HENRY WARREN TORREY. 449 



attained the highest reputation. In 1856 the McLean Professor- 

 ship of Ancient and Modern History, for many years vacant 

 through the meanest of political intrigues, was conferred on him. 

 He immediately took a year of European travel, and returned to 

 discharge the duties of his professorship in 1857. He was engaged 

 in its active labors till 1866, and was then appointed Professor 

 Emeritus. While holding this title he was chosen on the Board 

 of Overseers, and died on the anniversary of the death of Wash- 

 ington, December 14, 1893. He was elected to the American 

 Academy, November 12, 1856. 



Mr. Torrey's active life was that of a teacher. It is of little 

 moment to speculate whether he might not have distinguished 

 himself in some other line. He was emphatically an instructor, 

 and not a few of his pupils are 3 r et living who feel that he was the 

 best instructor they ever had, — the one to whom they owe most. 



He was a teacher according to the old fashion; that is, being 

 a scholar and a student himself, he expected his pupils to be 

 scholars and students on the lines he laid down for them. He 

 impressed upon all of them the idea that he who will nut work 

 cannot learn ; and that both working and learning must be done 

 in the line of duty, — that of subjecting one's own mind and energy 

 to the control of those in rightful authority. He never swerved 

 from this rule, yet he administered it with such unvarj'ing sym- 

 pathy and kindness that no pupil who was worth teaching ever 

 felt any sense of coercion or harsh pressure, or was other than 

 stimulated and braced by his kindly insistence. As soon as his 

 pupils had done their work his began. He supplied to them an 

 amount of knowledge, not only on the specific subjects they were 

 studying, but on a score of others, which they never could have 

 acquired without repeating his own indefatigable labor. From 

 first to last this knowledge w r as unerringly accurate. A mistake 

 of fact was to Professor Torrev simply an untruth ; and to state a 

 name or a date incorrectly was to falsify. Whatever was not right 

 was wrong. 



But he did not end with facts. He combined his vast stock of 

 information into an organic whole by the spirit of a philosophy 

 which soared far above the mere earth of accumulation which 

 makes up so much of human learning. The effect of this con- 

 structive power on his pupils was startling, if such a word can be 

 applied to so precise and gentle a character. A student might 

 come before him, fancying he knew a good deal of history for a 

 vol xxix. (n. s. xxi.) 29 



