Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/890

 860 L N L N trustworthy, and at last vanishes. Muck of the time is now spent in sleep, and unless some intercurrent disease snaps the thread of life there is a slow ebbing of existence into natural death. Essentially these phenomena are due to delicate changes in the tissues, visible only with the aid of the microscope. These changes are those of wasting or atrophy, meaning a failure of nutrition, or fatty changes, or those caused by infiltration into the tissue of earthy matter, which soon, destroys its healthy functions. Literature. Elliotson, Human Physiology; Hufeland, Art of Prolonging Life; P. Flourens, Da la Longevite Humaine, et de la Quanti te de Vie sur la Globe ; Quetelet, Physique Sociale, vol. i. p. 308; De Quatrefages, The Human Species; An Account of Persons remarkable for their Health and Longevity, by a Physician, London, 1829; Sir G. Cornewall Lewis s Letters; Thorns, On Lon gevity. (J. G. M.) HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Copyright, 1882, by Thomas Davidson. HEXRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW, (1807- 1882), the best known of American poets, was born on the 27th February 1807, at Portland, now the capital of the State of Maine, to which his ancestor, William Longfellow, immigrated, in 1G78, from English Hamp shire. His father was Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer and United States congressman, and his mother, Zilpha Wads- worth, a descendant of John Alden and of &quot; Priscilla, the Puritan maiden.&quot; Longfellow s external life presents little that is of stirring interest. It is the life of a modest, deep-hearted gentleman, whose highest ambition was to be a perfect man, and, through sympathy and love, to help others to be the same. His boyhood was spent mostly in his native town, which he never ceased to love, and whose beautiful surroundings and quiet, pure life he has described in his poem &quot; My Lost Youth.&quot; Here he grew up in the midst of majestic peace, which was but once broken, and that by an event which made a deep impression on him the war of 1812. He never forgot &quot; the sea-fight far away, How it thundered o er the tide, And the dead captains as they lay In their graves o eiiooking the tranquil bay, AVhere they in battle died.&quot; The &quot; tranquil bay &quot; is Casco Bay, one of the most beautiful in the world, studded with bold, green islands, well fitted to be the Hesperides of a poet s boyish dreams. At the early age of fourteen Longfellow entered Bowdoin College at Brunswick, a town situated near the romantic falls of the Androscoggin river, about 25 miles from Portland, and in a region full of Indian scenery and legend. Here he had among his classfellows Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever, and J. S. C. Abbott. During the latter years of his college life he contributed to the United States Literary Gazette some half-dozen poems, which are interesting for two reasons (1) as showing the poet s early, book-mediated sympathy with nature and legendary heroisms, and (2) as being almost entirely free from that supernatural view of nature which his subsequent residence in Europe imparted to him. He graduated in 1825, at the age of eighteen, with honours, among others that of writing the &quot; class poem.&quot; After graduation, he remained for a short time at Bowdoin College in the capacity of tutor, and then entered his father s law office, intending, it may be presumed, to devote himself to the study of the law. For this profession he was, both by capacity and tastes, utterly unfitted, and it was fortunate that, shortly after, he received an offer of a professorship of modern languages in his alma mater. In order the better to qualify himself for this appointment, he came to Europe and spent three years and a half travelling in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, and England, learning languages, for which he had unusual talent, and drinking in the spirit of the history and life of these countries. For an American, while still in a f plastic state, to spend much time in Europe is a doubtful and, not unfrequently, a disastrous experiment, unfitting him for a useful, contented life in his own country. The effect of Longfellow s visit was twofold. On the one hand, it widened his sympathies, gave him confidence in himself, and supplied him with many poetical themes ; on the other, it traditionalized his mind, coloured for him the pure light of nature, and rendered him in some measure unfit to feel or express the spirit of American nature and life. His sojourn in Europe fell exactly in the time when, in England, the reaction against the sentimental atheism of Shelley, the pagan sensitivity of Keats, and the sublime, Satanic outcastness of Byron was at its height ; when, in the Catholic countries, the negative exaggerations of the French Revolution were inducing a counter current of positive faith, which threw men into the arms of a half- sentimental half-aesthetic medievalism ; and when, in Germany, the aristocratic paganism of Goethe was being- swept aside by that tide of dutiful, romantic patriotism which flooded the country, as soon as it began to feel that it still existed after being run over by Napoleon s war- chariot. When, in 1829, he returned to assume his duties at Bowdoin College, he saw the world and man no longer in the clear effulgence of nature, but in the subdued and tinted light that comes through painted cathedral windows, or in the reflected rays that fall from somnambulous moons. He remained six years at Bowdoin College. In his twenty-fourth year (1831) he married Miss Mary S. Potter, one of his &quot;early loves,&quot; and in 1833 published, first, a small volume of translations from the Spanish, with an introductory essay on the moral and devotional poetry of Spain, and then part of Outre-Mer, a youthfully ebullient work, for which a fitting title would have been &quot;Poetry and Truth from my Travels.&quot; The latter con tained some translations from the French, and was com pleted in 1835. In 1835 Longfellow was chosen to succeed George Ticknor as professor of modern languages and belles- lettres in Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass., the oldest and most illustrious institution of higher learning in the country. On receiving this appointment, he paid a second visit of some fifteen months to Europe, this time devot ing special attention to the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland. During this visit he lost his wife, who died at Ptotterdam, November 29, 1835. The poet speaks of her in &quot; Footsteps of Angels &quot; as &quot;the Being Beauteous &quot;Who unto my youth was given, More than all things else to love me, And is now a saint in heaven.&quot; On his return to America in 1836, Longfellow took up his residence in Cambridge, and began to lecture and write. In his new home he found himself amid surroundings entirely congenial to him. Indeed, there are few places in the world which a man of learning, refinement, sociability, and liberal views would rather choose for a residence than Cambridge. Its spaciousness and free rural aspect, its old graveyards and towering elms, its great university, its cultivated society, for admission to which unabsorbed wealth is a positive disqualification, and its vicinity to humane, substantial, busy Boston, are all attractions for such a man. In 1837-38 several essays of Longfellow s appeared in the North American R-evieiv, and in 1839 he published Hyperion, and his first volume of original poetry, entitled Voices of the Night. The former, a poetical account of his travels, had, at the time of its