p= 
 
 '^ 
 
 REMARKS 
 
 ./ yt .c pi-^^^"^'^^' 
 
 UPON 
 
 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 BY 
 
 R.^C.^WATERSTON. 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 Fkbruary 11, 1875. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 1875. 
 
 <^-^ 
 
REMARKS 
 
 UPON 
 
 THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 RfC.'^'WATERSTON. 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 February II, 1875. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 1875. 
 
 
 
T5^ 
 <b3 
 
 OiO 
 
 ^« 
 
 25??4 
 
 ;ss< 
 
 OF 
 
 ^ 1899 - 
 
TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 Charles Sprague, born Oct. 26, 1791, was eightj-four years 
 of age when he peacefully passed away. The whole of that long life 
 was lived in this community. Year after year went by in a manner 
 which, to many persons, would have seemed monotonous ; but each suc- 
 cessive day found him engaged in his various duties, with large respon- 
 sibilities resting upon him ; and, when released from these* cares, he 
 welcomed most heartily the quiet of home, and asked for no greater 
 privilege than to participate in the affections of his kindred, and to 
 enjoy that intellectual communion which he ever found in books. 
 
 His father, Samuel Sprague, was a mechanic, intelligent, laborious, 
 and patriotic, of the same type with Paul Revere and others of that 
 day, — a class of men universally honored for their integrity, sound 
 sense, and public spirit. As a lad he heljjed throw the British tea into 
 the harbor; as a man he shouldered his musket and fought for the liber- 
 ties of his countr}' ; and, in an after day, with the same skilful hands 
 he helped build the State House, in which our legislative bodies still 
 meet. 
 
 His son Charles, until his thirteenth year, attended our public 
 schools, having been a student at the Franklin School, at that time in 
 Nassau Street, on the site now occupied by the Brimmer School. His 
 teachers were Dr. Bullard and Mr. Lemuel Shaw, since so widely 
 known as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The 
 opportunities thus granted were the utmost he enjoyed, sjive tliat which 
 life and books, and an earnestly energetic and inquiring mind, brought 
 within his reach. At the age of thirteen he left school, and was ap- 
 
4 TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 prenticed to Messrs. Thayer & Hunt, of whom he gained liis first prac- 
 tical knowledge of business. He would at times pleasantly narrate, 
 what was unique in the history of the school, that, on his taking final 
 leave of the school, the teacher gave him his hand, and, turning to the 
 sdiolars, said, "Charlie has been a good boy, and you may offer him 
 some mark of your kind approbation." AVhereupon all the boys 
 loudly applauded, and continued their applause as he walked from the 
 school-room and until he was beyond hearing. 
 
 While he was yet a very young man he was one of the singers in the 
 choir of the Old South Church ; and, as an indication of the primitive 
 character of the times, he would relate how on special occasions the 
 singers walked in procession through the streets, singing as they 
 walked, while one, who played upon the bass-viol, carried the instru- 
 ment strapped to his leg, which, after his own fashion, he would play 
 upon, as he went limping along. 
 
 Among the singers of the choir was a young lady, Miss Elizabeth 
 Rand, to whom Charles Sprague was engaged, and who in May, 1814, 
 became his wife. [Mr. "Waterstou here called attention to a volume 
 in manuscript containing some forty pieces of sacred music, both the 
 musical notes, and the words, written out by Mr. Sprague's own hand, — 
 a beautiful and perfect specimen of penmanship. This precious gift 
 was treasured by the lady for life, and it is now equally prized by her 
 children.] 
 
 Mr. Sprague was in business for several years in the old Scollay 
 Buildings, near the head of Brattle Street. The lines among his poems 
 entitled " Montague " were addressed to his partner in business. The 
 name is wholly fictitious. In 1820 he became associated with the 
 Sh^Hc Bank; and when the Globe Bank was established, in 1825, he 
 became an officer in that institution, — a connection which continued 
 unbroken through all the active years of his life. 
 
