its modernness, and said he had sent us a delightful novel by
Tourgueneff, 'Liza,' in which we should find charming and vivid
glimpses of landscape and life like those seen from a carriage window.
We left him alone in the library for a while, and returning found him
amusing himself over the 'Ingoldsby Legends.' He was reading the
'Coronation of Victoria,' and laughing over Count Froganoff, who could
not get 'prog enough,' and was 'found eating underneath the stairs.'
He wants to have a dinner for Bayard Taylor, whose coming is always
the signal for a series of small festivities. His own 'Divine Tragedy'
is just out, and everybody speaks of its simplicity and beauty."

"_April._--In the evening Longfellow came in town for the purpose
of hearing a German gentleman read an original poem, and he persuaded
me to go with him. The reader twisted his face up into frightful
knots, and delivered his poem with vast apparent satisfaction to
himself if not to his audience. It was fortunate on the whole that the
production was in a foreign tongue, because it gave us the occupation,
at least, of trying to understand the words,--the poem itself
possessing not the remotest interest for either of us. It was in the
old sentimental German style familiar to the readers of that
literature. Longfellow amused me as we walked home by imitating the
sing-song voice we had been following all the evening. He also recited
in the original that beautiful little poem by Platen, 'In der Nacht,
in der Nacht,' in a most delightful manner. 'Ah,' he said, 'to
translate a poem properly it must be done into the metre of the
original, and Bryant's "Homer," fine as it is, has this great fault,
that it does not give the music of the poem itself.' He came in and
took a cigar before walking home over the bridge alone....

"Emerson asked Longfellow at dinner about his last visit to England,