f less vigor
than his predecessors, was yet a man of culture and ability. He was
widely known as poet, critic, and lecturer; and endowed his son with
native qualities of intelligence, good breeding, and honesty.

After somewhat varied and troublous school days, young Dana entered
Harvard University, where he took high rank in his classes and bid fair
to make a reputation as a scholar. But at the beginning of his third
year of college a severe attack of measles interrupted his course, and
so affected his eyes as to preclude, for a time at least, all idea of
study. The state of the family finances was not such as to permit of
foreign travel in search of health. Accordingly, prompted by necessity
and by a youthful love of adventure, he shipped as a common sailor in
the brig, Pilgrim, bound for the California coast. His term of service
lasted a trifle over two years--from August, 1834, to September, 1836.
The undertaking was one calculated to kill or cure. Fortunately it had
the latter effect; and, upon returning to his native place, physically
vigorous but intellectually starved, he reentered Harvard and worked
with such enthusiasm as to graduate in six months with honor.

Then came the question of his life work. Though intensely religious,
he did not feel called to the ministry; business made no appeal; his
ancestors had been lawyers; it seemed best that he should follow where
they had led. Had conditions been those of to-day, he would naturally
have drifted into some field of scholarly research,--political science
or history. As it was, he entered law school, which, in 1840, he left
to take up the practice of his profession. But Dana had not the tact,
the personal magnetism, or the business sagacity to make a brilliant
success before the bar. Despite the fact that he had become a master
of legal theory, an authority upon international questions, and a
counsellor of unimpeachable integrity, his progress was painfully slow
and toilsome. Involved with his lack of tact and magnetism there was,
too, an admirable quality of sturdy obstinacy that often worked him
injury. Though far from sharing the radical ideas of the
Abolitionists, he was ardent in his anti-slavery ideas and did not
hesitate to espouse the unpopular doctrines of the Free-Soil party of
1848, or to labor for the freedom of those Boston negroes, who, under
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, were in danger of deportation to the
South.

His activity in