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 THE SCHOLAR, THE JURIST, THE ARTIST, THE PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
 MR. SUMNER'S ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY. 
 
 / 
 
.■^r 
 
THE SCHOLAB, THE JURIST, 
 
 THE AETIST, THE PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
 
 AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY, AUGUST 27, 1846. 
 
 By CHARLES SUMNER. 
 
 "Then I would say to the young disciple of Truth and Beauty, who would know how to 
 satisfy the noble impulse of his heart, through every opposition of the century, — I would say, 
 Give the world beneath your influence a direction towards the good, and the tranquil rhythm 
 of time will bring its development." — Schiller. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WILLIAM D. TICKNOR AND COMPANY. 
 
 1846. 
 
5*2 
 
 >\ 
 
 i> 1 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 
 
 Wm. D. Ticknor and Company, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 GIFT '"^^ 
 ESTATE OF 
 WJLLIAM C. RiVE8 
 X APAJJL, IMa 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 METCALF AND COMPANY, 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 To-day is the festival of our fraternity, sacred to 
 learning, to friendship, and to truth. From many 
 places, remote and near, we have come together be- 
 neath the benediction of Alma Mater. We have w^alked 
 in the grateful shelter of her rich embowering trees. 
 Friend has met friend, classmate has pressed the hand 
 of classmate, while the ruddy memories of youth and 
 early study have risen upon the soul. And now we 
 have come up to this church, a company of brothers, 
 in the long, well ordered procession, commencing with 
 the silver locks of reverend age, and closing with the 
 fresh forms that glow with the golden blood of youth. 
 
 With hearts of gratitude, we greet among our num- 
 ber those whose lives are crowned by desert ; espe- 
 cially him who, returning from conspicuous cares in 
 a foreign land, now graces our chief seat of learning ; * 
 and not less him who, closing an eminent career of 
 probity and honor in the high service of the Uni- 
 versity, now voluntarily withdraws to a well earned 
 
 * Hon. Edward Everett, President of Harvard University. 
 
4 
 
 repose.* We salute at once the successor and the 
 predecessor, — the rising and the setting sun. And 
 ingenuous youth, in whose bosom are enfolded the 
 germs of untold excellence, whose ardent soul sees 
 visions which are closed to others by the hand of Time, 
 commands our reverence, not less than age, rich in 
 experience and honor. What we have we know and 
 can measure ; that which we have not is unknown 
 and immeasurable, and there is in the uncertain prom- 
 ises of youth a brightness of hope transcending the 
 realities of life. Welcome, then, not less to the young 
 than the old ; and may this our holiday brighten with 
 harmony and joy ! 
 
 As the eye wanders around our circle, it seeks in 
 vain for a beloved form who, for many years, occupied 
 the seat which you now fill, Mr. President. I might 
 have looked to behold him on this occasion. But death, 
 since we last met together, has borne him away. The 
 love of friends, the devotion of pupils, the prayers of 
 the nation, the concern of the world, could not shield 
 him from the inexorable shaft. When I apply to him 
 those admirable words which the genius and friend- 
 ship of Clarendon bestowed upon Falkland, that " he 
 was a person of such prodigious parts of learning and 
 knowledge, of such inimitable sweetness and delight 
 in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity 
 and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive sim- 
 plicity and integrity of life,"t I need not add the 
 name of Story. To dwell on his character, and all 
 
 * Hon. Josiah Quincy, late President of Harvard University, 
 f History of the Rebellion, Book VH. 
 
that he has done, were a worthy theme. But his is 
 not the only dear countenance which returns no an- 
 swering smile. 
 
 This year our Society, according to custom, has 
 published the catalogue of its members, marking by a 
 star the insatiate archery of death in the brief span of 
 four years. In no period, equally short, of its history, 
 have such shining marks been found. 
 
 " Now kindred merit fills the sable bier, 
 Now lacerated friendship claims a tear ; 
 Year chases year, decay pursues decay ; 
 Still drops some joy from withering life away." * 
 
 Scholarship, Jurisprudence, Art, Humanity, each has 
 been called to mourn its chosen champion. Pickering, 
 the Scholar, Story, the Jurist, Allston, the Artist, 
 Channing, the Philanthropist, have been removed. 
 When our last catalogue was published, they were all 
 living, each in his field of usefulness. Our catalogue 
 of this year gathers them together with the dead. 
 Sweet and exalted companionship! They were joined 
 in their early lives, in their fame, in their death. They 
 were brethren of our fraternity, sons of Alma Mater. 
 Story and Channing were classmates. Pickering pre- 
 ceded them by two years only ; Allston followed them 
 by two years. As we cast our eyes upon the closing 
 lustre of the last century, we discern this brilliant 
 group, whose mortal light is now obscured. After the 
 toils of his long life, Pickering sleeps serenely, in the 
 place of his birth, near the honored dust of his father. 
 Channing, Story, and Allston have been laid to rest in 
 
 * Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes. 
 
Cambridge, where they first tasted together of the tree 
 of life ; Channing and Story in the sweet, grassy bed 
 of Mount Auburn, in the shadow of beautiful trees, 
 vocal with choristers of love ; Allston in the adjoining 
 church-yard, within sound of his voice who now ad- 
 dresses you. 
 
 It was the custom in ancient Rome, on solemn 
 occasions, to bring forward the images of departed 
 friends, arrayed in their robes of office, and carefully 
 adorned, while some one recounted what they had 
 done, in the hope of refreshing the memory of their 
 deeds, and of inspiring the living with new impulses to 
 virtue. "For who," says the ancient historian, "can 
 behold without emotion the forms of so many illus- 
 trious men, thus living as it were and breathing to- 
 gether in his presence ? or what spectacle can be con- 
 ceived more great and striking ? " * So, let me ex- 
 hibit to-day the images of our departed brothers, not 
 in robes of ceremony, or costume of office, but in the 
 native colors of their truthful and simple characters. 
 And while we dwell with the warmth of personal at- 
 tachment upon their virtues, let us seek to comprehend 
 and reverence the great interests which they hved to 
 promote. Pickering, Story, Allston, Channing ! Their 
 names alone, without addition, awaken a response, 
 which, like the far-famed echo of the woods of Dodona, 
 will prolong itself through the livelong day. But 
 great as they are, we feel their insignificance by the 
 side of the causes to which their days were conse- 
 
 * Hampton's Polybius, Book "VI. 
 
crated, — Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love, the com- 
 prehensive attributes of God. Illustrious on earth, 
 the J were the lowly and mortal ministers of lofty and 
 immortal truth. It is, then, the Scholar, the Ju- 
 rist, THE Artist, the Philanthropist, whom we 
 celebrate to-day, and whose pursuits will be the 
 theme of my discourse. 
 
 In the presence of these characters, we shall natu- 
 rally be lifted far away from the busy hum of selfish 
 interests, from the weary pulsations of the great heart 
 of Labor, from the madding strifes of the crowd, into 
 serener air. It may be pleasant, on this our holiday, 
 to range among the fair mountain-tops, to breathe 
 their bracing atmosphere, to discern the world in 
 diminished scenery below, — its tall spires become as 
 pigmies, — and again to descend to the valleys with 
 fresh ideas of the heights we should strive to reach. 
 
 In offering these tributes, I shall leave to other occa- 
 sions the more appropriate labor of biographical details. 
 I shall reverse the order in which our brothers died, 
 taking the last first. 
 
 John Pickering, the Scholar, died in the month 
 of May, 1846, aged sixty-nine, within a short period 
 of that extreme goal which is the allotted limit of human 
 life. By scholar, I mean a cultivator of liberal studies, 
 a student of knowledge in its largest sense, — not mere- 
 ly classical, not excluding what is exclusively called 
 science in our days, but which was unknown when the 
 title of scholar was first established ; for though Cicero 
 dealt a sarcasm at Archimedes, he spoke with higher 
 
truth when he beautifully recognized the common bond 
 between all departments of knowledge. The brother 
 whom we now mourn was a scholar, a student, as long 
 as he lived. He did not take his place merely among 
 what are called, by generous courtesy, Educated Men, 
 with most of whom education is past and gone, men 
 who have studied; he studied always. Life w^as to 
 him an unbroken lesson, pleasant with the sweets of 
 knowledge and the consciousness of improvement. 
 
 The world knows and reveres his learning; they 
 only, whose privilege it was to partake somewhat of 
 his daily life, fully know the modesty of his character. 
 His knowledge was such that he seemed to be igno- 
 rant of nothing, while in the perfection of his humility 
 he might seem to know nothing. By learning con- 
 spicuous before the world, his native diffidence with- 
 drew him from its personal observation. Surely learning 
 so great, which claimed so little, will not be forgotten. 
 The modesty which detained him in retirement during 
 life shall introduce him now that he is dead. Strange 
 reward ! The merit which shrank from the living gaze 
 shall now be observed of all men. The soft voice of 
 humility is returned in pealing echoes from the tomb. 
 
 In speaking of Pickering, I place in the front his 
 modesty and his learning, the two attributes by which 
 he will always be remembered. I might enlarge on 
 his sweetness of temper, his simplicity of life, his kind- 
 ness to the young, his sympathy with studies of all 
 kinds, his sensibility to beauty, his conscientious char- 
 acter, his passionless mind. Could he speak to us 
 with regard to himself, he might employ the words of 
 
self- painting which dropped from the kindly pen of his 
 great predecessor in the cultivation of Grecian litera- 
 ture, the leader in its revival in Europe, as Pickering 
 was in some sort in America, the urbane and learned 
 Erasmus. " For my own part," says the early scholar 
 to his English friend, John Colet, " I best know my 
 own faihngs, and therefore shall presume to give a char- 
 acter of myself. You have in me a man of little or no 
 fortune, a stranger to ambition, of a strong propensity 
 to loving-kindness and friendship, without any boast of 
 learning, but a great admirer of it ; one who has a 
 profound veneration for any excellence in others, how- 
 ever he may feel the want of it in himself; who can 
 readily yield to others in learning, but to none in in- 
 tegrity; a man sincere, open, and free; a hater of 
 falsehood and dissimulation ; of a mind lowly and up- 
 right ; who boasts of nothing but an honest heart." * 
 I have called him the scholar ; for it is in this char- 
 acter that he leaves so choice an example of excel- 
 lence. But the triumphs of his life are enhanced by 
 the variety of his labors, and especially by his long 
 career at the bar. He was a lawyer, whose days were 
 worn in the faithful and uninterrupted practice of his 
 profession, busy with clients, careful of their concerns, 
 both in court and out of court. Each day witnessed 
 his untiring exertions in scenes of labor having little 
 that was attractive to his gentle and studious nature. 
 He was formed to be a seeker of truth rather than a 
 defender of wrong, and he found less delight in the 
 hoarse strifes of the bar than in the peaceful conversa- 
 
 * Erasmi Epist., Lib. V., Ep. 4. 
 2 
 
10 
 
 tion of books. To him litigation was a sorry feast, 
 and a well filled docket of cases not unlike the cu- 
 rious and now untasted dish of " thistles " which 
 sometimes formed a part of a Roman banquet. He 
 knew that the duties of the profession were important 
 and useful ; but felt that even their successful perform- 
 ance, when unattended by a generous juridical culture, 
 gave a slender title to regard, while they were less 
 pleasant and ennobling far than the disinterested pur- 
 suit of learning. He would have said, at least as re- 
 gards his own profession, with the Lord Archon of 
 the Oceana, " I will stand no more to the judgment of 
 lawyers and divines than to that of so many other 
 tradesmen^ * 
 
 * Harrington's Oceana, 134. Milton, in his tract upon Education, 
 says, — " Some are allured to the trade of the latv, grounding their pur- 
 poses not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and 
 equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing 
 thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees." It is to 
 be hoped that the words of Socrates, sharply sketching the moral dan- 
 gers of professional and public life, are less applicable to our country than 
 to ancient Athens. "It seems to me," says the wisest of Greeks, " that 
 men trained from their youth in the tribunals and in affairs, compared 
 with those nurtured by philosophy, are like slaves by the side of free- 
 men Their disputes are never without some consequence ; 
 
 there always enters into them some personal interest, often even that of 
 life ; all this renders them sharp and ardent, skilful to win their master 
 by flattering words, and to please him by their actions ; but they have 
 neither rectitude nor moral grandeur of soul ; for the servitude in which 
 they engage from their youth prevents them from developing themselves, 
 takes from them all elevation and nobleness, in constraining them to act 
 by oblique ways ; and, as it exposes their souls, yet tender, to great dan- 
 gers and apprehensions which they have not sufficient hardihood to affront 
 in the name of justice and truth, they have early recourse to falsehood 
 and to the art of injuring one another ; they bend and twist in a thousand 
 ways, and pass from youth to ripe age with a soul thoroughly corrupted, 
 
11 
 
 It was the law as a trade, that he pursued reluc- 
 tantly ; while he had especial happiness in the science 
 of jurisprudence, to which he devoted many hours, res- 
 cued from other cares. By his example, and the various 
 contributions of his pen, he elevated and adorned the 
 study, and invested it with the charm of liberal pur- 
 suits. By marvellous assiduity, he was able to lead 
 two lives, one producing the fruits of earth, the other 
 those of immortality. In him was the union, rare as 
 it is grateful, of the lawyer and the scholar. He 
 has taught us how much may be done, amidst the toils 
 of professional life, for the high concerns of jurispru- 
 dence and learning ; while the clear and enduring lustre 
 of his name, dimming the glowworm scintillations of 
 ordinary forensic success, reminds us, as by contrast, of 
 the feeble and fugitive fame which is the lot of the 
 mere lawyer^ although clients may beat at his gates 
 from the earliest cock-crowing at the dawn. 
 
