OF ARTS AND SCIENCES- 151 



been his religious teacher and continued his attached friend ; and next 

 his companion in foreign travel in the bright days of their early man- 

 hood ; and then the emphatic tribute, without the frost and with all the 

 tenderness of age, offered by the Nestor of that Society, our host now, — 

 the venerated friend of the departed, and his father's friend. These 

 were enough ; but there were more, truthful and ardent tributes. But 

 the feeling stirred by such a loss to us, here, and there, and in how 

 many other places and fellowships, does not expire by its expression in 

 warm eulogistic utterances. And these are but the beginnings of a 

 series of memorials, which will need more than the months of this pass- 

 ing year for the gathering them into the wealth of posthumous honors. 



" That long list of academic distinctions attached to Mr. Prescott's 

 name in the triennial Catalogue of Harvard, may represent the order in 

 which the most eminent of the scholarly confraternities of the civilized 

 world will leai-n of the bereavement which is so recent to us, and will 

 hasten to express, record, and transmit to a sad home, their successive 

 tributes. To them, for the most part, he is known only through his 

 works, and the report of his character as a man. To us, the familiarity 

 of those pleasant and winning features, of those gracious and refined 

 manners, of that courteous speech, and of those delightful hospitalities, 

 where he was so cordial, so attractive, so radiant, adds a charm that 

 plays over his pages, and makes real a sorrow such as strangers, remote 

 and distant, will not know. 



" And what is the significance of these associated tributes, which such 

 fellowships of lettered and scientific men are prompted to render, first, 

 to the talents, and then, when truth allows, to the character, of their 

 more distinguished members ? If it were merely in friendship, through 

 private relationships of intercourse and esteem, or in sympathy with 

 the bereaved, it would be wiser to reserve speech. Those to whom it 

 was addressed might not be in the mood to hear it. But over the de- 

 parture from life of one who was eminent in the gifts of mind, and who 

 devoted them all, for the working period of a whole life, to the service 

 of the world, to instruct, to refine, and please, to extend the ennobling 

 sway of intellect in the toils of truth, — such personal tributes have a 

 warrant which needs no pleading to assure them. The only cautionary 

 suggestion to be remembered is, that we respect the most severe rules 

 of good taste in avoiding all exaggeration and flattery, and that we 

 think so exclusively of him that is gone, as to have no thought of bor- 