 Such were the external surroundings out of which the intellectnal 
 acquirements and the widely extended reputation of Mr. Sprague 
 developed themselves. His earliest literary achievement was the gain- 
 ing, at six different times, prizes which had been offered for the best 
 poems to be recited on public occasions. Among these was the famous 
 " Sliakspeare Ode," delivered in 1823, at the exhibition of a pageant 
 in honor of Shakspeare. The lines are full of graphic power and all 
 aglow with the fire of genius. 
 
 This ode was written fifty-two years ago, when Mr. Sprague was 
 thirty-two years of age. [Mr. AVaterston placed before the Society the 
 
TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. ^5 
 
 original manuscript, written by the author at that time. It was signed 
 " Airy Nothing," under which signature it gained the prize.] In this 
 manuscript are various alterations by the author's hand, among the 
 most important and curious of which are the closing lines : — 
 
 " Once more in thee sliall Albion's sceptre wave ; 
 And wliat her mighty Lion lost, her mightier Swan shall save." 
 
 Beneath the last line is written in pencil, — 
 
 "And ichat her Monarch lost, her Monarch Bard shall save." 
 
 Mr. Sprague has written upon the manuscript, under date of Novem- 
 ber 26, 1823, a statement that, if considered too long for recital, there 
 are one or two passages which may be omitted. These he encloses 
 in brackets, marked 1 and 2. This magnificent ijroduction at once 
 established the literary reputation of the author. Mr. Sprague also 
 inserted upon the manuscript, " The above was written with some 
 reference to its possible publication." It is interesting to read such 
 a sentence now, when, after half a century, these lines have become 
 familiar wherever American litei'ature is known. 
 
 The earliest poem of considerable length was delivered forty-six 
 years ago, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge, Aug. 27, 
 1829, when the author was thirty-eight years of age. This was 
 received with an outburst of enthusiasm at the time, and upon its 
 publication at once took its place as an acknowledged work of pre-emi- 
 nent merit, while for nearly half a century it has continued to sustain 
 the high place that was at first awarded it. It was remarkable that 
 one who had written for the public so seldom, and whose time was 
 almost wholly engrossed in active business-pursuits, should have been 
 able to produce so ripe and scholarly and thoroughly artistic a work. 
 Not a hasty combination of rhymes to answer a temporary occasion, 
 but a felicitous poem, complete in all its parts, compact with thought, 
 brilliant with wit, weighty with wisdom, graphic in its portrayals, tender 
 in its pathos, and genuine in its humor. 
 
 It is worthy to hold companionship with Campbell's " Pleasure of 
 Hope," or Kogers's " Pleasures of Memory." " Curiosity " was, in 
 itself, a subject happily chosen ; and it was in every respect as happily 
 carried out. 
 
 "What can be more beautiful than the portrayal of its earliest 
 development in childhood ? — 
 
 "In the pleased infant see its power expand, 
 When first the coral fills his little hand ; 
 
b TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 Throned in his mother's lap, it dries each tear, 
 As her sweet legend falls upon his ear; 
 Next it assails him in his top's strange hum, 
 Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum ; 
 Each gilded toy, that doting love bestows. 
 He longs to break and every spring expose. 
 Placed by j^our hearth, with what delight he pores 
 O'er the bright pages of his pictured stores ! 
 How oft he steals upon 3'our graver task. 
 Of this to tell you, and of that to ask ! 
 And when the warning hour to-bedward bids, 
 Thougli gentle sleep sits waiting on his lids, 
 How winningiy he pleads to gain you o'er, 
 That he may read one little story more ! " 
 
 The poem is filled with touches of nature like the following : — 
 
 " The blooming daughter throws her needle by, 
 And reads her school-mate's marriage with a sigh ; 
 While the grave mother puts her glasses on. 
 And gives a tear to some old crony gone." 
 
