Produced by Edmund Dejowski

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS OF ORVILLE DEWEY, D.D.

Edited by his Daughter Mary Dewey

INTRODUCTORY.

IT is about twenty-five years since, at my earnest desire, my father began to write some of the memories of his own life, of the friends whom he loved, and of the noteworthy people he had known; and it is by the help of these autobiographical papers, and of selections from his letters, that I am enabled to attempt a memoir of him. I should like to remind the elder generation and inform the younger of some things in the life of a man who was once a foremost figure in the world from which he had been so long withdrawn that his death was hardly felt beyond the circle of his personal friends. It was like the fall of an aged tree in the vast forests of his native hills, when the deep thunder of the crash is heard afar, and a new opening is made towards heaven for those who stand near, but when to the general eye there is no change in the rich woodland that clothes the mountain side.

But forty years ago, when his church in New York was crowded morning and evening, and [8] eager multitudes hung upon his lips for the very bread of life, and when he entered also with spirit and power into the social, philanthropic, and artistic life of that great city; or nearly sixty years ago, when he carried to the beautiful town and exquisite society of New Bedford an influx of spiritual life and a depth of religious thought which worked like new yeast in the well-prepared Quaker mind,—then, had he been taken away, men would have felt that a tower of strength had fallen, and those especially, who in his parish visits had felt the sustaining comfort of his singular tenderness and sympathy in affliction, and of his counsel in distress, would have mourned for him not only as for a brother, but also a chief. Now, almost all of his own generation have passed away. Here and there one remains, to listen with interest to a fresh account of persons and things once familiar; while the story will find its chief audience among those who remember Mr. Dewey [FN My father always preferred this simple title to the more formal "Dr." and in his own family and among his most intimate friends he was Mr. Dewey to the last. He was, of course, gratified by the complimentary intention of Harvard University in bestowing the degree of D.D. upon him in 1839, but he never felt that his acquisitions in learning entitled him to it.] as among the lights of their own youth. Those also who love the study of [9] human nature may follow with pleasure the development of a New England boy, with a character of great strength, simplicity, reverence, and honesty, with scanty opportunities for culture, and heavily handicapped in his earlier running by both poverty and Calvinism, but possessed from the first by the love of truth and knowledge, and by a generous sympathy which made him long to impart whatever treasures he obtained. To trace the growth of such a life to a high point of usefulness and power, to see it unspoiled by honor and admiration, and to watch its retirement, under the pressure of nervous disease, from active service, while never losing its concern for the public good, its quickness of personal sympathy, nor its interest in the solution of the mightiest problems of humanity, cannot be an altogether unprofitable use of time to the reader, while to the writer it is a work of consecration. He who was at once like a son and brother to my father, he who should have crowned a forty-years' friendship by the fulfilment of this pious task, and who would have done it with a stronger and a steadier hand than mine, BELLOWS, was called first from that "fair companionship," while still in the unbroken exercise of the varied and remarkable powers which made his life one of such [10] large use, blessing, and pleasure to the world. None could make his place good to his elder friend, whose approaching death was visibly hastened by grief for the loss of the constant sympathy and devotion which had faithfully cheered his declining years. Many and beautiful tributes were laid upon my father's tomb by those whom he left here. Why should we not hope that that of Bellows was in the form of greeting?

ST. DAVID'S, July, 1883.

[11]I WAS born in Sheffield, Mass., on the 28th of March, 1794. My grandparents, Stephen Dewey and Aaron Root, were among the early settlers of the town, and the houses they built the one of brick, and the other of wood—still stand. They came from Westfield, about forty miles distant from Sheffield, on horseback, through the woods; there were no roads then. We have always had a tradition in our family that the male branch is of Welsh origin. When I visited Wales in 1832, I remember being struck with the resemblance I saw in the girls and young women about me to my sisters, and I mentioned it when writing home. On going up to London, I became acquainted with a gentleman, who, writing a note one day to a friend of mine and speaking of me, said: "I spell the name after the Welsh fashion, Devi; I don't know how he spells it." On inquiring of this gentleman, and he referred me also to biographical dictionaries,—I found that our name had an origin of unsuspected dignity, not to say sanctity, being no other than that of Saint David, the patron saint [12] of Wales, which is shortened and changed in the speech of the common people into Dewi.'

Everyone tries, I suppose, to penetrate as far back as he can into his childhood, back towards his infancy, towards that mysterious and shadowy line behind which lies his unremembered existence. Besides the usual life of a child in the country,—running foot-races with my brother Chandler, building brick ovens to bake apples in the side-hill opposite the house, and the steeds of willow sticks cut there, and beyond the unvarying gentleness of my mother and the peremptory decision and playfulness at the same time of my father,—his slightest word was enough to hush the wildest tumult among us children, and yet he was usually gay and humorous in his family,—besides and beyond this, I remember nothing till the first event in my early childhood, and that was acting in a play. It was performed in the church, as part of a school exhibition. The stage was laid upon the pews, and the audience seated in the gallery. I must have been about five years old then, and I acted the part of a little son. I remember feeling, then and afterwards, very queer and shamefaced about my histrionic papa and mamma. It is striking to observe, not only how early, but how powerfully, imagination [13] is developed in our childhood. For some time after, I regarded those imaginary parents as sustaining a peculiar relation, not only to me, but to one another; I thought they were in love, if not to be married. But they never were married, nor ever thought of it, I suppose. All that drama was wrought out in the bosom of a child. It is worth noticing, too, the freedom with sacred things, of those days, approaching to the old fetes and mysteries in the church. We are apt to think of the Puritan times as all rigor and strictness. And yet here, nearly sixty years ago, was a play acted in the meeting-house: the church turned into a theatre. And I remember my mother's telling me that when she was a girl her father carried her on a pillion to the raising of a church in Pittsfield; and the occasion was celebrated by a ball in the evening. Now, all dancing is proscribed by the church there as a sinful amusement.

[FN This was the reason why Mr. Dewey gave to the country home which he inherited from his father the name of "St. David's," by which it is known to his family and friends.—M. E. D.]

The next thing that I remember, as an event in my childhood, was the funeral of General Ashley, one of our townsmen, who had served as colonel, I think, in the War of the Revolution. I was then in my sixth year. It was a military funeral; and the procession, for a long distance, filled the wide street. The music, the solemn march, the bier borne in the midst, the crowd! It seemed to me as if the whole world was at a funeral. The remains of Bonaparte borne to the Invalides amidst the crowds of Paris could not, [14] I suppose, at a later day, have affected me like that spectacle. I do not certainly know whether I heard the sermon on the occasion by the pastor, the Rev. Ephraim Judson; but at any rate it was so represented to me that it always seems as if I had heard it, especially the apostrophe to the remains that rested beneath that dark pall in the aisle. "General Ashley!" he said, and repeated, "General Ashley!—he hears not."

To the recollections of my childhood this old pastor presents a very distinct, and I may say somewhat portentous, figure, tall, large-limbed, pale, ghostly almost, with slow movement and hollow tone, with eyes dreamy, and kindly, I believe, but spectral to me, coming into the house with a heavy, deliberate, and solemn step, making me feel as if the very chairs and tables were conscious of his presence and did him reverence; and when he stretched out his long, bony arm and said, "Come here, child!" I felt something as if a spiritualized ogre had invited me. Nevertheless, he was a man, I believe, of a very affectionate and tender nature; indeed, I afterwards came to think so; but at that time, and up to the age of twelve, it is a strict truth that I did not regard Mr. Judson as properly a human being,—as a man at all. If he had descended from the planet Jupiter, he could not have been a bit more preternatural and strange to me. Indeed, I well remember the occasion when the idea of his proper humanity first flashed upon [15] my mind. It was when I saw him, one day, beat the old black horse he always rode, apparently in a passion like any other man. The old black horse—large, fat, heavy, lazy—figures in my mind almost as distinctly as its master; and if, as it came down the street, its head were turned aside towards the school-house, as indicating the rider's intent to visit us, I remember that the school was thrown into as much commotion as if an armed spectre were coming down the road. Our awe of him was extreme; yet he loved to be pleasant with us. He would say,—examining the school was always a part of his object, "How much is five times seven?" "Thirty-five," was the ready answer. "Well," replied the old man, "saying so don't make it so"; a very significant challenge, which we were ill able to meet. At the close of his visit he always gave an exact and minute account of the Crucifixion,—I think always, and in the same terms. It was a mere appeal to physical sympathy, awful, but not winning. When he stood before us, and, lifting his hands almost to the ceiling, said, "And so they reared him up!" it seemed as if he described the catastrophe of the world, not its redemption. Indeed, Mr. Judson appeared to think that anything drawn from the Bible was good, whether he made any moral application of it or not. I have heard him preach a whole sermon, giving the most precise and detailed description of the building of the Tabernacle, without one word of comment, [16] inference, or instruction. But he was a good and kindly man; and when, as I was going to college at the age of eighteen, he laid his hand upon my head, and gave me, with solemn form and tender accent, his blessing, I felt awed and impressed, as I imagine the Hebrew youth may have felt under a patriarch's benediction.

With such an example and teacher of religion before me, whose goodness I did not know, and whose strangeness and preternatural character only I felt; and indeed with all the ideas I got of religion, whether from Sunday-keeping or catechising, my early impressions on that subject could not be happy or winning. I remember the time when I really feared that if I went out into the fields to walk on Sunday, bears would come down from the mountain and catch me. At a later day, but still in my childhood, I recollect a book-pedler's coming to our house, and when he opened his pack, that I selected from a pile of story-books, Bunyan's "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." Religion had a sort of horrible attraction for me, but nothing could exceed its gloominess. I remember looking down from the gallery at church upon the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and pitying the persons engaged in it more than any people in the world,—I thought they were so unhappy. I had heard of "the unpardonable sin," and well do I recollect lying in my bed a mere child—and having thoughts and words injected into my mind, which I [17]imagined were that sin, and shuddering, and trembling, and saying aloud, "No, no, no; I do not,—I will not." It is the grand mystery of Providence that what is divinest and most beautiful should be suffered to be so painfully, and, as it must seem at first view, so injuriously misconstrued. But what is universal, must be a law; and what is law, must be right,—must have good reasons for it. And certainly so it is. Varying as the ages vary, yet the experience of the individual is but a picture of the universal mind,—of the world's mind. The steps are the same, ignorance, fear, superstition, implicit faith; then doubt, questioning, struggling, long and anxious reasoning; then, at the end, light, more or less, as the case may be. Can it, in the nature of things, be otherwise? The fear of death, for instance, which I had, which all children have, can childhood escape it? Far onward and upward must be the victory over that fear. And the fear of God, and, indeed, the whole idea of religion,—must it not, in like manner, necessarily be imperfect? And are imperfection and error peculiar to our religious conceptions? What mistaken ideas has the child of a man, of his parent when correcting him, or of some distinguished stranger! They are scarcely less erroneous than his ideas of God. What mistaken notions of life, of the world, the great, gay, garish world, all full of cloud-castles, ships laden with gold, pleasures endless and entrancing! What mistaken impressions [18]about nature; about the material world upon which childhood has alighted, and of which it must necessarily be ignorant; about clouds and storms and tempests; and of the heavens above, sun and moon and stars! I remember well when the fable of the Happy Valley in Rasselas was a reality to me; when I thought the sun rose and set for us alone, and how I pitied the glorious orb, as it sunk behind the western mountain, to think that it must pass through a sort of Hades, through a dark underworld, to come up in the east again. It is a curious fact, that the Egyptians in the morning of the world had the same ideas. Shall I blame Providence for this? Could it be otherwise? If earthly things are so mistaken, is it strange that heavenly things are? And especially shall I call in question this order of things,—this order, whether of men's or of the world's progress, when I see that it is not only inevitable, the necessary allotment for an experimenting and improving nature, which is human nature, but when I see too that each stage of progress has its own special advantages; that "everything is beautiful in its time;" that fears, superstitions, errors, quicken imagination and restrain passion as truly as doubts, reasonings, strugglings, strengthen the judgment, mature the moral nature, and lead to light?

I am dilating upon all this too much, perhaps. I let my pen run. Sitting down here in the blessed [19]country home, with nothing else in particular just now to do, at the age of sixty-three, I have time and am disposed to look back into my early life and to reason upon it; and although I have nothing uncommon to relate, yet what pertains to me has its own interest and significance, just as if no other being had ever existed, and therefore I set down my experience and my reflections simply as they present themselves to me.

In casting back my eyes upon this earliest period of my life, there are some things which I recall, which may amuse my grandchildren, if they should ever be inclined to look over these pages, and some of which they may find curious, as things of a bygone time.

Children now know nothing of what "'Lection" was in those days, the annual period, that is, when the newly elected State government came in. It was in the last week in May. How eager were we boys to have the corn planted before that time! The playing could not be had till the work was done. The sports and the entertainments were very simple. Running about the village street, hither and thither, without much aim; stands erected for the sale of gingerbread and beer,—home-made beer, concocted of sassafras roots and wintergreen leaves, etc.; games of ball, not base-ball, as now is the fashion, yet with wickets,—this was about all, except that at the end there was always horse-racing.

Having witnessed this exciting sport in my [20] boyhood, without any suspicion of its being wrong, and seen it abroad in later days, in respectable company, I was led, very innocently, when I was a clergyman in New York, into what was thought a great misdemeanor. I was invited by some gentlemen, and went with them, to the races on Long Island. I met on the boat, as we were returning, a parishioner of mine, who expressed great surprise, and even a kind of horror, when I told him what I had been to see. He could not conceal that he thought it very bad that I should have been there; and I suppose it was. But that was not the worst of it. Some person had then recently heard me preach a sermon in which I said, that, in thesis, I had rather undertake to defend Infidelity than Calvinism. In extreme anger thereat, he wrote a letter to some newspaper, in which, after stating what I had said, he added, "And this clergyman was lately seen at the races!" It went far and wide, you may be sure. I saw it in newspapers from all parts of the country; yet some of my friends, while laughing at me, held it to be only a proof of my simplicity.

There were worse things than sports in our public gatherings; even street fights,—pugilistic fights, hand to hand. I have seen men thus engage, and that in bloody encounter, knocking one another down, and the fallen man stamped upon by his adversary. The people gathered round, not to interfere, but to see them fight it out. [21] Such a spectacle has not been witnessed in Sheffield, I think, for half a century. But as to sports and entertainments in general, there were more of them in those days than now. We had more holidays, more games in the street, of ball-playing, of quoits, of running, leaping, and wrestling. The militia musters, now done away with, gave many occasions for them. Every year we had one or two great squirrel-hunts, ended by a supper, paid for by the losing side, that is, by the side shooting the fewest. Almost every season we had a dancing-school. Singing-schools, too, there were every winter. There was also a small band of music in the village, and serenades were not uncommon. We, boys used to give them on the flute to our favorites. But when the band came to serenade us, I shall never forget the commotion it made in the house, and the delight we had in it. We children were immediately up in a wild hurry of pleasure, and my father always went out to welcome the performers, and to bring them into the house and give them such entertainment as he could provide.

The school-days of my childhood I remember with nothing but pleasure. I must have been a dull boy, I suppose, in some respects, for I never got into scrapes, never played truant, and was never, that I can remember, punished for anything. The instruction was simple enough. Special stress was laid upon spelling, and I am inclined to think that every one of my fellow-pupils [22] learned to spell more correctly than some gentlemen and ladies do in our days.

Our teachers were always men in winter and women in summer. I remember some of the men very well, but one of them especially. What pupil of his could ever forget Asa Day,—the most extraordinary figure that ever I saw, a perfect chunk of a man? He could not have been five feet high, but with thews and sinews to make up for the defect in height, and a head big enough for a giant. He might have sat for Scott's "Black Dwarf;" yet he was not ill-looking, rather handsome in the face. And I think I never saw a face that could express such energy, passion, and wrath, as his. Indeed, his whole frame was instinct with energy. I see him now, as he marched by our house in the early morning, with quick, short step, to make the school-room fire; and a roaring one it was, in a large open fireplace; for he did everything about the school. In fact, he took possession of school, schoolhouse, and district too, for that matter, as if it were a military post; with the difference, that he was to fight, not enemies without, but within,—to beat down insubordination and enforce obedience. And his anger, when roused, was the most remarkable thing. It stands before me now, through all my life, as the one picture of a man in a fury. But if he frightened us children, he taught us too, and that thoroughly.

In general our teachers were held in great [23] reverence and affection. I remember especially the pride with which I once went in a chaise, when I was about ten, to New Marlborough, to fetch the schoolma'am. No courtier, waiting upon a princess, could have been prouder or more respectful than I was.

To turn, for a moment, to a different scene, and to much humbler persons, that pass and repass in the camera obscura of my early recollections. The only Irishman that was in Sheffield, I think, in those days, lived in my father's family for several years as a hired man,—Richard; I knew him by no other name then, and recall him by no other now,—the tallest and best-formed "exile of Erin" that I have ever seen; prodigiously strong, yet always gentle in manner and speech to us children; with the full brogue, and every way marked in my view, and set apart from every one around him,—"a stranger in a strange land." The only thing besides, that I distinctly remember of him, was the point he made every Christmas of getting in the "Yule-log," a huge log which he had doubtless been saving out in chopping the wood-pile, big enough for a yoke of oxen to draw, and which he placed with a kind of ceremony and respect in the great kitchen fireplace. With our absurd New England Puritan ways, yet naturally derived from the times of the English Commonwealth, when any observance of Christmas was made penal and punished with [24] imprisonment, I am not sure that we should have known anything of Christmas, but for Richard's Yule-log.

There was another class of persons who were frequently engaged to do day's work on the farm,—that of the colored people. Some of them had been slaves here in Sheffield. They were virtually emancipated by our State Bill of Rights, passed in 1783. The first of them that sought freedom under it, and the first, it is said, that obtained it in New England, was a female slave of General Ashley, and her advocate in the case was Mr. Sedgwick, afterwards Judge Sedgwick, who was then a lawyer in Sheffield.

There were several of the men that stand out as pretty marked individualities in my memory, Peter and Caesar and Will and Darby; merry old fellows they seemed to be,—I see no laborers so cheerful and gay now,—and very faithful and efficient workers. Peter and his wife, Toah (so was she called), had belonged to my maternal grandfather, and were much about us, helping, or being helped, as the case might be. They both lived and died in their own cottage, pleasantly situated on the bank of Skenob Brook. They tilled their own garden, raised their own "sarse," kept their own cow; and I have heard one say that "Toah's garden had the finest damask roses in the world, and her house, and all around it, was the pink of neatness."

In taking leave of my childhood, I must say [25] that, so far as my experience goes, the ordinary poetic representations of the happiness of that period, as compared with after life, are not true, and I must doubt whether they ought to be true. I was as happy, I suppose, as most children. I had good health; I had companions and sports; the school was not a hardship to me,—I was always eager for it; I was never hardly dealt with by anybody; I was never once whipped in my life, that I can remember; but instead of looking back to childhood as the blissful period of my life, I find that I have been growing happier every year, up to this very time. I recollect in my youth times of moodiness and melancholy; but since I entered on the threshold of manly life, of married and parental life, all these have disappeared. I have had inward struggles enough, certainly,—struggles with doubt, with temptation,—sorrows and fears and strifes enough; but I think I have been gradually, though too slowly, gaining the victory over them. Truth, art, religion,—the true, the beautiful, the divine,—have constantly risen clearer and brighter before me; my family bonds have grown stronger, friends dearer, the world and nature fuller of goodness and beauty, and I have every day grown a happier man.

To take up again the thread of my story, I pass from childhood to my youth. My winters, up to the age of about sixteen, were given to [26] school,—the common district-school,—and my summers, to assisting my father on the farm; after that, for a year or two, my whole time was devoted to preparing for college. For this purpose I went first, for one year, to a school taught in Sheffield by Mr. William H. Maynard, afterwards an eminent lawyer and senator in the State of New York. He came among us with the reputation of being a prodigy in knowledge; he was regarded as a kind of walking library; and this reputation, together with his ceaseless assiduity as a teacher, awakened among us boys an extraordinary ambition. What we learned, and how we learned it, and how we lost it, might well be a caution to all other masters and pupils. Besides going through Virgil and Cicero's Orations that year, and frequent composition and declamation, we were prepared, at the end of it, for the most thorough and minute examination in grammar, in Blair's Rhetoric, in the two large octavo volumes of Morse's Geography, every fact committed to memory, every name of country, city, mountain, river, every boundary, population, length, breadth, degree of latitude,—and we could repeat, word for word, the Constitution of the United States. The consequence was, that we dropped all that load of knowledge, or rather burden upon the memory, at the very threshold of the school. Grammar I did study to some purpose that year, though never before. I lost two years of my childhood, I think, upon that study, absurdly [27] regarded as teaching children to speak the English language, instead of being considered as what it properly is, the philosophy of language, a science altogether beyond the reach of childhood.

Of the persons and circumstances that influenced my culture and character in youth, there are some that stand out very prominently in my recollection, and require mention in this account of myself.

