'U OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JUNIOR. 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 BY 
 
 r 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 LITTLE, BEOWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1891. 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Jii 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Estate of 
 J.G.Schurman 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022151843 
 
SPEECHES 
 
 BY 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JUNIOR. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1891. 
 
Copyright, 1891, 
 By Oliver Wendell Holues, Jr. 
 
 Unitersitt Press: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
These chance utterances of faith and doubt 
 are printed for a few friends who will care to 
 keep them. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Memorial Day 1 
 
 May SO, I884. 
 
 Haevaed College in the War 13 
 
 June 25, 188^. 
 
 The Law 16 
 
 February 5, 1886. 
 
 The Puritan 19 
 
 February IB, 1886. 
 
 The Profession of the Law 22 
 
 February 17, 1886. 
 
 On Receiving the Degree of Doctor of Laws . . 2& 
 June 30, 1886. 
 
 The Use of Law Schools 28 
 
 November 5, 1886. 
 
 SiDNET BaRTLETT 41 
 
 March S3, 1889. 
 
 Daniel S. Eichardson 46 
 
 April 15, 1890. 
 
 The Use op Colleges 49 
 
 February 3, 1891. 
 
 Wn-LiAM Allen 52 
 
 September 15, 1891. 
 
MEMORIAL DAY. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED MAY 30, 1884, AT KEENE, 
 
 N. H., BEFORE JOHN SEDGWICK POST No. 4, 
 
 GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still 
 kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the 
 answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to 
 each other, — not the expression of those feelings that, so 
 long as you and I live, will make this day sacred to mem- 
 ories of love and grief and heroic youth, — but an answer 
 which should command the assent of those who do not 
 share our memories, and in which we of the North and 
 our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord. 
 
 So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no 
 trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill 
 one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, 
 than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeav- 
 ors. I have heard more than one of those who had been 
 gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side 
 say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and 
 those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it 
 was most desirable that the North should win ; we be- 
 lieved in the principle that the Union is indissoluble ; we, 
 or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was 
 inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But 
 
 1 
 
2 MEMORIAL DAY. 
 
 we equally believed that those who stood against us held 
 just as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours, 
 and we respected them as every man with a heart must 
 respect those who give all for their belief. The experience 
 of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came 
 into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not 
 stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where 
 overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side 
 would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at 
 last something of the same brotherhood for the enemy 
 that the north pole of a magnet has for the south, — each 
 working in an opposite sense to the other, but each un- 
 able to get along without the other. As it was then, it is 
 now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations ; they 
 can join in commemorating a soldier's death with feelings 
 not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by 
 their side. 
 
 But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning 
 also for those who do not share our memories. When men 
 have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will 
 be found that there is some thought or feeling behind it 
 which IS too large to be dependent upon associations alone. 
 The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, 
 although we no longer should think of rejoicing like chil- 
 dren that we have escaped from an outgrown control, al- 
 though we have achieved not only our national but our 
 moral independence and know it fer too profoundly to 
 make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join 
 in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the 
 temporary associations which gave rise to it, it is now the 
 moment when by common consent we pause to become 
 conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall 
 
MEMORIAL DAY. 3 
 
 what our country has done for each of us, and to ask our- 
 selves what we can do for our countiy in return. 
 
 So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial 
 Day is stUl kept up we may answer, It celebrates and sol- 
 emnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusi- 
 asm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form 
 our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the con- 
 dition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must be- 
 lieve something and want something with all your might. 
 So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth 
 reaching. More than that, you must be willing to com- 
 mit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, 
 without being able to foresee exactly where you will come 
 out. All that is required of you is that you should go 
 somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs 
 to fate. One may fall, — at the beginning of the charge 
 or at the top of the earthworks ; but in no other way can 
 he reach the rewards of victory. 
 
 When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that 
 a man ought to take part in the war unless some con- 
 scientious scruple or strong practical reason made it im- 
 possible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local 
 majority that their neighbors should agree with them ? I 
 think not : I think the feeling was right, — in the South as 
 in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it 
 is required of a man that he should share the passion and 
 action of his time at peril of being judged not to have 
 lived. 
 
 If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true 
 that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to 
 me. Why should I wish to know the secrets of philoso- 
 phy ? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation 
 
4 MEMORIAL DAY. 
 
 that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to un- 
 ravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue 
 of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of 
 speculation or of practical affairs ? I cannot answer him ; 
 or at least my answer is as little worth making for any 
 effect it will have upon his wishes as if he asked why 
 should I eat this, or drink that. You must begin by 
 wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by 
 argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, 
 and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly 
 share the emotions that make this day to us the most 
 sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial 
 pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those 
 who come after us. I believe from the bottom of my 
 heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, 
 the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the State- 
 houses, and this day with its funeral march and decorated 
 graves, are worth more to our young men by way of 
 chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another 
 hundred years of peaceful life could be. 
 
 But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after 
 us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to 
 teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it 
 is enough for us that to us this day is dear and sacred. 
 
 Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see 
 a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you 
 are back at White Oak Swamp, or Antietam, or on the 
 Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the dis- 
 tance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to 
 yourself, The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long 
 roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade 
 after many years of absence ; he recalls the moment when 
 
MEMORIAL DAY. 5 
 
 you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there 
 comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which 
 once hung life or freedom, — Shall I stand the best chance 
 if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means 
 to stop me ? Will he get his carbine free before I reach 
 him, or can I kill him first ? These and the thousand 
 other events we have known are called up, I say, by ac- 
 cident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten. 
 
 But as surely as this day comes round we are in the 
 presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least, 
 — at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table 
 more numerous than the living, and on this day when 
 we decorate their graves, — the dead come back and live 
 with us. 
 
 I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw 
 them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or 
 their counterparts, that come also before your eyes ; and 
 when I speak of those who were my brothers, the same 
 words describe yours. 
 
 I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on 
 whom life had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sit- 
 ting by the long mess-table in camp before the regiment 
 left the State, and wondering how many of those who 
 gathered in our tent could hope to see the end of what 
 was then beginning. For neither of them was that destiny 
 reserved. I remember, as I awoke from my first long 
 stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball's Bluff, I 
 heard the doctor say, "He was a beautiful boy," and I 
 knew that one of those two speakers was no more. The 
 other, after passing harmless through all the previous bat- 
 tles, went into Fredericksburg with strange premonition 
 of the end, and there met his fate. 
 
6 MEMORIAL DAY. 
 
 I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the 
 Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale. 
 The officers were at the head of their companies. The 
 advance was beginning. We caught each other's eye and 
 saluted. When next I looked, he was gone. 
 
 I see the brother of the last, — the flame of genius and 
 daring in his face, — as he rode before us into the wood 
 of Antietam, out of which came only dead and deadly 
 wounded men. So, a little later, he rode to his death at 
 the head of his cavalry in the Valley. 
 
 In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil 
 wars of England, Vandyke has fixed on canvas the type of 
 those who stand before my memory. Young and gracious 
 figures, somewhat remote and proud, but with a melancholy 
 and sweet kindness. There is upon their faces the shadow 
 of approaching fate, and the glory of generous acceptance 
 of it. I may say of them, as I once heard it said of two 
 Frenchmen, relics of the ancien regime, " They were very 
 gentle. They cared nothing for their lives." High breed- 
 ing, romantic chivalry — we who have seen these men can 
 never believe that the power of money or the enervation of 
 pleasure has put an end to them. We know that life may 
 still be lifted into poetry and lit with spiritual charm. 
 
 But the men not less, perhaps even more, characteristic 
 of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the 
 Puritan still lives in New England, thank God ! and will 
 live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old 
 renown. New England is not dead yet. She still is 
 mother of a race of conquerors, — stern men, little given to 
 the expression of their feelings, sometimes careless of the 
 graces, but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty. 
 Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has 
 
MEMORIAL DAY. 7 
 
 known. I see one — grandson of a hard rider of the Rev- 
 olution and bearer of his historic name — who was with 
 us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in 
 front of the enemy the only sleep that he would take was 
 what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and rest- 
 ing his back against a hut. He fell at Gettysburg. 
 
 His brother, a surgeon, who rode, as our surgeons so 
 often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling 
 in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line 
 at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm, — the next 
 moment his ministrations were ended. His senior asso- 
 ciate survived all the wounds and perils of the war, but, 
 not yet through with duty as he imderstood it, fell in 
 helping the helpless poor who were dying of cholera in 
 a Western city. 
 
 I see another quiet figure, of virtuous life and silent 
 ways, not much heard of until our left was turned at 
 Petersburg. He was in command of the regiment as 
 he saw our comrades driven in. He threw back his 
 left wing, and the advancing tide of defeat was shattered 
 against his iron wall. He saved an army corps from dis- 
 aster, and then a round shot ended all for him. 
 
