18 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



two hundred years, watching the crane and pen- 

 dent trammels show black against the blaze, seeing 

 the Turk's heads on the andirons glow, reading 

 by the firelight verses which the poet wrote in that 

 same home room, and when the storm passed and 

 I could go forth to his brook and his fields and 

 hills it could not fail to be with something of his 

 love for them in my heart. Some critic, whose 

 visit must have been shortened by homesick mem- 

 ories of a steam-heated flat, has said that Whit- 

 tier's birthplace is lonely and that its loneliness 

 had its effect on his life and work. But how 

 could such a place be lonely to a man who was 

 born there ? Here was the great living-room with 

 its hearth, where the life of the home centered. 

 Without was the wonderful rolling country with 

 all its majesty of hill, whence he saw the crystal 

 mountains to north and the blue lure of the sea to 

 eastward, with all its gentle delights of ravines 

 where brooks laughed, and meadows and swamps 

 where they slipped peacefully along, mirroring the 

 sky, watering all wild flowers and offering refuge 

 to all wild creatures. Within this wide circle, 

 with the house its core and the hearth its shrine, 



