to. That military consultations were held in that room when the house was General Ward's headquarters, that the Provincial generals and colonels and other men of war there planned the movement which ended in the fortifying of Bunker's Hill, that Warren slept in the house the night before the battle, that President Langdon went forth from the western door and prayed for God's blessing on the men just setting forth on their bloody expedition, all these things have been told, and perhaps none of them need be doubted.

But now for fifty years and more that room has been a meeting-ground for the platoons and companies which range themselves at the scholar's word of command. Pleasant it is to think that the retreating host of books is to give place to a still larger army of volumes, which have seen service under the eye of a great commander. For here the noble collection of him so freshly remembered as our silver-tongued orator, our erudite scholar, our honored College President, our accomplished statesman, our courtly ambassador, are to be reverently gathered by the heir of his name, himself pot unworthy to be surrounded by that august assembly of the wise of all ages and of various lands and languages.1

Could such a many-chambered edifice have stood a century and a half and not have had its passages of romance to bequeath their lingering legends to the after-time? There are other names on some of the small window-panes, which must have had young fleshand-blood owners, and there is one of early date which elderly persons have whispered was borne by a fair woman, whose graces made the house beautiful in the

1 William Everett, at that time one of the College Faculty.

of the youth of that time. One especially — you eyes will find the name of Fortescue Vernon, of the class of 1780, in the Triennial Catalogue was a favored visitor to the old mansion; but he went over seas, I think they told me, and died still young, and the name of the maiden which is scratched on the window-pane was never changed. I am telling the story honestly, as I remember it, but I may have colored it unconsciously, and the legendary pane may be broken before this for aught I know. At least, I have named no names except the beautiful one of the supposed hero of the romantic story.

It was a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by such recollections, with harmless ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast territory of four or five acres around it to give a child the sense that he was born to a noble principality. It has been a great pleasure to retain a certain hold upon it for so many years; and since in the natural course of things it must at length pass into other hands, it is a gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for a new tenant, like some venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a neighbor of condition. Not long since a new cap of shingles adorned this ancient mother among the village -now city mansions. She has dressed herself in brighter colors than she has hitherto worn, so they tell me, within the last few days. She has modernized her aspects in several ways; she has rubbed bright the glasses through which she looks at the Common and the Colleges; and as the sunsets shine upon her through the flickering leaves or the wiry spray of the elms I remember from my childhood, they will glorify her into the aspect she

wore when President Holyoke, father of our long since dead centenarian,1 looked upon her youthful comeliness.

The quiet corner formed by this and the neighboring residences has changed less than any place I can remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd, and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town as constable and auctioneer,2 and who bids fair to become the oldest inhabitant of the city, was there when I was born, and is living there to-day. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so tenaciously and fondly to the place and its habitations will have died with those who cherished them.

3

Shall they ever live again in the memory of those who loved them here below? What is this life without the poor accidents which made it our own, and by which we identify ourselves? Ah me! I might like to be a winged chorister, but still it seems to me I should hardly be quite happy if I could not recall at will the Old House with the Long Entry, and the White Chamber (where I wrote the first verses 3 that made me known, with a pencil, stans pede in uno, pretty nearly), and the Little Parlor, and the Study, and the old books in uniforms as varied as those of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company used to be, if my memory serves me right, and the front yard with the stars of Bethlehem growing, flowerless, among the grass, and the dear faces to be seen no more there or anywhere on this earthly place of farewells.

1 Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, who died in 1829, aged 101 years.

2 Royall Morse.

3 Were not these Old Ironsides?

I have told my story. I do not know what special gifts have been granted or denied me; but this I know, that I am like so many others of my fellow-creatures, that when I smile, I feel as if they must; when I cry, I think their eyes fill; and it always seems to me that when I am most truly myself I come nearest to them and am surest of being listened to by the brothers and sisters of the larger family into which I was born so long ago. I have often feared they might be tired of me and what I tell them. But then, perhaps, would come a letter from some quiet body in some out-of-the-way place, which showed me that I had said something which another had often felt but never said, or told the secret of another's heart in unburdening my own. Such evidences that one is in the highway of human experience and feeling lighten the footsteps wonderfully. So it is that one is encouraged to go on writing as long as the world has anything that interests him, for he never knows how many of his fellow-beings he may please or profit, and in how many places his name will be spoken as that of a friend.1

1 A pleasant paper of reminiscences of Cambridge will be found in Lowell's Fireside Travels, entitled Cambridge Thirty Years Ago. See also Dr. Holmes's Cinders from the Ashes, and a short paper on The Old Court-House, by his brother, John Holmes, in The Cambridge of 1776; and T. C. Amory's Old Cambridge and New, already referred to.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

INTRODUCTION.

IT has sometimes seemed to the casual observer that Lowell had a divided interest in his literary life, passing from poetry to prose, and back to poetry, as if he found it difficult to determine in which direction his power lay. But a closer student will remark how very large a proportion of Lowell's prose is the record of his studies in poetry. His first venture in literature was poetic, when he published, not long after graduation from college, the volume of poems, A Year's Life; but the opening words of the dedication of that book hint at studies which had been begun long before, and were carried on with unflagging zeal ever after. Three years later he published Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, a book now out of print; and any one reading the titles of the papers which comprise the six volumes of his prose writings will readily see how much literature, and especially poetic literature, occupied his attention. Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Percival, Thoreau, Swinburne, Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, these are the principal subjects of his prose, and the range of topics indicates the catholicity of his taste.

It is more correct, therefore, to regard Lowell as primarily a poet, who published also the results of a scholarship which busied itself chiefly about poetry. The comments of a poet about other poets are always of interest, and the first question usually asked of a young poet is: