James Russell Lowell and His Friends by Edward Everett Hale

Mr. Lowell had declined the suggestion that he should go to England when Mr. Hayes's administration came in. But one need not say that when he now determined to go to England, he went there with the pleasure with which every one of our race visits what we still call the "mother country. " His ancestry, his education, and the studies in which he had taken the very broadest interest, all made him love England.

He was an American through and through, and, as his own celebrated address, which I shall speak of again, showed to the world, he comprehended democracy in its possibilities, in its future, and in its present better than almost any man of his time. He was better able to show it to the leaders of the feudal communities in which he lived, better than any other American who could have been chosen. For all this,-it would be better to say because of this,-he went and came in England with that sort of delight which Mr. Edward Everett fifty years before described so well: -