blessed with a real gaiety of heart, a quality too rare among us descendants of Puritans, — inherited, perhaps, from his Dutch ancestors.

-

He had much mechanical ingenuity,- made several inventions, besides improving the stereoscope; but in some business ways he was amusingly helpless, and, as I have occasion to know, very grateful for assistance.

His kindness of heart was exercised, but not exhausted, by the bores who besieged him with visits and letters, who showered upon him their essays to be read, their aspirations to be considered, and often rewarded his patient endurance and merciful judgments with an outburst of ingratitude. His charity for these and other offences was habitual; he was quite capable of receiving, but not of inflicting, wounds; nor did he harbor resent

ments.

con

He has been called vain, by himself and others; but it was vanity of an amiable and childlike kind, fessed, and so apologized for; not denied or disguised or justified. It was not made offensive by superciliousness, nor contemptible by unmanliness, nor malignant by envy. Had he visited Rotten Row, and gazed at the well-born, well-dressed, well-mounted equestrians, he would have exulted over their bright array, and not have growled out, as Carlyle did, "There is not one of them can do what I can do." He would not, like Moore, have abused his honest and generous publisher; nor would he, like him, upon the loss of a child, have lain abed to revel in his grief, leaving his "dear Bessie," as Moore called his wife, to perform the last sad offices. He would not, — as did one author with whom I had formerly lived on terms

of equality, but who afterwards acquired fame and riches, – have called upon me to mark him extraordinary, not in the roll of common men, by cutting off the coupons from his goodly pile of bonds, a service not rendered to his four thousand fellow-customers.

Lowell wrote a witty paper on "A certain Condescension in Foreigners; " he might have followed it by "A certain Condescension in Literary Men."

When I read the correspondence between Emerson and Carlyle, it struck me how much more and better they would have written had they been bound to some task every morning; if manual, all the better. Emerson recognizes this in many passages: "The use of manual labor is one which never grows obsolete, and which is inapplicable to no person. . . . We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands. Not only health, but enterprise, is in the work."

Fortunate for Charles Lamb was his enforced drudgery "at the desk's dead wood." It was this routine that braced him for his congenial labors. After his longcoveted liberation, he ran and frisked about like a colt in a pasture, and then subsided; the "unchartered freedom" made him restless, but not productive.

Fortunate for Dr. Holmes were his practice and his lectures for thirty-five years. These gave him promptness, accountability, resolution, touch with the world. It was this commerce with the world that widened his observations and his sympathy; it was this which inclined him, it was this discipline which enabled him, to respond so constantly and so heartily to the appeal for occasions,

a well-performed service which endeared him to the great public.

The champagne, the effervescence, will be lacking at many a gathering now that he is gone; he stands out from all other poets by his cheerful and hearty co-operation. Who now can catch inspiration from the passing event, and express felicitously the feeling agitating every breast, as did our lost friend?

One more trait, and that a most amiable one, characterized him, a remarkable magnanimity; he gave an ungrudging tribute of praise to his brethren, he had “the most catholic receptivity for the genius of others."

In short, he was very human in weakness and in strength; love and good will he freely bestowed, and love and good will he craved in turn, and he received in full measure.

"I do not know what special gifts have been granted or denied me, but this I know, that I am like so many others of my fellow-creatures that when I smile I feel as if they must, when I cry I think their eyes fill; and it always seems to me that when I am most truly myself, I come nearest to them, and am surest of being listened to by the brothers and sisters of the larger family into which I was born so long ago."

He sings no more on earth; our vain desire
Aches for the voice we loved so long to hear.

WILLIAM MINOT

1894

All my life long I have beheld with most respect the man
Who knew himself and knew the ways before him,

And from amongst them chose considerably,

With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage,

And having chosen, with a steadfast mind
Pursued his purpose.

THE city must be rich indeed which can afford to lose a man like William Minot.

To his school and college-mates his lusty manhood while they were yet in the gristle, his prowess in all athletic games, his addiction to field sports, marked him for outdoor life, a mighty hunter; and his sufferings from a sedentary occupation went to confirm their diagnosis and to prove that Nature had been thwarted.

Guided, not by his tastes, but by conscience, he became a diligent student, an uphill road, which he travelled so resolutely that soon after quitting college, while he was preparing to follow his hereditary profession of the law, he broke down utterly, and a voyage and travel in Europe were prescribed to save his life.

His life was saved, but the robust health which he had enjoyed was much impaired, so that from this time forth nothing but a strict adherence to rule, a country life, and periodical withdrawals, cruising in his yacht, or

following his natural vocation of sportsman, reinvigorated him and enabled him to bear the heavy responsibilities of his profession.

How faithfully, how judiciously, how delicately all these duties have been discharged, how enormously they have been multiplied because of these admirable qualities, is in part known.

In part known, because his time was given to his work; and this over, he had no strength left for outside engagements, and so remained in comparative seclusion.

Nor was this seclusion a constraint, for he had neither ambition for public employment, nor taste for general society.

Like his revered father, he was conservative, indifferent or averse to reforms, as casting a reflection upon the past with which his affections were intertwined.

He loved old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; he might have said with the poet:—

Times change,

Years shift us up and down, but something sticks ;
And for myself, there's nothing as a mau

That I love more than what, a child, I loved.

No matter how long the interval of separation, it took but an instant to resume the old relations, to nestle into the same place in his heart, to recall the old stories, to laugh over the old jokes.

Like his father, he had a chivalric loyalty which bound him to his family, far and near, and to all heirs to his friendship, and nothing gave him keener delight than to play the host, or in any way to promote their happiness or to administer to their needs.