honor to his memory. The Rev. Benjamin Colman called him "our
master," and pronounced his life as "great and good." "The young men saw
him and hid themselves, and the aged arose and stood up." Dr. Appleton
declared that he had been "an honored ornament to his country. Verily,
the breach is so wide, that none but an all-sufficient God (with whom is
the residue of the Spirit) can repair or heal it." The late Benjamin
Peirce, in his _History of Harvard University_, says that "his
Presidency was successful and brilliant." He was honored abroad, as well
as at home; and his name is inscribed on the rolls of the Royal Society
of London. Mr. Peirce says: "He had a great and generous soul." His
natural abilities were of a very high order. His attainments were
profound and extensive. He was well acquainted with the learned
languages, with the arts and "sciences, with history, philosophy, law,
divinity, politics." Such, we are told, were "the majesty and marks of
greatness, in his speech, his behaviour, and his very countenance," that
the students of the College were inspired with reverence and affection.
In his earlier and later life, he had been connected with the College,
as Tutor and as President; and in the intermediate period, he had filled
the highest legislative and judicial stations, and been intrusted with
the most important functions connected with the military service. I am
inclined to think, all things considered, a claim, in his behalf, might
be put in for the distinction the Reviewer awards to Cotton Mather, as
"doubtless the most brilliant man of his day in New England."

President Leverett was buried on the sixth of May. Cotton Mather
officiated as one of the Pall-bearers, and then went home, and made the
following entry in his Diary, dated the seventh: "The sudden death of
that unhappy man who sustained the place of President in our College,
will open a door for my doing singular services in the best of
interests. I do not know that the care of the College will now be cast
upon me; though I am told it is what is most generally wished for. If it
should be, I shall be in abundance of distress about it; but, if it
should not, yet I may do many things for the good of the College more
quietly and more hopefully than formerly."

As time wore away, and no choice of President was made, he became more
and more sensible that an influence, hostile to him, was in the
ascendency; and, on the first of July, he writes thus, in