 It would be impossible, on this occasion, to describe 
 his multitudinous labors of scholarship. They were 
 of a character that is but slightly appreciated by the 
 world at large, although important contributions to the 
 general sum of knowledge. They were chiefly directed 
 to two subjects, — classical studies and general philol- 
 ogy, if these two may be regarded separately. 
 
 His early life was marked by a special interest in 
 classical studies. At a time when accurate and exten- 
 sive scholarship in our country was rare, he aspired to 
 
 while they imagine that they have acquired much cleverness and wis- 
 dom." Plato, Theaetetus, cap. xxiii. Pickering was nurtured by phi- 
 losophy, and his soul had the purity of freedom. 
 
12 
 
 possess it. By daily and nightly studies he mastered 
 the great exemplars of antiquity, and found delight in 
 their beauties. His example, for many years, exerted 
 a potent influence in commending them. But he 
 sought, by peculiar exertions, to promote their study 
 in the learned seminaries of our country. With un- 
 answerable force, he urged the duty of establishing a 
 standard of education among us, in every substantial 
 respect commensurate with that in Europe. It was 
 his desire to see the American youth receiving on their 
 native soil, under the precious influence of free insti- 
 tutions, a course of instruction that should render for- 
 eign aid superfluous. He had a just pride of country, 
 and wished to behold its character respected abroad in 
 the persons of accomplished representatives, well know- 
 ing that every American scholar, wherever he wanders 
 in foreign lands, is a living recommendation of the in- 
 stitutions under which he has been reared. 
 
 He knew that scholarship of all kinds would gild 
 the life of its possessor ; that it would enlarge the 
 resources of the advocate ; that it would enrich the 
 voice of the pulpit ; and strengthen the learning of 
 medicine. He knew that it would afford a pleasant 
 companionship in hours of relaxation from labor, in 
 periods of sadness, and in the evening of life ; that, 
 when once embraced, it was more constant than 
 friendship, — attending its votary, as an invisible spirit, 
 in the toils of the day, in the watches of the night, 
 in the changes of travel, in the alternations of fortune 
 and health. 
 
 In commending classical studies, it would be diffi- 
 
13 
 
 cult to say that he attached to them any undue im- 
 portance. He showed, by his own example, that he 
 bore them no exclusive love. He rightly regarded 
 them as an essential part of liberal education, opening 
 the way to other realms of knowledge, while they 
 matured the taste and invigorated the understanding. 
 In this view all will probably concur. It might be 
 questioned, however, whether, in our hurried life, it 
 were possible, with proper attention to other studies, 
 to introduce into ordinary education the exquisite 
 skill which is the pride of English scholarship, re- 
 minding us of the minuteness of finish in Chinese 
 art ; or the ponderous and elaborate learning which 
 is the wonder of Germany, reminding us of the dis- 
 proportion and unnatural perspective of a Chinese 
 picture. But much may be done by the establishment 
 of those habits of accuracy, the result of early and 
 careful instruction, which will aid in the appreciation 
 of the severe beauty of antiquity, while they become 
 an invaluable standard and measure of our attain- 
 ments in other things. 
 
 The classics possess a peculiar charm, from the cir- 
 cumstance, that they have been the models, I might 
 almost say the masters, of composition and thought in 
 all ages. In the contemplation of these august 
 teachers of mankind, we are filled with conflicting 
 emotions. They are the early voice of the world, 
 better remembered and more cherished still than all the 
 intermediate words that have been uttered, — as the 
 lessons of childhood still haunt us, when the impres- 
 sions of later years have been effaced from the mind. 
 
14 
 
 But they show with most unwelcome frequency the 
 tokens of the world's childhood, before passion had 
 yielded to the sway of reason and the affections. 
 They want the highest charm of purity, of righteous- 
 ness, of elevated sentiments, of love to God and man. 
 It is not in the frigid philosophy of the Porch and the 
 Academy that we are to seek these ; not in the mar- 
 vellous teachings of Socrates, as they come mended 
 by the mellifluous words of Plato ; not in the re- 
 sounding line of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of 
 blood Alexander pillowed his head ; not in the ani- 
 mated strain of Pindar, where virtue is pictured in 
 the successful strife of an athlete at the Isthmian 
 games ; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with 
 self-love and the spirit of vengeance ; not in the fitful 
 philosophy and intemperate eloquence of Tully ; not 
 in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately 
 atheism of Lucretius. No ; these must not be our 
 masters ; in none of these are we to seek the way of 
 life. For eighteen hundred years, the spirit of these 
 writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime 
 commandments on which hang all the law and the 
 prophets.* The strife is still pending. Heathenism, 
 
 * Terence, taught, perhaps, by his own bitter experience as a slave, 
 has given expression to truth almost Christian, when he says, 
 " Homo sum J humani nihil a me alienum puto." 
 
 Heauton. A. 1, So. 1. 
 and in the Andria, 
 
 " Facile omnes perferre at pati 
 Cum quibus erat cunque una ; iis sese dedere, 
 Eorum obsequi studiis, advorsus nemini, 
 Nunquam prasponens se aliis." 
 
 A, l,So. 1. 
 
15 
 
 which has possessed itself of such Siren forms, is not 
 yet exorcised. It still tempts the joung, controls the 
 affairs of active life, and haunts the meditations of 
 age. 
 
 Our own productions, though they may yield to those 
 of the ancients in the arrangement of ideas, in method, 
 in beauty of form, and in freshness of illustration, 
 are immeasurably superior in the truth, delicacy, and 
 elevation of their sentiments, — above all, in the be- 
 nign recognition of that great Christian revelation, 
 the brotherhood of man. How vain are eloquence and 
 poetry, compared with this heaven-descended truth ! 
 Put in one scale that simple utterance, and in the 
 other the lore of Antiquity, with its accumulating 
 glosses and commentaries, and the last will be light 
 and trivial in the balance. Greek poetry has been 
 likened to the song of the nightingale as she sits in the 
 rich, symmetrical crown of the palm-tree, trilling her 
 thick-warbled notes ; but even this is less sweet and 
 tender than the music of the human heart. 
 
 These things cannot be forgotten by the Christian 
 scholar. Let him draw from the Past all that it has 
 to contribute to the great end of life, human progress 
 and happiness ; progress, without which happiness is 
 vain. But let him close his soul to the pernicious in- 
 fluence of that spirit, which is the more to be dreaded, 
 as it is insinuated in compositions of such command- 
 ing authority. 
 
 In the department of philology, kindred to that of 
 the classics, our scholar labored with peculiar success. 
 
16 
 
 Unless some memorandum should be found among 
 his papers, as was the case with Sir William Jones, 
 specifying the languages to which he had been de- 
 voted, it may be difficult to frame a list with entire 
 accuracy. It is certain that he was familiar with at 
 least nine, — the English, French, Portuguese, Italian, 
 Spanish, German, Romaic, Greek, and Latin ; of 
 these he spoke the first five. He was less familiar, 
 though well acquainted, with the Dutch, Swedish, 
 Danish, and Hebrew ; and had explored, with various 
 degrees of care, the Arabic, Turkish, Syriac, Persian, 
 Coptic, Sanscrit, Chinese, Cochin-Chinese, Russian, 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Malay in several dialects, 
 and particularly the Indian languages of America and 
 of the Polynesian islands. His labors span immeas- 
 urable spaces in the world's history, — embracing the 
 distant, primeval Sanscrit ; the hieroglyphics of Egypt, 
 now awakening from their mute sleep of centuries ; 
 the polite and learned tongues of ancient and modern 
 Europe ; the languages of Mohammedanism ; the va- 
 rious dialects of the forests of North America, and of 
 the sandal-groves of the Pacific ; only closing with a 
 lingua franca, from an unlettered tribe on the coast 
 of Africa, to which his attention had been called even 
 after the illness which ended in his death. 
 
 This recital alone shows the variety and extent of 
 his studies in a department which is supposed to be 
 inaccessible, except to peculiar and Herculean toils. 
 He had a natural and intuitive perception of the 
 affinities of languages, and of their hidden relations ; 
 and his labors and researches have thrown important 
 
17 
 
 light upon the general principles that prevail in this 
 science, as also on the history and character of indi- 
 vidual languages. In devising an alphabet of the In- 
 dian tongues of North America, which has been 
 since adopted in the Polynesian islands, he render- 
 ed brilliant service to civilization.* It is pleasant 
 to contemplate the scholar sending forth from his 
 seclusion this priceless instrument of improvement. 
 On the beauteous islands once moistened by the 
 blood of Cook, newspapers and books are printed in 
 a native language, which was reduced to a written 
 character by the care and genius of Pickering. The 
 Vocabulary of Americanisms, and the Greek and 
 English Lexicon, attest still further the variety and 
 value of his labors ; nor can we sufficiently ad- 
 mire the facility with which, amidst the duties of 
 an arduous profession, and other efforts of scholarship, 
 he assumed the appalling task of the lexicographer. 
 
 It is not uncommon to listen to expressions in dis- 
 paragement of the labors of the philologist, treating 
 them sometimes as curious only, sometimes as trivial, 
 or, when they enter into lexicography, sometimes as 
 those of a harmless drudge. It might be sufficient to 
 reply to these, that the exercise of the intellect in 
 a manner calculated to promote forgetfulness of self, 
 and the love of science opening a taste for new and 
 
 * There is in the correspondence of Leibnitz a proposition for a new 
 alphabet of the Arabic, ^thiopic, Syriac, and other languages, which 
 seems to be not unlike, in principle, that of Pickering. — Leibnitz, 
 Opera (ed. Dutens), Vol. VI., p. 88. 
 3 
 
18 
 
 simple pleasures, is really, though perhaps indirectly, 
 ministering to human improvement. But philology 
 may claim other suffrages. It is its province to aid 
 in determining the character of words, their extrac- 
 tion, their signification, and in other ways to guide 
 and explain the development of language ; nor is it 
 generous, while enjoying the flowers of poetry and 
 the rich fruits of literature, to withhold our gratitude 
 from him who spends his hours in exploring the roots 
 and in training the tree. 
 
 But the science of Comparative Philology, which 
 our scholar has illustrated so highly, may rank with 
 the most brilliant pursuits. It boldly challenges a 
 place by the side of that science which received such 
 development from the genius of Cuvier. The study 
 of Comparative Anatomy has thrown unexpected light 
 on the physical history of the animate creation ; but 
 it cannot be less interesting or important to explore 
 the unwritten history of the human race in the lan- 
 guages that have been spoken, to trace their pedigree, to 
 detect their affinities, seeking the great prevailing laws 
 by which they are governed. As we understand these 
 things, confusion and discord retreat, the frater- 
 nity of mankind stands confessed, and the philol- 
 ogist becomes a minister at the altar of universal 
 philanthropy. In the study of the past, he learns to 
 anticipate the future ; and he sees with Leibnitz, in 
 sublime vision, the distant prospect, in the succession 
 of ages, of that Unity of the human race, which shall 
 find its expression in an instrument more marvellous 
 
19 
 
 than the Infinite Calculus, a universal language, com- 
 posed of an alphabet of human thoughts.* 
 
 As the sun draws moisture from the rill, from the 
 stream, from the lake, from the ocean, again to be 
 returned in fertilizing showers upon the earth, so did 
 our scholar derive knowledge from all sources, again 
 to be diffused in beneficent influences upon the world. 
 He sought it, not only in studies of all kinds, but in 
 converse with men, and in the experience of life. His 
 curious essay on the Pronunciation of the Ancient 
 Greek Language was suggested by listening to the 
 words which fell from some Greek sailors, whom the 
 temptations of commerce had conducted from their 
 tideless sea to our shores. 
 
 Such a character, devoted to labors of wide and 
 enduring interest, not restrained or hemmed in by 
 international lines, naturally awakened respect and 
 honor, wherever learning was cultivated. His name 
 was proudly associated with many of the most illus- 
 trious fraternities of science in foreign nations, while 
 scholars who could not know him face to face, by an 
 amiable commerce of letters, sought the aid and sym- 
 pathy of his learning. His death has broken these 
 living links of fellowship ; but his name, that cannot 
 die, shall continue to bind all who love knowledge and 
 virtue to the land which was blessed by his presence. 
 
 From the Scholar I pass to the Jurist. Joseph 
 
 * Fontenelle, Eloge de Leibnitz. Leibnitz, Opera (ed. Dutens), Yol. 
 v., p. 7. 
 
20 
 
 Story died in the month of September, 1845, aged 
 sixty-six. His countenance, so familiar in this pres- 
 ence, was always so beaming with goodness and kind- 
 ness, that its withdrawal seems to lessen most sensibly 
 the brightness of the scene. We are assembled near 
 the seat of his most pleasant pursuits, among the 
 neighbours familiar with his private virtues, close by 
 the home hallowed by his domestic altar. These 
 paths he often trod ; and all that our eyes may here 
 look upon seems to reflect his benignant regard. His 
 intimate official relations with the University, his high 
 judicial station, his higher character as a jurist, invest 
 his name with a peculiar interest ; while the uncon- 
 scious kindness which he ever showed to all, and es- 
 pecially to the young, makes them rise up and call 
 him blessed. How fondly would the youth nurtured 
 in jurisprudence at his feet, were such an offering, 
 Alcestis-like, within the allotments of Providence, — 
 
 *' similis si permutatio detur," * — 
 
 have prolonged their beloved master's days at the ex- 
 pense of their own ! 
 
