MEMOIR OF WILLIAM WHITWELL GREENOUGH. BY BARRETT WENDELL. THE LIBRARY OF TH£ Mar 4 ^24 sV ; V ; tfOJMt&f -. 3 - THE UBilAHY Or THE ESTERS!TV OF ILLIP \ V MEMOIR OF WILLIAM WHITWELL GREENOUGH. BY BARRETT WENDELL. [Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, February, 1901.] CAMBRIDGE: JOHN WILSON AND SON. SEtttberstlg I3ress. 1901. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/memoirofwilliamwOOwend WILLIAM WHITWELL GREENOUGH. William Whitwell Greenough, only child of William and Sarah (Gardner) Greenough, was born in Boston on the 25th of June, 1818. His father, a merchant, was a son of the Rev. William Greenough, for many years minister of Newton, and traced his descent through Deacon Thomas Greenough, a considerable citizen of Boston during the years preceding the Revolution, and through Captain John Greenough, who in 1726 commanded the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Com¬ pany, from Captain William Greenough, the emigrant, who is said to have resided at the North End of Boston before 1660, and whose death and burial are recorded in Sewall’s Diary for the 6th of August, 1693. Sarah Gardner, the mother of Mr. Greenough, was a granddaughter of the Rev. Francis Gardner, for many years minister of Leominster, and was a grand-niece of Dorothy Quincy, wife of the celebrated John Hancock. In her later years this lady, then doubly widowed by the death of her second husband, Captain Scott, was accustomed to relieve the monotony of her childless house by inviting agreeable young kinswomen to live with her, and making suitable matches for them. One of these was Sarah Gardner, who accordingly came from Leominster to Boston, and whose unusual personal attractions soon won the heart of William Greenough. They were married from Madam Scott’s house on the 23d of August, 1817. Their only child was thus descended on both sides from families who during the palmy days of Unitarianism adhered to the old Orthodox faith. Though few particular anecdotes of Mr. Greenough’s boy¬ hood are preserved, it is remembered that he was at one time /oz. 4 troublesome because of irrepressible physical activity. Some consequent accident threatened serious lameness. In the en¬ forced repose which followed he took to voracious reading, and thus early displayed that aptitude for books which remained so characteristic. He was prepared for college by a four years’ course at the Boston Latin School, supplemented by a fifth year at the private school of Mr. Leverett, who chanced at that time to retire from the mastership of the old public school, and took with him certain promising pupils. As a result, to use Mr. Greenough’s words,— “The studies of the Freshman year and of a portion of the Sopho¬ more year had already received so much attention at school that my time was thrown largely open to other pursuits not strictly scholastic. In consequence, at the end of my Sophomore year, under the peculiar regimen of the college which rated conduct higher than scholarship, I was dismissed, without a word of kindness or warning, for ‘ wayward and exceptionable ’ conduct, for an interval of three months. This was voluntarily lengthened to a year at Andover, Massachusetts, where I specially pursued Whately’s Rhetoric and Logic and the modern lan¬ guages, for the latter of which I had a strong inclination. Returning to college and entering the Senior Class, I followed especially my pre¬ ferred tastes in the study of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, in the courses of study of Dr. Bachi, to whose eminent learning, large ac¬ complishments, and masterful suggestions I was greatly indebted. I also studied German with Dr. Follen. Besides these courses I had been privately working on the Anglo-Saxon.” It is characteristic of Mr. Greenough that, despite this un¬ usual scholarly enthusiasm, he possessed such social qualities as to be made, in 1836, a member of the Porcellian Club. He took his degree at Harvard in 1837. His brief record of the ensuing year or two is more expressive than any paraphrase could be: — “ The result of my education to this point was good Latin and Greek scholarship, a good knowledge of the written French, and a fair knowl¬ edge of German, Italian, and Spanish. I had also in my senior year compiled a grammar of Anglo-Saxon. Besides this, I wrote the lan¬ guage (English) with sufficient polish, had no practice as a speaker, and no practical education, for every-day use and life.” For the moment every-day life failed to attract him. To use his own words again, — 5 “ With a strong desire to fit myself for usefulness in the languages, especially Oriental, I went to Andover for the year succeeding my graduation, and laid a foundation in three or four of these tongues, with a view to a professorship in a Southern college, about which I had been sounded by my kind friend, Mr. John Pickering, one of the most eminent of our American scholars, and for which due preparation was to be made by a two years’ residence in Germany. After some reflec¬ tion, I concluded