 There is one who on this day is always present to my 
 mind. He entered the anny at nineteen, a second lieu- 
 tenant. In the Wilderness, already at the head of his 
 regiment, he fell, using the moment that was left him of 
 life to give all his little fortune to his soldiers. I saw 
 him in camp, on the march, in action. I crossed debatable 
 land with him when we were rejoining the army together. 
 I observed him in every kind of duty, and never in all the 
 time that I knew him did I see him fail to choose that 
 alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to him- 
 
8 MEMORIAL DAY. 
 
 self. He was indeed a Puritan in all his virtues, without 
 the Puritan austerity ; for, when duty was at an end, he 
 who had been the master and leader became the chosen 
 companion in every pleasure that a man might honestly 
 enjoy. In action he was sublime. His few surviving 
 companions will never forget the awfid spectacle of his 
 advance alone with his company in the streets of Fred- 
 ericksburg. In less than sixty seconds he would become 
 the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semi- 
 circle of houses. His first platoon had vanished under it 
 in an instant, ten men falling dead by his side. He had 
 quietly turned back to where the other half of his company 
 was waiting, had given the order, " Second platoon, for- 
 ward ! " and was again moving on, in obedience to superior 
 command, to certain and useless death, when the order he 
 was obeying was countermanded. The end was distant 
 only a few seconds ; but if you had seen him with his 
 indifierent carriage, and sword swinging from his finger 
 like a cane, you never would have suspected that he was 
 doing more than conducting a company drill on the camp 
 parade ground. He was little more than a boy, but the 
 grizzled corps commanders knew and admired him ; and 
 for us, who not only admired, but loved, his death seemed 
 to end a portion of our life also. 
 
 There is one grave and commanding presence that you 
 all would recognize, for his life has become a part of our 
 common history. Who does not remember the leader of 
 the assault at the mine of Petersburg ? The solitary horse- 
 man in front of Port Hudson, whom a foeman worthy of 
 him bade his soldiers spare, from love and admiration of 
 such gallant bearing ? Who does not still hear the echo 
 of those eloquent lips after the war, teaching reconciliation 
 
MEMORIAL DAY. 9 
 
 and peace ? I may not do more than allude to his death, 
 fit ending of his life. All that the world has a right to 
 know has been told by a beloved friend in a book wherein 
 friendship has found no need to exaggerate facts that 
 speak for themselves. I knew him, and I may even 
 say I knew him well ; yet, until that book appeared, I had 
 not known the governing motive of his soul. I had ad- 
 mired him as a hero. When I read, I learned to revere 
 him as a saint. His strength was not in honor alone, but 
 in religion ; and those who do not share his creed must 
 see that it was on the wings of religious faith that he 
 mounted above even valiant deeds into an empyrean of 
 ideal life. 
 
 I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me 
 among others very near and dear, not because their lives 
 have become historic, but because their lives are the type 
 of what every soldier has known and seen in his own com- 
 pany. In the great democracy of self-devotion private and 
 general stand side by side. Unmarshalled save by their 
 own deeds, the armies of the dead sweep before us, 
 " wearing their wounds like stars." It is not because the 
 men whom I have mentioned were my friends that I have 
 spoken of them, but, I repeat, because they are types. I 
 speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have 
 known such ; you, too, remember ! 
 
 It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. 
 There are those still living whose sex forbade them to 
 offer their lives, but who gave instead their happiness. 
 Which of us has not been lifted above himself by the sight 
 of one of those lovely, lonely women, around whom the 
 wand of sorrow has traced its excluding circle, — set apart, 
 even when surrounded by loving friends who would fain 
 
10 MEMORIAL DAY. 
 
 biing back joy to their lives? I think of one whom 
 the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and 
 friend. I think of one who has lived not less greatly in 
 the midst of her children, to whom she has taught such 
 lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal^ lips. 
 The story of these and of their sisters we must pass in 
 reverent silence. All that may be said has been said by 
 one of their own sex : — 
 
 " But when the days of golden dreams had perished, 
 And even despair was powerless to destroy , 
 Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, 
 Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy. 
 
 " Then did I check the tears of useless passion, 
 Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine 
 Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten 
 Down to that tomb already more than mine." 
 
 Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not 
 only triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom 
 we once stood shoulder to shoulder — not all of those 
 whom we once loved and revered — are gone. On this 
 day we still meet our companions in the freezing winter 
 bivouacs and in those dreadful summer marches where 
 every faculty of the soul seemed to depart one after 
 another, leaving only a dumb animal power to set the 
 teeth and to persist, — a blind belief that somewhere 
 and at last there was rest and water. On this day, at 
 least, we still meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is 
 possible between men, — a tie which sufiFering has made 
 indissoluble for better, for worse. 
 
 When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in 
 terms that must sometimes embrace the living, we do not 
 deceive ourselves. We attribute no special merit to a man 
 
MEMORIAL DAY. 11 
 
 for having served when all were serving. We know that, 
 if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, 
 the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did 
 it, but to average human nature. We also know very well 
 that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, 
 and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we 
 must find new fields for action or thought, and make for 
 ourselves new careers. 
 
 But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the 
 war has been set apart by its experience. Through our 
 great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched 
 with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that 
 life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are 
 permitted to scorn nothing but indifierence, and do not 
 pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, 
 we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the 
 gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to 
 bear the report to those who come after us. But, above 
 all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from 
 Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or 
 from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, 
 the one and only success which it is his to command is 
 to bring to his work a mighty heart. 
 
 Such hearts — ah me, how many ! — were stilled twenty 
 years ago ; and to us who remain behind is left this day 
 of memories. Every year, — in the full tide of spring, at 
 the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life, — 
 there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the 
 lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering 
 under the apple boughs and through the clover and deep 
 grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black 
 veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier's 
 
12 MEMORIAL DAY. 
 
 grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, 
 with public honor, procession and commemorative flags 
 and funeral march, — honor and grief from us who stand 
 almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our 
 generation pass away. 
 
 But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the 
 funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest 
 the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead 
 brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not 
 death, — of life to which in their youth they lent the pas- 
 sion and glory of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus 
 of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra 
 of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and 
 evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, 
 hope, and will. 
 
HARVARD COLLEGE IN THE WAR. 
 
 ANSWER TO A TOAST AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 COMMENCEMENT, JUNE 25, 1884. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Alumni : — 
 
 Another day than this has been consecrated to the 
 memories of the war. On that day we think not of the 
 children of the University or the city, hardly even of 
 the children whom the State has lost, but of a mighty 
 brotherhood whose parent was our common country. 
 To-day the College is the centre of all our feeling, and if 
 we refer to the war it is in connection with the College, 
 and not for its own sake, that we do so. What, then, did 
 the College do to justify our speaking of the war now ? 
 She sent a few gentlemen into the field, who died there 
 becomingly. I know of nothing more. The great forces 
 which insured the North success would have been at 
 work even if those men had been absent. Our means 
 of raising money and troops would not have been less, I 
 dare say. The great qualities of the race, too, would still 
 have been there. The greatest qualities, after all, are 
 those of a man, not those of a gentleman, and neither 
 North nor South needed colleges to learn them. And 
 yet — and yet I think we all feel that to us at least the 
 war would seem less beautiful and inspiring if those few 
 
14 HARVAKD COLLEGE IN THE WAR. 
 
 gentlemen had not died as they did. Look at yonder 
 portrait and yonder bust, and tell me if stories such as 
 they commemorate do not add a glory to the bare fact 
 that the strongest legions prevailed. So it has been since 
 wars began. After history has done its best to fix men's 
 thoughts upon strategy and finance, their eyes have turned 
 and rested on some single romantic figure, — some Sidney, 
 some Falkland, some Wolfe, some Montcalm, some Shaw. 
 This is that little touch of the superfluous which is neces- 
 sary. Necessary as art is necessary, and knowledge which 
 serves no mechanical end. Superfluous only as glory is 
 superfluous, or a bit of red ribbon that a man would die 
 to win. 
 
 It has been one merit of Harvard College that it has 
 never quite sunk to believing that its only function was to 
 carry a body of specialists through the first stage of their 
 preparation. About these halls there has always been an 
 aroma of high feeling, not to be found or lost in science 
 or Greek, — not to be fixed, yet all-pervading. And the 
 warrant of Harvard College for writing the names of its 
 dead graduates upon its tablets is not in the mathematics, 
 the chemistry, the political economy, which it taught them, 
 but that in ways not to be discovered, by traditions not 
 to be written down, it helped men of lofty natures to 
 make good their faculties. I hope and I believe that it 
 long will give such help to its children. I hope and I 
 believe that, long after we and our tears for the dead 
 have been forgotten, this monument to their memory 
 still will give such help to generations to whom it is 
 only a symbol, — a symbol of man's destiny and power 
 for duty, but a symbol also of that something more 
 by which duty is swallowed up in generosity, that some- 
 
HARVARD COLLEGE IN THE WAR. 15 
 
 thing more which led men like Shaw to toss life and 
 hope like a flower before the feet of their country and 
 their cause. 
 
