On the 30th of April, 1889, there was a magnificent festival in the city of New York at which he spoke. It is already forgotten by

tion to be present. Among them Lowell, naturally was one. But to those who listened, it seemed as if all these great men were in a sort awed by the greatness of the occasion. His address, perhaps because so carefully prepared, was for the purpose no better than that of any of the others. They could not help it. Every man who spoke was asking himself how his speech would read in the year 1989. There was no spontaneity; there was decorum and consideration, the determination to think wisely, and none of the eloquence which "belongs to the man and the occasion." For hour after hour this patient stream of considerate commonplace flowed on, till at two in the morning the new President of the

United States made the closing speech. The expectation of this address, and that alone, had held the great audience together. He was probably the only man who had not had a chance "to make any preparation." He had gone through the day alive with the feeling of the day, drinking in its inspirations; and with such preparation as six hours at the dinner-table would give him, he rose to say what the day had taught him. He made one of the most magnificent addresses to which I have ever listened. He led with him from height to height an audience jaded and tired by the dignity of lawyers, the dexterity of politicians, and the commonplace of scholars. In fifteen minutes he had established his own reputation as a great orator among the thousand men who were fortunate enough to hear him.

the people of that city and of the country, but at the moment it engaged universal attention. It was the celebration of the centennial of the establishment of the United States as a nation; the centennial of the birth of the Constitution; of the inauguration of Washington. It was, of course, the fit occasion for the expression of the people's gratitude for the blessings which have followed on the establishment of the Federal Constitution.

For this celebration the most admirable arrangements were made in New York by the committee which had taken the matter in hand. In the evening a banquet was served at the Metropolitan Opera-House, and many of the most distinguished speakers in the country had gladly accepted the invita

And yet, such is the satire of what we call history, that, because the other speeches had been written out and could be sent to the journals-because even a New York morning newspaper has to go to press at some timethis absolutely extemporaneous speech of the one man who proved himself equal to the occasion did not get itself reported in any adequate form, and will never go down into history. There is, however, no danger that