that the result would be more satisfactory if I engaged in active business, with a view of accumulating in a few years a suffi¬ ciency of property to enable one to retire from business and pursue one’s taste for study at one’s own leisure. Like many dreams of the young and inexperienced, my expectations had no fulfilment, and the story carries its appropriate moral.” Yet it may be doubted whether the complete fulfilment of his youthful expectations could have brought about a life so useful as his was destined to be. At twenty years of age his scholarship was remarkable, and his knowledge of human nature far from extensive. The manner in which he proceeded to extend it was characteristic. On the 16th of August, 1838, according to his brief memo¬ randa, — “ Entered my father’s hardware store, 14 Merchants’ Row. Having previously lived a scholarly if not a scholastic life, I found that my line of thought and conversation had nothing of common interest with the people in practical life who were getting their living by handicraft or by country store-keeping. And for the purpose of being among them, I first went to board at No. 11 Elm Street, a largely frequented tavern, where I gradually mastered the general points of country store-keeping; and then in the winter took the only single room in the Lagrange House in Union Street, frequented by pedlers, sea-faring men, etc. After graduating at this institution, I removed to the American House, kept by Mr. Lewis Rice, in Hanover Street, a respectable and well-kept hotel. “ In my communion with the majority of the people who make up the world of life, this education was of more practical importance than all the book-learning, though that partially accumulated stock of knowl¬ edge was not neglected in the future.” This future proved widely and variously busy. In 1840 he became a partner of his father. At first, however, his business cares appear to have been light. His first recorded journey out of New England was in May, 1840, when he went to Bal¬ timore with the Boston delegation to attend the ratification 6 meeting of the nomination of General Harrison for the Presi¬ dency ; his anecdotic reminiscences of this excursion used to indicate that the personal conduct of American politicians sixty years ago was less austere than is sometimes asserted by pious tradition. In December, 1840, he first went to Europe, where—as in his various later travels abroad—he industriously verified the details to which guide-books and catalogues di¬ rected his swift and accurate attention. In April, 1841, he returned home. There, on the 15th of the following June, he was married to Catherine Scollay, the younger daughter of Charles Pelham Curtis, of Boston. Of the six children who sprung from this marriage, four survive: William, for some years past resident in New York ; Charles Pelham, of the Boston bar; Malcolm Scollay, now of Cleveland, Ohio ; and Edith, wife of Barrett Wendell, of Boston. The two other daughters died unmarried, one in infancy. In 1848, 1845, and 1847 his business involved extended journeys to the West, then a region where travel still meant primitive hardship. From 1847 to 1849 he was a member of the Common Council of the city of Boston, an office which he accepted 14 for the purpose of furthering and obtaining the in¬ troduction of a water supply for the city.” On the Fourth of July, 1849, he delivered the annual oration by which the city is accustomed officially to celebrate the anniversary of American Independence; his subject was “ The Conquering Republic.” About this time is said to have come a critical incident in his career. He found himself on such personally intimate terms with the leaders of the old Whig party that he was privately offered a nomination for Congress. This he agreed to accept, on condition that it receive the unanimous approval of the nominating powers. Unanimity proved wanting; and al¬ though he remained in closely confidential relations with the elder Whig politicians — particularly with Mr. Abbott Law¬ rence — he never took official part in national politics. The importance of his true life-work was local. In 1852 he was put in charge of the Boston Gas-Light Company; and in 1856 he was appointed a Trustee of the Boston Public Library. The career of double civic usefulness thus begun continued unbroken until 1888. In that year failing health compelled him to resign from the Board of Trustees of the Public Library, of which for the preceding twenty-two years he had 7 been president. A year later the Boston Gas-Light Company passed into other hands than those of the owners who had so long managed it with conscientious solicitude for the public good. Mr. Greenough’s last ten years were passed in more and more invalid retirement. He died at his house on Marl¬ borough Street, in Boston, on the 17th of June, 1899. From 1840 he had been a citizen of Boston ; but for some years before 1864 he had passed his summers at Swampscott. Pleasant memories of his life there still endure. He was par¬ ticularly fond of the