armth. Sir Philip Sidney was but a lovely
possibility, until he went to be Governor of Flushing. What else was our
friend, until he went to the war?

The age of Elizabeth did not monopolize the heroes, and they are always
essentially the same. When, for instance, I read in a letter of Hubert
Languet's to Sidney, "You are not over-cheerful by nature," or when, in
another, he speaks of the portrait that Paul Veronese painted of Sidney,
and says, "The painter has represented you sad and thoughtful," I can
believe that he is speaking of my neighbor. Or when I remember what
Sidney wrote to his younger brother,--"Being a gentleman born, you
purpose to furnish yourself with the knowledge of such things as may
be serviceable to your country and calling," or what he wrote to
Languet,--"Our Princes are enjoying too deep a slumber: I cannot think
there is any man possessed of common understanding who does not see to
what these rough storms are driving by which all Christendom has been
agitated now these many years,"--I seem to hear my friend, as he used to
talk on the Sunday evenings when he sat in this huge cane-chair at my
side, in which I saw him last, and in which I shall henceforth always
see him.

Nor is it unfair to remember just here that he bore one of the few
really historic names in this country. He never spoke of it; but we
should all have been sorry not to feel that he was glad to have sprung
straight from that second John Winthrop who was the first Governor of
Connecticut, the younger sister colony of Massachusetts Bay,--the John
Winthrop who obtained the charter of privileges for his colony. How
clearly the quality of the man has been transmitted! How brightly the
old name shines out again!

He was born in New Haven on the 22d of September, 1828, and was a grave,
delicate, rather precocious child. He was at school only in New Haven,
and entered Yale College just as he was sixteen. The pure, manly
morality which was the substance of his character, and his brilliant
exploits of scholarship, made him the idol of his college, friends, who
saw in him the promise of the splendid career which the fond faith of
students allots to the favorite classmate. He studied for the Clark
scholarship, and gained it; and his name, in the order of time, is first
upon the roll of that foundation. He won the Townshend prize for the
best composition on History. For the Berkeleian scholarship he and
another were judged equal, and, drawin