uched always with reverent
pity, as well as a writer of noble verse.

Everywhere that the English language is read, "Evangeline" has passed as
the most beautiful folk-story that America has produced: and the French
Canadians, the far-away brothers of the Acadians, have included
Longfellow among their national poets. Among them "Evangeline" is known
by heart, and the cases are not rare where the people have learned
English expressly for the purpose of reading Longfellow's poem in the
original, a wonderful tribute to the poet who could thus touch to music
one of the saddest memories of their race.

In "Hiawatha" Longfellow gave to the Indian the place in poetry that had
been given him by Cooper in prose.

"Hiawatha" is a poem of the forests and of the dark-skinned race who
dwelt therein, who were learned only in forest-lore, and lived as near
to nature's heart as the fauns and satyrs of old. Into this legend
Longfellow has put all the poetry of the Indians' nature, and has made
his hero, Hiawatha, a noble creation, that compares favorably with the
King Arthur of the old British romances. From first to last Hiawatha
moves among the people a real leader, showing them how to clear their
forests, to plant grain, to make for themselves clothing of embroidered
and painted skins, to improve their fishing-grounds, and to live at
peace with their neighbors. From the time when he was a little child,
and his grandmother told him all the fairy-tales of nature, up to the
day when, like Arthur, he passed mysteriously through the gates of the
sunset, all his hope and joy and work were for his people. He is a
creature that could only have been born from a mind as pure and poetic
as that of Longfellow. All the scenes and images of the poem are so true
to nature that they seem like very breaths from the forests. We move
with Hiawatha through the dewy birchen aisles, learn with him the
language of the nimble squirrel and of the wise beaver and mighty bear,
watch him build his famous canoe, and spend hours with him fishing in
the waters of the great inland sea, bordered by the great pictured rocks
painted by nature itself. Longfellow's first idea of the poem was
suggested, it is said, by his hearing a Harvard student recite some
Indian tales. Searching among the various books that treated of the
American Indians, he found many legends and incidents that preserved
fairly well the traditional history of the Indian race, and grouping
these a