Trent. On November 8, 1861, Commodore Wilkes of the U. S. sloop of war San Jacinto halted the Trent, took off the ambassadors and their secretaries, and transferred them to the Federal prison at Boston. The event caused great excitement in England and the British government demanded that immediate liberation of the four men together with a suitable apology for the aggression could alone satisfy the British nation. The men were accordingly liberated, but no apology was offered. The action was explained in the words of a contemporary editorial in Harper's Weekly: they were surrendered because it was infinitely better that we should endure a certain amount of humiliation at the hands of Great Britain than that we should jeopard the great cause of the Union by throwing the naval power of England into the rebel scale.'

516. 373. Vattel (1714-1767). Swiss diplomat, author of The Law of Nations, a famous treatise on international law.

413. Abram thought 't was right. 'Lincoln acknowledged that the seizure of Mason and Slidell was a violation of the rights of Great Britain as a neutral, and on the first of January, 1862, released the commissioners.'

445. Fiber o' cotton. The blockade of the Southern ports stopped the shipment of cotton to England and caused great distress in the manufacturing centers of the kingdom. It was largely on account of the cotton that the working people of England were inclined to sympathize with the South.

COMMEMORATION ODE

518. Lowell read this poem at the memorial exercises held July 21, 1865, to commemorate, in Lowell's words, the ever sweet and shining memory of the ninety-three sons of Harvard College who died for their country in the war of nationality.' 519. 147. Stanza VI was not read at the commem. oration exercises but was written and added shortly afterwards.

520. 236. Thinking of dear ones. In a privately printed edition of the Ode, 1865, Lowell gives the names of eight of his relatives who were among the dead: General Charles Russell Lowell, Lieutenant James Jackson Lowell, and Captain William Lowell Putnam were of the poet's own family.

262. Section X, as it is usually printed in the later editions of the poem, did not appear in the Atlantic Monthly which is the text most nearly like that actually read by Lowell at the original occasion.

REVERIES OF A BACHELOR

529. b. 55. Omnium gatherum, gatherer of everything.

530. a 7. Münchhausen, a well-known collection of exaggerations and grotesque adventure purporting to have been written by Baron Münchhausen of the German army, but really written by R. E. Raspe. Published in England in 1785.

22. Gil Blas of Santillane, the hero of a romance

of the same name by the French novelist Le Sage It was published in 1715.

b. 33. Paisleys, a variety of shawl manufactured at Paisley, Scotland, and very popular in America during the early part of the nineteenth century. 531. a. 18. Chaussée, stockinged.

b. 45. Goldoni, Italian comedy writer, born 1707.

49. An Elzevir, a book printed by the celebrated Dutch firm of Elzivir in the seventeenth century Copies are now rare and valuable.

55. Anthology, literally a collection of flowers, but now used as the name of a collection of the finest things of literature.

56. aiai, an exclamation of extreme grief or hor ror. found in Greek tragedy.

532. a. 2. Bruyère, born 1645, a French moralist. 534. b. 22. Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. 535. b. 49. Hervey, undoubtedly James Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs, 1745, a work very popular during the eighteenth century.

b. 57. Seneca was a stoic; Voltaire's view of life was cynical. 536. a. 7. Martial, born 43 A. D., is known chiefly for his biting epigrams.

DICKENS READING

550. The Easy Chair was begun in Harper's Magazine by D. G. Mitchell in October, 1851, and was conducted by him until it was taken over by Curtis in 1854. Except during two months in 1875

when he was sick and when T. B. Aldrich wrote the papers so completely in Curtis's style that no one suspected any change, the genial Howadji had full control of the department until his death in 1892. The Chair was then discontinued for eight years. In December, 1900, W. D. Howells brought back the Chair and until his death in 1920, edited it very ably. His successor was E. S. Martin.

Dickens was twice in America. He came over in January, 1842, returning the following July, and he came again in November, 1867, read in most of the larger cities and returned early the next May.

64

b. 21. Schnuspel. In Book II., ch. 3, Carlyle wrote: O, if all Yankee-land follow a small good 'Schnuspel the distinguished Novelist" with blazing torches, dinner-invitations, universal hep-hep-burrah, feeling that he, though small, is something; how might all Angle-land once follow a hero-martyr and great true son of Heaven!'

552. a. 50. Dickens' American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, written after his first tour, had been not at all flattering to Americans.

b. 31. The speedy end. Dickens died June 9, 1870. The hardships and exposures which he endured during the severe winter which he passed in America undoubtedly shortened his life.

HANNAH BINDING SHOES

565. The little song "Hanna Binding Shoes "written immediately after my return from the West, -[Summer of 1852] was a study from life- though not from any one life-in my native town.'- A New England Girlhood.

