William Hickling Prescott

on. Those who have borne it have belonged of right to the true patriciate of their Commonwealth. The Prescotts were from the first a fighting race, and t

f in what is now the town of Lancaster. A half-verified tradition describes him as having brought with him a coat of mail and a steel helmet, glittering in which he often terrified marauding Indians who ventured near his lands. His son and grandson and his three great-grandsons all served as officers in the military forces of Massachusetts;

racter is significant because of its influence upon his illustrious son. William Prescott was born in 1762, and, after a most careful training, entered Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1783. Admitted to the bar, he won high rank in his profession, twice receiving and twice declining an appointment to the Supreme Court of the State. His widely recognised ability brought him wealth, so that he lived in liberal fashion, in a home whose generous appointments and cultivated ease created an atmosphere that was rare indeed in those early days, when narrow means and a crude provincialism combined to make New England life unlovely. Prescott was not only an able lawyer, the worthy compeer of Dexter, Otis, and Webster-he was a scholar by instinct, widely read, thoughtful, and liberal-minded in the best sense of the word. His intellectual conflicts with such professional antagonists as have just been named g

d in these early years restraint was largely lacking in the life of the young Prescott, who, it may frankly be admitted, was badly spoiled. His father, preoccupied in his legal duties, left him in great part to his mother's care, and his mother, who adored him for his cleverness and good looks, could not bear to check him in the smallest of his caprices. He was, indeed, peculiarly her own, since from her he had inherited so much. By virtue of his natural gifts, he was, no doubt, a most attractive boy. Handsome, like his father, he had his mother's vivacity and high spirits almost in excess. Quick of mind, imaginative, full of eager curiosity, and with a tenacious memory, it is no wonder that her pride in him was great, and that her mothering heart went out to him in unconscious recognition of a kindred temperament. But his school companions, and even his elders, often found these ebullient spirits of his by no means so delightful. The easy-going indulgence which he met at home, and very likely also the recognised position of his father in that small community, combined to make young Prescott wilful and self-confident and something of an enfant terrible. He was allowed to s

a Latinist of the Ciceronian school. He was, besides, a man possessing many genial and very human qualities, so that all who knew him felt his personal fascination to a rare degree. He had at one time been the master of a classical school in Boston and had met with much success; but his clerical duties had obliged him to give up this occupation. Thereafter, he taught only a small number of boys, the sons of intimate friends in whom he took a special and personal interest. His methods with them were not at all those of a typical schoolmaster. He received his little classes in the library of his home, and taught them, in a most informal fashion, English, Greek, and Latin. He resembled, indeed, one of those ripe scholars of the Renaissance who taught for the pure love of imparting kn

ted to enter the Sophomore Class in Harvard, and to this end he devoted his mental energies. Like most boys, he worked hardest upon those studies which related to his college examination, viewing others as more or less superfluous. He did, however, a good deal of miscellaneous reading, opportunities for which he found in the Boston Athen?um. This institution had been opened but a short time before, and its own collection of books, which to-day numbers more than two hundred thousand, was rather meagre; but in it had been deposited some ten thousand volumes, constituting the private library of John Quincy Adams, who was then holding the post of American Minister to Russia. At a time when book-shops were few, and when books were imported from England with much difficulty and

boisterous, playing all sorts of tricks at evening in the streets, firing off pistols, and in general causing a good deal of annoyance to the sober citizens of Boston. In this they were like any other healthy boys,-full of animal spirits and looking for "fun" witho

lmeida, and Badajoz; and these narratives fired the imagination of Prescott, whose eagerness his companion found infectious, so that the two began to play at battles; not after the usual fashion of boys, but in a manner recalling the Kriegspiel of the military schools of modern Germany. Pieces of paper were carefully cut into shapes which would serve to designate the difference between cavalry, infantry, and artillery; and with these bits of paper the disposition

til it reached its end. It was here that Prescott's miscellaneous reading stood him in good stead. His mind was full of the romances and histories that he had read; and his quick invention and lively imagination enabled him to piece together the romantic bits which he remembered, and to give them some sort of consistency and form. Ticknor attaches little importance e

man of genius, but of genius that evaded utilisation." It is fairer to suppose that, if he did not accomplish all that he desired and attempted, this was because the time was not yet ripe for radical innovations. He did secure large benefactions to the University, the creation of new professorships on endowed foundations, and the establishment of three professional schools. President Kirkland, in reality, stood between the old order and the new, with his face set toward the future, but retaining still some of the best traditions of the small college of the past. It is told of him that he knew every student by name, and took a very genuine interest in all of them, helping them in many quiet, tactful ways, so th

k in Latin. Xenophon's Anabasis, Homer, and some desultory selections from other authors were supposed to give a sufficient knowledge of Greek literature. The Freshmen completed the study of arithmetic, and the Sophomores did something in algebra and geometry. Other subjects of study were rhetoric, declamation, a modicum of history, and also logic, metaphysics, and ethics. The ecclesiastical hold upon the College was seen in the inclusion of a lecture course on "some topic of positive or controversial divinity," in an examination on Doddridge's Lectures, in the reading of the Greek Testament, and in a two years' course in Hebrew for Sophomores and Freshmen. Indeed, Hebrew was regarded as so important that a "Hebrew part" was included in every commencement programme until 1817-three years after Prescott's graduation. In place of this language, however, while Prescott was in college, student

reat deal of the eighteenth-century formality survived in the intercourse between fathers and their sons; and especially in the letters which passed between them was there usually to be found a degree of stiffness and restraint both in feeling and expression. Yet this letter of Prescott's might have been written yesterday by an American youth of the present time, so easy and assured is it, and i

