9. THOUGHT-GEMS AND APHORISMS FROM EMERSON.

LANGUAGE is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. Has he a defect or temper that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl.

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A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

I compared notes with one of my friends who expects every thing of the universe, and is disappointed when any thing is less than the best; and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.

A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene.

The martyr can not be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spake not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own: but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The only way to have a friend is to be one. You shall not come nearer to a man by getting into his house.

The poet gives us the eminent experience only, — a god stepping from peak to peak, nor planting his foot but on a mountain.

There is a defeat that is useful.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

His will

The world belongs to the energetic man. gives him new eyes. He sees expedients and means where we saw none.

Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew!

Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love.

Every individual man has a bias which he must obey; and it is only as he feels and obeys this, that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to watch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have entire assurance of his own mind.

Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion.

Olympian bard who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,

And always keep us so.

XV.-HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

LIFE AND WORKS.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, the most popular of American poets, was born at Portland, Maine, Feb. 27, 1807. His father, Stephen Longfellow, was a well-known jurist, and, like Bryant, he could claim descent from John Alden, the youngest of the Mayflower's Pilgrims. His youthful advantages were exceptional; and at the early age of fourteen the future poet was admitted to Bowdoin College, in Maine, in the same class with Hawthorne, Cheever, and others eminent in later life.

Graduating in 1825, Longfellow entered on the study of law in the office of his father, but was invited, a year later, to return, as professor of modern languages, to the college he had just left as a student. This appointment he accepted, with the privilege of going abroad in order to qualify himself fully for his duties. For three years he traveled extensively in Europe, afterwards teaching at Bowdoin till 1835, when he was appointed professor of modern languages and literature in Harvard University. Again he visited Europe, this time for an absence of two years, and, returning to Cambridge, held his professorship there till 1854.

From the time of his appointment at Harvard till his death, March 24, 1882, Longfellow lived, first as lodger and later as owner, in that stately old Cambridge mansion, so often pictured, and now become a shrine for latter-day pilgrims. In this house Washington had

his headquarters on taking command after Bunker Hill; and here Everett the silver-tongued orator, and Jared Sparks the historian, had dwelt before him.

Longfellow was always a great favorite with the English people. On him alone of all Americans they have conferred the honors of Westminster Abbey, beneath whose "sun-gilt pinnacles" English hands have placed a bust of the poet, a memorial and a tribute from English hearts.

Nearly all Longfellow's prose was written in early days, and it is not voluminous. It is to his poetry that his fame is due.

There are five poems of considerable length: The Spanish Student, a poem in dramatic form; The Song of Hiawatha, a legend of the American Indians; The Courtship of Miles Standish, a tale of the early Massachusetts settlement, in which John Alden, the poet's ancestor, figures conspicuously; The Golden Legend, a poem whose scene is laid in the Middle Ages; and Evangeline, the most celebrated of his longer poems. The two poems Keramos and The Hanging of the Crane were written late in life.

In the great treasury which comprises the remainder of his verse a few of the more familiar poems are, The Psalm of Life, The Rainy Day, Resignation, The Beleaguered City, Footsteps of Angels, Paul Revere's Ride, The Day is Done, The Two Angels, The Children's Hour, and The Reaper and the Flowers.

Numerous pictures have made us all familiar with the fine features and thoughtful yet tender looks of Longfellow. He was of the middle height; his carriage