FAREWELL ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

571. It was a stormy morning [February 11, 1861] which served to add gloom and depression to their spirits. The leave-taking presented a scene of subdued anxiety, almost of solemnity. Mr. Lincoln took a position in the waiting-room, where his friends filed past him, often merely pressing his hand in silent emotion.

The half-finished ceremony was broken in upon by the ringing bells and rushing train. The crowd closed about the railroad car into which the President-elect and his party made their way. Then came the central incident of the morning. The bell gave notice of starting; but as the conductor paused with his hand lifted to the bell-rope, Mr. Lincoln appeared on the platform of the car, and raised his hand to command attention. The bystanders bared their heads to the falling snowflakes, and standing thus, his neighbors heard his voice for the last time, in the city of his home, in a farewell address so chaste and pathetic, that it reads as if he already felt the tragic shadow of forecasting fate.'-Nicolay and Hay.

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

571. Only the last six paragraphs of the address are given here, or about one-sixth of the entire address.

ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG

572. The orator of the day was Edward Everett, who was regarded as the most finished and scholarly speaker of his generation in America. He spoke for nearly two hours.

'Mr. Everett ended in a brilliant peroration, the echoes of which were lost in the long and hearty plaudits of the great multitude, and then President Lincoln arose to fill the part assigned him in the programme. It was a trying ordeal, to fittingly crown with a few brief sentences the ceremonies of such a day and such an achievement in oratory; finished, erudite, apparently exhaustive of the theme, replete with all the strength of scholastic method and the highest graces of literary culture. If there arose in the mind of any discriminating listener on the platform a passing doubt whether Mr. Lincoln would or could properly honor the unique occasion, that doubt vanished with his opening sentence; for then and there the President pronounced an address of dedication so pertinent, so brief yet so comprehensive, so terse yet so eloquent, linking the deeds of the present to the thoughts of the future, with simple words, in such living, original, yet exquisitely molded, (maxim-like phrases that the best critics have awarded

BATTLE-HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC

584. Mrs. Howe visited Washington in December, 1861, and while there saw much of the regiments quartered about the city. She heard the John Brown song everywhere sung, and impressed by the inadequacy of the words, even as Pike had been impressed by the inferiority of the early version of Dirie, she wrote before she left the city what she called The Battle-Hymn of the Republic. was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1862, and has now taken its place as the American battle-hymn.

THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE

It

584. First printed in the New York Evening Post, July 16, 1862, and as it was anonymous, attributed to William Cullen Bryant, who settled all conjecture as to its authorship by revealing the name of its author. It was written immediately following Lincoln's call for three hundred thousand volunteers.

STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY

584. Written while the battle of Antietam was in progress, September 17, 1862.

585. 14. Banks, Gen. N. P. Banks, commander of a corps in the Shenandoah in 1862.

22. In forma pauperis, like a poor man.

27. Hill, the Confederate general A. P. Hill. 37. Pope, the Federal general John Pope.

39. Stuart, General Jeb.' Stuart, the Confederate cavalry leader.

39. Ashby, General Turner Ashby, killed at the battle of Cross Keys, Va.

LITTLE GIFFEN

586. The poet Ticknor did take into his home a stricken young Confederate soldier just as the poem records and all the details of the story are literally true.

THE CONQUERED BANNER

588. First published in Father Ryan's paper, The Banner of the South, in 1868.

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY

589. First published in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1867. To this first appearance of the poem was prefixed a quotation from the New York Tribune: 'The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National heroes.' Finch was a native of Ithaca, N. Y., and was long prominently identified with Cornell University.

EUROPE

590. The poem deals with the revolution of 1848 in France which overthrew the corrupt Louis Philippe. The revolution as a whole was a failure. After insurrection and turmoil, gradually the monarchial forces gained control until by August, 1849, the old system had been completely restored.

FRANCE

591. Modern France was born from the French Revolution which is the subject of this poem.

MANNAHATTA

592. Manhattan Island, or New York City. 17. Trottoirs, French word for pavements.

CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

594. This poem and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd are without doubt the finest of all the elegiac verse called out by the death of Lincoln.

O STAR OF FRANCE

602. The poem was written during the dark days of the Franco-Prussian war, after the French armies had been crushingly defeated on the frontier and the commune had taken possession of Paris.

THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD 603. This poem was read by Whitman before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, June 26, 1872, and published the same year in pamphlet form. In 1876 it was included in Leaves of Grass. To the earlier edition were added later what are now the first thirteen lines of the poem in its present form, besides many other additions and changes. I have followed the latest text.

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS

606. In 1871, Whitman issued what unquestionably is his most notable prose work, Democratic Vistas. It is pitched in major key; it swells O'Connor's piping note into a trumpet blast. Boldly and radically it called for a new school of literature. The old is outgrown, it cried; the new is upon us; make ready for the great tide of democratic poetry and prose that even now is sweeping away the old landmarks. To the new era it was what Emerson's American Scholar was to the period that had opened in the thirties. It was our last declaration of literary independence.'-American Literature Since 1870. 607. a. 1. Promulge, coined by Whitman. Promulgate is the proper word.

