The school, on the whole, stood aloof from the civil and religious activities of its period. With the exception of Whittier, who was not a Brahmin, the larger figures of the era took interest in the great issues of their generation only when these issues had been forced into the field of their emotions. They were bookish men, and they were prone to look not into their hearts or into the heart of their epoch, but into their libraries. In 1856, when America was smoldering with what so soon was to burst out into a maelstrom of fire, Longfellow wrote in his journal, "Dined with Agassiz to meet Emerson and others. I was amused and annoyed to see how soon the conversation drifted off into politics. It was not till after dinner in the library that we got upon anything really interesting."[8] The houses of the Brahmins had only eastern windows. The souls of the whole school lived in the old lands of culture, and they visited these lands as often as they could, and, returning, brought back whole libraries of books which they eagerly translated. Even Lowell, the most democratic American of the group, save Whittier, wrote from Paris in 1873, "In certain ways this side is more agreeable to my tastes than the other." And again the next year he wrote from Florence: "America is too busy, too troubled about many things, and Martha is only good to make puddings." Howells in his novel, _A Woman's Reason_, has given us a view of this American worship of Europe during this period. Says Lord Rainford, who has been only in Boston and Newport: "I find your people--your best people, I suppose they are--very nice, very intelligent, very pleasant--only talk about Europe. They talk about London, and about Paris, and about Rome; there seems to be quite a passion for Italy; but they don't seem interested in their own country. I can't make it out.... They always seem to have been reading the _Fortnightly_, and the _Saturday Review_, and the _Spectator_, and the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and the last French and English books. It's very odd."