l profession as well. One of these
conditions may be found in the wide latitude of American opinion,
especially as it expresses itself in New England, and particularly in
the city of Boston where Mr. Savage spent many years as a preacher.

I.

In the community in which one lives, no less than in himself, often lies
the secret of a man's strength and greatness. The individual shares the
endowment or potency of those impersonal forces which sustain and
enhance public life. The spirit which animates the broader ranges of
general history acts with unhindered freedom on the narrower sphere of
the individual mind and often becomes the creator of its better moments.
Silent influences, hidden providences, are at work in society of which
the individual has no suspicion, and whose effects cannot be recorded in
statistics. Below the plane of conscious recognition there are
far-reaching movements of thought which transcend our powers of
understanding, but which act with almost unbounded sway in controlling
the thought and life of each person. The early promise is fulfilled in
the ripening powers of the mind under the cumulative influences which
nourish it from without. In the order which surrounds the individual,
and in the movement of which he has become a part, we see, as clearly as
in himself, the inevitable promise of his ultimate destiny.

In whatever pertains to liberal culture Boston is never weak or
wavering. Boston impresses one as possessing innate respect and
enthusiasm for intellectual supremacy, and reverence for the pure
sentiments of religion as continuous forces in human life. For two and a
half centuries it has been the wish and work of her most cultivated
minds to give human thought and life the highest expression; and this
has been done with monumental activity. In Boston, culture and religious
piety have never been decadent; over and above the controversies and
schisms and sectarian quarrels which from time to time have rent the
churches, they have remained intact. In spite of the manifold currents
of opposing tendencies, which now and then threaten to overwhelm
cherished beliefs and to lift the world off its hinges, they remain
essential elements in this city's social life. They are stern present
necessities, unwritten and immutable laws which she will not and cannot
transgress. From the founding of the city by the "choice spirits" of the
seventeenth century, they have retained their vitality and have been