GEORGE PARTRIDGE BRADFORD All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I was pleased to find in your columns an appreciative notice of this delightful old friend, the announcement of whose death gave me a double shock. The reflection that I should never again hear that voice with its ripple of cheerfulness, never again behold that face beaming with cordiality, mingled with my wonder that my seemingly unchanged friend had reached his eighty-third year. It was such a short time since he, then a young divinity student, was a welcome. evening visitor at my father's house, nor has he since then grown old to my eyes. He was a worthy descendant of the good Pilgrim Governor, William Bradford, and just as he, in the days of his youth, sought counsel of Elder Brewster in their Sabbath walks from Scrooby to Clifton, so did his descendant walk and seek counsel of his wise elder, Emerson, on life mortal and immortal. As William Bradford found "oaks, pines, walnuts, beech, sassafras, vines," etc., on Clark's Island, where living men have seen only a few red cedars, so did his descendant espy a varied flora and fauna where to the common eye was barrenness and desolation. As he sowed he reaped, whether he had been wayfaring with eyes open to every feature of sky and hill and plain, to every humble wayside plant, to every rock that cropped out of the ground, finding Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, or whether he had come refreshed by converse with Emerson, or had just been released from his task as a teacher, he met you as a bearer of good tidings; the message was never ended, he began as he had left off, for he was one of the meek who inherit the earth, he had lain down in green pastures, he had been led beside the still waters, his cup, which to the eyes of men seemed empty, was running over and he asked you to partake. He was as much more refreshing than other men as is the living water gushing from the rock than the same liquid conveyed in a conduit of men's devising. Like Emerson, he was so filled with the Holy Ghost, with love to God and man, that he diffused happiness whereever he might go. The college anniversaries, no longer illumined by the light of his countenance, have lost part of their charm. Like Emerson, he was bred to the pulpit, and like him he quitted it, not because he had no message for his fellow men, for he was a great favorite with Professor Norton, who had one or two essays written by him while in the Divinity School published in the Christian Examiner; and it was only his manner that the professor criticised, saying to him: "Your great defect seems to be an entire want of all those qualities that go to make a good speaker." This criticism Bradford characteristically exaggerated, as if it applied to his matter as well as to his manner. The fact was that, like Emerson, he had not played with the boys in the street, but had been kept in the yard or on the shed by his sister, who in after times lamented it, and he was hopelessly shy. This shyness affected his conversation, which was a series of flashes or outbursts of eloquence, brought abruptly to a stop by hearing his own voice. From all we think we know of the life hereafter, the change from this world to the other must have been hardly perceptible to one who so dwelt here in the presence of his Maker and in enjoyment of all his works. His life Was rounded with a sleep, no more. CHARLES DEVENS I HAVE a word or two to say about Charles Devens, with whom I have stood in friendly, familiar relations ever since my College days, when I was invited occasionally to his father's house in Cambridge. I have been wont to speak of him as "Sweet fortune's minion and her pride," and when one recounts the series of high positions, civil and military, to which he has been preferred, with never a break, from his earliest manhood to the day of his death, -my speech seems justified. Scarcely was he out of College and had begun his law practice in Franklin County when he was elected Brigadier General of Militia; soon afterwards he was chosen State Senator. He could not have been over thirty years old when he was made United States Marshal for the District of Massachusetts. In the war, starting out as Major, he became successively Colonel, Brigadier, then Brevet Major General of Volunteers, and Military Governor of South Carolina. Having returned home, he was appointed Judge of the Superior Court, and then of the Supreme Court; then taken by President Hayes as his Attorney General, and at the close of his administration instantly reappointed Judge of the Supreme Court. This opportune vacancy on the bench at the very moment when his time as United States Attorney General ended, did prompt me to remark to his kinsman that cousin Charles came down always upon his feet, and he agreed with me. His early promotion over his fellows of equal worth and talents is to be ascribed to his personal attributes, - his stature, his bright eyes, his mellifluous voice, his flowing speech, his genial and dignified deportment, which distinguished him in all companies, but more especially upon the small stage upon which he made his début. While his general symmetry and suavity helped him in certain directions and to a certain extent, it disparaged him with the fastidious and sceptical. The world is impatient and incredulous of perfection, the "totus teres atque rotundus" fades in the eye and provokes criticism rather than admiration. A mezzotint makes one long for the biting-in of the etching. Pope's Homer is so smooth that sense is lost in sound; and so with persons. Dr. Channing's soft speech stung at least one sensitive person to profanity; General Washington, as handed down by pen and pencil, was too smooth, too perfect; it was only the revelation of his outburst of wrath at Monmouth, and of laughter over Old Put, that justified him to his countrymen. Our friend suffered in like manner, his symmetry and suavity brought him under suspicion, caused him to be underrated intellectually and morally. But it was no padding, no veneering; if ever a man could be a hero to his valet, General Devens might have been that man; the nearer one came to him the higher he stood in one's regard. It was his thorough amiability, joined to his conscientious discharge of every duty assumed, which |