But a celestial brightness—a more ethereal beauty—
Shone on her face and encircled her form, when after confession,
Homeward serenely she walked with God’s benediction upon her.
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.”
—Evangeline, by Henry W. Longfellow
Artist: William Ladd Taylor.
Birthplace: Grafton, Massachusetts.
Dates: Born, 1854.
The story of the picture. In illustrating Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline, Mr. Taylor has chosen to represent the heroine during the happiest part of her life, and before anything very exciting or at all strange began to happen, unless, perhaps, we feel that it is strange and wonderful that there should be such a little village as Grand-Pré, where Evangeline lived. History tells us that such a village did exist in Acadie—or Nova Scotia, Canada, as we call it now. The French and English had quarreled bitterly over this island, for each wanted possession of its fisheries. The English claimed the territory by right of discovery, and they finally secured possession of it.
Most of the people living there were French and had been given the privilege of leaving within two years. Though they desired to remain, yet they refused to take the oath of allegiance, and their oath of fidelity to the British king was accepted instead. They were exempted from bearing arms against their own countrymen, allowed to enjoy their religion, to have magistrates of their own selection, and, in fact, they had been permitted to do about as they pleased. Each man owned his farm and his stock, and all that goes to make a life of usefulness as well as of plenty and content.