 Note. — The portrait referred to is that of Colonel Robert 
 Gould Shaw, killed at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, July 18, 
 1863, in command of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment 
 (colored). 
 
 The bust is that of Brigadier-General Charles Russell Low- 
 ell, died, October 20, 1864, of wounds received at Cedar Creek, 
 Virginia, October 19. 
 
THE LAW. 
 
 SUFFOLK BAR ASSOCIATION DINNER, 
 FEBRUARY 5, 1885. 
 
 Me. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Bar: — 
 
 The Court and the Bar are too old acquaintances to 
 speak much to each other of themselves, or of their mu- 
 tual relations. I hope I may say we are too old friends to 
 need to do it. If you did not believe it already, it would 
 be useless for me to affirm that, in the judges' half of our 
 common work, the will at least is not wanting to do every 
 duty of their noble office ; that every interest, every fac- 
 ulty, every energy, almost every waking hour, is filled 
 with their work ; that they give their lives to it, more than 
 which they cannot do. But if not of the Bench, shall I 
 speak of the Bar ? Shall I ask what a court would be, 
 unaided ? The law is made by the Bar, even more than 
 by the Bench ; yet do I need to speak of the learning and 
 varied gifts that have given the bar of this State a repu- 
 tation throughout the whole domain of the common law? 
 I think I need not, nor of its high and scrupulous honor. 
 The world has its fling at lawyers sometimes, but its very 
 denial is an admission. It feels, what I believe to be the 
 tmth, that of all secular professions this has the highest 
 standards. 
 
 And what a profession it is ! No doubt everything is 
 interesting when it is understood and seen in its connec- 
 
THE LAW. 17 
 
 tion with the rest of things. Every calling is great when 
 greatly pursued. But what other gives such scope to 
 realize the spontaneous energy of one's soul? In what 
 other does one plunge so deep in the stream of life, — so 
 share its passions, its battles, its despair, its triumphs, 
 both as witness and actor ? 
 
 But that is not all. What a subject is this in which we 
 are united, — this abstraction called the Law, wherein, as 
 in a magic mirror, we see reflected, not only our own lives, 
 but the lives of all men that have been ! When I think 
 on this majestic theme, my eyes dazzle. If we are to 
 speak of the law as our mistress, we who are here know 
 that she is a mistress only to be wooed with sustained 
 and lonely passion, — only to be won by straining all the 
 faculties by which man is likest to a god. Those who, 
 having begun the pursuit, turn away uncharmed, do so 
 either because they have not been vouchsafed the sight of 
 her divine figure, or because they have not the heart for 
 so great a struggle. To the lover of the law, how small 
 a thing seem the novelist's tales oi the loves and fates of 
 Daphnis and Chloe I How pale a phantom even the 
 Circe of poetry, transforming mankind with intoxicating 
 dreams of fiery eth^r, and the foam of summer seas, and 
 glowing greensward, and the white arms of women ! For 
 him no less a history will suffice than that of the moral 
 life of his race. For him every text that he deciphers, 
 every doubt that he resolves, adds a new feature to the 
 unfolding panorama of man's destiny upon this earth. 
 Nor will his task be done until, by the farthest stretch of 
 human imagination, he has seen as with his eyes the birth 
 and growth of society, and by the farthest stretch of rea- 
 son he has understood the philosophy of its being. When 
 
18 THE LAW. 
 
 I think thus of the law, I see a princess mightier than 
 she who once wrought at Bayeux, eternally weaving into 
 her web dim figures of the ever-lengthening past, — figures 
 too dim to be noticed by the idle, too symbolic to be inter- 
 preted except by her pupils, but to the discerning eye dis- 
 closing every painful step and every world-shaking contest 
 by which mankind has worked and fought its way from 
 savage isolation to organic social life. 
 
 But we who are here know the Law even better in an- 
 other aspect. We see her daily, not as anthropologists, 
 not as students and philosophers, but as actors in a drama 
 of which she is the providence and overruling power. 
 When I think of the Law as we know her in the court- 
 house and the market, she seems to me a woman sitting 
 by the wayside, beneath whose overshadowing hood every 
 man shall see the countenance of his deserts or needs. 
 The timid and overborne gain heart from her protecting 
 smile. Fair combatants, manfully standing to their rights, 
 see her keeping the lists with the stern and discriminating 
 eye of even justice. The wretch who has defied her most 
 sacred commands, and has thought to creep through ways 
 where she was not, finds that his path ends with her, and 
 beholds beneath her hood the inexorable face of death. 
 
 Gentlemen, I shall say no more. This is not the mo- 
 ment for disquisitions. But when for the first time I 
 was called to speak on such an occasion as this, the only 
 thought that could come into my mind, the only feeling 
 that could fill my heart, the only words that could spring 
 to my lips, were a hymn to her in whose name we are met 
 here to-night, — to our mistress, the Law. 
 
THE PURITAN. 
 
 250th anniversary OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN 
 CAMBRIDGE, FEBRUARY 12, 1886. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : — 
 
 Six hundred years ago a knight went forth to fight for 
 the cross in Palestine. He fought his battles, returned, 
 died among his friends, and his effigy, cut in alabaster or 
 cast in bronze, was set upon his tomb in the Temple or the 
 Abbey. Already he was greater than he had been in life. 
 While he lived, hundreds as good as he fell beneath the 
 walls of Ascalon, or sank in the sands of the desert and 
 were forgotten. But in his monument, the knight became 
 the type of chivalry and the church militant. What was 
 particular to him and individual had passed from sight, 
 and the universal alone remained. Six hundred years 
 have gone by, and his history, perhaps his very name, has 
 been forgotten. His cause has ceased to move. The 
 tumultuous tide in which he was an atom is still. And 
 yet to-day he is greater than ever before. He is no longer 
 a man, or even the type of a class of men, however great. 
 He has become a symbol of the whole mysterious past, — 
 of all the dead passion of his race. His monument is 
 the emblem of tradition, the text of national honor, the 
 torch of all high aspiration through all time. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty years ago a few devout men 
 founded the First Church of Cambridge. While they 
 
20 THE PURITAN. 
 
 lived, I doubt not, hundreds as good as they fell under 
 Fairfax at Marston Moor, or under Cromwell at Naseby, 
 or lived and died quietly in England and were forgotten. 
 Yet if the only monuments of those founders were mythic 
 bronzes, such as stand upon the Common and the Delta, — 
 if they were only the lichened slates in yonder church- 
 yard, — how much greater are they now than they were 
 in life ! Time, the purifier, has burned away what was 
 particular to them and individual, and has left only the 
 type of courage, constancy, devotion, — the august figure 
 of the Puritan. 
 
 Time still burns. Perhaps the type of the Puritan 
 must pass away, as that of the Crusader has done. But 
 the founders of this parish are commemorated, not in 
 bronze or alabaster, but in living monuments. One is 
 Harvard College. The other is mightier still. These men 
 and their fellows planted a congregational church, from 
 which grew a democratic state. They planted something 
 mightier even than institutions. Whether they knew it 
 or not, they planted the democratic spirit in the heart of 
 man. It is to them we owe the deepest cause we have to 
 love our country, — that instinct, that spark that makes 
 the American unable to meet his fellow man otherwise 
 than simply as a man, eye to eye, hand to hand, and foot 
 to foot, wrestling naked on the sand. When the citizens 
 of Cambridge forget that they too tread a sacred soil, 
 that Massachusetts also has its traditions, which grow 
 more venerable and inspiring as they fade, — when Har- 
 vard College is no longer dedicated to truth, and America 
 to democratic freedom, — then perhaps, but not till then, 
 vrill the blood of the martyrs be swallowed in the sand, 
 and the Puritan have lived in vain. Until that time 
 
THE PURITAN. 21 
 
 he will grow greater, even after he has vanished from 
 our view. 
 
 The political children of Thomas Shepard we surely are. 
 We are not all his spiritual children. New England has 
 welcomed and still welcomes to her harbors many who 
 are not the Puritan's descendants, and his descendants 
 have learned other ways and other thoughts than those 
 in which he lived and for which he was ready to die. 
 I confess that my own interest in those thoughts is chiefly 
 filial ; that it seems to me that the great currents of the 
 world's life ran in other channels, and that the future lay 
 in the heads of Bacon and Hobbes and Descartes, rather 
 even than in that of John Milton. I think that the some- 
 what isolated thread of our intellectual and spiritual life 
 is rejoining the main stream, and that hereafter all coun- 
 tries more and more will draw from common springs. 
 
