[187] In a review of this last volume of Whittier’s poems (Macmillan & Co.), a writer in the Athenæum (February 18th, 1882) gives the following just estimate of Whittier’s character and merits as a man and a poet: “The poems in this collection ... show that delicate apprehension of nature, that deep-seated sympathy with suffering mankind, that unwavering love of liberty and all things lovable, that earnest belief in a spirit of beneficence guiding to right issues the affairs of the world, that beautiful tolerance of differences—in a word, all those high qualities which, being fused with imagination, make Mr. Whittier, not indeed an analytical and subtle poet, nor a poet dealing with great passions, but what he is emphatically, the apostle of all that is pure, fair, and morally beautiful.
