a voice from heaven, saying, "Thy brother shall rise again."

And so another of my loves in life is quenched in death. Good-by, dear, blessed, sainted Rogers, good-by! "Very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love was wonderful." And where thou art now, with Christ, God grant we may be also.

THE SONGS OF LONGFELLOW ARE ENDED.

"Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul."

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

THE Psalm of Life is ended, was probably the first expression of many when they heard of the death of Mr. Longfellow. His life has been so like a psalm. Full of poetry and purity, majesty and beauty, calm and strong, it has risen and rolled on in solemn and stately numbers to its fitting close.

When great and good men leave the stage of life, and we are compelled to feel that they will be seen no more on earth, it is very pleasant to have known their faces and forms, and to preserve distinct memories of them as they were in the flesh. This is one of my secret and very great enjoyments, as the living pass by and are gone: to keep in the mind images of the departed, converse with them in spirit, recall the words they said, the smiles that lighted up their eyes, and the pressure of their hands when we parted for the last time. I have the names written down in a book of remembrance of hundreds: names the world is familiar with; names many of them that "the world will not let die," with whom it has been my happiness to have been in company. In this list of names is that of the great poet who has just now taken leave of us. I dined with him nearly forty years ago, and the recollections of his appearance at that period in his life are as fresh as the memory of the last portrait that I saw

of the venerable bard, with his gray beard covering the face that was then ruddy and fair. And all the way on, since that memorable occasion, his growth has been in the eye of the world.

I observe our English friends are pleased to say that the poems of Longfellow are more widely read in England than any of their poets, except Tennyson. That exception would not be made on our side of the sea. Doubtless hundreds read Longfellow to one who knows anything of the poet laureate of England. Yet it is fit that they should be spoken of together. They have the common and noble praise of being the friends of truth and virtue, and whatsoever is lovely and of good report. The secret of Longfellow's universal acceptance, alike among the lowly and the lofty of this world's people, is that he touches the universal heart, and only to give it comfort and joy. He is not sad. In company he was very cheerful, and his conversation revealed a heart in tune with the pleasant words of his fellow-men. To call him gay would not convey a true thought of him, though I have been told that he was more so than he appeared to be. The most prosaic line of his I remember is

"And things are not what they seem."

I would not think it incredible that a mind so full of things of beauty, and a heart so full of love for all mankind, should be in perpetual sunshine. That he was often sad, the sweetest, tenderest and most read of his poems give painful evidence. Yet what a loss to the world it would have been had he not written just those verses which have fallen upon and sunk into the deep waters of human sorrow, and yielded that strange comfort one finds in having his grief put into words! It is as if the writer had been in the wine-press where the reader is bleeding, and had survived; had come out of great tribulation himself with garments made white in the trial, and therefore was able to minister to them who are mourning still. Christ Jesus has wrought the same idea in his work and revealed it unto us, and we know through him there is a knowledge gained by experience that even Infinite

wisdom would not otherwise enjoy. Thus Jesus knows how to sympathize with those who have loved and lost. Longfellow, in the Footsteps of the Angels," sings to us of

those

"Who the cross of suffering bore,

Folded their pale hands so meekly,

Spoke with us on earth no more!"

And when we are thus reminded of our bereavements, and of them who have gone before us into the world of spirits, all at once we are taken out of our own experience, into sympathy with the poet who writes:

"And with them the being beauteous

Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven;

"With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,

Lays her gentle hand in mine;

"And she sits and gazes at me," etc.

We read, and the story seems to be a bit of personal experience; it is so real or, as we say, life-like, even when conversing with the dead. The same sensation is awakened by the first stanza of the most familiar of Longfellow's hymns, "Resignation:"

"There is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there!

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacant chair."

How many homes are in those four lines! The death of little children is as common as the flock and the fireside he states the fact only, and it brings a sort of comfort to the smitten household that their sorrow is like the sorrow of millions of Rachel "for her children crying." But the poet has more precious balm than this, even the name of Christ

whose sweet perfume soon fills the house; and when he has left "the one whom he called dead" in heaven,

"Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,"

he then bids the mourner weep: he knows that tears are healing;

"By silence sanctifying, not concealing

The grief that must have way."

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It is very likely that this poem has been read in more households than any other of Longfellow's, and there are very few in the language that are more familiar to the ear and heart of suffering humanity. Some years ago a very plain, elderly man, apparently a farmer quite away from home, came into my office, and produced a sheet of paper. He said his daughter had written a piece of poetry; he had read it, but was no judge of poetry, and for that matter he knew nothing about it, and had no opinion as to its being fit to print, but he liked this very much, and if I liked it as well as he did, he thought I would put it into the paper. Are you sure your daughter wrote this out of her own head?" I inquired, and the old man said she did. It was Longfellow's "Resignation." She had learned it undoubtedly, and it had sung in her heart and soul and mind, until it seemed to be her own, and, without a thought of taking what was another's, she had put all those lines upon paper. Her father, full of admiration at the wonderful gifts of his daughter, had brought them to me. In the same way, but not with like results, I trust, thousands of young men have taken Longfellow's EXCELSIOR into their very being: its aspiring thought has to them become an inspiration, and made them conquerors. They have excelled because their motto was, and their song, EXCELSIOR.

"Lives of great men all remind us,"
"Learn to labor and to wait,"

"To suffer and be strong,"

are lines, with scores of others, that have been assimilated with the moral and mental food of the people, till they are

in the thought of men, with the power of proverbs, the experience of thousands condensed into the word of one.

What a gift, to be able to sing for the world! To put into the form, and to give the power of wings to pure, holy, uplifting thought, so that it shall fly over the land and sea, lighting on the cot of the sick one in the lowly valley, and then flying into the palace window, where the smitten queen mourns her beloved dead; cheering the wearied laborer when his day's work is over, and rousing the nation's heart with stirring song:

"Sail on, O ship of State!

Sail on, O Union strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"

The best gifts of God are by some most basely abused. But when a nation, yes, a race, the human race, wherever English speech is known, is silently sad in hearing of Longfellow's death, mourning that a friend to whom they are in debt for comfort and aid, is gone, I think how good and how blessed it is to have filled the world with music without one false note; with pictures and not a canvas on which an eye can look with pain; with thoughts all and only pure, and purifying; making rich and adding no sorrow; songs to be sung in all time to exalt, console and bless. Happy the poet who sleeps under wreaths from all lands! happy the poet whose songs have made the whole world kin!

EMERSON AND THE CHILDREN.

It was not my pleasure to spend more than one evening in company with Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Then he made but one remark which left a memorable impression on my mind. Two children of the gentleman at whose house we met were playing in the room, when their father remarked: