I have heard an exiled scholar, who had caught from our revolutionary statesmen an enthusiasm for liberal institutions, express his keen disappointment at the style of manners and tone of character he found in our cities; and the delight with which he greeted the partial realization of his dreams of republican life, in an old provincial town of New England. Such communities yet offer to the speculative observer, relics of the simplicity, honorable pride and self-dependence which formerly made them nurseries of wise and brave citizens. The channels of trade have, in many cases, been diverted from these once prosperous towns; manufactures in an adjacent village or better maritime facilities at a different point of the coast, have caused the tide of activity to turn in another direction; the young men have emigrated and quietude and decay seem to brood over the well-paved streets and old-fashioned domiciles. Yet a certain air of thorough respectability and not ungraceful conservatism is visible: the church has a venerable aspect; the old grave-stones chronicle memorable names; and a few large brick or stone mansions, set far back from the grassy side-walk, with broad easy staircases, approached by a yard, shaded with noble trees and its paths fringed with ancient box,-suggest heroic passages of family history and embalm the sentiment of colonial grandeur. The portraits of Copley show us how the leading men of these primitive towns dressed and looked; but the intellectual aristocracy of the time is best represented by the clergy. They were the scholars, the public men, and the social kings of the period. Romance offers no more singular coincidence than that often presented by the culture and the circumstances of these men. Versed in ancient learning and the English classics, proficients in metaphysical theology -they were, at the same time, brought into contact with privation, inured to physical and moral hardihood, limited in their social privileges, and yet held re

sponsible for the spiritual welfare of their neighbors. The discipline of such a life was severe, but it was invested with rare dignity and favorable to individuality of character. The stern influence of the Puritan settlers yet lingered; the prescriptive authority of the pulpit was still deeply felt; classical education was a rare distinction; polemics had for the common mind that charm which the religious character of the people induced, and the minister was the great oracle, ideal, and central figure in the social world. A climate singularly exciting to the nervous system from its frequent and extreme alternations, scenery at once picturesque in itself and subject to the most changeful aspects from atmospheric phenomena and a national life so fresh as to be yet experimental, were the outward environment of this peculiar life. It thus contained all requisite means to invigorate and individualize the character; but little apparently to soften or adorn it; we can easily imagine a mind thus nurtured and influenced to develope strength, tenacity of opinion and consistency of purpose; but it is more difficult to anticipate from such agencies, the gentle, attractive and ideal traits that refine and elevate. Yet if nature were to endow a child of this sphere with the requisite grace and sensibility, how easy to fancy the form which genius would take, the manner of its growth and the essential qualities of its excellence; a clear, brave, free expression, an unchallenged purity, an intellectual and moral force, derived from a childhood of self-denial, self-control and aspiration Of all illustrations of this poetry of the New England character, Joseph Stevens Buckminster is one of the most remarkable.

It is difficult to ascertain whence we derive the most vivid and authentic idea of posthumous character; sometimes Art bequeathes the features of the departed in so graphic a manner that the image haunts our senses like a vital presence; rare genius occasionally transmits itself

in forms at once immortal and characteristic; while, occasionally, the inspiration of love reproduces the very graces it mourns. We have a definite notion of Charles the First through Vandyke's portrait; we are conscious of Rousseau's sentiment as it is revealed in his Confessions; while the anecdotical industry of James Boswell keeps Dr. Johnson before us a living reality. Perhaps the most complete impression is obtained from a threefold source the works, the biography and the "counterfeit presentment;" yet there is a singular charm in traditional knowledge gathered from the habitual reverence and testimony of the living. To hear an interesting character eloquently described and learn from household words, how deeply it was loved and how fondly it is remembered-is to acquire not merely an intellectual insight but an affectionate interest. After reading the volume of beautiful sermons which constitute the principal legacy of Buckminster's mind, after contemplating his portrait by Stuart and learning the facts of his life as recorded by his sister, we draw still nearer to him, and experience towards him a sentiment at once reverent and familiar when the outline thus afforded, is filled up, rounded and made alive by the spontaneous and habitual tributes which surviving friends award his memory. We realize what he must have been by the prolonged love and admiration he awakened. In Webster's reminiscences of his school days, the gentle encouragement he received, at Exeter Academy, from his young tutor-Buckminster, is the most grateful memory of his school boy age; and when Judge Story addressed the throng assembled to consecrate Mount Auburn as a rural cemetery, and he wished to give them an instance of the moral interest derivable from monuments to the good and great among the dead, it was to the name of Buckminster that he referred as a spell to lend solemn attraction to the scene. In that community he knew that many hearts would respond to such an appeal;-that before that name the fires of sectarian zeal would pale and the hardness of worldly ambition melt; for it was associated only with genius,

