e is especially struck with the resemblance of the American
poet to the Scandinavians, such as Tegner and Oehlenschlaeger. He
notices even in Longfellow the Norse tendency to alliteration, and he
quotes one of the Northern poems and then one of Longfellow's to show
this analogy. It is worth while to put these side by side. This is from
Oehlenschlaeger:--

"_T_i_l_giv _t_vu_n_gne
_T_rae_l_ af E_l_skov!
_At_ han dig _a_tter
_A_s_t_saeld findet." ... etc.

The following is by Longfellow:--

"_F_uller of _f_ragrance, _th_an _th_ey
And as heavy with sha_d_ows and night-_d_ews,
_H_ung the _h_eart of the _m_aiden.
The cal_m_ and _m_agical _m_oonlight
See_m_ed to inundate her soul."

It is curious to notice that Chasles makes the same criticism on
"Evangeline" that Holmes made on Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal;"
namely, that there is in it a mixture of the artificial and the natural.
The result is, we may infer, that on the whole one still thinks of it as
a work of art and does not--as, for instance, with Tolstoi's
"Cossacks"--think of all the characters as if they lived in the very
next street. Yet it is in its way so charming, he finds that although as
he says, "There is no passion in it," still there is a perpetual air of
youth and innocence and tenderness. M. Chasles is also impressed as a
Catholic with the poet's wide and liberal comprehension of the Christian
ideas. It is not, he thinks, a masterpiece (_Il y a loin d'Evangeline a
un chef-d'oeuvre_), but he points out, what time has so far vindicated,
that it has qualities which guarantee to it something like immortality.
When we consider that Chasles wrote at a time when all our more
substantial literature seemed to him to consist of uninteresting state
histories and extensive collections of the correspondence of American
presidents--a time when he could write sadly: "All America does not yet
possess a humorist" (_Toute l'Amerique ne possede pas un humoriste_),
one can place it to the credit of Longfellow that he had already won for
himself some sort of literary standing in the presence of one Frenchman.
At the time of this complaint, it may be noticed that Mr. S. L. Clemens
was a boy of fifteen. The usual European criticism at the present day is
not that America produces so few humorists, but that she brings forth so
many.

The work which came next from Longfellow's pen has that peculiar value
to a biographer which comes from a distinct, u