6603 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 3285.M91 
 
 3 1924 022 228 658 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022228658 
 
^^^zJid^i^ 
 
PROCEEDINGS 
 
 THE PRESENTATION OF A PORTRAIT 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 TO FRIENDS' SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
 Tenth Month, 24th, 1884 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 prtnteti at tlje KiijersiDe ^u^6 
 188s 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE DONOR, CHAKLES F. COFFIN . . . 1, 43 
 
 THE PORTRAIT 1, 44 
 
 THE HALL 2 
 
 THE ATTENDANCE AND GUESTS . . . 3, 4, 42 
 
 Elizabeth H. Austin 4 
 
 Richard Battey 4 
 
 Samuel R. Buffinton 4 
 
 Ellen K. Buffum 4 
 
 Hon. James N. Buffum 4 
 
 Gbeteudb W. Cartland 4 
 
 Elizabeth B. Chace 4 
 
 James H. Chacb 4 
 
 Hon. Jonathan Chace 4 
 
 Obadiah Chace 4 
 
 Deborah W. Crosman 4 
 
 Hon. Thomas A. Doyle 4 
 
 Julia Ward Howe 4 
 
 Hon. George Howland, Jr 4 
 
 Sylvia Xr. Howland 4 
 
 Esther Jones 4 
 
 Benjamin F. Knowles 4 
 
 Ruth S. Murray 4 
 
 Hon. Petkk M. Neal 4 
 
 Dr. Charles H. Nichols 4 
 
 Clark Shove 4 
 
 Rebecca Steerb 4 
 
 Sarah F. Tobby 4 
 
 THE ORATION, by Thomas Chase, LL. D. . . .5 
 ADDRESSES : 
 
 Augustine Jones, Principal of the School . 43 
 
 Julia Ward Howe 45 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 Thomas Chase, LL. D 48 
 
 EzEKiEL G. Robinson, D. D 49 
 
 Colonel William Goddard 52 
 
 John L. Lincoln, LL. D. ' f'S 
 
 Hon. Abraham Payne 60 
 
 Hon. Jonathan Chace 64 
 
 Hon. James N. BxTFruM 66 
 
 Gertrude W. Cartland 69 
 
 John C. Wtman 70 
 
 LETTERS : 
 
 John G. Whittier 75 
 
 Theodore D. Weld 76 
 
 Matthew Arnold 77 
 
 James B. Thayer 77 
 
 Dr. Pliny Earlb Chase 78 
 
 Rev. James Freeman Clarke .... 80 
 
 Rt. Ret. Thomas M. Clark 80 
 
 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes .... 81 
 
 Hon. James Russell Lowell 81 
 
 John Boyle O'Reilly 82 
 
 George William Curtis 83 
 
 Edwin P. Whipple 84 
 
 Hon. Robert C. Winthrop 85 
 
 Hon. Joseph Gkinnell 86 
 
 Dk. D. Hack Tuke 86 
 
 Dr. James E. Rhoads 88 
 
 Dr. Charles W. Eliot 89 
 
 Hon. George F. Hoar 89 
 
 Rt. Hon. John Bright 90 
 
 Dr. Noah Porter 92 
 
 Amos C. Barstow 92 
 
 SONNETS : 
 
 Hon. James Russell Lowell .... 82 
 
 Ernest W. Shurtleff 91 
 
PROCEEDINGS. 
 
 The gift to the Friends' School, by Charles F. 
 Coffin, of Lynn, Mass., of a portrait of John 
 Greenleaf Whittier, was the result of the donor's 
 wish to contribute to the institution a lasting 
 memorial of the beloved and venerable poet. 
 
 Mr. Coffin entered the school as a pupil forty- 
 five years ago, and was afterward a teacher in it. 
 He is now, and has been for many years, a mem- 
 ber of the "Committee in charge of the institu- 
 tion." 
 
 The portrait was painted by Edgar Parker, of 
 Boston. It is life-size, representing Mr. Whittier 
 sitting in an arm-chair in an attitude of peaceful 
 thought. The portrait is in a heavy gilt frame, 
 the principal feature of which is a moulding of 
 laurel leaves in relief The picture is hung in 
 Alumni Hall, over the platform, and behind it 
 is draped a curtain of rich maroon plush. 
 
 On the evening of 10th Mo., 23d, the students 
 of the Senior Class in the school gave recitations 
 of Whittier's poetry and prose, and original dec- 
 lamations on the poet and his works. 
 
2 FRIENDS' SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
 
 On Friday morning, the 24th, the ceremonies 
 were resumed at the school, at 10.30 o'clock. 
 Everything seemed to have been prearranged 
 for this beautiful and public recogniti9n of the 
 sterling worth of the poet, whose writings, per- 
 vaded with the peace which prevailed in and 
 filled his soul, have brought so many hours of 
 comfort and relief to troubled minds, and won for 
 him an abiding place in the hearts of the Amer- 
 ican people. The sun shone brightly upon the 
 grand old institution, with its beautiful surround- 
 ings of foliage and shrubbery, barely touched as 
 yet by the early frost. All nature seemed to 
 welcome to the historic spot the large number of 
 people who had gathered to do honor to Whit- 
 tier. 
 