 This University has already, by the voice of his 
 learned associate, rendered its tribute of respect to 
 his name. The tribunals of justice, throughout the 
 country, have given utterance to their solemn grief; 
 and the funeral torch has passed across the sea into 
 foreign lands. 
 
 He has been heard to confess that literature was his 
 earliest passion, which yielded only to the stern sum- 
 
 * Juvenal, VL, 653. 
 
21 
 
 mons of duty, beckoning him to the toils of profes- 
 sional life ; and they who knew him best cannot for- 
 get that this sentiment pervaded his days, as with the 
 perfume of flowers. He continued to the last fond of 
 poetry and polite letters, and would often turn from 
 the austere countenance of Themis to the more kindly 
 Muses. Nor can it be doubted that this feature, 
 which points the resemblance between him and Sel- 
 den, Somers, Mansfield, and Blackstone, in England, 
 and L'Hopital and D'Aguesseau, in France, has added 
 to the brilliancy and perfection of his character as a 
 jurist. It would not be easy in the history of juris- 
 prudence to mention a single name to whom its high- 
 est palm belongs, who was not a scholar. 
 
 The hardships of the early study of the law, which 
 had perplexed the youthful spirit of Spelman, beset 
 him with disheartening force. Let the young remem- 
 ber his trials and his triumphs, and be of good cheer. 
 According to the custom of his day, while yet a stu- 
 dent of law, in the town of Marblehead, he under- 
 took to read Coke on Littleton, in the large folio edi- 
 tion, thatched over with those manifold annotations 
 which cause the best trained lawyer "to gasp and 
 stare." As he strove in vain to force his weary way 
 through its rugged page, he was filled with despair. 
 It was but for a moment. The tears poured from his 
 eyes upon the open book. Those tears were his pre- 
 cious baptism into the learning of the law. From that 
 time forth, he persevered with confirmed ardor and 
 confidence, without let or hindrance. 
 
 He was elevated to a seat on the bench of the Su- 
 
22 
 
 preaie Court of the United • States, by the side of 
 Marshall, at the early age of thirty- two. It was at 
 the same age that Bailer, unquestionably the ablest 
 judge of Westminster Hall, who did not arrive at the 
 honors of Chief Justice, was induced to renounce an 
 income larger than the salary of a judge, to take a 
 seat by the side of Mansfield. The parallel continues. 
 During the remainder of Mansfield's career on the 
 bench, Buller was the friend and associate upon whom 
 he chiefly leaned for support; and history records that 
 it was a darling desire of the venerable chief justice, 
 that his younger associate should succeed to his seat 
 and chain of office ; but these wishes, the hopes of the 
 profession, and his own long services were disregarded 
 by a minister who seldom rewarded any but political 
 labors, — I mean Mr. Pitt. Our brother, like Buller, 
 was the friend and associate of his venerable chief 
 justice, by whose side he sat for many years ; nor do I 
 state any fact which is not proper in the light of his- 
 tory, when I add that it was the long-cherished de- 
 sire of Marshall that Story should be his successor. 
 It was ordered otherwise ; and he continued a justice 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States for the 
 space of thirty-four years, — a judicial life of almost 
 unexampled length in the history of the common law, 
 of precisely the same duration with that of D'Agues- 
 seau, the consummate chancellor of France. 
 
 As a judge, he was called upon to administer a most 
 extensive jurisdiction, embracing matters which, in 
 England, never come before any single judge ; and in 
 each department he has shown himself second to none 
 
23 
 
 other, unless we unite with him in deferring to Mar- 
 shall as the highest expounder of a branch peculiar to 
 ourselves, constitutional law. Nor will it be easy to 
 mention any judge who has left behind so large a 
 number of opinions which take their place in the first 
 class. It happens to some to excel in a special branch, 
 to which their learning and. labor have been directed. 
 He excelled in all. He was at home in the feudal 
 niceties of real law, with its dependencies of descents, 
 remainders, and executory devises ; also in the hair- 
 splitting technicalities of special pleading,— both crea- 
 tures of an illiterate age, gloomy with black-letter and 
 verbal subtilties ; he employed and expounded with 
 freedom and skill the rules of evidence, the product 
 of a more refined period of juridical history ; he was 
 master of the common law of contracts, of the wide 
 and interesting expanse of commercial law, embracing 
 so large a part of those topics which most concern the 
 business of our age ; he was familiar with the criminal 
 law, which he administered with the learning of a 
 judge and the tenderness of a parent ; he had com- 
 passed the whole circle of chancery, both in its juris- 
 diction and its pleadings, touching, as it does, all the 
 interests of life, and subtilely adapting the common law 
 to our own age ; and he ascended with ease to those 
 heights of jurisprudence, less trod than others, where 
 are extended the open, pleasant demesnes of the 
 admiralty and public law, embracing the law of prize, 
 and that theme into which enters history, the life of 
 man, philosophy, learning, literature, all that human 
 experience has recorded or established, and that Chris- 
 tianity has declared, the Law of Nations. 
 
24 
 
 But it was not as a judge only that he labored. He 
 sought still other means of illustrating the science of 
 the law, and added to the cares of judicial life the 
 responsibilities of an author and a teacher. He was 
 moved to this by his love of the science, by his desire 
 to aid in its elucidation, and by the irrepressible in- 
 stincts of his nature, which found in incessant activity 
 the truest repose. He was of that rare and happy 
 constitution of mind in which occupation is the normal 
 state. He had a genius for labor. Others may moil 
 in the law as constantly as he, but without his loving 
 earnestness of study. What he undertook he always 
 did with his heart, soul, and mind ; not with reluctant, 
 vain compliance, but with his entire nature bent to the 
 task. As in his friendships and in the warmth of soci- 
 ety, so he was in his studies. His heart embraced la- 
 bor, as his hand grasped the hand of friend. 
 
 As a teacher, he should be gratefully remembered 
 here. He was Dane Professor of Law in the Uni- 
 versity. By the attraction of his name students were 
 drawn from the most remote parts of the Union ; and 
 the Law School, which had been a sickly branch, 
 became the golden mistletoe of our ancient oak. Be- 
 sides learning unsurpassed in his profession, which he 
 brought to these duties, he displayed other qualities 
 which are not less important in the character of a 
 teacher, — goodness, benevolence, and a willingness 
 to teach. Only a good man can be a teacher ; only a 
 benevolent man ; only a man willing to teach. He 
 was filled with a desire to teach. He sought to min- 
 gle his mind with that of his pupil. He held it a 
 
25 
 
 blessed office to pour into the souls of the young, as 
 into celestial urns, the sweet waters of knowledge. 
 The kindly enthusiasm of his nature found its re- 
 sponse. The law, which is sometimes supposed to be 
 harsh and crabbed, became inviting under his instruc- 
 tions. Its great principles, drawn from the wells of 
 experience and reflection, from the sacred rules of right 
 and wrong, from the unsounded depths of Christian 
 truth, illustrated by the learning of sages and the 
 judgments of courts, he unfolded so as best to inspire 
 a love for their study, well knowing that the knowl- 
 edge we may impart is trivial, compared with that 
 awakening of the soul under the influence of which 
 the pupil himself becomes a teacher. All of knowl- 
 edge we can communicate is finite ; a few pages, a 
 few chapters, a few volumes, will embrace it ; but 
 such an influence is incalculable in its extent. It is 
 another soul ; it is the breath of a new life. Story 
 taught as a Priest of the law, seeking to consecrate 
 other Priests. In him the spirit spake, not with the 
 voice of an earthly calling, but with the softness, 
 the gentleness, the self-forgetful earnestness of one 
 pleading in behalf of justice, of knowledge, of human 
 happiness. His well-loved pupils hung upon his lips, 
 and, as they left his presence, confessed a more ex- 
 alted reverence for virtue, and a warmer love of 
 knowledge for its own sake. 
 
 The spirit which filled his teachings here inspired 
 his life. He was, in the truest sense of the term, a 
 Jurist, a student and expounder of jurisprudence as a 
 science ; not merely a lawyer or a judge, pursuing it 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 as an art. This distinction, though readily perceived, 
 is not always regarded. 
 
 The members of the profession, whether on the 
 bench or at the bar, rarely send their regards beyond 
 the matter directly before them. The lawyer is too 
 often content with the applause of the court-house, 
 the approbation of clients, " fat contentions and flow- 
 ing fees." Too seldom in his life does he render 
 voluntary aid in the development of any principle 
 which can be felt widely beyond the limited circle in 
 which he moves, or which can help to carry forward 
 or secure the landmarks of justice. The judge, in 
 the discharge of his duty, applies the law to the cases 
 before him. He may do this discreetly, honorably, 
 justly, benignly, in such wise that the community, 
 who have looked to him for justice, shall pronounce 
 his name with gratitude ; — 
 
 " that his bones, 
 When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings, 
 May have a tomb of orphan's tears wept on 'em." * 
 
 But the function of the mere lawyer and judge, 
 both of them practising law, is widely different from 
 that of the jurist, who, whether judge or lawyer, ex- 
 amines every principle in the light of science, and 
 seeks, while he does justice, to widen and confirm the 
 means of justice hereafter. All ages have abounded 
 in lawyers and judges ; there is no church-yard that 
 does not contain their forgotten dust. But the jurist 
 is rare. The judge passes the sentence of the law 
 upon the prisoner at the bar face to face, — but the 
 
 * Henry VIII. , Act 3, Scene 2. 
 
27 
 
 jurist, invisible to mortal sight, jet speaks ; as was 
 said of the Roman law, swaying by the reason, when 
 he has ceased to govern by the living voice. Such a 
 character does not live merely for the present, wheth- 
 er in time or place. He lifts himself alof^:, above its 
 petty temptations, and, yielding neither to the love of 
 gain nor to the seductions of a loud and short-lived 
 praise, perseveres in those serene labors which help 
 to build the mighty dome of justice, beneath which all 
 men are to seek harmonious shelter. 
 
 It is not uncommon to listen to the complaints of 
 lawyers and judges, as they liken their fame to that 
 of the well-graced actor, of whose hold on the public 
 mind only uncertain traces remain, when his voice has 
 ceased to charm. But they labor for the present only. 
 How can they hope to be remembered beyond the 
 present ? They are, for the most part, the instru- 
 ments of a temporary and perishable purpose. How 
 can they hope for the gratitude which attends labors 
 that are imperishable and eternal ? They do nothing 
 for all. How can they think to be remembered beyond 
 the operation of their labors ? So far forth, in time or 
 place, as a man's beneficent influence is felt, so far will 
 he be gratefully commemorated. Happy may he be, 
 if he has done aught to connect his name with the 
 great principles of justice ! 
 
 In the world's history, the lawgivers are among the 
 highest and most godlike characters. They are the 
 reformers of nations. They are the builders of human 
 society. They are the fit companions of the master 
 poets, who fill it with their melody. Man will never 
 forget Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, 
 
28 
 
 Goethe ; nor those other names of creative force, 
 Minos, Solon, Ljcurgus, Numa, Justinian, St. Louis, 
 Napoleon. Each of these is too closely linked to 
 human progress not to be always remembered. 
 
 In their train follow the company of jurists, whose 
 labors have the iaiportance without the form of legis- 
 lation, and who, by their recorded opinions, uttered 
 from the chair of a professor, from the bench of a judge, 
 or, it may be, from the seclusion of private life, con- 
 tinue to rule the nations. Here are Papinian, Tribo- 
 nian, Paulus, Gains, the ancient time-honored mas- 
 ters of the Roman law ; Cujas, its most illustrious ex- 
 pounder in modern times, of whom D'Aguesseau said, 
 " Cujas has spoken the language of the law better 
 than any modern, and perhaps as well as any ancient," 
 and whose renown was such during his life, in the 
 golden age of jurisprudence, that in the public schools 
 of Germany, when his name was mentioned, all took 
 off their hats ; Dumoulin, the relative of Queen 
 Elizabeth of England, and, like his contemporary, 
 Cujas, the pride of France, of whose municipal law 
 he was the most illustrious expounder, — of one of 
 whose books it was said it had accomplished what 
 thirty thousand soldiers of his monarch had failed to 
 do ; Hugo Grotius, the author of that great work, — 
 at times divine, alas ! at other times too much of this 
 earth, — the Laws of Peace and War; Pothier, whose 
 professor's chair was kissed in reverence by pilgrims 
 from afar, who sent forth from his recluse life those 
 treatises which enter so largely into the invaluable 
 codes of France; the crabbed character, Lord Coke, and 
 the silver-tongued magistrate. Lord Mansfield, both 
 
29 
 
 of whom are among the few exemplars which the juris- 
 prudence of the common law may boast in England ; 
 and, descending to our own day, Pardessus, of France, 
 to whom commercial and maritime law^ is under a 
 larger debt, perhaps, than to any single mind ; Thibaut, 
 of Germany, the earnest and successful advocate of a 
 just scheme for the reduction of the unwritten law to 
 the certainty of a written text ; Savigny, who is still 
 spared to us, the great living illustrator of the Roman 
 law ; Romagnosi, that heroic spirit of modern Italy, 
 only lately called before the seat of justice in heaven ; 
 and in our own country, one now happily among us 
 to-day, by his son,* — James Kent, the unquestioned 
 living head of American jurisprudence. These are 
 among the jurists. Let them not be confounded with 
 the lawyer, bustling with forensic success, although in 
 his life, like Dunning, he may have been the arbiter of 
 Westminster Hall, or, like Pinkney, the acknowledged 
 chief of the American bar. The great jurist is high- 
 er far than the lawyer; as Watt, who invented the 
 steam-engine, is higher than the journeyman who feeds 
 its fires and pours oil upon its irritated machinery; 
 as Washington is more exalted than the Swiss who 
 sells the vigor of his arm and the sharpness of his spear 
 to the largest bidder. 
 
