died, and one year after their return to Elmwood sorrow's crown of
sorrow came to the poet in the death of Mrs. Lowell, October, 1853.
For years after the dear old home was to him _The Dead House_, as he
wrote of it:

"For it died that autumn morning
When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside
That looks over woodland and corn."

Before 1854 Lowell's literary success had been won mainly in verse.
With the appearance in the magazines of _A Moosehead Journal_,
_Fireside Travels_, and _Leaves from My Italian Journal_ his success
as a prose essayist began. Henceforth, and against his will, his prose
was a stronger literary force than his poetry. He now gave a course of
lectures on the English poets at the Lowell Institute, and during the
progress of these lectures he received notice of his appointment to
succeed Longfellow in the professorship of the French and Spanish
languages and Belles-Lettres in Harvard College. A year was spent in
Europe in preparation for his new work, and during the next twenty
years he faithfully performed the duties of the professorship, pouring
forth the ripening fruits of his varied studies in lectures such as it
is not often the privilege of college students to hear. That pulling
in the yoke of this steady occupation was sometimes galling is shown
in his private letters. To W.D. Howells he wrote regretfully of the
time and energy given to teaching, and of his conviction that he would
have been a better poet if he "had not estranged the muse by donning a
professor's gown." But a good teacher always bears in his left hand
the lamp of sacrifice.