 The exercises of the day were held in Alumni 
 Hall, which had been tastefully decorated for this 
 occasion. On either side of the platform were 
 banks of bright green pines, ferns, and exotics. 
 Standing on the main floor, and directly in front 
 of the centre of the stage, was a large floral harp. 
 The base of the harp was of laurel leaves, while 
 a wreath of laurel was suspended to the plat- 
 form, behind the harp, in such a manner as to 
 make it appear a part of it. The other decora- 
 tions were in keeping with the spirit of the occa- 
 sion. Suspended on the walls were portraits of 
 other American poets. Holmes, Bryant, Longfel- 
 low, and Emerson, and of Phillips and Haw- 
 
RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 3 
 
 thorne. Placed about the hall were busts of 
 Agassiz, Sumner, Milton, Shakespeare, Dante, and 
 Homer. These busts were draped with smilax. 
 The bust of John Bright, given to the school a 
 year ago, was fittingly decorated with smilax. 
 On the wall, over the doorway, was a maroon- 
 colored tablet, on which was inscribed in letters 
 of gold : — 
 
 " I know not where his islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
 One of the pleasant features of the occasion 
 was the announcement that before another twelve 
 months had passed away a generous patron of 
 the school is to give to it a marble bust of Eliza- 
 beth Fry, which will occupy a space to the right 
 of the platform, and opposite the space devoted 
 to the bust of John Bright. 
 
 The attendance at the morning exercises was 
 all that could have been desired, especially of the 
 alumni, who came back to the old halls and trod 
 the old paths once more with a feeling of pride 
 in the institution that had so carefully nurtured 
 their earlier life and made them honored and re- 
 spected members of this and other communities. 
 The centre of the hall was devoted to the use 
 of the members of the school. And directly in 
 front of the platform were seated Caroline John- 
 son, Abby J. Woodman, and her young daugh- 
 
4 FRIENDS' SCHOOL, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
 
 ter, Phebe Woodman, members of the charming 
 household at Oak Knoll. 
 
 Upon the platform were His Honor Thomas A. 
 Doyle, Elizabeth B. Chace, Julia Ward Howe, 
 Clark Shove, Hon. Jonathan Chace, of Valley 
 Falls ; Hon. George Howland, Jr., of New Bed- 
 ford ; Samuel E. Buffinton, of Fall River ; James 
 H. Chace, of Providence ; Benjamin F. Knowles, 
 of South Manchester, Conn. ; Hon. Peter M. Neal, 
 of Lynn, Mass. ; Hon. James N. Buffura ; Dr. 
 Charles H. Nichols, M. D., LL. D. ; ^ Elizabeth H. 
 Austin, of Providence ; Ellen K. Buffum, of Prov- 
 idence ; Sylvia G. Howland, of New Bedford ; 
 Esther Jones, of Deering, Maiije ; Ruth S. Mur- 
 ray, of New Bedford ; Rebecca A. Steere, of Provi- 
 dence ; Sarah F. Tobey, of Providence ; Deborah 
 W. Crossman, of Lynn, Mass. ; Obediah Chace, of 
 Warren, R. I. ; Gertrude W. Cartland, of New- 
 buryport, Mass., a cousin of the poet, and Rich- 
 ard Battey, of Woonsocket. 
 
 The assemblage was called to order by the 
 principal of the school, Augustine Jones, who re- 
 quested that the exercises should open with silent 
 prayer, following which, without any formalities, 
 he introduced the orator of the day, Thomas 
 Chase, LL. D., President of Haverford College, 
 who spoke as follows : — 
 
 ^ Superintendent of Bloomingdale Asylum, New York. A pupil 
 in the school in 1834, and a teacher in 1840. 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 5 
 
 ORATION BY PRESIDENT THOMAS CHASE, LL. D.i 
 
 " Let US praise famous men," saith iihe wise son 
 of Sirach : " the Lord hath wrought great glory 
 by them through his great power from the be- 
 ginning ; men giving counsel by their under- 
 standing and declaring prophecies ; leaders of the 
 people by their counsels, wise and eloquent in 
 their instructions ; such as found out musical 
 tunes, and recited verses in writing." Far from 
 me to-day be words of fulsome eulogy ; but it is 
 meet for us to recognize great gifts of our Cre- 
 ator employed to his honor in the service of man- 
 kind ; it is meet to stimulate ourselves to greater 
 faithfulness by contemplating a great example ; 
 it is meet to pay respect, as we do now, to one 
 who has been to many — shall I not say to all of 
 us? — an instructor and a consoler, suggesting 
 sweet fancies, inspiring a love of freedom, and 
 arousing all noble resolves, as he has enshrined 
 in undying verse the lessons taught him by the 
 voices of nature and by that 
 
 " Spirit that doth prefer 
 Before all temples the upright heart and pure." 
 
