guage of Canon Farrar, "a most just and "There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart There are many references in his poems to "Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes, "Ring, bells in unreared steeples, In a brief sketch like this it is not possible to dwell upon the simple incidents of the poet's life. He was one of the original and highly valued contributors to the Atlantic Monthly, and many of his best poems are to be found in its pages. The establishment of that magazine, the first of a high literary character to defend the principles of universal freedom, gave him great delight. Some of his early poems, such as Mogg Megone," and, perhaps, "The Bridal of Pennacook," remind one of Scott; but that influence passed away, and there was developed from his character and experience a manner of thought and expression entirely his own. His poems are pervaded by the high sense of duty and the spirit of primitive Christianity, in which he was reared. They are in the domain of poetry what he has been in the world of man. The passionate impulses which inspired so many of the songs of Burns, and much of the verse of Byron, have never been breathed in a line of his. His blood was naturally fiery, and his feelings intense; but a sure self-control has directed him. After a weary time the end of the war came, and slavery was for ever destroyed: a momentous fact of which the world has not felt, and will not for centuries feel, the full significance. The triumph of Whittier was not in the victory of Northern over Southern-born men, not in He has been equally steadfast in abstainthe downfall of the Confederacy, but in the ing from wine. For him, "wine is a mocker, establishment of right and justice. When strong drink a raging." Shielded so by printhe proclamation of freedom came he gave ciple and by discipline from the frailties and utterance to his long-pent-up feelings in a excesses that have ruined so many generous poem of almost painful energy, fitly entitled men, but alive with the glow of love for the Laus Deo!" It is a cry of devout gratitude beautiful in humanity, in nature, and in art, for deliverance, in simple unaffected lines, he has presented a combination of traits which could scarcely have come from any seldom united in one person. If one could other living man. Later, when the conse- imagine the purity and honour of a knight, quences of the great events began to loom up the boldness of an inspired prophet, the singlewith the grandeur of mountains in the dis-hearted zeal of an apostle, an artist's deep tance, he wrote "My Triumph." He had a right to exult. For over thirty years he had devoted his life and strength to the cause, had voluntarily renounced fame, had chosen poverty, and denied himself the pleasures which man hold dear in this life, and now his reward had come. This poem seems to me singularly pathetic in its simplicity and power. It is terse to baldness. The poet is not thinking of melody or of fine phrases; his words come as if uttered in the presence of God. "Hail to the coming singers! "The airs of heaven blow o'er me; joy in the world of nature, the pitying heart of a woman, and a poet's power to fuse all these qualities without extinguishing humour and naturalness-in such a blending one would realise the soul of Whittier. Knowing his character and powers, the scenery and legends of his native valley, and the history of the cause for which he toiled, it is easy to classify and understand his poems. He never crossed the ocean, and travelled but little out of New England; and his scenes are naturally located in the region where he lived. The region is not extensive. There is the Merrimack River, from its sources near the White Mountains to the sea; the lakes and forests haunted by Indian legends; and the villages full of traditions of the trials of witches and the persecution of Quakers. Considered as landscape, few places in the New World are more beautiful than those Whittier has described. As specimens of his observation and art in scenery, readers may look at "The Last Walk in Autumn," "Summer by the Lake Side," "Melvin Stream," ," "Our River," and others; one can hardly go amiss, as there are few poems which do not contain some strokes that testify to his quick eye and sure hand. Here are a few passages. "O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, I see, beyond the valley lands, The sea's long level dim with rain. Along the river's summer walk The withered tufts of asters nod, And trembles on its arid stalk The hoar plume of the golden-rod, And on a ground of sombre fir, And azure-studded juniper, The silver birch its buds of purple shows, And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild rose." "Once more, O mountains of the North, unveil Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by! My common life,-your glorious shapes and hues "We saw the slow tides go and come, The curving surf-lines lightly drawn, Here are two stanzas from "The Pine Tree" (the ancient emblem in the flag of Massachusetts), written during the war with Mexico, 1846 : "Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's rusted shield, Give to northern winds the Pine Tree on our banner's tattered field. Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board, Answering England's royal missive with a firm 'THUS SAITH THE LORD! Rise again for home and freedom!