My father, first of all, did all that he could for me. He sent me to college when he could ill afford it. But, what was more important as an influence, all along from my childhood it was evidently his highest desire and ambition for me that I should succeed in some professional career, I think that of a lawyer. I was fond of reading,—indeed, spent most of the evenings of my boyhood in that way,—and I soon observed that he was disposed to indulge me in my favorite pursuit. He would often send out my brothers, instead of me, upon errands or chores, "to save me from interruption." What he admired most, was eloquence; and I think he did more than Cicero's De Oratore to inspire me with a similar feeling. I well remember his having been to Albany once, and having heard Hamilton, and the unbounded admiration with which he spoke of him. I was but ten years old when Hamilton was stricken down; yet such was my interest in [28] him, and such my grief, that my schoolmates asked me, "What is the matter?" I said, "General Hamilton is dead." "But what is it? Who is it?" they asked. I replied that he was a great orator; but I believe that it was to them much as if I had said that the elephant in a menagerie had been killed. This early enthusiasm I owed to my father. It influenced all my after thoughts and aims, and was an impulse, though it may have borne but little appropriate fruit.

For books to read, the old Sheffield Library was my main resource. It consisted of about two hundred volumes,—books of the good old fashion, well printed, well bound in calf, and well thumbed too. What a treasure was there for me! I thought the mine could never be exhausted. At least, it contained all that I wanted then, and better reading, I think, than that which generally engages our youth nowadays,—the great English classics in prose and verse, Addison and Johnson and Milton and Shakespeare, histories, travels, and a few novels. The most of these books I read, some of them over and over, often by torchlight, sitting on the floor (for we had a rich bed of old pine-knots on the farm); and to this library I owe more than to anything that helped me in my boyhood. Why is it that all its volumes are scattered now? What is it that is coming over our New England villages, that looks like deterioration and running down? Is our life going out of us to enrich the great West? [29]I remember the time when there were eminent men in Sheffield. Judge Sedgwick commenced the practice of the law here; and there were Esquire Lee, and John W. Hurlbut, and later, Charles Dewey, and a number of professional men besides, and several others who were not professional, but readers, and could quote Johnson and Pope and Shakespeare; my father himself could repeat the "Essay on Man," and whole books of the "Paradise Lost."

My model man was Charles Dewey, ten or twelve years older than myself. What attracted me to him was a singular union of strength and tenderness. Not that the last was readily or easily to be seen. There was not a bit of sunshine in it,—no commonplace amiableness. He wore no smiles upon his face. His complexion, his brow, were dark; his person, tall and spare; his bow had no suppleness in it, it even lacked something of graceful courtesy, rather stiff and stately; his walk was a kind of stride, very lofty, and did not say "By your leave," to the world. I remember that I very absurdly, though unconsciously, tried to imitate it. His character I do not think was a very well disciplined one at that time; he was, I believe, "a good hater," a dangerous opponent, yet withal he had immense self-command. On the whole, he was generally regarded chiefly as a man of penetrative intellect and sarcastic wit; but under all this I discerned a spirit so true, so delicate and tender, so touched [30] with a profound and exquisite, though concealed, sensibility, that he won my admiration, respect, and affection in an equal degree. He removed early in life to practise the law in Indiana. We seldom meet; but though twenty years intervene, we meet as though we had parted but yesterday. He has been a Judge of the Supreme Court, and, I believe, the most eminent law authority in his adopted State; and he would doubtless have been sent to take part in the National Councils, but for an uncompromising sincerity and manliness in the expression of his political opinions, little calculated to win votes.

And now came the time for a distinct step forward,—a step leading into future life.

It was for some time a question in our family whether I should enter Charles Dewey's office in Sheffield as a student at law, or go to college. It was at length decided that I should go; and as Williams College was near us, and my cousin, Chester Dewey, was a professor there, that was the place chosen for me. I entered the Sophomore class in the third term, and graduated in 1814, in my twenty-first year.

Two events in my college life were of great moment to me,—the loss of sight, and the gain, if I may say so, of insight.

In my Junior year, my eyes, after an attack of measles, became so weak that I could not use them more than an hour in a day, and I was [31] obliged to rely mainly upon others for the prosecution of my studies during the remainder of the college course. I hardly know now whether to be glad or sorry for this deprivation. But for this, I might have been a man of learning. I was certainly very fond of my studies, especially of the mathematics and chemistry. I mention it the rather, because the whole course and tendency of my mind has been in other directions. But Euclid's Geometry was the most interesting book to me in the college course; and next, Mrs. B.'s Chemistry: the first, because the intensest thinking is doubtless always the greatest possible intellectual enjoyment; and the second, because it opened to me my first glance into the wonders of nature. I remember the trembling pride with which, one day in the Junior year, I took the head of the class, while all the rest shrunk from it, to demonstrate some proposition in the last book of Euclid. At Commencement, when my class graduated, the highest part was assigned to me. "Pretty well for a blind boy," my father said, when I told him of it; it was all he said, though I knew that nothing in the world could have given him more pleasure. But if it was vanity then, or if it seem such now to mention it, I may be pardoned, perhaps, for it was the end of all vanity, effort, or pretension to be a learned man. I remember when I once told Channing of this, and said that but for the loss of sight I thought I should have devoted myself to the pursuits of learning, his [32] reply was, "You were made for something better." I do not know how that may be; but I think that my deprivation, which lasted for some years, was not altogether without benefit to myself. I was thrown back upon my own mind, upon my own resources, as I should never otherwise have been. I was compelled to think—in such measure as I am able—as I should not otherwise have done. I was astonished to find how dependent I had been upon books, not only for facts, but for the very courses of reasoning. To sit down solitary and silent for hours, and to pursue a subject through all the logical steps for myself,—to mould the matter in my own mind without any foreign aid,—was a new task for me. Ravignan, the celebrated French preacher, has written a little book on the Jesuit discipline and course of studies, in which he says that the one or two years of silence appointed to the pupil absolute seclusion from society and from books too were the most delightful and profitable years of his novitiate. I think I can understand how that might be true in more ways than one. Madame Guyon's direction for prayer to pause upon each petition till it is thoroughly understood and felt had great wisdom in it. We read too much. For the last thirty years I have read as much as I pleased, and probably more than was good for me.

The disease in my eyes was in the optic nerve; there was no external inflammation. Under the [33] best surgical advice I tried different methods of cure,—cupping, leeches, a thimbleful of lunar caustic on the back of the neck, applied by Dr. Warren, of Boston; and I remember spending that very evening at a party, while the caustic was burning. So hopeful was I of a cure, that the very pain was a pleasure. I said, "Bite, and welcome!" But it was all in vain. At length I met with a person whose eyes had been cured of the same disease, and who gave me this advice: "Every evening, immediately before going to bed, dash on water with your hands, from your wash-bowl, upon your closed eyes; let the water be of about the temperature of spring-water; apply it till there is some, but not severe, pain, say for half a minute; then, with a towel at hand, wipe the eyes dry before opening them, and rub the parts around smartly; after that do not read, or use your eyes in any way, or have a light in the room." I faithfully tried it, and in eight months I began to experience relief; in a year and a half I could read all day; in two years, all night. Let any one lose the use of his eyes for five years, to know what that means. Afterwards I neglected the practice, and my eyes grew weaker; resumed it, and they grew stronger.

The other event to which I have referred as occurring in my college life was of a far different character, and compared to which all this is nothing. It is lamentable that it ever should be an event in any human life. The sense of religion [34] should be breathed into our childhood, into our youth, along with all its earliest and freshest inspirations; but it was not so with me. Religion had never been a delight to me before; now it became the highest. Doubtless the change in its form partook of the popular character usually attendant upon such changes at the time, but the form was not material. A new day rose upon me. It was as if another sun had risen into the sky; the heavens were indescribably brighter, and the earth fairer; and that day has gone on brightening to the present hour. I have known the other joys of life, I suppose, as much as most men; I have known art and beauty, music and gladness; I have known friendship and love and family ties; but it is certain that till we see GOD in the world—GOD in the bright and boundless universe we never know the highest joy. It is far more than if one were translated to a world a thousand times fairer than this; for that supreme and central Light of Infinite Love and Wisdom, shining over this world and all worlds, alone can show us how noble and beautiful, how fair and glorious, they are. In saying this, I do not arrogate to myself any unusual virtue, nor forget my defects; these are not the matters now in question. Nor, least of all, do I forget the great Christian ministration of light and wisdom, of hope and help to us. But the one thing that is especially signalized in my experience is this, the Infinite Goodness and Loveliness began to be [35] revealed to me, and this made for me "a new heaven and a new earth."

The sense of religion comes to men under different aspects; that is, where it may be said to come; where it is not imbibed, as it ought to be, in early and unconscious childhood, like knowledge, like social affection, like the common wisdom of life. To some, it comes as the consoler of grief; to others, as the deliverer from terror and wrath To me it came as filling an infinite void, as the supply of a boundless want, and ultimately as the enhancement of all joy. I had been somewhat sad and sombre in the secret moods of my mind, read Kirke White and knew him by heart; communed with Young's "Night Thoughts," and with his prose writings also; and with all their bad taste and false ideas of religion, I think they awaken in the soul the sense of its greatness and its need. I nursed all this, something like a moody secret in my heart, with a kind of pride and sadness; I had indeed the full measure of the New England boy's reserve in my early experience, and did not care whether others understood me or not. And for a time something of all this flowed into my religion. I was among the strictest of my religious companions. I was constant to all our religious exercises, and endeavored to carry a sort of Carthusian silence into my Sundays. I even tried, absurdly enough, to pass that day without a smile upon my countenance. It was on the ascetic side only that I [36] had any Calvinism in my religious views, for in doctrine I immediately took other ground. I maintained, among my companions, that whatever God commanded us to do or to be, that we had power to do and be. And I remember one day rather impertinently saying to a somewhat distinguished Calvinistic Doctor of Divinity: "You hold that sin is an infinite evil?" "Yes." "And that the atonement is infinite?" "Yes." "Suppose, then, that the first sinner comes to have his sins cancelled; will he not require the whole, and nothing will be left?" "Infinites! infinites!" he exclaimed; "we can't reason about infinites!"

In connection with the religious ideas and impressions of which I have been speaking, comes before me one of the most remarkable persons that I knew in my youth, Paul Dewey, Uncle Paul, we always called him. He was my father's cousin, and married my mother's half-sister. His religion was marked by strong dissent from the prevailing views; indeed, he was commonly regarded as an infidel. But I never heard him express any disbelief of Christianity. It was against the Church construction of it, against the Orthodox creed, and the ways and methods of the religious people about him, that he was accustomed to speak, and that in no doubtful language. I was a good deal with him during the year before I went to college, for he taught me the mathematics; and one day he said to me, "Orville, you are going to college, and you will [37] be converted there." I said, "Uncle, how can you speak in that way to me?" "Nay," he replied, "I am perfectly serious; you will be converted, and when you are, write to me about it, for I shall believe what you say." When that happened which he predicted,—when something had taken place in my experience, of which neither he, nor I then, had any definite idea, I wrote to him a long letter, in which I frankly and fully expressed all my feelings, and told him that what he had thus spoken of, whether idly or sincerely, had become to me the most serious reality. I learned from his family afterwards that my letter seemed to make a good deal of impression on him. He was true to what he had said; he did take my testimony into account, and from that time after, spoke with less warmth and bitterness upon such subjects. Doubtless his large sagacity saw an explanation of my experience, different from that which I then put upon it. But he saw that it was at least sincere, and respected it accordingly. Certainly it did not change his views of the religious ministrations of the Church. He declined them when they were offered to him upon his death-bed, saying plainly that he did not wish for them. He was cross with Church people even then, and said to one of them who called, as he thought obtrusively, to talk and pray with him, "Sir, I desire neither your conversation nor your prayers." All this while, it is to be remembered that he was a man, not only of [38] great sense, but of incorruptible integrity, of irreproachable habits, and of great tenderness in his domestic relations. Whatever be the religious judgments formed of such men, mine is one of mingled respect and regret. It reminds me of an anecdote related of old Dr. Bellamy, of Connecticut, the celebrated Hopkinsian divine, who was called into court to testify concerning one of his parishioners, against whom it was sought to be proved that he was a very irascible, violent, and profane man; and as this man was, in regard to religion, what was called in those days "a great opposer," it was expected that the Doctor's testimony would be very convincing and overwhelming. "Well," said Bellamy, "Mr. X is a rough, passionate, swearing man,—I am sorry to say it; but I do believe," he said, hardly repressing the tears that started, "that there is more of the milk of human kindness in his heart than in all my parish put together!"

I may observe, in passing, that I heard, in those days, a great deal of dissent expressed from the popular theology, beside my uncle's. I heard it often from my father and his friends. It was a frequent topic in our house, especially after a sermon on the decrees, or election, or the sinner's total inability to comply with the conditions on which salvation was offered to him. The dislike of these doctrines increased and spread here, till it became a revolt of nearly half the town, I think, against them; and thirty years ago a Liberal [39] society might have been built up in Sheffield, and ought to have been. I very well remember my father's coming home from the General Court [The Massachusetts Legislative Assembly is so called.—M. E. D.], of which he was a member, and expressing the warmest admiration of the preaching of Channing. The feeling, however, of hostility to the Orthodox faith, in his time, was limited to a few; but somebody in New York, who was acquainted with it,—I don't know who,—sent up some infidel books. One of them was lying about in our house, and I remember seeing my mother one day take it and put it into the fire. It was a pretty resolute act for one of the gentlest beings that I ever knew, and decisively showed where she stood. She did not sympathize with my father in his views of religion, but meekly, and I well remember how earnestly, she sought and humbly found the blessed way, such as was open to her mind.

As my whole view of religion was changed from indifference or aversion to a profound interest in it, a change very naturally followed in my plan for future life, that is, in my choice of a profession,—very naturally, at least then; I do not say that it would be so now. I expected to be a lawyer; and I have sometimes been inclined to regret that I was not; for courts of law always have had, and have still, a strange fascination for me, and I see now that a lawyer's or physician's life may be [40] actuated by as lofty principles, and may be as noble and holy, as a clergyman's. But I did not think so then. Then, I felt as if the life of a minister of religion were the only sacred, the only religious life; as, in regard to the special objects with which it is engaged, it is. But what especially moved me to embrace it, I will confess, was a desire to vindicate for religion its rightful claim and place in the world, to roll off the cloud and darkness that lay upon it, and to show it in its true light. It had been dark to me; it had been something strange and repulsive, and even unreal,—something conjured up by fear and superstition. I came to see it as the divinest, the sublimest, and the loveliest reality, and I burned with a desire that others should see it.

This "divine call" I had, whether or not it answers to what is commonly meant by that phrase, and I am glad that I obeyed it.

But now, how was I to prosecute this design? how carry on the preparatory studies, when my eyes did not permit me to read more than half an hour a day? I hesitated and turned aside, first to teach a school in Sheffield for a year, and next, for another year, to try a life of business in New York. At length, however, my desire for my chosen profession became so irrepressible, that I determined to enter the Theological Seminary at Andover, and to pursue my studies as well as I could without my eyes, expecting afterwards to preach without notes. [41] At Andover I passed three years, attending to the course of studies as well as I was able. I gave to Hebrew the half-hour a day that I was able to study; with the Greek Testament I was familiar enough to go on with my room-mate, Cyrus Byington, [FN] who since has spent his life as a missionary among the Choctaws; and for reading I was indebted to his unvarying kindness and that of my classmates and friends. Still, I was left, some hours of every day, to my own meditations. But the being obliged to think for myself upon the theological questions that daily came before [42] the class, instead of reading what others had said about them, seemed to me not without its advantages.

[FN Byington was a young lawyer, here in Sheffield, of good abilities and prospects, but under a strong religious impression he determined to quit the law and study theology. He was a man of ardent temperament, whose thoughts were all feelings as well, which, though less reliable as thought, were strong impulses, always directed, consecrated to good ends. A being more unselfish, more ready to sacrifice himself for others, could not easily be found. This spirit made him a missionary. When our class was about leaving Andover, the question was solemnly propounded to us by our teachers, who of us would go to the heathen—I well remember the pain and distress with which Byington examined it,—for no person could be more fondly attached to his friends and kindred,—his final decision to go, and the perfect joy he had in it after his mind was made up. He went to the Choctaw and Cherokee Indians in Florida, and, on their removal to the Arkansas reservation, accompanied them, and spent his life among them. He left, as the fruit of one part of his work, a Choctaw grammar and dictionary, and a yet better result in the improved condition of those people. Late in life, on a visit here, he told me that the converted Indians in Arkansas owned farms around him, laboring, and living as respectably as white people do. Here was that very civilization said to be impossible to the Indian.]

Andover had its attractions, and not many distractions. I liked it, and I disliked it. I liked it for its opportunities for thorough study,—our teachers were earnest and thorough men,—and for the associates in study that it gave me. I could say, "For my companions' sake, peace be within thy walls." I disliked it for its monastic seclusion. Not that this was any fault of the institution, but for the first time in my life I boarded in commons; the domestic element dropped out of it, and I was persuaded, as I never had been before, of the beneficence of that ordinance that "sets the solitary in families." It was a fine situation in which to get morbid and dispirited and dyspeptic. On the last point I had some experiences that were somewhat notable to me. We were directed, of course, to take a great deal of exercise. We were very zealous about it, and sometimes walked five miles before breakfast, and that in winter mornings. It did not avail me, however; and I got leave to go out and board in a family, half a mile distant. I found that the three miles a day in going back and forth, that regular exercise, was worth more to me than all my previous and more violent efforts in that way. But I imagine that was not all. I had the misfortune to scald my foot, and was obliged for three weeks to sit perfectly still. [43] When I came back, Professor Stuart said to me, "Well, how is it with your dyspepsia?" "All gone," was the reply. "But how have you lived?" for his dietetics were very strict. "Why, I have eaten pies and pickles,—and pot-hooks and trammels I might, for any harm in the matter." Here was a wonder,——no exercise and no regimen, and I was well! The conclusion I came to, was, on the whole, that cheerfulness first, and next regularity, are the best guards against the monster dyspepsia. And another conclusion was, that exercise can no more profitably be condensed than food can.

As to morbid habits of mind, to which isolated seminaries are exposed, I had also some experience. What complaints of our spiritual dulness constantly arose among us! And there was other dulness, too,—physical, moral, social. I remember, at one time, the whole college fell into a strange and unaccountable depression. The occasion was so serious that the professors called us together in the chapel to remonstrate with us; and, after talking it all over, and giving us their advice, one of them said: "The evil is so great, and relief so indispensable, that I will venture to recommend to you a particular plan. Go to your rooms; assemble some dozen or twenty in a room; form a circle, and let the first in it say 'Haw!' and the second 'Haw!' and so let it go round; and if that does n't avail, let the first again say 'Haw! haw!' and so on." We tried it, [44] and the result may be imagined. Very astonishing it must have been to the people without, but the spell was broken.

But more serious matters claim attention in connection with Andover. I was to form some judgment upon questions in theology. I certainly was desirous of finding the Orthodox system true. But the more I studied it, the more I doubted. My doubts sprung, first, from a more critical study of the New Testament. In Professor Stuart's crucible, many a solid text evaporated, and left no residuum of proof. I was startled at the small number of texts, for instance, which his criticism left to support the doctrine of "the personality of the Holy Spirit." I remember saying to him in the class one day, when he had removed another prop,—another proof-text: "But this is one of the two or three passages that are left to establish the doctrine." His answer was: "Is not one declaration of God enough? Is it not as strong as a thousand?" It silenced, but it did not satisfy me. In the next place, I found difficulties in our theology from looking at it in a point of view which I had not before considered, and that was the difference between words and ideas, between the terms we used and the actual conceptions we entertained, or between the abstract thesis and the living sense of the matter. Thus with regard to the latter point, I found that the more I believed in the doctrine of literally eternal punishments, the more [45] I doubted it. As the living sense of it pressed more and more upon my mind, it became too awful to be endured; it darkened the day and the very world around me. At length I could not see a happy company or a gay multitude without falling into a sadness that marred and blighted everything. All joyous life, seen in the light of this doctrine, seemed to me but a horrible mockery. It is evident that John Forster's doubts sprung from the same cause. And then, I had been accustomed to use the terms "Unity" and "Trinity" as in some vague sense compatible; but when I came to consider what my actual conceptions were, I found that the Three were as distinct as any three personalities of which I could conceive. The service which Dr. Channing's celebrated sermon at the ordination of Mr. Sparks in Baltimore did me, was to make that clear to me. With such doubts, demanding further examination, I left the Seminary at Andover.

We parted, we classmates, many of us in this world never to meet again. Some went to the Sandwich Islands, one to Ceylon, one to the Choctaw Indians; most remained at home, some to hold high positions in our churches and colleges, Wheeler, President of the Vermont University, a liberal-minded and accomplished man; Torrey, Professor in the same, a man of rare scholarship and culture; Wayland, President of Brown University, in Rhode Island, well and widely [46] known; and Haddock, Professor in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and recently our charge d'affaires in Portugal. Haddock, I thought, had the clearest head among us. Our relations were very friendly, though I was a little afraid of him, and with him I first visited his uncle, Daniel Webster, in Boston. I was struck with what Mr. Webster said of him, many years after, considering that the great statesman was speaking of a comparatively retired and studious man: "Haddock I should like to have always with me; he is full of knowledge, of the knowledge that I want, pure-minded, agreeable, pious," I use his very words, "and if I could afford it, and he would consent, I would take him to myself, to be my constant companion."

I left Andover, then, in the summer of 1819, and in a state of mind that did not permit me to be a candidate for settlement in any of the churches. I therefore accepted an invitation from the American Education Society to preach in behalf of its objects, in the churches generally, through the State, and was thus occupied for about eight months.

