JOHN LOWELL. 635 



orchard extending down the phxce until it touched the garden of Judge 

 Prescott, which stretched from there up Bedford Street towards Wash- 

 ington. The lower side of Bedford Place was occupied by a row of 

 brick houses, and in the one at the corner, as has already been said, 

 Joiui Lowell was born. 



In Chauncy Place, next to the dividing wall between that and Bedford 

 Place, stood the Chauncy Hall School, then under the management of a 

 well-known teacher, Gideon F. Thayer. To this school, partly perhaps 

 from its nearness as well as for its reputation, Judge Lowell was sent, 

 as soon as he was old enough to go to any man's school. He was fitted 

 for college in the private school of Daniel G. lugraham, who kept for 

 more than twenty years the leading private classical school in Boston, 

 and graduated at Harvard in 1843 at the age of eighteen years, with 

 high distinction in Greek, Latin, Philosophy, and History, — indeed it 

 would seem that he must have been recognized as especially proficient 

 in Greek, as at the Sophomore Exhibition in October, 1841, he was 

 one of the speakers in A Greek Dialogue, " Extract from Shakspeare's 

 Henry the Fourth : Glendower and Hotspur ; " and at the corresponding 

 Exhibition in his Junior year, had a Greek oration, " Bvpwv iv 'EXXdSi." 

 He was anions the first scholars in his class : of his Commencement 

 part, an English oration, the Rev. Dr. John Pierce wrote in his diary : 

 " The subject of this oration was ' The Battle of the Nile,' — eight 

 minutes in length, a summary of the principal facts." * 



After leaving college Lowell entered the Dane Law School, and 

 remained there for the full course of two years. He was then for a 

 year in the office of Mr. Charles G. Loring, and was admitted to the 

 bar in 1846. Directly afterwards he went to Europe with his father 

 and family, and was absent about a year. On his return he formed a 

 connection with his brother-in-law, Mr. William Sohier, and began the 

 practice of the law. This connection lasted until 1857, when he took 

 an office by himself. 



The business in Mr. Sohier's office was mostly chamber practice, and 

 largely connected with the management of trust estates, and Mr. 

 Lowell's work there was not such as to give him the opportunity for any 

 especial display of ability, or to attract any one's attention. His name, 

 I think, appears only twice in the Massachusetts Reports for this period. 

 In the autumn of 1857 he separated from Mr. Sohier almost at the 

 moment when the financial difficulties of that time were reaching their 



* Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series II., V. p. 237. 