 The lawyer is the honored artisan of the law. He 
 may be surrounded with all the tokens of worldly suc- 
 cess, filling the mind, perhaps, wdth visions destined 
 
 * Hon. William Kent, recently appointed Roy all Professor of Law in 
 Harvard University. 
 
30 
 
 early to be dispersed; but his labors are on the things 
 of to-day. His name is written on the sandy margin 
 of the sounding sea, soon to be washed away by the 
 embossed foam of the tyrannous wave. Not so is the 
 jurist's. His is inscribed high on the immortal tablets 
 of the law. The ceaseless flow of ages does not wear 
 away their indestructible front ; the hour-glass of time 
 refuses to measure the period of their duration. 
 
 It is into the company of jurists that Story has now 
 passed. It is this which secures him a place, not only 
 in the history of his country, but in all history. It was 
 a saying of his, often uttered in the confidence of 
 friendship, that a man is to be measured by the horizon 
 of his mind, whether it embraced the village, town, 
 county, or state in which he lived, or the whole broad 
 country, ay, the circumference of the world. In this 
 spirit he lived and wrought, elevating himself above 
 the present, both in time and place, and always find- 
 ing in jurisprudence an absorbing interest. Only a 
 few days before the illness which ended in his death, 
 it was suggested to him, in conversation with regard 
 to his life, on his intended retirement from the bench, 
 that a wish had been expressed by many to see him a 
 candidate for the highest political office of the country. 
 He replied at once, spontaneously, and without hesi- 
 tation, " That the station of President of the United 
 States would not tempt him from his professor's chair, 
 and the calm pursuit of jurisprudence." Thus spoke 
 the Jurist. As a lawyer, a judge, a professor, he was 
 always a jurist. While administering justice between 
 parties, he sought to extract from their cause the ele- 
 
31 
 
 merits of future justice, and to advance the science of 
 the law. He staaiped upon his judgments a value 
 which is not restrained to the occasions on which they 
 w^ere pronounced. Unlike mere medals, of importance 
 to certain private parties only, they have the currency 
 of the gold coin of the republic, with the legend and 
 superscription of sovereignty, wherever they go, even 
 in foreign lands. 
 
 Many years before his death, his judgments in mat- 
 ters of Admiralty and Prize had arrested the attention 
 of that illustrious judge and jurist. Lord Stowell ; and 
 Sir James Mackintosh, a name emblazoned by literature 
 and jurisprudence, had said of them, that they were 
 ** justly admired by all cultivators of the Law of Na- 
 tions."^ His words have often been cited as authori- 
 ty in Westminster Hall, a tribute of unwonted char- 
 acter to a foreign jurist ;t and the Chief Justice of Eng- 
 land has made the remarkable declaration, with regard 
 to a point on which Story had differed from the Queen's 
 Bench, that his opinion would, " at least, neutralize 
 
 * Letter of Sir James Mackintosh to the Honorable Edward Everett, 
 dated June 3, 1824. 
 
 f This might be illustrated by many references to the English Reports. 
 The following extract is from a letter of William Bnrge, Esq., Q. C, 
 author of the learned and elaborate Commentaries on Colonial and Foreign 
 Law, addressed to Professor Greenleaf, dated April 1, 1843. "The 
 name of Story has shed so much lustre on the jurisprudence of his own 
 country and that of Europe, that I can never adequately express my 
 share of the obligations he has conferred on both. Our judges cite him 
 with language denoting their high respect for his talents and learning. 
 I have found in all his writings more to satisfy minute inquiries and im- 
 part the fullest information than I can ever meet with anywhere else. 
 May that great and good man be long spared to us ! " 
 
32 
 
 the effect of the English decision, and induce any of 
 their courts to consider the question as an open one." * 
 In debate, in the House of Lords, Lord Campbell 
 characterized him as " greater than any law-writer of 
 which England could boast, or which she could bring 
 forward, since the days of Blackstone " ; f and, in a 
 letter to our departed brother, the same distinguished 
 magistrate said, — *' I survey, with increased aston- 
 ishment, your extensive, minute, exact, and familiar 
 knowledge of English legal writers in every depart- 
 ment of the law. A similar testimony to your juridical 
 learning, I make no doubt, would be offered by the 
 lawyers of France and Germany, as well as of Amer- 
 ica, and we should all concur in placing you at the 
 head of the jurists of the present age." J His author- 
 ity was acknowledged in France and in Germany, the 
 classic lands of jurisprudence ; ^ nor is it too much 
 
 * Letter of Lord Denman to Charles Sumner, dated September 29, 
 1840. The case to which Lord Denman referred was that of Peters v. 
 The Warren Insurance Company, 3 Sumner's Rep. 389, where Mr. 
 Justice Story dissented from the case of Devaux v. Salvador, 4 Adolph. 
 & Ellis, 420. 
 
 f Speech on Lord Brougham's motion of thanks to Lord Ashburton, 
 April 7, 1843. 
 
 I Letter of Lord Campbell to Mr. Justice Story, dated September 29, 
 1842. 
 
 § His works were reviewed, with high praise, in the Eevue Etrangere 
 of Foelix, at Paris, and in the Kritische Zeitschrift fur Rechlsioissenschafi 
 und Gesetzgehung of Mittermaier, at Heidelberg. Some of them were 
 translated into French and German ; and that eminent jurist, Savigny, 
 at Berlin, said of him, in a letter to Theodore S. Fay, Esq., dated 
 November 28, 1841, — " Depuis longtemps je connais et estime votre 
 savant compatriote comme un homme qui fait le plus grand honneur a 
 sa double patrie,je veux dire ^ PAmirique et ii la jurisprudence.^^ 
 
33 
 
 to say, that, at the moment of his death, he enjoyed a 
 renown such as had never before been achieved, during 
 life, by any jmist of the common law. 
 
 In mentioning these things, I merely state facts, 
 without intending presumptuously to assert for our 
 brother any precedence in the scale of eminent jurists. 
 The extent of his fame is a fact. But it will not be 
 forgotten that the cultivators of the common law have 
 been hitherto confined to a narrow and insular repu- 
 tation. Even its great master has received no higher 
 designation on the Continent than quidam Cocus, a 
 certain Coke. 
 
 In the common law was the spirit of freedom ; 
 in that of the Continent the spirit of science. The 
 common law has given to the world the trial by 
 jury, the writ of habeas corpus, the system of parlia- 
 mentary representation, the rules and orders of debate, 
 and that benign principle which pronounces that its 
 air is too pure for a slave to breathe, — perhaps the 
 five most important political establishments of modern 
 times. From the Continent has been derived the 
 important impulse to the systematic study, arrange- 
 ment, and development of the law, — the example of 
 Law Schools and of Codes. 
 
 Story was bred in the common law ; but while ad- 
 miring its vital principles of freedom, he felt how much 
 it would gain, if illumined by the torch of science, 
 and the light of other systems of jurisprudence. Much 
 of the later labors of his life was specially devoted to 
 this object ; and under his hands, we behold the be- 
 ginning of a new study, the science of Comparative 
 
 5 
 
s^ 
 
 Jurisprudence, kindred to those other departments of 
 knowledge which are at once the token and the har- 
 binger of the peaceful association of nations. 
 
 I need not add that he emulated the Law Schools 
 of the Continent ; " as ever witness for him " this seat 
 of learning.* 
 
 On more than one occasion, he urged, with conclu- 
 sive force, the importance, in our age, of reducing our 
 unwritten law to the certainty of a Code, compiling 
 and bringing into one body those fragments which are 
 now scattered, like the dissevered limbs of Osiris, in all 
 directions, through the pages of many thousand vol- 
 umes.t His views on this high subject, while they 
 were widely different from those of John Locke and 
 Jeremy Bentham, — both of whom seem to have sup- 
 posed themselves able to clothe a people in a new 
 code as in fresh garments, — would, probably, be found 
 to be in harmony with those now generally adopted by 
 the jurists of the continent of Europe, and not unlike 
 those expressed in an earlier age by Bacon and Leib- 
 nitz, the two greatest intellects that have ever been 
 applied to topics of jurisprudence. J 
 
 * It is said, that Wolsey, to whom Ipswich and Oxford, " those twins 
 of learning," one of which fell with hina, were so much indebted, wished 
 also to establish a Law School ; but this has not yet been done in Eng- 
 land. — Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, Vol. I., p. 500. 
 
 f Encyclopaedia Americana, article Laiv, Legislation, Codes, Appen- 
 dix to Vol. VIL, pp. 586-592; Report of the Commissioners of Mas- 
 sachusetts on the Codification of the Common Law ; American Jurist, 
 Vol. XVIL,p. 17. 
 
 f See Bacon's Offer to King James of a Digest of the Laws of Eng- 
 land; Leibnitz, Opera, Epist. XV. ad Kestnerum, Tom. IV., Pars 4, p. 
 269; Ratio Corporis Juris reconcinnandi, Tom. IV., Pars 3, p. 235. 
 
35 
 
 In this catholic spirit he showed the attribute of a 
 superior mind. He loved the law with a lover's fond- 
 ness, but not with a lover's blindness. He could not 
 join with those devotees of the common law by whom 
 it has been entitled " the perfection of reason," an 
 anachronism as great as the assumed infallibility of the 
 Pope ; as if perfection or infallibility were to be found 
 in this life. He was naturally led, in a becoming 
 temper, to contemplate its amendment ; and here is 
 revealed the character of the Jurist, not content with 
 the present, but thoughtful of the future. In a letter 
 from him, which has been pubUshed since his death,* 
 he refers, with sorrow, to '' what is but too common 
 in our profession, a disposition to resist innovation, 
 even when it is an improvement." It is only an ele- 
 vated mind, that, having mastered the subtilties of the 
 law, is willing to reform them. 
 
 And now, farewell to thee. Jurist, Master, Bene- 
 factor, Friend ! May thy spirit continue to inspire 
 a love for the science of the law ! May thy example 
 be ever fresh in the minds of the young, beaming, as 
 in life, with encouragement, kindness, and hope ! 
 
 From the grave of the Jurist, at Mount Auburn, let 
 us walk to that of the Artist, who sleeps beneath 
 the protecting arms of those trees which cast their 
 shadow into this church. Washington Allston died 
 in the month of July, 1843, aged sixty-three, having 
 reached the grand climacteric, that special mile-stone 
 
 * Addressed to the Principal of the Dublin Law Institution, dated May 
 15, 1844. 
 
3a 
 
 on the road of life. It was Saturday night ; the 
 cares of the week were over; the pencil and brush 
 were laid in repose ; the great canvass on which for 
 many years he had sought to perpetuate the image 
 of Daniel confronting the idolatrous soothsayers of 
 Belshazzar, was left, with the chalk lines designating 
 the labors to be resumed after the rest of the Sab- 
 bath ; the evening was passed in the pleasant con- 
 verse of family and friends; words of benediction 
 had fallen from his lips upon a beloved relative ; all 
 had retired for the night, leaving him alone, in health, 
 to receive serenely the visitation of Death, sudden but 
 not unprepared for. Happy lot ! thus to be borne 
 away, with blessings on the lips, not through the 
 long valley of disease, amidst the sharpness of pain, 
 and the darkness that beclouds the slowly departing 
 spirit, but straight upward through realms of light, 
 swiftly, yet gently, as on the wings of a dove ! 
 
 The early shades of evening had be^un to prevail, 
 before the body of the Artist reached its last resting- 
 place ; and the solemn service of the church was read 
 in the open air, by the flickering flame of a torch, fit 
 image of life. In the group of mourners, who bore by 
 their presence a last tribute to what was mortal in 
 him of whom so much was immortal, stood the great 
 Jurist. His soul, overflowing with tenderness and 
 appreciation of merit of all kinds, was touched by the 
 scene. In vivid words, as he slowly left the church- 
 yard, he poured forth his admiration and his grief. 
 Never was such an Artist mourned by such a Jurist. 
 
 Of AUston may we repeat the words in which 
 
37 
 
 Burke has commemorated his friend Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds, when he sajs, — " He was the first who added 
 the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his 
 country." * An ingenious English writer, who sees Art 
 at once with the eye of taste and humanity, has said, 
 in a recent publication on our Artist : — "It seemed to 
 me, that in him America had lost her third great man. 
 What Washington was as a statesman, Channing as a 
 moralist, that was Allston as an Artist." f 
 
 And here again we discern the inseparable link be- 
 tween character and works. Allston was a good man, 
 with a soul refined by purity, exalted by religion, soft- 
 ened by love. In manner, he was simple, yet courtly, 
 — quiet, though anxious to please, — kindly alike to 
 all, the poor and lowly, not less than to the rich and 
 great, — a modest, unpretending, Christian gentle- 
 man. As he spoke, in that voice of softest utterance, 
 all were charmed to listen, and the airy-footed hours 
 often tripped on far tow^ards the gates of morning, 
 before his friends could break from his spell. His 
 character is transfigured in his works; and the Artist 
 is always inspired by the man. 
 
