In 1868, Mr. Longfellow again visited Europe, and remained abroad more than a year.  His reception by all classes of the people of the Old World was eminently gratifying to his countrymen.  This welcome, so genuine and heartfelt, was due, however, to the genius of the man, and not to his nationality.

He had overstepped the bounds of country, and had made himself the poet of the English-speaking race.  A man of vast learning and varied acquirements, thoroughly versed in the ways of the world, he is still as simple and unaffected in thought and ways as when he listened to and wondered at the dashing of the wild waves on the shore in his boyhood’s home.  A most gifted and accomplished artist, he has been faithful to nature in all things.  Earnest and aspiring himself, he has given to his poems the ring of a true manhood.  There is nothing bitter, nothing sarcastic in his writings.  He views all things with a loving eye, and it is the exquisite tenderness of his sympathy with his fellow-men that has enabled him to find his way so readily to their hearts.  Without seeking to represent the intensity of passion, he deals with the fresh, simple emotions of the human soul, and in his simplicity lies his power.  He touches a chord that finds an echo in every heart, and his poems have a humanity in them that is irresistible.  We admire the “grand old masters,” but shrink abashed from their sublime measures.  Longfellow is so human, he understands us so well, that we turn instinctively to his simple, tender songs for comfort in sorrow, or for the greater perfection of our happiness.

Perhaps I can not better illustrate the power of his simplicity than by the following quotations: 

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there! 
There is no fireside, howsoe’er defended,
But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewell to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted.

Let us be patient!  These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors,
Amid these earthly damps;
What seem to us but sad funereal tapers,
May be heaven’s distant lamps.

There is no death!  What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead—­the child of our affection—­
But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister’s stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grow more fair.