The study at Amesbury of course possesses great interest for us as the place where most of the poet's finest lyrics have been written. It is a very cosey little study, and is entered by one door from within and another from without. The upper half of the outer door is of glass. This door is at the end of the left-hand porch shown in the view on page 125. The two windows in the study look out upon a long strip of yard in the rear of the house,—very pretty and quiet, and filled with pear-trees and other trees and vines. Upon one side of the room are shelves holding five or six hundred well-used volumes. Among them are to be noticed Charles Reade's novels and the poems of Robert Browning. A side-shelf is completely filled with a small blue and gold edition of the poets. On the walls hang oil paintings of views on the Merrimack River and other Essex County scenes, including Mr. Whittier's birthplace. In one corner is a handsome writing-desk, littered with papers and letters. Upon the hearth of the Franklin stove, high andirons smile a fireside welcome from their burnished brass knobs. Indeed, everything in the room is as neat and cosey as the wax cell of a honey-bee. And over all is shed the genial glow of the gentlest, tenderest nature in all the land.
In the autumn of 1844 was written "The Stranger in Lowell," a series of light sketches suggested by personal experiences. The style of these essays reminds one of that of "Twice Told Tales," but it is not so pure. The thought is developed too rhetorically, and the essays betray the limitations attending the life of a recluse. But these sketches are interesting as exhibitions of the growth of the author toward this peculiar form of essay-writing, and are valuable on that account.
In 1847 James G. Birney's anti-slavery paper, The Philanthropist, published in Cincinnati, was merged with the National Era, of Washington, D. C., with Dr. Gamaliel Bailey as managing editor, and John G. Whittier as associate or corresponding editor. Dr. Bailey had previously helped edit The Philanthropist. Both papers were treated to mobocratic attacks. The Era became an important organ of the Abolition party in Washington. To it Mr. Whittier contributed his "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches" as well as other reform papers.
In the same year (1847) our author published his "Supernaturalism of New England." [New York and London: Wiley and Putnam.] This pleasant little volume shows a marked advance upon Whittier's previous prose work. In its nine chapters he has preserved a number of oral legends and interesting superstitions of the farmer-folk of the Merrimack region. Parts of the work have been quoted elsewhere in this volume. One of the chapters closes with the following fine passage:—
"The witches of Father Baxter and 'the Black Man' of Cotton Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star-worlds and thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is still over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the inheritance of humanity: still are there beautiful repentances and holy death-beds, and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises star-like the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences than the poor spectres of superstition man must henceforth be taught to reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness and sin and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy of an overruling Providence."
In 1849 Mr. Whittier collected and published his anti-slavery poems, under the title "Voices of Freedom." The year 1850 marks a new era in his poetical career. He published at that time his "Songs of Labor,"—a volume which showed that his mind had become calmed by time, and was now capable of interesting itself in other than reform subjects.
There is not much of outward incident and circumstance to record of the quiet poetical years passed since 1840 at Amesbury and Danvers. Almost every year or two a new volume of poems has been issued, each one establishing on a firmer foundation the Quaker Poet's reputation as a creator of sweet and melodious lyrical poetry.