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form of government by representation, and by a thorough training of one hundred and fifty years prepared the popular mind for the responsibilities which national independence brought. Thus it was that what seemed to Europe the miraculous spectacle of a people suddenly assuming self-government and a Constitution of equal rights, was really no stranger than that the oak, strong with the growth of centuries, should endure the tempest which sways its leafy top, but disturbs not its trunk or its roots. The institution of the New England town was the college in which these students in local self-government graduated, and every man in New England was such a student. You could to-day in other lands have visited shrines of grander fame, over which are temples wrought by masters of architecture and gorgeous with the work of masters of art. You could in imagination re-create from Greek and Roman and still more Oriental ruins the magnificent grandeur and glory of dynasties that have ruled the world. You could in Westminster Abbey hold communion with the illustrious dead who won the most conspicuous glory of warrior and statesman, orator, poet, scholar, and divine. But none of these suggest to us the humanity and beauty and significance of the birthplace of a town like this. For here no broken column of fallen temples tells of the magnificence and luxury of the few wrung from the poverty and degradation of the many; no statue or shrine perpetuates not so much the greatness of one man as the inferiority of the body of the people. Here rather began that growth of a free people, that common recognition in town organization of the equal rights of all men which could not endure that any child should be uneducated; or that any poor should remain unfed; or that any one caste should hold supremacy or any other be ground under foot; or that any slave should long breathe Massachusetts air. The civilization of other peoples has been a slow evolution from misty and barbarous beginnings, aided even by the invasion or conquest of other powers. Our fathers began themselves at the summit, standing clear and self-sustained against the sunrise. There are no shadowy beginnings, no day of mean things; no semibarbarism, out of which there has been an exodus, but rather always a spirit of advanced intellectual and national life. No more

generous enthusiasm for learning goes into your schools to-day than they put into theirs. They dotted your landscape with the spires of churches. I love these towns, and sigh that for more than half the people of the Commonwealth they exist no longer. Think what magnificent memories and associations they embody for us, and how crowded is the record of every one of them with heroic names and with participation in great heroic events. We are no longer the new world. We are venerable with age. The world moves now so swift that a hundred years are more than a thousand in the Middle Ages. We look back through the vista of two centuries and a half, and it is filled with great achievements in behalf of humanity; with great names of heroic men and women who lived not afar off, but were with us and of us; and with such great events as the success of popular government, the emancipation of human thought and faith, the abolition of slavery, and the inventions of science which have put the globe into the hollow of man's hand and made the giant powers of nature obedient servants of human will, and which will some day scoop out the Cape Cod Ship Canal as deftly as a lady dips a spoon. With what ancestry in the world shall we fear to compare ours? Our soil is rich with the ashes of the good and great, and our tribute goes out to them the more warmly because it goes not to the few; not to an illustrious warrior here or a great benefactor there; but to the whole body of those plain, quiet, God-fearing, and selfrespecting men and women who so raised the general level of their ordinary life that any distinction among them which they made was the accident of circumstance or necessity, and any distinction which we should make would be an injustice. What trust have they not imposed upon us? With them behind us, what is not our duty as the living, accountable citizens of this and other like communities to-day to those who shall follow us? Shall we lower the standard? Shall we not rather advance it still higher? The world is pleading with us from our safe and high vantage-ground to lend a helping hand, to reach down to our fellow-men and lift them up by help and by example. There never was a time when the moral instincts were more sensitive than now.

wings over us.

Peace spreads her white There is no field to-day

on which to battle with bloody arms for civil freedom, for religious toleration or against beast or savage foe.

Our conflict must be with the insidious forces that war upon the moral sentiment, that threaten corruption to our social and political fabric, that invade the manhood and purity and truth of men, that impair the sanctity and happiness of home, or that would subvert the institutions that have made New England a paradise of living, as it is a paradise of varied and invigorating climate, scenery, and seashore.

The obligations of the noble record along which you look back for two hundred and fifty years with so much pride are not to seek for great opportunities remote and afar off, but to aid in the circle of our own immediate influence and ability in upbuilding the citizen, in erad

icating the subtle evil of intemperance that is honeycombing society and the state with its rot; in diffusing the common education of the people for which the fathers provided so sedulously; in adjusting not so much the cold, economic relation of capital and labor as if these were distinct factors, but the warm relation of man with man in the great struggle for happiness in which every man is a capitalist and every man a laborer; and in standing firm against any influence or inroad that threatens the purity of democratic government. These great causes depend upon our discharge or our neglect of our duty. If we discharge it, then are we worthy sons of worthy sires. If we neglect it, then is our celebration of these anniversaries, our praise of the fathers, our tribute to their virtues, but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

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SIR EDWIN ARNOLD AT HARVARD.

