Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[14] residence of the family at the house of Samuel Stephenson, whose wife was a sister of Stephen Longfellow, that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born. He was the second son, and was named for an uncle, Henry Wadsworth, a young naval lieutenant, who was killed in 1804 by the explosion of a fire-ship, before the walls of Tripoli. The Portland of 1807 was, according to Dr. Dwight,—who served as a sort of travelling inspector of the New England towns of that period,—‘beautiful and brilliant;’ but the blight of the Embargo soon fell upon it. The town needed maritime defences in the war of 1812, and a sea-fight took place off the coast, the British brig Boxer being captured during the contest by the Enterprise, and brought into Portland harbor in 1813. All this is beautifully chronicled in the poem ‘My Lost Youth:’ —

I remember the sea-fight far away,
     How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
     In their graves, overlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died.
     And the sound of that mournful song
Goes through me with a thrill;
     “A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
”

Here Henry Longfellow spent his childhood and youth. Much of that strong aversion to