10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



amount of these generous contributions to the works of other writers 

 can never be specified. 



In his educational works, as well as in the class-room, President 

 Felton always aimed to develop before his pupils the prevailing 

 thought of the author, and to lead them to appreciate its beauty or its 

 grandeur. If they were reading an oration of Demosthenes, he rather 

 helped them to perceive the compact perfection of the whole design, 

 than lingered upon the phrases. All appliances of historical, archaao- 

 logical and critical knowledge were sought to help this great object. 

 And yet the notes to his editions contain enough of minute philological 

 remark, showing an appreciation of those points of discussion which 

 the profoundest grammarians have dwelt on. His mirthful nature, 

 also, — another attractive feature of his mind, — caught every merry 

 allusion and sparkled in its light, adding a grace to the wit it reflected. 



As he performed the prime duty of a teacher, that of securing his 

 own growth while cultivattng others, his teaching became continually 

 more successful ; and although his kindly nature led him to be lenient 

 to the short-comings of his pupils, and to overlook their devices, yet the 

 scholarly men of every class felt, as they passed under his care, that they 

 were in contact with a master mind. Particularly has this develop- 

 ment been apparent since his European tours in 1853 - 4 and in 1858. 

 With the Odyssey before him, he then traced the Greek headlands and 

 the islands of the -3^gean, and learned to interpret the author by this 

 commentary. Iliad in hand, he wandered over the Troad, and believed 

 in Homer. At Athens he demonstrated to sceptics the identity of the 

 Pnyx ; and, standing on its Bema, looked towards the Acropolis and 

 recalled the thunder-words of the great orator. Wandering to the re- 

 mains of the Dionysiac Theatre, he was in imagination present at the 

 representation of the Prometheus. He climbed the steps of the Pro- 

 pylaea, and, standing amid the ruined glories of the Parthenon, looked 

 down on the waters of the Saronic, and away to the blue heights of the 

 Peloponnesus, and read the whole Grecian history in the scene. He felt 

 too the consecration of these monuments in the holier reminiscences of 

 Mai's Hill. The vivid pictures thus obtained, with the wider range of 

 thought received from intercourse with the highly cultivated minds he 

 encountered wherever he travelled, so wrought upon his plastic nature, 

 that he seemed almost a new man, — so fed and rekindled was his en- 

 thusiasm for his favorite studies, — so felt was his assured position 

 among the world's scholars, and so extended were his sympathies with 

 everything embraced in human science. 



