A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 85 



Not at all, but because the work had grown to be a volume 

 under his weariless hand. Ohne Hast oJine Rast, was as true 

 of him as of Goethe. We find the explanation of his accom 

 plishing so much in a rule of life which he gave, when pre 

 sident, to a young man employed as his secretary, and who 

 was a little behindhand with his work : When you have a 

 number of duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable 

 one first. No advice could have been more in character, 

 and it is perhaps better than the great German s, Do the 

 duty that lies nearest thee. 



Perhaps the most beautiful part of Mr. Quincy s life was 

 his old age. What in most men is decay, was in him but 

 beneficent prolongation and adjournment. His interest in 

 affairs unabated, his judgment undimmed, his fire unchilled, 

 his last years were indeed lovely as a Lapland night. Till 

 within a year or two of its fall, there were no signs of dila 

 pidation in that stately edifice. Singularly felicitous was Mr. 

 Winthrop s application to him of Wordsworth s verses : 



The monumental pomp of age 

 Was in that goodly personage. 



Everything that Macbeth foreboded the want of, he had in 

 deserved abundance the love, the honour, the obedience, the 

 troops of friends. His equanimity was beautiful. He loved 

 life, as men of large vitality always do, but he did not fear to 

 lose life by changing the scene of it. Visiting him in his 

 ninetieth year with a friend, he said to us, among other 

 things : I have no desire to die, but also no reluctance. In 

 deed, I have a considerable curiosity about the other world. 

 I have never been to Europe, you know. Even in his ex 

 treme senescence there was an April mood somewhere in his 

 nature that put a spirit of youth in everything. He seemed 

 to feel that he could draw against an unlimited credit of 

 years. When eighty-two, he said smilingly to a young man 

 just returned from a foreign tour, Well, well, I mean to go 

 myself when I am old enough to profit by it. We have seen 

 many old men whose lives were mere waste and desolation, 

 who made longevity disreputable by their untimely persist 

 ence in it; but in Mr. Quincy s length of years there was 

 nothing that was not venerable. To him it was fulfilment, 

 not deprivation ; the days were marked to the last for what 

 they brought, not for what they took away. 

 The memory of what Mr. Quincy did will be lost in ihs , 