deep-sea fishing which at that time was held a diverting sport, and which attracted to our coast a number of Canadian gentlemen, eminent in the commercial and the political life of the Dominion. With several of these Mr. Greenough contracted lasting friendship. It is said that his gayety was the life of many a Swampscott fishing-party; and it is certain that nothing gave him more pleasure than the occasional visits to Canada in later years which renewed the associations of this earlier time. In 1864 it came to an end ; he bought the old Greenleaf estate in Quincy. Here he passed most of each year from that time till 1888. The original house he replaced by the large and generous one which still stands there; and for a while the unusual beauty of his grounds, where the trees, planted years ago by one of the Greenleafs, are various and noble, greatly interested him. So did the far from elaborate gardening which he found within his means. Towards the end of his life at Quincy, however, his failing strength showed itself in neglect of these matters which had once afforded him such wholesome recreation. He finally removed to Boston with a sense of relief. Among the clubs, societies, and the like of which he was a member, may be mentioned the American Oriental Society, of which in 1843 he was a founder; the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, of which he became an honorary member in 1849; the Massachusetts General Hospital, of which he was a Trustee for ten years, beginning in 1856; the Provident In¬ stitution for Savings, with which his connection lasted from 1857 to the end; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, of which he was a Trustee from 1870 until his health compelled him to relinquish all responsibilities; and those purely social bodies, the Wednesday Evening Club, the Somerset Club, and the Friday Club, of Boston. 8 This last named, a dinner club peculiarly congenial to Mr. Greenough, was founded by a meeting called at his house on Temple Street, on the 21st of March, 1859. The origi¬ nal members were Professor Agassiz, Mr. Sidney Bartlett, Judge B. R. Curtis, Mr. Greenough, Mr. George S. Hillard, Mr. Robert M. Mason, Mr. Charles W. Storey, and President Felton, of Harvard College. The first dinner of the club was held at the Parker House on the 1st of April, 1859. A record of this and of two hundred and twenty subsequent dinners, end¬ ing with the 28th of March, 1884, exists in Mr. Greenough’s handwriting. 1 Among the later members of the club who no longer survive were Professor William B. Rogers, Mr. Henry P. Sturgis, Mr. William Amory, Mr. George Ticknor, Chief Justice Bigelow, Mr. William H. Gardiner, Mr. William Gray, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, and Mr. James Russell Lowell ; and among the guests from time to time were many other in¬ teresting men. Mr. Greenough’s notes of the earlier meet¬ ings show that the talk was apt to turn on political matters and occasionally to wax warm ; his later entries state merely who were present. The last dinner he recorded was one where he himself was host; among the guests were President Eliot, of Harvard College, and General Walker, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. To persons familiar with the Boston of the last generation, this mere list of names must be significant. It indicates not only the wide range of interest in public affairs which Mr. Greenough always main-, tained and the general social qualities in which he delighted, but also his incessant interest in the learning which at first he had hoped to make his chief occupation. Though Ins ostensible duties took him far from the profession of education, this was never far from his sympathies; and it is believed that he was frequently consulted by the friends under whose care the educa¬ tion of New England prospered during the years of his maturity. On April 10, 1879, he was elected to the Massachusetts Historical Society. The ground for this election was partly, no doubt, the unusual range and variety of his antiquarian knowledge. Among his busy relaxations was an eager interest in the facts of New England history and genealogy, concerning which he made innumerable memoranda ; for one thing, he kept an interleaved copy of the Harvard Triennial Catalogue, 1 This record is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 9 in which he entered with punctilious care every detail which came to his knowledge about every man whose name appeared in those pleasantly barbarous Latinized columns. Had he been merely an antiquarian, however, it is doubtful whether the Historical Society would certainly have recognized him. He belongs rather to that group of its members who owe their selection not so much to their historical scholarship or to their writings as to the fact that their public services have made them at least locally memorable. Yet in one sense Mr. Greenough had hardly any public career. His three years in the Common Council, at the time when Boston needed a water supply, comprise all his