religion and youth. The engaging appearance of Buckminster as a boy may be inferred from the circumstances, that a lady and gentleman of wealth-travellers passing through his native town, encountered him in the street and were so attracted by his ingenuous and intelligent face, as to visit his parents and offer to adopt him. It would appear that his origin justifies the usual theory of inherited character. In the first years after their emigration, his ancestors were distinguished for athletic frames, manly beauty and practical wisdom. They were ministers for several generations; and one of them engaged heartily in a controversy for modifying the extreme Calvanistic doctrines that prevailed; for this he was considered heretical and bore, with moral courage, the tyranny of public opinion; another, prominent in colonial affairs, was long remembered as a Hercules. It is a pleasing and characteristic incident that Colonel Williams, his father's maternal uncle, preserved the noble old elm that is the glory of Pittsfield in Massachusetts. Other anecdotes evince, on his father's part, singular presence of mind and vigor of purpose. On one occasion there was a difficulty in the choir; they would not sing, and after the hymn was read, a deep and painful silence ensued. Dr. Buckminster was a man of noble presence and gifted with a melodious voice. He commenced in clear, devotional tones to sing; the congregation felt the example and the choir the reproof, and, when he began the second stanza, they all united with an earnestness never before realized. One day as he glanced, during a walk through the principal street of the town, to the roof of a house, he beheld, with consternation, a lovely child of three years standing on the very edge, unconscious of danger and evidently amused with the scene before him ; instantly Dr. Buckminster entered the dwelling and to the surprise of the inmates, and, without a word, passed through the lower rooms, ascended the stairs, gained the sky-light, and, with noiseless step, crept down the roof, until he seized the child and bore him in safety to his mother's arms.

Dr. Buckminster's mother was a cousin of Jonathan Edwards; and educated at Yale College, and having taken the Berkleyan prize, he was himself indebted to the good bishop of Cloyne, for three years literary privilege, derived from the income of the latter's farm in Rhode Island, bequeathed to the institution. These are significant historical associations; and to them may be added the facts that Dr. Buckminster's cotemporaries, during his student life and professional career, were Trumbull, Barlow and Dwight-all personal friends; and that he succeeded the celebrated Dr. Stiles as pastor of the church in Portsmouth. The inducement to adopt theology as a profession, was characteristic of the period; he experienced one of those spiritual crises that affect not only mind but destiny. The life of the younger Buckminster's mother, before her marriage, was one of singular retirement. She was the only child of Dr. Stevens of Kittery; and her education was his favorite employment. She lived alone with nature and her widowed father-studying under his guidance and accompanying him on horseback in his parochial visits. With a romantic tendency of character, she thus united an isolation and discipline of life adapted to strengthen and individualize her nature; and her letters, after she became the wife of Dr. Buckminster as well as the accounts we have of the charm of her disposition and the tender grief attending her premature death, indicate a woman such as the most partial imagination would conceive, as the mother of that pure, gifted and beloved sonwho seemed to combine the best qualities of his parents.

