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Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches, Lowell (search)
ziliai and Ebenezer, and the hoar frost of the Concord meadows would seem to have had a chilling effect on Lowell's naturally tolerant and amiable disposition. He was not attracted by Emerson at this time, but, on the contrary, would seem to have felt an aversion to him. The following lines in his class poem could not have referred to anyone else: Woe for Religion, too, when men who claim To place a Reverend before their name Ascend the Lord's own holy place to preach In strains that Kneeland had been proud to reach; And which, if measured by Judge Thatcher's scale, Had doomed their author to the county jail! Alas that Christian ministers should dare To preach the views of Gibbon and Voltaire! To confound the strong spiritual assertion of Emerson with the purely negative attitude of the French satirist was a common mistake in those days, and the Lowell of 1838 needs small excuse for it. He must have been in a biting humor at this time, for there is a cut all round in his class p