156 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



equally to all, and my acquaintance with his has been almost life- 

 long. 



" The great foundation of his noble and beautiful character, of its 

 loftiness and its humility, of its strength and its loveliness, is to be 

 found in the wonderful equipoise of the mental and moral powers with 

 which he was so signally gifted, constituting, as it were, an atmosphere 

 in which they all had full and equal life and play, — their combined and 

 harmonious action giving a self-possession, for the accomplishment of 

 great results, far superior to physical bravery or nervous excitability, 

 or any capacity for extraordinary effort in great emergencies, — im- 

 buing him with a moral and intellectual consciousness, which needed 

 no summons of occasion to awaken it to action, no studied array of the 

 will against the seductions of passion, pleasure, or ease, and culminat- 

 ing in a courage which, revering and yielding to nothing but the truth, 

 fears nothing and which nothing can subdue, — all bathed in the con- 

 stant sunlight of a cheerful, genial, and affectionate temperament, per- 

 haps not less peculiar than his genius. 



" This peculiarity of mental constitution — among the highest of the 

 gifts of Heaven — seems to have been a blest inheritance from a truly 

 noble ancestry ; evinced alike by his heroic grandfather, who retired 

 from the most glorious battle-field in the history of his country, where 

 he had imperishably interwoven his name with the achievement of her 

 independence, as seemingly unconscious of any unusual effort, or of any 

 personal meritorious achievement, as if resting from any ordinary toil 

 of daily duty ; and by his no less honored father, whose life was an 

 illustration of simple devotion to its highest duties, as unconscious of 

 the reverential affection and respect which everywhere surrounded 

 him, as he was unambitious of the public honors with which his fellow- 

 citizens would gladly have invested him. 



" And here we have, as I think, the solution of our friend's success- 

 ful struggle against physical infirmity, and of his brilhant victory over 

 one of the most embarrassing and depressing privations which could 

 befall the student or aspirant for literary eminence, and particularly in 

 the department which he had selected ; and which privation has given 

 such touching interest to his works. 



" Others, like him, have encountered the same calamity, — and with 

 equal resolution have not suffered it to impede their path ; some under 

 the stimulus of necessity which admitted of no halting ; others to gain 



