o
others. At Antwerp he had the glories of the cathedral, the memory of
Quintin Matsys, and the paintings of Rubens. His home at Marienberg was
in an ancient cloister for noble nuns, converted into a water-cure, then
a novelty and much severer in its discipline than its later copies in
America, to one of which, however, Longfellow himself went later as a
patient,--that of Dr. Wesselhoeft at Brattleboro, Vermont. He met or
read German poets also,--Becker, Herwegh, Lenau, Auersberg, Zedlitz, and
Freiligrath, with the latter of whom he became intimate; indeed reading
aloud to admiring nuns his charming poem about "The Flowers' Revenge"
(_Der Blumen Rache_). He just missed seeing Uhland, the only German poet
then more popular than Freiligrath; he visited camps of 50,000 troops
and another camp of naturalists at Mayence. Meantime, he heard from
Prescott, Sumner, and Felton at home; the "Spanish Student" went through
the press, and his friend Hawthorne was married. He finally sailed for
home on October 22, 1842, and occupied himself on the voyage in writing
a small volume of poems on slavery.

{56 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. ix. 318.}

{57 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. ix. 336.}

{58 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. x. 363.}

{59 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xi. 153.}

{60 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xi. 187.}

CHAPTER XIV

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS AND SECOND MARRIAGE

It is difficult now to realize what an event in Longfellow's life was
the fact of his writing a series of anti-slavery poems on board ship and
publishing them in a thin pamphlet on his return. Parties on the subject
were already strongly drawn; the anti-slavery party being itself divided
into subdivisions which criticised each other sharply. Longfellow's
temperament was thoroughly gentle and shunned extremes, so that the
little thin yellow-covered volume came upon the community with something
like a shock. As a matter of fact, various influences had led him up to
it. His father had been a subscriber to Benjamin Lundy's "Genius of
Universal Emancipation," the precursor of Garrison's "Liberator." In his
youth at Brunswick, Longfellow had thought of writing a drama on the
subject of "Toussaint l'Ouverture," his reason for it being thus given,
"that thus I may do something in my humble way for the great cause of
negro emancipation."

Margaret Fuller, who could by no means be called an abolitionist,