"'Ah,' said I, 'c'est une belle chose que l'avenir.'
"The elderly French gentleman rolled up the whites of his eyes and answered:—
"'Oui, c'est une belle chose; mais vous et moi, nous n'en avons pas beaucoup!'
"Superfluous information!—H. W. L."
It would be both an endless and unprofitable task to recall more of the curious experiences which popularity brought down upon him. There is a passage among Mr. Fields's notes, however, in which he describes an incident during Longfellow's last visit to England, which should not be overlooked. Upon his arrival, the Queen sent a graceful message, and invited him to Windsor Castle, where she received him with all the honors; but he told me no foreign tribute touched him deeper than the words of an English hod-carrier, who came up to the carriage door at Harrow, and asked permission to take the hand of the man who had written the "Voices of the Night."
There was no break nor any change in the friendship with his publisher during the passing of the years; but in 1861 there is a note containing only a few words, which shows that a change had fallen upon Longfellow himself, a shadow which never could be lifted from his life. He writes:—
"MY DEAR FIELDS,—I am sorry to say No instead of Yes; but so it must be. I can neither write nor think; and I have nothing fit to send you but my love, which you cannot put into the magazine."
For ever after the death of his wife he was a different man. His friends suffered for him and with him, but he walked alone through the valley of the shadow of death. "The blow fell entirely without warning, and the burial took place upon the anniversary of her marriage day. Some hand placed on her beautiful head, lovely and unmarred in death, a wreath of orange blossoms."
There was a break in his journal at this time. After many days he inscribed in it the following lines from Tennyson's poem addressed to James Spedding:—
"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace.
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul!
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll."