400 RICHARD HENRY DANA. 



1774 to 1784. He was Judge in the Supreme Court of Massachu- 

 setts from 1785 to 1792, and Chief Justice from 1792 to 1806. As 

 one of the founders of this Academy, a member of its Council from 

 1789 to 1805, and its Vice-President from 1805 to 1807, he is worthy 

 of commemoration. His son, Richard H. Dana, Sr., was born in 

 Cambridge in 1787, and graduated at Harvard College in 1808. In 

 1814 he entered the literary alliance which started the " North Ameri- 

 can Review," and in 1818-19 he was associated with Professor E. 

 T. Channing in the editorship of it. Though he studied law, was 

 admitted to the Boston Bar in 1811, and began practice in Cambridge 

 the next year, serving also as member of the Legislature, he was for 

 many years previous to his death, on July 2, 1879, only remembered 

 as one of the early pioneers in American letters. In 1821—2 he pub- 

 lished the " Idle Man." The " Buccaneer and other Poems," which 

 was printed in 1827, was praised by Wilson in " Blackwood's Maga- 

 zine " as being " the most powerful and original of American poetical 

 compositions." When Richard H. Dana the younger graduated, the 

 subject of his Part was : " Heaven lies about us in our infancy." 

 This heaven, in his case, was the tastes and talents he had inherited. 



What seemed at the time to be an unfortunate interruption in the 

 college studies of the younger Dana turned out to his great advantage. 

 It gave him a courage and robustness of character for which he found 

 full exercise in later years. His " Two Years before the Mast," first 

 published in 1840, which Dr. 0. W. Holmes has characterized as 

 the " Odyssey of the forecastle," has acquired a perennial popularity 

 and made the literary reputation of its author. In the school at 

 Amsterdam, where boys pass through a three years course of edu- 

 cation for the merchant service, twelve copies are required in the 

 library to supply the constant demand of the students for a book which 

 competes successfully with Defoe's stories. Mr. Dana's interest iu 

 sailors, whose hardships, privations, and dangers he had shared, led him 

 to publish another book in 1841 under the title of the " Seaman's 

 Friend." This description of sea usages was republished in England 

 under the name of the " Seaman's Manual." His next volume, " To 

 Cuba and Back," which appeared in 1859, was the fruit of a short 

 trip in which he was seeking rest from his professional labors. In 

 1859-GO, Mr. Dana made the grand tour of the earth, stopping at 

 the Hawaiian Islands, China, Japan, Ceylon, India, and Egypt, and 

 revisiting California. His vivid description of this journey remains 

 only in the memory of friends, except what relates to California. 

 For that the public is indebted to the second edition, in 1869, of his 



