at Paris. He is an academician of the National Academy of Design, one of the founders of the Society of American Artists and the holder of many medals, diplomas and awards for his drawings and decorative work.
Low′ell (lō′el), a manufacturing city in Middlesex County, Mass., is on Merrimac River, 25 miles northwest of Boston. The river has a fall of 33 feet, which gives it fine water-power, and it is one of the largest manufacturing cities of the country. There are boot and shoe factories, nearly one hundred cotton and woolen mills and the largest carpet manufactory in the country, turning out 4,000,000 yards of carpeting a year. Other manufactures are leather, paper, iron goods, patent medicines, chemicals and carriages. Lowell manufacturers have been noted for their care of their work-people. In early days the operatives were gathered from the country around, and largely were the sons and daughters of New England farmers. They lived in boarding-houses carefully managed, attending evening schools and lectures, publishing local journals, and having the use of free reading rooms and libraries. The large foreign emigration now supplies a permanent manufacturing population; but the system of good homes and advantages for study and recreation is followed by many of the large corporations. The city pays much attention to education; the value of its school-property exceeds $1,600,000; and on elementary education it expends annually over $400,000. It maintains a public library with over 65,000 volumes. Lowell was made a city in 1826. Population 106,294, a gain of 12 per cent. over the previous decade.
|
| JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |
Lowell, James Russell. “If writing poetry were a profession I should be a poet,” Lowell declared when, at 19, he graduated from Harvard. So, with the best of intentions to be what was expected of a man of New England birth and education, he studied law and was admitted to the bar. Nevertheless, he spoiled his chances of success in so serious a profession by continuing to write poetry. The youngest of the Cambridge poets, Lowell was born at Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 22, 1819. His home was Elmwood, a colonial mansion of prerevolutionary days, from which one could see Craigie House where Longfellow later made his home. Between the two there was the most beautiful friendship, that continued without interruption for nearly a half century. Until the age of 35 Lowell's “need for writing poetry” condemned him to a poor and uncertain living. His wife and three children died during these years of struggle, leaving him only one daughter to share his better fortune. But he had published two volumes of poetry and the first series of The Biglow Papers, and had written incessantly, for 16 years, thus gaining skill in expression. A reserved, scholarly man, whose diction was distinguished by purity and elegance, it is curious that Lowell should have first won wide recognition through The Biglow Papers — dialect verses called forth by strong feeling against slavery and the Mexican War. Behind their shrewdness, humor and homely common sense stood keen satire, wit and culture. In 1855 Lowell was elected professor of the Spanish and French languages at Harvard and also of belles lettres. For nearly twenty years he was engaged in editorial work on The Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review, successively, and in lecturing at Harvard. During that time he produced a second series of Biglow Papers, My Study Windows, Fireside Travel and Among My Books; and he became known as critic and essayist. Many people admire Lowell's prose more than his poetry. His Harvard lectures, collected and published after his death, contain some of the most exquisite prose produced by any American writer. Every student should read his lecture on The Province of the Poet, if he would increase his understanding of verse and his pleasure in it.
Some of Lowell's simpler poems, like The First Snowfall, remind one of Whittier; Midnight of Longfellow; but The Vision of Sir Launfal, for which he would have won an enduring place had he written nothing else, is Lowell's own. It is “delicate, airy, fanciful; something new and true, in thought, feeling and expression; profound human experience; the creation of a thing at once beautiful and pathetic and heroic,” fitting his own definition of what poetry should be.
His productive period in literature practically ended, Lowell gave the distinction of a man of letters and leisure to the position of American minister to Madrid and to London, where his polished manners and learning raised the European estimate of American character. The closing years of his life were chiefly spent in his birthplace among his books and friends. He died on Aug. 12, 1891, crowned with the triple wreath of a poet, an essayist and a man of distinguished public service. All these honors came to him through persistently following the bent of his genius. Before he was 21 Lowell declared: “God has given me powers such as are not given to all,