 Especially is it meet to place before the eyes of 
 the young the lifelike image of one whose words 
 are worthy of their loving study, and whose ex- 
 ample is pure and ennobling. In this venerable 
 
 1 Thomas Chase was a pupil in the school in 1840. 
 
6 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 seat of learning, dedicated to those lofty truths 
 of the spirit which are taught by our Lord and 
 Master, and to the love of God and man, it is 
 meet that the likeness of John Greenleaf Whit- 
 tier should hang in congenial neighborhood to 
 the bust of John Bright. And if ever the So- 
 ciety that reared these walls, and has sent hither 
 so many of its sons and daughters for their in- 
 tellectual and moral and religious training, shall 
 prove recreant to those principles which that So- 
 ciety has always proclaimed, and of which these 
 great men have been the unfailing champions ; or 
 if the leaders in thought and culture in our land 
 shall prove recreant to those noble purposes and 
 high aims which should always mark men who 
 have received the gift of genius and who make 
 up the glorious guild of authors, — may some in- 
 dignant orator on this platform, appealing not in 
 vain to these, our heroes, caill upon those deep- 
 set, burning eyes of the poet to flash in indigna- 
 tion, and on those mobile lips of the orator to 
 open in rebuke. 
 
 I have been asked to speak to you on Whit- 
 tier as a poet. Let us attempt at first some an- 
 swer — perhaps a very imperfect one — to the 
 question, " What is poetry ? " It is an answer 
 which is true as far as it goes to say that poetry 
 is a form of artistic composition, whose object is 
 to please ; that it differs from science, history, 
 argumentative composition, and ordinary prose, 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 7 
 
 in aiming at beauty, not merely or primarily at 
 truth ; and that accordingly, in form and diction, 
 it departs from the ordinary and commonplace, 
 and seeks the aid often of rhyme, and perhaps 
 always of some kind of metre, of elegant lan- 
 guage, and of metaphor and other figures of 
 speech ; and that especially it is the mouthpiece 
 not of reasoning, but of fancy and imagination. 
 But all this fails to reach the heart of the mat- 
 ter. That poetry is the voice of fancy and im- 
 agination is the nearest approach, among these 
 statements, to a true definition ; but writing may 
 have all the qualities I have named, and yet not 
 be poetry in the highest sense. These are little 
 more than the poet's robes and his instruments- 
 What is the function he himself performs by their 
 aid ? What is the proper purpose of his exist- 
 ence? 
 
 First. The poet is a Seer ; by which I mean not 
 so much one who foresees the future as one who 
 discerns the present, and follows and understands 
 both the thought and the action of his day ; one 
 who has a deep insight into the heart of things, 
 looking below their outward shows, and seeing 
 them as they really are; one who discerns the 
 elemental truths which underlie our destinies 
 and our lives: who sees the full significance of 
 common, every-day experiences, and reads the 
 meaning of laughter and of tears; whose heart 
 keeps time to the still, sad music of humanity, 
 
8 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 while it also throbs responsive to the trumpet 
 notes of conflict and the paeans of victory. The 
 great bards ' of history have not sung merely to 
 amuse. They read the meaning of life ; they 
 learned by their own suffering, or by sympathy 
 with the suffering of others, what they taught in 
 song. Homer shows us, says Goethe, that man in 
 his life above ground enacts hell (he does, and he 
 shows us much more). The Greek tragedians, 
 Milton tells us, unfold the mysteries 
 
 " Of fate and chance and change in human life, 
 High actions and high passions best describing." 
 
 " Virgil," says Cardinal Newman, " gives utter- 
 ance, as the voice of Nature herself, to that pain 
 and weariness, yet hope of better things, which 
 is the experience of her children in every time ; " 
 Dante transmits to us the deepest , thought and 
 the most earnest feeling of the Middle Ages ; 
 Shakespeare, in the full springtime of our mod- 
 ern epoch, portrayed every characteristic, every 
 capacity, nay, every yet untried possibility, of 
 our human nature ; Milton, with the ripest schol- 
 arship and the brightest genius, inspired by a 
 religious and moral earnestness which was the 
 noblest fruit of Puritanism, passing the flaming 
 bounds of space and time, saw and reported to 
 us the vision, — 
 
 "The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 
 Where angels tremble while they gaze." 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 9 
 
 Goethe was a grand example of the length and 
 breadth of modern learning before it had begun 
 to narrow itself into specialties as in our day ; 
 and, — 
 
 " Physician of the iron age, 
 He took the suflfering human race, 
 He read each wound, each weakness clear, 
 And struck his finger on the place. 
 And said : Thou ailest here, and here ! " 
 
 The great poets are men that know. 
 
 Secondly. The poets are men that feel — feel 
 more quickly, more deeply, more intensely than 
 other men. Poetry is preeminently the language 
 of passion. The quick emotion of the poet cor- 
 responds to his quick intelligence : he sees and 
 his heart beats ; he hears and* his blood boils. 
 Nor are his the fiercer passions alone ; all the 
 gentlest, deepest, holiest feelings are his also ; not 
 noisy, not agitating, but flowing in full, strong 
 stream through the deep and quiet caves in the 
 ocean of his heart. His is "the hate of hate, the 
 scorn of scorn, the love of love," — the love of 
 all that is beautiful and good. And because the 
 poet feels, himself, he touches the heart of others. 
 The fire of patriotic ardor burns in his breast, his 
 indignation at tyranny and wrong blazes forth, 
 and his words stir up a whole people to self-sacri- 
 fice and daring ; the sweet passion of love swells 
 his soul, and a nation's heart beats responsive to 
 his own. His intensity of feeling kindles in our 
 
10 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 breasts a kindred flame, and he becomes our in- 
 spirer, our leader, and our guide. 
 