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wn into the parlour, almost frightened out of our wits, to be examined by each separately; but we soon found them quite a pleasant sort of chaps. The President sent us down a good dish of pears, and treated us very much like gentlemen. It was not ended in the morning; but we returned in the afternoon when Professor Ware [t

ked him,'Did I appear well in my examination?' Answer. 'Yes.' Question. 'Did I appear very well, sir?' Answer. 'Why are you so particular, young man? Ye

KLING PR

d imbued with a liberal culture, seemed to him a sufficient end for his ambition. His father was wealthy and generous. He was himself extremely fond of the good things of life. He made friends readily, and had a very large share of personal attractiveness. Under the circumstances, it is not to be wondered at if his college life was marked by a pleasant, well-bred hedonism rather than by the austerity of the true New England temperament. The Prescotts as a family had some time before slipped away from the clutch of Puritanism and had accepted the mild and elastic creed of Channing, which, in its tolerant view of life, had more than a passing likeness to Episcopalianism. Prescott was still running over with youthful spirits, his position was an assured one, his means were ample, and his love of pleasure very much in evidence. We cannot wonder, then, if we find that in the early part of his university career he slipped into a sort of life which was probably less commendable than his cautious biographers are willing to admit. Mr. Ticknor's very guarded intimations seem to imply in Prescott a considerable laxity of conduct; and it is not unfair to read between the lines of what he has written and there find unwilling but undeniable testimony. Thus Ticknor remar

s as in the world, the same temptations to idleness, the same gilded seductions, but without the same power of resistance. For in this morning of life his passions are strongest; his animal nature is more sensible to enjoyment; his reasoning faculties less v

uate follies; while the flutter of a petticoat may at times have stirred his senses. No doubt many a young man in his college days has plunged far deeper into dissipation than ever Prescott did and has emerged unscathed to lead a useful life. Yet in Prescott's case there existed a peculiar danger. His future did not call upon him to face the stern realit

much in their halting and ambiguous phrases, as to create a picture of which the outlines are far too faint. Apparently, they wish to draw the likeness of a perfect being, and to that extent they have made the subject of their encomiums appear unreal. One cannot understand how truly lovable the actual Prescott was, without reconstructing him in such a way as to let his faults appear beside his virtu

a fluttering pulse, and all the evidences of physical collapse. So weak was he that he could not even sit upright in his bed. For several weeks unbroken rest was ordered, so that nature, aided by a vigorous constitution, might repair the injury which his system had sustained. When he returned to Cambridge, the sight of the injured eye (the left one) was gone forever. Oddly enough, in view of the severity of the blow, the organ was not disfigured, and only through powerful lenses could even the slightest difference be detected between it and the unhurt eye. Dr. James Jackson, who attended Prescott at this time, described the case as one of paralysis of the retina, for which no remedy was possible. This accident, with the consequences which it entailed, was to have a profound effect not only upon the whole of Prescott's subsequent career, but upon his character as well. His affliction, indeed, is inseparably associated with his work, an

as he found them in the text-books, without the slightest comprehension of what they meant; and his remarkable memory enabled him to reproduce them in the class room, so that the professor of mathematics imagined him to be a promising disciple. This fact does not greatly redound to the acumen of the professor nor to the credit of his class-room methods, and what followed gives a curious notion of the easy-going system which then prevailed. Prescott found the continual exertion of his memory a good deal of a bore. To his candid nature it also savoured of deception. He, therefore, very frankly explained to the professor the secret of his mathematical facility. He said that, if required, he would continue to memorise the work, but that he knew it to be for him nothing but a waste of time, and he asked, with much na?veté, that he might be allowed to use his leisure to better advantage. This most ingenuous request must

rapidly as to leave Prescott for the time completely blind. Nor was the disorder merely local. A fever set in with a high pulse and a general disturbance of the system. Prescott's suffering was intense for several days; and at the end of a week, when the local inflammation had passed away, the retina of the right eye was found to be so seriously affected as to threaten a permanent loss of sight. At the same time, symptoms of acute rheumatism appeared in the knee-joints and in the neck. For several months the patient's condition was pitiable. Again and again there was a recurrence of the inflammation in the eye, alternating with the rheumatic symptoms, so that for sixteen weeks Prescott was unable to leave his room, which had to be darkened almost into blackness. Medical skill availed very little, and no doubt the copious blood-letting which was dem

or the charming villa in the Azores, where his grandfather had made his home in the midst of groves and gardens, blooming with a semi-tropical vegetation. Mr. Hickling, during his long residence at St. Michael's, had married a Portuguese lady for his second wife, and his family received Prescott with unstinted cordiality. The change from the bleak shores of New England to the laurels and myrtles and roses of the Azores delighted Prescott, and so appealed to his sense of beauty that he wrote home long and enthusiastic letters. But his unstinted enjoyment of this Hesperian paradise lasted for little more than two short weeks. He had landed on the 18th of October, and by November 1st he had gone back to

do and see but little, because he was forbidden to leave his room after nightfall, and of course he could not visit the theatre or meet the many interesting persons to whom Mr. John Quincy Adams, then American Minister to England, offered to present him. Something he saw of the art collections of London, and he was especially impressed by the Elgin Marbles and Raphael's cartoons. There was a touch of pathos in the wistful way in which he paused in the booksellers' shops and longingly turned over rare editions of the classics which it was forbidden him to read. "When I look into a Greek or Latin book," he wrote to his father, "I experience much the same sensa