e of a remarkable student of nature. He was a born
observer, and such are far from common. He was also a man of great
enthusiasm and unwearying industry. His quick eye detected what others
passed by without notice: the Indian relic, where another would 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 pass