wn a broad and placid river, murmuring softly
against its banks, heaven over it, and the glory of the unspoiled
wilderness all around." The words "This is the forest primeval" have
become as familiar, he thinks, as the "Arma virumque cano" which opened
Virgil's "AEneid," and he elsewhere calls the poem "the tranquil current
of these brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines." The subject was
first suggested to Longfellow by Hawthorne, who had heard it from his
friend, the Rev. H. L. Conolly, and the outline of it will be found in
"The American Note-Books" of Hawthorne, who disappointed Father Conolly
by not using it himself. It was finished on Longfellow's fortieth
birthday.

It was a striking illustration of the wide popularity of "Evangeline,"
that even the proper names introduced under guidance of his rhythmical
ear spread to other countries and were taken up and preserved as
treasures in themselves. Sumner writes from England to Longfellow that
the Hon. Mrs. Norton, herself well known in literature, had read
"Evangeline," not once only, but twenty times, and the scene on Lake
Atchafalaya, where the two lovers pass each other unknowingly, so
impressed her that she had a seal cut with the name upon it. Not long
after this, Leopold, King of the Belgiums, repeated the same word to her
and said that it was so suggestive of scenes in human life that he was
about to have it cut on a seal, when she astonished him by showing him
hers.

The best review of "Evangeline" ever written was probably the analysis
made of it by that accomplished French traveller of half a century ago,
Professor Philarete Chasles of the College de France, in his "Etudes sur
la Litterature et les Moeurs des Anglo-Americains du XIX. Siecle,"
published in 1851. It is interesting to read it, and to recognize anew
what has often been made manifest--the greater acuteness of the French
mind than of the English, when discussing American themes. Writing at
that early period, M. Chasles at once recognized, for instance, the
peculiar quality of Emerson's genius. He describes Longfellow, in
comparison, as what he calls a moonlight poet, having little passion,
but a calmness of attitude which approaches majesty, and moreover a deep
sensibility, making itself felt under a subdued rhythm. In short, his is
a slow melody and a reflective emotion, both these being well suited to
the sounds and shadows of our endless plains and our forests, which have
no history. H