ndson brevetted with the
same title for gallantry in the field. Only child of one among the most
eminent advocates of the Revolution, and who 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 was thenceforth intimately united by offices of
public trust, as Representative in Congress, 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 forward 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 generation. The
New England breed is running out, we are told! This was in all ways a
beautiful and fortunate life,--fortunate in the goods of this
world,--fortunate, above all, in the force of character which makes
fortune secondary and subservient. We are fond in this country of what
are called self-made men (as if real success could ever be other); and
this is all very well, provided they make something worth having of
themselves. Otherwise it is not so well, and the examples of such are at
best but stuff for the Alnaschar dreams of a false democracy. The gist
of the matter is not where a man starts from, but where he comes out. We
are glad to have the biography of one who, beginning as a gentleman,
kept himself such to the end,--who, with no necessity of labor, left
behind him an amount of thoroughly done work such as few have
accomplished with the mighty help of hunger. Some kind of pace may be
got out of the veriest jade by the near prospect of oats; but the
thorough-bred has the spur in his blood.

Mr. Edmund Quincy has told the story of his father's life with the skill
and good taste that might have been expected from the author of
"Wensley." Considering natural partialities, he has shown a discretion
of which we are oftener reminded by missing than by meeting it. He has
given extracts enough from speeches to show their bearing and
quality,--from letters, to recall bygone modes of thought and indicate
many-sided friendly relations with good and eminent men; above all, he
has lost no opportunity to illustrate that life of the past, near in
date, yet alien in manners, whose current glides so imperceptibly from
one generation into another that we fail to