EPHRAIM WHITMAN GURNET. 525 



in the account there given of the growth of Wright's philosophical 

 opinions and of the influences affecting it, than the light which is 

 thrown upon the wide philosophical attainments of the friend, who 

 for many years shared Wright's interests and speculations, or joined 

 issue with him in their daily discussions. But as Professor Gurney 

 said of himself, he cared much more about men than about man ; 

 and philosophy, like law and the classics, was after all only tribu- 

 tary to the main current of his studies. Of the nature of this main 

 current, so far as it was exhibited in his public instruction in the 

 University, perhaps no better statement can be made than by tran- 

 scribing his own carefully prepared titles for the leading courses of 

 study offered by him in his later years: — 



Roman History to the Fall of the Republic, with especial reference to the 

 development of political institutions in Greece and Rome. 



Political and Legal Institutions of the Roman Empire, and development of the 

 Frankish Constitution to tiie death of Charlemagne. 



The Constitutional and Legal History of France to the end of the fifteenth 

 century. 



Few branches of modern investigation or speculation in history, 

 politics, or the origin of institutions, could be foreign to a range of 

 topics like this, in the mind of an inquirer gifted in discerning broad 

 relations, and in interpreting the deeper meanings of political and 

 social movements. And no less comprehensive treatment of an his- 

 torical field than is here implied could have given adequate scope for a 

 man whose varied interests stimulated him to a constant and vigilant 

 survey of the latest intellectual achievements, in whatever field, and 

 whose knowledge of men was as wide as his knowledge of books, and 

 as carefully perfected. Unhappily as it must seem for the interests of 

 learning, he undertook no printed exposition of the subjects of which 

 so many accomplished students have found him a master. He neither 

 wrote lectures, nor arranged systematic notes for his university in- 

 struction, but " talked to his students and met their questions from the 

 fulness of his knowledge, seeming," as one of them has said, " to live 

 in the subject of his discourse," so complete was his mastery of it 

 and its related matter. For the press, although he was an editor of 

 the North American Review for the years 18G9 and 1870, he wrote 

 almost nothing. It is therefore to the report of students, colleagues, 

 and friends, who had long recognized him as a competent specialist in 

 so many directions, and of the many scholars, both American and 

 European, who in the warmth of his fireside and among his books 

 sounded his knowledge and felt their own sounded by him, that we 