precisely official life. What made him essentially a public servant was, on the one hand, the essentially civic character of the corpora¬ tion of which he was so long the guiding spirit, and on the other hand the incalculable civic importance of the Public Library, which owes so much of its present dignity to his wise, watchful, unremitting care. In 1852, when he was thirty-four years old, the Boston Gas-Light Company, a corporation with a capital of $500,000, found itself, by reason of carelessness on the part of its practi¬ cal manager, in a somewhat disturbing condition. Concerning the manufacture of illuminating gas, Mr. Greenough at that time knew hardly anything. His remarkably systematic mental training, however, had combined with his impregnable good sense, his accumulating experience of general affairs, and his knowledge of all sorts and conditions of men, to attract towards him the attention of the elderly gentlemen then in control of the corporation. His own brief memorandum tells the story of what ensued : “ I became Treasurer, with the whole management of their business, in consultation with the Directors, when deemed necessary by me. In the continuation of this trust to the close of 1887, the paid up capital of the company, after thirty-five }^ears, is $2,500,000.” Early in 1889 the property was sold for six millions. These figures tell the story of a civic work at once admira¬ ble and in its issue somewhat melancholy. The problem which Mr. Greenough found before him was to provide the large and growing city of Boston with adequate illumination. To do tliis required not only administrative and financial intelligence of high order, but also studious familiarity with an increas- 10 ingly technical kind of manufacture, and in addition to these, incessant dealings with the shifting and unstable personages brought by annual elections into temporary control of the city government. These widely various duties he performed with unremittent care and skill. Boston was provided with a system of gas lighting which in its day was among the best, for both quality and efficiency, in the world. The property and the franchise of the Gas-Light Company, meanwhile, originally encumbered and of somewhat doubtful value, so developed as to attract the cupidity of speculative adventurers. The inevi¬ table result finally came ; all he could do was to make terms which should assure the fortune of his stockholders. His own holdings in the corporation were so small that, except for a generous present voted him at the time of his retirement, he would have withdrawn from his thirty-five years of service little richer than he began them. For many of those years his salary was only four thousand dollars. It was probably during the earliest part of this strictly business career that one of Mr. Greenough’s most significant traits finally declared itself. As his record of education so pleasantly indicates, his powers matured early. In con¬ sequence, he excited much friendly interest on the part of men far older than he. Apparently he found the accomplish¬ ments of these gentlemen more sympathetic than the less settled characteristics of his more youthful contemporaries. At all events, by the time when he was thirty-five years of age, his most intimate personal relations were generally with men old enough to be his father. This fact goes far to explain the evident personal solitude of his later life. The generation to which he belonged at heart, though not in years, was dead long before his days of fruitful usefulness were over. Among the elder men whose friendship he thus attracted was Mr. John Pickering, an eminent scholar and the principal founder of the American Oriental Society. Of these founders Mr. Greenough was the last survivor. As he stated in his brief notes concerning his education, his early intention of pre¬ paring himself for a professorship of languages was partly influenced by Mr. Pickering’s suggestions ; and in spite of the complete change in Mr. Greenough’s purposes his friendship with Mr. Pickering appears to have lasted, cordial as ever, 11 until the death of the latter, in 1846. It was perhaps through this earlier intimacy that a few years later Mr. Greenough found himself drawn into such close and enduring personal relations with Mr. George Ticknor. His intimacy with Mr. Ticknor was certainly the circumstance which most happily influenced that portion of his career which proved of the high¬ est public service. This, of course, was his admirable and prolonged management of the Boston Public Library. So considerable and comprehensive a civic institution as this Library must owe its origin and development to widely diffused public spirit; to speak of any one man as its founder, then, is perhaps unduly to neglect others; yet as one con¬ siders the history of the Public Library, it seems constantly more certain that we should hardly have possessed this noble monument without the generous, far-seeing, and not justly remembered energy and persistency of Mr. Ticknor. His eminent