 But even if we are not all of us the spiritual children 
 of Thomas Shepard, even if our mode of expressing our 
 wonder, our awful fear, our abiding trust in face of life 
 and death and the unfathomable world has changed, yet 
 at this day, even now, we New Englanders are still 
 leavened with the Puritan ferment. Our doctrines may 
 have changed, but the cold Puritan passion is still here. 
 And of many a man who now hears me, whether a mem- 
 ber of his church or not, it may be said, as it was said 
 of Thomas Shepard by Cotton Mather, " So the charac- 
 ter of his daily conversation was a trembling walk with 
 God." 
 
 Note. — Thomas Shepard was the first minister of the First 
 Church in Cambridge. My grandfather, Rev. Abiel Holmes, was 
 minister of it in his day. 
 
THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW. 
 
 CONCLUSION OF A LECTURE DELIVERED TO UN- 
 DERGRADUATES OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
 ON FEBRUARY 17, 1886. 
 
 And now, perhaps, I ought to have done. But I know 
 that some spirit of fire will feel that his main question has 
 not been answered. He will ask, What is all this to my 
 soul ? You do not bid me sell my birthright for a mess 
 of pottage; what have you said to show that I can reach 
 my own spiritual possibilities through such a door as this ? 
 How can the laborious study of a dry and technical sys- 
 tem, the greedy watch for clients and practice of shop- 
 keepers' arts, the mannerless conflicts over often sordid 
 interests, make out a life ? Gentlemen, I admit at once 
 that these questions are not futile, that they may prove 
 unanswerable, that they have often seemed to me un- 
 answerable. And yet I believe there is an answer. They 
 are the same questions that meet you in any form of prac- 
 tical life. If a man has the soul of Sancho Panza, the 
 world to him will be Sancho Panza's world ; but if he has 
 the soul of an idealist, he will make — I do not say find — 
 his world ideal. Of course, the law is not the place for 
 the artist or the poet. The law is the calling of thinkers. 
 But to those who believe with me that not the least god- 
 like of man's activities is the large survey of causes, that 
 to know is not less than to feel, I say — and I say no 
 
THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW. 23 
 
 longer with any doubt — that a man may live greatly in 
 the law as well as elsewhere ; that there as well as else- 
 where his thought may find its unity in an infinite per- 
 spective; that there as well as elsewhere he may wreak 
 himself upon life, may drink the bitter cup of heroism, 
 may wear his heart out after the unattainable. All that 
 life offers any man from which to start his thinking or his 
 striving is a fact. And if this universe is one universe, if 
 it is so far thinkable that you can pass iu reason from one 
 part of it to another, it does not matter very much what 
 that fact is. For every fact leads to every other by the 
 path of the air. Only men do not yet see how, always. 
 And your business as thinkers is to make plainer the way 
 from some thing to the whole of things ; to show the ra- 
 tional connection between your fact and the frame of the 
 universe. If your subject is law, the roads are plain to 
 anthropology, the science of man, to political economy, 
 the theory of legislation, ethics, and thus by several paths 
 to your final view of life. It would be equally true of any 
 subject. The only difference is in the ease of seeing the 
 way. To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must 
 master those which lie next to it ; and thus to know any- 
 thing you must know all. 
 
 Perhaps I speak too much the language of intellectual 
 ambition. I cannot but think that the scope for intel- 
 lectual, as for physical adventure, is narrowing. I look 
 for a future in which the ideal will be content and digni- 
 fied acceptance of life, rather than aspiration and the 
 passion for achievement. I see already that surveys and 
 railroads have set limits to our intellectual wildernesses, 
 — that the lion and the bison are disappearing from them, 
 as from Africa and the no longer boundless West. But 
 
24 THE PKOFESSION OF THE LAW. 
 
 that undelightful day which I anticipate has not yet come. 
 The human race has not changed, I imagine, so much 
 between my generation and yours but that you still have 
 the barbaric thirst for conquest, and there is still some- 
 tliing left to conquer. There are fields still open for occu- 
 pation in the law, and there are roads from them that will 
 lead you where you will. 
 
 But do not think I am pointing you to flowery paths 
 and beds of roses, — to a place where brilliant results 
 attend your work, which shall be at once easy and new. 
 No result is easy which is worth having. Your educa- 
 tion begins when what is called your education is over, — 
 when you no longer are stringing together the pregnant 
 thoughts, the "jewels five words long," which great men 
 have given their lives to cut from the raw material, but 
 have begun yourselves to work upon the raw material for 
 results which you do not see, cannot predict, and which 
 may be long in coming, — when you take the fact which 
 life offers you for your appointed task. No man has 
 earned the right to intellectual ambition until he has 
 learned to lay his course by a star which he has never 
 seen, — to dig by the divining rod for springs which he 
 may never reach. In saying this, I point to that which 
 will make your study heroic. For I say to you in all sad- 
 ness of conviction, that to think great thoughts you must 
 be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have 
 worked alone, — when you have felt around you a black 
 gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds 
 the dying man, and in hope and in despair have trusted 
 to your own unshaken will, — then only will you have 
 achieved. Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy 
 of the thinker, who knows that, a hundred years after he 
 
THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW. 25 
 
 is dead and forgotten, men who never heard of him will 
 be moving to the measure of his thought, — the subtile 
 rapture of a postponed power, which the world knows not 
 because it has no external trappings, but which to his 
 prophetic vision is more real than that which commands 
 an army. And if this joy should not be yours, still it is 
 only thus that you can know that you have done what 
 it lay in you to do, — can say that you have lived, and 
 be ready for the end. 
 
ON RECEIVING THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR 
 OF LAWS. 
 
 YALE UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT, 
 JUNE 30, 1886. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : — 
 
 I KNOW of no mark of honor which this country has to 
 offer that I should value so highly as this which you have 
 conferred upon me. I accept it proudly as an accolade, 
 like the little blow upon the shoulder from the sword of 
 a master of war which in ancient days adjudged that a 
 soldier had won his spurs and pledged his life to decline 
 no combat in the future. 
 
 The power of honor to bind men's lives is not less now 
 than it was in the Middle Ages. Now as then it is the 
 breath of our nostrils ; it is that for which we live, for 
 which, if need be, we are willing to die. It is that which 
 makes the man whose gift is the power to gain riches 
 sacrifice health and even life to the pursuit. It is that 
 which makes the scholar feel that he cannot afford to be 
 rich. 
 
 One would sometimes think, from the speech of young 
 men, that things had changed recently, and that indifiier- 
 ence was now the virtue to be cultivated. I never heard 
 any one profess indifference to a boat race. Why should 
 you row a boat race ? Why endure long months of. pain 
 in preparation for a fierce half-hour that will leave you all 
 
ON RECEIVING A DEGREE. 27 
 
 but dead ? Does any one ask the question ? Is there 
 any one who would not go through all it costs, and more, 
 for the moment when anguish breaks into triumph, — or 
 even for the glory of having nobly lost ? Is life less than 
 a boat race ? If a man will give all the blood in his body 
 to win the one, wUl he not spend all the might of his soul 
 to prevail in the other ? 
 
 I know, Mr. President, that there is a motive above 
 even honor which may govern men's lives. I know that 
 there are some rare spirits who find the inspiration of 
 every moment, the aim of every act, in holiness. I am 
 enough of a Puritan, I think, to conceive the exalted joy 
 of those who look upon themselves only as instruments 
 in the hands of a higher power to work out its designs. 
 But I think that most men do and must reach the same 
 result under the illusion of self-seeking. If the love 
 of honor is a form of that illusion, it is no ignoble one. 
 If it does not lift a man on wings to the sky, at least it 
 carries him above the earth and teaches him those high 
 and secret pathways across the branches of the forest the 
 travellers on which are only less than winged. 
 
 Not the least service of this great University and its 
 sister from which I come is, that by their separate teaching 
 and by their mutual rivalry they have fostered that lofty 
 feeling among their graduates. You have done all that 
 a university can do to fan the spark in me. I will try to 
 maintain the honor you have bestowed. 
 
THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 
 
 ORATION BEPORE THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL ASSOCI- 
 ATION, AT CAMBRIDGE, NOVEMBER 5, 1886, ON THE 
 250IH ANNIVERSARY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
 It is not wonderful that the graduates of the Law 
 School of Harvard College should wish to keep alive their 
 connection with it. About three quarters of a century 
 ago it began with a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
 of Massachusetts for its Royall Professor. A little later, 
 one of the most illustrious judges who ever sat on the 
 United States Supreme Bench — Mr. Justice Story — 
 accepted a professorship in it created for him by Nathan 
 Dane. And from that time to this it has had the services 
 of great and famous lawyers ; it has been the source of a 
 large part of the most important legal literature which the 
 country has produced ; it has furnished a world-renowned 
 model in its modes of instruction ; and it has had among 
 its students future chief justices and justices, and leaders 
 of state bars and of the national bar too numerous for me 
 to thrill you with the mention of their names. 
 