609. b. 36. Haut ton, high tone. 614. b. 30. Con amore, with love.

THE PRAYER OF COLUMBUS

615. In the Preface to the poem in the collected edition of 1876, Whitman explained: It was near the close of his indomitable and pious life on his

last voyage when nearly seventy years of agethat Columbus, to save his two remaining ships from foundering in the Caribbean Sea in a terrible storm, had to run them ashore on the Island of Jamaica where, laid up for a long and miserable year

1503 -he was taken very sick, had several relapses, his men revolted, and death seem'd daily imminent; though he was eventually rescued, and sent home to Spain to die, unrecognized, neglected and in want.

It is only ask'd, as preparation and atmosphere for the following lines, that the bare authentic facts be recall'd and realized, and nothing contributed by the fancy. See the Antillean island, with its florid skies and rich foliage and scenery, the waves beating the solitary sands, and the hulls of the ships in the distance. See the figure of the great Admiral, walking the beach, as a stage, in this sublimest tragedy, what poem so piteous and majestic as the real scene?-and hear him uttering-as his mystical and religious soul surely utters, the ideas followingperhaps, in their equivalents, the very words.'

It is believed by many that this poem has autobiographic touches. It is a picture of Whitman himself in his last years.

MY DOUBLE AND HOW HE UNDID ME 618. a 17. Rasselas, a moralizing romance written by Dr. Samuel Johnson.

26. Sandemanian. The Sandemanians were a small religious sect founded by a Scotchman, Robert Sandeman, who came to America in 1764.

b. 21. Paraheliacal, sun-equaling, or dazzling like the sun.

619. a. 25. Richard Greenough, born 1819, American sculptor.

b. 25. Frederic Ingham, the pen name used by Hale for some of his early writings, notably The Man Without a Country.

620. a. 9. Thalaba, the chief character in Robert Southey's poem Thalaba the Destroyer.

sanc

13. Sanctissimum, a superlative coined by the author. An author's study is often called his tum,' meaning place sacred to him and his work. b. 52. Midshipman Easy. Captain Frederick Marryat's popular sea novel, Midshipman Easy, appeared in 1814.

621. a. 1. The Academy. In early New England days a private high school was often called an academy, a name derived from Plato's school of philosophy, the Academy, at Athens.

622. a. 25. Semiramis, queen of Assyria, who, after the death of her husband, brought her empire to a brilliant height of glory.

MY OUT-DOOR STUDY

627. This is the tenth paper in Out-Door Papers, published in book form, 1863.

630. b. 8. William Wilkie Collins (1824-89) English novelist, had issued, when Higginson's essay was written, The Dead Secret and The Woman in White, titles that suggest the type of fiction to which they belong.

24. John Constable (1776-1837) English landscape painter.

51. Thoreau's Walden had appeared in 1854. 631. a. 44. Henry T. Buckle (1821-1862) English his torian, author of History of Civilization in England. 56. Vishnu Purana, one of the eighteen Sanscrit works which deal with the doctrines of Brahmanism. b. 22. Brentano. German romantic poet and novelist (1778-1842).

633. a. 21. Subde caput, etc. Put down your head, at the same time put down your body, at the same time wash out your hair.

634. b. 33. De soir fontaines, etc. In the evening fountains; in the morning mountains.

L'ENVOI

635. This was the closing poem of Taylor's Poems of the Orient, a collection which he published after his tour through Egypt, Asia Minor, India, China and Japan and other lands during the years between 1851-53, a journey of over fifty thousand miles.

THE NATIONAL ODE

636. The National Ode' was delivered at the celebration of the Fourth of July at the Centennial at Philadelphia in 1876. An immense platform had been built running the length of Independence Hall. A most distinguished gathering it was, resplendent in the midst of it Emperor of Brazil and his suite. 'At last Bayard Taylor's part came. He stood upon the speaker's stand, without manuscript or notes of any kind, and in his full, strong voice began,"Sun of the stately Day."

There was something in his presence, erect, impressive, filled with a solemn sense of the moment, something in his voice, clear, penetrating, sonorous, and charged with profound emotion, which stilled the noise and tumult of those before him, hushed even the lively creatures in the branches, and made the vast audience listen. He had mastered the situation in a moment, and filled with his theme, he poured out his ode with a majesty of expression which held the people to the close. It was a real victory for Poetry.'-Taylor's Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor.

THE DIAMOND LENS

652. b. 37. Leeuwenhock, Antonius von, Dutch microscopist, born 1632. He discovered among other things the red corpuscles of the blood. Williamson and the others mentioned in the list were noted naturalists and microscopists.

653. b. 19. Camera-lucida, an apparatus for projecting a microscopic image upon paper so it can be sketched.