scholarship, his untiring and fruitful labors as a literary historian, and his exceptional social career abroad and at home, are matters of familiar tradition. So, in a manner faintly tinctured with humour, are some personal peculiarities which prevented him from enjoying general popularity. What stands in danger of being forgotten is his life-long purpose that, so far as lay in his power, the widest resources of learn¬ ing and culture should be freely open to every human being who could in any wise benefit by them or enjoy them. No citizen of Boston has ever done a work at heart more unre¬ servedly popular than that which thus proceeded from a man often thought unduly limited in his relations with other people. The formal founding of the Public Library occurred in 1852. Of the Trustees then appointed the most eminent were George Ticknor and Edward Everett. In that veiy year, however, Mr. Everett was called away from New England by his appointment to the office of Secretary of State ; and until 1854, when the Library was actually opened, its organization lay chiefly in the hands of Mr. Ticknor. The story of his faithful work is adequately set forth in Miss Ticknor’s pious, sympathetic Life of her father. 1 This excellent book, how¬ ever, touches lightly on his chief limitation, of which he was probably aware ; he lacked the kind of tact which seems need- 1 Vol. ii. chap. xv. 12 ful for successful dealings with such men as hold office in modem American cities. He possessed, on the other hand, both the enlightened culture which enabled him to plan the scholarly future of the Public Library, and the generous pub¬ lic spirit which enabled him equally to foresee and to prepare its more popular features. What the Library clearly needed was a whole-souled Trustee who should combine these traits, so fully developed in Mr. Ticknor, with experienced power of conciliating the every-day citizens who chanced to hold civic authority. It seems doubtful whether in 1856 there was any citizen of Boston more fitted to meet this need than Mr. Greenough. At thirty-eight years of age, his powers were mature ; and they had grown to maturity amid surroundings which made him personalty familiar not only with a wide range of learning but also with almost every aspect of New England life. He was born Orthodox, and in youth attended the church of Dr. Lyman Beecher ; he was educated partly at Harvard and partly at Andover; he was a Porcellian man and the compiler of an unpublished Anglo-Saxon grammar; he was married to a Unitarian of King’s Chapel; he was a widely accomplished linguist and a learned local antiquarian ; his travels had made him acquainted both with Europe and with our own Western States; his confidential friendship with leaders of the old Whig party had afforded him considerable knowledge of national poli¬ tics ; for years, meanwhile, he had been engaged in a business which involved close contact with people of the plainer sort; he had been a member of the City government; and his more recent business had kept him in frequent relations with sub¬ sequent governments of the City. He was conspicuously free from the temptations which beset those too freely endowed with the gifts of imagination or humour; he was equally con¬ spicuous for indomitable energy and for illimitable common- sense. Finally, he was heart and soul interested in the public work of which he now became an almost life-long Trustee. His first considerable service to it he was fond of remember¬ ing. When, in 1855, Mr. Joshua Bates offered his second great endowment to the Public Library, a number of scholars and experts were consulted as to what books might most desirably be bought. Among these Mr. Greenough, either just before his appointment as Trustee or just after it, was 13 requested to make some suggestions. He took up his pencil, and wrote in a line or two that the Library ought to possess the County Histories of England. The suggestion is said to have appealed instantly to the sympathies of Mr. Bates. At all events, it has resulted in a collection of English local his¬ tories unequalled in America. Mr. Greenough never rendered the Public Library but one more signal single service ; this was years later when, as president, he negotiated the purchase of the Barton Library, which enriched Boston with one of the most important. Shakspearean collections in the world. Incalcu¬ lably his chief services, however, were no such single ones as these ; they were embraced in the innumerable details of his daily care for the Library during his thirty-two years of office there. For a full twenty-two of these j 7 ears he was president of the Board of Trustees. The story of the growth and development of the Library during this period may be read in its official reports. In 1856, when he first became a Trustee, the Library had been little more than a generously endowed experiment, favored alike b}^ the public spirit of the City authorities and by the personal enthusiasm of scholarly and beneficent private citizens ; in 1888, when he