Some time in the spring, I think, of 1820, I went down to Gloucester to preach in the old Congregational Church, and was invited to become its pastor. I replied that I was too unsettled in my opinions to be settled anywhere. The congregation then proposed to me to come and preach [47] a year to them, postponing the decision, both on their part and mine, to the end of it. I was very glad to accept this proposition, for a year of retired and quiet study was precisely what I wanted. I spent that year in examining the questions that had arisen in my mind, especially with regard to the Trinity. I read Emlyn's "Humble Inquiry," Yates and Wardlaw, Channing and Worcester, besides other books; but especially I made the most thorough examination I was able, of all the texts in both Testaments that appeared to bear upon the subject. The result was an undoubting rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity. The grounds for this, and other modifications of theological opinion, I need not give here; they are sufficiently stated in what I have written and published.

And here let me say that, although I had my anxieties, I had none about my personal hold upon heart-sustaining truth. It was emphatically a year of prayer, if I may without presumption or indelicacy say so. Humbly and earnestly I sought to the God of wisdom and light to guide me; and I never felt for a moment that I was perilling my salvation. I had a foundation of repose, stronger than mere theology can give, deep and sure beneath me. I had indeed my anxieties. I felt as if I were putting in peril all my worldly welfare. All the props which a man builds up around him in his early studies, all the props of church relationship and religious friendship, seemed to be suddenly falling away, and I was [48] about to take my stand on the threshold of life, alone, unsupported, and unfriended.

I soon had practical demonstration of this, not only in the coldness and the withdrawal of friends, all natural enough, I suppose, and conscientious, no doubt, but in the summons of the Presbytery of the city of New York, from which I had taken out my license to preach, to appear before it and answer to the charge of heresy. The summons was made in terms at war, I thought, with Christian liberty, and I refused to obey it. The terms may have been in consonance with the Presbyterian discipline, and perhaps I ought not to have refused. What I felt was, and this, substantially, I believe, was what I said, that, if "the Presbytery propose to examine me simply to ascertain whether my opinions admit of my standing in the Presbyterian Church, I have no objection; I neither expect nor wish to remain with it; but it appears to me to assume a right and authority over my opinions to which I cannot submit."

At the end of the year passed in Gloucester, it appeared that the congregation was about equally divided on the question of retaining me as pastor; at any rate, the circumstances did not permit me to think of it, and I went up to Boston to assist Dr. Channing in his duties as pastor of the Federal Street Church.

But I must not pass over, yet cannot comment upon, the great event of my year at Gloucester, the greatest and happiest of my life, my [49] marriage. [FN 1] It took place in Boston, on the 26th day of December, 1820, the Rev. Dr. Jarvis officiating as clergyman, my wife's family being then in attendance upon his church. As in the annals of nations it is commonly said that, while calamities and disasters crowd the page, the happy seasons are passed over in silence and have no record, so let it be here.

My going up to Boston, to be acquainted with Channing, and to preach in his church, excited in me no small expectation and anxiety. I approached both the church and the man with something of trembling. Of Channing, of his character, of his conversation, and the great impression it made upon me, as upon everybody that approached him, I have already publicly spoken, in a sermon [FN 2] which I delivered on my return from Europe after his death, and in a letter to be inserted in Dr. Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit." In entering the pulpit of Dr. Channing, as his assistant for a season, I felt that I was committing myself to an altogether new ordeal, I had been educated in the Orthodox Church; I knew little or nothing about the style and way of preaching in the Unitarian churches; I knew only the pre-eminent place which Dr.

[FN 1: To Louisa Farnham, daughter of William Farnham, of Boston. M. E.
D.]

[FN 2: This sermon, a noble, tender, and discriminating tribute to
Dr. Channing, was reprinted in 1831, on the occasion of the Channing
Centennial Celebration at Newport, R. I.—M. E. D.]

[50] Channing occupied, both as writer and preacher, and I naturally felt some anxiety about my reception. I will only say that it was kind beyond my expectation. After some months Dr. Channing went abroad, and I occupied his pulpit till he returned. In all, I was in his pulpit about two years. On my taking leave of it, the congregation presented me with a thousand dollars to buy a library. It was a most timely and welcome gift.

During my residence in Boston, I made my first appearance, but anonymously, in print, in an essay entitled "Hints to Unitarians." How ready this body of Christians has always been to accept sincere and honest criticism, was evinced by the reception of my adventurous essay. My gratification, it may be believed, was not small on learning that it had been quoted with approbation in the English Unitarian pulpits; and Miss Martineau told me, when she was in this country, then learning that I was the author, that she, with a friend of hers, had caused it to be printed as a tract for circulation. She would say now that it was in her nonage that she did it.

The most remarkable man, next to Channing, that I became acquainted with during this residence of two years in Boston, was Jonathan Phillips. He was a merchant by profession, but inherited a large fortune, and was never, that I know, engaged much in active business. He led, when I knew him, a contemplative life, was an assiduous reader, and a deeper thinker. He had [51] a splendid library, and spent much of his time among his books. If he had had the proper training for it, I always thought he would have made a great metaphysician. His conversation was often profound, and always original, always drawn from the workings of his own mind, and was always occupied with great philosophical and religious themes. It was born of struggle, more, I think, than any man's I ever talked with. For he had a great moral nature, and great difficulties within, arising partly from his religious education, but yet more from the contact with actual life of a very sensitive temperament and much ill health. He had worked his way out independently from the former, and stood on firm ground; and when some of his family friends charged Channing with having drawn him away from Orthodoxy, Channing replied, "No; he has influenced me more than I have influenced him."

In London, in 1833, I met Mr. Phillips with Dr. Tuckerman, well known as the pioneer in the "Ministry to the Poor in Cities," about to take the tour on the Continent. He invited me to join them, and we travelled together on the Rhine and in Switzerland. It was on this journey that I became acquainted with the sad effect produced upon him by great and depressing indisposition. His case was very singular, and explains things in him that surprised his acquaintances very much, and, in fact, did him much wrong with them. It was a scrofulous condition of the stomach, and [52] when developed by taking cold, it was something dreadful to hear him describe. The effect was to make entirely another man of him. He who was affluent in means and disposition became suddenly not only depressed and melancholy, but anxious about expenses, sharp with the courier upon that point, and not at all agreeable as a travelling companion. But when the fit passed off, which seemed for the time to be a kind of insanity, his spirits rose, and his released faculties burst out in actual splendor. He became gay; he enjoyed everything, and especially the scenery around him. I never knew before that his aesthetic nature was so fine. He said so many admirable things while we were going over Switzerland, that I was sorry afterwards that I had not noted them down at the time, and written a sheet or two of Phillipsiana. His countenance changed as much as his conversation, and its expression became actually beautiful. There was a miniature likeness taken of him in London. I went to see it; and when I expressed to the artist my warm approval of it, he said: "I am glad to have you say that; for I wanted to draw out all the sweetness of that man's face." [FN]

One of the most distinguished persons in Dr. Channing's congregation was Josiah Quincy, who, during his life, occupied high positions in the country, and of a very dissimilar character,—

[FN: the point in this is that Mr. Phillips' features were of singular and almost repellent homeliness till irradiated by thought or emotion. M. E. D.]

[53] Member of Congress, Mayor of Boston, and President of Harvard University, all of which posts he filled with credit and ability; always conscientious, energetic, devoted to his office, high-toned, and disinterested. He was a model of pure and unselfish citizenship, and deserves for that a statue in Boston.

When Mr. Quincy was a very old man, I asked him one day how he had come to live so long, and in such health and vigor. He answered: "For forty years I have taken no wine; and every morning, before dressing myself, I have spent a quarter of an hour in gymnastic exercises." I adopted the practice, and have found it of great benefit, both as exercise, and inuring against colds. It is really as much exercise as a mile or two of walking. President Felton said: "After that, I can let the daily exercise take care of itself, without going doggedly about it." I find that a good many studious men are doing the same thing. I asked Bryant how much time he gave, and he said, "Three quarters of an hour." After that, at least in his summer home, he is upon his feet almost as much as a cat, and about as nimbly. With his thin and wiry frame, and simple habits, he is likely to live to a greater age than anybody I know. [Mr. Bryant and my father were about of an age. They had known each other almost from boyhood, and their friendship had matured with time. The sudden death of the poet in 1878, from causes that seemed almost accidental, was a great and unexpected blow to the survivor, then himself in feeble health. M. E. D.]

[54] I shall add a word about the healthfulness of these exercises, since it is partly my design in this sketch to give the fruits of my experience. It is true one cannot argue for everybody from his own case. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that this morning exercise and the inuring would greatly promote the general health. "Catching cold" is a serious item in the lives of many people. One, two, or three months of every year they have a cold. For thirty years I have bathed in cold water and taken the air-bath every morning; and in all that time, I think, I have had but three colds, and I know where and how I got these, and that they might have been avoided.

But I have wandered far from my ground, Boston, and my first residence there. I was Dr. Channing's guest for the first month or two, and then and afterwards knew all his family, consisting of three brothers and two sisters. They were not people of wealth or show, but something much better. Henry lived in retirement in the country, not having an aptitude for business, but a sensible person in other respects. George was an auctioneer, but left business and became a very ardent missionary preacher; and Walter was a respectable physician. William was placed in easy circumstances by his marriage. Their sister Lucy, Mrs. Russel of New York, told me that she was very much amused one day by something that her brother William said to Walter. "Walter," he said, "I think we are a very [55] prosperous family. There is Henry, he is a very excellent man. And George, why, George has come out a great spiritual man. And you, you know how you are getting along. And as for me, I do what I can. I think we are a very prosperous family."

Mrs. Russel was a person of great sense, of strong, quiet thought and feeling; and some of her friends used to say that, with the same advantages and opportunities her brother had, she would have been his equal.

On a day's visit which Henry once made me in New Bedford, I remember we had a long conversation on hunting and fishing, in which he condemned them, and I defended. Pushed by his arguments, at length I said, "for I went a-fishing myself sometimes with a boat on the Acushnet; yes, and barely escaped once being carried out to sea by the ebb tide," I said, "My fishing is not a reckless destruction of life; somebody must take fish, and bring them to us for food, and those I catch come to my table." "Now," said he, "that is as if you said to your butcher, You have to slay a certain number of cattle, calves, and sheep, and turkeys, and fowls for my table; let me have the pleasure of coming and killing them myself."

Of Dr. Channing himself, I should, of course, have much to say here, if, as I have just said, I had not already expressed my thoughts of him in print. His conversation struck me most; more [56] even than any of his writings ever did. He was an invalid, and kept much at home and indoors, and he talked hour after hour, day after day, and sometimes for a week, upon the same subject, without ever letting it grow distasteful or wearisome. Edward Everett said, he had just returned from Europe, where doubtless he had seen eminent persons, "I have never met with anybody to whom it was so interesting to listen, and so hard to talk when my turn came." There was, indeed, a grand and surprising superiority in Channing's talk, both in the topics and the treatment of them. There was no repartee in it, and not much of give and take, in any way. People used to come to him, his clerical brethren, I remember Henry Ware and others speaking of it, they came, listened to him, said nothing themselves, and went away. In fact, Channing talked for his own sake, generally. His topic was often that on which he was preparing to write. It was curious to see him, from time to time, as he talked, dash down a note or two on a bit of paper, and throw it into a pigeon-hole, which eventually became quite full.

It would appear from all this that Channing was not a genial person, and he was not. He was too intent upon the subjects that occupied his mind for that varied and sportive talk, that abandon, that sympathetic adjustment of his thoughts to the moods of people around him, which makes the agreeable person. His thoughts [57] moved in solid battalions, but they carried keen weapons. It would have been better for him if he had had more variety, ease, and joyousness in society, and he felt it himself. He was not genial either in his conversation or letters. I doubt if one gay or sportive letter can be found among them all. His habitual style of address, out of his own family, was "My dear Sir," never "My dear Tom," or "My dear Phillips," scarcely, "My dear Friend." Once he says, "Dear Eliza," to Miss Cabot, who married that noble-minded man, Dr. Follen, and in them both he always felt the strongest interest. Let any one compare Channing's letters with those of Lord Jeffrey, for instance. The ease and freedom of Jeffrey's letters, their mingled sense and playfulness, but especially the hearty grasp of affection and familiarity in them, make one feel as if he were introduced into some new and more charming society. Jeffrey begins one of his letters to Tom Moore thus: "My dear Sir damn Sir My dear Moore." Whether there is not, among us, a certain democratic reserve in this matter, I do not know; but I suspect it. Reserve is the natural defence set up against the claims of universal equality.

In the autumn of 1823, on Dr. Channing's return to his pulpit, I went to New Bedford to preach in the Congregational Church, formerly Dr. (commonly called Pater) West's, was invited to be its pastor, and was ordained to that charge [58] on the 17th of December, Dr. Tuckerman giving the sermon. An incident occurred at the ordination which showed me that I had fallen into a new latitude of religious thought and feeling. After the sermon, and in the silence that followed, suddenly we heard the voice of prayer from the midst of the congregation. At first we were not a little disturbed by the irregularity, and the clergymen who leaned over the pulpit to listen looked as if they would have said, "This must be put a stop to"; but the prayer, which was short, went on, so simple, so sincere, so evidently unostentatious and indeed beautiful, so in hearty sympathy with the occasion, and in desire for a blessing on it, that when it closed, all said, "Amen! Amen!" It was a pretty remarkable conquest over prejudice and usage, achieved by simple and self-forgetting earnestness. Indeed, it seemed to have a certain before unthought-of fitness, as a response from the congregation, which is not given in our usual ordination services. The ten years' happy, and, I hope, not unprofitable ministration on my part that followed, and of fidelity on the part of the people, were perhaps some humble fulfilment and answer to the good petitions that it offered, and to all the brotherly exhortations and supplications of that hour.

The congregation was small when I became its pastor, but it grew; a considerable number of families from the Society of Friends connected [59] themselves with it, and it soon rose, as it continues still, to be one of the wealthiest and most liberal societies in the country.

My duties were very arduous. There was no clergyman with whom I could exchange within thirty miles; [FN] relief from this quarter, therefore, was rare, not more than four or five Sundays in the year. I was most of the time in my own pulpit, sometimes for ten months in succession. In addition to this, I became a constant contributor to the "Christian Examiner," for some years, I think as often as to every other number. It was not wise. The duties of the young clergyman are enough for him. The lawyer, the physician, advances slowly to full practice; the whole weight falls upon the clergyman's young strength at once. Mine sunk under it. I brought on a certain nervous disorder of the brain, from which I have never since been free. Of course it interfered seriously with my mental work. How many days hundreds and hundreds did one hour's study in the morning paralyze and prostrate me as completely as if I had been knocked on the head, and lay me, for hours after, helpless on my sofa! After the Sunday's preaching, the effect of which upon me was perhaps singular, making my back and bones ache, and my sinews as if they had been stretched on the rack, making me [60] feel as if I wanted to lie on the floor or on a hard board, if any one knows what that means, after all this, it would be sometimes the middle of the week, sometimes Thursday or Friday, before I could begin to work again, and prepare for the next Sunday. My professional life was a constant struggle; and yet I look back upon it, not with pain, but with pleasure.

[FN: This distance, which now seems so trifling, then involved the hire of a horse and chaise for three days, and two long days' driving through deep, sandy roads. M. E. D.]

Besides all this, subjects of great religious interest to me constantly pressed themselves upon my attention. I remember Dr. Lamson, of Dedham, a very learned and able man, asking me one day how I "found subjects to write upon;" and my answering, "I don't find subjects; they find me." I may say they pursued me. It may be owing to this that my sermons have possibly a somewhat peculiar character; what, I do not know, but I remember William Ware's saying, when my first volume of Discourses appeared, "that they were written as if nobody ever wrote sermons before," and something so they were written. I do not suppose there is much originality of thought in them, nor any curiosa felicitas of language, I could not attend to it; it was as much as I could do to disburden myself, but original in this they are, that they were wrought out in the bosom of my own meditation and experience. The pen was dipped in my heart, I do know that. With burning brain and bursting tears I wrote. Little fruit, perhaps, for so much struggle; be it so, though it could not be so [61] to me. But so we work, each one in his own way; and altogether something comes of it.

Early in my professional life, too, I met certain questions, which every thinking man meets sooner or later, and which were pressed upon my mind by the new element that came into our religious society. The Friends are trained up to reverence the inward light, and have the less respect for historical Christianity. The revelation in our nature, then, and the revelation in the Scriptures; the proper place of each in any just system of thought and theology; what importance is to be assigned to the primitive intuitions of right and wrong, and what to the supernaturalism, to the miracles of the New Testament, these were the questions, and I discussed them a good deal in the pulpit, as matters very practical to many of the minds with which I was dealing. I admitted the full, nay, the supreme value of the original intuitions, of the inward light, of the teachings of the Infinite Spirit in the human soul; without them we could have no religion; without them we could not understand the New Testament at all, and Christianity would be but as light to the blind; but I maintained that Christ's teaching and living and dying were the most powerful appeal and help and guidance to the inward nature, to the original religion of the soul, that it had ever received. And I believed and maintained that this help, at once most divine and most human, was commended to the world by miraculous [62] attestations. Not that the miracle, or the miracle-sanctioned Christianity, was intended to supersede or disparage the inward light; not that it made clearer the truth that benevolence is right, any more than it could make clearer the proposition that two and two make four; not that it lent a sanction to any intuitive truth, but that it was the seal of a mission, this was what I insisted on. And certainly a being who appeared before me, living a divine life, and assuring me of God's paternal care for me and of my own immortality, would impress me far more, if there were "works done by him" which no other man could do, which bore witness of him. And although it should appear, as in a late work on "The Progress of Religious Ideas" it has been made to appear, that in the old systems there were foreshadowings of that which I receive as the most true and divine; that the light had been shining on brighter and brighter through all ages, that would not make it any the less credible or interesting to me, that Jesus should be the consummation of all, the "true Light" that lighteth the steps of men; and that this Light should have come from God's especial illumination, and should be far above the common and natural light of this world's day. Nay, it would be more grateful to me to believe that all religions have had in them something supernaturally and directly from above, than that none have.

[63] But time went on, and work went on, reason as I might; though time would have lost its light and life, and work all cheer and comfort, if I had not believed. But work grew harder. I was obliged to take longer and longer vacations, one of them five months long at the home in Sheffield. After this I went back to my work, preaching almost exclusively in my own pulpit, seldom going away, unless it was now and then for an occasional sermon.

I went over to Providence in 1832, to preach the sermon at Dr. Hall's installation as pastor of the First Church. Arrived on the evening before, some of us of the council went to a caucus, preparatory to a Presidential election, General Jackson being candidate for the Presidency and Martin Van Buren for Vice-President. Finding the speaking rather dull, after an hour or more we rose to leave, when a gentleman touched my arm and said, "Now, if you will stay, you will hear something worth waiting for." We took our seats, and saw John Whipple rising to speak. I was exceedingly grateful for the interruption of our purpose, for I never heard an address to a popular assembly so powerful; close, compact, cogent, Demosthenic in simplicity and force, not a word misplaced, not a word too many, and fraught with that strange power over the feelings, lent by sadness and despondency, a state of mind, I think, most favorable to real eloquence, in which all verbiage is eschewed, and the burden [64] upon the heart is too heavy to allow the speaker to think of himself.

Mr. Whipple was in the opposition, and his main charge against Van Buren especially, was, that it was he who had introduced into our politics the fatal principle of "the spoils to the victors," a principle which, as the orator maintained, with prophetic sagacity, threatened ruin to the Republic. Still there was no extravagance in his way of bringing the charge. I remember his saying, "Does Mr. Van Buren, then, wish for the ruin of his country? No; Caesar never wished for the glory of Rome more than when he desired her to be laid, as a bound victim, at his feet."

We have learned since more than we knew then of the direful influence of that party cry, "The spoils to the victors." It has made our elections scrambles for office, and our parties "rings." Mr. Whipple portrayed the consequences which we are now feeling, and powerfully urged that his State, small though it was, should do its utmost to ward them off. As he went on, and carried us higher and higher, I began to consider how he was to let us down. But the skilful orator is apt to have some clinching instance or anecdote in reserve, and Mr. Whipple's close was this:

"There sleep now, within the sound of my voice, the bones of a man who once stood up in the revolutionary battles for his country. In one of them, he told me, [65] when the little American army, ill armed, ill clad, and with bleeding feet, was drawn up in front of the disciplined troops of England, General Washington passed along our lines, and when he came before us, he stopped, and said, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.' And when I heard that," said he, "I clasped my musket to my breast, and said, Damn 'em; let 'em come!" "The immortal Chieftain" [said the orator] "is looking down upon us now; and he says, 'I place great confidence in this Rhode Island regiment.'"

And now, on the whole, what shall I say of my life in New Bedford? It was, in the main, very happy. I thought I was doing good there; I certainly was thoroughly interested in what I was doing. I found cultivated and interesting society there. I made friends, who are such to me still. In the pastoral relation, New Bedford was, and long continued to be, the very home of my heart; it was my first love.

In 1827 I was invited to go to New York. I did not wish to go, so I expressly told the church in New York (the Second Church); but I consented, in order to accomplish what they thought a great good, provided my congregation in New Bedford would give their consent. They would not give it; and I remained. I believe that I should have lived and died among them, if my health had not failed.

