86 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 



strung with seventy active years, each one a rounded 

 bead of usefulness and service. 



Mr. Quincy was a Bostonian of the purest type. Since 

 the settlement of the town, there had been a colonel of the 

 Boston regiment in every generation of his family. He 

 lived to see a grandson bre vetted with the same title for 

 gallantry in the field. Only child of one among the most 

 eminent advocates of the Revolution, and who but for his 

 untimely death would have been a leading actor in it, his 

 earliest recollections belonged to the heroic period in the 

 history of his native town. With that history his life was 

 thenceforth intimately united by offices of public trust, as 

 Representative in Congress, State Senator, Mayor, and 

 President of the University, to a period beyond the 

 ordinary span of mortals. Even after he had passed 

 ninety, he would not claim to be emeritus, but came 

 forward to brace his townsmen with a courage and warm 

 them with a fire younger than their own. The legend of 

 Golonel Goffe at Deerfield became a reality to the eyes of 

 this generation. The New England breed is running out, 

 we are told ! This was in all ways a beautiful and fortunate 

 life fortunate in the goods of this world fortunate, 

 above all, in the force of character which makes fortune 

 secondary and subservient. We are fond in this country 

 of what are called self-made men (as if real success could 

 ever be other) ; and this is all very well, provided they 

 make something worth having of themselves. Otherwise 

 it is not so well, and the examples of such are at best but 

 stuff for the Alnaschar dreams of a false democracy. 

 The gist of the matter is, not where a man starts from, 

 but where he comes out. We are glad to have the 

 biography of one who, beginning as a gentleman, kept 

 himself such to the end who, with no necessity of labour, 

 left behind him an amount of thoroughly done work such as 

 few have accomplished with the mighty help of hunger. 

 Some kind of pace may be got out of the veriest jade by 

 the near prospect of oats; but the thoroughbred has the 

 spur in his blood. 



