his political sagacity, which, with his untiring industry, made him one of the most capable workers on the side of Abolition, was largely responsible for the rise of Charles Sumner to a position of beneficent influence. Ever frail in health, yet labouring on, and subjected more than once to personal violence at the hands of opponents, Whittier had the satisfaction of seeing the movement which he championed emerge from persecution into triumph. Regarded superficially, his devotion delayed his own progress as an artist, and his best poetry came late. In a deeper sense, he could not have developed into the poet that he became without living the life that he did. In a general way his work may be divided into two parts--that produced during his more active interest in journalism and politics, and that produced after his retirement. In 1831 he published his “Legends of New England in Prose and Verse,” a pamphlet, and in 1832, another pamphlet, “Moll Pitcher,” neither of them of much interest save in comparison with his better choice of subjects and better handling at a later date. A third pamphlet, “Justice and Expediency” (1833), published at his own expense and with a full consciousness of its probable effect, was the document that severed him from the dominant party and openly leagued him with the Abolitionists. “Mogg Megone” (1836), his first bound volume, which he afterward vainly tried to suppress, was published after he became a secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The next year (1837), Isaac Knapp, without consulting Whittier, issued a collection of “Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Movement in America.” It was followed in 1838 by an authorised collection. The poet represented Haverhill in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1835; ill-health prevented his finishing a second term. In 1837 he went to Philadelphia to aid “the venerable anti-slavery pioneer Benjamin Lundy, who was editing _The National Enquirer_,” afterward called _The Pennsylvania Freeman_. In 1840 he retired to Amesbury, Massachusetts, taking up his abode with his mother and his sister Elizabeth. He never married. At Amesbury and at Danvers, in the same county, he spent the remainder of his life in quiet. The record is one of domestic peace and literary endeavour, whose first fruits were “Lays of my Home, and Other Poems” (1843). With this volume Whittier’s writings began to be remunerative. Some of the more noteworthy subsequent dates in his life are as follows: Of his prose works, “The Stranger in Lowell” appeared in 1845, “Supernaturalism in New England” in 1847, “Literary Recollections” in 1854. From the founding of _The Atlantic Monthly_, in 1857, Whittier was a most welcome contributor. He also edited John Woolman’s _Journal_, and in other ways displayed interest in the writings of the Friends. “Voices of Freedom” (1849) was the first comprehensive edition of his poems. He published “Songs of Labour” in 1850, “A Sabbath Scene” in 1853,