But it failed to that degree that I could no longer do the work, and I determined to go abroad and recruit, and recover it, if possible. [66] This was in 1833. The Messrs. Grinnell & Co., of New York, offered me a passage back and forth in their ships, one of the thousand kind and generous things that they were always doing, and I sailed from New York in the "George Washington" on the 8th of June. It was like death to me to go. I can compare it to nothing else, going, as I did, alone. In London I consulted Sir James Clarke, who told me that the disease was in the brain, and that I must pass three or four years abroad if I would recover from it. I believe I stared at his proposition, it seemed to me so monstrous, for he said, in fine: "Well, you may go home in a year, and think yourself well; but if you go about your studies, you will probably bring on the same trouble again; and if you do, in all probability you will never get rid of it." Alas! it all proved true. I came home in the spring of 1834, thinking myself well. I had had no consciousness of a brain for three months before I left Europe. I went to work as usual; in one month the whole trouble was upon me again, and it became evident that I must leave New Bedford. I could write no more sermons; I had preached every sermon I had, that was worth preaching, five times over, and I could not face another repetition. I retired with my family to the home in Sheffield, and expected to pass some years at least in the quiet of my native village. [67] I should like to record some New Bedford names here, so precious are they to me. Miss Mary Rotch is one, called by everybody "Aunt Mary," from mingled veneration and affection. It might seem a liberty to call her so; but it was not, in her case. She had so much dignity and strength in her character and bearing that it was impossible for any one to speak of her lightly. On our going to New Bedford, she immediately called upon us, and when she went out I could not help exclaiming, "Wife, were ever hearts taken by storm like that!" Storm, the word would be, according to the usage of the phrase; but it was the very contrary, a perfect simplicity and kindliness. But she was capable, too, of righteous wrath, as I had more than one occasion afterwards to see. Indeed, I was once the object of it myself. It was sometime after I left New Bedford, that, in writing a review of the admirable Life of Blanco White by the Rev. J. H. Thom, of Liverpool, while I spoke with warm appreciation of his character, I commented with regret upon his saying, toward the close of his life, that he did not care whether he should live hereafter; and I happened to use the phrase, "He died and made no sign," without thinking of the miserable Cardinal Beaufort, to whom Shakespeare applies it. Aunt Mary immediately came down upon me with a letter of towering indignation for my intolerance. I replied to her, saying that if ever I should be so [68] happy as to arrive at the blessed world where I believed that she and Blanco White would be, and they were not too far beyond me for me to have any communion with them, she would see that I was guilty of no such exclusiveness as she had ascribed to me. She was pacified, I think, and we went on, as good friends as ever. Her religious opinions were of the most catholic stamp, and in one respect they were peculiar. The Friends' idea of the "inward light" seemed to have become with her coincident with the idea of the Author of all light; and when speaking of the Supreme Being, she would never say "God," but "that Influence." That Influence was constantly with her; and she carried the idea so far as to believe that it prompted her daily action, and decided for her every question of duty.

Miss Eliza Rotch had come from her English home shortly before my going to New Bedford, and had brought, with her English education and sense, more than the ordinary English powers of conversation. She, like all her family, had been bred in the Friends' Society; and she came with many of them to my church. She was a most remarkable hearer. With her bright face, and her full, speaking eye, and interested especially, no doubt, in the new kind of ministration to which she was listening, she gave me her whole attention, often slightly nodding her assent, unconsciously to herself and unobserved by others. She married Professor John Farrar of Harvard, and [69] able mathematician, and one of the most genial and lovable men that ever lived.

Life, in our quiet little town, was more leisurely than it is in cities, and the consequence was an unusual development of amusing qualities. There was more fun, and I ventured sometimes to say, there was more wit, in New Bedford than there was in Boston. To be sure, we could not pretend to compare with Boston in culture and in high and fine conversation, least of all in music, which was at a very low ebb with us. I remember being at an Oratorio in one of our churches, where the trump of Judgment was represented by a horn not much louder than a penny-whistle, blown in an obscure corner of the building!

Charles H. Warren was the prince of humorists among us, and would have been so anywhere. Channing said to me one day, "I want to see your friend Warren; I want to see him as you do." I could not help replying, "That you never will; I should as soon expect to hear a man laugh in a cathedral." I never knew a man quite so full of the power to entertain others in conversation as he was. Lemuel Williams, his brother lawyer, had perhaps a subtler wit. But the way Warren would go on, for a whole evening, letting off bon-mots, repartees, and puns, made one think of a magazine of pyrotechnics. Yet he was a man of serious thought and fine intellectual powers. He was an able lawyer, and, placed upon the bench at an uncommonly, early [70] age, he sustained himself with honor. I used to lament that he would not study more, that he gave himself up so much to desultory reading; but he had no ambition. Yet, after all, I believe that the physical organization has more to do with every man's career than is commonly suspected. His was very delicate, his complexion fair, and his face, indeed, was fine and expressive in a rare degree. The sanguine-bilious, I think, is the temperament for deep intellectual power, like Daniel Webster's. It lends not only strength, but protection, to the workings of the mind within. It is not too sensitive to surrounding impressions. Concentration is force. Long, deep, undisturbed thinking, alone can bring out great results. I have been accustomed to criticise my own temperament in this respect, too easily drawn aside from study by circumstances, persons, or things around me, external interests or trifles, the wants and feelings of others, or their sports, a playing child or a crowing cock. My mind, such as it is, has had to struggle with this outward tendency, too much feeling and sentiment, and too little patient thinking, and I believe that I should have accomplished a great deal more if I had had, not the sanguine alone, but the sanguine-bilious temperament.

Manasseh Kempton had it. He was the deacon of my church. I used to think that nobody knew, or at least fairly appreciated, him as I did. Under that heavy brow, and phlegmatic aspect, [71] and reserved bearing, there was an amount of fire and passion and thought, and sometimes in conversation an eloquence, which showed me that, with proper advantages, he would have made a great man.

James Arnold was a person too remarkable to be passed over in this account of the New Bedford men. With great wealth, with the most beautiful situation in the town, and, yet more, with the aid of his wife, never mentioned or remembered but to be admired, his house was the acceptable resort of strangers, more than any other among us. Mr. Arnold was not only a man of unshaken integrity, but of strong thought; and if a liberal education had given him powers of utterance, the habit of marshalling his thoughts, equal to the powers of his mind, he would have been known as one of the remarkable men in the State.

One other figure rises to my recollection, which seems hardly to belong to the modern world, and that is Dr. Whittredge of Tiverton. In his religious faith he belonged to us, and occasionally came over to attend our church. I used, from time to time, to pay him visits of a day or two, always made pleasant by the placid and gentle presence of his wife, and by the brisk and eager conversation of the old gentleman. He was acquainted in his earlier days with my predecessor, of twenty-five years previous date, Dr. West, himself a remarkable man in his day, [72] and almost equally so, both for his eccentricity and his sense. An eccentric clergyman, by the by, is rarely seen now; but in former times it was a character as common as now it is rare. The commanding position of the clergy the freedom they felt to say and do what they pleased brought that trait out in high relief. The great democratic pressure has passed like a roller over society: everybody is afraid of everybody; everybody wants something, office, appointment, business, position, and he is to receive it, not from a high patron, but from the common vote or opinion.

Dr. West's eccentricity arose from absorption into his own thoughts, and forgetfulness of everything around him. He would pray in the family in the evening till everybody went to sleep, and in the morning till the breakfast was spoiled. He would preach upon some Scripture passage till some one went and moved his mark forward. He once paid a visit to the Governor in Boston, and, having got drenched in the rain, was supplied with a suit of his host's, which unconsciously, he wore home, and arrayed in which, he appeared in his pulpit on Sunday morning. At the same time he was a man of strong and independent thought. I have read a "Reply" of his to Edwards on the Will, in which the subject was ably discussed, but without the needful logical coherence, perhaps, to make its mark in the debate. [73] The conversations of West with his friend, Dr. Whittredge, as the latter told me, ran constantly into theological questions, upon which they differed. West was a frequent visitor at Tiverton, and, when the debate drew on towards midnight, Whittredge was obliged to say, "Well, I can't sit here talking with you all night; for I must sleep, that I may go and see my patients to-morrow." He was vexed, he said, that he should thus seem to "cry quarter" in the controversy again and again, and he resolved that the next time he met West, he would not stop, be they where they might. It so happened that their next meeting was at the head of Acushnet River, three miles above New Bedford, where Whittredge was visiting his patients, and West his parishioners. This done, they set out towards evening to walk to New Bedford. Whittredge throwing the bridle-rein over his arm, they walked on slowly, every now and then turning aside into some crook of the fence, the horse meantime getting his advantage in a bit of green grass, and thus they talked and walked, and walked and talked, till the day broke!

But the most remarkable thing about my venerable parishioner remains to be mentioned. Dr. Whittredge was an alchemist. He had a furnace, in a little building separate from his house, where he kept a fire for forty years, till he was more than eighty, visiting it every night, of summer and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and melting down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find the philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to gold. From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry now that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but once, and that was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims in his patient and mysterious search; and, indeed, no one could doubt that he was a most benevolent and kind-hearted man. The occasion was this: He had been to our church one day, indeed, it was his last attendance, and as we came down from the pulpit, where he always sat, the better to hear me, and as we were walking slowly through the broad aisle, he laid his hand upon my shoulder, and said, "Ah, sir, this is the true doctrine! But it wants money, it wants money, sir, to spread it, and I hope it will have it before long."

While in Europe I had kept a journal, and I low published it under the title of "The Old World and the New," and about the same time, I forget which was first, a volume of sermons entitled, "Discourses on Various Subjects." The idea of my book of travels, I think, was a good me, to survey the Old World from the experience of the New, and the New from the observation of the Old; but it was so ill carried out hat what I mainly proposed to myself on my second visit to Europe, ten years after, was to [75] fulfil, as far as I could, my original design. But my health did not allow of it. I made many notes, but brought nothing into shape for publication. I still believe that America has much to teach to Europe, especially in the energy, development, and progress lent to a people by the working of the free principle; and that Europe has much to teach to America, in the value of order, routine, thorough discipline, thorough education, division of labor, economy of means, adjustment of the means to living, etc. As to my first volume of sermons, if any one would see his thoughts laid out in a winding-sheet, let them be laid before him in printer's proofs; that which had been to me alive and glowing, and had had at least the life of earnest utterance, now, through this weary looking over of proof-sheets, seemed dead and shrouded for the grave. It did not seem to me possible that anybody would find it alive. I have hardly ever had a sadder feeling than that with which I dismissed this volume from my hands.

At the time of my retirement to Sheffield, the Second Congregational Church in New York, which had formerly invited me to its pulpit, was without a pastor, and I was asked to go down there and preach. I could preach, though I could not write; my sermons, with their five earmarks upon them in New Bedford, would be new in another pulpit, and I consented. I was soon [76] invited to take charge of the church, but declined it. It was even proposed to me to be established simply as preacher, and to be relieved from parochial visiting; but as the congregation was small, and could not support a pastor beside me, I declined that also. But I went on preaching, and after about a year, feeling myself stronger, I consented to be settled in the church with full charge, and was installed on the 8th November, 1835, Dr. Walker preaching the sermon.

The church was on the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets; a bad situation, inasmuch as it was on a corner, that is, it was noisy, and the annoyance became so great that I seriously thought more than once of proposing to the congregation to sell and build elsewhere. On other accounts the church was always very pleasant to me. It was of moderate size, holding seven or eight hundred people, and became in the course of a year or two quite full. The stairs to the galleries went up on the inside, giving it, I know not what, a kind of comfortable and domestic air, very social and agreeable; and last, not least, it was easy to speak in. This last consideration, I am convinced, is of more importance, and is so in more ways, than is commonly supposed. A place hard to speak in is apt to create, especially in the young preacher just forming his habits, a hard and unnatural manner of speaking. More than one young preacher have I known, who began with good natural tones, in the course of a [77] year or two, to fall into a loud, pulpit monotone, or to bring out all his cadences with a jerk, or with a disagreeable stress of voice, to be heard. One must be heard, that is the first requisite, and to have one and another come out of church Sunday after Sunday, and touch your elbow, and say, "Sir, I could n't hear you; I was interested in what I could hear, but just at the point of greatest interest, half of the time, I lost your cadence," is more than any man can bear for a long time, and so he resorts to loud tones and monotonous cadences, and he is obliged to think, much of the time, more of the mere dry fact of being heard, than of the themes that should pour themselves out in full unfolding ease and freedom. I have fought through my whole professional life against this criticism, striving to keep some freedom and nature in my speech, though I have made every effort consistent with that to be heard. I have not always succeeded; but I have tried, and have always been grateful, a considerable virtue, especially when the hearer was himself a little deaf to every one who admonished me. This is really a matter that seriously concerns the very religion that we preach. Everybody knows what the preaching tone is; it can be distinguished the moment it is heard, outside of any church, school-house, or barn where it is uplifted; but few consider, I believe, of what immense disservice it is to the great cause we have at heart. Preaching is the [78] principal ministration of religion, and if it be hard and unnatural, the very idea of religion is likely to be hard and unnatural, far away from the every-day life and affections of men. Stamp upon music a character as hard, technical, unnatural as most preaching has, and would men be won by it? I do not say that what I have mentioned is the sole cause of the "preaching tone;" false ideas of religion have, doubtless, even more to do with it. But still it is of such importance that I think no church interior should be built without especial nay, without sole reference to the end for which it is built, namely, to speak in. Let what can be done for the architecture of the exterior building; but let not an interior be made with recesses and projections and pillars and domes, only to please the eye, while it is to hurt the edification of successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No ornamentation can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics is as yet but little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is that the plain, unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if we must stick to that, I had rather have it than a church half ruined by architectural devices. Our Protestant churches are built, not for ceremonies and spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching. And the fitness of means to ends that first law of architecture is sacrificed by a church interior made more to be looked at than to be heard in. [79] But to return: we were not long to occupy the pleasant little church in Mercer Street, pleasant memories I hope there are of it to others besides myself. On Sunday morning, the 26th November, 1837, it was burned to the ground. Nothing was saved but my library, which was flung out of the vestry window, and the pulpit Bible, which I have, a present from the trustees.

The congregation immediately took a hall for temporary worship in the Stuyvesant Institute, and directed its thoughts to the building of a new church. Much discussion there was as to the style and the locality of the new structure, and at length it was determined to build in a semi-Gothic style, on Broadway. I was not myself in favor of Broadway, it being the great city thoroughfare, and ground very expensive; but it was thought best to build there. It was contended that a propagandist church should occupy a conspicuous situation, and perhaps that view has been borne out by the result. One parishioner, I remember, had an odd, or at least an old-fashioned, idea about the matter. "Sir," said he, "you don't understand our feeling about Broadway. Sir, there is but one Broadway in the world." It is now becoming a street of shops and hotels, and is fast losing its old fashionable prestige.

The building was completed in something more than a year, and on the 2d May, 1839, it was dedicated, under the name of the Church of the Messiah. The burning of our sanctuary had [80] proved to be our upbuilding; the position of the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway, and the plan of free seats, had increased our numbers, and we entered the new church with a congregation one third larger than that with which we left the old. The building had cost about $90,000, and it was a critical moment to us all, but to me especially, when the pews came to be sold. It may be judged what was my relief from anxiety when word was brought me, two hours after the auction was opened, that $70,000 worth of pews were taken.

It was a strong desire with me that the church should have some permanent name. I did not want that it should be called Dewey 's church, and then by the name of my successor, and so on; but that it should be known by some fixed designation, and so pass down, gathering about it the sacred associations of years and ages to come. I believe that it was the first instance in our Unitarian body of solemnly dedicating a church by some sacred name.

Another wish of mine was to enter the new church with the Liturgy of King's Chapel in Boston for our form of service. The subject was repeatedly discussed in meetings of the congregation; but although it became evident that there would be a majority in favor of it, yet as these did not demand it, and there was a considerable minority strongly opposed to it, we judged that there was not a state of feeling among us that would justify the introduction of what so essentially [81] required unanimity and heartiness as a new form of worship. And I am now glad that it was not introduced. For while I am as much satisfied as ever of the great utility of a Liturgy, I have become equally convinced that original, spontaneous prayer is likely to open the preacher's heart, or to stir up the gift in him in a way very important to his own ministration and to the edification of his people. The best service, I think, should consist of both.

And I cannot help believing that a church service will yet be arranged which will be an improvement upon all existing ones, Roman Catholic, Church of England, or any other. If in the highest ranges of human attainment there is to be an advancement of age beyond age, surely there is to be a progress in the spirit and language of prayer. From some forming hand and heart, by the united aid of consecrated genius, wisdom, and piety, something is to come greater than we have yet seen. No Homeric poem or vision of Dante is so grand as that will be. What is the highest idea of God, excluding superstition, anthropomorphism, and vague impersonality alike, what is the fit and true utterance of the deepest and divinest heart to God, this, I must think, may well occupy the sublimest meditations of human intellect and devotion. Not that the entire Liturgy, however, should be the product of any one man's thought. I would have in a Liturgy some of the time-hallowed prayers, some of the Litanies [82] that have echoed in the ear of all the ages from the early Christian time. The churches of Rome and England and Germany have some of these; and in a service-book, supposed to be compiled by the Chevalier Bunsen, there are others, prayers of Basil and of Jerome and Augustine, and of the old German time. There are beautiful things in them, especially in the old German prayers there is something very filial, free, and touching; but they would want a great deal of expurgation, and I believe that better prayers are uttered today than were ever heard before; and it is from uttered, not written prayers, if I could do so by the aid of a stenographer or of a perfect memory, that I would draw contributions to a book of devotion. What would I not give for some prayers of Channing or of Henry Ware! some that I have heard by their own firesides, or of Dr. Gardiner Spring, or of Dr. Payson of Portland, that I heard in church many years ago, for the very words that fell from their lips! I do not believe that the right prayers were ever composed, Dr ever will be.

After the dedication of our church I went on with my duties for three years, and then again broke down in health, able indeed, that is, with physical strength, to preach, but not able to write sermons. The congregation increased; many of is members became communicants; in the last Tear before I went abroad once more, the church [83] was crowded; in the evening especially, the aisles as well as pews were sometimes filled.

It was this fulness of the attendance in the evening that reconciled me to a second service; especially it was that many strangers came, to whom I had no other opportunity to declare my views of religion. For I judge that, for any given congregation, one service of worship, and of meditation such as the sermon is designed to awaken, is enough for one day. In the "Christian Examiner," two or three years after this, I think it was; I published an article on this subject, in which I maintained that there was too much preaching, too much preaching for the preacher, and too much preaching for the people. It was received with great surprise and little favor, I believe, at the time; but since then not a few persons, both of the clergy and laity, have expressed to me their entire agreement with it. What I said, and say, is that one sermon, one discourse of solemn meditation, designed to make a distinct and abiding impression upon the heart and life, is all that anybody should preach or hear in one day, and that the other part of Sunday should be used for conference or Sunday-school, or instructive lecture, or something with a character and purpose different from the morning meditation, something to instruct the people in the history, or evidences, or theory, or scriptural exposition of our religion. Indeed, I did this myself as often as I was able, though it tried the [84] religious prejudices of some of my people, and my own too, about what a sermon should be. I discussed the morals of trade, political morality, civic duty, that of voters, jurymen, etc., social questions, peace and war, and the problem of the human life and condition. Some portions of these last were incorporated into the course of Lowell Lectures on this subject, which I afterwards published. And it is high time to take this matter into serious consideration; for in all churches where the hearing of two or three sermons on Sunday is not held to be a positive religious duty, the second service is falling away into a thin and spectral shadow of public worship, discouraging to the attendants upon it, and dishonoring to religion itself.

The pastor of a large congregation in the city of New York has no sinecure. The sermons to be written, the parochial visiting, once a year, at least, to each family, and weekly or daily to the sick and afflicted, my walks commonly extended to from four to seven miles a day, the calls of the poor and distressed, laboring under every kind of difficulty, the charities to be distributed, I was in part the almoner of the congregation, the public meetings, the committees to be attended, the constantly widening circle of social relations and engagements, the pressure, in fine, of all sorts of claims upon time and thought, all this made a very laborious life for me. Yet it was pleasant, and very interesting. I thought when I [85]first went to the great city, when I first found myself among those busy throngs, none of whom knew me, beside those ranges of houses, none of which had any association for me, that I should never feel at home in New York. But it became very home-like to me. The walls became familiar to my eye; the pavement grew soft to my foot. I built me a house, that first requisite for feeling at home. I chanced to see a spot that I fancied: it was in Mercer Street, between Waverley Place and Eighth Street, just in the centre of everything, a step from Broadway and my church, just out of the noise of everything; there we passed many happy days. I have been quite a builder of houses in my life. I built one in New Bedford. My study had the loveliest outlook upon Buzzard's Bay and the Elizabeth Islands, I shall never have such a study again. Oh, the joy of that sea view! When I came to it again, after a vacation's absence, it moved me like the sight of an old friend. And I have built about the old home in Sheffield, till it is almost a new erection.

But to return to New York: I was very happy there. I had a congregation, I believe, that was interested in me. I made friends that were and are dear to me. When I first went to New York, I was elected a member of the Artists' Club, or Club of the Twenty-one, as it was called; by what good fortune or favor I know not, for I was the first clergyman that had ever been a member of it. It consisted of artists and other gentlemen, [86] an equal number of each. Cole and Durand and Ingham and Inman and Chapman and Bryant and Verplanck and Charles Hoffman were in it when I first became acquainted with it; and younger artists have been brought into it since, Gray and' Huntingdon and Kensett, and other non-professional gentlemen interested in art, and the meetings have been always pleasant. It was a kind of heart's home to me while I lived in New York, and I always resort to it now when I go there, sure of welcome and kindly greeting.'

