_John Greenleaf Whittier._--In so brief a section, it has seemed impossible to offer more than a few scattered remarks on the poetry that arose in both the North and the South in connection with slavery and the Civil War. Something has been said of Confederate writers, including Timrod and Lanier; more might be added on the patriotic verse of Lowell and Longfellow, Emerson and Holmes, and a throng of lesser men, who sang to the North of courage and consolation, or attacked those whom they considered the foes of the Republic at home or abroad. One poetess, yet living, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (born in 1819), immortalised herself in 1862 by her “Battle-Hymn of the Republic,” a piece breathing the very essence of righteousness and love of country, and having a value out of all proportion to the rest of her work. Something similar must be said of Thomas B. Read (1822-72) and his popular “Sheridan’s Ride” (1865). The true bard of the battle-field and bivouac, of course, was Walt Whitman, who, as a nurse in the Union army, had actual experience of war. If, however, any one person is to be singled out from his century as the proclaimer of American freedom, this must be Whittier; and that too, it might almost be said, in spite of his heredity, his early hopes, and his natural bent. At least, his Quaker blood and his love for the peaceful ways of nature would not designate him for the office of poet militant. Furthermore, if Whittier’s art and sentiment in the progress of years elicit more and more admiration from qualified arbiters, such admiration will be mainly bestowed, not on his war lyrics or his denunciations of slavery, but on his hymns, his legends of New England, and his rustic idyls--above all, on “Snow Bound.”