ideas of his profession

a little better than he carried out. Medicine," he said, "is the most difficult of sciences and the most laborious of arts. It will task all your powers of body and mind, if you are faithful to it. Do not dabble in the muddy sewers of politics, nor linger by the enchanted streams of literature, nor dig in far-off fields for the hidden waters of alien sciences: The great practitioners are generally those who concentrate all their powers on their business."

There is an incident in his life while yet a law-student that must not be passed over. He had been writing for The Collegian a good many verses that were well received. Indeed, to borrow his phrase, he had become infected with the "leadpoisoning of type-metal." One day he read that the Navy Department had issued orders for the breaking up of the old frigate Constitution, then lying at Charlestown. His soul was deeply stirred; and, seizing a scrap of paper, he dashed off the passionate lines of "Old Ironsides: "

"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rang the battle shout,

And burst the cannon's roar;

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more!"

The stirring words of the poem, copied in the press throughout the country, found a response in the heart of the people. Under the sudden blaze of indignation, the astonished Secretary revoked his order, and the gallant vessel was spared for half a century. This result was a remarkable achievement for a young man who had just attained his majority.

In 1836 Holmes opened an office in Boston as a practising physician. He was sympathetic, painstaking, and conscientious; and in a reasonable time he gained a fair practice. In spite of his fondness for literature, he continued his professional studies with unusual diligence and success. He won

several prizes by medical essays. But his scholarly tastes fitted him better for a medical lecturer than for a practitioner; and in 1838 he was much gratified to be elected Professor of Anatomy at Dartmouth College, a position that required his presence there only three months of the session.

The year he opened his office in Boston, he published his first volume of verse. From a professional standpoint it was, perhaps, an unwise thing to do. People are instinctively averse to going to poets for prescriptions. But he was far from indifferent to his reputation as a poet. As between the two, he would probably have chosen to go down to posterity famed for his gifts in poetry rather than for his skill in medicine. The slender volume contained several pieces that have since remained general favorites. His poetic powers matured early; and, among all the productions of his subsequent years, there is nothing better than "The Last Leaf”—that inimitable combination of humor and pathos. One of its stanzas is a perfect

gem:

"The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest

In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb."

His jolly humor nowhere else finds better expression than in "My Aunt," "The September Gale," and "The Height of the Ridiculous."

In 1840, the year his connection with Dartmouth College ceased, Holmes thought himself well enough established to end his bachelorhood. His tastes were strongly domestic. Accordingly, he married Miss Amelia Lee Jackson, a gentle, affectionate, considerate woman, who appreciated her husband's talents, and, with a noble devotion, helped him to make the most of them. For nearly fifty years her delicate tact shielded him from annoyances, and her skilful management relieved him of domestic cares.

In 1847 Holmes was elected Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Harvard University. The chair was afterwards divided, and he had charge of anatomy. He held this position for the long period of thirty-five years. He recognized the danger of falling into an unprogressive routine. "I have noticed," he wrote to a friend, "that the wood of which academic fauteuils are made has a narcotic quality, which occasionally renders their occupants somnolent, lethargic, or even comatose." But he escaped this danger; and, taking a deep interest in his department, he remained a wide-awake, progressive teacher to the end. His lectures were illumined with a coruscating humor that made them peculiarly interesting.

About the middle of the century the popular lecture was in great vogue in New England. Men of distinguished abil ity did not disdain this means of disseminating wisdom and replenishing their pockets. Like Emerson, Holmes made lecturing tours. Though not imposing in person nor gifted in voice, he was much sought after for his unfailing vivacity and wit. In the Autocrat" he makes a humorous reference to his experience as a lecturer. "Family men," he says, "get dreadfully homesick. In the remote and bleak village the heart returns to the red blaze of the logs in one's fireplace at home.

'There are his young barbarians all at play.'

No, the world has a million roosts for a man, but only one nest."

The founding of The Atlantic Monthly, the name of which he suggested, was an important event in the life of Holmes. He was engaged to write for it; and the result was "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," perhaps the best of all his works. He here revealed himself as a charming writer of prose. The "Autocrat" talks delightfully on a hundred different subjects, presenting with a careless grace and irrepressible humor the accumulated wisdom of years of observation and study. Nothing is too small or too great for his reflections. "There are

few books," as George William Curtis well said, "that leave more distinctly the impression of a mind teeming with riches of many kinds. It is, in the Yankee phrase, thoroughly wide awake. There is no languor, and it permits none in the reader, who must move along the page warily, lest in the gay profusion of the grove, unwittingly defrauding himself of delight, he miss some flower half-hidden, some gem chance-dropped, some darting bird."

ous.

Interspersed through the brilliant talk of the "Autocrat" are nearly a score of poems, partly humorous and partly seriSeveral of these rank among the poet's choicest productions. A special charm is given to each poem by its setting. "The Chambered Nautilus" was Holmes's favorite among all his poems. "Booked for immortality" was Whittier's criticism the moment he read it. The last stanza gives beautiful expression to the aspiration of a noble spirit:

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."

The humorous poem "Contentment" embodied, as he tells us, "the subdued and limited desires of his maturity:"

"Little I ask; my wants are few;

I only wish a hut of stone,

(A very plain brown stone will do,)
That may call my own; -
And close at hand is such a one,

In yonder street that fronts the sun."

Other poems from the "Autocrat" deserving special mention are "Musa," "What We All Think," "Latter-Day Warnings," "Estivation," and, above all these, "The Deacon's Masterpiece."

A

About the time the Atlantic was founded, the Saturday Club came into existence, and numbered among its members Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Motley, Agassiz, and other distinguished literary men of Boston and Cambridge. They dined together the last Saturday of every month. more brilliant club had not existed since the days of Johnson and Goldsmith. Holmes took great pride in it, and added greatly to its festive meetings. He was a prince of talkers. His wise, witty, genial, vivacious talk is said to have been even better than his books. He called talking "one of the fine arts." He probably had the Saturday Club in mind when, in the "Autocrat," he defined an intellectual banquet as "that carnival-shower of questions and replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bombshells from professional mortars, and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored fire, and the mischief-making rain of bon-bons pelting everybody that shows himself."

Holmes was strongly attached to Boston, and was really its poet laureate. He playfully said that the "Boston State House is the hub of the solar system," and in his heart half believed it. He received a proud and affectionate recognition from the city. He was expected to grace every great festive occasion with his presence, and to contribute a poem to its enjoyment. The number of these occasional pieces is surprising; they form no inconsiderable part of his poetical works. Of their kind they are unsurpassed. Year after year Holmes met the demand upon him with unfailing freshness and vigor. But it goes without saying that vers de société does not belong to the highest order of poetry. It does not sound the deeper notes of song, nor entitle the poet, no matter how brilliant may be his verse, to rank with those "to whom poetry, for its own sake, has been a passion and belief."

Holmes was strongly drawn to theological subjects. It may be true, as has been suggested, that he inherited "ecclesiastical pugnacity;" but it was not exercised in defending the ecclesiastical beliefs and institutions of his ancestors. A theo