VISIT TO AMERICA. 129 



ning's birth had been celebrated in London, in 1880, he 

 had attended, at some personai risk, for he was suffering 

 from a return of the malady of 1864, to show his " thorough 

 "accordance as a man of science with his general views of 

 "human nature and its responsibilities." The great Civil 

 War had kindled in him an absorbing interest ; he had 

 followed its progress with almost personal anxiety ; his 

 recollection of its incidents was vivid, and in a long letter 

 written in 1878, to Dr. O. W. Holmes, who had sent him a 

 copy of his life of the historian and diplomatist Motley, he 

 had retraced, in full detail, the causes which had for a while 

 somewhat alienated his own sympathies, and those of 

 many of his London friends, from the side of the North, 

 partly through what he felt to be the unwise advocacy of 

 Mr. Motley, with whom he was at one time in intimate 

 intercourse. For the character of Lincoln he had conceived 

 warm admiration ; he had studied the details of his career ; 

 in the President's devotion to duty, his single-mindedness, 

 his strength, he found the elements of nobility which he 

 regarded as of highest worth, and his sense of humour was 

 especially gratified by the manifold stories which he 

 gathered of the insight and pungency of Lincoln's retorts. 

 Under these influences his judgment of the issue became 

 far tenderer to the North ; and when, after his return home 

 in December, he recalled some of his impressions, strongest 

 and deepest was his admiration for the readiness with which 

 it had met the call to sacrifice. 



To the Rev. R, L. Carpenter. 



London, December 31, 18S2. 



A very fine memorial of the graduates who lost their lives 



in the war has been erected by subscription at enormous cost 



[at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.]; including a hall for 



dining, a good deal in the style of one of the Oxford or Cam- 



