The delivery of the lectures had one immediate and important result. Mr. Longfellow had been Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Literatures and Professor of Belles Lettres in Harvard College since 1836, having come to the work when Lowell was midway through his course, but he made up his mind in 1854 that he must give up the post, not from ill-health, but because he wished to try the effect of change on his mind, and of freedom from routine. “Household occupations,” he wrote to Freiligrath, “children, relatives, friends, strangers, and college lectures, so completely fill up my days that I have no time for poetry, and, consequently, the last two years have been very unproductive with me.” Freiligrath had heard rumors of Longfellow’s resignation, and had put in an application to be his successor. Longfellow could not give him any encouragement, since, though foreigners were employed to teach the several languages, the professor himself must be an American. There were, he said, six candidates for the position, all friends of his. Lowell was not one of these, but his lectures had marked him as the fit successor, and so Longfellow wrote with satisfaction in his diary, 31 January, 1855: “Lowell is to be my successor! Dr. Walker talked with me about it this morning, and I have been to see Lowell about the preliminaries, and the matter is as good as settled. I am sorry for some of my friends who want the place. But for lectures, I think Lowell the best of the candidates. He has won his spurs and will give the college just what it needs.” Lowell himself told the news to his friend Briggs in the following letter, dated 9 February, 1855:-- “I have been silent ever so long because I could not help it. I have been lecturing four times a week (and am now), and, with my usual discretion, put off writing my lectures till the last moment, so that for five weeks I have been with the bayonet pricking me on close behind, and have hardly dared to _think_ even of anything else. But I have not forgotten you, my dear old friend, nor my love of you, and I have felt a kind of pang now and then because I said in my last note that I would soon write to you--as, indeed, I am always intending to do. “I write now because I have something pleasant to tell, and did not wish you to hear it first from any one but me--though you always seem to live at one end of an ear of Dionysius that brings you all the news of itself. The news is this: The Corporation of the college have asked me to take Longfellow’s place, and my nomination will go to the Overseers next Thursday. “The thing has come about in the pleasantest way, and the place has sought me, not I, it. There were seven applicants for the place, but I was not one of them. On the contrary, I had refused to be a candidate when it was proposed to me. “I have accepted the offer, and am to go abroad for a year to prepare myself. _That_ is the hardest part, but I did not feel competent without it.