Then, again, I had in William Ware, the pastor of the First Church, a friend and fellow-laborer, than whom, if I were to seek the world over, I could not find one more to my liking. Our friendship was as intimate as I ever had with any man, and our constant intercourse, to enter his house as freely as my own, his coming to mine was as a sunbeam, as cheering and undisturbing, I thought I could not get along without it. But I was obliged to do so. He had often talked of resigning his situation, and I had obtained from him a promise that he would never do it without consulting me. Great was my surprise, then, to learn, one day while in the country, that he had sent in his resignation. My first word to him on going to town was, "What is this? You have broken your promise." "I did not consult even [87] my father or my brothers," was his reply. I could say nothing. The truth was, that things had come to that pass in his mind that the case was beyond consultation. He considered himself as having made a fatal mistake in his choice of a profession. I have some very touching letters from him, in which he dwells upon it as his "mistake for a life." His nature was essentially artistic; he would have made a fine painter. He could have worked between silent walls. He could write admirably, as all the world knows; I need only mention "Zenobia" and "Aurelian" and "Probus." But there was a certain delicacy and shrinking in his nature that made it difficult for him to pour himself out freely in the presence of an audience. And yet a congregation, consisting in part of some of the most cultivated persons in New York, held him, as preacher and pastor, in an esteem and affection that any man might have envied.

[FN: The well-known Century Club of New York is the modern development of what was first known as the Sketch Club, or the XXI. M. E. D.]

And to repair the circle of my happy social relations, broken by Ware's departure, came Bellows to fill his place. I gave him the right hand of fellowship at his ordination; and I remember saying in it, that I would not have believed it possible for me to welcome anybody to the place of his predecessor with the pleasure with which I welcomed him. The augury of that hour has been fulfilled in most delightful intercourse with one of the noblest and most generous men I ever knew. With a singularly clear insight and penetration [88] into the deepest things of our spiritual nature, with an earnestness and fearlessness breaking through all technical rules and theories, with a buoyancy and cheerfulness that nothing can dampen, with a fitness and readiness for all occasions, his power as a preacher and his pleasantness as a companion have made him one of the most marked men of his day.

As to my general intercourse with society, whether in New York or elsewhere, I have always felt that its freedom lay under disagreeable restrictions, if not under a lay-interdict; and when travelling as a stranger I have always chosen not to be known as a clergyman, and commonly was not. I once had a curious and striking illustration of the feeling about clergymen to which I am alluding. I was invited by Mr. Prescott Hall, the eminent lawyer, to meet the Kent Club at his house, a law club then just formed. As I arrived a little before the company, I said to him: "Mr. Hall, I am sorry you have formed this kind of club, a club exclusively of lawyers. In Boston they have one of long standing, consisting of our professions, and four members of each, that is of lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and merchants." "To tell you the truth," he answered, "I don't like the clergy." I said that I could conceive of reasons, but I should like to hear him state them. "Why," said, he, "they come over me; they don't put themselves on a level with me; they talk [89] ex cathedra." I was obliged to bow my head in acquiescence; but I did say, "I think I know a class of clergymen of whom that is not true; and, besides, if I could bring all the clergy of this city into clubs of the Boston description, I believe those habits would be broken up in a single year."

There were two men who came to our church whose coming seemed to be by chance, but was of great interest to me, for I valued them greatly. They were Peter Cooper and Joseph Curtis. Neither of them, then, belonged to any religious society, or regularly attended upon any church. They happened to be walking down Broadway one Sunday evening as the congregation were altering Stuyvesant Hall, where we then temporarily worshipped, and they said, "Let us go in were, and see what this is." When they came out, is they both told me, they said to one another, "This is the place for us" And they immediately connected themselves with the congregation, to be among its most valued members.

Peter Cooper was even then meditating that plan of a grand Educational Institute which he afterwards carried out. He was engaged in a large and successful business, and his one idea which he often discussed with me was to obtain the means of building that Institute. A man of the gentlest nature and the simplest habits; yet his religious nature was his most remarkable quality. It seemed to breathe through his life as [90] fresh and tender as if it were in some holy retreat, instead of a life of business. Mr. Cooper has become a distinguished man, much engaged in public affairs, and much in society. I have seen him but little of late years; but I trust he has not lost that which is worth more than all the distinctions and riches in the world.

Joseph Curtis was a man much less known generally, and yet, in one respect, much more, and that was in the sphere of the public schools. He did more, I think, than any man to bring up the free schools of New York to such a point as compelled our Boston visitors to confess that they were not a whit inferior to their own. And his were voluntary and unpaid services, though his means were always moderate. He neither had, nor made, nor cared to make, a fortune. He cared for the schools as for nothing else; and there is no wiser or nobler care. For more than twenty years he spent half of his time in the schools, walking among them with such intelligent and gentle oversight as to win universal confidence and affection, so that he was commonly called, by teachers and pupils, "Father Curtis."

At the same time, his hand and heart were open to every call of charity. I remember once making him umpire between me and Horace Greeley, the only time that I ever met the latter in company. He was saying, after his fashion in the "Tribune,"—he was from nature and training a Democrat, and had no natural right ever to be in [91] the Whig party, he was saying that the miseries of the poor in New York were all owing to the rich; when I said, "Mr. Greeley, here sits Mr. Joseph Curtis, who has walked the streets of New York for more years than you and I have been here, and I propose that we listen to him." He could not refuse to make the appeal, and so I put a series of questions upon the point to Mr. Curtis. The answers did not please Mr. Greeley. He broke in once or twice, saying, "Am not I to have a chance to speak? ". But I persisted and said, "Nay, but we have agreed to listen to Mr. Curtis." The upshot was, that, in his opinion, the miseries of the poor in New York were not owing to the rich, but mainly to themselves; that there was ordinarily remunerative labor enough for them; and that, but in exceptional cases of sickness and especial misfortune, those who fell into utter destitution and beggary came to that pass through their idleness, their recklessness, or their vices. That was always my opinion. They besieged our door from morning till night, and I was obliged to help them, to look after them, to go to their houses; my family was worn out with these offices. But I looked upon beggary as, in all ordinary cases, prima facie evidence that there was something wrong behind it.

The great evil and mischief lay in indiscriminate charity. Many were the walks we took to avoid this, and often with little satisfaction. I have walked across the whole breadth of the city, [92] on a winter's day, to find a man dressed better than I was, with blue broadcloth and metal buttons and new boots, and just sitting down to a very comfortable dinner. The wife was rather taken aback by my entrance, it was she who had come to me, and the man, of course, must say something for himself, and this it was: He "had fallen behind of late, in consequence of not receiving his rents from England. He was the owner of two houses in Sheffield." "Well," I said, "If that is so, you are better off than I am;" and I took a not very courteous leave of them.

To give help in a better way, an Employment Society was formed in our church to cut out and prepare garments for poor women to sew, and be paid for it. A salesroom was opened in Amity Street, to sell the articles made up, at a trifling addition to their cost. The ladies of the congregation were in attendance at the church, in a large ante-room, to prepare the garments and give them out, and a hundred or more poor women came every Thursday to bring their work and receive more; and they have been coming to this day. It was thought an excellent plan, and was adopted by other churches. The ladies of All Souls joined in it, and the institution is now transferred to that church.

One day, in the winter I think of 1837, I heard of an association of gentlemen formed to investigate this terrible subject of mendacity in our city, and to find some way of methodizing our chari-[93] ties and protecting them from abuse. I went down immediately to Robert Minturn, who, I was told, took a leading part in this movement, and told him that I had come post-haste to inquire what he and his friends were doing, for that nothing in our city life pressed upon my mind like this. I used, indeed, to feel at times and Bellows had the same feeling as if I would fain fling up my regular professional duties, and plunge into this great sea of city pauperism and misery.

Mr. Minturn told me that he, with four or five others, had taken up this subject; that, for more than a year past, they had met together one evening in the week to confer with one another upon it; that they had opened a correspondence with all our great cities, and with some in Europe; and sometimes had sent out agents to inquire into the methods that had been adopted to stem these enormous city evils. Mr. Minturn wished me to join them, and I expected to be formally invited to do so; but I was not, nor to a great public meeting called soon after, under their auspices. I suppose there was no personal feeling against me, only an Orthodox one. Well, no matter. It was a noble enterprise, better than any sectarianism ever suggested, and worthy of record, especially considering its spontaneity, labor, and expense.

Their plan, when matured, was this: to district the city; to appoint one person in each district to receive all applications for aid; to sell tickets [94] of various values, which we could buy and give the applicant at our doors, to be taken to the agent, who would render the needed help, according to his judgment. Of course the beggars did not like it. I found that, half the time, they would not take the tickets. It would give them some trouble, but the special trouble, doubtless, with the reckless and dishonest among them, was that it would prevent them from availing themselves of the aid of twenty families, all acting in ignorance of what each was doing.

Jonathan Goodhue was a man whom nobody that knew him can ever forget. Tall and fine-looking in person, simple and earnest in manners, with such a warmth in his accost that to shake hands with him was to feel happier for it all the day after. I remember passing down Wall Street one day when old Robert Lenox was standing by his side. After one of those warm greetings, I passed on, and Mr. Lenox said, "Who is that?" "Mr. Dewey, a clergyman of a church in the city." "Of which church?" said Mr. Lenox. "Of the Unitarian church." "The Lord have mercy upon him!" said the old man. It was a good prayer, and I have no doubt it was kindly made.

Alas! What I am writing is a necrology: they are all gone of whom I speak. George Curtis, too; he died before I left the Church of the Messiah, died in his prime. George William Curtis is [95] his son, well known as one of our most graceful writers and eloquent men: something hereditary in that, for his father had one of the clearest heads I knew, and a gifted tongue, though he was too modest to be a great talker. He could make a good speech, and once he made one that was more effective than I could have wished. The question was about electing Thomas Starr King to be my colleague. The congregation was immensely taken with him; but Mr. Curtis opposed on the ground that King was a Universalist, and he carried everything before him. He said, as it was reported to me, "I was born a Unitarian; I have lived a Unitarian; and, if God please, I mean to die a Unitarian!" He had the old-fashioned, and indeed well-founded, dislike of Universalism. But all that is changed now, was changing then; for the Universalists have given up their preaching of no retribution hereafter. They are in other respects, also, Unitarians, and the two bodies affiliate and are friends.

Moses Grinnell was a marked man in New York. A successful and popular merchant, his generosity was ample as his means; and I have known him in circumstances that required a higher generosity than that of giving money, and he stood the test perfectly. His mind, too, grew with his rise in the world. He was sent to Congress, and his acquaintance from that time with many distinguished men gave a new turn to his thoughts and a higher tone to his character and [96] conversation. At his house, where I was often a guest, I used to meet Washington Irving, whose niece he married. Of course everybody knows of Washington Irving; but there are one or two anecdotes, of which I doubt whether they appear in his biography, and which I am tempted to relate. He told me that he once went to a theatre in London to hear some music. (They use theatres in London as music-halls, and I went to one myself, once, to hear Paganini, and enjoyed an evening that I can never forget. His one string for he broke all the others was a heart-string.) Mr. Irving said that on entering the theatre he found in the pit only three or four English gentleman, who had evidently come early, as he had, to find a good place. Accordingly, he took his seat near them, when one of them rather loftily said, "That seat is engaged, sir." He got up and took a seat a little farther off, when they said, "That, too, is engaged." Again he meekly rose, and took another place. Pretty soon one of the party said, "Do you remember Washington Irving's description of a band of music?" (It is indeed a most amusing caricature. One of the performers had blown his visnomy to a point. Another blew as if he were blowing his whole estate, real and personal, through his instrument. I quote from memory.) Mr. Irving said they went over with the whole description, with much entertainment and laughter. They little knew that they had thrust aside [97] the author of their pleasure, who sat there, like the great Caliph, incognito, and they would have paid him homage enough if they had known him.

Mrs. S. told me that one evening he strolled up to their piazza, they lived near to one another in the country, and fell into one of those easy and unpremeditated talks, in which, to be sure, he was always most pleasant, when he said, among other things, "Don't be anxious about the education of your daughters: they will do very well; don't teach them so many things,—teach them one thing." "What is that, Mr. Irving?" she asked. "Teach them," he said, "to be easily pleased."

Bryant, too, everybody knows of. Now he is chiefly known as poet; but when I went to New York-people thought most about him as editor of the "Evening Post," and that with little enough complacency in the circles where I moved. How many a fight I had for him with my Whig friends! For he was my parishioner, and it was known that we were much together. The "Evening Post" was a thorn in their sides, and every now and then, when some keen editorial appeared in it, they used to say, "There! What do you say of that?" I always said the same thing: Whether you and I like what he says or not, whether we think it fair or not, of one thing be sure, he is a man of perfect integrity; he is so almost to a fault, if that be possible, regarding [98] neither feelings nor friendships, nor anything else, when justice and truth are in question.

Speaking of Bryant brings to mind Audubon, the celebrated naturalist. I became acquainted with him through his family's attending our church, and one day proposed to Mr. Bryant to go with me to see him. Seating himself before the poet, Audubon quietly said, "You are our flower,"—a very pretty compliment, I thought, from a man of the woods.

I happened to fall in with Mr. Audubon one day in the cars going to Philadelphia, when he was setting out, I think, on his last great tour across the American wilderness. He described to me his outfit, to be assumed when he arrived at the point of departure, a suit of dressed deerskin, his only apparel. In this he was to thread the forest and swim the rivers; with his rifle, of course, and powder and shot; a tin case to hold his drawing-paper and pencils, and a blanket. Meat, the produce of the chase, was to be his only food, and the earth his bed, for two or three months. I said, shrinking from such hardship, "I could n't stand that."—"If you were to go with me," he replied, "I would bring you out on the other side a new man." He broke down under it, however, rather prematurely; for in that condition I saw him once more,—his health and faculties shattered,—near the end of his life.

[99] But to return,—turning and returning upon one's self must be the course of an autobiography, my health having a second time completely failed, I determined again to go abroad; and to make the measure of relief more complete, I determined to go for two years, and to take my family with me. The sea was a horror to me, but beyond it lay pleasant lands that I wanted to look upon once more, galleries of art by which I wished to sit down and study at my leisure, and, above all, rest: I wanted to be where no one could call on me to preach or lecture, to do this or do that.

We sailed for Havre in October, 1841, passed the winter in Paris, the summer following in Switzerland, the next winter in Italy, and, returning through Germany, spent two months in England, and came home in August, 1843.

While in Geneva I was induced for my health to make trial of the "water-cure," and first to try what they call the "Arve bath." The Campagne at Champel, where we were passing the summer, is washed for half a mile by the Arve. In hot August days I walked slowly by the river-bank, with cloak on, till a moderate perspiration was induced, then jumped in,—and out as quick! for the river, though it had run sixty miles from its source, seemed as cold as when it left the glacier of the Arveiron at Chamouni. Experiencing no ill effect, however, I determined to try the regular water-cure, and for this purpose, in [100] our travel through Switzerland, stopped at Meyringen in the Vale of Hasli. I was "packed,"-bundled up in bed blankets every morning at daybreak, went through the consequent furnace of heat and drench of perspiration for two or three hours,—then was taken by a servant on his back, me and my wrappages, the whole bundle, and carried down to the great bath, only 6 of Reaumur above ice (45 degrees Fahrenheit), plunged in, got out again in no deliberate way, was pushed under a shower-bath of the same glacier water, fought my way out of that, at arm's end with the attendant, when he enveloped me in warm, dry sheets, and made me comfortable in one minute. It was of no use, however. My brain grew more nervous, the doctor agreed that it did not suit me, and shortly I gave it up.

At Rome we were introduced with a small American party to the Pope, Gregory XVI. It was just after the Carnival and just before Lent. The old man expressed his pleasure that the people had enjoyed themselves in Carnival, "But now," said he, "I suppose a great many of them will find themselves out of health in Lent, and will want indulgences." I could not help thinking how much that last was like a Puritan divine.

What a life is life in Rome!—not common, not like any other, but as if the pressure of stupendous and crowding histories were upon every day. A presence haunts you that is more than all you see. We Americans, with some invited [101] guests, celebrated Washington's birthday by a dinner. In a speech I said, "I was asked the other day, what struck me most in Rome, and I answered,—To think that this is Rome!" Lucien Bonaparte, who sat opposite me at table, bowed his head with emphasis, as if he said, "That is true." He was entitled to know what great historic memories are; and those of his family, criticise them as we may,—and I am not one of their admirers,—do not, perhaps, fall below much of the Roman imperial grandeur.

On coming to England from the Continent, among many things to admire, there were two things we were especially thankful for,—comfort and hospitality. We had not been in London half a day before I had rented a furnished house, and we were established in it. That is, the owner, occupying the basement, gave us the parlors above and ample sleeping-rooms, and the use of her servants,-we defraying the expense of our table,—for so much a month. We took possession of our apartments an hour after we had engaged them, and had nothing to do but order our dinner and walk out; and all this for less, I think, than it would have cost us to live at a good boarding-house in Broadway.

We visited various parts of England,—Warwick, Kenilworth, Oxford, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and made acquaintance with persons whom to know was worth going far, and whom [102] to remember has been a constant pleasure ever since.

Well, we came back in August, 1843, in the steamer "Hibernia." What a joy to return home! We landed in Boston. The railroad across Massachusetts had been completed during our absence, and brought us to Sheffield in six or seven hours; it had always been a weary journey before, of three days by coach, or a week with our own horse. A few days' rest, and then six or eight hours more took us to New York, where we found the water fountains opened; the Croton had been brought in that summer. Did it not seem all very fit and festal to us? For we had come home!

My health, however, was only partially reestablished, and the recruiting which had got me for constant service in my church but three years more. The winter of 1846-47 I passed in Washington, serving the little church there. En the spring I returned to New York, struggled on with my duties in the church for another year; in the spring of 1848 sold my house, and retired to the Sheffield home, continuing to preach occasionally in New York for a number of months longer, when, early in 1849, my connection with the Church of the Messiah was finally dissolved. I would willingly have remained with it on condition of discharging a partial service, with a colleague to assist me: it was the only chance I saw [103] of continuing in my profession. The congregation, at my instance, had sought for a colleague, both during my absence in Europe and in the later years of my continuance with it, but had failed,—there appearing to be some singular reluctance in our young preachers to enter into that relation,—and there seemed nothing for the church to do but to inaugurate a new ministration.

It was in this crisis of my worldly affairs, so trying to a clergyman who is dependent on his salary, that I experienced the benefit of a rule that early in life I prescribed to myself; and that was, always to lay up for a future day some portion of my annual income. I insisted upon it that, with as much foresight as the ant or the bee, I might be allowed without question so to use the salary appointed to me as to make some provision for the winter-day of life, or for the spring that would come after, and might be to others bleak and cold and desolate without it. So often have I witnessed this, that I am most heartily thankful that, on leaving New York, I was not reduced to utter destitution, and that with some moderate exertion I am able to provide for our modest wants. At the same time I do not feel obliged to conceal the conviction, and never did, that the service of religion in our churches meets with no just remuneration. One may suffer martyrdom and not complain; but I do not think one is bound to say that it is a reasonable or pleasant thing. [104] Another thing I will be so frank as to say on leaving New York, and that is, that it was a great moral relief to me to lay down the burden of the parochial charge. I regretted to leave New York; I could have wished to live and die among the friends I had there; I should make it my plan now to spend my winters there, if I could afford it: but that particular relation to society,—no man, it seems to me, can heartily enter into it without feeling it to weigh heavily upon him. Sympathy with affliction is the trial-point of the clergyman's office. In the natural and ordinary relations of life every man has enough of it. But to take into one's heart, more or less, the personal and domestic sorrows of two or three hundred families, is a burden which no man who has not borne it can conceive of. I sometimes doubt whether it was ever meant that any man, or at least any profession of men, should bear it; whether the general ministrations of the pulpit to affliction should not suffice, leaving the application to the hearer in this case as in other cases; whether the clergyman's relations to distress and suffering should not be like every other man's,—general with his acquaintance, intimate with his friends; whether, if there were nothing conventional or customary about this matter, most families would not prefer to be left to themselves, without a professional call from their minister. Suppose that there were no rule with regard to it; that the clergyman, like every [105] other man, went where his feelings carried him, or his relations warranted; that it was no more expected of him, as a matter of course, to call upon a bereaved family, than of any other of their acquaintance,—would not that be a better state of things? I am sure I should prefer it, if I were a parishioner. When, indeed, the minister of religion wishes to turn to wise account the suffering of sickness or of bereavement, let him choose the proper time: reflection best comes after; it is not in the midst of groans and agonies, of sobs and lamentations, that deep religious impressions are usually made.

I have a suspicion withal, that there is something semi-barbaric in these immediate and urgent ministrations to affliction, something of the Indian or Oriental fashion, or something derived from the elder time, when the priest was wise and the people rude. For ignorant people, who have no resources nor reflections of their own, such ministrations may be proper and needful now. I may be in the wrong about all this. Perhaps I ought to suspect it. There is more that is hereditary in us all, I suppose, than we know. My father never could bear the sight of sickness or distress: it made him faint. There is a firmness, doubtless, that is better than this; but I have it not. Very likely I am wrong. My friend Putnam [FN: Rev. George Putnam, D. D., of Roxbury, Mass.—M. E. D.] lately tried to convince me of it, in a conversation we had; maintaining that the [106] parochial relation ought not to be, and need not be, that burden upon the mind which I found it. And I really feel bound on such a point, rather than myself, to trust him, one of the most finely balanced natures I ever knew. Why, then, do I say all these things? Because, in giving an account of myself, I suppose I ought to say and confess what a jumble of pros and cons I am.