seems

In recalling the life of the early New England student, or man of genius, we must consider his natural resources as well as his social position; if endowed with that sense of the beautiful which an essential quality of highly gifted minds, it need not seek for or long for nutriment. The autumn-tinted woods, the late outbreak of spring, traceable in the swollen volume of the waterfall and the delicate blooming of the liverwort, sanguinaria and dogwood,-the hazy

dreaminess of the Indian summer and the vast whitened landscape of winter, unrivalled sunsets and mysterious twilights, had for him a deeper charm than is now experienced as advanced civilization has tempered the climate and thinned the forests. We can imagine such a youth as Buckminster deriving the most cheerful and pensive inspiration from the rambles that intervened between his studies. The air of Portsmouth is salubrious; longevity is proverbial there. The shores of the beautiful Piscataqua boast many a picturesque inlet; and, although no event of more interest than the sessions of a clerical assembly, the visit of a governor, a launch, a fire, or a pestilence, vary the humble annals of the town, yet the changeful aspects of Nature are ever at hand to quicken or win the imagination. Traditions, too, not yet old, of Indian warfare, the chime that announced the death of Whitfield, the procession that hailed Washington's visit, stories of the "dark day" and the September gale, were significant reminiscences of the neighborhood.

Originally a fishery-plantation, Portsmouth combines safe harbor with a rocky shore. Many honorable names are identified with the town, such as Langdon, Pickering, Haven and Parker. Here Joseph Stevens Buckminster was born May 26th, 1784. Although gifted he was fortunately not precocious, as that term is usually understood. His faculties were of a superior order, but they developed harmoniously: by temperament elastic, by nature gentle and, from the very constitution of his mind, truthful, there was no moral or physical impediment to the free and complete exercise of his intellectual powers. He was docile without being in the least degree subservient, gay yet never frivolous, thoughtful without a particle of asceticism, devoted to books and, at the same time, instinctively social. There is not in the whole range of expression, as indicated by the human countenance, a more permanently attractive phase than that 'made up of candor, gaiety and intelligence. It instantly excites confidence, the keystone of fellowship, gives promise of de

light-the latent charm of the best faces, and almost elicits of itself the best sympathies of the spectator. There beamed from the features of Buckminster this radiant mirth and wisdom, this ingenuous, open soul; and the same qualities informed his manners. His clear hazel eyes and frank brow, the chestnut curls of his boyhood, and the fine Grecian profile so striking in his youth; his smile, his tone, his silver laugh, his glowing yet chastened utterance, never faded from the senses, far less the hearts, of those who knew and survived him. At four years of age he studied the Latin grammer, and at six, in his father's absence, read the Scriptures and prayed before the household in a manner that excited their reverence. He was prepared for college at Exeter Academy, an institution endeared as the school of so many American scholars and men of genius.

The correspondence between Dr. Buckminster and his son, during the latter's academic years, is a singular picture of the time. The young student is urged to take the best care of classical manualsthey having been borrowed for his use and all of them English editions. His journeys between home and the University were performed more or less on foot and in patched boots. The only indulgence that we discover, during his four years at Cambridge, was an occasional visit to the Boston theatre to see Cooke perform. He was thirteen when he entered college, and his sensibility was such that tears gushed to his eyes when he failed to answer a question or received unexpected praise. The specific and numerous directions from the paternal hand on every detail of behavior, expense and reading, suggest the most vigilent anxiety on the one hand and the extreme of Puritan restraint on the other; while the assiduity, love of learning, simple habits and almost morbid conscientiousness of the son appeared to render the father's monitions quite superfluous. The scenes of this early discipline, though limited and remote from metropolitan refinements, were not devoid of salutary influence and natural

charms. I recal with zest my childish impressions of the town where Buckminster was born, the old parsonage in Maine where he went to preach his first sermon, and the beautiful domain at which he was the favored guest for many months before entering upon the duties of his profession.

There was just enough cultivated society in Portsmouth to make it an agreeable residence, and not enough to interrupt the student's retirement. Sir William Pepperel's estate at Kittery, and the fine library bequeathed by that gentleman to the maternal grand-father of Buckminster, offered truly manorial privileges to the visitor. The venerable minister of York, in Maine, was his kinsman, and there was a primitive simplicity in the worship, the life and the domestic arrangements of his dwelling that have in the retrospect a solemn beauty. At Waltham, where the young student enjoyed a brief but happy interlude of reading, thought and association, a noble park with lofty trees, traversed by a herd of deer, and having in its centre a family tomb, more nearly resembled a rural estate in the Old World than any other in New England. In each of these familiar places, it should be remembered, he was surrounded by love and honor; relatives devoted to his welfare, friends who recognized the graces of his character, and acquaintances who rejoiced in the gifts of his intellect. Thus the amenities of social life and the picturesque or the beautiful in nature, environed his early years; refreshment, at once pure and invigorating, awaited him when released from self-imposed tasks; the delights of amity, the cheer of wit, and the solace of intellectual intercourse, to which his gentle and earnest heart responded with an alacrity and confidence that won instant sympathy.

