divines who said, "Happy is that household wherein Martha still
reproves Mary!"

In February, 1868, it was decided that Longfellow should go to Europe
with his family. He said that the first time he went abroad it was to
see places alone and not persons; the second time he saw a few
persons, and so pleasantly combined the two; he thought once that on a
third visit he should prefer to see persons only; but all that was
changed now. He had returned to the feeling of his youth. He was eager
to seek out quiet places and wayside nooks, where he might rest in
retirement and enjoy the consecrated memorials of Europe undisturbed.

The following year found him again in Cambridge, refreshed by his
absence. The diary continues: "He has been trying to further the idea
of buying some of the lowlands in Cambridge for the colleges. If this
can be done, it will save much future annoyance to the inhabitants
from wretched hovels and bad odors, beside holding the land for a
beautiful possession forever. He has given a good deal of money
himself. This might be called 'his latest work.'"

"_January_, 1870.--Longfellow and Bayard Taylor came to dine.
Longfellow talked of translators and translating. He advanced the idea
that the English, from the insularity of their character, were
incapable of making a perfect translation. Americans, French, and
Germans, he said, have much larger adaptability to and sympathy in the
thought of others. He would not hear Chapman's Homer or anything else
quoted on the other side, but was zealous in enforcing this argument.
He anticipates much from Taylor's version of 'Faust.' All this was
strikingly interesting, as showing how his imagination wrought with
him, because he was arguing from his own theory of the capacity of the