 "With how keen a pencil does he sketch the walks of traffic, — 
 
 " Where Mammon's votaries bend, of each degree. 
 The hard-eyed lender, and the pale lendee ; 
 Where rogues insolvent strut in whitewashed pride, 
 And shove the dupes who trusted them aside." 
 
 With what a gracious smile he watches the credulity of the antiquarian 
 who — 
 
 " The crusted medal rubs, with painful care 
 To spell the legend out — that is not there ! " 
 
 The scribe is alluded to at a time when steel pens were not so common 
 as they are now, writing with — 
 
 " A quill so noisy and so vain. 
 We almost hear the goose it clothed complain." 
 
 Some of the happy results which have followed the invention of print- 
 ing are thus briefly hinted : — 
 
 " Turn to the Press ; its teeming sheets survey, 
 Big with the wonders of each passing day, — 
 Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks, 
 Harangues and hail-storms, brawls and broken necks; 
 Where half-fledged bards on feeble pinions seek 
 An immortality of near a week." 
 
TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 7 
 
 How perfect the picture of the invalid ! — 
 
 " Behold the sick man in liis easy-cliair ; 
 Barred from tlie busy crowd and bracing air, 
 How every passing trifle proves its power 
 To wliile away the long, dull, lazy hour ! 
 As down the pane the rival rain-drops chase, 
 Curious, he'll watch to see which wins the race ; 
 And let two dogs beneath his windows fight, 
 He'll shut his Bible to enjoy the sight." 
 
 The following solemn description is doubly impressive from the fact 
 that Mr. Sprague had recently lost a beloved brother, who was buried 
 at sea : — 
 
 " Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear, 
 His body to the deck they slowly bear. 
 Even there the spirit that I sing is true ; 
 The crew look on with sad, but curious view ; 
 The setting sun flings round his farewell rays, 
 O'er the broad ocean not a ripple plays ; 
 How eloquent, how awful in its power, 
 The silent lecture of death's Sabbath-hour ! 
 One voice that silence breaks, — the prayer is said, 
 And the last rite man i^aj's to man is paid ; 
 The plashing waters mark his resting-place. 
 And fold him round in one long, cold embrace ; 
 Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er. 
 Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more." ' 
 
 [Mr. Waterstou laid before the meeting the autograph manuscript 
 from which the author read the poem at Cambridge, in 1829, with Mr. 
 Sprague's alterations here and there, showing the severe scrutiny to 
 which he had himself subjected it.] 
 
 The next public production was in September, 1830, — forty -five 
 years ago, — when Mr. Sprague was thirty-nine years of age. This 
 was " The Centennial Ode," pronounced at the request of the city 
 authorities before the inhabitants of Boston, at the second centennial 
 from the settlement of the city, at which time Josiah Quincy, then 
 President of Harvard University, delivered the oration. 
 
 [The original manuscript from which Mr. S2:)rague read on that day 
 to the assembled multitude in the Old South Church was here pro- 
 duced, and was examined with evident interest by the members of the 
 Society, not a few of whom remembered the day itself,'and listened while 
 the poem was publicly read by the author.] What heart does not throb 
 before his picture of the Pilgrim Fathers? — 
 
8 TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 " In grateful adoration now, 
 Upon tlie barren sands tlicy bow. 
 Wliat tongue of joy ere woke sucb prayer 
 As burst in desolation there 1 
 What arm of strength ere wrought such power 
 As waits to crown tliat feeble hourl 
 
 There into life an infant empire springs ! 
 There falls the iron from the soul ; 
 There liberty's j^oung accents roll 
 Up to the King of kings ! 
 
 Oh ! many a time it hath been told, 
 The story of those men of old, 
 Por this fair Poetry hath wreathed 
 
 Her sweetest, purest flower ; 
 For this proud Eloquence hath breathed 
 
 His strain of loftiest power ; 
 
 Devotion, too, hath lingered round 
 Each spot of consecrated ground, 
 
 And hill and valley blessed ; 
 There, where our banished Fathers strayed. 
 There, where they loved, and we^it, and prayed, 
 
 There, where their ashes rest. 
 
 And never may they rest unsung, 
 While liberty can find a tongue ! 
 Twme, Gratitude, a wreatli for them 
 More deathless than the diadem, 
 "Who to life's noblest end. 
 
 Gave up life's noblest powers. 
 And bade the legacy descend 
 
 Down, down to us and ours." 
 
 The lines so widely known and admired under the title of the 
 " Winged Worshippers " were actually written on the fly-leaf of a 
 hymn-hook in the old Chauncy-place Church, the Rev^ Dr. Frothing- 
 ham's, where two hirds flew through an open window into the church 
 during divine service. 
 
 " Gay, guiltless pair, 
 What seek ye from the fields of heaven ? 
 
 Ye have no need of prayer. 
 Ye have no sins to be forgiven. 
 
 Why perch ye here, 
 'Where mortals to their Maker bend ? 
 
 Can your pure spirits fear 
 The God ye never could offend 1 " 
 
.TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 9 
 
 The words were printed precisely as they were first written. The 
 hymn-book itself long ago mysteriously disappeared; and neither that 
 nor the autograph copy of the lines as originally written is now known 
 to exist. The lines exist in Mr. Sprague's handwriting, but not the 
 copy which was first written. 
 
 Between the years 1823 and 1827 Mr. Sprague was a member of 
 the City Council. This is the only instance in which he could be per- 
 suaded to hold public office. Here he took active part in public debate, 
 and fulfilled most acceptably the duties of his position. 
 
 Twice Mr. Sprague accepted invitations to discourse in prose. 
 Once, at the request of the city of Boston, he delivered the oration, 
 July 4, 1825. This production was so popular that not less tiian six 
 editions were rapidly called for. Some unscrupulous plagiarist at the 
 "West is said to have taken this oration and to have repeated it before . 
 the public as his own. The triumph gained by this boiTowed plumage 
 was of short duration. The excellence of the original was of too 
 decided a character to allow such robbery escaping detection. The 
 second address was on Temperance, in 1827. This was a discourse 
 of great directness and power, and exerted a marked influence. 
 
 Aside from these productions, Mr. Sprague confined himself in his 
 literary labors to poetry ; and in this field we may be tempted to 
 think that he ap|)eared but too seldom. Evidently not quantity, but 
 quality, was his aim ; and in this doubtless he was right. Whatever 
 he did was well done. It was remarked by John Quincy Adams, 
 that Mr. Sprague's poem on Art " comprised iti forty lines an ency- 
 clopajdia of description." Each work from his pen was individual 
 and masterly. Every line, every epithet, was judiciously chosen. 
 There was a compactness of meaning, a clearness of statement, a 
 thoroughness of finish, and a harmony of parts. Each piece was true 
 to its own purpose, brilliant with wit, or tender with pathos ; polished 
 with artistic skill, or kindling with genius. 
 
 The following letter I received from Mr. Sprague thirty-two years 
 ago, describing the occasion upon which the poem entitled " We are 
 but Two " was written. The letter contains allusions to local and per- 
 sonal histories, which are of general interest. 
 
 BosTOJf, Oct. 9, 1843. 
 Rev. R. C. Waterstox. 
 
 My deak Sir, — I- take pleasure in sending you the lines you asked me 
 for. Perhaps you would like to know the story of them. You will recollect 
 that a few years ago the city authorities extended our fine mall, so as to run 
 
 2 
 
10 TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 it entirely round the Common. By this improvement (as I suppose I must 
 call it) some filtyor sixty tombs in the adjoining burial-ground were shut up, 
 and their places supplied by a range of new ones, built in another part of 
 the ground. My father's tomb was one of those disturbed. For me it had 
 always had peculiar interest. I saw my father build it toith his own hands, 
 •when I was a little boy, sitting on the grass and playing with the bricks 
 round me while he was at work. A large old sycamore tree swung its 
 branches directly over our heads. 
 
