s Mather had is a rare and delightful
gift.

This last volume has given us a higher conception of Mr. Whittier's
powers. We already valued as they deserved his force of faith, his
earnestness, the glow and hurry of his thought, and the (if every third
stump-speaker among us were not a Demosthenes, we should have said
Demosthenean) eloquence of his verse; but here we meet him in a softer
and more meditative mood. He seems a Berserker turned Carthusian. The
half-mystic tone of "The Shadow and the Light" contrasts strangely, and,
we think, pleasantly, with the warlike clang of "From Perugia." The
years deal kindly with good men, and we find a clearer and richer
quality in these verses where the ferment is over and the _rile_ has
quietly settled. We have had no more purely American poet than Mr.
Whittier, none in whom the popular thought found such ready and vigorous
expression. The future will not fail to do justice to a man who has been
so true to the present.

SNOW-BOUND: A WINTER IDYL

At the close of his poem Mr. Whittier utters a hope that it may recall
some pleasant country memories to the overworked slaves of our great
cities, and that he may deserve those thanks which are all the more
grateful that they are rather divined by the receiver than directly
expressed by the giver. The reviewer cannot aspire to all the merit of
this confidential privacy and pleasing shyness of gratitude, but he may
fairly lay claim to a part of it, inasmuch as, though obliged to speak
his thanks publicly, he need not do it to the author's face. We are
again indebted to Mr. Whittier, as we have been so often before, for a
very real and a very refined pleasure. The little volume before us has
all his most characteristic merits. It is true to Nature and in local
coloring, pure in sentiment, quietly deep in feeling, and full of those
simple touches which show the poetic eye and the trained hand. Here is a
New England interior glorified with something of that inward light which
is apt to be rather warmer in the poet than the Quaker, but which,
blending the qualities of both in Mr. Whittier, produces that kind of
spiritual picturesqueness which gives so peculiar a charm to his verse.
There is in this poem a warmth of affectionate memory and religious
faith as touching as it is uncommon, and which would be altogether
delightful if it did not remind us that the poet was growing old. Not
that there is any other mark of senescence than t