uniper, sweet-fern, and
the _arbor vitae_. Set them out in the earth, and would they not sprout
and grow?--nor would need vine-shields to shelter them from the weather!
They are living and local, and lean toward the west from the pressure of
east winds that blow on our coast. "Skipper Ireson's Ride,"--can any one
tell what makes that poetry? This uncertainty is the highest praise.
This power of telling a plain matter in a plain way, and leaving it
there a symbol and harmony forever,--it is the power of Nature herself.
And again we repeat, that almost anything may be found in literature
more frequently than this pure creative simplicity. As a special
instance of it, take three lines which occur in an exquisite picture of
natural scenery,--and which we quote the more readily as it affords
opportunity for saying that Whittier's landscape-pictures alone make his
books worthy of study,--not so much those which he sets himself
deliberately to draw as those that are incidental to some other purpose
or effect.

"I see far southward, this quiet day,
The hills of Newbury rolling away,
With the many tints of the season gay,
Dreamily blending in autumn mist
Crimson and gold and amethyst.
Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
A stone's toss over the narrow sound.
Inland, as far as the eye can go,
The hills curve round, like a bended bow;
A silver arrow from out them sprung,
I see the shine of the Quasycung;
_And, round and round, over valley and hill,
Old roads winding, as old roads will,
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill._"

Can any one tell what magic it is that is in these concluding lines, so
that they even eclipse the rhetorical brilliancy of those immediately
preceding?

Our deep-hearted poet has fairly arrived at his poetic youth. Never was
he so strong, so ruddy and rich as to-day. Time has treated him as,
according to Swedenborg, she does the angels,--chastened indeed, but
vivified. Let him hold steadily to his true vocation as a poet, and
never fear to be thought idle, or untrue to his land. To give
imaginative and ideal depth to the life of the people,--what truer
service than that? And as for war-time,--does he know that "Barbara
Frietche" is the true sequel to the Battle of Gettysburg, is that other
victory which the nation _asked_ of Meade the soldier and obtained from
Whittier the poet?

THE CONVUL