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not the most successful of all his productions-a Life of Washington, in five volumes.

He had just finished that work when he died suddenly of heart disease at Sunnyside, November 28th, 1859. He was never married. He had been engaged in his youth to Miss Matilda Hoffman. She died in her eighteenth year, and he remained faithful to her memory.

In respect of classic elegance of style, Irving was a follower of Addison; in respect of humour, his model was evidently Goldsmith, who was his favourite author. In lightness of touch and felicity of phrase, he has few equals among English authors. His biographical writings are masterly examples of that style of composition, so thoroughly did he understand the art of subordinating historical and incidental details to the main purpose of the narrative. He wrote no verse, but there is a great deal of true poetry in his writings; and his descriptions of natural scenery and of animal life show him to have been a close and accurate observer.

A list of Washington Irving's works is subjoined :

ICHABOD CRANE, SCHOOLMASTER.

(FROM "THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW.")

In this by-place of Nature there abode, in a remote period of American history-that is to say, some thirty years since--a worthy wight of the

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547 name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a state which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together.

His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green, glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a corn-field.

His school-house was a low building of one large room rudely constructed of logs, the windows partly glazed and partly patched with leaves of old copy-books. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours by a withe twisted in the handle of the door and stakes set against the window-shutters, so that, though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out-an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eel-pot. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch tree growing at one end of it.

From hence the low murmur of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive, interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master in the tone of menace or command, or peradventure by the appalling sound of the birch as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled.

In addition to his other vocations he was the singing-master of the neighbourhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers, where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation, and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill-pond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane.

Thus by divers little makeshifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought by all who understood nothing of the labour of head-work to have a wonderfully easy time of it.

LONGFELLOW is not only the greatest poet America has produced he is also entitled to take rank with the greatest English poets of modern times. Hardly any other English poet has appealed more powerfully to the homely affections or to the tenderest and simplest feelings of human nature. His poetry,

it has been said, "is a gospel of goodwill set to music. It has carried sweetness and light' to thousands of homes. It is blended with our holiest affections and our immortal hopes." *

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born at Portland, Maine, on February 27th, 1807. His father was Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer and a Congressman. His mother was Zilpha Wadsworth, a descendant of John Alden, and of "Priscilla,† the Puritan Maiden." His boyhood was spent chiefly in and about For its quiet life and its lovely surroundaffection continued all through life.

his native town. ings his strong

His

are embalmed in his touching poem, My Lost Youth, published in his fifty-first year.

At the early age of fourteen, Longfellow entered Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, twenty-five miles from Portland. One of his class-fellows was Nathaniel Hawthorne, ‡ afterwards well known as the author of "The House of the Seven Gables."

*Francis H. Underwood.

↑ John Alden.. Priscilla, the hero and the heroine of Longfellow's poem The Courtship of Miles Standish.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, author also of "The Scarlet Letter," "Tanglewood Tales." He was for five years United States Consul at Liverpool. (1804-1864.)

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Here he discovered his poetical bent in several short poems contributed to "The United States Literary Gazette." After graduating, with honours, in 1825, at the age of eighteen, he remained for a short time at Bowdoin as tutor. He then spent a short time in his father's office, with the idea of becoming a lawyer; but he did not take kindly to the work, for which, indeed, he had no natural aptitude. Fortunately for himself, and for English literature, he was offered and he accepted, though only nineteen years of age, the professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin.

After his appointment, he received the customary leave of absence, that he might travel in Europe and perfect himself in European languages. The three and a half years that he spent in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, and England, had a powerful effect on the growth and development of his mind. As in the case of Washington Irving, his contact with the Old World widened his sympathies, and changed his manner of contemplating both nature and human nature. At the same time, it prevented him, as it prevented Irving, from being a purely American author, and it fitted him for taking his place among the exponents of English thought and English feeling. It is remarkable that the two foremost American writers should thus have fallen, in the plastic time of youth, under the influence of Old-World conceptions and scenes.

With this equipment for his life work, Longfellow returned to America in 1829, and at once entered on his professorial duties with enthusiasm and with confidence in his powers. That high expectations were formed of his labours, may be inferred from the fact that, in 1828, Bowdoin College conferred on him the degree of LL.D. In 1831 he married Mary S. Potter.

His first literary work, after he entered on his college duties, consisted of translations, chiefly from the Spanish. He also wrote articles in the "North American Review ;" and he published notes of travel, written in a highly poetical vein, under the title Outre-Mer (beyond the sea).

In December 1834 he was selected to succeed George Ticknor

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as Professor of Modern Languages and of Belles-Lettres in the University of Harvard, the foremost seat of learning in America. That involved another period of European travel, extending to fifteen months. In the midst of it a great sorrow cast its shadow on his young life, in the death of his wife at Rotterdam.

On his return to America he continued his contributions to the "North American Review ;" and he published his romance of Hyperion—a work glowing with poetic feeling. In the same year (1839) he gave to the world his first volume of poems, under the title, Voices of the Night. It contained The Psalm of Life, The Reaper and the Flowers, The Beleaguered City, and other poems, which at once became popular and marked him out as a poet of the first rank. The issue of another volume of Ballads and other Poems, two years later, established his fame, including, as it did, The Wreck of the Hesperus, Excelsior, and The Village Blacksmith.

Longfellow paid a third visit to Europe in 1842, which is chiefly memorable on account of the Poems on Slavery, which he wrote on board ship during the homeward voyage. Not long after his return to America, he married his second wife-Frances Appleton. Then, also, he settled in his house at Cambridge, Massachusetts, which Americans regard with feelings of reverence.

Its

For the rest, his life was destitute of active interest. story consists of little more than a record of his works. For the next eleven years, he continued to discharge faithfully and acceptably the duties of his professorship at Harvard. He wrote a drama of Spanish gipsy life, The Spanish Student; he edited The Poets and Poetry of Europe; he published a volume of poems under the general title of The Belfry of Bruges; he wrote Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, the greatest of his poems, and the most successful attempt ever made to adapt the classic hexameter to English verse. He wrote Kavanagh, a second prose romance; The Seaside and the Fireside, another volume of verse; and The Golden Legend, a mystery play,—the lastnamed, in 1851.