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GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS as when he followed Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn with his own The Tent on the Beach, he often failed to rival his graceful brother poet. In American balladry he was pre-eminent; such pieces as "The Swan Song of Parson Avery," "Marguerite," "Barclay of Ury," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," "In the 'Old South,'" hold their place in literature. It is necessary above all to consider the relation of a people's years of growth and ferment to the song which represents them; for in the strains of Whittier, more than in those of any other nineteenth-century lyrist, the saying of Fletcher of Saltoun, as to the ballads and laws of a nation, finds historic illustration. He was the national bard of justice, humanity, and reform, whose voice went up as a trumpet until the victory was won. Its lapses resembled those of Mrs. Browning, who was of his own breed in her fervor and exaltation. To the last it was uncertain whether a poem by Whittier would "turn out a sang" or "perhaps turn out a sermon"; if the latter, it had deep sincerity and was as close to his soul as the other. He began as a liberator, but various causes employed his pen; his heart was with the people; he loved a worker, and the Songs of Labor convey the zest of the artisan and pioneer. From 1832 to 1863 no occasion escaped him for inspiring the assailants of slavery, or chanting pæans of their martyrdom or triumph. No crusade ever had a truer laureate than the author of "The Virginia Slave Mother," "The Pastoral Letter"—one of his stinging ballads against a time-serving Church, "A Sabbath Scene," and [108]