 During more than forty years I had again and again followed my dear 
 kindred to this last resting-place (last, as I believed) ; and it was always my 
 hope that in God's good time my bones might be laid there also. I wanted 
 that the old button-wood tree's autumnal leaves should cover me. But im- 
 provement has no leisure to listen to a rhymster's sickly complaints. The tree 
 was cut down, the mall laid out, and it became necessary to remove the 
 tenants of our old tomb into one of the new ones. The superintending this 
 removal fell upon my brother and myself, the surviving "two" of seven 
 sons. Our task was performed on a cold, dreary afternoon, one of us 
 standing at the mouth of the old tomb, while the other, as each coflin was 
 lifted out, slowly preceded it to its new abode. 
 
 By the time we had done it was dark. We parted, each for his own 
 home ; and I could not help looking back after my companion with the sad- 
 dening thought that it would not be long before that tomb must be opened 
 again. " We ivere but two ; " and of them one might soon be called to say, 
 "I only am left." 
 
 From this little domestic incident, my dear sir, you will at once see that 
 the few lines which you are pleased to compliment could hardly avoid being 
 born, and that much, much more might have been said, had the writer drawn 
 upon his fancy instead of his feelings. 
 
 Yours with much regard, 
 
 CiiAiiLES Spuague. 
 
 [The lines in IMr. Sprague's clear and handsome manuscript were 
 laid before the Society. The verses have been sometimes printed with 
 alterations made by other hands. They are here printed as he wrote 
 them : — 
 
 THE BROTHERS. 
 
 We are but two, — the others sleep 
 
 Through death's untroubled night ; 
 We are but two, — oh let us keep 
 
 The link that binds us bright. 
 
 Heart leaps to heart, — the sacred flood 
 
 That warms us is the same ; 
 Tliat good old man, — his honest blood 
 
 Alike we fondly claim. 
 
TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE, 11 
 
 We in one mother's arms were locked, — 
 
 Long be her love repaid ; 
 In the same cradle \ve were rocked, 
 
 Round the same hearth we played. 
 
 Our boyish sports were all the same, 
 
 Each little joy and woe ; 
 Let manliood keep alive the flame, 
 
 Lit up so long ago. 
 
 We are but two, — be that the band 
 
 To hold us till we die ; 
 Shoulder to shoulder let us stand. 
 
 Till side by side we lie. 
 
 Charles Spraguk.] 
 
 The brother alluded to in these lines was George James, who died 
 Aug. 22, 1847, four years after the foregoing letter was written. 
 He died in the fifty-fourth year of his age. The day before his depart- 
 ure, twenty-eight years ago, I received the following words from Mr. 
 Sprague : — 
 
 Boston, Aug. 21, 1847. 
 .... I haye long ceased to use my poor pen for any other than official 
 purposes. The last verses I ever wrote were addressed to my brother, — " We 
 are but Two." Alas, sir, there will soon be but one ! I am in much dis- 
 tress, for that dear brother is dying. 
 
 Yours with much esteem, 
 
 Charles Sprague. 
 
 One cannot but feel the profoundness of his affections. "With what 
 tenacity of love he clung to those who were dear to him ! 
 
 The phrase " other than official purposes " takes the mind to the 
 scenes of Mr. Sprague's business life, aud those active duties which were 
 so constant a tax upon his time and thought. How difficult it is to 
 associate the absorbing pursuits of biisiness with a distinguished lite- 
 rary career ! Yet Coleridge has some very striking remarks in his 
 *' Biographia Literaria," upon this very subject, in which he urges the 
 course that Sprague pursued. " With no other privilege," he says, 
 "than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address an 
 affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own 
 experience. It will be but short, for the beginning, middle, and end 
 converge to one charge : never pursue literature as a trade." 
 " Three hours of leisure, looked forward to with delight as a change 
 and recreation," Coleridge insists, " will abundantly suffice to realize 
 