MERICA gave to Edwin Arnold a wife, and she has now had the pleasure of giving him a hearty welcome to her shores. The Light of Asia and the volumes which have followed it have found as large a company of readers in America as in England, and roused as deep an interest here as there. If the poet needed assurance of the honor in which he is held in America, it was given by the audiences which crowded Sanders Theatre in Cambridge on the evenings of October 1st and 2d, to listen to his lectures on the Upanishads and the Mahabharata. And if we needed assurance of his deep and intelligent interest in our history and institutions and future, he gave us that in the impressive words which he added to his last lecture. So full of beautiful and striking historical and local allusions was this farewell of his to New England, and so full as well of noble counsel, that it merits careful reading and permanent place. The readers of the NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE will certainly be grateful that the poet has revised and somewhat expanded this brief address for publication in the columns of the magazine.

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"These are my last lectures, - positively my last appearance on any stage; for I perceive that a scholar's conscience will not allow him to be satisfied with such swift condensations. But since I am happy enough to find myself face to face with the students of this renowned University, I would venture not on the impertinence of advice, of which I am incapable, but on the privilege of a few friendliest remarks suggested by your generous reception to-night. As I have seen in Washington the Capitol, and in it the Supreme Court, which is the omphalos' of your political life, so I recognize here, in the Seat of Learning so worthily ruled by my friend and gracious host, President Eliot, the intellectual centre of your vast community. It is not because Oxford is older than Harvard that an Oxonian can see any farther into the future than a Harvard man, or has any right to give himself prophetic or archæological airs. True it is that my grandfather served King George before your constitution was drawn up, and that my own particular college was founded by King Alfred the Great ; but we have no record in our ancient seats of learning so wholly noble and immeas

urably exalting as the building in which I am addressing you. When I first entered it I read, with feelings of admiration, the Latin inscription over its gateway,

"In memoriam eorum, qui, his sedibus instituti, mortem pro patria oppetiverunt.

"I have found with a pride and pleasure greater than any aristocratic ties would ever give, the names of friends and even kindred by marriage, inscribed among those illustrious dead whom Harvard offered on the shrine of a pure, a lofty, and justly victorious patriotism. Passing through Memorial Hall and reading that imperishable catalogue of youthful worthies who suddenly learned the highest lessons that Life can teach, at the knee of Duty and by the light of the flash of cannons, fresh, moreover, from travelling through your rich and fertile states, I have realized as never before the meaning of Lowell's lines when, speaking of America, he wrote:

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"Binding the gold of war-dishevelled hair, On such sweet brows as never other bore.'

ægis of great and high ideas governing the practical pursuits of life. I would labor and strive to have America regarded abroad as large-hearted as she is liberal, as equitable as she is fearless, as splendid in the service of all mankind as she is strong and efficient for her own security and progress. And, among the minor means to this end, I would wish to see cultivated those fields of Eastern thought and literature which I have so hastily traversed, but which are fitted to yield a sovereign and subtle medicine against the fevers of a too busy existence. I would ask the days as they pass, to bestow not merely material gifts, not only those boons of which you are sure, wealth, success, influence, comfort, and national expansion, the 'herbs and apples' of Emerson's divine parable, but the meditations which exalt, the aims which ennoble, the studies which redeem, the convictions which consecrate, for these are necessary to the large liberties of your country and will best embellish its greatness. Cultivate, therefore, I venture to entreat, the philos

"At Concord bridge I have seen the ophy and literature of India, rejecting what sylvan and now peaceful spot where

"th' embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world;'

and have bared my head as much to them as in natural pity for King George's soldiers, my countrymen, who also died for duty defending a mistaken and happily unsuccessful policy. Near Gettysburg I have passed by that spot where peach-trees cover with bright, conciliating verdure the field whereon the North and South met in deplorable but inevitable conflict. You have had by the strange and hard decree of Destiny to contend with and to vanquish first your fathers and next your brothers. I think you have one more great combat to wage and one last consummating victory to win, which will be over yourselves. If I were a Harvard man, my dream and desire would be to help to control the superb prosperity of America by continuing that brilliant galaxy of intellect which glitters already with the names of Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, and many others. If I were a Harvard man, I would hope and strive to give to that Statue of Liberty which towers aloft over your New York harbor as Pallas Athenë looked over Sunium, the golden

your strong, sober sense perceives to be useless in them, and utilizing for the repose and exaltation of your minds what they contain of noble and refining thought. Do you know that the Mayflower which brought your ancestors hither went down on her last voyage in Indian waters, which I have traversed, off Masulipatam, with a 'general cargo'? Raise her some day in fancy, and freight her with a new load of investigations from Massachusetts Bay, where we shall find the Old World interpreted by the New World, and the American scholars outdoing the best of England and Germany. If I should live to see that day, or should return from some other existence to the delightful groves of Harvard, I should feel like Robinson Crusoe, who, shaking forth a few poor grains from his almost empty sack upon a generous and fertile soil, passed by thereafter to find upon the spot a splendid and fruitful harvest."

