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delivering lectures at the Harvard Law-School, where he might have remained the rest of his life, if he had been satisfied with a merely routine employment, and the fortunes of the republic had not decided differently.
The attraction between Sumner and Longfellow was immediate and permanent.
It was owing more perhaps to the essential purity of their natures, than to mutual sympathy in regard to art and literature; although Longfellow held Sumner's literary judgment in such respect that he rarely published a new poem without first subjecting his work to Sumner's criticism.
Those who admired Sumner at this time, for his fine moral and intellectual qualities, had no adequate conception of the far nobler quality which lay concealed in the depths of his nature.
Charles Sumner was a hero,--one to whom life was nothing in comparison with his duty.
It was in the anti-Irish riot of June, 1837, that he first gave evidence of this.
Nothing was more hateful to him than race prejudice, and what might be called international malignity, which he believed was the most frequent cause of war.
As soon as Sumner was notified of the disturbance, he hastened to the scene of action, seized on a prominent position, and attempted to address the insurgents; but his pacific words
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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