294 WILLIAM AUGUSTUS STEARNS. 



2:)i'operly could to cletennine the steps of a questioning pupil in the 

 direction of her academic shades. 



Under these gentle and gracious influences, young Stearns spent 

 three diligent years, and at the Commencement of 1823 he entered 

 Harvard College to pass four other diligent years of studious prepara- 

 tion for his vv,ork in life. From the first he took a high rank among 

 his fellows. His preparation for the exercises of the class-room was 

 always thorough to 2:)erfection, and his recitations accurate, elegant, 

 and fluent, but without any studied attempt at disj^lay. Though not 

 recluse, he was retired in his habits, and devoted himself earnestly to 

 the work that he was there to do. Though his intimates were few, 

 there was no man of his time more cordially esteemed and respected 

 of all that knew him than he. The chief drawback on the happiness 

 of his well-spent hours was the narrowness of his circumstances, which 

 more than once threatened to cut short his colleire career. At the most 

 critical moment, however, when he was brought face to face with this 

 cruel necessity, he was relieved from his distress by the timely and 

 judicious generosity of President Kirkland. By dint of keeping school 

 in the winter vacations and of the most rigid economy he managed to 

 win his way to the end, and he took his degree at the Commencement 

 of 1827 with the third honor of his year. If his worthy master, Mr. 

 Adams, had entertained any fears — which it is altogether probable 

 that he did — that his promising pupil might be shaken in his faith in 

 the strict theology of his fathers through the heretical influences to 

 which he was subjected at Cambridge, he was happily disappointed ; 

 for the young Bachelor of Arts issued from the furnace without the 

 smell of fire upon his garments. Indeed, we imagine that it would 

 have been necessary for him to court the flames to have had his gar- 

 ments even singed by the fires of heresy. We believe that there was 

 never the slightest attempt at proselytism made by the heresiarchs of 

 the college. Even attendance on the theological lectures of Dr. Ware, 

 which were necessarily imbued with Unitarian ideas, was not required 

 of students who objected to their doctrine. However this may have 

 been, Mr. Stearns remained faithful to the religious tenets he had 

 imbibed in youth, in which he was assisted by a society of young men 

 of Evangelical views, which met weekly for devotional purposes and to 

 strengthen one another to hold fast to the faith as delivered to the 

 Fathers. 



After a year's interval of school-teaching, Mr. Stearns joined the 

 Theological Seminary at Andover, and went through the regular course 

 of three years. Having received his license to preach in 1831, and 



