cially imported, we are told that hardly one was procured except for some definite purpose or use. He was a superior Greek scholar, as well as a diligent reader of the best Latin authors. He was familiar with the most advanced chemical science of his day, and was associated with the late Rev. Dr. Prince in the experimental study of natural philosophy. He was deeply interested in botany, and discovered the Magnolia glauca in its anomalous Northern habitat on Cape Ann. He left numerous manuscripts on mathematical subjects, and we have in the Appendix to the volume before us an abstruse Essay by him on Parallel Lines, and a method, original with him, for extracting the Roots of Affected Equations. He read with equal avidity history and fiction, and was conversant with the older English poets. His services in the diffusion of knowledge were faithful and efficient. He was among the founders, and the first President, of the Boston Athenæum. He is believed to have contributed some of the earliest scientific papers to the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was for several years one of the Fellows of Harvard University, and, as such, was largely influential in securing the appointment and acceptance of Dr. Kirkland as President, and also in founding the Professorship of Natural History.

In ascribing to the subject of this paper so large a circuit of attainments in literature and science, we might seem to brand him with superficiality; but such an inference would be at the farthest remove from the fact. In science it must be remembered that in his day the amount of knowledge that could be acquired bore but a small proportion to that which has been accumulated within the last half-century. The then known details in the entire realm of science might be mastered by labor which would now hardly raise one above the rank of a mere tyro in a single branch. The arts and methods of investigation were comparatively simple, and within the scope of any well-cultivated mind. As regards literature, too, the omnivorous reader may be, yet need not be, superficial. There is a process, by which one may deal with books as the bee with the clover-blossom. The fitly trained eye may read a paragraph at a glance, and, in a tithe of the time which

the perusal of a book word for word would demand, may take in whatever portions of its contents can enrich the intellect or worthily occupy the imagination. He who thus reads is far less superficial than he who does equal honor to the entire contents of a book. The former digests and assimilates all that can nourish or invigorate his mind; while the latter discharges from his overloaded memory alike what ought to be retained and what is best forgotten.

Chief Justice Parsons in his private character merited and won the profoundest respect of all, and the fervent love of those who shared his home, enjoyed his hospitality, or were favored by his intimacy. His moral standard was high and rigid. No shadow of reproach ever rested on his name. Neither elevated station nor the most arduous professional toil interfered with his discharge of the duties, or his exercise of the amenities and charities, of daily life. Eminently happy in his domestic relations, he was unexacting, tender, and genial in his family intercourse and discipline. His hospitality was large and generous. At his Saturday dinners were always gathered a goodly circle of friends, and such strangers as had claims upon his kindness; and while he was a fluent talker and loved to bear his full part in conversation, he always took care to draw out his diffident and retiring guests, and to make every one feel at ease and appear to the best advantage at his table. Though not inclined to melancholy, and disposed to take cheerful views of mankind and of life, he suffered much from that form of hypochondria which consists in excessive apprehension of sickness, and the imagining of the symptoms of disease. For this he had indeed the not inadequate physical cause, in an almost lifelong dyspepsia. But whatever his fears, they made him neither indolent nor selfish. In temperament he was nervous, and constitutionally irascible and passionate; but over this tendency he kept so firm a control that from an early period in his life no angry word was known to have escaped his lips. The hygienic department of duty was the only one in which he is not presented as excellent and exemplary. In this regard the hebetude of conscience almost universal in his time seems to have characterized him in full; and by his neglect of the essential conditions of health - NO. 184.

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he was perpetually aiding in the realization of his worst fears. He must have had a wonderfully elastic and vigorous constitution of body, as of mind, to sustain for so many years such excessive labor of the brain, with not exercise enough to wear out a pair of shoes in a year, with free though temperate habits as to the indulgences of the table, and with the inordinate use of tobacco in all its forms. On the whole, his portrait seems a not unapt representation of his mental and moral features. A character so massive as to merge in its quantity all questions as to its proportions; a framework of mind and will so energetic that its strength alone was sufficient to give it beauty; an aggregation of the most noble qualities and endowments, which left equally little room for the minor graces, for meanness and for vice, these are the impressions left upon us by the perusal of his Memoir, and they correspond with those which we derived in our early boyhood when his was a familiar name on the lips of our elders.