 His life was consecrated to Art. He lived to dif- 
 fuse Beauty, as a writer, as a poet, as a painter. As 
 an expounder of the principles of his art, he will take 
 a place with Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Durer, Joshua 
 Reynolds, and Fuseli. His theory of painting, as de- 
 veloped in his still unpublished discourses, and in that 
 tale of rare beauty, " Monaldi," is an instructive 
 
 * Prior's Life of Burke, Vol. IL, pp. 189, 190. 
 j- Mrs. Jameson's Memoirs and Essays. 
 
38 
 
 memorial of his conscientious studies. In the small 
 group of painter-poets — poets by the double title of 
 the pencil and the pen — he holds an honored place. 
 He was pronounced, by no less a judge than Southej, 
 to be one of the first poets of the age. His ode on 
 England and America, one of the choicest lyrics in 
 the language, is immeasurably superior to the satiri- 
 cal verse of Salvator Rosa, and may claim compan- 
 ionship with the remarkable sonnets of Michel An- 
 gelo. 
 
 In his youth, while yet a pupil of the University, his 
 busy fingers found pleasure in drawing, and there 
 is still preserved, in the records of one of our soci- 
 eties, a pen-and-ink sketch from his hand. Shortly 
 after leaving Cambridge, he repaired to Europe, in the 
 pursuit of his art. At Paris were then collected the 
 great masterpieces of painting and sculpture, the 
 spoils of unholy war, robbed from their native galle- 
 ries and churches, to swell the pomp of the imperial 
 capital. There our Artist devoted his days to the 
 diligent study of his chosen profession, particularly 
 the department of drawing, so important to accurate 
 art. Alluding to these thorough labors at a later day, 
 he said, " he worked like a mechanic." Perhaps 
 to these may be referred his singular excellence in 
 that necessary, but neglected branch, which is to Art 
 what Grammar is to language. Grammar and Design 
 are treated by Aristotle as on a level.* 
 
 Turning his back upon Paris, and the greatness of 
 
 * Politics, V. 3. 
 
39 
 
 the Empire, he directed his steps to Italy, the en- 
 chanted ground of literature, of history, and of art, — 
 strown with richest memorials of the Past, — touching 
 from scenes memorable in the story of the progress of 
 man, — teaching by the pages of philosophers and his- 
 torians, — vocal with the melody of poets, — ringing 
 with the music which St. Cecilia protects, — glowing 
 with the living marble and canvass, — beneath a sky 
 of heavenly purity and brightness, — w^ith the sunsets 
 which Claude has painted, — parted by the Apennines, 
 early witnesses of the unrecorded Etruscan civiliza- 
 tion, — surrounded by the snow-capped Alps and the 
 blue, classic waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The 
 deluge of war, which submerged Europe, had here 
 subsided ; and our Artist took up his peaceful abode 
 in Rome, the modern home of Art. Strange change 
 of condition ! Rome, sole surviving city of An- 
 tiquity, who once disdained all that could be wrought 
 by the cunning hand of sculpture, — 
 
 " Excudent alii^spirantia mollius aera, 
 Credo equidem : vivos ducent de marmore vultus,"* — 
 
 who has commanded the world by her arms, by her 
 jurisprudence, by her church, now sways it further 
 by her arts. Pilgrims from afar, where neither her 
 eagles, her praetors, nor her interdicts ever reached, 
 become the willing subjects of this new empire ; and 
 the Vatican, stored with the precious remains of An- 
 tiquity, and the touching creations of a Christian 
 pencil, has succeeded to the Vatican whose thunders 
 intermingled with the strifes of modern Europe. 
 
 * iEneis, VI., 847. 
 
 4- 
 
40 
 
 At Rome he was happy in the friendship of Cole- 
 ridge, and in long walks in his instructive company. 
 We can well imagine that the author of Genevieve 
 and The Ancient Mariner would find especial sympa- 
 thies with Allston. We behold these two natures, 
 tremblingly alive to beauty of all kinds, looking to- 
 gether upon those majestic ruins, upon the manifold 
 accumulations of Art, upon the marble, which almost 
 spoke, and upon the warmer canvass, — listening to- 
 gether to the flow of the perpetual fountains, fed by 
 ancient aqueducts, — musing together in the Forum on 
 the mighty footprints of History, — and entering to- 
 gether, with sympathetic awe, that grand Christian 
 church whose dome rises a majestic symbol of the 
 comprehensive Christianity which shall embrace the 
 whole earth. "Never judge of a work of art by its 
 defects," was one of the lessons of Coleridge to his 
 companion, which, when extended, by natural ex- 
 pansion, to the other things of life, is a sentiment 
 of justice and charity, of higher value than a statue 
 of Praxiteles, or a picture of Raffael. 
 
 In England, where our Artist passed several years 
 at a later period, his intercourse with Coleridge was 
 renewed, and he became the friend and companion of 
 Lamb and Wordsworth also. Afterwards, on his re- 
 turn to his own country, he spoke with fondness of 
 these men, and dwelt with delight upon their genius 
 and virtues. 
 
 In considering more particularly his character as an 
 Artist, we should regard his attainments in three dif- 
 ferent respects, — drawing, color, and expression, or 
 
41 
 
 sentiment. It has already been seen that he had de- 
 voted himself with uncommon zeal to drawing. His 
 works bear witness to this excellence. There are 
 chalk outlines, sketched on canvass by him, which 
 are as clear and definite as any thing from the classic 
 touch of Flaxman. 
 
 'His excellence in color was remarkable. This 
 seeming mystery, which is a distinguishing charac- 
 teristic of the artists of different schools, periods, and 
 countries, is not unlike that of language or style in 
 literature. Color is to the painter what words are to 
 the author ; and as the writers of one age or place 
 arrive at a peculiar mastery in the use of language, 
 so the artists of a particular period excel in color. 
 It would be difficult to account satisfactorily for the 
 rich idiom suddenly assumed by our English tongue 
 in the contemporaneous prose of Bacon, Hooker, and 
 Jeremy Taylor, and in the unapproached variety of 
 Shakspeare. It might be as difficult to account for 
 the unequalled tints which shone on the canvass of 
 Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and Titian, masters of 
 what is called the Venetian School. The ignorance 
 of some inquirers has referred these glories to con- 
 cealed or lost artistic rules in the combination of 
 colors ; not thinking that it can be traced only to a 
 peculiar native talent for color, as there is a native 
 talent for language, which was prompted to its display 
 by circumstances difficult at this late period fully to 
 determine. As it happens that some persons possess 
 a peculiar and unbought fehcity and copiousness of 
 words, without an accurate knowledge of grammar, 
 
42 
 
 so there are artists excelling in rich and splendid 
 colors, but ignorant of drawing ; while, on the other 
 hand, accurate drawing is sometimes coldly clad by 
 weak or imperfect colors. 
 
 Allston was largely endowed by nature with the 
 talent for color, which was strongly developed under 
 the influence of Italian art. While in Rome, he was 
 remarked for his excellence in this respect, and re- 
 ceived from the German painters who were there the 
 high title of the American Titian.* Critics of authority 
 have said that the clearness and vigor of his coloring 
 approached that of the elder masters.f It was rich 
 and harmonious as the verses of the Fairy Queen, 
 and was uniformly soft, mellow, and appropriate, with- 
 out the garish brilliancy of the modern French school, 
 which in its disturbing influence calls to mind the 
 saying of the blind man, that red resembled the notes 
 of a trumpet. 
 
 He aflected no secret or mystery in the preparation 
 of colors. What he knew he was ready to impart 
 to others ; his genius he could not impart. With the 
 simple pigments, accessible alike to all, he reproduced, 
 with glowing brush, the tints of nature. All that his 
 eyes looked upon furnished a lesson ; the flowers of 
 the field, the foliage of the forest, the sunset glories 
 of our western horizon, the transparent azure above 
 us, the blackness of the storm, the soft gray of twi- 
 
 * Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design, Vol. 11. , p. 167; Mrs. 
 Jameson's Memoirs and Sketches. 
 
 f Bunsen, Beschreibung- der Stadt Rom., Vol. I., p. 538. Article 
 on Modern Art, by K. Platner. 
 
43 
 
 light, the haze of an Indian summer, the human 
 countenance animate with thought and emotion, — and 
 that finest color in nature, according to the ancient 
 Greek, the blush of an ingenuous youth. These 
 were the sources from which he drew. With a dis- 
 cerning spirit he mixed them on his pallet, and with 
 the eye of sympathy saw them again on his can- 
 vass. 
 
 But richness of coloring, superadded to accuracy of 
 drawing, cannot secure the highest place in Art. The 
 expression, the sentiment, the thought, the soul, which 
 sits on the canvass, is not less important than that 
 which animates the printed page or beams from the 
 human countenance. The mere imitation of inani- 
 mate nature belongs to the humbler schools of art. 
 The skill of Zeuxis, which drew the birds to peck at 
 the grapes on his canvass, and the triumph of Par- 
 rhasius, who deceived his rival by a painted curtain, 
 cannot compare with those pictures which seem 
 articulate with all the various voices of humanity. 
 The highest form of art is that which represents man 
 in the highest scenes and under the influence of the 
 highest sentiments. And that quality, or character- 
 istic, which has been sometimes called expression, is 
 the highest element of art. It is this which gives to 
 RafFael, who yields to Titian in color, such an emi- 
 nence among artists. His soul was brimming with 
 sympathies, which his cunning hand has kept alive in 
 immortal pictures. Here the eye, the mouth, the coun- 
 tenance, the whole composition, has life, — not the 
 life of mere imitation, copied from common nature, 
 
44 
 
 but elevated, softened, purified, idealized. As we 
 behold his works, we forget the colors in which they 
 are robed ; we gaze, as at living forms ; and seem to 
 look behind the painted screen of flesh into living 
 souls. A genius, so largely endowed with the Pro- 
 methean fire, has not unaptly been called Divine. 
 
 It was said by Plato, that nothing is beautiful, 
 which is not morally good. But this is not a faultless 
 proposition. Beauty is of all kinds and degrees, as it 
 is everywhere, beneath the celestial canopy, in us 
 and about us. It is that completeness or finish of any 
 thing, which gives pleasure to the mind. It is to be 
 found in the color of a flower and in the accuracy 
 of geometry, in an act of self-sacrifice and in the 
 rhythm of a poem, in the virtues of humanity and 
 in the marvels of the visible w^orld, in the meditations 
 of a solitary soul and in the stupendous mechanism 
 of civil society. There is beauty where there is nei- 
 ther life nor morality ; but the highest form of beauty 
 is in the perfection of our moral nature. 
 
 The highest beauty of expression is a grace of 
 Christian art. It flows from the sensibilities, affec- 
 tion s, and struggles which are peculiar to the Christian 
 character. It breathes purity, gentleness, meekness, 
 patience, tenderness, peace. It abhors pride, vain- 
 glory, selfishness, intemperance, lust, war. How ce- 
 lestial is this, compared with the grace which dwells 
 in the perfection of form and color only ! The beauty 
 of ancient art found its highest expression in the fault- 
 less form of Aphrodite rising from the sea,* and in the 
 
 * Ovid, Tristia, Lib. H., 527. 
 
45 
 
 majestic mien of Juno, with snow-white arms, and 
 rojal robes, seated on a throne of gold ; * not in the 
 soul-lit countenance of her who watched the infant in 
 his manger-cradle, and throbbed with a mother's ecsta- 
 sies beneath the agonies of the cross. 
 
 Allston was a Christian artist, and the beauty of 
 expression lends an uncommon charm to his colors. 
 All that he did shows sensibility, refinement, delicacy, 
 feeling, rather than force. His genius was almost 
 feminine. As he advanced in life, this was more re- 
 marked. His pictures became more and more instinct 
 with those higher sentiments which form the truest 
 glory of Art. 
 
 Early in life, he had a fondness for pieces repre- 
 senting banditti ; but this taste does not appear in his 
 later works. On more than one occasion, he expressed 
 a disinclination to paint battle-pieces. In so doing, his 
 artistic taste, which did not separate morality from art, 
 unconsciously judged the morality of the picture. Lu- 
 cretius has said, in often quoted lines, that it is pleas- 
 ant, when removed beyond the reach of danger, to 
 behold the shock of contending armies : — 
 
 " Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli, 
 Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri." f 
 
 But this is a heathen sentiment, which Christianity 
 
 * Martial, Lib. X., Epig. 89. 
 
 f Lib. IL 5. The Greek epigrammatist, describing the Philoctetes of 
 Parrhasius, an image of hopeless wretchedness and consuming grief, 
 rises to a higher sentiment, when he says, — 
 
 " We blame thee, painter, though thy art commend : 
 'T was time his sufferings with himself should end." 
 
 Anthol., Lib. IV. 
 
and humanity disown. The artist of purest aims feeis 
 that no scene of human strife can find a place in the 
 highest art ; that man, created in the image of God, 
 should never be pictured degrading, profaning, vio- 
 lating that sacred image. 
 
 Were this sentiment general in art and literature, 
 w^ar would be shorn of its false glory. Let our poets, 
 our historians, our orators, join with the Artist, in say- 
 ing, JVb battle-piece. Let them cease to dwell, except 
 with pain and reprobation, upon those dismal exhibi- 
 tions of human passion, in which the lives of friends 
 are devoted, to procure the death of enemies. Let no 
 Christian pen, let no Christian tongue, dignify, by 
 praise or picture, scenes from which God averts his 
 eye. It is true, man has slain his fellow-man ; armies 
 have rushed in deadly shock against armies ; the blood 
 of brothers has been spilled. These are facts which 
 history must enter sorrowfully, tearfully, in her faithful 
 record ; but let her not perpetuate the passions from 
 which they sprung, by investing them with her attrac- 
 tions. Let her dwell, with eulogy and pride, on those 
 acts which are noble, true, Christ-like in their charac- 
 ter. Let these be preserved by the votive canvass and 
 marble. But no battle-pieces ! 
 