Heaven knows I have tried hard to keep right; and if I am not as full as I can hold of one-sided and erratic opinions, I think it some praise. . . . I do strive to keep in my mind a whole rounded circle of truth and opinion. It would be pleasant to let every mental tendency run its length; but I could not do so. It may be pride or narrowness; but I must keep on some terms with myself. I cannot find my understanding falling into contradiction with the judgments it formed last month or last year, without suspecting not only that there was something wrong then, but that there is something wrong now, to be resisted. That "there is a mean in things" is held, I believe, to be but a mean apothegm now-a-days; but I do not hold it to be such. All my life I have endeavored to hold a balance against the swayings of my mind to the one side and the other of every question. I suppose this appears in my course, such as it has been, in religion, in politics, on the subject of slavery, of peace, of temperance, etc. It may appear to be dulness or tameness or time-serving or cowardice [107] or folly, but I simply do not believe it to be either.

But to return: we were now once more in Sheffield, and I was without employment,—a condition always most irksome to me. Hard work, I am persuaded, is the highest pleasure in the world, and, from the day when I was in college, vacations have always proved to me the most tedious times in my life.

I determined, therefore, to pursue some study as far as I could, and my subject,—the choice of years before,—was the philosophy of history and humanity. While thus engaged, I received an invitation from Mr. John A. Lowell, trustee of the Lowell Institute, to deliver one of its annual popular courses of lectures in Boston. This immediately gave a direction to my thoughts, and by the winter of 1850-51 I was prepared to write the lectures, which I ventured to denominate, "Lectures on the Problem of Human Destiny," and I gave them in the autumn of 1851. My reason for adopting such a title I gave in the first lecture, and I might add that, with my qualifications, I was ashamed to put at the head of my humble work such great words as "Philosophy of History and Humanity,"—the title of Herder's celebrated treatise. The truth was, I had, or thought I had, something to say upon the philosophy of the human condition,—upon the end for man, and upon the only way in which it could be [108] achieved,—upon the terrible problem of sin and suffering in this world,—and I tried to say it. I so far succeeded with my audience in Boston, that, either from report of that, or from the intrinsic interest of the subject, I was invited to repeat the lectures in various parts of the country; and during the four or five years following I repeated them fifteen times,—in New Bedford, New York, Brooklyn, Washington, Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, Madison, Cincinnati, Nashville, Sheffield, Worcester, Charleston, S. C., New Orleans, and Savannah in part, and the second time also, I gave them, by Mr. Lowell's request, in the Boston Institute. At the same time, I was not idle as a preacher, having preached every Sunday in the places where I lectured, besides serving the church in Washington two long winters. I also wrote another course of lectures for the Lowell Institute, on the "Education of the Human Race," and repeated it in several places.

At the time that I was invited to Washington, I received, in February, 1851, a document from the Government, which took me so much by surprise that I supposed it must be a mistake. It was no other than a commission as chaplain in the Navy. I wrote to a gentleman in Washington, asking him to make inquiry for me, and ascertain what it meant. He replied that there was no mistake about it, and that it was intended for me. I then concluded, as there was a Navy Yard in Washington, and as the President, Mr.[109] Fillmore, attended the church to which I was invited, that he intended by the appointment to help both the church and me, and I accepted it. On going to Washington I found that there was a chaplain already connected with the Navy Yard, and on his retirement some months later, and my offering to perform any duties required there, being answered that there was really nothing to be done, I resigned the commission.

Life in Washington was not agreeable to me, and yet I felt a singular attachment to the people there. This mixture of repulsion and attraction I could not understand at the time, or rather,-as is usually the case with our experience while passing,—did not try to; but walking those streets two or three years later, when experience had become history, I could read it. In London or Paris the presence of the government is hardly felt; the action of public affairs is merged and lost in the life of a great city; but in Washington it is the one, all-absorbing business of the place. Now, whether it be pride or sympathy, one does not enjoy a great movement of things going on around him in which he has no part, and the thoughts and aims of a retired and studious man, especially, sever him from the views and interests of public men. But, on the other hand, this very pressure of an all-surrounding public life brings private men closer together. There they stand, while the tides of successive Administrations sweep by them, and their relation be-[110] comes constantly more interesting from the fluctuation of everything else. It is really curious to see how the private and resident society of Washington breathes freer, and prepares to enjoy itself when Congress is about to rise and leave it to itself.

Among the remarkable persons with whom I became acquainted in Washington, at this or a-former time, was John C. Calhoun. I had with him three interviews of considerable length, and remember each of them, the more distinctly from the remarkable habit he had of talking Ton subjects,—not upon the general occurences of the day, but upon some particular topic. The first two were at an earlier period than that to which this part of my narrative creates; it was when he was Vice-President of the United States, under the administration of John Quincy Adams. I went to his room in the Capitol to present my letter of introduction; it was just before the assembling of the Senate, and I said, of course, that I would not intrude upon his time at that moment, and was about to withdraw; but he kindly detained me, saying, "No: it will >e twenty minutes before I go to the Senate; sit down." And then, in two minutes, I found him talking upon a purely literary point,—I am sure do not know how he got to it; but it was this, hat the first or second book of every author, so le maintained, was always his best. He cited a [111] number of instances in support of his position. I do not remember what they were; but it occurred to me in reflecting upon it afterwards, that, in purely literary composition, there were some reasons why it might be true. An author writes his first books with the greatest care; he naturally puts into them his best and most original thoughts, which he cannot use again; and if he succeeds, and gains reputation, he is liable to grow both careless and confident,—to think that the things which people admire are his peculiarities, and not his general merits, and so to fall into mannerism and repetition. I remember Mrs. George Lee, of Boston, a sagacious woman, saying to me one day, when I told her I was going to write a second sermon on a certain subject,—she had praised the first,—"I have observed that the second sermon, on any subject, is never so good as the first; even Channing's are not."

Mr. Calhoun, on my leaving him, invited me to pass the evening with him at his house in Georgetown. I went, expecting to meet company, but found myself alone with him, and then the subject of conversation was the advantage and necessity of an Opposition in Government. He was himself then, of course, in the Opposition, and he was very candid: he said he did not question the motives of the Administration, while he felt bound to oppose it. I was struck with his candor,—a thing I did not look for in a political [112] opponent,—but especially with what he said about the benefit of an Opposition; both were rather new to me.

My third interview with him was at a later period, when his discourse turned upon this question: What is the greatest thing that a man can do? His answer was characteristic of the statesman. "It is," he said, "to speak the true and saving word in a great national emergency. For it implies," he continued, "the fullest knowledge of the past, the largest comprehension of the present, and the clearest foresight of the future." He might have added, to complete the idea, that this word was sometimes to be spoken when it involved the greatest peril to the position and prospects of the speaker. But how much moral considerations were apt to be present to his mind, I do not know. He was mostly known—so we of the North thought—as an impracticable reasoner. Miss Martineau said, "He was like a cast-iron man on a railroad."

I was introduced to Mr. Adams, but saw him little, and heard him less, as I will relate. Mr. Reed, of Barnstable, introduced me,—"Father Reed," as they used to call him, from his having been longer a member of Congress than any other man in the House,—and I said to him, as we were entering the White House, "Now tell Mr. Adams who I am and where from; for I think he must be puzzled what to talk about, with so many strangers coming to him." Well, I was intro-[113]duced accordingly, and Mr. Reed retired. I was offered a seat, and took it. I was a young man, and felt that it did not become me to open a conversation. And there we sat, five minutes, with>tit a word being spoken by either of us! I rose, took my leave, and went away, I don't know whether more angered or astonished. I once, by the by, visited his father, old John Adams, then lying in retirement at Quincy. Mr. Josiah Quincy took me to see him. He was not silent, but talked, I remember, full ten minutes—for ye did not interrupt him—about Machiavelli and in language so well chosen that I thought it night have been printed.

But the most interesting person, as statesman, hat I saw in Washington, was Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, commonly called Tom Corwin. This was a later period.

Circumstances, or the chances of conversation, sometimes lead to acquaintance and friendship, which years of ordinary intercourse fail to bring about. It happened, the first time I saw Mr. Corwin, that some observation I made upon political normality seemed to strike him as a new thought; suppose it was a topic seldom touched upon in Washington society. It led to a good deal of conversation, then and afterwards; and I must say that a more high-principled and religiously minded statesman I have never met with than Mr. Corwin.

When he was preparing to deliver his celebrated [114] speech in the Senate against the war with Mexico, he told me what he was going to say, and asked me if I thought he could say it and not be politically ruined by it. I answered that I did not know; but that I would say it if it did ruin me.

The day came for his speech, and I never saw the Senate Chamber so densely packed as it was to hear him. He told me that he should not speak; more than half an hour; but he did speak three hours, not only against the Mexican war, but against the system of slavery, in the bitterest language. His friends in Ohio told me, years after, that it did ruin him. But for that, they said, he would have been President of the United States.

Thackeray came to Washington while I was here. He gave his course of lectures on "the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century." His style, especially in his earlier writings, had one quality which the critics did not seem to notice; it was not conventional, but spun out of the brain. With the power of thought to take hold of the mind, and a rich, deep, melodius voice, he contrived, without one gesture, or my apparent emotion in his delivery, to charm away an hour as pleasantly as I have ever felt it in a lecture. What he told me of his way of composing confirms me in my criticism on his style.-He did not dash his pen on paper, like Walter Scott, and write off twenty pages without stop-[115] ping, but, dictating to an amanuensis,—a plan which leaves the brain to work undisturbed by the pen-labor,—dictating from his chair, and often from his bed, he gave out sentence by sentence, slowly, as they were moulded in his mind.

Thackeray was sensitive about public opinion; no writer, I imagine, was ever otherwise. I remember, one morning, he was sitting in our parlor, when letters from the mail came in. They were received with some eagerness, of course, and he said, "You seem to be pleased to have letters; I am not."—"No?" we said.—"No. I have had letters from England this morning, and they tell me that 'Henry Esmond' is not liked."

This led to some conversation on novels and novel-writing, and I ventured to say: "How is it that not one of the English novelists has ever drawn any high or adequate character of the clergyman? Walter Scott never gave us anything beyond the respectable official. Goldsmith's Dr. Primrose is a good man, the best we have in your English fiction, but odd and amusing rather than otherwise. Then Dickens has given us Chadband and Stiggins, and you Charles Honeyman. Can you not conceive," I went on to say, "that a man, without any chance of worldly profit, for a bare stipend, giving his life to promote what you must know are the highest interests of mankind, is engaged in a noble calling, worthy of being nobly described? Or have you no examples in England to draw from?" [116] This last sentence touched him, and I meant it should.

With considerable excitement he said, "I delivered a lecture the other evening in your church in New York, for the Employment Society; would you let me read to you a passage from it?" Of course I said I should be very glad to hear it, and added, "I thank you for doing that."—"I don't know why you should thank me," he said; "it cost me but an hour's reading, and I got $1,500 for them. I thought I was the party obliged. But I did tell them they should have a dozen shirts made up for me, and they did it." He then went and brought his lecture, and read the passage, which told of a curate's taking him to visit a poor family in London, where he witnessed a scene of distress and of disinterestedness very striking and beautiful to see. It was a very touching description, and Thackeray nearly broke sown in reading it.

A part of the winter of 1856-57 I passed with my family at Charleston, S. C. I went to preach in Dr. Gilman's pulpit, and to lecture. I had been there the spring before, and made very agreeable acquaintance with the people. My reception, both in public and in private, was as kindly and hospitable as I could desire. I was much interested in society there, and strongly attached to it. But in August following, in an address under our Old Elm-tree in Sheffield,[117] I made some observations upon the threatened extension of the slave-system, that dashed nearly all my agreeable relations with Charleston. I am not a person to regard such a breach with indifference: it pained me deeply. My only comfort was, that what I said was honestly said; that no honorable man can desire to be respected or loved through ignorance of his character or opinions; and that the ground then recently taken at the South—that the institution of human slavery is intrinsically right, just, and good—seems to me to involve such a wrong to humanity, such evil to the South, and such peril to the Union of the States, that it was a proper occasion for speaking earnestly and decidedly.

I was altogether unprepared for the treatment I received. One year before, I had been in the great Charleston Club, when the question of the perpetuity of the slave-system was discussed; when, indeed, an elaborate essay was read by one of the members, in which the ground was taken, that the dark cloud would sink away to the southwest, to Central America perhaps, from whence the slave population would find an exodus across the water to Africa; and of twenty members present, seventeen agreed with the essayist.

And I take occasion here to say, that this position of the seventeen was mainly satisfactory to me. I would, indeed, have had the South go farther. I would have had it take in hand the business of putting an end to slavery, by laws [118] providing for its gradual abolition, and by preparing the slaves for it; but I did not believe then, and do not now, [FN: The date of this passage must be in or about 1868.-M. E. D.] that immediate emancipation was theoretically the best plan. It was forced upon us by the exigencies of the war. And, independently of that, such was the infatuation of the Southern mind on the subject that there seemed to be no prospect of its ever being brought to take that view of it which was prevailing through the civilized and Christian world. But if it had taken that view, and had gone about the business of preparing for emancipation, I think the general public sentiment would have been satisfied; and I believe the result would have been better for the slaves, and better for the country. To be sure, things are working better perhaps now than could have been expected, and it may turn out that instant emancipation was the best thing. But the results of great social changes do not immediately reveal themselves. We are feeling, for instance, the pressure and peril of the free system in government more than we did fifty years ago, and may have to feel and fear it more than we do now. The freedmen are, at present, upon their good behavior, and are acting under the influence of a previous condition. But when I look to the future, and see them rising to wealth, culture, and refinement, and, as human beings, entitled to consideration as much as any other, [119] and yet forbidden intermarriage with the whites, as they should be for physiological reasons,-when, in fine, they see that they have not any fair and just position in American society and government,—they may be sorry that they were not gradually emancipated, and colonized to their own native country; and for ourselves-for our own country—the seeds may be sowing, in the dark bosom of the future, which may spring up in civil wars more terrible than ever were seen before.

Such speculations and opinions, I am sensible, would meet with no favor among us now. The espousal of the slave-man's cause among our Northern people is so humane and hearty that they can stop nowhere, for any consideration of expediency, in doing him justice, after all his wrongs; and I honor their feeling, go to what lengths it will. Nevertheless, I put down these my thoughts, for my children to understand, regard them as they may.

But what it is in my style or manner of writing that has called forth such a hard feeling towards me, from extremists both North and South, upon this slavery question, I cannot understand. In every instance in which I have spoken of it, I have been drawn out by a sense of duty,-there certainly was no pleasure in it. I have never assailed the motives of any man or party; I have spoken in no feeling of unkindness to anybody; there can have been no bitterness in my speech. [120] And yet something, I suppose, there must have been in my way of expressing myself, to offend. It may have been a fault, it may have been a merit for aught I know; for truly I do not know what it was.

After all, how little does any man know of his own personality,—of his personality in action? He may study himself; he may find out what his faculties, what his traits of character are, in the abstract as it were; but what they are in action, in movement,—how they appear to others,—he cannot know. The eye that looks around upon a landscape sees everything but itself. It is just as a man may look in the glass and see himself there every day; but he sees only the framework, only the "still life" in his face; he does not see it in the free play of expression,—in the strong workings of thought and feeling. I was one day sitting with Robert Walsh in Paris, and there was a large mirror behind him. Suddenly he said, "Ah, what a vain fellow you are!"-"How so?" I asked.—"Why," said he, "you are not looking at me as you talk, but you are looking at yourself in the glass."—"It is a fact!" I exclaimed, "I never saw myself talking before,—never saw the play of my own features in conversation." Had the mind a glass thus to look in, it would see things, see wonders, it knows nothing of now. It might see worse things, it might see better things, than it expected. And yet I have been endeavoring in these pages [121] to give some account of myself, while, after all, I am obliged to say that it is little more than a post mortem examination. If I had been dealing with the living subject, I suppose I could not have dealt so freely with myself. The last thing which I ever thought of doing is this which I have now done. Autobiographies are often pleasant reading; but I confess that I have always had a kind of prejudice against them. They have seemed to me to imply something of vanity, or a want of dignified reserve. The apology lies, perhaps, in the writer's ignorance, after all, of his own and very self. He has only told the story of a life. He has not come much nearer to himself than statistics come to the life of a people.

All that I know is, that I have lived a life mainly happy in its experience, not merely according to the average, not merely as things go in this world, but far more than that; which I should be willing to live again for the happiness that has blessed it, yet more for the interests which have animated it, and which has always been growing happier from the beginning. I have lived a life mainly fortunate in its circumstances both of early nurture and active pursuit; marred by no vice,—I do not remember even ever to have told a lie,—stained by no dishonor; laborious, but enjoying labor, especially in the sphere to which my life has been devoted; suffering from no pressing want, though moderate in means, and successful in every way, as much as I had any [122] right or reason to expect. I have been happy (the word is weak to express it) in my domestic relations, happy in the dearest and holiest friendships, and happy in the respect of society. And I have had a happiness (I dread the appearance of profession in saying it) in things divinest, in religion, in God,-in associating with him all the beauty of nature and the blessedness of life, beyond all other possible joy. And, therefore, notwithstanding all that I have suffered, notwithstanding all the pain and weariness and anxiety and sorrow that necessarily enter into life, and the inward errings that are worse than all, I would end my record with a devout thanksgiving to the great Author of my being. For more and more am I unwilling to make my gratitude to him what is commonly called "a thanksgiving for mercies,"—for any benefits or blessings that are peculiar to myself, or my friends, or indeed to any man. Instead of this, I would have it to be gratitude for all that belongs to my life and being,—for joy and sorrow, for health and sickness, for success and disappointment, for virtue and for temptation, for life and death; because I believe that all is meant for good.

Something of what I here say seems to require another word or two to be added, and perhaps it is not unmeet for me to subjoin, as the conclusion of the whole matter, my theory and view and summing up of what life is; for on it, to my apprehension, the virtue and happiness of life [123] mainly repose. It revealed itself dimly in my earlier, it has become clearer to me in my later, years; and the best legacy, as I conceive, that I could leave to my children would be this view of life.

I know that we are not, all the while, thinking of any theory of life. So neither are we all the while thinking of the laws of nature; the attraction of gravitation, for instance. But unless there were some ultimate reference to laws, both material and moral, our minds would lose their balance and security. If I believed that the hill by my side, or the house I live in, were liable any moment to be unseated and hurled through the air by centrifugal force, I should be ill at ease. And if I believed that the world was made by a malignant Power, or that the fortunes of men were the sport of a doubtful conflict between good and evil deities or principles, my life, like that of the ancients, would be filled with superstitions and painful fears. The foundation of all rational human tranquillity, cheerfulness, and courage, whether we are distinctly conscious of it or not, lies in the ultimate conviction, that God is good,—that his providence, his order of things in the world, is good; and theology, in the largest sense of the term, is as vital to us as the air we breathe.

If, then, I thought that this world were a castoff, or a wrecked and ruined, world; if I thought that the human generations had come out from the dark eclipse of some pre-existent state, or [124] from the dark shadow of Adam's fall, broken, blighted, accursed, propense to all evil, and disabled for all good; and if, in consequence, I believed that unnumbered millions of ignorant heathens, and thousands around me,—children but a day old in their conscious moral probation, and men, untaught, nay, ill-taught, misled and blind,—were doomed, as the result of this life-experiment, to intense, to unending, to infinite pain and anguish,—most certainly I should be miserable in such a state, and nothing could make life tolerable to me. Most of all should I detest myself, if the idea that I was to escape that doom could assuage and soothe in my breast the bitter pain of all generous humanity and sympathy for the woes and horrors of such a widespread and overwhelming catastrophe.

What, then, do I say and think? I say, and I maintain, that the constitution of the world is good, and that the constitution of human nature is good; that the laws of nature and the laws of life are ordained for good. I believe that man was made and destined by his Creator ultimately to be an adoring, holy, and happy being; that his spiritual and physical constitution was designed to lead to that end; but that end, it is manifest from the very nature of the case, can be attained only by a free struggle; and this free struggle, with its mingled success and failure, is the very story of the world. A sublime story it is, therefore. The life of men and nations has not been [125] a floundering on through useless disorder and confusion, trial and strife, war and bloodshed; but it has been a struggling onward to an end.

This, I believe, has been the story of the world from the beginning. Before the Christian, before the Hebrew, system appeared, there was religion, worship, faith, morality, in the world, and however erring, yet always improving from age to age. Those systems are great steps in the human progress; but they are not the only steps. Moses is venerable to me. The name of Jesus is "above every name;" but my reverence for him does not require me to lose all interest in Confucius and Zoroaster, in Socrates and Plato.

In short, the world is a school; men are pupils in this school; God is its builder and ordainer. And he has raised up for its instruction sages and seers, teachers and guides; ay, martyred lives, and sacrificial toils and tears and blood, have been poured out for it. The greatest teaching, the greatest life, the most affecting, heart-regenerating sacrifice, was that of the Christ. From him I have a clearer guidance, and a more encouraging reliance upon the help and mercy of God, than from all else. I do not say the only reliance, but the greatest.