 Thirdly. Of all that he thus sees and feels, the 
 poet is the voice : a voice which sounds forth 
 what is deepest, truest, best in nature and in life ; 
 what lies hidden half unconsciously to themselves 
 in the bottom of the hearts of his fellow-men, and 
 would have remained inarticulate without his aid. 
 Most of us are engrossed in our farms, our shops, 
 or our merchandise, or the cares and details of 
 professional life ; even if we have the ability, we 
 have not the time nor the opportunity to utter 
 our deepest feelings in forms which win ready ad- 
 mission to the ear and the heart. Many of us 
 need the aid of one who shall reveal what is best 
 within us even to ourselves. Especially do we 
 welcome one who gives graceful and attractive 
 expression to our best sentiments and noblest 
 loves ; who sings of homes and hearths ; of love's 
 young dream ; of love's soberer but deeper and 
 sweeter realities ; of our country, and freedom, 
 and the brotherhood of mankind ; of nature and 
 her myriad voices ; of heaven and of God. We 
 prize the poet because the great heart of human- 
 ity has found in him its voice. 
 
 And what more is the function of him who 
 thus sees and feels and speaks ? First, it is the 
 mission of the poet to delight. Nor is this a low 
 or insignificant mission. All true and noble pleas- 
 ure, like beauty, is its own excuse. 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 11 
 
 The poet takes us out of ourselves. By the in- 
 ventions of his imagination and the ornaments of 
 his fancy we are transported from this dusty, 
 noisy, care-beset world to brighter realms, where 
 for a while we revel in visions of beauty, and find 
 that ideal scenes and joys and pains can touch us 
 as profoundly as the real. 
 
 But the poet has a higher function still. He 
 is the servant of the truth and the right. He 
 yokes beauty to their car, and by aiding their 
 progress aids the cause of God and man. Such at 
 least have been, to a greater or less degree, the 
 sense and endeavor of the greatest bards of all 
 ages. Even if we admit that that may be poetry 
 which aims only at beauty and delight, disclaim- 
 ing any moral purpose and any direct aim at 
 truth, it is not the noblest poetry, it is not the 
 poetry which the world takes to its heart and will 
 not suflFer to die. The true poet pleases, but at 
 the same time, mixing beauty and use, although 
 he does not lecture or preach, he pleads at least 
 indirectly for the good and the true. 
 
 Let us judge Whittier in the light of these def- 
 initions. Has he not shown himself, in many 
 ways, to be a seer, who can feel, and can. speak? 
 Has he not touched our hearts ? Has he not said 
 what we were burning to have said ? Has he 
 not given us delight ? Has he not consecrated 
 his gifts of song to the service of his fellow-men 
 and his God ? 
 
12 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 We will begin with the field in which alone his 
 service would render him immortal, — the field of 
 the anti-slavery struggle. How clear the insight 
 of our seer ! how loud and bold his voice ! At 
 first the voice of one crying in the wilderness j 
 the wilderness of indifference, selfishness, insen- 
 sibility, political subserviency, and time-serving. 
 But Whittier was equal to his task. 
 
 " Deeply he felt ; and stern and strong 
 His soul spoke out against the wrong." 
 
 His cry of indignation tingled in many a slug- 
 gish ear : — 
 
 " What ho ! our countrymen in chains, 
 
 The whip on woman's shrinking flesh ? 
 Our soil yet reddening with the stains 
 
 Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh '! 
 What, mothers from their children riven ? 
 
 What, God's own image bought and sold, 
 Americans to market driven 
 
 And bartered as the brute for gold ? 
 
 " Oh rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth, 
 
 The gathered wrath of God and man. . . . 
 
 Hear ye no warnings in the air ? 
 Feel ye no earthquake underneath? 
 
 Up, up ! why will ye slumber, where 
 The sleeper only wakes in death ? " 
 
 When Calhoun's bill was passed excluding all 
 " papers written or printed, touching the subject 
 of slavery, from the United States post-office," he 
 was one of the few who saw and felt all that the 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 13 
 
 measure meant of future menace and of present 
 degradation, and his appeal rang forth : — 
 
 " Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging, 
 In God's name let us speak while there is time! 
 Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging. 
 Silence is crime ! " 
 
 When the Kebellion came, the North felt 
 dumbly at first, and grew soon to perceive 
 clearly that something deeper far than any ques- 
 tion of constitutional law or of nationality was 
 involved in the struggle, and that its real signifi- 
 cance was the irrepressible conflict between free- 
 dom and slavery. Thanks to the noble men and 
 women who had so long labored, apparently with 
 so little effect, to enlighten and arouse the con- 
 science of the nation, — thanks to the Society of 
 Friends, with its emphatic protest of visiting the 
 offense of slave-owning with excommunication, — 
 thanks to the faithful muse of Whittier, the seed 
 of love of freedom and hatred of slavery had 
 been widely sown; and though it had lain for 
 years idle in the ground, in the elemental con- 
 vulsion of those battle years, the rain and the 
 sunlight of heaven beat in upon it, and it germi- 
 nated and grew up and bore a rich and abundant 
 harvest. It was the anti-slavery sentiment of the 
 people that nerved the North up to the lavish 
 sacrifices of blood and treasure by which the vic- 
 tory was won. It was abhorrence of slavery 
 