relinquished the presidency, it was an institu¬ tion of learning so firmly established and so widely recognized that it had served as a model for countless others of similar character in various parts of the world. All this is matter of common knowledge. What has never been fully appreci¬ ated, except by those who were constantly at hand, is the extent to which Mr. Greenough’s indefatigable care, and tact, and prudence, and enthusiasm contributed to so noble a result. For one thing, to the end of Mr. Ticknor’s life, the intimacy between them never relaxed. It is said that, whenever Mr. Ticknor was in Boston, hardly a Sunday after¬ noon passed without an interview between the elder friend and the younger; and it is probable that almost all of these cordial meetings were partly occupied with consultations con¬ cerning the Public Library which was so near to the hearts of both. Long after Mr. Ticknor’s death, indeed, it was Mr. Greenough’s practice often to pass a part of Sunday afternoon with Mr. Ticknor’s daughter, who so loyally preserved her father’s traditions. Thus keeping constantly in touch with the first impulses from which the Library had sprung, Mr. 14 Greenough actually devoted to the details of its management hours of every day. Just when his habits in this matter grew fixed it is hard to say ; but during the last ten or fifteen years of his presidency they had taken on marvellous regularit} r . His mornings he devoted uninterrupted^ to the affairs of the Gas-Light Company ; then he would lunch at his club, select¬ ing his fare with much deliberation, and supplementing the meal with a single not very large cigar ; then he would pro¬ ceed to the Library, where in his inner office he would set to work over the innumerable questions of policy, of purchase, of management, of dealings with men public and private, which constantly arose. He would commonly emerge, in the mid afternoon, with a number of new books under his arm, and with sundry booksellers’ catalogues in his pocket. The books were his chief relaxation ; he read them with astonish¬ ing speed, and remembered them as accurately as if he had studied them. The catalogues he would somehow find time to run through, pencil in hand. In the course of years he thus developed exceptional knowledge of bibliography and of book-prices. He is said also to have developed a remark¬ able intuitive knowledge of what the Library possessed and what it lacked. No human memory, of course, could con¬ sciously include a catalogue in which the entries were rising into the hundreds of thousands ; Mr. Greenough’s unconscious memory, however, came nearer such inclusion than would seem credible. An instance is remembered where a friend brought him two small books concerning out-of-the-way dialects spoken by American Indians. He instantly declared that he believed the Library to possess one and not the other; and his impression proved correct. A less obvious phase of his work was never generally rec¬ ognized. As the Library grew, its staff of employees, in every grade, inevitably increased; and this included men and women of widely divergent degrees of character and culture. With these, in general, his relations became exceptional. At least after his youthful days, he was addicted to personal reticence, — by no means the kind of man who provokes a feeling of intimacy. On the other hand, his fundamental kindness of temper, his thorough sense of justice, and his practical tact in dealing with men slowly grew to command unfailing confi¬ dence. In more instances than a few, it is believed, he was 15 appealed to for advice concerning the private affairs of these persons who found themselves publicly in his employ. And a few cases which are definitely remembered afford ground for conjecture that there are many such people whose mem¬ ories of him are irradiated by a sense of personal gratitude. When at last he retired from office, the employees of the Library presented him with an elaborately engrossed testi¬ monial of their esteem, which he highly prized. Such testi¬ monials are doubtless apt to be perfunctory. In this case, however, if many private words may be believed, every signa¬ ture was given with eagerness to express a warmth of regard which under* the circumstances could not escape the limits of formal phrase. Throughout Mr. Greenough’s presidency the Library was so managed as to develop almost equally those two phases of its usefulness which might once have seemed incompatible. It was a repository of the higher learning, preserving for scholars and experts, and keeping freely at their disposal, resources for minutely special study and investigation. It was also a free lending library, providing for the people of Boston an almost unlimited supply of general reading. In each phase it steadily grew and steadily improved. Its publi¬ cations meanwhile — its catalogues and handbooks and the like— constantly called the attention of the learned to its in¬ creasing riches, and reminded the simple of those opportunities for wholesome