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JAMES WALKER. 



Dr. Walker often studied and wrote under great physical disabilities. 

 For many years his eyes were weak, and he was forced to employ a 

 reader. At another time he suffered from cramp in the fingers, so 

 that he was obliged to hold his pen in one hand and guide it with the 

 other. He was never a fluent or rapid writer. He generally spent so 

 much time in thinking over his subject that he wrote at last under 

 pressure. The remark occurs once in his diary, that he would not 

 again allow himself so much time to write a sermon. After he had 

 once welded a sentence in his heated brain, it was strong as iron, and 

 incapable of improvement. Hence, he seldom corrected his own manu- 

 script, and the material which he has left might be sent to the press 

 without the change of a single word. He never shrank from a homely 

 expression, if it conveyed his meaning; and whenever he indulged in 

 the graces of rhetoric, the effect was heightened by contrast with the 

 massive columns below. Of all which Dr. Walker had written, but 

 little was published during his lifetime. A volume containing twenty- 

 five of his sermons appeared in 1861, and at other times single sermons 

 and addresses. He contributed more than fifty articles, besides short 

 notices, to the " Christian Examiner," and he was the sole or associate 

 editor of it from January, 1831, to March, 1839. While he was pro- 

 fessor, he edited " Reid's Essay on the Intellectual Powers, abridged, 

 with Notes from Sir William Hamilton;" also, " Dugald Stewart's 

 Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man." 



All the honors which a life so long, so laborious, so useful, had 

 richly merited, were freely bestowed and meekly worn. Harvard Col- 

 lege gave him the degi-ee of D.D. in 1835, and that of LL.D. in 1860. 

 Yale College had given him the degree of LL.D. in 1853. In 1842 

 he was chosen a Fellow of this Academy, and in 1857 he was elected 

 a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Li 1854 he was 

 made an honorary member of the Historical Society of Wisconsin, 

 and, in 1859, an honorary member of the New F2ngland Historic- 

 Genealogical Society. In 1860 the Senior Class in Harvard Col- 

 lege requested him to sit for his portrait; and, in 1863, some friends 

 had the privilege of seeing his grand head perpetuated in marble. 

 The portrait by Hunt and the bust by Dexter are among the worthies 

 which adorn the walls of the dining-room of IMemorial Hall at Cam- 

 bridge. The munificent gift of $12,000, presented to Dr. Walker by 

 unknown friends in 1860, though not necessary to a man of simple 

 tastes, and who had managed his affairs with a wise forecast, was, 

 nevertheless, received by him with gratitude, as relieving him from all 

 anxiety, and furnishing the means of increasing his facilities of study, 