14 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 which urged so many of the best and noblest of 
 our youth to the field, even, in not a few in- 
 stances, in spite of their abhorrence of war. But 
 even after the nation was fully aroused, — partly 
 by those earlier voices of its seers and prophets 
 to which it had paid so little heed at first, partly 
 by the stern shock of war, — the government 
 was hampered by considerations, foreign to such 
 grand times of crisis, of parchment legality and 
 constitutionality, and forbore to aim its weapons 
 directly at its real foe. Then, when Freedom, — 
 
 " Through weary day and night 
 But watched a vague and aimless fight 
 For leave to strike one blow aright," — 
 
 our poet's voice became the voice of the whole 
 people, as he demanded that we should " strike 
 at the cause as well as consequence ; " asking, in 
 words rugged and vigorous as those of Luther's 
 hymn, on which they are modeled, — 
 
 " What gives the wheat-field blades of steel ? 
 What points the rebel cannon ? 
 What sets the roaring rabble's heel 
 On the old star-spangled pennon ? 
 What breaks the oath 
 Of the men of the South ? 
 What whets the knife 
 For the Union's life ? 
 Hark to the answer : Slavery ! 
 
 " Then waste no blows on lesser foes 
 In strife unworthy freemen. 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 15 
 
 God lifts to-day the veil, and shows 
 The features of the demon. 
 O, North and South, 
 Its victims hoth, 
 Can you not cry 
 ' Let slavery die ! ' 
 And union find in freedom?" 
 
 And though the message of deliverance came at 
 last, — 
 
 " Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer. 
 
 But heralded hy roll of drums 
 
 On waves of battled-troubled air," — 
 
 at the end of that fierce war which had caused 
 so many heart-breaks, whose voice was so fit as 
 his to sound the nation's anthem of victory and 
 thanksgiving on the passage of the constitutional 
 amendment abolishing slavery ? 
 
 " It is done ! 
 
 Clang of bell and roar of gun 
 Send the tidings up and down. 
 
 How the belfries rock and reel ! 
 
 How the great guns, peal on peal, 
 Fling the joy from town to town ! 
 
 " Let us kneel ; 
 
 God's own voice is in that peal 
 And this spot is holy ground. 
 
 Lord, forgive us ! What are we 
 
 That our eyes this glory see. 
 That our ears have heard the sound ? 
 
 " Did we dare 
 In our agony of prayer 
 
16 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Ask for more than He has done ? 
 
 When was ever his right hand 
 
 Over any time or land 
 Stretched as now beneath the sun ? 
 
 " How they pale, 
 Ancient myth and song and tale, 
 
 In this wonder of our days. 
 When the cruel rod of war 
 Blossoms white with righteous law. 
 
 And the wrath of man is praise ! " 
 
 One of the grandest chapters of the history of 
 the human race was now closed, and Whittier's 
 name, which had appeared on many of its pre- 
 vious pages, was inscribed imperishably at the 
 end. Thank God, that the poet who in early 
 manhood had consecrated his life to the warfare 
 against a gigantic crime, and who had borne so 
 manfully persecution and scorn in the battle, was 
 permitted to see and to sing the victory which, 
 his verses had done so much to hasten and se- 
 cure ! 
 
 Nor has Whittier's muse been silent in other 
 philanthropic movements. It has attacked im- 
 prisonment for debt, the gallows, intemperance, 
 and war, and it has sent forth its notes of lofty 
 cheer to the reformers in England and the friends 
 of civil and religious liberty throughout the 
 world. Indeed, it is perhaps as a poet of reform 
 that Whittier has become most conspicuous, al- 
 though I do not think this his most essential 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 17 
 
 characteristic. His heart glows with sympathy 
 for the oppressed, the afflicted, the fallen, and the 
 outcast, and burns with 
 
 "A hate of tyranny intense 
 And hearty in its vehemence, 
 As if his brother's pain and sorrow were his own." 
 
 A large part of his verse has been prompted 
 by a sense of duty to his fellow-men. Grateful 
 for 
 
 " The great boon of living 
 In grand historic years, when Liberty 
 Had need of word and work," 
 
 with noble self-sacrifice he abandoned the flowery 
 paths of romance and the fields of art for the 
 rugged, and prosaic scenes where his brother- 
 men were toiling and suffering. Hear his own 
 words : — 
 
 "Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong 
 I leave the green and pleasant paths of song,^ 
 The mild, sweet words which soften and adorn, 
 For griding taunt and bitter laugh of scorn. 
 More dear to me some song of private worth, 
 Some homely idyl of my native North, 
 Some summer pastoral of her inland vales, 
 Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales, 
 Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails — 
 Lost barks, at parting hung from stem to helm 
 With prayers of love, like dreams on Virgil's elm." 
 
 But with what gain to himself as a man was 
 this self-renunciation, though haply with some 
 
18 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 loss to his achievement as an artist, — a loss, 
 however, not without compensations, even in a 
 literary and sesthetic sense. With what fires has 
 his verse been lit up by the vehemence of his 
 sense of wrong ; with what pathos has it been 
 softened by his compassion with human suflfer- 
 ing ! And the perpetuity of his name would be 
 secured — if it were not secure before — by his 
 connection with the anti-slavery struggle alone. 
 
