desire to see all men really free, while Carlyle only felt the desire to see all men strongly governed,which they might be without being free at all. Emerson's spirit, moreover, was much the saner and more reverent of the two, though less rich in power and humour. His mind was heartily religious, though his transcendentalism always gave a certain air of patronage to his manner in speaking of any of the greater religions. One of his youthful sermons was thus described by a lady who heard it:-"Waldo Emerson came last Sunday, and preached a sermon, with his chin in the air, in scorn of the whole human race." That is caricature, but whenever Emerson spoke on any religion which claims a special revelation, even in later life, his chin seemed to be "in the air" still. He had the democratic transcendentalist's jealousy of any one who claimed to be nearer God than the race at large. He was contemptuous of the pretensions of special access to God, and this, to my ear at least, always spoils his tone when he speaks of Christ and Christianity. But towards man he is always reverent,-which Carlyle seldom is, and he is always reverent, too, in relation to the Divine Mind itself. "I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind," he once wrote, "and unable to turn his head and see the speaker. In all the millions who have heard the voice, none ever saw the face. As children in their play run behind each other, and seize one by the ears, and make him walk before them, so is the Spirit of our unseen pilot." Those are the words of a truly reverent mind, though of a mind as jealously devoted to a sort of false spiritual democracy as it is reverent in its attitude and poetic in its inmost thought.

LONGFELLOW

"THE fact is, I hate everything that is violent," said the poet whom the world has just lost to some friend who had been with him during a thunderstorm, and to whom he was excusing himself for the care with which he had endeavoured to exclude from his house the tokens of the storm; and one sees this in his poetry, which is at its highest point when it is most restful, and is never so happy in its soft radiance as when it embodies the spirit of a playful or childlike humility. I should not claim for Longfellow the position of a very great or original poet; it was his merit rather to embody in a simple and graceful form the gentleness and loveliness which are partially visible to most men's eyes, than to open to our sight that which is hidden from the world in general. To my mind, "Hiawatha" is far the most original of his poems, because the happy nature-myths which best expressed the religious genius of the American Indians appealed to what was deepest in himself, and found an exquisitely simple and harmonious utterance in the liquid accents of his childlike and yet not unstately verse. His material in "Hiawatha" was so fresh and poetical in itself, as well as so admirably

suited to his genius, that in his mind it assumed its most natural form, and flowed into a series of chants of childlike dignity and inimitable grace. The story of Nature has never been told with so much liquid gaiety and melancholy, so much of the frolic of the childlike races, and so much of their sudden awe and dejection, as in "Hiawatha," which I, at least, have never taken up without new delight in the singular simplicity and grace, the artless art and ingenuous vivacity, of that rendering of the traditions of a vanishing race. How simple and childlike Longfellow makes even the exaggerations so often found in these traditions, so that you enjoy, where you might so easily have sneered! How spontaneously he avoids anything like dissertation on the significance of the natural facts portrayed, leaving us the full story and poetry of impersonation, without any attempt to moralise or dilate upon its drift! How exquisitely the account of the first sowing and reaping of the Indian corn, of Hiawatha's revelation of agriculture to his people, is told in his three days' wrestling with Mondamin, in his conquest over him, and the sowing of the bare grain, that the green and yellow plumes of Mondamin may wave again over his grave! And how eerie is the tale of the first warning of spiritual truths, the return of spectres from beyond the grave to warn Hiawatha that for him, too, there are secrets which it will need a higher revelation than his to reveal :—

One dark evening, after sun-down,

In her wigwam Laughing Water
Sat with old Nokomis, waiting
For the steps of Hiawatha

Homeward from the hunt returning.

On their faces gleamed the firelight,
Painting them with streaks of crimson,
In the eyes of old Nokomis

Glimmered like the watery moonlight,
In the eyes of Laughing Water
Glistened like the sun in water;

And behind them crouched their shadows
In the corners of the wigwam,

And the smoke in wreaths above them
Climbed and crowded through the smoke-flue.
Then the curtain of the doorway

From without was slowly lifted;
Brighter glowed the fire a moment,
And a moment swerved the smoke-wreath,
As two women entered softly,
Passed the doorway uninvited,
Without word of salutation,
Without sign of recognition,
Sat down in the farthest corner,
Crouching low among the shadows

From their aspect and their garments

Strangers seemed they in the village;
Very pale and haggard were they,
As they sat there sad and silent,
Trembling, cowering with the shadows.

Was it the wind above the smoke-flue,
Muttering down into the wigwam?
Was it the owl, the Koko-koho,
Hooting from the dismal forest?

Sure a voice said in the silence:
"These are corpses clad in garments,

These are ghosts that come to haunt you,
From the kingdom of Ponemah,
From the land of the Hereafter!"

Homeward now came Hiawatha

From his hunting in the forest,

With the snow upon his tresses,

And the red deer on his shoulders.
At the feet of Laughing Water
Down he threw his lifeless burden;
Nobler, handsomer she thought him,
Than when first he came to woo her;
First threw down the deer before her,
As a token of his wishes,

As a promise of the future.

Then he turned and saw the strangers,
Cowering, crouching with the shadows;
Said within himself, "Who are they?
What strange guests has Minnehaha?"
But he questioned not the strangers,
Only spake to bid them welcome
To his lodge, his food, his fireside.

When the evening meal was ready,
And the deer had been divided,
Both the pallid guests, the strangers,
Springing from among the shadows,
Seized upon the choicest portions,
Seized the white fat of the roebuck,
Set apart for Laughing Water,
For the wife of Hiawatha;
Without asking, without thanking,
Eagerly devoured the morsels,
Flitted back among the shadows
In the corner of the wigwam.

Not a word spake Hiawatha,

Not a motion made Nokomis,
Not a gesture Laughing Water;
Not a change came o'er their features;
Only Minnehaha softly

Whispered, saying, "They are famished;
Let them do what best delights them;
Let them eat, for they are famished."

Once at midnight Hiawatha,