12 TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 whatever is requisite." " My dear young friend," he continues, " sup- 
 pose yourself established in any honorable occupation. From the 
 manufactory or counting-house, from the law-court or from having 
 visited your last ^latient, you return at evening to your family, pi-epared 
 for its social enjoyments, witli the very countenances of your wife and 
 children brightened, and their voice of welcome made doubly welcome 
 by the knowledge that, as far as they are concerned, you have satisfied 
 the demands of the day by the labor of the day. Then, when you 
 retire into your study, in the books ou your shelves you revisit so many 
 venerable friends with whom you can converse. Your own spirit 
 scarcely less free from personal anxieties than the great minds that in 
 those books are still living for you ! " (" Biographia Literaria," London, 
 1817, vol. i. p. 224.) 
 
 This view presented by Coleridge was precisely what Charles 
 Sprague, from his own conviction, had acted upon. This imaginary 
 picture would seem to have been taken from Mr. Sprague himself, in 
 his domestic tranquillity and joy, in communion with the books of which 
 he was so untiringly fond ; and the statement of Coleridge appears to 
 be verified by 'tlie literary results which Mr. Sprague, with apparent 
 ease, accomplished. 
 
 One naturally recalls Samuel Rogers, " the banker poet," of Eng- 
 land. But with Rogers there was no such domestic felicity. One is 
 reminded yet more forcibly of Charles Lamb, " the gentle Elia," who 
 must ever be associated in our thought with the South-Sea House, and 
 the accountant's office of the East India Company, in Leadenhall Street. 
 There, in the centre of busy interests, amid day-books and ledgers, year 
 after year he toiled. " Those" Lamb would exclaim, pointing to the 
 huge account-books which he had laboriously filled, — " Those are my 
 real avorks. There let them rest on their massy shelves, — more manu- 
 scripts in folio than ever Aquinas left ! " Even so ; in the brief inter- 
 vals from such drudgery, which lasted over thirty years, Lamb penned 
 his inimitable essays. 
 
 Thus also while Charles Sprague was familiarly conversant with 
 discounts and dividends, credits and investments ; intricate problems 
 awaiting his solution, and heavy responsibilities pressing upon his mind ; 
 through all these perplexities of business, the finer sensibilities of his 
 nature remained unscathed, and the tastes and perceptions which made 
 him what he was received no blight. His passion for literature con- 
 tinued fresh, and poetic-thought welled up, a perennial fountain, — life- 
 giving and inexhaustible. 
 
TEIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 13 
 
 Charles Sprague and Charles Lamb had other similarities than those 
 connected with outward circumstance. They had both the same strong 
 love for quaint old volumes, and were never weary of searching for the 
 treasures they contained. " And you, my midnight darlings, my 
 folios," Lamb would exclaim, " must I part with the intense delight 
 of having you (huge armfuls) in my embrace ? Must knowledge 
 come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intui- 
 tion, and no longer by this familiar process of reading ? " (" Elia.") 
 
 To both, the volumes they loved were an unfailing solace and delight. 
 Mr. Sprague's house was overflowing with books, and no one knew 
 better than he did all that was good within them. "You have come 
 to see a happy old man," he exclaimed to me one day as I entered his 
 room, — " a very happy old man, surrounded by his friends." And with 
 a lurninous smile he smote with bis hand the books upon his table. 
 "These are precious friends," he said, "and I love them more and 
 more." Many will be reminded of his own lines to his cigar ; — 
 
 " When in the lonely evening hour, 
 
 Attended but by thee, 
 O'er history's varied page I pore, 
 
 Man's fate in thine I see. 
 Oft as thy snowy column grows, 
 
 Tiien breaks and falls away, 
 I trace how mighty realms thus rose, 
 
 Thus tumbled to decay." 
 