Sir Edwin Arnold has emphasized on all occasions his feeling of warm friendship for America. His chief impression has been that of "the absolute practical identity of manner, mind, and national life between our two countries." He feels himself, by sympathies and by marriage, he says, truly an American. A project close to his

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heart, of which he spoke to President Harrison on his visit to the White House, is the establishment of an international council, "composed of the worthiest and best trusted men on either side," to whom shall be referred all questions affecting the relations of America and England. Sir Edwin went from Boston across the continent to San Francisco, and sailed from San Francisco for Japan, October 18th. On the night before his departure he was entertained by the Howard Club of San Francisco, where he read the following sonnet :

A FAREWELL. America at this thy Golden Gate, New-travelled from thy green Atlantic coves, Parting-I make my reverence! It behooves With backward steps to quit a queen in state. Land! of all lands most fair and free and great

Of countless Kindred lips, wherefrom I heard Sweet speech of Shakespeare - Keep it consecrate For noble uses! Land of Freedom's Bird, Fearless and proud! So let him soar, that stirred By generous joy, all men may learn of thee

A larger life; and Europe, undeterred By ancient wrecks, dare also to be free Body and Soul-seeing thine Eagle gaze Undazzled upon Freedom's Sun, full-blaze!

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THE WAYSIDE INN.

By Edwin D. Mead.

ONE of our American poets has been more cosmopolitan in his tastes and culture than Longfellow. Yet none has been a warmer lover of America and American themes, and none perhaps has done so much to train the ivy over our history, still so fresh in its oldest places, and over our life, still in much so angular. "But few of our associates," said Dr. Ellis at the memorial meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society following Longfellow's death, "can have studied our local and even national history more sedulously than did Mr. Longfellow. And fewer still among us can have found in its stern and rugged and homely actors and annals, so much that could be graced and softened by rich and delicate fancies and the hues and fragrance of simple poetry. He took the saddest of our New England tragedies, and the sweetest of its rural home scenes, the wayside inn, the alarum of war, the Indian legend, and the hanging of the crane in the modest household, and his genius has invested them with enduring charms and morals. . . . He has, indeed, used the poet's license in playful freedom with dates and facts. But the scenes and incidents and personages which most need a softening and refining touch receive it from him without prejudice to the service of sober history."

Without regard to the large number of separate short poems devoted to subjects in American history and life, consider how large a portion of the whole volume of Longfellow's poetry is made up by "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," "The New England Tragedies," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and "The Tales of a Wayside Inn." The various poems embraced in this last work are not indeed all or chiefly poems of New England or of America; and yet the whole collection is forever associated with the old Sudbury tavern where the poet makes each work heard for the first time.

It is always interesting to look over Longfellow's journals and correspondence to trace the conception and development of his different works, for he takes the

page into his confidence and shares his enthusiasms and misgivings with it in a way so frank and kindly, and because his nature was such as to lead every one to write to him with a most beautiful sincerity and simplicity. Here are some of the things which we come upon as we turn the pages at the time that the first series of the "Tales of a Wayside Inn" was born, -the second series was not published until 1872, the third in 1873.

1862-Oct. II. "Write a little upon the Wayside Inn, -a beginning, only."

Oct. 31. "October ends with a delicious Indian-summer day. Drive with Fields to the old Red-Horse Tavern in Sudbury, alas, no longer an inn! A lovely valley; the winding road shaded by grand old oaks before the house. A rambling, tumbie-down old building, two hundred years old; and till now in the family of the Howes, who have kept an inn for one hundred and seventy-five years. In the old time, it was a house of call for all travellers from Boston westward."

Nov. 11. "The Sudbury Tales go on famously. I have now five complete, with a great part of the 'Prelude.'

Nov. 18. side Inn."

Nov. 29.

"Finished the 'Prelude' to the Way

"At work on a tale called 'Torquemada,' for the Sudbury Tales."

Dec. 5. "[At midnight.] Finished Torquemada,'- -a dismal story of fanaticism, but in its main points historic. See De Castro, Protestantes Españolas, page 310."

13th. "In the evening, Fields came out, and I read to him 'Torquemada.'"

1863-April 16. "Finish the translation of the Inferno.. Meanwhile the Sudbury Tales are in press."

To James T. Fields. "Nahant, August 25, 1863. ... I am afraid we have made a mistake in calling the new volume, The Sudbury Tales.' Now that I see it announced I do not like the title. Sumner cries out against it and has persuaded me, as I think he will you, to come back to 'The Wayside Inn.' Pray think as we do."

Nov. 25. "Published to-day by Ticknor and Fields, Tales of a Wayside Inn; fifteen thousand copies. The publishers dined with me; also Sumner and Greene."

To Miss F. "December 28, 1863. . . . The Wayside Inn has more foundation in fact than you may suppose. The town of Sudbury is about twenty miles from Cambridge. Some two hundred years ago, an English family, by the name of Howe, built there a country house, which has remained in the family down to the present time, the last of the race dying about two years ago. Losing their fortune, they became inn-keepers; and for a century

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