-Set the battle in array!What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do today." none but a poet and a believer could have conceived. "Still waits kind Nature to impart Her choicest gifts to such as gain Again : "Wherever through the ages rise I trace His presence in the blind In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung, So welcome I from every source As affording a text for some remarks on Whittier as a man, and on his place among New England poets, I quote a passage from a recent number of the Revue des Deux Mondes: .... "Fastidious people of the present day, accustomed to works whose only defect sometimes is excessive cleverness, accuse Whittier of too great facility, of negligence. A Quaker grafted upon a New England farmer is excusable for letting some bad rhymes pass; but the traces of hasty work in his case never succeed in destroying the sovereign charm of savour and spontaneity.. What will never grow old is the treasure of his ballads, idyls, and stories in verse. The idyls of Longfellow and those of Lowell are justly admired; but there is this difference between them and those of Whittier, that in the former the poet evidently looks down from an enormous intellectual and social height upon the persons and things which he puts upon the stage; Whittier, on the contrary, is of the same blood as his humble heroes. He has remained a peasant, rooted to the soil, like a roadside fern. Not a shadow of dilettantism. If he has not the breadth of Bryant, the penetration of Emerson, he has something more -he reads the soul of the people as from an open book, and he addresses himself to the insignificant as well as to the learned." the soil," he early abandoned the farm and all "Proem," which flows like the most liquid. manual labour, and from the age of about of Spenser's stanzas. But every one sees twenty-two devoted himself to a literary that he sometimes leaves a limping line or career. His ancestors, furthermore, were an imperfect rhyme, especially when he has fellow - townsmen of the ancestors of both brought out his thought strongly. One Lowell and Longfellow, the three poets being thinks of Burns's homely expressiondescended from families in Old Newbury. The ancestors of all three were honest, Godfearing men; but there was no splendour of birth or breeding in Old Newbury, and no talk until late years of a Brahminical class in Massachusetts. Lowell and Longfellow are distinguished for learning as well as for genius; they had every advantage, and made the best use of their time. In their verse and prose are evidences of their reading and travel. But it is a truism to state that no training whatever would have made them poets without native genius, and the example of Whittier has shown that a genius may blossom as a poet, even outside of the university hot-house. This is not the time to speak of relative intellectual height," but the talk of "social" inferiority is nonsense. And though Whittier had college training, he is not "to be excused for having let pass some bad 6: no "Whene'er my muse does on me glance, I jingle at her." Perhaps the very temperament that gave him his dazzling conceptions made him averse to the tedious labour of revision. John Gew hillier rhymes." He is well enough instructed to know when he violates the rules of assonance and of prosody. He does know, and he deplores his shortcomings. And they did not arise from ignorance; they are the effect of his vehement temper, of the rush and fervour of his ideas, of the impossibility of halting to refine and potter when the flood of inspiration is upon him. No man has a finer natural ear for melody, and few poets have given more delightful specimens of it-witness his XXVIII-3 Once more as to the supposed "peasant." Of all men in our time Whittier is remarkable for loftiness of soul. This is a distinguishing feature of his verse, and it is this which has raised him above the makers of merely pretty pastorals, and above the singing gladiators and cymbalclashers of the reform. For he is not chiefly a poet of the common people, except that he does not repel them by foreign phrases nor bewilder them with metaphysics. Ex cepting his antislavery lyrics, his verse, like all high products of mind, demands thought and attention. There has not been as yet a poet of the common people in the United States. Still avoiding comparisons as far as possible-which are ungracious in the lifetime of any of the poets under considerationit may be said that the chief difference between Whittier on the one hand and Longfellow and Lowell on the other arises from the fact that the latter have been cloistered scholars, while our Quaker has been in the thick of the greatest moral contest which the world. has seen since Luther's time. Both of the scholars were heart and soul in the antislavery movement; and Lowell, we all know, is immortal in the Yankee satire which blasted the supporters of slavery in the North as well as in the South; but Whittier alone renounced all to become the apostle and bard of the cause. His devotion cost him dear in honour, fame, wealth, and home delights; it cost him much also in the absorption of time and energy, which, if applied to study and to verse in his fresh and budding years, might have surprisingly changed the relative rank and popularity of the chief American poets; for while others may be more philosophic, profound, and cultured, no one has yet appeared in the United States (of whom the public has knowledge) whose native poetical genius exceeds Whittier's. The description of Whittier, in the