 But Whittier has won brightest laurels in those 
 fields also to which poets confine themselves, who 
 think Pegasus out of place in the dusty paths of 
 politics and philanthropy, and excels as a poet 
 of nature, of legend, and of human life. His 
 verse flows now with a melody like that of a 
 mountain brook, now with full stream like a ma- 
 jestic river, now, especially in some of his reform 
 poems, like a hoarse torrent, and now with a 
 grandeur like that of a Hebrew prophet, as when 
 he invokes 
 
 " Our fathers' God, from out whose hand 
 The centuries fall like grains of sand." 
 
 It is lit up with the sweetest gleams of fancy, 
 and often ennobled with the grandest imagina- 
 tions. Nor is it lacking in an occasional touch of 
 genuine humor, as in " The Demon of the Study," 
 and " Abraham Morrison." 
 
 As a poet of nature, with how sure a hand has 
 Whittier painted our American scenery, partic- 
 ularly in New England and Eastern Pennsyl- 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 19 
 
 vania ; with what sure instinct, too, he seizes 
 from the descriptions of travelers the most char- 
 acteristic features of landscapes on which his own 
 eyes never rested ! No one has felt better than 
 he the power of nature to console and soothe, to 
 feed the heart with scenes of unfading beauty, 
 to teach the love of God. 
 
 " Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 
 We lapse into the glad release 
 Of Nature's own exceeding peace," — 
 
 as he leads us beside " The Lake of the North- 
 land," or we breathe with him the air of the early 
 dawu as he departs : — 
 
 " Fair scenes ! whereto the Day and Night 
 Make rival love, I leave ye soon, 
 What tiujie before the eastern light 
 The pale ghost of the setting moon 
 
 " Shall hide beyond yon rooky spines, 
 
 And the young archer, Morn, shall break 
 His arrows on the mountain pines, 
 And, golden-sandaled, walk the lake." 
 
 How well he paints the transfiguring of the 
 mountain rock in the sunset light, and shows the 
 permanence of the lessons which nature has for 
 the soul, in his " Sunset on the Bearcamp " : — 
 
 " Touched by a light that hath no name, 
 A glory never sung, 
 Aloft on sky and mountain wall 
 Are God's great pictures hung. 
 
20 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 How changed the summitB vast and old ! 
 
 No longer granite-browed, 
 They melt in rosy mist ; the rock 
 
 Is softer than the cloud ; 
 The valley holds its breath ; no leaf 
 
 Of all its elms is twirled ; 
 The silence of eternity 
 
 Seems falling on the world. 
 
 " "What unseen altar crowns the hills 
 
 That reach up stair on stair ? 
 What eyes look through, what white wings fan 
 
 Those purple veils of air ? 
 "What Presence from the heavenly heights 
 
 To those of earth stoops down ? 
 Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods 
 
 On Ida's snowy crown. 
 
 " Slow fades the vision of the sky, 
 
 The golden water pales, 
 And over all the valley-land 
 
 A gray-winged vapor sails. 
 I go the common way of all ; 
 
 The sunset fires will burn. 
 The flowers will blow, the river flow, 
 
 "When I no more return. 
 
 " No whisper from the mountain pine 
 
 Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
 The stranger, treading where I trod, 
 
 Of him who loved them well. 
 But beauty seen is never lost, 
 
 God's colors all are fast ; 
 The glory of this subset heaven 
 
 Into my soul has passed, — 
 A sense of gladness unconfined 
 
 To mortal date or clime ; 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 21 
 
 As the soul liveth, it shall live 
 
 Beyond the years of time. 
 Beside the mystic asphodels 
 
 Shall bloom the home-blown flowers, 
 •And new horizons flush and glow 
 
 With sunset hues of ours." 
 
 How well put the lesson, in " The Seeking of 
 the Waterfall," that — 
 
 " Every wish for better things 
 An undreamed beauty nearer brings ! " 
 
 How beautiful those lines to Avis Keene, on 
 receiving from her a basket of sea-mosses — (it is 
 a great pleasure to all who knew that noble and 
 large-minded woman to see her name forever as 
 sociated with such sweet and lofty verse) — teach-, 
 ing from ocean moss, — 
 
 " The many colored skies, 
 The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies, 
 The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings 
 The tropic sunshine from its golden wings. 
 The brightness of the human countenance. 
 Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance, 
 That beauty, in and of itself, is good," — 
 
 and that, — 
 
 " Evermore, 
 On sky, and wave, and shore. 
 An all-pervading beauty seems to say : 
 God's love and power are one." 
 
 The eye that looks so fondly upon nature 
 dwells with a kindred insight upon the beauties 
 
22 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 of art. I have always admired Whittier's charac- 
 terizations of Eaphael's pictures : — 
 
 " There drooped thy more than mortal face, 
 Mother, beautiful and mild. 
 Enfolding, in one dear embrace. 
 Thy Saviour and thy Child ! 
 
 " The rapt brow of the desert John ; 
 The awful glory of that day 
 When all the Father's brightness shone 
 Through manhood's veil of clay. 
 
