association with the master-minds of England opened to him a wider field of literature, and impressed him with the importance of writing something loftier and more artistic than anything he yet had undertaken. To that task he turned all the forces of his nature; so that on leaving England his friends noticed through all his vivacity and unceasing attention a tendency to abstraction; as though some important theme unspoken was uppermost in his mind. He was searching for an ideal which should not copy Tennyson, nor Wordsworth, nor Browning, but should equal theirs in conception and execution. He felt that irresistible yearning for the highest poetical work, which is the surest indication of genius. He was not egotistic, he was not foolishly ambitious, but all his life he had been seeking his place in the realms of poetry, feeling morally sure, notwithstanding his own temporary misgivings, that there was a great work for him to do. [Illustration: RUSSIAN SLEDGES.] However, the needs of the present crowded out the dreams of the future, as they so often do in the lives of others, and after a delightful summer in the lands he loved, and a visit to those who were now dearer than the most gorgeous landscapes, he determined upon a trip to the frozen regions of Lapland. He undertook that journey with evident reluctance. His communion with the best minds of America and Europe had taught him that of the works which he had published his poetry would live much longer than his travels. He found that the place of a poet in the scale of human merit was loftier than that of a journalistic traveller. He had left home with a feeling of uncertainty about his future course; but there was no longer hesitation or doubt. He would follow out the routes laid out and keep his promises to the newspapers and publishers, and was determined to acquire an insight into the Scandinavian language in view of an enterprise in the way of translation, which, however, was never fully matured nor undertaken. But his interest in travel had lost its chiefest charms. It would not, could not, satisfy his ambition. Some critics have accounted for this lack of zeal by the nearness of his marriage, which would take him from his wanderings. But the best reason is the one he gave himself; viz., that he desired to undertake some more permanent task—one that should live when his travels were forgotten. Hence, that indescribable lack which his readers have so universally found in his books of travels published after that date. He could not rid himself of the burden, nor cease to ponder upon the subjects which seemed worthy of a great poem.