rge upon this interesting subject, which not only
explains the shortcomings of the past, but opens enticing vistas into
the future. We cannot doubt that Mr. Longfellow's example will be
followed, and that from time to time other great poets will arise, who;
not content with enriching literature with original productions, will
acknowledge it as a part of what they owe the world, to do for Homer and
Virgil and AEschylus and Sophocles what he has done for Dante. It is
pleasant to think that our children will sit at the feet of these great
masters, and, listening to them in English worthy of the tongues in
which they first spake, be led to enter more fully into the spirit of
the abundant Greek and the majestic Latin. It is cheering to the lovers
of sound study to feel that every faithful version of a great poet
extends the influence of his works, and awakens a stronger desire for
the original. We never yet looked upon an engraving of Morghen without a
new longing for the painting which it translated.

We have not left ourselves room for what we had intended to say about
the notes, which form half of each of these three volumes. Those who
know what conscientious zeal Mr. Longfellow brings to all his duties
need not be told that they bear abundant testimony to his learning,
industry, and good taste. They not only leave nothing to be asked for in
the explanation of real difficulties, but, as answers to a wide range of
philosophical, biographical, and historical questions, form in
themselves a delightful miscellany. Dante has been overladen by
commentators. In Mr. Longfellow he has found an interpreter.

It is not to Mr. Longfellow's reputation only that these volumes will
add, but to that of American literature. It is no little thing to be
able to say, that, in a field in which some of England's great poets
have signally failed, an American poet has signally succeeded; that what
the scholars of the Old World asserted to be impossible, a scholar of
the New World has accomplished; and that the first to tread in this new
path has impressed his footprints so deeply therein, that, however
numerous his followers may be, they will all unite in hailing him, with
Dante's own words,--

"Tu Duca, tu Signore e tu Maestro,"--
Thou Leader and thou Lord and Master thou.

THE OLD STORY.

The waiting-women wait at her feet,
And the day is fading down to the night,
And close at her pillow, and round and s