To know any one well it is needful to inquire into his ancestry, and two or three hints may be given of the currents that met in this poet. On his father's side he came from a succession of New England men who for the previous three generations had been in professional life. The Lowells traced their descent from Percival Lowell,--a name which survives in the family,--of Bristol, England, who settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1639. The great-grandfather was a minister in Newburyport, one of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached sermons when young men went out to fight the French, and preached sermons again in memory of their death when they had been slain in battle." The grandfather was John Lowell, a member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 1780. It was he who introduced into the Bill of Rights a phrase from the Bill of Rights of Virginia, "All men are created free and equal," with the purpose which it effected of setting free every man then held as a slave in Massachusetts. A son of John Lowell and brother of the Rev. Charles Lowell was Francis Cabot Lowell, who gave a great impetus to New England manufactures, and from whom the city of Lowell took its name. Another son, and thus also an uncle of the poet, was John Lowell, Jr., whose wise and far-sighted provision gave to Boston that powerful centre of intellectual influence, the Lowell Institute. Of the Rev. Charles Lowell, his son said, in a letter written in 1844, "He is Doctor Primrose in the comparative degree, the very simplest and charmingest of sexagenarians, and not without a great deal of the truest magnanimity." It was characteristic of Lowell thus to go to _The Vicar of Wakefield_ for a portrait of his father. Dr. Lowell lived till 1861, when his son was forty-two. [Illustration: Elmwood, Mr. Lowell's home in Cambridge.] Mrs. Harriet Spence Lowell, the poet's mother, was of Scotch origin, a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She is described as having "a great memory, an extraordinary aptitude for language, and a passionate fondness for ancient songs and ballads." It pleased her to fancy herself descended from the hero of one of the most famous ballads, Sir Patrick Spens, and at any rate she made a genuine link in the Poetic Succession. In a letter to his mother, written in 1837, Lowell says: "I am engaged in several poetical effusions, one of which I have dedicated to you, who have always been the patron and encourager of my youthful muse." The Russell in his name seems to intimate a strain of Jewish ancestry; at any rate Lowell took pride in the name on this account, for he was not slow to recognize the intellectual power of the Hebrew race. He was the youngest of a family of five, two daughters and three sons. An older brother who outlived him a short time, was the Rev. Robert Traill Spence Lowell, who wrote besides a novel, _The New Priest in Conception Bay_, which contains a delightful study of a Yankee, some poems, and a story of school-boy life.