 It has not taught great lawyers only. Many who have 
 won fame in other fields began their studies here. Sum- 
 ner and Phillips were among the Bachelors of 1834. The 
 orator whom we shall hear in a day or two appears in the 
 list of 1840 alongside of William Story, of the jChief 
 Justice of this State, and of one of the Associate Justices, 
 
THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 29 
 
 who is himself not less known as a soldier and as an 
 orator than he is as a judge. Perhaps, without revealing 
 family secrets, I may whisper that next Monday's poet 
 also tasted our masculine diet before seeking more easily 
 digested, if not more nutritious, food elsewhere. Enough. 
 Of course we are proud of the Harvard Law School. Of 
 course we love every limb of Harvard College. Of course 
 we rejoice to manifest our brotherhood by the symbol of 
 this Association. 
 
 I will say no more for the reasons of our coming to- 
 gether. But by your leave I will say a few words about 
 the use and meaning of law schools, especially of our 
 law school, and about its methods of instruction, as they 
 appear to one who has had some occasion to consider 
 them. 
 
 A law school does not undertake to teach success. 
 That combination of tact and will which gives a man 
 immediate prominence among his fellows comes from 
 nature, not from instruction ; and if it can be helped at 
 all by advice, such advice is not offered here. It might 
 be expected that I should say, by way of natural antithesis, 
 that what a law school does undertake to teach is law. 
 But I am not ready to say even that, without a qualifica- 
 tion. It seems to me that nearly all the education which 
 men can get from others is moral, not intellectual. The 
 main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition 
 of facts, but learning how to make facts live. Culture, in 
 the sense of fruitless knowledge, I for one abhor. The 
 mark of a master is, that facts which before lay scattered 
 in an inorganic mass, when he shoots through them the 
 magnetic current of his thought, leap into an organic 
 order, and live and bear fruit. But you cannot make a 
 
30 THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 
 
 master by teaching. He makes himself by aid of his 
 natural gifts. 
 
 Education, other than self-education, lies mainly in. the 
 shaping of men's interests and aims. If you convince a 
 man that another way of looking at things is more pro- 
 found, another form of pleasure more subtile than that to 
 which he has been accustomed, — if you make him really 
 see it, — the very nature of man is such that he will 
 desire the profounder thought and the sub tiler joy. So 
 I say the business of a law school is not sufficiently 
 described when you merely say that it is to teach law, or 
 to make lawyers. It is to teach law in the grand manner, 
 and to make great lawyers. 
 
 Our country needs such teaching very much. I think 
 we should all agree that the passion for equality has 
 passed far beyond the political or even the social sphere. 
 We are not only unwilling to admit that any class or 
 society is better than that in which we move, but our 
 customary attitude towards every one in authority of any 
 kind is that he is only the lucky recipient of honor or 
 salary above the average, which any average man might 
 as well receive as he. When the effervescence of demo- 
 cratic negation extends its workings beyond the abolition 
 of external distinctions of rank to spiritual things, — when 
 the passion for equality is not content with founding 
 social intercourse upon universal human sympathy, and a 
 community of interests in which all may share, but attacks 
 the lines of Nature which establish orders and degrees 
 among the souls of men, — they are not only wrong, but 
 ignobly wrong. Modesty and reverence are no less virtues 
 of freemen than the democratic feeling which will submit 
 neither to arrogance nor to servility. 
 
THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 31 
 
 To inculcate those virtues, to correct the ignoble excess 
 of a noble feeling to which I have referred, I know of no 
 teachers so powerful and persuasive as the little army of 
 specialists. They carry no banners, they beat no drums ; 
 but where they are, men learn that bustle and push are 
 not the equals of quiet genius and serene mastery. They 
 compel others who need their help, or who are enlightened 
 by their teaching, to obedience and respect. They set the 
 example themselves; for they furnish in the intellectual 
 world a perfect type of the union of democracy with 
 discipline. They bow to no one who seeks to impose his 
 authority by foreign aid; they hold that science like 
 courage is never beyond the necessity of proof, but must 
 always be ready to prove itself against all challengers. 
 But to one who has shown himself a master, they pay the 
 proud reverence of men who know what valiant combat 
 means, and who reserve the right of combat against their 
 leader even, if he should seem to waver in the service of 
 Truth, their only queen. 
 
 In the army of which I speak, the lawyers are not the 
 least important corps. For all lawyers are specialists. 
 Not in the narrow sense in which we sometimes use the 
 word in the profession, — of persons who confine them- 
 selves to a particular branch of practice, such as convey- 
 ancing or patents, — but specialists who have taken all 
 law to be their province ; specialists because they have 
 undertaken to master a special branch of human knowl- 
 edge, — a branch, I may add, which is more immediately 
 connected with all the highest interests of man than any 
 other which deals with practical affairs. 
 
 Lawyers, too, were among the first specialists to be 
 needed and to appear in America. And I believe it 
 
32 THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 
 
 would be hard to exaggerate the goodness of their influ- 
 ence in favor of sane and orderly thinking. But lawyers 
 feel the spirit of the times like other people. They, like 
 others, are forever trying to discover cheap and agreeable 
 substitutes for real things. I fear that the bar has done 
 its full share to exalt that most hateful of American words 
 and ideals, "smartness," as against dignity of moral feel- 
 ing and profundity of knowledge. It is from within the 
 bar, not from outside, that I have heard the new gospel 
 that learning is out of date, and that the man for the 
 times is no longer the thinker and the scholar, but the 
 smart man, unencumbered with other artillery than 
 the latest edition of the Digest and the latest revision 
 of the Statutes. 
 
 The aim of a law school should be, the aim of the 
 Harvard Law School has been, not to make men smart, 
 but to make them wise in their calling, — to start them 
 on a road which will lead them to the abode of the 
 masters. A law school should be at once the workshop 
 and the nursery of specialists in the sense which I have 
 explained. It should obtain for teachers men in each 
 generation who are producing the best work of that gen- 
 eration. Teaching should not stop, but rather should 
 foster, production. The " enthusiasm of the lecture-room," 
 the contagious interest of companionship, should make 
 the students partners in their teachers' work. The fer- 
 ment of genius in its creative moment is quickly imparted. 
 If a man is great, he makes others believe in greatness ; 
 he makes them incapable of mean ideals and easy self- 
 satisfaction. His pupils will accept no substitute for 
 realities ; but at the same time they leani that the only 
 coin with which realities can be bought is Life. 
 
THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 33 
 
 Our School has been such a workshop and such a nur- 
 sery as I describe. What men it has turned out I have 
 hinted already, and do not need to say ; what works it has 
 produced is known to all the world. From ardent co- 
 operation of student and teacher have sprung Greenleaf 
 on Evidence, and Stearns on Real Actions, and Story's 
 epoch-making Commentaries, and Parsons on Contracts, 
 and Washburn on Real Property; and, marking a later 
 epoch, Langdell on Contracts and on Equity Pleading, 
 and Ames on Bills and Notes, and Gray on Perpetuities, 
 and I hope we may soon add Thayer on Evidence. You 
 will notice that these books are very different in character 
 from one another, but you will notice also how many of 
 them have this in common, — that they have marked and 
 largely made an epoch. 
 
 There are plenty of men nowadays of not a hundredth 
 part of Story's power who could write as good statements 
 of the law as his, or better. And when some mediocre 
 fluent book has been printed, how often have we heard it 
 proclaimed, " Lo, here is a greater than Story I " But if 
 you consider the state of legal literature when Story 
 began to write, and from what wells of learning the dis- 
 cursive streams of his speech were fed, I think you will 
 be inclined to agree with me that he has done more than 
 any other English-speaking man in this century to make 
 the law luminous and easy to understand. 
 
 But Story's simple philosophizing has ceased to satisfy 
 men's minds. I think it might be said with safety, that 
 no man of his or of the succeeding generation could have 
 stated the law in a form that deserved to abide, because 
 neither his nor the succeeding generation possessed or 
 could have possessed the historical knowledge, had made 
 
34 THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 
 
 or could have made the analyses of principles, which are 
 necessary before the cardinal doctrines of the law can be 
 known and understood in their precise contours and in 
 their innermost meanings. 
 
 The new work is now being done. Under the influ- 
 ence of Germany, science is gradually drawing legal his- 
 tory into its sphere. The facts are being scrutinized by 
 eyes microscopic in intensity and panoramic in scope. At 
 the same time, under the influence of our revived interest 
 in philosophical speculation, a thousand heads are ana- 
 lyzing and generalizing the rules of law and the grounds 
 on which they stand. The law has got to be stated over 
 again ; and I venture to say that in fifty years we shall 
 have it in a form of which no man could have dreamed 
 fifty years ago. And now I venture to add my hope and 
 my belief, that, when the day comes which I predict, the 
 Professors of the Harvard Law School will be found to 
 have had a hand in the change not less important than 
 that which Story has had in determining the form of the 
 text-books of the last half-century. 
 
