educational training,
their curiosity led them to inquire for Percival. The sight of this
modest, shrinking individual, as the possessor of such mines of
intellectual wealth, it may well be understood, produced the deepest
interest. In him they recognized a man superior to the clamor of vulgar
gratification; his indifference to gain, to luxury, and every form of
display, his constant preference of the spiritual over the sensual, was
always an impressive example to them. The indigent student took fresh
courage as he saw in him to what a narrow compass exterior wants might
be reduced; the man of fashion and the fop stood abashed before the
simplicity of his dress and daily life. And wherever the spirit of
classic literature had been imbibed, and the capacity acquired of
perceiving the severe worth of the true philosopher, the inspection of
such a character, compared with the mere description of it in history,
was like the difference between a statue and a living, breathing man. As
at early dawn or in the gray twilight his slender form glided by, the
thoughtful and poetic scholar could scarce refrain from uttering to
himself,--"There goes Diogenes or Chrysippus! There goes one, by the
side of whom many a bustler in letters is only a worthless drone, many
an idolized celebrity a weak and pitiful sham!" Such a character as
Percival's, in the presence of a scholastic community, was a perpetual
incentive to industry and manliness; and although he rarely spoke in its
hearing, and has left us fewer published works than many others, still
I believe that thousands yet live to thank him for lessons derived from
the simple survey of his daily life.

Though there is little likelihood that his example of self-abnegation
and devotion to study will be followed by many of our youth,
nevertheless, the occurrence of such a model now and then in the
republic of letters constitutes a pleasing as well as useful
phenomenon,--if for no other reason, because it breaks in upon the
monotony of literary biography, and communicates a portion of that
picturesqueness to scholastic life which belongs to Nature in everything
else. That his course was fraught with happiness to himself cannot be
doubted; that it was beneficial also to his fellow-men is equally
true; and though he may be judged less leniently by minds incapable of
pronouncing that to be a character honorable in the sight of God or
man, which deviates from their own standard or creed,--to o