 " And, midst gray prophet forms, and wild, 
 Dark visions of the days of old, 
 How sweetly woman's beauty smiled 
 Through locks of brown and gold ! " 
 
 For a broad, general classification, we may re- 
 fer Whittier's poems not comprised in the two 
 classes already named to the title, "Poems of Hu- 
 man Life." Among these, his historical and leg- 
 endary poems are masterpieces of their kind, and 
 most valuable records of our early history. How 
 much more truthful and more vivid- is our idea of 
 our colonial times, of the Indians and their ways, 
 of the persecution of the Quakers, the witchcraft 
 delusion, the early settlers of New England and 
 Pennsylvania, than it would be without our poet's 
 charming verses ! 
 
 His ballads are particularly admirable ; indeed, 
 he is the foremost ballad-writer of our day. It is 
 no easy thing to write a good ballad. It requires 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 23 
 
 the qualities of a good story-teller together with 
 poetic grace and inspiration ; a union of direct- 
 ness, simplicity, and strength, of picturesqueness 
 and rapid movement, which seems denied to most 
 of our modern writers. Several of Whittier's 
 ballads will always be counted in the first class of 
 poems of this kind. In clear, bold strokes he 
 paints the characters and the scene, and brings 
 them living before you with a Homeric simplic- 
 ity and picturesqueness of style, directness, and 
 vigor. " Barclay of Ury," " Skipper Ireson's Ride," 
 « Cassandra Southwick," " Kathleen," " The Witch 
 of Wenham," and " The Exiles," are signal exam- 
 ples of the success of our poet as a ballad maker. 
 Of a kindred excellence are Whittier's narra- 
 tive poems. Indeed, the line is sometimes a hard 
 one to draw between the narrative poem and the 
 ballad proper. The ballad is lyric ; the narrative 
 poem (though often short) is epic ; the ballad is 
 directer and often simpler in its story-telling, and 
 it does not stay for reflection or moralizing, unless 
 in the simplest way, as in that exquisite change 
 in the refrain of the " Skipper's Ride," " Poor 
 Find Oirson." Whittier's narratives, however, all 
 have the life - likeness and vigor of the ballad. 
 In these verses, how some noble man or woman, 
 with his noble deed, stands out immortal ! Bar- 
 bara Frietchie snatching the banner from its 
 broken staff and waving it in the face of the 
 rebel horde, and crying, — 
 
24 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 " Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 
 But spare your country's flag,'' — 
 
 and the quick response from the noble heart of 
 Stonewall Jackson to her noble deed ; Abraham 
 Davenport, — 
 
 "Erect, self-poised, a nigged face, half seen 
 Against the background of unnatural dark," — 
 
 with his " Bring in the candles ! " Nauhaught, 
 the deacon, saying, " Who hath lost aught to- 
 day ? " and " Yea, in God's name I take it, with 
 a poor man's thanks." In rnany^ other poems 
 Whittier's wonderful gift of painting persons and 
 characters appears. ' The memorial verses, in 
 which he has enshrined the memory of so many 
 of his friends, abound in happy touches which 
 perpetuate their traits. He has made large inci- 
 dental contributions to the biography and history 
 both of earlier times and our own. Lincoln's 
 " sad eyes," " worn frame," and " care-lined face," 
 live on his canvas. Webster stands there, not 
 only in " Ichabod," that sternest, saddest rebuke 
 that poet ever penned, but also where Whittier 
 has gladly recognized in him so much that was 
 good and great, in " The Lost Occasion " : — 
 
 " With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, 
 With all the massive strength that fills 
 His home horizon's granite hills. 
 With rarest gifts of heart and head 
 From manliest stock inherited. 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 25 
 
 New England's stateliest type of man, 
 In port and speech Olympian ; " 
 
 Sumner, too : — 
 
 "Lifted, like Saul, above the crowd, 
 Upon whose kingly forehead fell 
 The first sharp bolt of slavery's cloud ; " 
 
 to whom when God's voice came, — 
 
 " ' Forego thy dreams of lettered ease. 
 
 Put thou the scholar's promise by. 
 The rights of man are more than these,' 
 
 He heard and answered, ' Here am I.' 
 How felt the greed of gold and place. 
 
 The venal crew that schemed and planned, 
 The fine scorn of that haughty face. 
 
 The spurning of that bribeless hand ! 
 Proud was he ? If his presence kept 
 
 Its grandeur whereso'er he trod. 
 As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped 
 
 The hero and the demigod. 
 None failed at least to reach his ear. 
 
 Nor want nor woe appealed in vain ; " 
 
 Rantoul stands out on that canvas ; and Dr. Howe, 
 " a knight like Bayard ; " and William Francis 
 Bartlett, — 
 
 " Whose failing hand the olive bore. 
 Whose dying lips forgave ; " 
 
 and Joseph Sturge, ^- 
 
 " Tender as woman ; manliness and meekness 
 In him were so allied, 
 That they who judged him by his strength or weakness 
 Saw but a single side ; " 
 
26 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 and William Lloyd Garrison, — 
 
 " Not for thyself, but for the slave 
 
 Thy words of thunder shook the world ; 
 No selfish griefs or hatred gave 
 
 The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled. 
 
 "From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 
 We heard a tender undersong ; 
 Thy very wrath from pity grew, 
 
 From love of man thy hate of wrong." 
 
 Whittier's ideal creations have a similar life- 
 likeness. I would cite as examples, " The Hench- 
 man," and "The Knight of St. John." 
 
