Her spirit still lingers round the house, and though many things-amongst others the low wicket-have disappeared, every corner of the place still breathes something of her influence. The elaborate tomb by the chancel of the little church, the tall monument on the hill raised by her in affectionate remembrance of D'Israeli the elder, but inscribed also with the name of Mary Anne Disraeli, Viscountess Beaconsfield, are not the only memorials of the lady to whom Hughenden owes so much. It has been more than once said of Mr Disraeli that he held with a light and readily-relaxed grasp the objects that he apparently cherished most. This certainly cannot be said of him in his home life. In the simple little study upstairs, where he takes his matutinal tea and toast-the Earl of Beaconsfield is not an early riser, and seldom appears at breakfast and where, by the aid of Mr Montagu Corry, he gets through the mass of official correspondence that is always heavy even in his days of retirement, he sits surrounded by memories. Miniatures of his father, mother, and brother hang above the mantelpiece, and portraits of departed friends or colleagues look upon him from the walls; while he gazes from the windows on broad terraces bright with variegated blossoms, and flanked with noble beeches and firs, where traces of the wife's loving care still linger. The walls of the bijou morning-room, of the staircases, and of the yellow room set aside for the most distinguished | visitors, are all hung with sketches or paintings of those whom the ties of friendship or long association in political work have endeared to the lord of Hughenden. The manor over which the youngest of our earls holds dominion has been associated with not a few names of distinction. In a chapel of the old church are many knightly tombs of the De Monforts and Wellesburnes, once lords of the manor. At Hughenden Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, frequently resided while the estate belonged to him. But of all its successive owners none has made more distinct a mark on his age than, or imprinted his name in characters so brilliant on the page of history as, he who, uniting the dash of a De Monfort with the polish of a Chesterfield, has, step by step, risen to be prime minister of a mighty empire. A CONVERSATION WITH DISRAELI. [Speaking of his own novels, Mr Disraeli said:] "I never aimed too high, and so I have no great fall to deplore. Novel-writing in England is different from what it is in France. With you plot is everything, with us comparatively little. The novel invariably bears the characteristics of the nation. You Frenchmen are fond of dramatic effects; we are fonder of gradual transitions. What seems magnificent to you sometimes appears ludicrous to us; and what we consider very fine and substantial, you look upon as dull and prosy. Make the rounds of the various literatures, and you will always find the characteristic of the respective nations strongly imprinted upon the productions of their novelists. There are phenomenal exceptions to this rule, gifted individuals soaring high above the multitude of even good writers. Still I must say that every now and then I dearly love to read one of your crisp, nervous French novels. Time was when I eagerly perused 'The Wandering Jew' and the 'Mysteries of Paris;' and I think that our English critics have uniformly underrated the talents of Eugene Sue." "His influence upon the literature of France should not be underrated," I said. "His imagination was an extraordinary one, and his facility of composition absolutely marvellous. You spoke of M. de Tocqueville. That man, otherwise so fair-minded and just, held Eugene Sue in great abhorrence. He was on excellent terms with my father, and remained so even when their political views widely diverged. But he often censured my father, jocosely, of course, for giving French literature such an enfant terrible as Eugene Sue. A favourite saying of M. de Tocqueville was: 'Rousseau lived twenty years, and then begat Bernardin de St Pierre ; Bernardin de St Pierre lived twenty years, and then begat Chateaubriand; Chateaubriand lived twenty years, and then begat Victor Hugo; Victor Hugo, being tempted of the devil, is begetting every day Eugene Sues, and the like.'' When our merriment had subsided, Mr Disraeli began to speak of our French parliamentary orators. He said he would greatly like to hear Jules Favre, whose speeches he said read splendidly. I told him that M. Favre's speeches could hardly be recognised in the imperfect printed reports. "I heard M. Thiers many years ago," he said, "and was somewhat disappointed. He seemed to give directions to the Chamber of Deputies rather than to appeal to its judgment. Nor was his delivery faultless. But, perhaps," he continued, drily, “I was prejudiced at the time against M. Thiers, for he was speaking against my friend Louis Philippe, who, the day before, had treated me with charming kindness." I then took my leave of Mr Disraeli. This conversation had been carried on in a small oblong room, whose walls were entirely covered by book-shelves. It would have looked like a bookworm's cosy cell, but for the gorgeous frescoes on the ceiling, the candelabra of the rarest workmanship, the coloured windows, of which Mr Disraeli seems extremely fond, and the heavy black and yellow curtains of the door and windows. On the tables there was no picturesque disorder: everything was very neat, and great care seemed to be constantly taken that everything should be in its right place.— The late François Victor Hugo. