106 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



single-hearted rectitude with which he had managed the many difficult 

 subjects that came under his treatment. 



From 1839 to 1849 he was Professor of History in Harvard Col- 

 lege, and he was its President from 1849 to 1852. Since retiring from 

 the Presidency he has written little. It was his intention to write an 

 extended history of the United States, and he regarded his previous 

 labors as but a preparation for this. But a lameness of the right arm 

 precluded the free use of the pen, and the conscious difficulty of so chan- 

 ging all his habits of study, note-taking, and composition as to conform 

 himself to the use of an amanuensis postponed the commencement of 

 this plan till it was too late to carry it into execution. He continued 

 to live at Cambridge,' surrounded by many of his early friends, and by 

 many more by whom he was equally revered and loved. On the 

 evening of Mai'ch 6th, 1866, he was at a social party. On his return 

 home he was seized with chill, and on the next day pneumonia set 

 in, at his age with little or no hope of recovery. His sufferings 

 were probably not severe ; if they were, he bore them in perfect 

 serenity, and remained cheerful and self-collected till" a comatose con- 

 dition ensued but a few hours before his death. He died on the 14th 

 of March. 



Mr. Sparks did nothing that was not done well, few things that 

 were not done superlatively well. His reputation rests not merely 

 on his capacity as an editor and compiler : had he written nothing 

 else, his biographies alone would have seemed work and glory enough 

 for one man ; and these, in the appreciation of their subjects, in the 

 grouping of persons and incidents, in the delineation of character, 

 and in the tracing of relations and sequences among events, give 

 ample evidence of a keen insight, an analytic faculty, and a con- 

 structive power, which the literary world would have better appre- 

 ciated, had not his more important biographies, those of Washington 

 and Franklin, been in form subsidiary to the publication of their 

 works. 



In his private character no ordinary terms can convey the measure 

 in which he was honoi*ed and loved, most by those who knew him best. 

 He can have had no enemies ; and no man can have made more or 

 warmer friends. In meekness, modesty, kindness, generosity, a win- 

 ning politeness that went to the heart because it came from the heart, 

 the most tender concern for the well-being and happiness of others, 

 constant watchfulness for the opportunities of doing good, charity that 



