652 JAMES ELLIOT CABOT. 



up of scraps, very unfavorable to my education. I was, I think, natu- 

 rally inclined to hover somewhat above the solid earth of practical life, 

 and thus to miss its most useful lessons. The result I think was to 

 confirm me in the vices of my mental constitution and to cut off what 

 chance there was of my accomplishing something worth while." 



In March, 1843, he finally left Gcittingen for home by way of Belgium 

 and England, and entered the Harvard Law School in the autumn, tak- 

 ing his degree there two years later, in 1845. Renewing acquaintance 

 with him during this period, I found him to be, as always, modest and 

 reticent in manner, bearing unconsciously a certain European prestige 

 upon him which so commanded the respect of a circle of young men that 

 we gave him the sobriquet of " Jarno," after the well-known philosophic 

 leader in Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister." Whatever he may say of him- 

 self, I cannot help still retaining somewhat of my old feeling about 

 the mental training of the man, who, while in the Law School, could 

 write a paper so admirable as Cabot's essay entitled " Immanuel Kant" 

 (Dial, IV. 409), an essay which seems to me now, as it then seemed, 

 altogether the simplest and most effective statement I have ever encoun- 

 tered of the essential principles of that great thinker's philosophy. I 

 remember that when I told Cabot that I had been trying to read Kant's 

 " Critique of Pure Reason " in an English translation, but could not 

 understand it, he placidly replied that he had read it twice in German 

 and had thought he comprehended it, but that Meiklejohn's translation 

 was beyond making out, so that I need not be discouraged. 



After graduating from the Law School, he went for a year into a law 

 oflTice in Boston, acting as senior partner to my classmate, Francis Ed- 

 ward Parker, who, being a born lawyer, as Cabot was not, found it for 

 his own profit to sever the partnership at the end of a year, while Cabot 

 retired from the profession forever. His German training had meanwhile 

 made him well known to the leaders of a new literary enterprise, origi- 

 nating with Theodore Parker and based upon a meeting at Mr. Emerson's 

 house in 1849, the object being the organization of a new magazine which 

 should be, in Theodore Parker's phrase, " the Dial with a beard." Lib- 

 erals and reformers were present at the meeting, including men so essen- 

 tially diverse as Sumner and Thoreau. Parker was, of course, to be 

 the leading editor, and became such. Emerson also consented, " rather 

 weakly," as Cabot says in his memoranda, to appear, and contributed 

 only the introductory address, while Cabot himself agreed to act as corre- 

 sponding secretary and business manager. The " Massachusetts Quar- 

 terly Review" sustained itself with difficulty for three years, — showing 



