"
Yet even in December there are bright days, and when in his seventieth
year the veteran orator was invited to deliver an address before the
graduates of his own college, from whose festivities he had been
excluded since the time of his Lovejoy speech, warmed with the
recollections of his youth, his genius blazed forth with all its former
brilliancy. With customary hardihood he selected for his subject "The
Danger from the Educated Classes"; that is, the tendency of intellectual
culture to exclusiveness and separation from the less fortunate portion
of mankind. It is not to be supposed that the Harvard Alumni were well
pleased with this topic, but he presented it with so much skill, and
even eloquence, as to win applause from some of his most inveterate
opponents. This sympathy for the unfortunate had been the key-note and
true explanation of his course in life. It came to him there in the days
of his youthful gayety like a dream, and now after fifty years he had
returned to celebrate his last triumph in the same place where this
vision of Heavenly mercy had appeared to him.
He looked like Cicero, and there is a bust of Cicero on the Pincian hill
at Rome, which if placed in Boston would certainly be mistaken for him.
His figure, however, was better than Cicero's, who is reported to have
had a long neck and rather slender legs. He resembled Cicero in his
refined tastes, his admiration for great writers his command of
language, his tact, fluency, fiery invective, and in the anti-climax of
his career.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212