Edmund Clarence Stedman

“ The Haverhill homestead, memorized in Snow-Bound, is also held by trustees “to preserve the natural features of the landscape,” and to keep the buildings and furniture somewhat as they were in their minstrel's boyhood.
It would be unjust to consider Whittier's genius from an academic point of view. British lovers of poetry—except John Bright and others of like faith or spirit—have been slow to comprehend his distinctive rank. As a poet he was essentially a balladist, with the faults of his qualities ”

“ All the Whittiers were men of stature and bodily strength, John Greenleaf being almost the first exception, a lad of delicate mould, scarcely adapted for the labour required of a Yankee farmer and his household. ”

“ Whittier edited the former, having a bent for politics, but wrote for the latter also. His father's last illness recalled him to the homestead, where both farm and family became his pious charge. Money had to be earned, and he now secured an editorial post at Hartford, Connecticut, which he sustained until forced by ill-health, early in his twenty-fifth year, to re-seek the Haverhill farm. There he remained from 1832 to 1836, when the property was sold, and the Whittiers removed to Amesbury in order to be near their meeting-house and to enable the poet to be in touch with affairs. ”

“ He soon essayed journalism, first spending a year and a half in the service of a publisher of two Boston newspapers, the Manufacturer, an organ of the Clay protectionists, and the Philanthropist, devoted to humane reform. ”