intellectual pleasure which were brought to their very doors. In which phase of the Library Mr. Green - ough was more deeply interested it is hard to say. He was so deeply interested in both that he strove to advance both im¬ partially. And so the Library grew, until its old quarters on Boylston Street could no longer serve its purposes. Among the last of Mr. Greenough’s duties was an endeavor to secure for the institution to which he had devoted so much of his life a new, permanent abiding place, of such character as his years of experience had convinced him to be fitting. In his private talk about the new building, Mr. Greenough permitted himself a freedom and decision of expression all the more noteworthy because he so rarely gave utterance to opin¬ ion. The structure, he believed, ought to be thoroughly fire¬ proof ; it ought to be commodious enough to provide for the growth of a century to come ; it ought to be planned through- 16 out with expert understanding of the uses for which it was to be erected, and accordingly in close consultation with people who had learned by experience what the public, scholarly and unlearned alike, needed; and finally, as a civic structure, built at civic cost for civic use, it ought to be free from all ostentation and extravagance, owing its beauty to the dignity of its scale, the harmony of its proportions, and the precision of its adaptation to its purpose. Some such plan as he thus contemplated he hoped that he had assured the City when he was compelled to retire from office. In the matter of fire-proof construction, his principles prevailed; the other conditions, which Mr. Greenough had deemed equally important, were ultimately held less essential to the public library of an Amer- can city than such collocations of form and color, for their own sake, as should exemplify the taste of an eminent architect. The result, familiar to us all, is undeniably splendid ; but so long as Mr. Greenough’s powers allowed him to observe its growth, he observed it with diminishing satisfaction. Though, as years go, he was not very old, he had outlived his time. He loved the thoughtful simplicity of the past. Yet the last days of his consciousness were not all sadness. Throughout his long maturity, to the very verge of his swiftly declining age, he had preserved an unobtrusive rigidity of habit, mental and physical alike. To the eye this revealed itself in various ways. His dark beauty of feature, which in youth must have been extraordinary, so retained its alert strength that when he was seventy years old a careless ob¬ server might have mistaken him for a man still in the full vigor of life. His carriage was always somewhat careless, with that sort of carelessness, so frequently characteristic of elder New England, which disdains external forms. His clothes, of which he was by no means neglectful, were never exactly in the fashion. He never looked eccentric, nor ever quite like anybody else. This individuality of aspect corresponded with extreme fixity of personal behavior. He kept regular hours ; he thoughtfully considered and heartily relished what he daily ate and drank and smoked. No one was ever much more free from asceticism on the one hand or from excess on the other. He was affable and voluble in talk ; his acquisitive mind combined with his minutely retentive memory to enrich him with encyclopedic stores of fact; and 17 these he would always impart freely to any one who consulted him. When it came to expression of opinion, however, he was more than cautious. The better one knew him, it sometimes seemed, the less one knew what he really thought. Not even his immediate family, for example, ever discovered whether he had retained or discarded the inbred Calvinism of his ancestry and his childhood. The deepest personal trait of his later life was the solitude of his unforbidding reticence. And then came the end, when his powers so rapidly failed. One had grown to think of him as a man whose almost prema¬ ture development had attached his affections, years and years ago, to that elder generation which had held him an equal friend,— as one whose heart had been buried long before his alert activity had reached its limit. One found him, as his self-control relaxed, gentle, affectionate, and tender. One had grown used to thinking of him as a man so truly of other days that, when newer times surged about him, he must per¬ force find little pleasure except in saddening memories. One found him ready to take simple delight in kindly trivialities. One looked for closing years of restless discontent; the clos¬ ing years which came were mostly placid. An hour before he died his fingers were half-consciously turning the leaves of some book, just as they had done through the thirty-two years of his inestimable civic service. By that time his name, never popularly known, was generally forgotten. He rests from his labors now ; but so long as learning lives in New England his works, even though unrecognized, shall follow him. Such citizens as he justify our republic.