New volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica > Volume 30, K-MOR

368
LOW
railway facilities by branches of the Boston and Maine,
and of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Bail-
ways. It is one of the chief cities of the country for
textile, mainly cotton, manufactures. For this the water
power of the Pawtucket Falls in the Merrimac has been
utilized, supplemented by steam power. In 1900 the
city contained, in all branches of manufacture, 981
establishments, with a total capital of $46,578,193.
These employed an average number of 31,377 hands, and
the total product was valued at $44,774,525. Of these
establishments, eight were cotton mills, with a capital
of $21,354,927. In them were employed 13,730 hands,
and the product was valued at $17,038,576, or about 38
per cent, of all manufactured products. The product of
woollen and worsted goods was valued at $4,689,265;
of foundry and machine shop products, $4,258,047;
of hosiery and knitted goods, $3,148,110; and of patent
medicines and compounds, $1,784,338. The assessed
valuation of real and personal property in 1900 was
$71,529,515, the net debt was $3,217,731, and the
rate of taxation was $18.80 per $1000. Population
(1890), 77,696 ; (1900), 94,969, of whom 40,974 were
foreign-born. The death-rate in 1900 was 19‘8; in 1890
it was 25’O.
Lowell, James Russell(1819-1891),American
author and diplomatist, was born at Elmwood, in Cam¬
bridge, Massachusetts, on 22nd February 1819.1 He was
brought up in a neighbourhood bordering on the open
country, and from his earliest years he found a companion
in nature; he was also early initiated into the reading of
poetry and romance, hearing Spenser and Scott in child¬
hood, and introduced to old ballads by his mother. He
had for schoolmaster an Englishman who held by the
traditions of English schools, so that before he entered
Harvard College he had a more familiar acquaintance with
Latin verse than fell to the lot of most of his fellows—a
familiarity which showed itself later in his mock-pedantic
accompaniment to The Biglow Papers and his macaronic
poetry. He was a wide reader of literature, but a some¬
what indifferent student in college, graduating at Harvard
without special honours in 1838. During his college
course he wrote a number of trivial pieces for a college
magazine, and shortly after graduating printed for private
circulation the poem which his class asked him to write
for their graduation festivities. He was uncertain at first
what vocation to choose, and vacillated between business,
the ministry, medicine, and law. He decided at last to
practise law, and after a course at the Harvard law school,
was admitted to the bar. While studying for his profes¬
sion, however, he continued the pursuit of literature in a
random fashion, contributing poems and prose articles to
various magazines. At this period he was in a somewhat
wayward mood, conscious of a latent power, deeply en¬
amoured of letters, a student of the art of literature, but
uncertain just how to direct his impulses. He cared little
1 The ancestry of James Russell Lowell was of mingled English and
Scottish strain. On his father’s side he was descended from Percival
Lowell or Lowle, who emigrated from Somersetshire, England, in 1639,
to Massachusetts Bay. The descendants of Percival remained in
Boston and its vicinity down to James Russell, and contained among
them more than one man of note. John Lowell, the grandfather of
James Russell, was a judge of the federal court appointed by Wash¬
ington, and took a conspicuous part in the framing of the Massachu¬
setts constitution ; and Charles Lowell, the father, was long honoured
as a minister in Boston ; Francis Cabot Lowell, an uncle of James
Russell, was the organizer of the industries on the banks of the Merri¬
mac which resulted in the building of the city of Lowell, and a son
of Francis Cabot was the founder of the Lowell Institute, a centre of
diffusing light in Boston. On his mother’s side Lowell was descended
from the Spences and Traills, who made their home in the Orkney
Isles, his great-grandfather, Robert Traill, returning to England upon
the breaking out of hostilities in 1775.
ELL
for tbe profession of law, regarding it simply as a dis¬
tasteful means of livelihood, yet his experiments in writing
could not greatly encourage him to trust to this for
support. An unhappy adventure in love deepened his
sense of failure, but a new and profound experience sud¬
denly steadied his purpose, and helped besides to fashion
and guide certain vague tendencies which he felt towards
the reform movements then stirring in the society about
him. He became betrothed to Maria White in the
autumn of 1840, and the next twelve years of his life
were deeply affected by her influence. She was herself
a poet of delicate power, but she was also possessed of a
lofty enthusiasm, a high conception of purity and justice,
and of a practical temper which led her to concern herself
actively in the movements directed against the evils of
intemperance and slavery. Lowell was already looked
upon by his companions as a man marked by wit and
poetic sentiment; Miss White was admired for her beauty,
her character, and her intellectual gifts, and the two became
thus the hero and heroine among a group of ardent young
men and women, who set them upon a dais, as it were, and
bestowed their homage. The first-fruits of this passion
was a volume of poems, published in 1841, entitled
A Year’s Life, which was inscribed by Lowell in a veiled
dedication to his future wife, and was a record of his
emotions under this new experience, with a backward
glance at the preceding period of depression and irresolu¬
tion. The betrothal, moreover, stimulated Lowell to new
efforts towards self-support, and though nominally main¬
taining his law office, he threw his energy into the estab¬
lishment, in company with a friend, Bobert Carter, of a
literary journal, to which the young men gave the name
of The Pioneer. It was to open the way to new ideals in
literature and art, and the writers to whom Lowell turned
for assistance—Hawthorne, Emerson, Whittier, Poe, Story,
and Parsons, none of them yet possessed of a wide
reputation—indicate the acumen of the editor. Lowell
himself had already turned his studies in dramatic and
early poetic literature to account in another magazine, and
continued the series in The Pioneer, besides contributing
poems; but after the issue of three monthly numbers,
beginning in January 1843, the magazine came to an end,
partly because of a sudden disaster which befell Lowell’s
eyes, partly through the inexperience of the conductors
and unfortunate business connexions.
The venture confirmed Lowell in his bent towards
literature. At the close of 1843 he published a collec¬
tion of his poems, and a year later he gathered up certain
material which he had printed, sifted and added to it, and
produced Conversations on some of the Old Poets. The
dialogue form was used merely to secure an undress
manner of approach to his subject; there was no attempt
at the dramatic. The book reflects curiously Lowell’s
mind at this time, for the conversations relate only partly
to the poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan period; a
slight suggestion sends the interlocutors off on the discussion
of current reforms in church and state and society. Litera¬
ture and reform were dividing the author’s mind, and
continued to do so for the next decade. Just as this
book appeared Lowell and Miss White were married, and
spent the winter and early spring of 1845 in Philadelphia.
Here, besides continuing his literary contributions to
magazines, Lowell had a regular engagement as an edi¬
torial writer on The Pennsylvania Freeman, a fortnightly
journal devoted to the Anti-Slavery cause. In the spring
of 1845 the Lowells returned to Cambridge and made
their home at Elmwood. On the last day of the year
their first child, Blanche, was born, but she lived only
fifteen months. A second daughter, Mabel, was born six
months after Blanche’s death, and lived to survive her