 In the progress of moral truth, the animal passions, 
 which degrade our nature, are, by degrees, checked 
 and subdued. The license of lust, and the brutality 
 of intemperance, which mark the periods of a civiliza- 
 tion inferior to our own, are now driven from public 
 displays. Art faithfully reflects the character of the 
 age, and libertinism and intemperance now no longer 
 
47 
 
 intrude their obscene faces in any of its pictures. The 
 time is at hand when rehgion, humanity, and taste 
 will all concur in likewise rejecting any representation 
 of human strife. Lais and Phryne have fled; Bac- 
 chus and Silenus have been driven reeling from the 
 scene. Mars will soon follow, howling, as with the 
 wound which he received from the Grecian spear, in 
 the field before Troy. 
 
 In the grand mission of teaching to nations and to 
 individuals wherein is true greatness, Art has a noble 
 office to perform. If she be not a herald, she is at 
 least a handmaid, of Truth. Her lessons may not train 
 the intellect, but they cannot fail to touch the heart. 
 Who can measure the blessed influence of an image of 
 beauty, aflection, and truth? The Christus Conso- 
 lator of SchefFer, voiceless and without a word, wins 
 the soul to the Christian graces, and makes it overflow 
 with gratitude to the artist. It is only works which, 
 like this, are animated by the godlike part of our na- 
 ture, that can hope for a wide immortality. The 
 flowers which spring from the bad passions of man 
 must fade and be forgotten, even as the perishing 
 flowers of this earth ; while those which are inspired 
 by the heavenly sentiments shall live in perennial, 
 amaranthine bloom. The Hall of Battles, at Ver- 
 sailles, in which Louis Philippe, the great conser- 
 vator of peace, has arrayed, on acres of canvass, the 
 bloody contests which disfigure the long history of 
 France, will be shut, with mortification and shame, 
 by a generation that shall appreciate the true glory 
 of the kingdom. 
 
48 
 
 Allston loved excellence for its own sake. He 
 looked down upon the common strife for worldly con- 
 sideration. With rare beauty of truth and expression, 
 he said, that " Fame is the eternal shadow of excel- 
 lence, from which it can never be separated." Here 
 is revealed a volume, prompting to high thought and 
 action, not for the sake of glory, but to advance our- 
 selves in knowledge, in virtue, in excellence of all 
 kinds. Our Artist has here given a fresh utterance to 
 that sentiment which is the highest grace in the life of 
 that great magistrate, Lord Mansfield, when, confes- 
 sing the attractions of popularity, he said, it was that 
 which followed, not which was followed after. 
 
 As we contemplate the life and works of Allston, 
 we are inexpressibly grateful that he lived. His ex- 
 ample is one of our most precious possessions. And 
 yet, while we rejoice that he has done much, we 
 seem to hear a whisper that he might have done 
 more. His productions suggest a higher genius than 
 they fully display ; and we are sometimes disposed to 
 praise the master rather than his works. Like a be- 
 loved character in English literature, Sir James Mack- 
 intosh, he suddenly closed a career of beautiful but 
 fragmentary labors, leaving much undone which all 
 had hoped he would do. The great painting which 
 had haunted so many years of his life, and which his 
 friends and country awaited with anxious interest, 
 remained unfinished at last. His Virgilian sensibili- 
 ty and modesty would doubtless have ordered its de- 
 struction, had death arrested him less suddenly.* 
 
 • The accomplished artist, Mr. West, now in Boston, has kindly fur- 
 
49 
 
 Titian died, leaving, like Allston, an important picture, 
 on which his hand had been busy down to the time 
 of his death, still incomplete. A pious and dis- 
 tinguished pupil, the younger Palma, took up the la- 
 
 nished me with the following sketch of his impressions of this picture : — 
 *' For many years, I had heard of the picture, in progress, of Bel- 
 shazzar's Feast, by Washington Allston. Upon his death, I was informed 
 of the defaced condition in which he had left it, and, finally, of its resto- 
 ration to its present state ; and among the many descriptions given me of 
 it, as it is, there were none very flattering to his reputation. My surprise 
 and pleasure were the greater, upon seeing it, — as it is, certainly, as far 
 as it is wrought, one of the finest pictures I ever saw, I have looked at 
 it again and again, and feel confident I am not mistaken in rating it as I 
 do. There is much more of the picture finished than strikes one at first 
 view ; the few unfinished figures in the foreground A^eiling, as it were, the 
 excellence, beauty, and amount of that which is completed. The whole 
 of the background and middle ground, or the figures next in size and ad- 
 junct to the principal figures, appear to be finished, and that with a care 
 and completeness that are surprising. His concern was everywhere upon 
 the picture, and the detail which pervades the whole surface of the can- 
 vass makes every inch of it teem with the subject; and this too, strange 
 to say, without the least detriment to that required breadth that no fine 
 picture must want. ' In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's 
 hand and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the 
 wall of the king's palace,' &c. This is the time chosen for the picture. 
 Of the figures in the foreground, the queen is the only one that is fin- 
 ished, or very nearly so. Her attitude, her intently fixed look of awe and 
 grief at the writing on the wall, her convulsive gripe of the hand of an 
 attendant immediately behind her, while she hears the prophet's doom, 
 the expression in the faces of the two attendants, is one of the finest and 
 most powerful passages of art I ever saw committed to canvass. It ex- 
 hibits the drawing of Raffael with the coloring of Titian. On the right 
 hand of the picture, as you stand before it, below the unfinished astrolo- 
 gers in the foreground, is a group of figures, mostly in shadow, some 
 bending low in reverence of the prophet, — which for color, drawing, and 
 execution, altogether, is of unsurpassable beauty. The artist aimed to 
 make it a perfect picture ; and, if we may judge by the evidence already 
 adduced, the trial would have terminated very much like a verdict in his 
 favor." 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 bor of his master, and, on completing it, placed it in 
 the church for which it was destined, with this in- 
 scription : — " That which Titian left unfinished Pal- 
 ma reverently completed, and dedicated the work to 
 God." Where is the Palma who can complete what 
 our Titian has left unfinished ? 
 
 Let us now reverently approach the grave of the 
 brother whom, in order of time, we were called to 
 mourn first. William Ellery Channing, the Phi- 
 lanthropist, died in the month of October, 1842, 
 aged sixty-two. It is by an easy transition that we 
 pass from Allston to Channing. They were friends and 
 connections. The monumental stone which marks the 
 last resting-place of the Philanthropist was designed 
 by the Artist. In physical organization they were not 
 unlike, each possessing a fineness of fibre which hard- 
 ly belongs to the Anglo-Saxon stock. There were in 
 both the same sensibility, delicacy, refinement, and 
 truth, illumined by highest aims ; and the coloring of 
 Allston finds a parallel in the Venetian richness of 
 the style of Channing. 
 
 I do not speak of him as the Divine, although his 
 labors might well have earned that title also. It is 
 probable that no single mind in our age has exerted a 
 greater influence over theological opinions. But I pass 
 these by, without presuming to indicate their charac- 
 ter. It were far better, on this occasion, to dwell on 
 those Christian labors which should not fail to find 
 favor alike in all churches, whether at Rome, Geneva, 
 Canterbury, or Boston. 
 
51 
 
 His beneficent influence has been widely felt and 
 acknowledged. His words have been heard and read 
 by thousands, in all conditions of life, and in various 
 lands, whose hearts have been touched with gratitude 
 towards the meek and eloquent upholder of divine 
 truth. An American traveller, at a small village on 
 one of the terraces of the Alps, in the Austrian Tyrol, 
 encountered a German, who, hearing that his com- 
 panion was from Boston, inquired earnestly after 
 Channing, — saying, that the difficulty of learning the 
 English language had been adequately repaid by the 
 delight of his writings. A distinguished stranger, 
 when about to visit this country, was told by a relative 
 not less lovely in character than exalted in condition, 
 that she envied him his journey, " for two objects that 
 he would not fail to see, — Niagara and Channing." 
 We have already observed, that a critic of art has 
 placed him in a grand American triumvirate with 
 Allston and Washington.* More frequently, he has 
 been associated with Washington and Franklin ; but, 
 unlike Washington, he had no ensigns of command ; 
 unlike Franklin, he was never elevated to the pin- 
 nacle of foreign office. It is probable that since them 
 no American has exerted an equal influence over his 
 fellow-men. And yet, if it be asked what single 
 important measure he has carried to a successful 
 close, I could not answer. It is on character that 
 he has wrought and is still producing incalculable 
 changes. 
 
 * Mrs. Jameson's Memoirs and Sketches. 
 
52 
 
 From the retirement of his study he has spoken to 
 the nations and to mankind, in a voice which has made 
 itself heard in the most distant places, and whose in- 
 fluence, pleading the cause of gendeness, of right- 
 eousness, and of peace, is felt by thousands on 
 whose souls has never fallen either his spoken or 
 written word. He is the herald of a new and greater 
 age than any yet seen in the world's history, when 
 the Sword shall yield to the Pen, when the Gorgon 
 countenance of Force, hardening all that it looks 
 upon, shall be dazzled into imbecility by the efful- 
 gence of Christian Truth. While he lived, he was 
 ever, through good report and evil report, the cham- 
 pion of Humanity. " Follow my white plume," said 
 the chivalrous monarch of France, as he plunged 
 into the thickest of the vulg-ar fight. '' Follow the 
 Right," more resplendent than plume or oriflamme, 
 was the watchword of Channing. 
 
 I have called him the Philanthropist, the lover of 
 man, — the title of highest honor on earth. " I take 
 goodness in this sense," says Lord Bacon, " the offecU 
 ing of the weal of men, which is what the Grecians 
 
 call Philanthropeia This of all virtues and 
 
 dignities of the mind is the greatest, being the char- 
 acter of the Deity ; and without it man is a busy, 
 mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind 
 of vermin." * Lord Bacon was right. Confessing 
 the attractions of Scholarship, awed by the majesty 
 of the Law, fascinated by the beauty of Art, our souls 
 bend with involuntary reverence before the angelic 
 
 * Essays, Of Goodness. 
 
53 
 
 nature that seeks the good of his fellow-man. It is 
 through him that God speaks. On him has de- 
 scended in especial measure his divine spirit. God is 
 love, and man most nearly resembles him in his 
 diffusive benevolence. In heaven, we are told, the 
 first place or degree is given to the angels of love, 
 who are termed Seraphim ; the second to the angels 
 of light, who are termed Cherubim. 
 
 It must be confessed with sorrow, that the time 
 has not yet come, when even his exalted labors of 
 benevolence can find equal acceptance with all men. 
 And now, as I undertake to speak of them in this 
 presence, I seem to tread on half-buried cinders. I 
 shall tread fearlessly ; trusting to be loyal to the 
 occasion, to my subject, and to myself. In the 
 language of my own profession, I shall not travel 
 out of the record; but I trust to be true to 
 the record. It is fit that his name should be affec- 
 tionately commemorated here. He was one of us. 
 He was a son of the University, and for many 
 years connected with its government as a teacher, 
 and as a Fellow of the Corporation. To him, more, 
 perhaps, than to any other person, is she indebted 
 for her most distinctive opinions. His name is indis- 
 solubly connected with hers ; — 
 
 " And when thy ruins shall disclaim 
 To be the treasure of his name, 
 His name, that cannot fade, shall be 
 An everlasting monument to thee."* 
 
 * Ben Jonson's inscription for the " pious marble " in honor of Dray 
 ton. 
 
54 
 
 I have called him the Philanthropist ; he might also 
 be called the Moralist, for he was the high ex- 
 pounder of human duties ; but his exposition of duties 
 was no common service in the cause of humanity. 
 His morality, etherealized and sublimed by Christian 
 love, fortified and confirmed by Christian righteous- 
 ness, was applied with unhesitating frankness to the 
 people and affairs of his own country and age. He 
 saw full well, that it were vain to declare, in general 
 terms, the blessings of right and the misery of 
 wrong, unless the special wrong was pointed out 
 which ought to be eradicated. A general morality 
 is apt to be inefficient. Tamerlane and Napoleon 
 might both join in general praise of peace and con- 
 demnation of war, and entitle themselves to be en- 
 rolled, with Alexander of Russia, as the members of 
 a Peace Society. And many people satisfy their 
 consciences by the utterance of general truth, warm- 
 ed, perhaps, by rhetorical effort, without venturing 
 or caring to apply it practically in life. This was 
 not the case with our Philanthropist. He sought to 
 bring his morality to bear distinctly and pointedly 
 upon the world. Nor was he disturbed by another 
 suggestion, which the moralist often encounters, that 
 his views were sound in theory, but not practical. 
 He well knew that what is unsound in theory must 
 be vicious in practice. He did not hesitate, there- 
 fore, to fasten upon any wrong he discerned, and 
 attach to it a mark, which, like that of Cain, can 
 never be wiped from its forehead. His Philanthropy 
 was Morality in action. 
 
