the pillow, and then not be able to shut out the shapeless monsters
that thronged around me, minted in my brain.... In winter my view is a
wide one, taking in a part of Boston. I can see one long curve of the
Charles and the wide fields between me and Cambridge, and the flat
marshes beyond the river, smooth and silent with glittering snow. As
the spring advances and one after another of our trees puts forth, the
landscape is cut off from me piece by piece, till, by the end of May,
I am closeted in a cool and rustling privacy of leaves." In two of his
papers especially, _My Garden Acquaintance_ and _A Good Word for
Winter_, has Lowell given glimpses of the out-door life in the midst
of which he grew up.




II.

EDUCATION.


His acquaintance with books and his schooling began early. He learned
his letters at a dame school. Mr. William Wells, an Englishman, opened
a classical school in one of the spacious Tory Row houses near
Elmwood, and, bringing with him English public school thoroughness and
severity, gave the boy a drilling in Latin, which he must have made
almost a native speech to judge by the ease with which he handled it
afterward in mock heroics. Of course he went to Harvard College. He
lived at his father's house, more than a mile away from the college
yard; but this could have been no great privation to him, for he had
the freedom of his friends' rooms, and he loved the open air. The Rev.