 Corresponding to the change which I say is taking 
 place, there has been another change in the mode of 
 teaching. How far the correspondence is conscious, I do 
 not stop to inquire. For whatever reason, the Professors 
 of this School have said to themselves more definitely 
 than ever before. We will not be contented to send forth 
 students with nothing but a rag-bag full of general prin- 
 ciples, — a throng of glittering generalities, like a swarm 
 of little bodiless cherubs fluttering at the top of one of 
 Correggio's pictures. They have said that to make a 
 general principle worth anything you must give it a body ; 
 you must show in what way and how far it would be 
 
THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 35 
 
 applied actually in an actual system ; you must show how 
 it has gradually emerged as the felt reconciliation of con- 
 crete instances no one of which established it in terms. 
 Finally, you must show its historic relations to other 
 principles, often of very different date and origin, and thus 
 set it in the perspective without which its proportions 
 will never be truly judged. 
 
 In pursuance of these views there have been substituted 
 for text-books more and more, so far as practicable, those 
 books of cases which were received at first by many with 
 a somewhat contemptuous smile and pitying contrast of 
 the good old days, but which now, after fifteen years, bid 
 fair to revolutionize the teaching both of this country and 
 of England. 
 
 I pause for a moment to say what I hope it is scarcely 
 necessary for me to say, — that in thus giving in my 
 adhesion to the present methods of instruction I am not 
 wanting in grateful and appreciative recollection (alas ! it 
 can be only recollection now) of the earlier teachers under 
 whom I studied. In my day the Dean of this School was 
 Professor Parker, the ex-Chief Justice of New Hampshire, 
 who I think was one of the greatest of American judges, 
 and who showed in the chair the same qualities that had 
 made him famous on the bench. His associates were 
 Parsons, almost if not quite a man of genius, and gifted 
 with a power of impressive statement which I do not 
 know that I have ever seen equalled ; and Washburn, who 
 taught us all to realize the meaning of the phrase which I 
 already have quoted from Vangerow, the " enthusiasm of 
 the lecture-room," He did more for me than the learning 
 of Coke and the logic of Feame could have done without 
 his kindly ardor. 
 
36 THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 
 
 To return, and to say a word more about the theory on 
 which these books of cases are used. It long has seemed 
 to me a striking circumstance, that the ablest of the agi- 
 tators for codification. Sir James Stephen, and the origi- 
 nator of the present mode of teaching, Mr. Langdell, 
 start from the same premises to reach seemingly opposite 
 conclusions. The number of legal principles is small, 
 says in effect Sir James Stephen, therefore codify them ; 
 the number of legal principles is small, says Mr. Langdell, 
 therefore they may be taught through the cases which 
 have developed and established them. Well, I think 
 there is much force in Sir James Stephen's argument, if 
 you can find competent men and get them to undertake 
 the task ; and at any rate I am not now going to express 
 an opinion that he is wrong. But I am certain from my 
 own experience that Mr. Langdell is right ; I am certain 
 that when your object is not to make a bouquet of the 
 law for the public, nor to prune and graft it by legislation, 
 but to plant its roots where they will grow, in minds 
 devoted henceforth to that one end, there is no way to be 
 compared to Mr. Langdell's way. Why, look at it simply 
 in the light of human nature. Does not a man remember 
 a concrete instance more vividly than a general principle ? 
 And is not a principle more exactly and intimately grasped 
 as the unexpressed major premise of the half-dozen ex- 
 amples which mark its extent and its limits than it can 
 be in any abstract form of words? Expressed or unex- 
 pressed, is it not better known when you have studied its 
 embryology and the lines of its growth than when you 
 merely see it lying dead before you on the printed page ? 
 
 I have referred to my own experience. During the 
 short time that I had the honor of teaching in the School, 
 
THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 37 
 
 it fell to me, among other things, to instruct the first-year 
 men in Torts. With some misgivings I plunged a class of 
 beginners straight into Mr. Ames's collection of cases, and 
 we began to discuss them together in Mr. Langdell's 
 method. The resxilt was better than I even hoped it 
 would be. After a week or two, when the first confusing 
 novelty was over, I found that my class examined the 
 questions proposed with an accuracy of view which they 
 never could have learned from text-books, and which 
 often exceeded that to be found in the text-books. I at 
 least, if no one else, gained a good deal from our daily 
 encounters. 
 
 My experience as a judge has confirmed the belief I 
 formed as a professor. Of course a young man cannot 
 try or argue a case as well as one who has had years of 
 experience. Most of you also would probably agree with 
 me that no teaching which a man receives from others at 
 all approaches in importance what he does for himself, 
 and that one who simply has been a docile pupil has got 
 but a very little way. But I do think that in the thor- 
 oughness of their training, and in the systematic char- 
 acter of their knowledge, the young men of the present 
 day start better equipped when they begin their practical 
 experience than it was possible for their predecessors to 
 have been. And although no school can boast a mo- 
 nopoly of promising young men, Cambridge, of course, 
 has its full proportion of them at our bar ; and I do 
 think that the methods of teaching here bear fruits in 
 their work, 
 
 I sometimes hear a wish expressed by the impatient, 
 that the teaching here should be more practical. I re- 
 member that a very wise and able man said to a friend 
 
38 THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 
 
 of mine when he was beginning his professional life, 
 "Don't know too much law," and I think we all can 
 imagine cases where the warning would be useful. But 
 a far more useful thing is what was said to me as a stu- 
 dent by one no less wise and able, — afterwards my part- 
 ner and always my friend, — when I was talking as young 
 men do about seeing practice, and all the other things 
 which seemed practical to my inexperience, " The business 
 of a lawyer is to know law." The Professors of this Law 
 School mean to make their students know law. They 
 think the most practical teaching is that which takes their 
 students to the bottom of what they seek to know. They 
 therefore mean to make them master the common law and 
 equity as working systems, and think that when that is 
 accomplished they will have no trouble with the improve- 
 ments of the last half-century. I believe they are entirely 
 right, not only in the end they aim at, but in the way they 
 take to reach that end. 
 
 Yes, this School has been, is, and I hope long will be, a 
 centre where great lawyers perfect their achievements, 
 and from which young men, even more inspired by their 
 example than instructed by their teaching, go forth in 
 their turn, not to imitate what their masters have done, 
 but to live their own lives more freely for the ferment 
 imparted to them here. The men trained in this School 
 may not always be the most knowing in the ways of 
 getting on. The noblest of them must often feel that 
 they are committed to lives of proud dependence, — the 
 dependence of men who command no factitious aids to 
 success, but rely upon unadvertised knowledge and silent 
 devotion ; dependence upon finding an appreciation which 
 they cannot seek, but dependence proud in the conviction 
 
THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 39 
 
 that the knowledge to which theur lives are consecrated 
 is of things which it concerns the world to know. It is 
 the dependence of abstract thought, of science, of beauty, 
 of poetry and art, of every flower of civilization, upon 
 finding a soil generous enough to support it. If it does 
 not, it must die. But the world needs the flower more 
 than the flower needs life. 
 
 I said that a law school ought to teach law in the 
 grand manner; that it had something more to do than 
 simply to teach law. I think we may claim for our School 
 that it has not been wanting in greatness. I once heard 
 a Russian say that in the middle class of Russia there 
 were many specialists ; in the upper class there were civil- 
 ized men. Perhaps in America, for reasons which I have 
 mentioned, we need specialists even more than we do 
 civilized men. Civilized men who are nothing else are 
 a little apt to think that they cannot breathe the Ameri- 
 can atmosphere. But if a man is a specialist, it is most 
 desirable that he should also be civilized ; that he should 
 have laid in the outline of the other sciences, as well as 
 the light and shade of his own ; that he should be rea- 
 sonable, and see things in their proportion. Nay, more, 
 that he should be passionate, as well as reasonable, — 
 that he should be able not only to explain, but to feel ; 
 that the ardors of intellectual pursuit should be relieved 
 by the charms of art, should be succeeded by the joy 
 of life become an end in itself. 
 
 At Harvard College is realized in some degree the 
 palpitating manifoldness of a truly civilized life. Its aspi- 
 rations are concealed because they are chastened and in- 
 structed ; but I believe in my soul that they are not the 
 less noble that they are silent. The golden light of the 
 
40 THE USE OF LAW SCHOOLS. 
 
 University is not confined to the undergraduate depart- 
 ment ; it is shed over all the schools. He who has once 
 seen it becomes other than he was, forevermore. I have 
 said that the best part of our education is moral. It is 
 the crowning glory of this Law School that it has kindled 
 in many a heart an inextinguishable fire. 
 
 Note. — The orator referred to on page 28 was James Kussell 
 Lowell ; the poet was Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
SIDNEY BARTLETT. 
 