55 
 
 As a Moralist, he knew that the highest happiness 
 could be reached only by following the right ; and as 
 a lover of man, he sought on all occasions to inculcate 
 this as a supreme duty. He strove to impress upon 
 states and nations the important truth, that they were 
 amenable to the same moral law as individuals. 
 This proposition, if universally recognized, would 
 open the gates of a new civilization. It is the 
 vague and imperfect acceptance of it that is the 
 source of national sins. The principles of morality, 
 after they have possessed themselves of the indi- 
 vidual, slowly pervade the body politic; and it is not 
 uncommon to listen to the suggestion, that the state 
 and the individual are governed by separate laws of 
 right, — that the state may do what an individual 
 may not do. In combating this pernicious fallacy, 
 Channing did important service to the state. He has 
 helped to bring government within the circle of Chris- 
 tian duties, and has instructed the statesman that 
 there is one unbending rule of Right, binding alike on 
 public and private conscience. This truth cannot 
 be too often proclaimed. The pulpit, the press, the 
 school, the college, should render it familiar to our 
 ears, and pour it into our souls. Beneficent nature 
 joins with the moralist in declaring the universality 
 of God's laws ; the flowers of the field, the rays of 
 the sun, the morning and evening dews, the descend- 
 ing showers, the waves of the sea, the breezes that 
 fan our cheeks and bear rich argosies from shore to 
 shore, the careering storm, all that is on this earth, — 
 nay, more, the system of which this earth is a part, 
 
56 
 
 and the infinitude of the Universe, in which our sys- 
 tem dwindles to a grain of sand, all declare one 
 prevailing law, knowing no distinction of persons, of 
 numbers, of masses, of size. 
 
 While Channing commended this truth, he recog- 
 nized with especial fervor the rights of men. He 
 saw in our institutions, as established in 1776, the 
 grand animating idea of Human Rights, distinguish- 
 ing us from other countries. It was this idea, which, 
 first appearing at our nativity as a nation, shone on 
 the path of our fathers, as the unaccustomed star in 
 the west, which twinkled over Bethlehem. 
 
 Kindred to the idea of Human Rights was that 
 other, which appears so often in his writings as to 
 seem to inspire his whole philanthropy, the impor- 
 tance of the Individual Man. No human soul was 
 so abject in condition as not to find sympathy and 
 reverence from him. He confessed his brother- 
 hood with all God's children, although separated 
 from them by rivers, mountains, and seas ; although 
 a torrid sun had left upon them an unchangeable 
 Ethiopian skin. Filled by this thought, he sought 
 in all that he did to promote their elevation and hap- 
 piness. He longed to do good, to be a spring of life 
 and light to his fellow-beings. " I see nothing worth 
 living for," he said, " but the divine virtue which en- 
 dures and surrenders all things for truth, duty, and 
 mankind." * 
 
 In the cause of education and of temperance 
 
 * Channing's Works, Vol. II., p. 175. 
 
57 
 
 he was an earnest laborer. He saw how essen- 
 tial was knowledge to a people who governed them- 
 selves, — that without it the right of voting would 
 be a dangerous privilege, and that with it the state 
 would be elevated, and the means of happiness in- 
 finitely diffused. His vivid imagination saw the blight 
 of intemperance, and exposed it in glowing colors. 
 In these causes he was sustained by the kindly sym- 
 pathy of those among whom he lived. 
 
 But there were two other causes in which his soul 
 more than in any other was engaged, particularly at 
 the close of his life, and with which his name will be 
 indissolubly connected ; — I mean the efforts for the 
 abolition of those two mighty Heathen Institutions, 
 Slavery and War. Fain would I pass these by, on 
 this occasion ; but not to speak of them would be to 
 present a portrait from which the most distinctive 
 features had been carefully removed. 
 
 And, first, as to Slavery. His attention was par- 
 ticularly drawn to this by his residence early in life 
 in Virginia, and at a later day for a season in one of 
 the West India islands. His soul was moved by its 
 injustice and inhumanity. He saw in it an infraction 
 of God's great law of Right and of Love, and of 
 the Christian precept, " Whatsoever ye would that 
 men should do to you, do ye even so to them." He 
 regarded it as contrary to the law of nature ; and 
 here the Philanthropist unconsciously adopted the con- 
 clusions of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 speaking by the mouth of Mr. Chief Justice Mar- 
 shall,* and of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 
 
 * The Antelope, 10 Wheaton's Rep. 211. 
 8 
 
58 
 
 at a later day, speaking by the mouth of Mr. Chief 
 Justice Shaw.* 
 
 With these convictions, his duty as a Moralist and 
 a Philanthropist did not admit of question. He saw 
 before him a giant wrong. Almost alone he went 
 forth to the contest. On his return from the West 
 Indies, he first declared his views from the pulpit. At 
 a later day, he published a book entitled Slavery., the 
 most extensive treatise on any subject from his pen. 
 Other publications followed, down to the close of his 
 life, among which was a prophetic letter, addressed 
 to Henry Clay, against the annexation of Texas, on 
 the ground that it would entail upon the country war 
 with Mexico, and would extend and fortify slavery. 
 It is important to mention that this letter, before its 
 publication, was read to his classmate Story, who 
 listened to it with admiration and assent; so that the 
 Jurist and the Philanthropist here joined in upholding 
 benign truth. 
 
 In his defence of the liberty of the African race, 
 he always invoked the great considerations of justice 
 and humanity. The argument of economy, which is 
 deemed by some minds the only one pertinent to the 
 subject, never presented itself to him. The question 
 of profit and loss was absorbed in that of right and 
 wrong. His maxim was, " Any thing but slavery ; 
 poverty sooner than slavery." But while he exhibited 
 this institution in the blackest colors of reprobation, 
 
 * Commonwealth v. Aves, 18 Pick. 211, where it is judicially de- 
 clared, that " slavery is contrary to natural right, to the principles of jus- 
 tice, humanity, and sound policy." This has become a part of the ju- 
 risprudence of Massachusetts. 
 
59 
 
 as inhuman, unjust, unchristian, unworthy of an age 
 of light and of a republic professing freedom, his 
 gentle soul found no word of harshness for those 
 whom birth, education, and custom have bred in its 
 support. He was implacable towards wrong ; but 
 used soft words towards wrong-doers. He looked 
 forward to the day when they too, encompassed by a 
 moral blockade^ invisible to the eye, but more potent 
 than navies, and under the influence of increasing 
 Christian light, difliised from all the nations, shall 
 have the magnanimity to acknowledge the wrong, 
 and to set their captives free. 
 
 At the close of his life, he urged with peculiar 
 clearness and force the duty — it was of duties that 
 he spoke — of the Northern States to free themselves 
 from all support of slavery. To this conclusion he 
 was driven irresistibly by the ethical principle, that 
 what is wrong for an individual is wrong for a state. 
 No son of the Pilgrims would hold a fellow-man in 
 bondage. Conscience forbids it. No son of the 
 Pilgrims can help, through his government, to hold a 
 fellow-man in bondage. Conscience equally forbids 
 it. We have among us to-day a brother who, re- 
 ducing to practice the teachings of Channing and 
 the suggestions of his own conscience, has liberated 
 the slaves which have fallen to him by inheritance.* 
 
 * Hon. John Gorham Palfrey, Secretary of the Commonwealth of 
 Massachusetts, received twenty-two slaves, by inheritance, on the death 
 of his father, in October, 1843. They were on a plantation in Louis- 
 iana. He lost no time in taking- the necessary steps for their manumis- 
 sion. His petition to the legislature of Louisiana for permission to set 
 them free within the State was laid on the table by a unanimous vote. 
 
60 
 
 This act finds a response of gratitude and admiration 
 in all our hearts. In asking the Free States to dis- 
 connect themselves from all support of slavery, 
 Channing wished them to do, as States, what Palfrey 
 has done as a man. At the same time he dwelt 
 with affectionate care upon the Union. He sought 
 to reform, not to destroy; to eradicate, not to over- 
 turn ; and he cherished the Union as the mother of 
 peace, plenteousness, and joy. 
 
 Such w^ere some of his labors in behalf of human 
 liberty. As the mind dwells upon them, it instinct- 
 ively recalls the parallel exertions of John Milton. 
 He, too, was a defender of liberty. His Defence of 
 the People of England drew to him, living, a wider 
 homage than his sublime epic. But Channing's 
 labors were of a higher order, more instinct with 
 Christian love, more truly worthy of renown. Mil- 
 ton's De/ensio pro populo Anglicano was in behalf of 
 the political freedom of the English people, supposed 
 at that time to number about four and a half mil- 
 lions. It was written after the " bawble " of royalty 
 had been removed, and in the confidence that his 
 cause was triumphantly established beneath the pro- 
 tecting genius of Cromwell. Channing's Defensio pro 
 popido Jfricano was in behalf of the personal freedom 
 of three millions of his fellow-men, who were held in 
 abject bondage, none of whom knew that his eloquent 
 
 Against many impediments, and at considerable cost, he persevered in his 
 determination, and by a personal visit to the State speeded the act. 
 Eighteen fellow-men, who had been slaves, have been established by his 
 beneficence in Massachusetts and New York. Four others have been 
 allowed to remain, as freemen, in Louisiana. 
 
61 
 
 pen was pleading their cause. The labors of Milton 
 caused his blindness ; those of Channing exposed him 
 to the shafts of obloquy and calumny. How truly 
 might the Philanthropist have exclaimed, in the ex- 
 alted words of the Sonnet to Cyriac Skinner, — 
 
 " What supports me, dost thou ask? 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
 In Uberiy^s defence, my noble task, 
 Of which all Europe rings from side to side.'^ 
 
 The same spirit of humanity and justice, which 
 animated him in defence of liberty, also inspired his 
 exertions for the abolition of the barbarous Institu- 
 tion of War. When I call war an institution, I mean 
 the legalized, technical war, sanctioned, explained 
 and defined by the law of nations, as a mode of de- 
 termining questions of right. I mean war, the 
 arbitrator, the umpire of right, the Ordeal by Bat- 
 tle, deliberately continued in this age of Christianity 
 and civilization, as the means of justice between na- 
 tions. Slavery is an institution sustained by our 
 private municipal law. War is an institution sus- 
 tained by the law of nations and the custom of man- 
 kind. Both are relics of the early ages, and have 
 their root in violence and wrong. 
 
 And here the principle, already considered, that 
 nations and individuals are bound by one and the 
 same rule of right, applies with unmistakable 
 force. Our civilization brands the Trial by Battle, 
 by which justice in the early ages was determined 
 between individuals, as monstrous and impious ;* and 
 
 * Montesquieu calls it monstrous. Esprit des Lois, Liv. 28, cap. 
 20. An early king of the Lombards, Luitprand, recognized its impiety, 
 
62 
 
 it refuses to recognize any glory in the successful 
 combatants. Christianity turns from these scenes of 
 strife, as abhorrent to her highest injunctions. And 
 is it right for nations to continue a usage, defined and 
 estabhshed by a code of laws, which is monstrous and 
 impious in individuals ? The conscience answers, 
 No. 
 
 It will be perceived that this view of the character 
 of war leaves undisturbed that sublime question of 
 Christian ethics, — - existing only in Christian ethics, — 
 whether the asserted right of self-defence is con- 
 sistent with the meekness, the longsuffering, the 
 submission of Christ. Channing thought it was. 
 It is sufficient that war, when regarded as an in- 
 stitution, sanctioned by the law of nations as a 
 judicial combat, raises no such question, involves no 
 such right. When, in our age, two nations, after 
 mutual preparations, continued perhaps through many 
 years, appeal to war and invoke the God of battles, 
 they voluntarily adopt this unchristian umpirage of 
 right ; nor can either side strongly plead the over- 
 ruling necessity, on which alone the right of self- 
 defence is founded. Self-defence is independent of 
 law ; it knows no law ; it springs from the tempest- 
 uous urgency of the moment, which brooks neither 
 circumscription nor delay. Define it, give it laws, 
 circumscribe it by a code, invest it with form, re- 
 while he vindicated it on the same ground on which the institution 
 of war is sometimes maintained. " Sed propter consuetudinem gentis 
 nostras Longobardorum legem impiam vetare non possumus." Muratori, 
 Rerum Italic. Script., Tom. 2, p. 65. 
 
63 
 
 fine it by punctilio, and it becomes the Duel, And 
 modern war, with its innumerable rules, regulations, 
 limitations and refinements, is the Duel of JYations, 
 
 But these nations are communities of Christian 
 brothers. War is, therefore, a duel between brothers.* 
 In this light, its impiety finds apt illustration in the 
 Past. Far away in the early period of time, where 
 the uncertain hues of Poetry blend with the serener 
 light of History, our eyes discern the fatal contest 
 between those two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices. 
 No scene fills the mind with deeper aversion ; we 
 do not inquire which of them was in the right. The 
 soul says, in bitterness and sorrow, both were wrong, 
 and refuses to discriminate between their degrees of 
 guilt. A just and enlightened public opinion, hereafter 
 regarding the feuds and wars of mankind, shall con- 
 demn both sides as wrong, shall deem all wars as 
 fratricidal, and shall see in every battle-field a scene 
 from which to avert the countenance, as from that 
 dismal duel beneath the walls of Grecian Thebes. 
 
 To hasten this condition of the public mind Chan- 
 ning beneficently labored. With a soul that kindled 
 at the recital of every act of magnanimous virtue, of 
 every deed of self-sacrifice in a righteous cause, his 
 clear Christian judgment saw the mockery of what is 
 called military glory, whether in ancient thunder- 
 bolts of war, or in the career of modern conquest. 
 He saw that the fairest flowers cannot bloom in a 
 
 * " Plato civile bellumesse putat, quod GraecigeruntadversusGrascos. 
 At Christian us Christiano proprius junctus est, quam civis civi, quam 
 frater fratri. " — Erasmi Epist., Lib. XXIL, Epist. 16. 
 