article from the Revue des Deux Mondes, rankles in the mind of any one who has known him as an unworthy contumely, a personal wrong. His nature is delicacy itself; his taste is as refined, his perception as true, his self-respect as perfect, his gravity as commanding as if he had been "born in the purple.' With all this, he has characteristic human traits. He has a keen sense of humour, shown in the mobile lines of his mouth and in his sparkling eyes. In ordinary conversation his soft and ungrammatical thee and thou are very fascinating; and when (in earlier days) he related a comical story, the gravity of phrase made it convulsing. Whittier is tall and rather spare, and in early manhood and middle age was singularly handsome, far more so than his engraved pictures lead one to expect. In the engraving is seen the noble dome of his head-the graceful swell of the temples and the ideal fulness of the crown-but no art could represent the depth of his eyes, their softness in repose, or their flashes when he was aroused. His complexion is quite dark, but the skin as well as the features have the delicacy which marks a fine organisation; the whole visage shows_refinement, especially when one ob serves the half-pathetic smile that sometimes plays about his lips. He is often silent, and generally reserved, since age has made him somewhat deaf, but he was never timid or self-conscious. The distinctive dress of the Friends appears to have been modified of late years. The ancient broad-brims have become obsolete. Whittier's costume is plain, but neat and becoming; the colour deep brown or black, the velvet coat collar in shape much like those worn by clergymen in this country. Whittier in a certain way was "canny” as a Scot, and in consequence there have been few things in his life to pique the curiosity of the lovers of ana. After the deplorable scandal that followed the publication of the letters of Carlyle he burned the great part of his correspondence; and he had been a most assiduous letter-writer. In fact it was largely by correspondence that he carried on the work of the political anti-slavery party for the many years in which he gave to it his service. And this period and this service will be with great difficulty set in light by any future biographer. He had not the gift of speech, and never appeared on the platform. His relations with the leading authors of the country have always been pleasant, and he has been visited by multitudes of admirers from all over the world. He is content to live in very simple style at his home in Amesbury, and passes a good portion of each year with relatives in Danvers, not far distant. He generally makes a visit to Boston each winter. Having been almost an invalid. all his life, he has shunned dinners and other assemblies, and from his native reserve_he has avoided all publicity and display. But his qualities have long been known, and no man living, probably, has such troops of friends. A genial temper, a striking presence, a soul without spot or flaw, a life of self-devotion, a record of toil in well-doing, a serene old age, an unfaltering faith, these all belong to John Greenleaf Whittier. ON BROADLAW.* BY THE EDITOR. A BURST of glorious August weather, The moorland that I love so well, Ridge on ridge-a sea of heather, Oh joy to leave the sweltering masses, For streams that glide thro' nibbled grasses, • Broadlaw is in Peeblesshire, near the upper reaches of the Tweed, and is the highest mountain on the mainland of Scotland to the south of the Forth. EARTHQUAKES. BY ARCHIBALD GEIKIE, F.R.S., DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. AMONG the phenomena of nature that after another, to burst against a rocky coast vividly impress the imagination of man- line, the thunder of each successive billow kind none leave so potent and abiding an and the hoarse rattle of the shingle dragged influence as Earthquakes and Volcanoes. To back by the recoiling wave, the hissing cataother manifestations of natural energies we racts of sea-water that pour back again into may become more or less accustomed, till by the angry surf, and the yeasty foam torn off degrees they lose their power over us. A by the wind and blown in fragments away great storm, for instance, brings before us inland? Even thoughts of sympathy for the might of the commotions which from those at sea hardly lessen the kind of painful time to time arise in the atmosphere and pleasure with which the exhibition of such trace out for themselves a path of destruc- stupendous power is beheld. tion across the surface of the land. Yet, though we cannot but recognise its potency, secure in the shelter of our well-built houses, we watch the progress of the storm, even with a certain degree of pleasure. Again, a gale at sea is witnessed from the land, not indeed without a sense of awe, but yet without that feeling of horror which is inspired by the possibility of personal danger. Who can be insensible to the fascination of the huge breakers as they come rolling in one But in an earthquake the sense of personal safety gets a rude shock or vanishes altogether. The solid earth on which we have passed our lives, and to which we have instinctively trusted as an immovable foundation, suddenly trembles and sways under our feet. An ominous hollow groan, or a prolonged rumble, or a grating roar seems to rise out of the ground. And then amid the crash of falling buildings come the shrieks and wails of the terrified inhabitants. In a |