moods of gentle and pensive sentiment, and drawing from analogies in
nature or in legend lessons which, if somewhat obvious, were expressed
with perfect art. Like Keats, he apprehended every thing on its
beautiful side. Longfellow was all poet. Like Ophelia in Hamlet,

"Thought and affection, passion, hell itself,
_He_ turns to favor and to prettiness."

He cared very little about the intellectual movement of the age. The
transcendental ideas of Emerson passed over his head and left him
undisturbed. For politics he had that gentlemanly distaste which the
cultivated class in America had already begun to entertain. In 1842 he
printed a small volume of _Poems on Slavery_, which drew commendation
from his friend Sumner, but had nothing of the fervor of Whittier's or
Lowell's utterances on the same subject. It is interesting to compare
his journals with Hawthorne's _American Note Books_, and to observe in
what very different ways the two writers made prey of their daily
experiences for literary material. A favorite haunt of Longfellow's
was the bridge between Boston and Cambridgeport, the same which he put
into verse in his poem, _The Bridge_. "I always stop on the bridge,"
he writes in his journal; "tide waters are beautiful. From the ocean
up into the land they go, like messengers, to ask why the tribute has
not been paid. The brooks and rivers answer that there has been little
harvest of snow and rain this year. Floating sea-wood and kelp is
carried up into the meadows, as returning sailors bring oranges in
bandanna handkerchiefs to friends in the country." And again: "We
leaned for a while on the wooden rail and enjoyed the silvery
reflection on the sea, making sundry comparisons. Among other thoughts
we had this cheering one, that the whole sea was flashing with this
heavenly light, though we saw it only in a single track; the dark waves