2. +Poets and Prose-Writers.+-- The six greatest poets of the latter half of this century are +Longfellow+, a distinguished American poet, +Tennyson+, +Mrs Browning+, +Robert Browning+, +William Morris+, and +Matthew Arnold+. Of these, Mrs Browning and Longfellow are dead-- Mrs Browning having died in 1861, and Longfellow in 1882. --The four greatest writers of prose are +Thackeray+, +Dickens+, +George Eliot+, and +Ruskin+. Of these, only Ruskin is alive. 3. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (+1807-1882+), the most popular of American poets, and as popular in Great Britain as he is in the United States, was born at Portland, Maine, in the year 1807. He was educated at Bowdoin College, and took his degree there in the year 1825. His profession was to have been the law; but, from the first, the whole bent of his talents and character was literary. At the extraordinary age of eighteen the professorship of modern languages in his own college was offered to him; it was eagerly accepted, and in order to qualify himself for his duties, he spent the next four years in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. His first important prose work was +Outre-Mer+, or a +Pilgrimage beyond the Sea+. In 1837 he was offered the Chair of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard University, and he again paid a visit to Europe-- this time giving his thoughts and study chiefly to Germany, Denmark, and Scandinavia. In 1839 he published the prose romance called +Hyperion+. But it was not as a prose-writer that Longfellow gained the secure place he has in the hearts of the English-speaking peoples; it was as a poet. His first volume of poems was called +Voices of the Night+, and appeared in 1841; Evangeline was published in 1848; and +Hiawatha+, on which his poetical reputation is perhaps most firmly based, in 1855. Many other volumes of poetry-- both original and translations-- have also come from his pen; but these are the best. The University of Oxford created him Doctor of Civil Law in 1869. He died at Harvard in the year 1882. A man of singularly mild and gentle character, of sweet and charming manners, his own lines may be applied to him with perfect appropriateness-- “His gracious presence upon earth Was as a fire upon a hearth; As pleasant songs, at morning sung, The words that dropped from his sweet tongue Strengthened our hearts, or-- heard at night-- Made all our slumbers soft and light.”