A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 97 



planned for white. The same eyes that had looked on 

 Gage's red-coats, saw Colonel Shawn's negro regiment 

 march out of Boston in the national blue. Seldom has a 

 life, itself actively associated with public affairs, spanned 

 so wide a chasm for the imagination. Oglethorpe's 

 offers a parallel, — the aide-de-camp of Prince Eugene 

 calling on John Adams, American Ambassador to Eng- 

 land. Most long lives resemble those threads of gos- 

 samer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly 

 prolonged, scarce visible pathway of some worm from 

 his cradle to his grave ; but Quincy's was strung wdth 

 seventy active years, each one a rounded bead of useful- 

 ness and service. 



Mr. Quincy w^as 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 brevetted with the 

 same title for gallantry in the field. Only child of one 

 among the most eminent advocates of the Revolution, 

 and w^ho 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 w^as thenceforth intimately 

 united by offices of public trust, as Representative in 

 CongTess, 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 forw^ard to brace his 

 townsmen with a courage and warm them with a fire 

 younger than their own. The legend of Colonel Goffe 

 at Deerfield became a reality to the eyes of this genera- 

 tion. The New England breed is running out, we are 

 told ! This was in all w^ays a beautiful and fortunate 

 life, — fortunate in the goods of this world, — fortunate, 

 above all, in the force of character which makes fortune 



