The finest comment in Carpenter’s book on Whittier is that upon “Benedicite.” No other poem so expresses the renunciation of Whittier’s life and that purity and holiness of character which made women especially his dear and loving friends. * * * * * Once, unknown to the poet, his sister sent to the doctor’s home for inspection an exquisite miniature on ivory of a very beautiful woman. Miss Whittier’s message with the miniature was that this was the portrait of a lady whom the poet had loved, but that she had turned from him and married another. Now, however, in her widowhood and his greater fame she had looked back at him again. Today’s question is, would she have been won had she found in him his old ardor and less resignation? At least she complained to him of the loss of this ardor. His letters assured her that his feelings to her were the same, but that her “fine artistic nature” could not endure the hard, uncongenial influences of his life surroundings. How much had his ardent emotion softened into tender and constant friendship? If his narrow income at that time forbade him; or if loyalty to his sister would not permit him to put another over the home of which she had been so long the light, who can tell? This miniature was the portrait of Elizabeth Lloyd to whom the poet’s letters have been published. Was she the inspirer of “Benedicite,” that poem of a deep and holy love? * * * * * When Bayard Taylor was ready to bring to Amesbury “his beautiful German wife” whom the poet’s sister had been so eager to see, Miss Whittier was too ill to make the visit possible. For months she had been growing weaker and more suffering. The doctor sent her to Boston to be in care of Dr. Z----, then a very famous woman physician. During this time Miss Whittier visited Mrs. W----, a sister of Dr. S----. But in spite of all efforts the disease progressed, and Elizabeth returned to Amesbury worse. From that time she steadily failed, and in the late summer of 1864 she passed to the life beyond. * * * * * The doctor’s wife who was often in Miss Whittier’s room during the latter part of her illness could well have given a touch of the poet’s inner life. One day Elizabeth in a spasm of pain looked up at her brother from this friend who was bending over her. “Ah, Greenleaf,” she said, “I wish thee had a good, strong wife like the doctor’s.” “So do I, Elizabeth,” he answered her. “But thee knows--” The finishing of that sentence the hearer never told beyond the limits of her own home. * * * * * After Elizabeth’s death, in his loneliness and his loyalty to those who had gone, Whittier’s heart uttered itself. How could the world help listening to the voice of such a heart as spoke in “Snow Bound?”