this, "Tell my dear
friends at home that I thought of them at the last hour." I then
read to her from the Church Litany the prayers for the sick and
dying; and as the nurse spoke of sending for Dr. Bosworth, the
Episcopal clergyman, Mary said she should like to see him, and I
accordingly sent. He came about one o'clock, but at this time Mary
became apparently insensible to what was around her; and at
half-past one she ceased to breathe.

Thus all the hopes I had so fondly cherished of returning home with
my dear Mary in happiness and renovated health have in the
providence of God ended in disappointment and sorrow unspeakable.
All that I have left to me in my affliction is the memory of her
goodness, her gentleness, her affection for me--unchangeable in life
and in death--and the hope of meeting her again hereafter, where
there shall be no more sickness, nor sorrow, nor suffering, nor
death. I feel, too, that she must be infinitely, oh, infinitely
happier now than when with us on earth, and I say to myself,--

"Peace! peace! she is not dead, she does not sleep!
She has awakened from the dream of life."

With my most affectionate remembrance to Eliza and Margaret, and my
warmest sympathies with you all, very truly yours,

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

On the 2d of December the young husband left Rotterdam for Heidelberg.
There he spent the winter, like Paul Flemming of "Hyperion," and buried
himself in "old dusty books." He met many men who interested him,
Schlosser, Gervinus, and Mittermaier, and also Bryant, the poet, from
his own country, whom he saw for the first time. An added sorrow came to
him in the death of his brother-in-law and dearest friend, George W.
Pierce, "He the young and strong," as he afterwards wrote in his
"Footsteps of Angels;" but in accordance with the advice of his friend
Ticknor he absorbed himself in intellectual labor, taking the direction
of a careful study of German literature. This he traced from its
foundations down to Jean Paul Richter, who was for him, as for many
other Americans of the same period, its high-water mark, even to the
exclusion of Goethe. It will be remembered that Longfellow's friend,
Professor Felton, translated not long after, and very likely with
Longfellow's aid or counsel, Menzel's "History of German Literature," in
which Goethe is m