98 A GREA T P UBLIC CHA RA CTER. 



as of Goethe. We find the explanation of his accomplishing 

 so much in a rule of life which he gave, when president, to 

 a young man employed as his secretary, and who was a 

 little behindhand with his work : &quot; When you have a 

 number of duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable 

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

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

 duty that lies nearest thee.&quot; 



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 &quot; lovely as a Lapland night.&quot; 

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

 dilapidation in that stately edifice. Singularly felicitous 

 was Mr. Winthrop s application to him of Wordsworth s 

 verses : 



&quot; The monumental pomp of age 

 Was in that goodly personage.&quot; 



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 &quot; I have no desire to die, but also no reluct 

 ance. Indeed, I have a considerable curiosity about the 

 other world. I have never been to Europe, you know.&quot; 

 Even in his extreme senescence there was an April mood 

 somewhere in his nature &quot; that put a spirit of youth in 

 everything.&quot; 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, 

 &quot; Well, well, I mean to go myself when I am old enough to 

 profit by it.&quot; We have seen many old men whose lives 

 were mere waste and desolation, who made longevity dis 

 reputable by their untimely persistence in it ; but in Mr. 



