offered to Whittier a subject admirably adapted to his powers. Here the faults of taste that elsewhere so often offend us are sunk in the harmony of the whole and in the singular unity of impression; and the lack of elevation that so often stints our praise becomes a suave and mellow beauty. All the better elements of his genius are displayed here in opulent freedom. The affections of the heart unfold in unembittered serenity. The sense of home seclusion is heightened by the presence of the enveloping wilderness, but not disturbed by any harsher contrast. Within is familiar joy and retirement unassailed--not without a touch of humour, as when in the evening, "while his wife put on her look of love's endurance," Pastorius took down his tremendous manuscript-- And read, in half the languages of man, His _Rusca Apium_, which with bees began, And through the gamut of creation ran. (The manuscript still exists; pray heaven it be never published!) Now and then the winter evenings were broken by the coming of some welcome guest--some traveller from the Old World bringing news of fair Von Merlau and the other beloved mystics; some magistrate from the young city, Lovely even then With its fair women and its stately men Gracing the forest court of William Penn; or some neighbour of the country, the learned Swedish pastor who, like Pastorius, "could baffle Babel's lingual curse," Or painful Kelpius, from his forest den By Wissahickon, maddest of good men. Such was the life within, and out of doors were the labours of the gardener and botanist, while the seasons went Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent Of their own calm and measureless content. The scene calls forth some of Whittier's most perfect lines of description. Could anything be more harmonious than this, with its economy of simple grace, Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds sailed? No poem would be thoroughly characteristic of Whittier without some echo of the slavery dispute, and our first introduction to Pastorius is, indeed, as to a baffled forerunner of John Woolman. But the question here takes on its most human and least political form; it lets in just enough of the outside world of action to save the idyl from unreality. Nor could religion well be absent; rather, the whole poem may be called an illustration through the Pilgrim's life of that Inner Guide, speaking to him not with loud and controversial tones, as it spoke to George Fox, but with the still, small voice of comfortable persuasion: A Voice spake in his ear, And lo! all other voices far and near Died at that whisper, full of meanings clear. The Light of Life shone round him; one by one The wandering lights, that all misleading run, Went out like candles paling in the sun.