It is worthy of emphatic note that Chief Justice Parsons professed firm belief in Christianity, revered its institutions and ordinances, became a communicant in the latter part of his life, and assigned for his not having joined the church at an earlier period a reason which indicates anything rather than indifference to the established forms of religion. We say not this because we regard Christianity as honored by the belief and profession of any man, however distinguished, but because we cannot recognize the claims to our eminent regard and unqualified honor of any man in Christendom who is not a Christian. Least of all would we respect for its judicial aptitude and ability the mind which failed to perceive and own the validity of the Christian evidences, and the divine. authority of Jesus. Judge Parsons was accustomed to say to his friends: "I examined the proofs and weighed the objections to Christianity many years ago, with the accuracy of a lawyer; and the result was so entire a conviction of its truth, that I have only to regret that my belief has not more completely influenced my conduct." We are glad to find the record of his example as to the strict observance of the Sabbath as a holy day. Whatever the emergency, he transacted no business during the Sabbath hours; his usual books and

occupations were laid aside, and the day was set apart in the invariable order of his domestic arrangements to its sacred uses. We can have no doubt that this adherence to a law which is as legibly written on the constitution of man as on the pages of revelation, had an important agency in preserving his intellectual vigor and acumen unimpaired, while his physical powers were perceptibly enfeebled and declining.

He died in the zenith of his reputation, in the full strength of his understanding." He held his last court at Worcester during the month preceding his decease. His fatal illness baffled the discernment, while it eluded the skill, of his physicians, and is now believed to have been "a rapid termination of a softening of the brain, which had begun a considerable time before." His closing days were passed, for the most part, in lethargy, with intervals of dreamy half-consciousness; but previously to his lapse into this state he had made his arrangements for departure, and conversed as a dying man with his family, friends, and pastor. From the brief shadow which fell upon the closing scene, he emerged with "the look of one who had prevailed in a great controversy" on his lifeless coun

tenance.

Had our own leisure and the length of previous articles in this number permitted, we should have given a more ample space to our tribute to this great and good man. We cannot close without expressing our high appreciation of the Memoir from which we have compiled this notice. It combines with the tender reverence of a child, the nicest discrimination, and the most rigid impartiality. We have seldom read a biography which has given us so vivid a perception of the manners, habits, and character of its subject. There is no suppression of those lesser traits which the fastidious might deem blemishes, but which are to the judicious reader only proofs that the person portrayed is the real, living man, and not one of the impossible demigods to whom biography gives a name, but who never had a local habitation. Mr. Parsons has written in a rambling, discursive style, and has introduced a great deal which bears somewhat indirectly upon his main purpose; but we have abundant reason to thank him for this, inasmuch as he has preserved many features of the times, and many per

sonal anecdotes and reminiscences, which must otherwise have passed away without record. There is an ease amounting almost to carelessness in the diction of the book, and in the arrangement of the material; but it is the graceful ease of a man of taste and letters, and constitutes not a defect, but, in our esteem, a crowning merit. The author abandons himself, without reserve, to the current of his own thought and feeling, and in so doing has given us two biographies under the title of one. While we tender to him our hearty thanks for reproducing to our familiar knowledge his father, who has till now been to us of a younger generation little more than an honored and revered "nominis umbra," we are hardly less grateful for the equally intimate acquaintance he permits us, through these pages, to form with the heir of the paternal name, worth, learning, and reputation.

ART. VIII. The English Language in its Elements and Forms. By W. C. FOWLER, late Professor of Rhetoric in Amherst College. New York: Harper and Brothers.

No subject offers more numerous difficulties to the teacher inclined to go beyond the mere letter of the text-books, and to ask the reasons of things, than that of English Grammar. Nor is there any subject in the curriculum of our lower schools which so generally awakens disgust on the part of the pupil. To the teacher, the multitude of books, the discrepancy in both principles and their applications, and, above all, the inadequacy of the system to meet the facts of the language, render it an unsatisfactory department. To the pupil, the long paradigms conveying no clear ideas, and the mass of exceptions overloading the rules, make the whole study tedious.

But why should this state of things exist? Why should it be at once so irksome and so unsatisfactory to study the principles of the language in which our thoughts find utterance every moment, and in which more living ideas are embodied. than in any other tongue? Not for want of books, nor be