ld see only
pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his companion
would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a prize at the
end of it. Getting his single facts together with marvellous sagacity
and long-breathed patience, he arranged them, classified them, described
them, studied them in their relations, and before those around him were
aware of it the collector was an accomplished naturalist. When--he died
his collections remained, and they still remain, as his record in the
hieratic language of science. In writing this memoir the spirit of his
quiet pursuits, the even temper they bred in him, gained possession of my
own mind, so that I seemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed
spectacles, and to move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had
myself prepared and arranged its specimens. I felt wise with his wisdom,
fair-minded with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time his
placid, observant, inquiring, keen-sighted nature "slid into my soul,"
and if I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected
to see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was
sketching.

A few years hater I lived over the life of another friend in writing a
Memoir of which he was the subject. I saw him, the beautiful,
bright-eyed boy, with dark, waving hair; the youthful scholar, first at
Harvard, then at Gottingen and Berlin, the friend and companion of
Bismarck; the young author, making a dash for renown as a novelist, and
showing the elements which made his failures the promise of success in a
larger field of literary labor; the delving historian, burying his fresh
young manhood in the dusty alcoves of silent libraries, to come forth in
the face of Europe and America as one of the leading historians of the
time; the diplomatist, accomplished, of captivating presence and manners,
an ardent American, and in the time of trial an impassioned and eloquent
advocate of the cause of freedom; reaching at last the summit of his
ambition as minister at the Court of Saint James. All this I seemed to
share with him as I tracked his career from his birthplace in Dorchester,
and the house in Walnut Street where he passed his boyhood, to the
palaces of Vienna and London. And then the cruel blow which struck him
from the place he adorned; the great sorrow that darkened his later
years; the invasion of illness, a threat that warned of danger, and after
a period of i