In the midst of this unrivalled prosperity, this distinction of genius, and public and private honor, on the ninth of July, 1861, there came one of the most harrowing tragedies that has ever befallen a man's domestic life. Longfellow was widowed for the second time, and five children were left without a mother. It seemed as if Providence had set a limit beyond which human happiness could not pass. It was after this calamity that Longfellow undertook his metrical translation of Dante's "Divina Commedia," a much more difficult and laborious work than writing original poetry. As his brother said, "He required an absorbing occupation to prevent him from thinking of the past." No wonder that in later years he said, in his exquisite verses on the Mountain of the Holy Cross in Colorado, these pathetic words, "On my heart also there is a cross of snow." In Longfellow's diary we meet with the names of many books that he read, and these as well as the pertinent comments on them tell much more of his intellectual life than we derive from his letters. "Adam Bede," which took the world by storm, did not make so much of an impression on him as Hawthorne's "Marble Faun," which he read through in a day and calls a wonderful book. Of "Adam Bede" he says: "It is too feminine for a man; too masculine for a woman." He says of Dickens, after reading "Barnaby Rudge": "He is always prodigal and ample, but what a set of vagabonds he contrives to introduce us to!" "Barnaby Rudge" is certainly the most bohemian and esoteric of Dickens's novels. He liked much better Miss Muloch's "John Halifax,"--a popular book in its time, but not read very much since. He calls Charles Reade a clever and amusing writer. We find nothing concerning Disraeli, Trollope, or Wilkie Collins. Neither do we hear of critical and historical writers like Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Carlyle, and Froude. He went, however, to call on Carlyle in England, and was greatly impressed by his conversation. The scope of Longfellow's reading does not compare with that of Emerson or Marian Evans; but the doctors say that "every man of forty knows the food that is good for him," and this is true mentally as well as physically. He refers more frequently to Tennyson than to any other writer, and always in a generous, cordial manner. Of the "Idyls of the King" he says that the first and third Idyls could only have come from a great poet, but that the second and fourth are not quite equal to the others. Once, at his sister's house, he held out a book in his hand and said: "Here is some of the finest dramatic poetry that I have ever read." It was Tennyson's "Queen Mary;" but there were many who would not have agreed with his estimate of it. Rev. Samuel Longfellow considered the statement very doubtful.