 And we recall the lines in his Phi Beta poem : — 
 
 " 'Twas heaven to lounge upon a coilfch, said Gray, 
 And read new novels through a rainy day. 
 Add but the Spanish weed, the bard was right; 
 'Tis heaven, the upper heaven of calm delight. 
 The world forgot, to sit at ease reclined. 
 While round one's head the smoky perfumes wind, 
 Firm in one hand the ivory folder grasped, 
 Scott's uncut latest by the other clasped, 
 'Tis heaven, the glowing, graphic page to turn, 
 And feel within the ruling passion burn." 
 
 Another peculiarity of Lamb's was a marked characteristic in' Mr. 
 Sprague. Both had the same partiality for the city, and loved the 
 busy hum of streets. They had no craving for solitude, unless, like 
 Cowper, through the loop-holes of retreat, they could peep at the 
 woi'ld, and watch the stir of the great Babel ! The moving tide of 
 life was, to them, " better than all the waters of Damascus." London 
 was Lamb's Paradise. The Strand and Fleet Street he affirmed he 
 
14 TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 would not exchange for Skiddaw or Helvellyn. " I don't care," said 
 Lamb, in a letter to "Wordsworth, "if I never see a mountain in my 
 life." " All these emotions," he adds, "must seem strange to you ; so 
 are your rural emotions to me." With a like taste, Mr. Sprague seldom 
 or never went out of the city. He had no wish actually to mingle in 
 the crowd, but he loved to look out upon it. Lamb says, " I often shed 
 tears in the moth-y Strand fiom fulness of joy at so much life." Mr. 
 Sprague had much of this feeling. A thousand times have I seen him 
 at his window watching the people moving by. And as at St. Mark's, 
 in Venice, the doves are daily fed, so it was not an unfrequent pleasure 
 to Mr. Sprague to bestow gifts to little children as they passed by. 
 
 Meeting, one day, Mr. Sprague in the busy street, " Come with me, 
 my dear sir," I said, " into the country." — " I should rejoice to do so," 
 he replied, " but I am chained like a galley slave." — " Break your 
 fetters," I said, " and be free." — " Ah ! that," he replied with a smile, 
 " I fear cannot be done ! " Just so said Lamb. " I am a prisoner to 
 the desk. I have been chained to that galley thirty years. I have 
 almost grown to the wood." 
 
 Yet both Charles Sprague and Charles Lamb, though surrounded by 
 so much that seemed antagonistic, retained their tenderness of humor, 
 their large charity, their genial sympathies, and their nobleness of char- 
 acter. 
 
 Both Lamb and Sprague knew well how to 
 
 " frame matter for mirth, 
 Making li^e social, and the laggard time 
 To move on nimbly." 
 
 Both Charles Sprague and Charles Lamb cherished an absolute 
 aversion to every thing that approximated to pretension and conceit. 
 They never would profess to believe what their convictions did not 
 accept; perhaps from that very circumstance they were at times mis- 
 understood. That which they considered conventional had for them no 
 special value ; but they honoied what they felt to be truth, and desired 
 to plant their feet on solid foundations. 
 
 To a friend wlio called to visit Mr. Sprague in his last illness, he 
 emphatically said, pointiug to Christ's Sermon on the Mount, " Tins is 
 my Religion." Thus did he avow that it had been his earnest desire 
 to live in accordance with Christ's requirements, and to embody in his 
 life the Beatitudes. AVhat is the Seimon on the Mount but the com- 
 pendium of Ciiristianity ? Never, through all his writings, did Mr. 
 Sprague utter a word which was not in harmony with this conviction : 
 
TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 15 
 
 it was alike manifest in his daily conrluct and in his intercourse with 
 his kindred, his neighbors, and mankind. The spirit that shone through 
 all he wrote was this, that he was liabitually living, to use his own lan- 
 guage, in the presence of One 
 
 " Before whose all-beholding eyes 
 Ages sweep on, and empires sink and rise ! " 
 
 He declares that — 
 
 " 'Twere Heaven indeed 
 Through fields of trackless light to soar, 
 
 On Nature's charms to feed, 
 And Nature's own great God adore." 
 
