So ably had he served the best interests of his country through his writings, that in 1877 he was appointed Minister of the United States to Spain, and served here until 1880, when he was sent as Minister to England. These high trusts, it proved, had not been wrongly placed. Lowell’s devotion to the truest American principles, together with his large experience in public affairs, made him a most successful diplomat. He was given high honors by British universities, and he made many friends in England.
After his return to America in 1885 he withdrew gradually from his former active life. Occasionally he wrote and lectured, and several times he made trips to England where he always received a cordial welcome. It was in his much loved Elmwood that death came to him August 12, 1891.
Lowell was a man of wide learning, and has a prominent place in American literature for his exceptional critical ability and delightful wit, and for the artistic excellence of both his prose and poetry; but the secret of his power lies not so much in these things as in the sincerity and vigor of thought that rise above all bookishness, and in the warm human feeling that reached out for the love of his fellow-men rather than for fame and distinction. Probably that which most endears him to his countrymen is the quality he attributes to others in these words of admiration: “I am sure that both the President (Hayes) and his wife have in them that excellent new thing we call Americanism, which, I suppose, is that ‘dignity of human nature’ which the philosophers of the last century were always seeking and never finding, and which, after all, consists, perhaps, in not thinking yourself either better or worse than your neighbors by reason of any artificial distinction. As I sat behind them at the concert the other night, I was profoundly touched by the feelings of this kingship without mantle and crown from the property-room of the old world. Their dignity was in their very neighborliness, instead of in their distance.” Certainly in the realm of American literature, there is no one better entitled than Lowell to this “kingship without mantle and crown.”
A CHILD’S THOUGHT OF GOD
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
They say that God lives very high,
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see our God, and why?
And if you dig down in the mines
You never see Him in the gold;
Though, from Him, all that’s glory shines.
God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across His face—
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.