OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 557 



but upon its negative side. He got what was to be got without bar- 

 tering for it a tittle of his individuality. 



" Ccelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt," 



was never truer than of him. Indeed, had Horace not written this line, 

 Holmes might have been counted on to do so. Both men were so whole 

 with their native surroundings as to preclude their becoming to any 

 transforming degree pai-t of any other they might meet. This was even 

 more tlie case with Holmes than with Horace. For Horace took much 

 from the Greek, while Holmes never followed the French. But to 

 both the great world without was corrective, not creative of that corner 

 of it each was respectively born to within. In both there was that same 

 tiresomeless carrier-pigeon flight across the waters from wherever the 

 body might be, flight ever mindful of home and never resting till it 

 reached there, which above all other traits is the characteristic of the 

 poet of his own time and place. At home both were pre-eminently 

 at home, which made them both delightful diners out. And if Horace 

 was somewhat more mindful of Chloe than of the Schoolmistress, to 

 the times is due the change. Plolmes could find the woman amid per- 

 haps the most austere society the world has ever known, unless it be 

 that of the same society's ancestors, in which to be human was itself 

 perilously near sin. So people wore masks, shocked by the sin in 

 sincerity. Holmes and Horace might well have sat at the same table. 

 And just as Quintus par excellence, Quintessence that he was of later 

 Roman life, reveals to us that life as much more human than our early 

 Latin text-books led us to suppose, so Holmes discovers charms in 

 the Schoolmistress unsuspected of her pupils. 



Having gone abroad once at the beginning of his life, Holmes did 

 not go again till toward the close of it, a half-century later. The 

 half-century that intervened constituted his life, and that was spent to 

 all intents and purposes in Boston. His flights were chiefly limited, 

 like Apollo's, to annual migrations from his winter home in his own 

 temple in town to his summer sanctuary by the sea, and back again, — 

 Beverly Farms being his local Delos. Yet though he thus practically 

 never stirred from home, it was he who was always asked to welcome 

 his country's guests, — welcome which none could more gracefully 

 extend. 



Of his honors the catalogue is long. He was elected into the 

 American Academy on November 14, 1838, and became its Record- 

 ing Secretary in 1845, an office he held till 1848. From 1880 to 

 1887 he was its Vice-President. In 1880 he was made an LL. D. by 



