thinking of a series of ballads or a romantic poem on the deeds of the first bold viking who crossed to this western world, with storm-spirits and devil-machinery under water. New England ballads I have long thought of. This seems to be an introduction. I will dream more of this.'

A few months later, returning to Cambridge from Newport, where he had doubtless seen the Round Tower,' he passed through Fall River just after the skeleton in armor had been unearthed. These two things fitted in with his previous conception, and on May 24, 1839, he speaks of his plan for a heroic poem on the Discovery of America by the Northmen, in which the Round Tower at Newport and the Skeleton in Armor have a part to play.' In a letter to his father, of December 13, 1840, after the ballad was written, he speaks of having himself seen the skeleton: 'I suppose it to be the remains of one of the old Northern sea rovers who came to this country in the tenth century. Of course I make the tradition myself.'

For a full account of the finding of the skeleton, see the American Monthly Magazine of January, 1836, from which the following description is taken :

In digging down a hill near the village, a large mass of earth slid off, leaving in the bank and partially uncovered a human skull, which on examination was found to belong to a body buried in a sitting posture; the head being about one foot below what had been for many years the surface of the ground. The surrounding earth was carefully removed, and the body found to be enveloped in a covering of coarse bark of a dark color. Within this envelope were found the remains of another of coarse cloth, made of fine bark, and about the texture of a Manilla coffee bag. On the breast was a plate of brass, thirteen inches long, six broad at the upper end, and five in the lower. This plate appears to have been cast, and is from one eighth to three thirtyseconds of an inch in thickness. It is so much corroded that whether or not anything was engraved upon it has not yet been ascertained. It is oval in form, the edges being irregular, apparently made so by corrosion. Below the breastplate, and entirely encircling the body, was a belt composed of brass tubes, each four and a half inches in length, and three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, arranged longitudinally and close together, the length of the tube being the width of the belt. The tubes are of thin brass, cast upon hollow reeds, and were fastened together by pieces of sinew. Near the right knee was a quiver of arrows. The arrows are of brass, thin, flat, and triangular in shape, with a round hole cut through near the base. The shaft was fastened to the head by inserting the latter in an opening at the end of the wood and then tying with a sinew through the round hole, a mode of constructing the weapon never practised by the Indians, not even with their arrows of thin shell. Parts of the shaft still remain on some of them. When first discovered, the arrows were in a sort of quiver of bark, which fell to pieces when exposed to the air.'

Poe calls The Skeleton in Armor' 'a pure and perfect thesis artistically treated.' See his review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems, April, 1842, in the Virginia Edition of his Works, vol. xi.

THE shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed

Excelsior' was inspired by the motto on the shield of New York State, which Longfellow happened to see copied as the heading of a newspaper. The significance of the poem is well expressed by Poe at the end of his review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems, in a passage beginning, 'It depicts the earnest upward impulse of the soul,- -an impulse not to be subdued even in death.' Longfellow himself has described his purpose fully in a letter to C. K. Tuckerman:

I have had the pleasure of receiving your note in regard to the poem "Excelsior," and very willingly give you my intention in writing it. This was no more than to display, in a series of pictures, the life of a man of genius, resisting all temptations, laying aside all fears, heedless of all warnings, and pressing right on to accomplish his purpose. His motto is Excelsior, higher." He passes through the Alpine village through the rough, cold paths of the world-where the peasants cannot understand him, and where the watchword is an "unknown tongue." He disregards the happiness of domestic peace and sees the glaciers- his fate before him. He disregards the warning of the old man's wisdom and the fascinations of woman's love. He answers to all, "Higher yet!" The monks of St. Bernard are the representatives of religious forms and ceremonies, and with their oft-repeated prayer mingles the sound of his voice, telling them there is something higher than forms and ceremonies. Filled with these aspirations, he perishes; without having reached the

A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

'Try not the Pass!' the old man said; 'Dark lowers the tempest overhead, The roaring torrent is deep and wide!' And loud that clarion voice replied, Excelsior!

'Oh stay,' the maiden said, and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!'
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche !' This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the height, Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,

perfection he longed for; and the voice heard in the air is the promise of immortality and progress ever upward.'

The manuscript of the poem, containing many alterations, is kept on exhibition in the Art Room of the Harvard University Library It is written on the back of a letter from Charles Sumner, and dated 'September 28, 1841. Half-past three o'clock, morning.' See H. E. Scudder's Men and Letters, pp. 137-146: The Shaping of Excelsior."

HALF of my life is gone, and I have let The years slip from me and have not fulfilled

The aspiration of my youth, to build
Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
Of restless passions that would not be
stilled,

But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and
sights, -

A city in the twilight dim and vast, With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,

--

Wide through the landscape of his dreams The lordly Niger flowed;

1 Longfellow's health was so seriously impaired by his close work as teacher, lecturer, editor, and author, that in the spring of 1842 he took six months' leave of absence, and spent most of the time at the watercure' of Marienberg. While there he wrote no verse except this sonnet, dated August 25, just before leaving for England on his way home. It was first published in the Life.

2 Longfellow wrote all his Poems on Slavery during his voyage home in 1842, and they were published in a small volume of thirty-one pages in December of that year. The intense sincerity of Whittier's poems against slavery is lacking in Longfellow's sentimental and romantic' treatment of the subject; but it meant much for him to take the side which he did, so early as 1842. See the Life, vol. i, pp. 443-453, vol. ii, pp. 7-10, 20-21; and T. W. Higginson's Life of Longfellow, pp. 163-167. Compare the notes on Lowell's Stanzas on Freedom' and on Whittier's To William Lloyd Garrison.'