 So, on the loss of a dear friend, he follows the ascending spirit, with 
 
 the eye of faith, to 
 
 " Her eternal home, 
 That bright abode where sorrow ne'er can come ; 
 There, in the likeness that her Maker drew, 
 Ye weeping ones, she ivaits to avelcome tou." 
 
 Observe how he describes, on another occasion, a friend, with pro- 
 phetic vision, — beholding the splendors to come : — 
 
 " Thine eyes one moment caught a glorious light ! 
 As if to thee, in that dread hour, 'twere given 
 To know on earth, what faith believes of Heaven ! " 
 
 He then adds, — 
 
 " In my last hour be Heaven so kind to me ! 
 I ask no more than this, — to die Uke thee." 
 
 Listen as he pours forth his earnest supplications to the Infinite 
 mind: — 
 
 " On every soul 
 
 Shed the incense of thy grace, 
 While our anthem-echoes roll 
 
 Hound the consecrated place ; 
 While thy holy page we read. 
 
 While the prayers thou lov'st ascend, 
 While thy cause thy servants plead, — 
 
 Fill this house, our tjod and Friend. 
 
 Fill it now, — oh fill it long ! 
 
 So wiien death shall call us home, 
 Still to thee, in many a throng. 
 
 May our children's children come. 
 Bless them. Father, long and late ; 
 
 Blot their sins, their sorrows dry; 
 Make this place to them the gate, 
 
 Leading to thy courts on high." 
 
16 TRIBUTE TO CHARLES SPRAGUE. 
 
 Graduall}'^ the infirmities of age came upon him, liis manly strength 
 slowly giving way; but through all, to the very last, his intellectual 
 powers continued unimpaired. "Without a murmur he bore up under 
 physical pain. Cheerfully he contemplated the final event, and became 
 at last even anxious to go. " Say I am ready," was the message he 
 sent, with his love, to his absent friends, and thus, peacefully as an in- 
 fant sinks to its quiet slumber, on Thursday, January 21, at half-past 
 eleven o'clock, in tlie eighty-fifth year of his age, he passed away. 
 
 In the same burial-place in which he describes himself as a little 
 boy seated upon the grass watching his father with his own hands build- 
 ing a tomb, and to which, in after years, he had seen the dust of his 
 parents and his kindred gathered, — in that same burial-place all that 
 was mortal of Charles Sprague now reposes. 
 
 Most fitting it seems that there, in the midst of that busy life he 
 loved, he should rest, — there where the young and the old in their 
 daily walks are constantly passing. Faithful, industrious, and with an 
 unbending integrity, he lived a spotless and childlike life. Strong in 
 his affections, simple in his tastes, with an unchanging love for goodness 
 and for truth, he was in himself, to those who knew and loved him, 
 more, far more, than he ever embodied in the best he ever wrote ; a 
 broader, loftier, and more noble spirit, which language could never ex 
 press. The sweetest and the grandest lines he penned were but a 
 faint echo of that heavenly harmony which breathed through his 
 soul. 
 
 To those who knew him, however imperfectly, his was a simple, 
 truthful, and beautiful life ; and that life has left behind quickening 
 and inspiring memories. 
 
 Standing here by his grave, let us listen to his own words, as if his 
 voice were still speaking to us : — 
 
 " And is this all, — this mournful doom ? 
 Beams no glad light beyond the tomb ? 
 Mark how yon clouds in darkness ride ; 
 They do not quench the orb they hide ; 
 Still there it wheels, — the tempest o'er, 
 In a bright sky to burn once more ; 
 So, far above the clouds of time. 
 Faith can behold a world sublime, — 
 There, when the storms of life are past. 
 The light beyond shall break at last." 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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