SAMUEL ELIOT. 647 



their daughter, Mrs. John Holmes Morison, survives. Dr. Eliot died 

 at Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, on the 14th of" September, 1898. 



Among the traits which are passing from New England, and now 

 rather enrich the memory of times gone by than give promise for the 

 days to come, none was more marked than the personal distinction of 

 our older gentry. The term may sound dissonant with the traditions 

 of a democratic country. Yet whoever has known this region through 

 the century which is closing must in candor admit that, for better or 

 worse, we have had here social distinctions perhaps the more rigid be- 

 cause they were protected only by their own worth. The true worth of 

 this New England gentry was nowhere more evident than in their deep 

 sense of public duty. If they felt themselves born to the privilege of a 

 certain social isolation, they felt, as every truly vital aristocracy must 

 feel, that this privilege involved profound obligations. The older and 

 officially recognized aristocracies of Europe find scope for their best 

 powers in public careers, — military or political. In America, such 

 careers, beset with far greater uncertainties than elsewhere, have proved 

 less and less practicable for people of principle whose temper is not 

 genuinely, unaffectedly democratic. Our first generation of independence, 

 to be sure, found its highest ideal, military and civil alike, in Washington ; 

 our later century has found its chief civil hero in Lincoln, and its chief 

 military hero in Grant, — admirable men, true worthies, but both alike 

 sprung from the common people. In the generation which is passing, 

 then, the old gentry of New England were mostly placed where they mus-t 

 either swerve from their traditions or do their public services elsewhere 

 than in regular public life. 



From this state of affairs has resulted a century of faithful activity 

 in works which, while of public usefulness, are in many aspects priv^ate. 

 Almost all of the serious literature of New England, like almost all of 

 its riper scholarship, has been animated by its gentry. Almost all its 

 great charities and public institutions have sprung from this class, and 

 have been fostered by their care. To go no further than two instances 

 familiar to all who know Boston, it is to our gentry, and almost to them 

 alone, that we owe the Massachusetts General Plospital and the Boston 

 Public Library, civic monuments which may serve as types of a hundred 

 more, destined to survive any revolutions which may come, and so sur- 

 viving to justify the lives and the privileges of the men to whom posterity 

 shall owe them. 



The older gentry of New England were probably at their best in a 