64 
 
 soil moistened by human blood. He saw that to 
 overcome evil by bullets and bayonets was less great 
 and glorious than to overcome it by good. He 
 saw that the courage of the camp was inferior to 
 the Christian fortitude of patience, resignation, and 
 forgiveness of evil, — as the spirit which scourged and 
 crucified the Saviour was less divine than that which 
 murmured, " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do." 
 
 With fearless pen he arraigned that giant criminal, 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. Witnesses came from all his 
 fields of blood ; and the Pyramids of Egypt, the coast 
 of Palestine, the plains of Italy, the snows of Russia, 
 the fields of Austria, Prussia, of all Europe, sent 
 forth their uncoffined hosts to bear testimony against 
 the glory of their chief, and to call for the abolition 
 of that institution in whose service they miserably 
 perished. Never before was grand offender arraigned 
 by such a voice, in the name of humanity and free- 
 dom. The sentence of degradation which Channing 
 has passed, confirmed as it will be by coming genera- 
 tions, shall darken the name of the warrior more than 
 any defeat of his arms or compelled abdication of his 
 power. 
 
 By these labors Channing has enrolled himself 
 among the benefactors of the world. He has helped 
 the coming of that glad day, which Literature, 
 with generous speech. Commerce, with white-winged 
 ships, and Science, with fiery engines of speed and 
 magical net- work of human thought, are all hastening, 
 when the inimical distinctions of countries shall dis- 
 
65 
 
 appear, when the swollen nationalities of the earth, 
 no longer vexed by the passions of mankind, shall 
 subside to one broad level of humanity, " illimitable 
 and without bound " ; as the mountain waves, which 
 seem to peer into the skies, sink, when the storm is 
 lulled, to an undisturbed expanse, wherein are mirrored 
 the sun and stars and all the imagery of heaven. 
 
 These causes Channing upheld and commended 
 with rare eloquence, both of tongue and pen. From 
 lack of point, and the firm divisions of a more logical 
 mind, his character is not to be seen in single pas- 
 sages, sentences, or phrases, but in the continuous 
 and harmonious treatment of his subject. And yet 
 everywhere the same spirit is discerned. His style,; 
 was not formal or architectural in its shape or pro-i 
 portions ; but natural and fluent, like a river. * Other 
 writers seem to construct, to build their thoughts ; but 
 his are an unbroken rolling stream. If we should 
 seek a parallel for him as a writer, we must turn our 
 backs upon England, and repair with our Jurist to 
 France. Meditating on the high thoughts of Pas- 
 cal, the persuasive sweetness of Fenelon, the con- 
 stant and comprehensive benevolence of Castel St. 
 Pierre, we may be reminded of Channing. 
 
 With few of the physical attributes which belong 
 to the orator, he was an orator of surpassing grace. 
 His soul tabernacled in a body that seemed little 
 more than a filament of clay. He was small in stat- 
 ure ; but when he spoke, his person seemed to di- 
 late with the majesty of his thoughts ; as the Her- 
 
66 
 
 cules of Ljsippus, a marvel of ancient art, though 
 not more than a foot in height, revived in the mind 
 the superhuman strength which overcame the Ne- 
 mean lion ; — 
 
 " Deus ille, Deus ; seseque videndum 
 Indulsit, Lysippe, tibi, parvusque videri 
 Sentirique ingens.'" * 
 
 His voice was soft and musical, not loud or full in 
 its tones ; and jet, like conscience, it made itself 
 heard in the inmost chambers of the soul. His elo- 
 quence was that of gentleness and persuasion, pleading 
 for religion, humanity, and justice. He did not thun- 
 der or lighten. The rude elemental forces furnish no 
 proper image of his power. His words descended, 
 like sunshine, upon the souls of his hearers, and 
 under their genial influence the hard in heart were 
 softened, while the closely hugged mantle of preju- 
 dice and error was allowed to fall to the earth. 
 
 His eloquence had not the form and fashion of 
 forensic efforts or parliamentary debates. It ascend- 
 ed above these, into an atmosphere as yet unat- 
 tempted in practical hfe. Whenever he spoke or 
 wrote, it was w^ith the highest aims ; not for display, 
 not to advance himself, not for any selfish purpose, 
 not in human strife, not in any ignoble question 
 of dollars and cents ; but in the high service of re- 
 ligion and benevolence, of love of God and man. 
 Here, indeed, are the highest sources of eloquence. 
 Eloquence has been called action ; but it is not this 
 alone; it is action, action, action, in noble, godlike 
 
 * Statius, Silv., Lib. IV., Eclog. 6. 
 
67 
 
 causes, for the good of all. It cannot be displayed, 
 in purest perfection, in a personal pursuit of dishonest 
 guardians, or a selfish strife for a crown ; not in the 
 defence of a murderer, or in invectives hurled at a 
 conspirator. These are not the highest founts of elo- 
 quence. The w^aters may flow through meadows 
 enamelled with flowers, that fringe their sparkling 
 surface ; but the stream descending from the moun- 
 tains, whose tops of dazzling whiteness are hidden in 
 the heavens, will burst with fresher and more power- 
 ful current on its way to the sea. 
 
 Such was our Philanthropist. As he advanced in 
 life, his enthusiasm seemed to brighten, his soul put 
 forth fresh blossoms of hope, his mind opened to new 
 truths. Age brings experience ; but, except in some 
 few constitutions of rare felicity, it renders the mind 
 indifferent to what is new, particularly in moral truth. 
 The last months of his life were passed amid the 
 heights of Berkshire, with a people to whom may be 
 applied what Bentivoglio said of Switzerland, — 
 " Their mountains become them, and they become 
 their mountains." It was to them that he volun- 
 teered, on the 1st of August, 1842, to deliver an ad- 
 dress, in commemoration of that great moral victory, 
 the peaceful emancipation of their slaves in the West 
 Indies by the British government. These were the 
 last public words from his lips. His final benediction, 
 ere he was yet translated, was on the slave. His 
 spirit, as it took its flight, seemed to say, nay, it still 
 says. Remember the Slave, 
 
68 
 
 Thus have I attempted, humblj and affectionately, 
 to hold before jou the images of our departed brothers, 
 while I dwelt on the great causes in which their lives 
 were made manifest. Servants of Knowledge, of Jus- 
 tice, of Beauty, of Love, they have ascended to the 
 great Source of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love. 
 Each of our brothers is removed ; but though dead, 
 yet speaketh, informing our understandings, strength- 
 ening our sense of justice, refining our tastes, enlarging 
 our sympathies. The body dies ; but the page of the 
 Scholar, the interpretation of the Jurist, the creation 
 of the Artist, the beneficence of the Philanthropist, 
 cannot die. 
 
 I have dwelt upon their lives and characters, less in 
 grief for what we have lost, than in gratitude for what 
 we so long possessed, and still retain, in their pre- 
 cious example. In proud recollection of her departed 
 children, Alma Mater might well exclaim, in those 
 touching words of parental grief, that she would not 
 give her dead sons for any living sons in Christen- 
 dom. Pickering, Story, AUston, Channing ! A grand 
 Quaternion ! Each, in his peculiar sphere, was fore- 
 most in his country. Each might have said, what the 
 modesty of Demosthenes did not forbid him to boast, 
 that through him his country had been crowned abroad. 
 Their labors were wide as the Commonwealth of Let- 
 ters, Laws, Art, Humanity, and have found accept- 
 ance wherever these have dominion. 
 
 Their lives, which overflow with instruction, teach 
 one great and commanding lesson, which speaks alike 
 to those of every calling and pursuit, — not to live for 
 
69 
 
 ourselves alone. They lived for Knowledge, Justice, 
 Beauty, Humanity. Withdrawing from the strifes of 
 the world, from the allurements of office, and the rage 
 for gain, they consecrated themselves to the pursuit of 
 excellence, and each, in his own vocation, to beneficent 
 labor. They were all philanthropists ; for the labors 
 of all have promoted the welfare and happiness of 
 mankind. 
 
 In the contemplation of their generous, unselfish 
 lives, we feel the insignificance of office and wealth, 
 which men so hotly pursue. What is office ? and 
 what is wealth ? They are the expressions and rep- 
 resentatives of what is present and fleeting only, in- 
 vesting their possessor, perhaps, with a brief and local 
 regard. But let this not be exaggerated ; let it not be 
 confounded with the serene fame which is the reflec- 
 tion of high labors in great causes. The street lights, 
 within the circle of their nightly scintillation, seem to 
 outshine the distant stars, observed of men in all lands 
 and times ; but gas-lamps are not to be mistaken for 
 the celestial luminaries. They who live only for 
 wealth, and the things of this world, follow shadows, 
 neglecting the great realities which are eternal on 
 earth and in heaven. After the perturbations of life, 
 all its accumulated possessions must be resigned, ex- 
 cept those alone which have been devoted to God 
 and mankind. What we do for ourselves perishes 
 with this mortal dust ; what we do for others lives in 
 the grateful hearts of all who have felt the benefaction. 
 Worms may destroy the body, but they cannot con- 
 sume such a fame. It is fondly cherished on earth, 
 and never forgotten in heaven. 
 
70 
 
 The grand fundamental law of Humanity is the 
 good of the whole human family, its happiness, its 
 development, its progress. In this cause. Knowledge, 
 Jurisprudence, Art, Philanthropy, all concur. They 
 are the influences, more puissant than the sword, 
 which ^shall lead mankind from the bondage of error 
 into that service which is perfect ^freedom. 
 
 " HaB tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem.''^ * 
 
 Our departed brothers join in summoning you to this 
 gladsome obedience. Their examples speak for them. 
 Go forth into the many mansions of the house of life : 
 scholars ! store them with learning ; jurists ! build 
 them with justice ; artists! adorn them with beauty; 
 philanthropists ! let them resound with love. Be ser- 
 vants of truth and duty, each in his vocation. Be sin- 
 cere, pure in heart, earnest, enthusiastic. A virtuous 
 enthusiasm is always self-forgetful and noble. It is the 
 only inspiration now vouchsafed to man. Like Picker- 
 ing, blend humility with learning. Like Story, ascend 
 above the present, in place and time. Like Allston, 
 regard fame only as the eternal shadow of excellence. 
 Like Channing, bend in adoration before the right. 
 Cultivate alike the wisdom of experience and the wis- 
 dom of hope. Mindful of the Future, do not neglect 
 the Past ; awed by the majesty of Antiquity, turn not 
 with indifference from the Future. True wisdom looks 
 to the ages before us, as well as behind us. Like the 
 
 *-^neis VI., 852. — Dryden, in his translation of this passage, intro- 
 duces an element which is not in the original : — 
 
 " The fettered slave set free^ 
 These are imperial arts, and worthy thee !" 
 
71 
 
 Janus of the Capitol, one front thoughtfully regards 
 the Past, rich with experience, with memories, with 
 the priceless traditions of truth and virtue ; the other 
 is earnestly directed to the All Hail Hereafter, richer 
 still with its transcendent hopes and unfulfilled proph- 
 ecies. 
 
 We stand on the threshold of a new age, which is 
 preparing to recognize new influences. The ancient 
 divinities of Violence and Wrong are retreating to 
 their kindred darkness. The sun of our moral uni- 
 verse is entering a new ecliptic, no longer deformed 
 by those images of animal rage. Cancer, Taurus, Leo, 
 Sagittarius, but beaming with the mild radiance of 
 those heavenly signs. Faith, Hope, and Charity. 
 
 " There 's a fount about to stream, 
 There 's a light about to beam, 
 There 's a warmth about to glow. 
 There 's a flower about to blow ; 
 There 's a midnight blackness changing 
 
 Into gray ; 
 Men of thought, and men of action. 
 Clear the way. 
 
 " Aid the dawning, tongue and pen; 
 Aid it, hopes of honest men ; 
 Aid it, paper ; aid it, type ; 
 Aid it, for the hour is ripe. 
 And our earnest must not slacken 
 
 Into play ; 
 Men of thought, and men of action, 
 
 Clear the way.'''' * 
 
 The age of Chivalry has gone. An age of Human- 
 ity has come. The Horse, which gave the name to 
 
 * Voices from the Crowd, by Charles Mackay. 
 
72 
 
 the first, now yields to Man the foremost place. In 
 serving him, in doing him good, in contributing to his 
 welfare and elevation, there are fields of bloodless tri- 
 umph, nobler far than any in which Bayard or Du 
 Guesclin ever conquered. Here are spaces of labor 
 wide as the world, lofty as heaven. Let me say, then, 
 in the benison which was bestowed upon the youthful 
 knight, — Scholars ! jurists ! artists ! philanthropists ! 
 heroes of a Christian age, companions of a celes- 
 tial knighthood, "Go forth, be brave, loyal, and suc- 
 cessful ! " 
 
 And may it be our office to-day to light a fresh 
 beacon-fire on the venerable walls of Harvard, sacred 
 to Truth, to Christ, and the Church,* — to Truth Im- 
 mortal, to Christ the Comforter, to the Holy Church 
 Universal. Let the flame spread from steeple to stee- 
 ple, from hill to hill, from island to island, from con- 
 tinent to continent, till the long lineage of fires shall 
 illumine all the nations of the earth, animating them 
 to the holy contests of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, 
 Love. 
 
 *The legend on the early seal of Harvard University was Veritas. 
 The present legend is Christo et Ecdesia.