l application, within the ordinary rounds
of school and college--an education in which every man must
be mainly his own master. In the work of this enlarged self-
education he was engaged, and, until it was finished, he shrunk
from the appearance of attempting to instruct others. He
had in him all the elements which would have insured the success
of early efforts at display--a fluent speech, a fine elocution,
quick conception, a brilliant fancy. But his ambition, . . .
while it aspired to a lofty eminence, was content to see that
eminence still in the distance." Mr. Winthrop adds, "Principle,
unyielding and uncompromising principle, was the very breath
of his soul, and pervaded and animated his whole intellectual
system . . . . He openly professed what he believed, and he acted
up to his professions. He not only held conscience the guide
of his life, but he took care to school and discipline that
conscience so that its dictates should always conform to truth,
to duty, to the laws of God. He was an honorable, high-minded,
virtuous man--a sincere and devout Christian . . . . He has
fallen at the very gate of an honorable and eminent career,
and a thousand hopes are buried in his grave."

A few years before Mr. Winthrop died I met him in Cambridge,
at the Peabody Museum, of which we were both trustees. The
trustees were gathered in their room waiting for the meeting
to be called to order. Mr. Winthrop was talking about his
college days. I asked him how it happened that there were
so many distinguished persons, in various departments of excellence,
who were graduated from Harvard about his time, in his class
and in the few classes following and preceding. I said that
sometimes there would be several orators, or eminent men of
science, or eminent classical scholars, or eminent teachers,
graduated about the same time, and their excellence would
be attributed to some one instructor; but that in his time
there seemed to be a crop of great men in all departments
of life--in natural history, in the pulpit, the bar, in oratory,
in literature, and in public life. Mr. Winthrop rose to
his feet from this chair and brought his hand down with great
emphasis on the table as he answered: "It was the influence
of Charles Emerson, Sir."

Charles Emerson delivered just before his death a very beautiful
and impressive lecture on Socrates. It was long remembered
by the people of Concord. It is said that they who heard
it ne