under the title of “Outre Mer; or, Sketches from Beyond Sea.”  They appeared originally in numbers, and were published by Samuel Colman, of Portland.  They were well received, and brought Professor Longfellow into notice in New England.  Soon afterward he published a translation of the ode upon “Coplas de Manrique,” by his son, Don Jose Manrique, which won him additional credit.  His fugitive poems had become very popular, and had made his name familiar to his countrymen, but as yet he had not collected them in book form.

In 1835, on the resignation of Mr. George Ticknor, he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in Harvard College, and accepted the position.  Before entering upon his duties, however, he resolved to devote two years more to foreign travel and improvement, and accordingly sailed for Europe the second time.  Before leaving America, however, he committed the publication of “Outre Mer” to the Harpers, of New York, who issued it complete in two volumes in 1835.  Its popularity was very decided.  Soon after reaching Europe, Mr. Longfellow was visited with a sad bereavement in the loss of his wife, who died at Rotterdam.  He devoted this European visit to the northern part of the continent, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Holland, and to England, and spent some time in Paris.  Returning in the autumn of 1836, he entered upon his duties at Harvard, and made his home in Cambridge.  He continued his contributions to the “North American Review,” and a number of fugitive pieces flowed from his pen into print.

In the summer of 1837 he went to live in the house which has ever since been his home.  This is the old Craigie House, in Cambridge, famous in our history as having been the headquarters of Washington during the siege of Boston.  It had been built by Colonel John Vassal about the middle of the last century, and had finally passed into the hands of Andrew Craigie, “Apothecary General to the Northern Provincial Army” of the infant Republic.  Craigie had ruined himself by his lavish hospitality, and his widow, a stately old lady, and worthy in every respect of a better fate, had been reduced to the necessity of letting rooms and parting with the greater portion of the lands which had belonged to the mansion.  Mr. Longfellow had been attracted to the house not only by its winning and home-like appearance, but by its historical associations.  Mrs. Craigie had decided at the time to let no more rooms, but the young professor’s gentle, winning manner conquered her determination, and she not only received him into the old mansion, but installed him in the south-east corner room in the second story, which had been used by Washington as his bed-chamber.