Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, Not as a child shall we again behold her, In our embraces we again enfold her, But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion And beautiful with all the soul's expansion And though at times impetuous with emotion And anguish long suppressed, The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, We will be patient and assuage the feeling We may not wholly stay; By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way. I add one simile from the "Address to a Child :" By what astrology of fear or hope A luminous circle faint and dim, And scarcely visible to us here, Rounds and completes the perfect sphere, A prophecy and intimation, A pale and feeble adumbration, Of the great world of light that lies Beyond all human destinies ! The concluding extract has a stronger recommendation than any that I can give; it is Mrs. Browning's favorite among the poems of Longfellow : THE ARROW AND THE SONG. I shot an arrow into the air, I breathed a song into the air, Long, long afterward, in an oak I found it again in the heart of a friend. I venture to add an anecdote new to the English public. Professor Longfellow's residence at Cambridge, a picturesque old wooden house, has belonging to it the proudest historical associations of which America can boast; it was the head-quarters of Washington. One night the poet chanced to look out of his window, and saw by the vague starlight a figure riding slowly past the mansion. The face could not be distinguished; but the tall erect person, the cocked hat, the traditional costume, the often-described white horse, all were present. Slowly he paced before the house, and then returned, and then again passed by, after which neither horse nor rider were seen or heard of. Could it really be Washington ? or was it some frolic-masquerader assuming his honored form? For my part I hold firmly to the ghostly side of the story, so did my informant, also a poet and an American, and as worthy to behold the specter of the illustrious warrior, as Professor Longfellow himself. I can hardly say more. VII. AUTHORS SPRUNG FROM THE PEOPLE. THOMAS HOLCROFT. I REMEMBER saying one day to a woman of high genius, that a mutual friend of hers and mine proposed to give a series of lectures on authors sprung from the people, from the masses, as it is the fashion to say now-a-days, and her replying quickly : "Why all authors who are worth reading are sprung from the people; it is the well-born who are the exceptions." And then she ran through a beadroll of great names from Chaucer to Burns: nevertheless this repartee was not quite right; not a whit more right than a repartee usually is; for the number of educated writers must always preponderate. But still the class of self-educated writers is large, increasingly large; and truthful biographies of such persons must always be among the most interesting books in the world, as showing better than any other books the development and growth of individual minds. Mr. Bamford's "Life of a Radical," and Mr. Somerville's ac count of his own career, have mnch of this merit; but the most curious of all these memoirs both for the vicissitudes of the story and the irdomitable character of the man, is the "Life of Thomas Holcroft," begun by himself and concluded by Hazlitt. Of his strength of character no better evidence can be offered than that the first seventeen chapters were dictated by him during his last illness while he was in such a state that he was frequently obliged to pause several minutes between every word, and yet the events are as clearly narrated and the style is as lucid and as lively as if it had been written in his most vigorous day. He was born in London in the winter of 1745; his father being by trade a shoemaker, but of a disposition so unsteady that he never could remain long in any place or at any occupation. Here is the account his son, a most dutiful and affectionate son who maintained him to his death, gives of these rambling propensities: "Having been bred to an employment for which he was very ill-fitted, the habit that became most rooted in and most fatal to my father, was a fickleness of disposition, a thorough persuasion after he had tried one means of providing for himself and his family for a certain time, that he had discovered another far more profitable and secure. Steadiness of pursuit was a virtue at which he never could arrive; and I believe few men in the kingdom had in the course of their lives been the hucksters of so many small wares, or more enterprising dealers in articles of a halfpenny value. “I should mention that to carry on these itinerant trades my father had begun with purchasing an ass, and bought more as he could; now and then increasing his store by the addition of a ragged pony or a worn-out, weather-beaten Rozinante. In autumn he turned his attention to fruit, and conveyed apples and pears in hampers from villages to market-towns. The bad nourishment I met with, the cold and wretched manner in which I was clothed, and the excessive weariness I endured in following these animals day after day, and being obliged to drive creatures perhaps still more weary than myself, were miseries much too great, and loaded my little heart with sorrows far too poignant ever to be forgotten. By-roads and high-roads were alike to be traversed, but the former far the oftenest, for they were then almost innumerable, and the state of them in winter would hardly be believed at present. My father became by turns a collector and vender of rags, a hardwareman, a dealer in buttons, buckles, and pewter spoons, in short, a trafficker in whatever could bring gain. But there was one thing which fixed his attention longer than any other, and which therefore I suppose he found the most lucrative, which was to fetch pottery from the neighborhood of Stoke in Staffordshire, and to hawk it all through the north of England. Of all other traveling this was the most continual, the most severe, and the most intolerable. * * * 'Toward Litchfield on the right lay Cannock heath and town, and adjoining to this heath on the left there were coal-pits situ ated in a remarkably heavy clay country. Desirous of employing his asses, yet averse to go himself, my father frequently sent me to these coal-pits to get a single ass loaded, and to drive him over the heath to Rugeley, there to find a customer for my coals. The article was so cheap and so near, that the profits could be but very small, yet they were something. Had the weather been fine when I was sent on these errands, the task would not have been so difficult nor the wonder so great; but at the time I was unfortunately sent there, I have a perfect recollection of deep ruts, of cattle, both asses and horses, unable to drag their legs through the clay, and of carts and wagons that were set fast in it. "One day my ass had passed safely through the clay-ruts and deep roads, and under my guidance had begun to ascend a hill we had to cross on Cannock heath on our way to Rugeley. The wind was very high, though while we were on low ground I had never suspected its real force. But my apprehensions began to increase with our ascent, and when on the summit of the hill, nearly opposite to two clumps of trees which are pictured to my imagination as they stood there at that time, it blew gust after gust too powerful for the loaded animal to resist, and down it came. Through life I have always had a strong sense of the grief and utter despair I then felt. But what a little surprises me is, that I have no recollection whatever of the means by which I found relief, but rather of the naked and desolate place in which I was, and my inability to help myself. Could I have unloaded the ass it would not have been much matter, but the coals were brought from the pits in such masses that three of them were generally an ass load, any one of which was usually beyond my strength. I have no doubt, however, but I got them by some means or other to Rugeley, and brought the money for them to my father, whom I could not help secretly accusing of insensibility, though that was the very reverse of his character. "The coal-pits were situated on the extremity of an old forest inhabited by large quantities of red deer. At these I always stopped to look; but what inspired and delighted me most was the noble stag, for to him the deer appeared insignificant. Him I often saw bounding along, eying objects without fear, and making prodigious leaps over obstacles that opposed his passage. In this free state, indeed, he can not but excite our admiration. D |