club never included the more radical reformers, as Garrison, Phillips, Bronson Alcott, Edmund Quincy, or Theodore Parker, and so did not call out what Emerson christened "the soul of the soldiery of dissent." It would be a mistake to assume that on these occasions Longfellow was a recipient only. Of course Holmes and Lowell, the most naturally talkative of the party, would usually have the lion's share of the conversation; but Longfellow, with all his gentle modesty, had a quiet wit of his own and was never wholly a silent partner. His saying of Ruskin, for instance, that he had "grand passages of rhetoric, Iliads in nutshells;" of some one else, that "Criticism is double edged. It criticises him who receives and him who gives;" his description of the contented Dutch tradesman "whose golden face, like the round and ruddy physiognomy of the sun on the sign of a village tavern, seems to say 'Good entertainment here;'" of Venice, that "it is so visionary and fairylike that one is almost afraid to set foot on the ground, lest he should sink the city;" of authorship, that "it is a mystery to many people that an author should reveal to the public secrets that he shrinks from telling to his most intimate friends;" that "nothing is more dangerous to an author than sudden success, because the patience of genius is one of its most precious attributes;" that "he who carries his bricks to the building of every one's house will never build one for himself;"--these were all fresh, racy, and truthful, and would bear recalling when many a brilliant stroke of wit had sparkled on the surface and gone under. As a mere critic he grew more amiable and tolerant as he grew older, as is the wont of literary men; and John Dwight, then the recognized head of the musical brotherhood of Boston, always maintained that Longfellow was its worst enemy by giving his warm indorsement to the latest comer, whatever his disqualifications as to style or skill. Holmes said of him in a letter to Motley in 1873:-- "I find a singular charm in the society of Longfellow,--a soft voice, a sweet and cheerful temper, a receptive rather than aggressive intelligence, the agreeable flavor of scholarship without any pedantic ways, and a perceptible soupçon of the humor, not enough to startle or surprise or keep you under the strain of over-stimulation, which I am apt to feel with very witty people." And ten years later, writing to a friend and referring to his verses on the death of Longfellow, printed in the "Atlantic Monthly," he said: "But it is all too little, for his life was so exceptionally sweet and musical that any voice of praise sounds almost like a discord after it." Professor Rolfe has suggested that he unconsciously describes himself in "The Golden Legend," where Walter the Minnesinger says of Prince Henry:--