JOHN FISKE. 667 



Jupiter and Saturn, owing to their great size and slow refrigeration, are 

 in a much earlier stage of development than Venus, Mars, and the 

 Earth. 



His taste for philology led him to attack the modern languages at 

 the age of fifteen. He began with German ; took up Spanish, in which 

 he kept a diary ; conquered French; and then attacked Italian. At the 

 end of six months he had read the whole of Giuccardini, with parts of 

 Ariosto and Petrarch. He then turned his attention to Portujruese. 



We have followed him as a boy down to the time when he is about 

 to leave home to go to Cambridge, What had college to offer him in 

 the way of instruction ? It is true that in much of the work he had 

 performed he had been without a master, and of course there was much 

 that he might still learn, but clearly the regular curriculum would 

 practically be merely review work for him. Nevertheless, he looked 

 forward with yearning to the time he should spend at Harvard, knowing 

 that he could discover avenues in which the extraordinary mental activity 

 which had impelled him along this wonderful path of study could find 

 exercise. 



We are told that until he was sixteen " he averaged twelve hours study 

 daily for twelve months in the year." With the qualifications which will 

 naturally suggest themselves this statement would seem probable, yet 

 this boy who could cope with problems which present difficulties to the 

 ordinary collegiate student, and whose learning at fifteen years of age far 

 exceeded in many directions the standard which we should set for a 

 cultivated man of maturity, found time for other occupations than delving 

 in books. He taught himself to play upon the piano; participated iu 

 out-of-door sports, and took pleasure in walking, riding, and boating upon 

 the Connecticut. He was much interested in church and oratorio music, 

 was a member of the church choir, and his fondness for choral music, 

 then developed, is said to have abided by him throughout life. AVe do 

 not find evidence that works of fiction had much attraction for him as a 

 boy. Later in life, we know that he was fond of novels, and that the 

 characters portrayed by the masters of fiction were as real to him as the 

 heroes with whom he met in history. His reading at this time must 

 have been controlled by his surroundings, and what the libraries at his 

 command furnished we can conjecture from the list of his acquirements. 

 He gives us a hint of what there was at hand for him to read, in addition 

 to what might be termed '"useful books," in the following: "I remem- 

 ber," lie says in one of his essays, " that when I was about ten years old, 

 a favorite book witli me was one entitled ' Criminal Trials of all Coun- 