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. [1807-] see Henry Longfellow face to face. At last the [FEW modern poets are so widely and favourably | were a dream that within half-an-hour I was to known as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His verses are in every school collection, and his poems, by their sweetness, simplicity, and purity, have made their way into every British home. Born at Portland, Maine, 27th February 1807, he entered Bowdoin College at the age of fourteen, where he took his degree with high honours in 1825. For a few months he was a law student in his father's office. He spent three years in foreign travel in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England, returning to the United States in 1829. His experience in travel was intended to fit him for the professorship of modern languages in Bowdoin College. In 1835 he succeeded to the professorship of modern languages and of the belles-lettres in Harvard College, vacant by the death of Mr George Tick nor. After a twelvemonth's travel in the north of Europe, and after gaining a knowledge of the language and literature of the countries visited, he returned to enter upon his duties as professor at Cambridge, United States. He resigned his professorship in 1854, when he was succeeded by James Russell Lowell, now the Hon. James R. Lowell, American Consul in Spain. While a student, he wrote many fine poems, which he contributed to the United States Literary Gazette, and also wrote for the North American Review. Since 1833 he has published over twenty separate works, poetry and prose. Collected editions of his poems have been freely reprinted and sold in Great Britain, and also translated into many Continental languages. The latest work on which he has been engaged is a compilation from the whole field of British and American poetry, entitled "Poems of Places," in twenty volumes. In 1868 and 1869 he was again in Europe. In the latter year the University of Oxford conferred upon him the honorary degree of D.C.L.; he was also elected a member of the Russian Academy of Science in 1873.] I walked down the road very slowly, for anticipation is sweet, and one does not like to hurry over a joy that can never be had but once. My bosom was filled with strange emotion. I was about to see the man who had touched the heart of Christian humanity with his songs-one who had filled my own early life with the music of his dreams. It is always sweet to pay homage to the poet, but to few, either in the New World or in the Old, could I have paid it with so much heart as to Longfellow. How pure his influence upon the world had been! How many hearts his "Psalm of Life," his "Evangeline," and his "Excelsior," had kindled with a nobler enthusiasm! How many toilers in the dark cells of humanity his "Architects of Fate" had awakened to the nobleness and immortality of faithful work! Among the mountains of sorrow how many melancholy wanderers had he cheered! How many a mother's heart, throbbing with anguish over the withered corpse of her child, had he comforted with his sweet song of "The Reaper and the Flowers!" The old Craigie House, once the Washington Conferred on poets, of a twofold life, I heard, however, from some of Longfellow's whom he was devotedly attached, had made a great change in his appearance, and brought a shadow over his life that nothing had ever been able to drive away. split of our Union. The Marquis said it was the instinct of caste. He was the first nobleman I met who perceived, or at least confessed the truth. I was surprised to hear the con The family were at an early dinner, but Long-fession even from him." fellow insisted upon my joining them. The Scotch terrier went in with us, and was still making demonstrations to attract my attention. "That terrier is intensely national," said Longfellow, with a smile. "I never knew a Scotchman come here but that terrier found him out, and wanted to make friends with him." After dinner he took me to his study, wheeled a big arm-chair for me to the fireside, and, seating himself in another, with a cigar, began to ask about his literary friends in Scotland. He spoke of Alexander Smith and his "City Poems," and of Gilfillan's early recognition of their author's genius, and expressed deep regret at Smith's premature death. Aytoun he knew chiefly by his "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers." Tennyson, he said, was exceedingly popular all over America. He showed me a beautiful copy of the laureate's works that stood among the books on his study-table. He spoke of George Mac Donald, and of Dr John Brown, whose "Spare Hours" [Hora Subseciva] was much admired. "But he is best known," he said, "by some of his shorter pieces. Rab and his Friends' is everywhere." Speaking of international copyright law, he said: "We have done all we could to get such a law passed. You would gain by it even more than we. The difficulty lies with the lower class of publishers and booksellers here. They cry out against it. But houses like Fields' are strongly in its favour, and have lent all their influence to obtain it. My own idea," he added, "is this: Any copyright taken out on the one side should hold on the other; and whenever it expires on the side on which it is taken out it should expire on the other. This, I think, would cover the whole ground, and would avoid all difficulty arising from the different lengths of time for which copyright is granted in the two countries." Of newspapers and journals he said: "Ours are not equal to yours. We have no such classic writing here as you have in the Times, Spectator, and Saturday Review. But our standard is rising." Speaking of the war, he said: "When the Marquis of Lorne was here, I