 ANSWEK TO RESOLUTIONS OF THE BAR, 
 BOSTON, MARCH 23, 1889. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Bak : — 
 
 Your resolutions do not at all exaggerate the feelings 
 which the Bench share with the Bar, and no one, I am 
 sure, more than I, although my knowledge of Mr. Bartlett 
 professionally is of a date which would seem late to some 
 of you. When I came to the bar, Mr. Bartlett already 
 had nearly completed his threescore and ten years, so that 
 of what would have been his whole career, had he been 
 another man, I cannot speak. I have, however, one 
 reminiscence which I cherish, and which takes us back in 
 imagination beyond the oldest memory. I hold in my 
 hand a letter in which he says, " Deacon Spooner died in 
 1818 aged ninety-four. I saw him and talked with him. 
 He talked with Elder Faunce, who talked with the Pil- 
 grims and is said to have pointed out the rock." 
 
 It is not necessary to go behind what I can remember 
 myself to bear witness to a great career. Between seventy 
 and ninety Mr. Bartlett did work enough for the glory of 
 an advocate's lifetime. I will not stop to mention famous 
 cases, like that of the Merchants' Bank with the Govern- 
 ment and the State Bank, or that of the Credit Mobilier, 
 or other cases connected with the Union Pacific, but 
 
42 SIDNEY BAKTLETT. 
 
 will rather repeat what no doubt has been mentioned at 
 your meeting, that the judges of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States pronounced his arguments the ablest which 
 they heard from any man in the country, and that the 
 memory of one of those who thus spoke of him went back 
 to the days of Webster. 
 
 Less than two months ago he argued two cases at this 
 bar with almost unabated fire. I suppose that those who 
 were most familiar with his methods would point out as 
 one secret of his success the fact that from the first instant 
 that he was retained he began to shape his case with 
 reference to its remotest ends. He possessed the facts 
 when £(nother would not yet have anticipated a contro- 
 versy. He took the evidence himself, having in view the 
 principles of law upon which he expected finally to rest 
 his case. You could mark his advent in a cause in the 
 course of which he had been retained merely by reading 
 the record. 
 
 But the day when he shone was when he came to argue 
 the questions of law. His way of disregarding ramifica- 
 tions and cutting at the root alone you all remember too 
 well to make description necessary. If I were asked to 
 say what seemed to me his most striking characteristic, 
 I think I should say style, — taking that word in a large 
 sense. In that respect he often made me think of the 
 eighteenth century, which sent him down to us. He had 
 that terse and polished subtilty of speech which was most 
 familiar to the world where courtiers and men of fashion 
 taught the litUrateurs of a later age how to write. He 
 had something of the half-hidden wit which men learned 
 to practise who lived about a court and had to speak 
 in innuendo. He had much of the eighteenth century 
 
SIDNEY BARTLETT. 43 
 
 definiteness of view which was such an aid to perfection 
 of form. 
 
 His manner was no less a study than his language. 
 There was in it a dramatic intensity of interest which 
 made him seem the youngest man in the room when he 
 spoke. And yet you felt at the same time the presence 
 of something older than the oldest; — the detachment 
 which came from ancient experience and intellect undis- 
 turbed ; the doubt which smiled at action without making 
 it less ardent or sicklying o'er the native hue of resolution. 
 His might was written in his face, — that wonderful silver- 
 crowned countenance, glittering yet serene, framed on 
 slanting, deep-cut lines of power, — the imperial face of 
 one who had lived beyond surprises, not unlike that of the 
 great Csesar as Pontifex Maximus in ironic fulness of 
 knowledge, such as still sometimes is produced in New 
 England. It was enough to look upon him to know that 
 you saw a man who had greatness in him. 
 
 I do not share the regrets which some are inclined to 
 feel that Mr. Bartlett confined himself strictly to his pro- 
 fession. I think that he was wise in his ambition, and 
 that his life served public ends. It seems to me that we 
 are apt to take short-sighted views of what constitutes 
 power, and of how a man may serve his fellows. The ex- 
 ternal and immediate result of an advocate's work is but 
 to win or lose a case. But remotely what the lawyer does 
 is to establish, develop, or illuminate rules which are to 
 govern the conduct of men for centuries ; to set in motion 
 principles and influences which shape the thought and 
 action of generations which know not by whose command 
 they move. The man of action has the present, but the 
 thinker controls the future; his is the most subtile, the 
 
44 SIDNEY BARTLETT. 
 
 most far-reaching power. His ambition is the vastest, as 
 it is the most ideal. 
 
 It seems to me further that the rule for serving our fel- 
 low men, and, so far as we may speculate or hope upon 
 that awful theme, the rule for fulfilling the mysterious 
 ends of the universe — it seems to me that the beginning 
 of self-sacrifice and of holiness — is to do one's task with 
 one's might. If we do that, I think we find that our mo- 
 tives take care of themselves. We find that what may 
 have been begun as a means becomes an end in itself; 
 that self-seeking is forgotten in labors which are the best 
 contribution that we can make to mankind ; that our per- 
 sonality is swallowed up in working to ends outside our- 
 selves. I, for one, am glad that our famous leader never 
 sought the more obvious forms of power or public service, 
 and was content to remain to the close Mr. Bartlett of the 
 Sufiblk Bar. 
 
 When a great tree falls, we are surprised to see how 
 meagre the landscape seems without it. So when a great 
 man dies. We may not have been intimate with him ; it 
 is enough that he was within our view; when he is gone, 
 life seems thinner and less interesting. More than that, 
 just as, when the fire swept the ground of our city to the 
 water's edge, we were surprised to see close at hand the 
 ocean, which before was hidden from our vision and our 
 thoughts, the death of this powerful bulwark against time 
 lays open for a moment to our gaze the horizon into which 
 we are to sail so soon. We are another generation. Our 
 tasks are new. We shall carry difierent freight. The 
 happiest of us hardly can hope for a destiny so com- 
 plete and fortunate as that which has just been fulfilled. 
 We shall be fortunate enough if we shall have learned to 
 
SIDNEY BARTLETT. 45 
 
 look into the face of fate and the unknown with a smile 
 like his. 
 
 The resolutions of the Bar will be entered upon the 
 records of the Court, and in token of respect to the mem- 
 ory of Mr. Bartlett the Court will now adjourn. 
 
DANIEL S. RICHARDSON. 
 
 ANSWEK TO RESOLUTIONS OF THE BAR, 
 LOWELL, APRIL 15, 1890. 
 
 Gentlemen op the Bar : — 
 
 Of the leader whom you have lost I must say, Vidi 
 tantum, I have seen him, and but little more. While J 
 was at the bar, I never met him, and for the last eight 
 years he has been rather one of the heroes of Valhalla 
 than in the thick of daily conflict. But I have heard 
 enough, before listening to the eloquent and touching 
 words of those who were his friendly rivals — I might 
 almost say I have seen enough — to know something of 
 his character. He was a just, brave, tender, charitable, 
 single-minded man. The men of a younger generation, 
 who were often indebted to him for advice and oppor- 
 tunity freely given, bear witness to his generosity. Their 
 elders, who knew him as an opponent rather than as a 
 benefactor, testify to his unruffled nature, which it was 
 not safe to disturb too nearly. He was a lover of learn- 
 ing, and he had that union of acuteness, judgment, and 
 human feeling that makes a successful lawyer. He was 
 able, wise, and good, and his being so not only brought 
 his reward in success and aifectionate regard, but, I am 
 persuaded, did a very great deal to lift up and maintain 
 the character of the bar to which he belonged. 
 
DANIEL S. RICHARDSON. 47 
 
 His long career is spanned by the reports between the 
 seventh of Metcalf and one of our latest volumes. It is 
 strange to think of that monotonous series as a record of 
 human lives. I have seen upon the section of an ancient 
 tree the annual rings marked off which grew while the 
 Black Prince was fighting the French, while Shakespeare 
 wrote his plays, while England was a Commonwealth, 
 while a later republic arose over the western waters, and 
 grew so great as to shake the world. And so, I often 
 think, may all our histories be marked off upon the backs 
 of the unbroken series of our reports. As we go down 
 the long line, — at every step, as on the Appian Way, a 
 tomb, — we can see the little space within which Mason 
 rose, grew mighty, and was no more, — or Dexter, or 
 Choate, or Bartlett, or Lord, or Sweetser. Alas ! now we 
 must add, or Richardson. And the record which remains 
 of them is but the names of counsel attached to a few 
 cases. 
 
 Is that the only record ? I think not. Their true mon- 
 ument is the body of our jurisprudence, — that vast ceno- 
 taph shaped by the genius of our race, and by powers 
 greater than the greatest individual, yet to which the least 
 may make their contribution and inscribe it with their 
 names. The glory of lawyers, like that of men of sci- 
 ence, is more corporate than individual. Our labor is an 
 endless organic process. The organism whose being is re- 
 corded and protected by the law is the undying body of 
 society. When I hear that one of the builders has ceased 
 his toil, I do not ask what statue he has placed upon 
 some conspicuous pedestal, but I think of the mighty 
 whole, and say to myself. He has done his part to help 
 the mysterious growth of the world along its inevitable 
 
48 DANIEL S. RICHARDSON. 
 
 lines towards' its unknown end. I say to myself to-day, 
 that all this wonder is the work of such patient, accurate, 
 keen, just, and fearless spirits as Daniel Richardson. 
 
