had for several years been governess to his little girl, and his selection as first editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly. The editorship he held for four years along with his pro

fessorship, a combination which was doubtless of value as preparation for future work, but which seems almost to have stopped his writing of poetry. His great success with the Atlantic caused him to be invited in 1863 to assume charge of the North American Review, to which he had been an occasional contributor. Because

of the opportunity it would give him to deal with public questions, he accepted; and because of his unwillingness to undertake again the drudgery of the editorial chair, he stipulated that his friend

Charles Eliot Norton should be "active editor." In the Atlantic Lowell took a firm stand against slavery; he did not believe the Southern states would secede. When, however, secession became certain, slavery occupied a less prominent place in his thought and writing, and the preservation of the Union became his chief object. During the Reconstruction Period, he advocated through the North American

Review suffrage for the negroes and liberal treatment of the Confederates. The climax of Lowell's writings on slavery and dissension was reached in 1865, in the Ode for the Harvard Commemoration, which contains one of the finest tributes to Lincoln, concluding,

"New birth of our new soil, the first American."

In the summer of 1871 Lowell sold enough of Elmwood to give him a comfortable income; and a year later resigned from Harvard and went abroad with Mrs. Lowell for two years. Evidence of his being more widely and favorably known than on his previous trips is found in the more general reception accorded him, in England especially. seal of English national approval was placed on him by honorary degrees from the two great universities — D. C. L. from Oxford, in 1873, and LL.D. from Cambridge the following year.

The

Minister to Spain. - The years 1874-1877 were spent in the United States, where he did a little teaching and a little politics. His political activity led to his appointment as Minister to Spain, which he felt bound to accept, though he had already refused to go to Austria or Germany, and had "no desire to go abroad at all." Before sailing he got some amusement out of his fellow townsmen, who acted "as if I had drawn a prize in a lottery and was somebody at last.

I dare say I shall enjoy it after I get there, but at present it is altogether a bore to be honorabled at every The difficulties of his position he thus expressed in a letter after he had been four months in Madrid: "Fancy a shy man, without experience, suddenly plumped down among a lot of utter strangers, unable to speak their language (though knowing more of it than almost any of them), and with a secretary wholly ignorant both of Spanish and French." While he was often burdened with the business

of the embassy, and bored with the amount of ceremony in official life, he was thoroughly interested in studying at first hand the national character, with which he was already familiar through a wide knowledge of Spanish literature.

To England. Though Lowell found some of his duties distasteful, the life in Spain became exceedingly pleasant, and his career there was eminently successful. So satisfactory indeed was he to his government that in January, 1880, after two and a half years in Spain, he was appointed Minister to Great Britain, the highest post in the foreign service. During the five years of his residence in England, he handled with great skill some difficult diplomatic problems, and greatly increased the cordial feeling between the two countries, which had not been without friction since the Civil War. Though he was well received everywhere, and in great demand for all sorts of public appearances, he acted on the assumption that he was asked as the representative of a great nation, and not on personal grounds. Even in country homes, where he was more frequently a guest than any other American who ever lived, he always, says a friend, "let fall some good American seed."

During his official residence in Spain and England Lowell wrote very little, and wrote no poem or literary essay which takes high rank. The essay on Democracy, referred to above, belongs to his last year in England; but this is of course not literary. What are very generally considered Lowell's most artistic productions were written two years before his going to Spain—the Ode at the Concord Centennial, and Under the Old Elm. The first of these, while quite as great as the subject demanded, falls short of the vigor and beauty of Emerson's simple ode of forty years before. The second, however, the occasion of which was the hundredth anniversary of Washington's taking command of the army, ranks second only to the Commemoration Ode among

American patriotic poems. The author considered it the best of his memorial poems, "mainly because it was composed after my college duties were over." After drawing pictures of Washington and his army-"a motley rout". and paying suitable homage to Washington, he concludes with a noble tribute to the hero's native state:

"Virginia gave us this imperial man;

She gave us this unblemished gentleman.

What shall we give her back but love and praise

As in the dear old unestranged days

Before the inevitable wrong began ?"

"I took advantage of the occasion," Lowell wrote, "to hold out a hand of kindly reconciliation to Virginia."

"I am

Lowell's foreign service came to an end in June, 1885, with the return to power of the Democratic party. on the whole glad to be rid of my official trappings," he wrote to one friend; and to another: "I shall see you again in June - one of the greatest favors I have to thank President Cleveland for." Yet he had a few months earlier expressed his willingness to stay and had admitted his regret at leaving "certain friendships I have formed here, and the climate." His recall was very generally lamented in England, and has been often taken as a text for an attack on the American method of filling such positions.

Last Years. Shortly before Lowell's departure from England, Mrs. Lowell died. Unwilling to return then to Elmwood, he went to live with his daughter at Southborough, not far from Boston, which was his home for four years. They were busy years; for the poet, diplomat, critic, popular lecturer, essayist, was in great demand. He spoke on matters of national interest before many organizations, gave readings from his poems, wrote a few new poems and published a collection of his old ones, and undertook