JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 357 



foundation of St. Paul's School in Concord, N. H. To this he 

 gave an estate which had been his summer home for several 

 years, making frequent gifts at later times to the amount of 

 about one hundred thousand dollars. He was greatly revered as 

 the founder of this school, and almost equally in his after years 

 as a devoted layman of his Church thoughout the country. He 

 died in Boston, after a protracted illness, March 22, 1893, leav- 

 ing a widow, a married daughter, and two sons in his own 

 profession. 



This is a very bare outline of a highly serviceable and honora- 

 ble career. A noble character was at the heart of it. He was 

 simple, sincere, bountiful, thoughtful for others, and disinter- 

 ested to an exceptional degree. His friends were very many, 

 and the objects of his kindness and practical helpfulness were 

 legion. His home was full of hospitality, and all about it lay 

 the walks in which he served and loved his fellow men. 



1893. Samuel Eliot. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 



John Greenleaf Whittier was born in Haverhill, Massachu- 

 setts, on December 17, 1807. His ancestors, in every line of the 

 soundest Yankee stock, had resided from the earliest times in 

 Essex County, or in the older regions of New Hampshire. The 

 house in which he was born had been built by his emigrant 

 ancestor, Thomas Whittier, who died at the age of seventy-six, 

 in 1696, after above fifty years' residence in New England. In 

 1694, Joseph Whittier, son of the emigrant, and great-grand- 

 father of the poet, had married the daughter of a well known 

 Quaker. Probably from this time the immediate family of the 

 poet had belonged to the Keligious Society of Friends. In all 

 other respects, their condition had been that of substantial New 

 England farmers. 



Amid the extreme diversity of religious views that marks our 

 own time, and the efforts now so general among the New Eng- 

 land clergy to emphasize the few things that religious people 

 believe in common, and to neglect the many concerning which 

 they radically differ, we are apt to think of religious divergences 

 as verbal or formal. In general, I think, we are right. Modern 

 Yankees, at all events, are not profound theologians. They are 

 disposed either to take religion as they find it, or else, without 



