Like many authors, Whittier has been attracted, in the autumn of his life, to the rich fields of Oriental literature. His Oriental poems show careful and sympathetic study of eastern books. "The Two Rabbis" and "Shah Akbar" are especially fine. The little touch in the former of "the small weeds that the bees bow with their weight" is a very pretty one. In "The King's Missive" we have a few "Oriental Maxims," being paraphrases of translations from the Sanscrit. "The Dead Feast of the Kol-Folk," and "The Khan's Devil," are also included in the same volume. Mr. Whittier has also made successful studies in Norse literature, for which his beautiful ballads, the "Dole of Jarl Thorkell," "Kallundborg Church," and "King Volmer and Elsie" are vouchers. CHAPTER VI. PROSE WRITINGS. It is to be feared that the greater portion of the prose writings of Whittier will be _caviare_ to many readers of this day. He himself almost admits as much in the prefatory note to the second volume of the complete edition of his essays. That many of the papers are entertaining reading, and that they are written often in a light and genial and vivacious style, is true; and, as he himself hints, they will at least be welcomed and indulgently judged by his personal friends and admirers. His prose work was done in a time seething with moral ideas; the air was full of reforms; the voice of duty sounded loud in men's consciences, and the ancestral buckler called-- "Self-clanging, from the walls In the high temple of the soul!" _Lowell._