This school of life I regard as the infant-school of eternity. The pupils, I believe, will go on forever learning. There is solemn retribution in this system,—the future must forever answer for the past; I would not have it otherwise. I must fight [126] the battle, if I would win the prize; and for all failure, for all cowardice, for all turning aside after ease and indulgence in preference to virtue and sanctity, I must suffer; I would not have it otherwise. There is help divine offered to me, there is encouragement wise and gracious; I welcome it. There is a blessed hereafter opened to prayer and penitence and faith; I lift my hopes to that immortal life. This view of the system of things spreads for me a new light over the heavens and the earth. It is a foundation of peace and strength and happiness more to be valued, in my account, than the title-deed of all the world.

[127] LETTERS.

THE foregoing pages, selected from many written at intervals between 1857 and 1870, tell nearly all of their writer's story which it can be of interest to the public to know; and although I have been tempted here and there to add some explanatory remarks, I have thought it best on the whole to leave them in their original and sometimes abrupt simplicity. The author did not intend them for publication, but for his family alone; and in sharing a part with a larger audience than he contemplated, we count upon a measure of that responsive sympathy with which we ourselves read frequently between the Lines, and enter into his meaning without many words.

But there is one point I cannot leave untouched. There is one subject on which some of those who nevertheless honor him have scarcely understood his position.

Twenty-five years ago slavery was a question upon which feeling was not only strong, but roused, stung, and goaded to a height of passion [128] where all argument was swept away by the common emotion as futile, if not base. My father, thinking the system hateful in itself and productive of nearly unmingled evil, held nevertheless that, like all great and established wrongs, it must be met with wise and patient counsel; and that in the highest interest of the slave, of the white race, of the country, and of constitutional liberty, its abolition must be gradual. To the uncompromising Abolitionists such views were intolerable; and by some of those who demanded immediate emancipation, even at the cost of the Union and all that its destruction involved, it was said that he was influenced by a mean spirit of expediency and a base truckling to the rank and wealth which sustained this insult to humanity.

They little knew him. The man who at twenty-five had torn himself from the associations and friendships of his youth, and, moved solely by love of truth, had imperilled all his worldly hopes by joining himself to a small religious body, despised and hated as heretics by most of those whom he had been trained to love and respect, was not the man at fifty to blanch from the expression of any honest conviction; and, to sum up all in one word, he held his views upon this subject, as upon all others, bravely and honestly, and stated them clearly and positively, when he felt it his duty to speak, although evasion or silence would have been the more comfortable alternative. "I doubt," says Mr. Chadwick,[129] "if Garrison or Parker had a keener sense than his of the enormity of human slavery. Before the first Abolitionist Society had been organized, he was one of the organizers of a committee for the discussion and advancement of emancipation. I have read all of his principal writings upon slavery, and it would be hard to find more terrible indictments of its wickedness. He stated its defence in terms that Foote and Yancey might have made their own, only to sweep it all away with the blazing ubiquity that the negro was a man and an immortal soul. Yet when the miserable days of fugitive-slave rendition were upon us, he was with Gannett in the sad conviction that the law must be obeyed. We could not see it then; but we can see to-day that it was possible for men as good and true as any men alive to take this stand. And nothing else brings out the nobleness of Dewey into such bold relief as the fact, that the immeasurable torrent of abuse that greeted his expressed opinion did not in any least degree avail to make him one of the pro-slavery faction. The concession of 1850 was one which he would not have made, and it must be the last. Welcome to him the iron flail of war, whose tribulation saved the immortal wheat of justice and purged away the chaff of wrong to perish in unquenchable fire!"

His feelings retained their early sensitiveness

[FN The Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N. Y., In a sermon preached after Dr. Dewey's death.]

[130] in a somewhat remarkable degree. In a letter written when he was near seventy he says, "I do believe there never was a man into whose manhood and later life so much of his foolish boyhood flowed as into mine. I am as anxious to go home, I shall be all the way to-morrow as eager and restless, and all the while thinking of the end of my journey, as if I were a boy going from school, or a young lover six weeks after his wedding-day. Shall I ever learn to be an old man?"

But it was this very simplicity and tenderness that gave such a charm to his personal intercourse. His emotions, like his thoughts, had a plain directness about them which assured you of their honesty. With a profound love of justice, he had an eminently judicial mind, and could not be content without viewing a subject from every side, and casting light upon all its points. The light was simple sunshine, untinged by artificial mixtures; the views were direct and straightforward, with no subtle slants of odd or recondite position; and in his feelings, also, there was the same large and natural simplicity. You felt the ground-swell of humanity in them, and it was this breadth and genuineness which laid the foundation of his power as a preacher, making him strike unerringly those master chords that are common and universal in every audience. Gifts of oratory he had, both natural and acquired,—a full, melodious voice, so sympathetic in modulation and so attuned to [131] reverence that I have heard more than one person say that his first few words in the pulpit did more towards lifting them to a truly religious frame of mind than the whole service from any other lips,—a fine dramatic power, enough to have given him distinction as an actor, had that been the profession of his choice,—a striking dignity of presence, and an easy and appropriate gesticulation. But these, as well as his strong common sense, that balance-wheel of character, were brought into the service of his earnest convictions. What he had to say, he put into the simplest form; and if his love of art and beauty, and his imaginative faculty, gave wealth and ornament to his style, he never sacrificed a particle of direct force for any rhetorical advantage. His function in life—he felt it to his inmost soul—was to present to human hearts and minds the essential verities of their existence in such a manner that they could not choose but believe in them. His strength was in his reverent perception of the majesty of Right as accordant with the Divine and Eternal Will; his power over men was in the sublimity of his appeal to an answering faith in themselves.

He was greatest as a preacher, and it is as a preacher that he will be best remembered by the public. The printed page, though far inferior to the fervid eloquence of the same words when spoken, will corroborate by its beauty, its pathos, and its logical force, the traditions that still linger [132] of his deep impressiveness in the pulpit. In making the following selections from his letters, I have been influenced by the desire to let them show him in his daily and familiar life, with the easy gayety and love of humor which was as natural to him as the deep and solemn meditations which absorbed the larger part of his mind. They are very far from elaborate compositions, being rather relaxations from labor, and he thought very slightly of them himself; yet I think they will present the real man as nothing but such careless and conversational writing can.

No letters of his boyhood have been preserved, and very few of his youth. This, to Dr. Channing, was probably written at Plymouth, while there on an exchange of pulpits, soon after his ordination at New Bedford:—

To Rev. William Ellery Charming, D.D.

PLYMOUTH, Dec. 27, 1823.

DEAR SIR,—I was scarcely disappointed at your not coming to my ordination, and indeed I have felt all along that, if you could not preach, I had much rather see you at a more quiet and leisurely time. I thank you for the hope you have given me of this in the suggestion you made to Mr. Tuckerman. When the warm season comes, I pray you to give Mrs. Dewey and me the pleasure of trying what we can do to promote your comfort and health, and of enjoying your society for a week. [133] Our ordination was indeed very pleasant, and our prospects are becoming every day more encouraging. The services of that occasion were attended with the most gratifying and useful impression. Our friend, Mr. Tuckerman, preached more powerfully, and produced a neater effect, than I had supposed he ever did. I must remind you, however, that his sermon, like every good sermon, had its day when it was delivered. We cannot print the pathos, nor you read the fervor, with which it was spoken.

I have had no opportunity to express to you the very peculiar and high gratification with which I have received the late expression of the liberality and kindness of your society, nor can it be necessary. I cannot fail to add, however, that the pleasure is greatly enhanced by the knowledge that I owe the occasion of it to your suggestion.

I hope to visit Boston this winter, or early in the spring. I often feel as if I had a burden of questions which I wish to propose to you for conversation. The want of this resource and satisfaction is one of the principal reasons that make me regret my distance from Boston. I shall always remember the weeks I spent with you, two years ago, with more interest than I shall ever feel it proper to express to you. It is one of my most joyful hopes of heaven, that such intercourse shall be renewed, and exalted and perpetuated forever.

To the Same.

NEW BEDFORD, Sept. 21, 1824.

DEAR SIR,—I thank you for your letter and invitation [See p. 50] . . . . The result of your going to Boston is what I [134] feared, and it seems too nearly settled that nothing will give you health, but a different mind, or a different mode of life.

Quintilian advises the orator to retire before he is spent, and says that he can still advance the object of his more active and laborious pursuits by conversing, by publishing, and by teaching others, youths, to follow in his steps. I do not quote this advice to recommend it, if it were proper for me to recommend anything. But I have often revolved the courses that might preserve your life, and make it at once happy to yourself and useful to us, for many years to come. I cannot admit any plan that would dismiss you altogether from the pulpit, nor do I believe that any such could favor your happiness or your health. But could you not limit yourself to preaching, say ten times in a year (provided one of them be in New Bedford)? and will you permit me to ask, nor question my modesty in doing so, if you could not spend a part of the year in a leisurely preparation of something for the press? I fear that your MSS., and I mean your sermons now, would suffer by any other revisal and publication than your own. With regard to the last suggestion of Quintilian's, I have supposed that it has been fairly before you; but perhaps I have already said more than becomes me. If so, I am confident at least that I deserve your pardon for my good intentions; and with these, I am, dear sir, most truly as well as

Respectfully your friend,

O. DEWEY.

I am tempted to introduce here a sketch of my father as he appeared in those early days, writ-en by Rev. W. H. Channing, for "the London Enquirer" of April 13, 1882:

[135] "It so happened then to me, while a youth of twelve or fifteen years in training at the Boston Latin School for Harvard University, that Dr. Dewey became a familiar guest in my mother's hospitable house. He was at this period the temporary minister of Federal Street Church, while Dr. Channing was seeking to renew his wasted energies, for better work, in Europe. And on Mondays—after his exhausting outpourings of Sunday—he was wont to 'drop in, while passing,' to talk over the themes of his discourse, or for friendly interchange of thought and sympathy. A special attraction was that the Misses Cabot, the elder of whom became a few years later Mrs. Charles Follen (both of whom will be remembered by English friends), made a common home with my mother; and the radiant intelligence, glowing enthusiasm, hearty affectionateness, and genial merriment of these bright-witted sisters charmed him. Sometimes they probed with penetrating questions the mystical metaphysics of the preceding day's sermon. Then, deeply stirred, and all on fire with truths dawning on his vision, he would rise from his chair and slowly pace the room, in a half soliloquy, half rejoinder. At these times of high-wrought emotion his aspect was commanding. His head was rounded like a dome, and he bore it erect, as if its weight was a burden; his eyes, blue-gray in tint, were gentle, while gleaming with inner light; the nostrils were outspread, as if breathing in mountain-top air; and the mobile lips, the lower of which protruded, apparently measured his deliberately accented words as if they were coins stamped in the mint. It was intense delight for a boy to listen to these luminous self-unfoldings, embodied in rhythmic speech. They moved me more profoundly even than the suppressed feeling of his awe-struck prayers, [136] or the fluent fervor of his pulpit addresses; for they raised the veil, and admitted one into his Holy of holies. At other times, literary or artistic themes, the newest poem, novel, picture, concert, came up for discussion; and as these ladies were verse-writers, essayists, critics, and lovers of beauty in all forms, the conversations called out the rich genius and complex tendencies and aptitudes of Dr. Dewey in stimulating suggestions, which were refreshing as spring breezes. His mind gave hospitable welcome to each new fact disclosed by science, to all generous hopes for human refinement and ennobling ideals, while his discernment was keen to detect false sentiment or flashy sophisms. Again, some startling event would bring conventional customs and maxims to the judgment-bar of pure Christian ethics, when his moral indignation blazed forth with impartial equity against all degrading views of human nature, debasing prejudices, and distrust of national progress,—sparing no tyrant, however wealthy or high in station; pleading for the downcast, however lowly; hoping for the fallen, however scorned. Thanks to this clear-sighted moralist, he gave me, in his own example, a standard of generous Optimism too sun-bright ever to be eclipsed. Let it not be inferred from these hasty outlines, however, that Dr. Dewey was habitually grave, or intent on serious topics solely, in social intercourse So far from this, he continually startled one by his swift transitions from solemn discourse to humorous descriptions of persons, places, experiences. And as the Misses Cabot and my mother alike regarded healthful laughter, cheery sallies, and childlike gayety as a wise relief for overwrought brains or high-strung sensibilities, our fireside sparkled with brilliant repartees and scintillating mirth. It is [137] pleasantly remembered that, in such by-play, Dr. Dewey, while often satirical, and prone to good-tempered banter, was never cynical, and was intolerant of personal gossip or he intrusion of mean slander. And to close the chapter of boyhood's acquaintance, it is gratefully recalled how cordially sympathetic this earnest apostle was with my youthful studies, trials, aspirations. All recollections, indeed, of my uncle's curate—whom, as is well-known, le wished to become his colleague—are charming; and before my matriculation at Harvard, one of my most trusted religious guides was Orville Dewey." The Wares, both Henry and William, were among my father's dearest friends at this time, and the intimacy was interrupted only by death.

To Rev. Henry Ware.

NEW BEDFORD, Feb. 2, 1824. MY DEAR FRIEND,

There is a great cause committed to us,—not that of a party, but that of principles. A contest as important as that of the Reformation is to pass here, and I trust,-though with trembling,—I trust in God that it is to be maintained with a better spirit. I cannot help feeling that generations as boundless as shall spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific shores wait for the result. The importance of everything that is doing for the improvement of this country is fast swelling to infinitude. These, dear sir, are some of my dreams, I fear I must call them, rather than waking thoughts. It seems to me not a little to know the age and country we live in. I think, and think, and think that something must be done, and often [138] I feel, and feel, and feel that I do nothing. What can we do to make ourselves and others aware of our Christian duties and of the signs of this time?

There is one comfort,—Unitarianism will succeed just as far as it is worthy of it,—and there are some forms of practical Unitarianism that ought not to meet with any favor in the world. If the whole mass becomes of this character, let it go down, till another wave of providence shall bring it up again.

But enough of this preaching: you think of all these things, and a thousand more, better than I can say them. I turn to your letter. Elder H., for whom you ask, is a very good man,-very friendly to me; but le is a terrible fanatic. He has Unitarian revivals that might match with any of them. It is a curious fact that the Christians, as they call themselves, Unitarian as they ire, form the most extravagant, fiery, fanatical sect in this country.

Mrs. Dewey desires very friendly regards to Mrs. Ware, of whose continued illness we are concerned to lean Let my kind remembrance be joined with my wife's, and believe me very truly,

Your friend and brother,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To the Same.

NEW BEDFORD, Feb. 14, 1824.

MY DEAR FRIEND,—I cannot repress the inclination to offer you my sympathy. I have often thought with [FN: Mrs. Ware died in the interval between those two letters she was the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, of Cambridge, Mass. In 1827 Mr. Ware was again married to Miss Mary Lovell Pickard.] [139] pain of what was coming upon you; and I fear, though long threatening, it has come at last with a weight which you could hardly have anticipated. May God sustain and comfort you! You are supported, I well know, while you are afflicted, in every recollection of what you lave lost. Surely the greatness of your trial argues the Kindness of Heaven, for it proves the greatness of the blessing you have enjoyed.

But, my dear sir, I will not urge upon you words which are but words, and touch not the terrible reality that occupies your mind. You want not the poor and old sayings of one who knows not—who cannot know—what you suffer. You need not the aids of reflection from me. But you need what, in common with your hands, I would invoke for you,—the aid, the consolation that is divine. God grant it to you,—all that affection can ask,—all that affliction can need,—prays

Your friend and brother,

O. DEWEY.

To Dr. Channing.

NEW BEDFORD, Oct. 16, 1827.

MY DEAR AND REVERED FRIEND,—Excuse me for calling you so; may the formalities and the English reserves excuse me too.

I have had two letters from New York, one from Mr. Sewall, and the other from Mr. Ware, which are so pressing as really to give me some trouble. Do say something to me on this subject, if you have anything to say. There certainly are many reasons, and strong as numerous, why I should not at present leave New Bedford,-why I should not take such a post. I cannot say I am made to doubt what I ought to do; but I have a fear lest [140] I should not do right, lest I should love my ease too well, lest it should be said to me in the other world, "A great opportunity, a glorious field was opened to you, and you did not improve it,"—lest, in other words, I should not act upon considerations sufficiently high, comprehensive, and disinterested,—fit, in short, for contemplation from the future world as well as from the present.

I do not write asking you to reply; for I do not suppose you have anything to say which you would not have suggested when I was with you. Indeed, I believe I write, as much as for anything, because I want to communicate with you about something, and this is uppermost in my mind.

Present my affectionate regards to Mrs. Channing and the children, and to Miss Gibbs.

Yours most affectionately,

O. DEWEY. To Rev. Henry Ware.

NEW BEDFORD, March 29, 1829.

MY DEAR FRIEND,—I cannot let you go off without my blessing. I did not know of your purpose till last evening, or I should not have left myself to write to you in the haste of a few minutes snatched on Sunday evening, to say nothing of the aching nerves' and the misled hand that usually come along with it. By the by, I have a good mind to desire you to propose a year's exchange [for me] to somebody in England. If you meet with a man who is neither too good nor too bad, suppose you suggest it to him,—not as from me, however.

I should think that a man, in going to England, would feel the evil of belonging to a sect, unless that sect [141] embraced all the good and wise and gifted,—which can be said of no sect. The sectarianism of sects, however, is the bad thing. These are necessary; that is not necessary, but to human weakness. But fie upon discoursing to a man who is just stepping on shipboard! May it bear you safely! May it tread the mountain wave "as a steed that knows its rider," and is conscious of what it bears from us! My heart will go with you in a double sense; for I want to see England,—I want to see Italy, and the Alps, and the south of France. I don't know whether you intend to do all this; and I am very certain not to do any of it. I know that yours will not be a travelled heart, any more than Goldsmith's. Let me lay in my claim for as many of its kind thoughts as belong to me. But yet more, let me assure you, as the exigency demands, that for every one you have thus to render, I have five to give in return.

I believe you will not be sorry, at this time, that my lines and words are few and far between; for your leisure cannot serve to read many.

Mrs. D. desires her best wishes to you. We do not know whether Mrs. Ware goes with you, but hope she does.

I took my pen feeling as if I had not a word to say, but—God bless you! and that I say with all my heart. Write me from abroad if you can, but make no exertion to do so.

Yours as ever,

O. DEWEY.

To the Same.

NEW BEDFORD, Sep. 14, 1830,

DEAR WARE,—I write down the good old compellation here, not because I have anything in particular to say [142] to you, but just to assure myself in the agreeable conviction that you are again within sixty miles of me. When you get a little quiet, when matters have taken some form with you, when you have seen some hundreds of people, and answered some thousands of questions, then take your pen for the space of ten minutes, and tell me of your "whereabouts," and how your strength and spirits hold out, and what is the prospect.

I hope you will not disappoint me of the visit this autumn, for I want to talk the sun down and the stars up with you. I suppose you have tales enough for "a thousand and one nights." You have made friends here, moreover, even in Rome,—some by hearsay, and others who will be here probably in a fortnight or three weeks. Kind Mrs. Ware has admirers here. Think of that, sir! That while Mr. W. is spoken of only with a kind of reverence, the lady carries off all the charms and fascinations of epithet. But alas! Such is the hard fate of us of the wiser sex. There are other senses than Saint Paul's in which we may say, "Where I am weak, there am I strong."

Pray excuse the levity (specific) of this letter, on two rounds,—first, that I am very heavy, and should sink in any other vessel; and, secondly, that I cannot take in any of the weighty matters, because I have no room for them.

Mrs. Dewey joins me in the regards to you and Mrs. Ware, with which I am,

Most truly yours,

O. DEWEY.

In less than three years from this time the nervous suffering from overwork became so intense that Mr. Dewey was advised to go abroad [143] to obtain the absolute rest from labor that was impossible here.

To Miss Catherine M. Sedgwick.

SHEFFIELD, May 2, 1833.

My DEAR FRIEND,—I am about to go abroad. I have made up my mind to that huge, half pleasurable, half painful undertaking; or shall I say, rather, that both the pleasure and the pain come by wholes, and not by halves? The latter I feel as a domestic man, for I must go alone; the former I feel as a civilized man. Civilized, I say, for who that has the lowest measure of educated intelligence and sensibility can expect to tread all the classic lands of the world, Greece only excepted, without a thrill of delight?

If you should think that I had written thus much as claiming your sympathy in what so much interests me, and if you should think this without accusing me of presumption, I should be tempted, were I assured of the fact, to stop here, and to leave the matter on a footing so gratifying to my feelings. But I must not venture to take so considerable a risk, and must therefore hasten to tell you that what I have said is only a vestibule to something further.

Nor is the vestibule at all too large or imposing for the object, as I conceive it, to which it is to open the way; for I am about to ask through you, if you will consent and condescend to be the medium, a very considerable favor of a very distinguished man. Among many letters of introduction which I have received, it so happens, as they say in Parliament, that I can obtain none to certain persons that I want to see quite as much as any others [144] in Europe. None of our Boston gentlemen that I can find are acquainted with Professor Wilson, or Miss Ferrier, the author of "Inheritance," or Thomas Moore, or Campbell, or Bulwer. The "Noctes Ambrosianx," with other things, have made me a great admirer of Wilson; and Miss Ferriers (I don't know whether her name ends with s or not) I had rather see than any woman in Europe. She comes nearer to Sir Walter, I think, than any writer of fiction abroad, and in depth of religious sentiment goes very far beyond him. Now, I presume that Washington Irving is acquainted with all these individuals; and what I venture to ask is, whether, through your intervention, letters can be obtained from him to any of them, and especially to the two first.

