Life — March 28, 1889 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. HE Hon. James Russell Lowell, LL.D., D.C.L., ex-Minister to Spain, ex-Minister to England, ex- American and present Deity-at- Large in the world of New England letters, and Visiting Delegate to New York, Chicago and London, is a glittering example of the lofty possibilities that unpretentious de- mocracy may attain in the courts of royalty. Mr. Lowell was born in the strategetic center of American culture, Cambridge, on the an versary of George Washington's birthday in 1819, and at the age of nineteen years was graduated from Harvard College in due form as poet of the class. His earliest am- bition—excluding, of course, the inclination of boyhood to a life of crime—was to become a lawyer, and, in time, counsel to a railroad corpor- ation or a boodlé alderman ; Blackstone and Chitty being duller than Milton and Shakespeare, he abandoned the bar and devoted himself to literature, first becoming _famous as the author of the cele- “brated conundrum: ‘What is so rare asa day in June?” which has since furnished much amusement to the public from the minstrel stage. Within a score of years after leav- ing college, Mr. Lowell wrote many pages of poetry, real poetry with words that sounded alike at the end of the lines. He also wrote critical articles about other poets, picking out the dead ones for his bitterest attacks, thus indicating rare discre- tion for one so young. Mr. Lowell passed on from one pinnacle to another on the mounting battle- but, io aan Se ahha? ments of success. He succeeded the late H, Wadsworth Longfellow, like- wise a poet, as Professor of Modern Languages and Belles- Lettres in Harvard, and he became the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and afterward of the North American Ke- view, acquitting himself creditably in both chait ing manuscripts accompanied by stamped and directed envelopes. It must be admitted that the Hon, James Russell Lowell was something of a disappointment at the Court of St. James. He had written so much patriotic poetry that the American people naturally felt that he believed in the American idea, But Mr. Lowell failed to make an aggressive diplomatic campaign in the stronghold of the Britons, He refused to call on the Queen with his trousers tucked in his boots; he ate his pie with a fork when he dined at Windsor; he did not maintain a cuspidor in his private office at the American Legation; he bowed to the Prince of Wales in the public thorough- fares, and he wore a top hat on Sundays and legal holidays. More- over, he refused to interfere when England e: ecuted Irish dynamiters who had once been in America, and visited Tory aoblemen in their ancestral halls. The result was that Mr. Lowell became popular , and always return- LIFE'S GALLERY OF BEAUTIES. No. 11. HON. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. in court circles. Victoria asked him about Chauncey Depew; he walked down Pall Mall with a duke on each arm; the Prince of Wales called him Jim, and he sat in poker games with peers of the realm. Mr. Lowell's position in the Bostonese affections is now almost as firmly established as that of the Common. The inhabitants gaze at him through smoked glass when he promenades the thoroughfares, and he is often asked to speak in the Lowell Institute. METHOD IN HIS SILENCE. ** TOLTON told me he had borrowed some money from you. I was surprised, because I n:ver heard you say anything about it. “No; I still hope to get it back.” s i} comicbooks.com