ot from the graves of their foes.

They died in their glory, surrounded by fame,
And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim;
They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.

These verses cannot be assigned to the domain of high art, most
certainly, but they mark in this case the beginning of a career, and
milestones are always interesting. It was Longfellow's first poem, and
he chose an American subject. We know from him the circumstances of the
reception of this youthful effort. When the morning paper arrived it was
unfolded and read by his father, and no notice was taken of the
effusion; but when, in the evening, the boy went with his father to the
house of Judge Mellen, his father's friend, whose son Frederic was his
own playmate, the talk turned upon poetry. The host took up the
morning's "Gazette." "Did you see the piece in to-day's paper? Very
stiff. Remarkably stiff; moreover, it is all borrowed, every word of
it." No defence was offered. It is recorded that there were tears on the
young boy's pillow that night.

The young Henry Longfellow went to various schools, as those of Mrs.
Fellows and Mr. Carter, and the Portland Academy, then kept by Mr.
Bezaleel Cushman, a Dartmouth College graduate. In 1821, he passed the
entrance examinations of Bowdoin College, of which his father was a
trustee. The college itself was but twenty years old, and Maine had only
just become an independent State of the Union, so that there was a
strong feeling of local pride in this young institution. Henry
Longfellow's brother, Stephen, two years older than himself, passed the
examinations with him, but perhaps it was on account of the younger
brother's youth--he being only fourteen--that the boys remained a year
longer at home, and did not go to Brunswick until the beginning of the
Sophomore year. Henry's college life was studious and modest. He and
Nathaniel Hawthorne were classmates, having been friends rather than
intimates, and Hawthorne gives in his "Fanshawe" a tolerably graphic
picture of the little rural college. Neither of the two youths cared
much for field sports, but both of them were greatly given to
miscellaneous reading; and both of them also spent a good deal of time
in the woods of Brunswick, which were, and still are, beautiful.
Longfellow pursued the appointed studies, read poetry, was fond of
Irving, and also of books about the Indians, an