IV 1856-1865 RETURN FROM EUROPE. ENTERS UPON THE DUTIES OF HIS PROFESSORSHIP.-MARRIAGE TO MISS DUNLAP.-EDITORSHIP 66 OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.-NEW SERIES OF THE BIGLOW PAPERS."-JOINT EDITORSHIP OF THE NORTH AMERCOMMEMORATION ODE." ICAN REVIEW.-THE LETTERS TO H. W. LONGFELLOW, MISS NORTON, C. E. NORTON, C. F. BRIGGS, S. H. GAY, W. J. STILLMAN, T. W. HIGGINSON, O. W. HOLMES, THOMAS HUGHES, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, J. L. MOTLEY, W. D. HOWELLS, CHARLES NORDHOFF, J. T. FIELDS, MRS. FRANCIS G. SHAW. In the summer of 1856 Lowell returned from Europe, and in the autumn entered upon his regular duties as professor. Admirably accomplished as he was for their performance, and fitted, by sympathy with youthful students no less than by natural gifts and acquired learning, for the post of teacher, he nevertheless found its exactions irksome, and the demand which it made upon him such as to interfere more or less with the free exercise of his poetic faculty. His lectures during the twenty years which he held the professorship had a wide range through the fields of Modern Literature, and were such as college students have rarely had the good-fortune to hear. In the summer of 1857 the happiness of his life was renewed by his marriage to Miss Frances Dunlap. She was a woman of remarkable gifts and graces of person and character, and from this time, for many years, their domestic life was of exceptional felicity. In the autumn of the same year he undertook the editorship of the Atlantic Monthly, a new venture, which under his guidance speedily took the leading place among American literary periodicals. He held the position of editor for nearly four years, devoting much time to its duties. Shortly after resigning its editorship into the competent hands of Mr. James T. Fields he became joint editor with me of the North American Review, which, mainly through his contributions to its pages, regained its old distinction as an organ of the best contemporary thought in America. During the years of the Rebellion his writings were among the most powerful and effective expressions of the sentiment and opinions of the North. Once more Hoseal Biglow uttered the voice of the people; and at the end of the war the "Commemoration Ode" gave expression in its nobly inspired strophes to the true heart of the nation. Few poets have ever rendered such service to their country as Lowell rendered in these years. TO H. W. LONGFELLOW Cambridge, Aug. 16, 1856. My dear Philoctetes,-I was not, I confess, half so sorry for your accident as I ought to have been, because it will give you to me as a neighbor for some time longer.* * Longfellow had been prevented by a lameness from an intended voyage to Europe. I should have come down* to see you whether you had asked me or not, but it was particularly pleasant to find your welcome awaiting me here. I shall come Monday if possible. I am enjoying the academic delights from which you too early withdrew yourself-being pursued by the entire Teutonic, Swiss, Hungarian, Polish, and other emigrations, who are all desirous (especially the last three) to teach the German tongue at Cambridge. I have done nothing since my return but read certificates in various unknown tongues and stand at bay, protecting myself with a cheval-de-frise of English. However, the choice is made to-day, and then I shall be quit of them-unless the rejected take to reviewing my poems. I saw a great deal of Appleton† in England, who was in uncommonly good health and spirits, and as full of good talk as ever. I bring a little package from him. How shall I address you? Do you submit still to the "Professor," or do you find a fresher flavor in "Esquire"? I shall follow old use and wont, and call you as ever. Give my most cordial regards to Mrs. Longfellow, and believe me ever Affectionately yours, J. R. LOWELL. * To Nahant, on the sea-shore, where Longfellow was spending the summer. + Longfellow's brother-in-law, whom his narrowing circle of friends recall affectionately as Tom Appleton-a man with the temperament of genius, and all its social and many of its poetic gifts. Longfellow wrote in his diary: "18 August. Lowell came down and passed the day, looking as if he had not been gone a week. It is very pleasant to have him back again." TO MISS NORTON Cambridge, Sept. 9, 1856, You see that I no longer date my letters "Elmwood," but simple "Cambridge." After thirty-seven years spent in the ship-house, only hearing afar the tumults of the sea, I am launched at last, and have come to anchor in Professors' Row. Or am I rather a tree with my tap-root cut? Or a moss-gathering bowlder gripped up by that cold iceberg Necessity, and dropped here at the corner of Oxford Street? We never find out on how many insignificant points we have fastened the subtile threads of association-which is almost love with sanguine temperaments-till we are forced to break them; and perhaps, as we grow older, Fancy is more frugal of her web: spins it more for catching flies than from an overplus that justifies whim and wasteful ness. ... I will envy you a little your delightful two months in England—and a picture rises before me of long slopes washed with a cool lustre of watery sunshine—a swansilenced reach of sallow-fringed river-great humps of foliage contrasting taper spires-cathedral closes, gray Gothic fronts elbowed by red-brick deaneries-broad downs clouded with cumulous sheep-nay, even a misty, moisty morning in London, and the boy with the pots of porter, and the hansom cab just losing itself in the universal gray-even these sights I envy you.... * On his return from Europe Lowell went to reside with his brother-in-law, Dr. Estes Howe, on Kirkland Street, known in the good old times as "Professors' Row." I suppose you think you are having all the green to yourselves over there-but there never was a greater mistake. The fates have given us an exceptional August -so unlike the common ones that I don't believe even the oysters found out what r-less month it was-rain every other day, so that trees and grass are like June, while at the same time we have the ripeness of the middle-aged year instead of the girlishness of a season in its teens. . . . The hills that you see beyond Charles as you go towards Boston are superb, and then we have all the while those glorious skies of ours, with the clouds heaped up like white foam-bursts to set them off in full perfection. And the sunsets! Europe has lost the art of shining skies as of staining glass-or is it that our unthrift New World squanders like a young heir just come into his estate, while grandam Europe is growing closefisted? Is our Nature Venetian with her gorgeous color, or only Indian, painting herself savagely with the fiercest pigments? I am delighted with your matriotism. "Rome, Venice, Cambridge!" I take it for an ascending scale, Rome being the first step and Cambridge the glowing apex. But you wouldn't know Cambridge -with its railroad and its water-works and its new houses. You remember our bit of Constantinopolitanism-the burnt-out shell of the school-house on the Common? It is gone, and a double house stares like an opera-glass in its place. Think of a car passing our corner at Elmwood every fifteen minutes! Think of the most extraordinary little "Accommodation"—an omnibus that holds four, with an Irish driver whose pride in it is in the inverse ratio of its size-to carry one to |