 The memorial will be entered upon the records of the 
 Court as moved, and as a mark of respect to the deceased 
 the Court will now adjourn. 
 
THE USE OF COLLEGES. 
 
 SPEECH AT A DINNER OF THE ALUMNI OF YALE 
 UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, FEBRUARY 3, 1891. 
 
 Me. Chairman and Gentlemen: — 
 
 At every feast it is well to have a skeleton. At every 
 gathering of the elect, the doubting spirit must be al- 
 lowed to ask his question. In these days all the old 
 assumptions are being retried by the test of actuality, 
 and at a feast in honor of a college, at a gathering of 
 the elect of Yale, the question will arise. What is the 
 use of colleges, after all ? 
 
 A question not to be answered without reflection, and 
 one which trenches on the doubts sometimes expressed 
 by extremists whether our civilization is a success. We 
 have made famine and pestilence less likely, it is true, 
 and we have multiplied the number of human beings 
 upon the earth; but I own I see no clear advantage 
 in the latter fact; and on the other hand, I doubt 
 whether men generally are as happy as they were in 
 earlier days with all their dangers, and whether the 
 earth has not lost rather than gained in charm. 
 
 Nevertheless, we all believe in civilization, and prob- 
 ably most of us believe that colleges are among its fair- 
 est flowers. Why ? Not surely as collections of school- 
 masters teaching others to be schoolmasters, that they 
 
50 THE USE OF COLLEGES. 
 
 may teach yet others, and so ad infinitum ; not, I ven- 
 ture to think, mainly as teaching the first steps toward 
 practical success in life, but, if practical knowledge is 
 what we mean by useful knowledge, I would rather say 
 as preserving, discovering, and imparting useless knowl- 
 edge, — and thus as the concrete image of what makes 
 man man. 
 
 Somebody once said to me, "After all, religion is the 
 only interesting thing," and I think it is true if you 
 take the word a little broadly, and include under it 
 the passionate curiosity as well as the passionate 'awe 
 which we feel in face of the mystery of the universe. 
 This curiosity is the most human appetite we have. 
 We alone of living beings yearn to get a little nearer 
 and ever a little nearer toward the unseen ocean into 
 which pours the stream of things, — toward the reality 
 of the phantasmagoria which dance before our eyes for 
 threescore years and ten. 
 
 This endless aerial pursuit is our fate, as truly as to 
 bear oifspring or to toil for bread. This passion is as 
 genuine and self-justifying as any other. The satisfac- 
 tion of it is as truly an end in itself as self-preserva- 
 tion. I do not believe that the justification of science 
 and philosophy is to be found in improved machinery 
 and good conduct. Science and philosophy are them- 
 selves necessaries of life. By producing them, civiliza- 
 tion sufficiently accounts for itself, if it were not absurd 
 to call the inevitable to account. 
 
 Harvard and Yale, as cloisters of philosophy, are 
 keepers of the sacred fire. There are trained the mar- 
 tyrs of the future, — the pale acolytes of science. There 
 are gathered those who believe that thoughts are mightier 
 
THE USE OF COLLEGES. 51 
 
 than things. There are the strongholds of ideals more 
 remote and vast than fortune. There is kept alive the 
 faith which sets men to a task of which they shall not 
 see the end, and which perhaps may be unaccomplished 
 when the last of the race shall die. There is believed 
 the idealist's creed, which even sceptics may share, that 
 the world cannot mean less than the farthest-reaching 
 thought, cannot be less worthy of reverence than the 
 loftiest aspiration, of man, who is but a part of it, but 
 a leaf of the unimaginable tree. 
 
 It is because I believe that creed that I hope that 
 the two colleges, to both of which I owe a great debt, 
 long may keep the belief of their high import, and long 
 may urge one another in generous rivalry to be and to 
 do all that universities may be and do. 
 
WILLIAM ALLEN, 
 
 Associate Justice op the Supkeme Judicial Coukt of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 ANSWER TO RESOLUTIONS OF THE BAR, GREENFIELD, 
 SEPTEMBER 15, 1891. 
 
 Gentlemek of the Bar : — 
 
 When I heard the sudden news of our associate's 
 death, my second thought was that the Commonwealth 
 had lost a judge not to be replaced, — my first was that I 
 had lost a friend. 
 
 The Judges of this Court are thrown so much and so 
 closely together by their work that they are intimate with 
 one another perforce ; and to be intimate with William 
 Allen was necessarily to love and admire him. The bar 
 found him very silent upon the bench. He was not so in 
 the consultation room. There he expressed himself freely, 
 and at times, notwithstanding his quiet manner, with the 
 warmth of a hearty and somewhat impulsive temperament, 
 so that there was no question that we knew not only his 
 opinions, but the man behind them. 
 
 He seemed to me a typical New Englander, both in 
 character and in ways of thinking; a characteristic pro- 
 duct of one of those inland towns which have been our 
 glory, — centres large enough to have a society and a cul- 
 
WILLIAM ALLEN. 53 
 
 ture of their own, and, formerly at least, remote enough 
 to have local traditions, and local rather than cosmopolitan 
 standards and responsibilities. As with others whom I 
 have known that were brought up in similar surroundings, 
 his Yankee caution and sound judgment were leavened 
 with a touch of enthusiasm capable of becoming radical 
 at moments, and his cultivation had destroyed rather than 
 fostered his respect for the old merely as such. He was 
 very kind. He was always perfectly considerate and rear 
 sonable, as well as warm of feeling. In ill health as in 
 good he took his share of work without a word or hint of 
 what it cost him until he died. He had the subtlety of a 
 Calvinist theologian, and as sound a training in the com- 
 mon law as was to be found in Massachusetts; but he 
 was saved from becoming over technical by his good sense, 
 his humanitarian turn, and the occasional slight touch of 
 radicalism which I have noted. I never felt quite sure 
 that nothing had been overlooked in a statement of facts, 
 until his eye had scrutinized it. In discussion, if you did 
 not agree with him, you always reached an exact issue, and 
 escape in generalities was impossible, I know few qual- 
 ities which seem to me more desirable in a judge of a 
 court of last resort than this accuracy of thought, and 
 the habit of keeping one's eye on the things for which 
 words stand. Many men, especially as they grow older, 
 resent attempts to push analysis beyond consecrated 
 phrases, or to formulate anew. Such attempts disturb 
 the intellectual rest for which we long. Our ideal is 
 repose, perhaps because our destiny is eflfort, just as the 
 eye sees green after gazing at the sun. Judge AUen 
 had none of this weakness, but went on without rest to 
 the end. 
 
64 WILLIAM ALLEN. 
 
 Great places make great men. The electric current of 
 large affairs turns even common mould to diamond, and 
 traditions of ancient honor impart something of their dig- 
 nity to those who inherit them. No man of any lofti- 
 ness of soul could be long a Justice of this Court without 
 rising to his full height. But our dead brother seemed to 
 me too modest to be ambitious for reputation, and to re- 
 gard his place mainly as an opportunity and a duty. He 
 would have been most pleased, too, I dare say, to slip from 
 it and from life, when his hour came, without remark. 
 He would have preferred not to be celebrated with guns 
 and bells and pealing requiems, the flutter of flags and 
 gleam of steel in the streets, and all the pomp which prop- 
 erly is spent on those who have held power in their right 
 hand. ... I too am content for him that it should be so, if 
 this neglect of outward show means, even for a chosen few, 
 that their eyes have taken a wider sweep, and have seen 
 that such symbols do not express the vast and shadowy 
 command which a thinker holds. Our prevailing ideals 
 are somewhat coarse. Comparatively few imaginations 
 are educated to aspire beyond money and the immediate 
 forms of power. I have no doubt that vulgar conceptions 
 of life at the top are one of the causes of discontent at the 
 bottom of society. Unless we are to accept decadence as 
 the necessary end of civilization, we should be grateful 
 to all men like William Allen, whose ambition, if it can 
 be called so, looks only to remote and mediated com- 
 mand; who do not ask to say to any one. Go, and he 
 goeth, so long as in truthful imagination they wield, 
 according to their degree, that most subtile and intoxi- 
 cating authority which controls the future from within by 
 shaping the thoughts and speech of a later time. 
 
WILLIAM ALLEN. 55 
 
 Such men are to be honored, not by regiments mov- 
 ing with high heads to martial music, but by a few oth- 
 ers, lonely as themselves, walking apart in meditative 
 silence, and dreaming in their turn the dream of spiritual 
 reign. 
 
 THE END.