asked him why the English aristocracy were so exultant over the He looked at some photographs that I happened to have with me. On coming to Cruik | shank's, he said, sadly, "How changed he is since I first met him at the door of Dickens's house. It makes me feel old to look at him." He admired a picture of Thomas Carlyle, taken by Elliot & Fry, but was amused beyond measure at the philosopher's appearance in the handsome cloak which the artist had thrown over his shoulders to give effect to the picture, and over which the face of Sartor Resartus appeared, wearing an expression of ludicrously doleful resignation. Speaking of "Hiawatha" and the Indians, I told Longfellow how much I preferred the Indian of romance to the Indian of reality, as far as my experience of him had gone. He said, "You see no true specimens now. They are all degenerated by contact with white men and by rum. I doubt if there is a pure uncontaminated Indian left on this continent." He said that the correct pronunciation of Hiawatha was "Hea-wah-tha." When I spoke of "Evangeline," but expressed my doubt if the hexameter would take root in English soil, he said, "I don't know; I think it will. It is a measure that suits all themes. It can fly low like a swallow, and at any moment dart skywards. What fine hexameters we have in the Bible, ‘Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.' And that line, 'God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet!' Nothing could be grander or finer than that!" "When I wrote 'Evangeline,'" he added, "friends here said, 'It is all very well, but you must take an English metre; that hexameter will never do.' But my thoughts would run into hexameter. However, to please them, I translated some passages into heroic measure; but they agreed, when they heard them together, that the hexameter was best." But whatever might be thought of classic measure for new poems, Homer and Virgil ought, if possible, he said, to be preserved in their native hexameter. Attempts to modernise Homer, and put him into English metre, were apt to become absurd. It was like putting a statue in crinoline, or converting Achilles into a modern gentle man. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. [1809-1861.] BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.* THERE are some poets whom we picture to our selves as surrounded with aureolas; who are clothed in so pure an atmosphere that when we speak of them-though with a critical purpose and in this exacting age-our language must express that tender fealty which sanctity and exaltation compel from all mankind. We are not sure of our judgment: ordinary tests fail us; the pearl is a pearl, though discoloured; fire is fire, though shrouded in vapour, or tinged with murky hues. We do not see clearly, for often our eyes are blinded with tears; we love, we cherish, we revere. The memory and career of Elizabeth Barrett Browning appear to us like some beautiful ideal. Nothing is earthly, though all is human; a spirit is passing before our eyes, yet, of like passions with ourselves, and encased in a frame so delicate that every fibre is alive with feeling and tremulous with radiant thought. Her genius certainly may be compared to those sensitive, palpitating flames, which harmonically rise and fall in response to every soundvibration near them. Her whole being was rhythmic, and, in a time when art is largely valued for itself alone, her utterances were the expression of her inmost soul. I have said that while the composite period has exhibited many phases of poetic art, it is not difficult, with respect to each of them taken singly, to find some former epoch more distinguished. The Elizabethan age surpassed it in dramatic creation, and in those madrigals and canzonets which-to transpose Mendelssohn's fancy-are music without harping; the protectorate developed more epic grandeur - the Georgian era, more romantic sentiment and strength of wing. Recent progress has been phenomenal, chiefly, in variety, finish, average excellence of work. To this there is one exception. The Victorian era, with its wider range of opportunities for women, has been illumined by the career of the greatest female poet that England has produced-nor only England, but the whole territory of the English language; more than this, the most inspired woman, so far as known, of all who have composed in ancient or modern tongues, or flourished in any land or time. What have we of Sappho, beyond a few exquisite fragments, a disputed story, the broken * By permission from "Victorian Poets." London: Chatto & Windus. strings of a remote and traditional island-lyre! Yet, from Sappho down, including the poetry of Southern and Northern Europe and the whole melodious greensward of English song, the remains of what woman are left to us, which in quantity and inspiration compete with those of Mrs Browning? What poet of her own sex, except Sappho, did she herself find worthy a place among the forty immortals grouped in the hemicycle of her own "Vision of Poets?" Take the volume of her collected writings-with so much that we might omit, with so many weaknesses and faults-and what riches it contains! How different too, from other recent work, thoroughly her own, eminently that of a woman -a Christian sibyl, priestess of the melody, heroism, and religion of the modern world! What is the story of her maidenhood? Not only of those early years which, no matter how long we continue, are said to make up the greater portion of our life; but also of an unwedded period which lasted to that ominous year, the thirty-seventh, which has ended the song of other poets at a date when her own—so