Now I must make you comprehend how little I wish you to go out of your way, or to put any constraint on yourself in the matter. I have none of the passion for seeing celebrated men, merely as such. Those whose writings have interested me, I do, of course, wish to see; but I am to be too hasty a traveller to make it a great object to see them, or to go very much out of my way for it. Above all, if you have the least reluctance to ask this of Mr. Irving, you must allow me to impose it as a condition of my request that you will not do it; or if Mr. Irving is reluctant to give the letters, do not undertake to tell me so with any circumlocution, for I understand all about the delicacy of these Transatlantic connections. I only fear that the very length of this letter will convey to you an undue impression of the importance which I give to the subject of it. Pray construe it not so, but set it down as one of the involuntary consequences of the pleasure I have in conversing with you.

Very truly your friend,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[145] The letters, and every other advantage that the kindness of friends could provide, were given him, and the mingled anticipations with which he entered on his year of solitary exile were all fulfilled. His enjoyment in the wonders of nature and of art, in society, and in the charm of historical and romantic association which is the peculiar pleasure to an American of travel in the Old World, was very great, and the relief to his brain from the weekly pressure of original production gave him ease for the present and hope for the future. But the year was darkened for him by the death of his youngest sister, who had been married the previous summer to Mr. Andrew L. Russell, of Plymouth, and of his wife's brother, John Hay Farnham, of Indiana; and when he returned home, three months' work convinced him that arduous and prolonged mental labor was henceforth impossible for him. With deep disappointment and sorrow, he resigned his charge at New Bedford, and left the place and people which had been and always remained very dear to him.

Few are left of those who heard his first preaching there. One of his sisters says: "To me, brought up on the Orthodoxy of Berkshire, it was like a revelation, and I think it was much the same to the Quakers. Those views of life and human nature and its responsibilities that are common now, were new then, and the effect produced upon us all was most thrilling and solemn; and [146] when, service over, we passed out of the church, I remember there were very few words spoken,-a contrast to the custom nowadays of chatting and laughing at the door." I have heard others speak of the overwhelming pathos of his manner, and I asked the Rev. Dr. Morison, who came to New Bedford as a young man during the last years of our stay there, to put some of his personal remembrances on paper. In a note from him, dated Toth January, 1883, he says: "I have not forgotten my promise to send you some little account of your father's preaching in New Bedford. He was so great a man, uttering himself in his preaching, the sources of his power lay so deep, his words came to us so vitally connected with the most subtle and effective forces of the moral and spiritual universe, that I can no more describe him than I could a June day, in all its glory and beauty and its boundless resources of joy and life, to one who had never known it."

The following pages, which Dr. Morison was nevertheless kind enough to send, have touching value and beauty:

"More than half a century ago, in March, 1832, I went to New Bedford, and, for nearly a year, was a constant attendant at Mr. Dewey's church. During that year he preached most of the sermons contained in the first volume that he published. As we read them, they are among the ablest and most impressive sermons in the language. But when read now they give only a slight idea of what they were as they came to us then, all [147] glowing and alive with the emotions of the preacher. When he walked through the church to the pulpit, his head swaying backward and forward as if too heavily freighted, his whole bearing was that of one weighed down by the thoughts in which he was absorbed and the solemn message which he had come to deliver. The old prophetic 'burden of the Lord' had evidently been laid upon him. Some hymn marked by its depth of religious feeling was read. This was followed by a prayer, which was not the spontaneous, easy outflowing of calmly reverential feelings, but the labored utterance of a soul overawed and overburdened by emotions too strong for utterance. There was sometimes an appearance almost of distress in this exercise, so utterly inadequate, as it seemed to him, were any words of his to express what lay deepest in his mind, when thus brought face to face with God. 'I do not shrink,' he said, 'from speaking to man.' But, except in his rarest and best moments, he was oppressed by a sense of the poverty of any language of thanksgiving or supplication that he could use in his intercourse with God."

"His manner in preaching was marked by great depth and strength of feeling, but always subdued. He spoke on great subjects. He entered profoundly into them, and treated them with extraordinary intellectual ability and clearness. They who were seeking for light found it in his preaching. But more than any intellectual precision or clearness of thought was to be gained from him in his treatment of the momentous questions which present themselves, sooner or later, to every thoughtful mind. Behind these questions, more important than any one or all of them intellectually considered, was the realm of thought, emotion, aspiration, out of which [148] religious ideas are formed, and in which the highest faculties of our nature are to find their appropriate nourishment and exercise. He spoke to us as one who belonged to this higher world. The realm in which he lived, and which seemed never absent from his mind, impressed itself as he spoke, and gave a deeper solemnity and attractiveness to his words than could be given by any specific and clearly-defined ideas. A sense of mystery and awe pervaded his teachings, and infused into his utterances a sentiment of divine sacredness and authority. He preached as I never, before or since, have heard any one else, on human nature, on retribution, on the power of kindness, on life and death, in their relations to man and to what is divine. He stood before us compassed about by a religious atmosphere which penetrated his inmost nature, and gave its tone and coloring to all he said. For he spoke as one who saw rising visibly before him the issues of life and of death."

"He was gifted with a rare dramatic talent. But it was a gift, not an art, and showed itself in voice and gesture as by the natural impulse of a great nature profoundly moved, and in its extremest manifestations so subdued as to leave the impression of a vast underlying reserved force. His action, so full of meaning and so effective, was no studied or superficial movement of hand and voice, but the action of the whole man, body and soul, all powerfully quickened and moved from within by the living thoughts and emotions to which he was giving utterance."

"I have heard many of the greatest orators of our time. But, with the exception of Daniel Webster and Dr. Channing in their highest moments, Mr. Dewey was the most [149] eloquent man among them all, and that not once or twice, on great occasions, but Sunday after Sunday, forenoon and afternoon, for months together."

"Some allowance should perhaps be made for the state of mind and the period of life in which I heard him. I had just come from college, where the intellect had been cultivated in advance of the moral and religious faculties. The equilibrium which belongs to a perfectly healthy and harmonious nature was disturbed, and, as a necessary consequence of this unbalanced and distempered condition, there was a deep inward unrest, and a craving for something,—the greatest of all,—which had not yet been attained. Mr. Dewey's preaching came in just at this critical time, and it was to me the opening into a new world. The hymn, the prayer, the Scripture reading, usually brought me into a reverent and plastic state of mind, ready to receive and be moulded by the deepest and loftiest Christian truths. From the beginning to the end of the sermon I was under the spell which he had thrown over me, and unconscious of everything else. Very seldom during my life, and then only for a few minutes at a time, has any one, by his eloquence, exercised this absorbing and commanding influence over me. Once or twice in hearing Dr. Channing I felt as I suppose the prophet may have felt when he heard 'the still small voice,' at which 'he wrapped his face in his mantle,' and listened as to the voice of God. A few such experiences I have had with other men; but with Mr. Dewey more than with all others. And when the benediction was pronounced, I wished to go away and be by myself in the new world of spiritual ideas and emotions into which I had been drawn. Those were to me great experiences, [150] inwrought into the inmost fibres of my nature, and always associated in my mind with Mr. Dewey's preaching."

"Nor were these experiences peculiar to any one person. The audience as a whole were affected in a similar manner. A deep solemnity pervaded the place. There was not merely silence, but the spell of absorbed attention that makes itself felt, and spreads itself as by a general sympathy through a congregation profoundly moved by great thoughts filled out and made alive by deep and uplifting emotions. The exercises in the church were often followed by lasting convictions. The Sunday's sermon was the topic, not of curious discussion or indiscriminate eulogy, but of serious conversation among the young, who looked forward to the coming Sunday as offering privileges which it would be a misfortune to lose. The services of the church were remembered and anticipated as the most interesting and important event of the week."

"I shall never cease to think with gratitude of Mr. Dewey's preaching. In common with other great preachers of our denomination,—Dr. Channing, for example, Dr. Nichols, and Dr. Walker,—he spoke as one standing within the all-encompassing and divine presence. He awakened in us a sense of that august and indefinable influence from which all that is holiest and best must come. He brought us into communication with that Light of life. He showed us how our lives, our thoughts, and even our every-day acts, may be sanctified and inspired by it, as every plant and tree is not only illuminated by the sun but vitally associated with it."

"If, in the light of later experience, I were to criticise [151] the preaching I then heard, I should say that it was too intense. The writing and the delivery of such sermons subjected the preacher to too severe a strain both of body and mind. No man could go on preaching in that way, from month to month, without breaking down in health. And it may be questioned whether a mind acting under so high a pressure is in the best condition to take just views, to preserve its proper equipoise, or to impart wise and healthful instruction. The stimulus given may be too strong for the best activity of those who receive it. They whose sensitive natures are most deeply affected by such an example may, under its influence, unconsciously form an ideal of intellectual attainments too exacting, and therefore to them a source of weakness rather than of strength."

"The danger lies in these directions. But Mr. Dewey's breadth of apprehension, his steadfast loyalty and devotion to the truth, the judicial impartiality with which he examined the whole field before making up his mind, saved him from one-sided or ill-balanced conclusions. And the intense action of all the faculties not only enables a man of extraordinary intellectual powers to impress his thought on others and infuse his very soul into theirs; but it also, as we see in the best work of Channing, Dewey, and Emerson, opens to them realms of thought which otherwise might never have been reached, and gives to them glimpses of a divine love and splendor never granted to a less earnest and passionate devotion."

In the autumn of 1835 Mr. Dewey was settled over the Second Unitarian Church in New York, trusting to his stock of already written discourses [152] to save him from a stress of intellectual labor too severe for his suffering brain, which was never again to allow him uninterrupted activity in study. When his life-work is viewed, it should always be remembered under what difficulties it was carried on. It was work that taxed every faculty to the uttermost, while the physical organ of thought had been so strained by over-exertion at the beginning of his professional career, owing to a general ignorance of the bodily laws even greater then than it is now, that the use of it during the rest of his life was like that which a man has of a sprained foot; causing pain in the present exercise, and threatening far worse consequences, if the effort is continued. Fortunately, his health in all other respects was excellent, and his spirits and courage seldom flagged. I remember him as lying much on the sofa in those days, and liking to have his head "scratched" by the hour together, with a sharp-pointed comb, to relieve by external irritation the distressing sensation's, which he compared to those made, sometimes by a tightening ring, sometimes by a leaden cap, and sometimes (but this was in later life) by a dull boring instrument. Yet he was the centre of the family life, and of its merriment as well; and his strong social instincts and lively animal spirits made him full of animation and vivacity in society, although he was soon tired, and with a nervous restlessness undoubtedly the effect of disease, never wanted to stay long in any company. [153] He preached a sermon after the great fire in New York, in December, 1835, which drew forth the following letter from Mr. Henry Ware:—

CAMBRIDGE, Jan. 15, 1836.

DEAR FRIEND,—I must acknowledge your sermon,-you made me most happy by it. It was so true, so right, so strongly and movingly put; it was the word that ought to be said, the word in season. My feeling was: God Almighty be praised for sending that man there to speak to that great and mighty city, and to interpret to it his providence. You cannot but feel gratitude in being appointed to be such an instrument; and I trust that you are to be used much and long, and for great good. Keep yourself well and strong; look on yourself as having a message and a mission, and live for nothing else but to perform it.

I happen to have found out, very accidentally, what is always the most secret of undiscoverable secrets,—that you are asked to preach the Dudleian Lecture. Do not let anything hinder you. We want you: you must come; do not hesitate; and, mind, I speak first, to have you come and house it with me while you are in Cambridge. Pray, deny me not.

Shall I tell you? Your sermon made me cry so that I could not finish reading it, but was obliged to lay it down. Not from its pathos,—but from a stronger, higher, deeper, holier something which it stirred up. I am almost afraid for you when I think what a responsibility lies on you for the use of such powers. May He that gave them give you grace with them! Love to you and yours, and all peace be with you. Yours ever,

H. WARE, JR.

[154] In the same year he addressed a letter to Emerson, who, as a cousin of his wife, was well known to him from the first. The familiarity of the opening recalls what he said in writing of him many years after: "Waldo, we always called him in those days, though now all adjuncts have dropped away from the shining name of Emerson."

To Ralph Waldo Emerson.

BOSTON, May 13, 1836.

DEAR WALDO,—I felt much disappointed when, on going to Hancock Place the third time, I found that you had gone to Concord; for I was drawn to you as by a kind of spell. I wanted to see you, though it seemed to me that I could not speak to you one word. I can do no more now,—I am dumb with amazement and sorrow; [FN] and yet I must write to you, were it only to drop a tear on the page I send. Your poor mother! I did not know she had come with you. Miss Hoar 2 I do not know, and will intrude no message; but I think of her more than many messages could express. My dear friend, I am as much concerned for you as for any one. God give you strength to comfort others! Alas! we all make too much of death. Like a vase of crystal that fair form was shattered,—in a moment shattered! Can such an event be the catastrophe we make it?

[FN: This letter was called forth by the sudden death of Charles Chauncey Emerson, a younger brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and one of the noblest young men of America.]

[FN: Miss Hoar was betrothed to Charles Emerson.]

[155] I preached to-day at Chauncey Place [FN 1]. I will copy a passage. (I have not space to give the connection.)

"There stood once where now I stand, a father,—I knew him not, but to some of you he was known,—who, ere his children were twined up for life, was called to leave them, but whose fair example and fervent prayer visited them, and dwelt among them, and helped, with much kindly nurture, to form them to learning, virtue, honor, and to present them to the world a goodly band of brothers. And say not, because one and another has fallen on the threshold of life,—fallen amidst the brightest visions and most brilliant promises of youth,—that it is all in vain; that parental toils and cares and prayers are all in vain. There is another life, where every exalted power trained here shall find expansion, improvement, and felicity. [Those sons of the morning, who stand for a moment upon the verge of this earthly horizon amidst the first splendors of day, and then vanish away into heaven, as if translated, not deceased, seem to teach us, almost by a sensible manifestation, how short is the step and how natural is the passage from earth to heaven.][FN 2] They almost open heaven to us, and they help our languid efforts to reach it, by the most powerful of all earthly aids,—the memory of admired and loved virtues. Yes, the mingled sorrow and affection which have swelled many hearts among us within the last week, tell me that the excellence we have lost has not lived in vain. Precious memory of early [156] virtue and piety! and such memories, and more than one such, there are among you. Hold these bright companions ever dear, my young friends; embalm their memory in the fragrant breath of your love; follow them with the generous emulation of virtue; let the seal which death has set upon excellence stamp it with a character of new sanctity and authority; let not virtue die and friendship mourn in vain!"

[FN 1: The church formerly ministered to by the Rev. William Emerson, the father of these rare sons.]

[FN 2: This letter is taken from a copy, not the original; and the meaning of the brackets is uncertain. Probably, however, the passage which they enclose is a quotation.]

Remember me with most affectionate sympathy to your mother, and Aunt
Mary, and to Dr. Ripley.

With my kind regards to your wife, I am, dear Waldo, in love and prayer, yours,

O. DEWEY.

Everybody mourns with you. Dr. Channing said yesterday, "I think Massachusetts could not have met with a greater loss than of that young man."

Mr. Emerson's letter in reply is beautiful in itself, and has the added interest attaching now to every word of his:—

CONCORD, May 23, 1836,

MY DEAR SIR,—I received the last week your kind letter, and the copy of your affectionate notice of Charles A Chauncey Place. I remember how little while ago you consoled us by your sympathy at Edward's departure,—a kind, elevating letter, which I have never acknowledged. I feel as if it was kind, even compassionate, to remember me now that these my claims of remembrance are gone.

Charles's mind was healthy, and had opened steadily with a growth that never ceased from month to month [157] under favorable circumstances. His critical eye was so acute, his rest on himself so absolute, and his power of illustrating his thought by an endless procession of fine images so excellent, that his conversation came to be depended on at home as daily bread, and made a very large part of the value of life to me. His standard of action was heroic,—I believe he never had even temptations to anything mean or gross. With great value for the opinion of plain men, whose habits of life precluded compliment and made their verdict unquestionable, he held perhaps at too low a rate the praise of fashionable people,—so that he steadily withdrew from display, and I felt as if nobody knew my treasure. Meantime, like Aaron, "he could speak well." He had every gift for public debate, and I thought we had an orator in training for the necessities of the country, who should deserve the name and the rewards of eloquence. But it has pleased God not to use him here. The Commonwealth, if it be a loser, knows it not; but I feel as if bereaved of so much of my sight and hearing.

His judgment of men, his views of society, of politics, of religion, of books, of manners, were so original and wise and progressive, that I feel—of course nobody can think as I do—as if an oracle were silent.

I am very sorry that I cannot see you,—did not when we were both in Boston. My mother and brother rejoice in your success in New York, and I with them. They have had their part in the benefit. I hear nothing of the aching head, and hope it does not ache. . . . Cannot I see you in Concord during some of your Boston visits? I will lay by every curious book or letter that I can think might interest you. My cousin Louisa, I know, would be glad to see this old town, and the old [158] man at the parsonage whilst he is yet alive. My mother joins me in sending love to her.

Yours affectionately,

R. WALDO EMERSON.

Mr. Dewey's mind was too logical in its methods for entire intellectual sympathy with Mr. Emerson; but that he thoroughly appreciated his spiritual insight is shown by the following passage from a manuscript sermon on Law, preached 13th August, 1868, on the occasion of the earthquake of that year in South America: "But the law [of retribution] does stand fast. Nothing ever did, ever shall, ever can escape it. Take any essence-drop or particle of evil into your heart and life, and you shall pay for it in the loss, if not of gold or of honor, yet of the finest sense and the finest enjoyment of all things divinest, most beautiful and most blessed in your being. I know of no writer among us who has emphasized this fact, this law, more sharply than Waldo Emerson, and I commend his pages to you in this view. Freed from all conventionalism, whether religious or Scriptural, though he has left the ranks of our faith, yet he has gone, better than any of us, to the very depth of things in this matter."

To Rev. William Ware.

NEW YORK, Nov. 7, 1836.

MY DEAR WARE,—Shall I brood over my regrets in secret, or shall I tell you of them? I sometimes do not care whether any human being knows what is passing in [159] me; and then again my feelings are all up in arms for sympathy, as if they would take it by storm. I declare I have a good deal of liking for that other,—that sullenness, or sadness, or what you will; it is calmer and more independent. So I shall say nothing, only that I miss you even more than I expected.' Never, in all this great city, will a face come through my door that I shall like to see better than yours,—I doubt if so well.

The next nearest thing to you is Furness's book. Have you got it? Is it not charming? It is a book of beauty and life. Spots there are upon it,—they say there are upon the sun. Certes, there are tendencies to naturalism in Furness's mind which I do not like,—do not think the true philosophy; but it is full of beauty, and hath much wisdom in it too.

I write on the gallop. My dinner is coming in three minutes, and a wagon is coming after that to carry me to Berkshire, that is, by steamboat to Hudson as usual. But I am going to send this, though it be worth nothing but to get a letter from you.

If letters, like dreams, came from the multitude of business, I should write of nothing but that tragedy extempore,-for I am sure it was got up in a minute,-the argument whereof was your running away. It positively is the staple of conversation. And I think it is rather hard upon me, too. I am here; but that seems to go for nothing. All their talk is of your going away,—running away, I say,—desertion,—and help yourself if you can. . . .

My love to Henry Ware, and the love of me and mine to you and yours.

Yours ever,

O. DEWEY.

[See p. 86.]

[160] To the Same.

NEW YORK, Dec. 1, 1836.

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,—For a prince you are in letter-writing, and you can call me Lord Orville, for I have a birthright claim to that title.' Excuse this capricole of my pen; it has been drawing hard enough at a sermon all the morning, and can't help cutting a caper when it is let out. You won't get the due return for your good long letter this time, nor ever, I think. I am taking comfort in the good long letters that are going with mine, and of whose sending by this conveyance I am the cause.

This conveyance is Miss Searle; and if you and Mrs. Ware don't cultivate her, or let her cultivate you, your folly will be inconceivable.

Mrs. Jameson I have missed two or three chances of seeing,—very bright sometimes, and very foolish others; but who shall resist such intoxicating draughts as have for some years been offered to her! She set off for Canada yesterday, going for her husband, since he could n't or would n't come for her.

Ingham has just finished one of the most exquisite portraits of Miss
Sedgwick that eye ever saw. Did you see anything of it before you went?

Furness ['s book] is selling much, and I hear nothing but admiration, save the usual quaver in the song about the part on miracles. Apropos, . . . I think that the explication of the miracles must be a moot and not a test point, and I would not break with the [161] "Christian Examiner" upon it; and yet I think the heterodox opinions of Ripley should have come into it in the shape of a letter, and not of a review. It is rather absurd to say "We" with such confidence, and that for opinions in conflict with the whole course of the "Examiner" and the known opinions of almost all its supporters. . . .

[FN He was named after Lord Orville, the hero of Miss Burney's "Evelina," which his mother had read with delight shortly before his birth.]

Yours forever and a day,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To the Same.

NEW YORK, May. 2, 1837.