Ixiii 



" The conversation of such a man must be full of instruction. It was most 

 agreeably so. I think I may say, that, for fifty years past, I have never spent half 

 an hour with Mr. Pickering in which I did not get some interesting or useful in- 

 formation, such as few men could give me. 



" In his manners there was a peculiar polish, improved, undoubtedly, by his 

 intercourse with cultivated people abroad. His manners were so simple, as not 

 to arrest attention at first ; but so refined and finished, as to bear the closest scru- 

 tiny, and to fit him for the most elegant society. He manifested in them the 

 nicest discrimination as to persons. Their foundation was in his good heart and 

 in his respect for the pleasure as well as for the rights of others." 



The following is a brief extract from a letter addressed to me by a learned 

 scholar and divine, alluded to in the discourse, who was intimately associated 

 with Mr. Pickering in the American Oriental Society. 



" It gave me a great, although a melancholy pleasure, when we last met, that 

 you should request me to recall and write to you my recollections of the late 

 Dr. Pickering. I think it was my particular senior, the late Dr. Joseph McKean, 

 who introduced me to our departed friend, then in the class, as you know, next 

 above us. And this must have been between fifty-two and fifty-three years ago. 

 But from that period I ever entertained toward him the most respectful esteem 

 and regard, and have shared the privilege of his friendship, — a virtuous friendship, 

 productive, from its commencement, of literary and moral benefits. His acquaint- 

 ance was, to use the phrase of Waller the poet, ' a liberal education.' 



" You well remember his gentlemanly deportment in college. You recollect, 

 too, his high and just reputation in the various branches of mathematical science, — 

 a reputation fairly and laboriously earned. But he deserves remembrance at Har- 

 vard, also, for being most efficiently engaged in the resuscitation of classical lit- 

 erature. That was at a very low ebb, you know, in the early part of our time 

 there. 



" With respect to the extent of his linguistic acquirements, about which you 

 wished me to inform you, I really am not able to give any satisfactory account. I 

 think, however, I can recollect as many as sixteen languages of which we have oc- 