That he "was consecrated to God from his birth," however, appears rather an ordination of Nature and a fact of consciousness than a paternal decree. Not only did a guileless spirit and devotional sentiment ordain him to the priestly of fice, but, at a very early age, the bias of his mind was toward theological studies

and the character of his eloquence was clearly adapted to the pulpit. His animated expression, finished periods and high range of thought, were as visible in the oration pronounced when he took his degree as in the last sermon he delivered. He had, too, we are told, " a keen relish for every innocent enjoyment with a fixed dread of every shadow of vice." While at Cambridge, the skepticism induced by the French revolution caused the faithful votaries of Christianity among the students to re-examine its evidences; and perhaps at no period was a rising generation, in this country, more freely exposed to the wiles of atheism and more encouraged by the circumstances and discussions of the time, to think for themselves upon questions of belief. From this conflict Buckminster emerged strong in his faith, with the views of his childhood essentially modified, while his religious sentiment was deepened.

One of his earliest oratorical efforts was a club address, while in college, on "the benefits of diversity in religious opinions"—a subject indicative of his liberal tendency of mind. In order to understand a career like his, it is requisite to consider the social atmosphere in which he was reared. The very origin of the State where he first drew breath is identified with a religious impulse, and this character, in a peculiar manner, stamped the life of its citizens. What commerce was to the burgher life of the Netherlands in their palmy days, what art proved to the Italian painters of the fifteenth century-theology was to the primitive New Englander; it was the nucleus and the inspiration of thought, the avenue of mysterious experience and the arena for sturdy opinion,-the guage of character and the gauntlet of mind. Educated by a clergyman of this region, and one unusually gifted by nature and disciplined by education, it is not remarkable that the development of Buckminster was from the first theological, that his young aspirations were towards the ministry and that his studies were adapted to create a pulpit orator; but it is remarkable that with a filial reverence and tenderness seldom equalled, he possessed also a thor

ough integrity of mind, and did not hesitate to differ candidly with the parent whose dearest hope was to transmit to him the cherished heritage of his creed. This episode is the most heroic and yet the most painful in the life of Buckminster. Never were father and son united by so many intellectual and professional associations, by a more stringent bond of of mutual love and pride, affectionate respect on the one hand and parental interest on the other; and yet the time came when the son in all meekness, but with solemn decision, announced his allegiance to other than the doctrines of his father. This well-known fact gave a singular interest to the scene of Buckminster's ordination, when his father preached the sermon. By one of those wonderful coincidences which seem to prove an instinct of love amounting to prescience, a few hours before the elder Buckminster breathed his last, although at a great distance from Boston, and unacquainted with the state of things there, he said to his wife, "my son is dead." It appeared like the prophetic consciousness of immediate reunion.

The advent of Buckininster as a preacher was an epoch in Boston. Not yet arrived at manhood his eloquence broke upon society like that of the stripling Hamilton, when as a collegian, he first addressed a popular assembly. It was an intellectual marvel; and the delight and surprise the young divine awakened was not that which is induced by the gush of youthful enthusiasm or the undisciplined exuberance of poetical gifts, but the higher, more calm and rational pleasure which a well-balanced, harmonious and yet earnest and sincere mind creates, when fresh and pure with the dew of youth. Without a single artifice of declamation, natural in manner even to carelessness, but strong, clear and beautiful in thought and sentiment, he spoke to crowded assemblies, including the most cultivated inhabitants of a town distinguished for literary refinement. He spoke to them in accents of musical intonation, with an impressive yet spontaneous air, and there was in all he said a wisdom at once serene and lucent, a fin