far as the world heard her had but just begun. How grew our Psyche in her chrysalid state? For she was like the insect that weaves itself a shroud, yet by some inward force, after a season, is impelled to break through its covering, and come out a winged tiger-moth, emblem of spirituality in its birth, and of passion in the splendour of its tawny dyes. Elizabeth Barrett Barrett was born of wealthy parents, in 1809, and began her literary efforts almost contemporaneously with Tennyson. Apparently-for the world has not yet received the inner history of a life, which, after all, was so purely intellectual that only herself could have revealed it to us-apparently, I say, she was the idol of her kindred; and especially of a father who wondered at her genius and encouraged the projects of her eager youth. Otherwise, although she was a rhymer at the age of ten, how could she have published, in her seventeenth year, her didactic essay, composed in heroics after the method of Pope? Apparently, too, she had a mind of that fine northern type which hungers after learning for its own sake, and to which the study of books or nature is an instinctive and insatiable desire. If Mrs Browning left no formal record of her youth, the spirit of it is indicated so plainly in "Aurora Leigh," that we scarcely need the letter: "Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-room The first book first. And how I felt it beat At last, because the time was ripe Doubtless this sleepless child was one to whom her actual surroundings, even if observed, seemed less real than the sights in dreamland and cloudland revealed to her by simply opening the magical covers of a printed book. An imaginative girl sometimes becomes so entranced with the ideal world as to quite forego the billing and cooing which attend upon the spring time of womanhood. Such natures often awake to the knowledge that they have missed something: love was everywhere around them, but their eyes were fixed upon the stars, and they perceived it not. This abnormal growth is perilous, and to the feebler class of dreamers, who have poetic sensibility without true constructive power, ensures blight, loneliness, premature decay. For the born artist, such experiences in youth not only are inevitable, but are the training which shapes them for their after-work. The fittest survive the test. Miss Barrett's early feasts were of an omnivorous kind, the best school regimen for genius: "I read books bad and good-some bad and good At once: And being dashed From error on to error, every turn "Without considering whether they were fit a man upon first acquaintance, and often not far wrong. With time and occasion afterward came the more disciplinary process of her education. Fortunate influences, possibly those of her father-if we may still follow "Aurora Leigh"guided her in the direction of studies as refining as they were severe. She read Latin and Greek. Now, it is noteworthy that a girl's intellect is more adroit in acquirement, not only of the languages, but of pure mathematics, than that of the average boy. Any one trained at the desks In later years the woman very likely will stop of a New England high-school is aware of this. acquiring, while the man still plods along and grows in breadth and accuracy. Miss Barrett became a loving student of Greek, and we shall see that it greatly influenced her literary progress. Among her maturer friends was the sweetly gentle and learned Hugh Stuart Boyd, to whom and under whose guidance she explored a rein his blindness she read the Attic dramatists, markably wide field of Grecian philosophy and song. What more beautiful subject for a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark modern painter than the girl Elizabeth-" that curls falling on each side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed with dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam"-than this ethereal creature seated at the feet of the cody of the sonorous drama, from which she blind old scholar, her face aglow with the rhapread of Edipus, until "the reader's voice dropped lower When the poet called him BLIND!" Here was the daughter that Milton should have had! An oft-quoted stanza from her own "Wine of Cyprus," addressed to her master in after-years, may be taken for the legend of the picture: "And I think of those long mornings, Which my thought goes far to seek, so much help By so much reading. It is rather when Aside from repeated indications in her other We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge writing, this graceful poem shows the liberal Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, extent of her delightful classical explorations. Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth"Tis then we get the right good from a book." Homer, Pindar, Anacreon-"Eschylus the thunderous," "Sophocles, the royal," "EuriMuch of this reading was of that grave char- pides, the human," "Plato, the divine one"❞— acter to which court-maidens of Roger Ascham's Theocritus, Bion-not only among the immortal time were wonted, for her juvenile "Essay on pagans did Miss Barrett follow hand in hand Mind" evinced a knowledge of Plato, Bacon, with Boyd, but attended him upon his favourite and others of the world's great thinkers: I do excursions to those "noble Christian bishops" not say familiarity with them; scholars know-Chrysostom, Basil, Nazianzen-"who mouthed what that word means, and how loosely such terms are bandied. She gained that general conception of each, similar to what we learn of grandly the last Greek." What other woman and poet of recent times has passed through such a novitiate, in the |