 In " Snow-Bound " and " The Pennsylvania 
 Pilgrim," American literature boasts its two best 
 pastorals. They, too, are of great historical as 
 well as literary value. In " Snow-Bound " is en- 
 shrined the memory of the best days and the gen- 
 uine features of New England; the days when 
 wars with Indian, witch, and red-coat had ceased, 
 and Peace brooded over all her fields ; the days 
 when New England was still New England. The 
 scene was one of those country farm-houses which 
 were scattered over the land, inhabited by people 
 sturdy, industrious. God-fearing, benevolent,' in- 
 telligent ; people who, though having few books, 
 were not without glimpses of the lore of Greece 
 and Eome, and of that great world, the echo of 
 whose roar fell gently at their feet. Very dear 
 to the hearts of all those whose childhood and 
 youth were passed in a similar home, very pre- 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 27 
 
 cious in all time to come as a picture of rural life 
 in the good old days, are the descriptions here 
 given of the " nightly chores " about the house 
 and barn,- the old kitchen bursting into rosy 
 bloom as the huge fire is lighted in its wide chim- 
 ney, the crane and hooks and the Turks' heads 
 on the andirons glowing in the blaze, the family 
 gathered around the clean-winged hearth, the 
 house-dog on his paws outspread, and the cat 
 dozing before the fire, while 
 
 "The mug of cider simmered slow, 
 The apples sputtered in a row, 
 And, close at hand, the basket stood 
 With nuts from brown October's wood ; " 
 
 of the love for each other of the members of that 
 household gathered around that hearth j of the 
 intelligent visitors who enlivened their winter 
 evenings ; of the weekly visit of the newspaper ; 
 and then of wintry scenes : the winds that roared, 
 the snow that sifted through the wall and piled 
 up its drifts without, the tunneled pathway dug 
 through it to the barn, and the neighbors turning 
 out with their oxen to break the road. 
 
 " From scenes like these " New England's " grandeur springs, 
 That makes her loved at home, revered abroad." 
 
 A similar service is rendered to Eastern Penn- 
 sylvania in the lifelike and beautiful descriptions 
 in the " Pennsylvania Pilgrim," both of her scen- 
 ery and of her early Quaker and German settlers. 
 
28 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 a people than whom none in the early annals of 
 America is more worthy of lasting and loving 
 commemoration. 
 
 " The Songs of Labor," which also belong to 
 the poiems of Human Life, recognize the dignity 
 of toil, and show our poet's quick sympathy with 
 every mode of life and form of occupation, — 
 
 " Haply from them the toiler, bent 
 Above his forge or plough may gain 
 A manlier spirit of content, 
 And feel that life is wisest spent 
 Where the strong working hand makes strong the working 
 brain. 
 
 "The doom which to the guilty pair 
 Without the walls of Eden came, 
 Transforming sinless ease to care 
 And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
 The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame. 
 
 "A blessing now, a curse no more; 
 Since He, whose name we breathe with awe. 
 The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
 A poor man toiling with the poor, 
 In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law." 
 
 I come now to what I regard as the noblest 
 fruit of Whittier's muse, deepest of all his strains, 
 dearest to the thoughtful heart, his verses of 
 faith, and aspiration, and trust, — those songs of 
 the spirit which could flow only from a soul which 
 through deepest experience, through honor and 
 dishonor, through evU report and good report, 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 29 
 
 through sorrow and temptation and trialj had at- 
 tained at last to peace with itself and its Maker, 
 the peace that passeth understanding, the token 
 of a life hid with Christ in God. Let me read 
 some of these verses, — verses to which any words 
 of criticism or of exposition would be but an in- 
 jury. 
 
 " I mourn no more my vanished years ; 
 Beneath a tender rain, 
 An- April rain of smiles and tears, 
 My heart is young again. 
 
 " No longer forward or behind 
 I look in hope or fear ; 
 But, grateful, take the good I find, 
 The best of now and here. 
 
 "The airs of spring may never play 
 Among the ripening corn, 
 Nor freshness of the flowers of May 
 Blow through the autumn morn ; 
 
 "Tet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 
 Through fringed lids to heaven, 
 And the pale aster in the brook 
 Shall see its image given ; 
 
 " The woods shall wear their robes of praise. 
 The south wind softly sigh. 
 And sweet, calm days in golden haze, 
 Melt down the amber sky. 
 
 "Enough that blessings undeserved 
 Have marked my erring track ; 
 
30 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, 
 His chastening turned me back ; 
 
 "That care and trial seem at last, 
 Through memory's sunset air, 
 Like mountain ranges overpast, 
 In purple distance fair ; 
 
 " That all the jarring notes of life 
 
 Seem blending in a psalm, 
 
 And all the angles of its strife 
 
 Slow rounding into calm. 
 
 "And so the shadows fall apart, 
 And so the west winds play ; 
 And all the windows of my heart 
 I open to the day." 
 
 And that kindred strain : — 
 
 " I dimly guess from blessings known, 
 Of greater out of sight ; 
 And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 
 His judgments, too, are right. 
 
 "I long for household voices gone. 
 For vanished smiles I long; 
 But God hath led my dear ones on, 
 And He can do no wrong. 
 
 "No offering of my own I have. 
 Nor works my faith to prove ; 
 I can but give the gifts He gave, 
 And plead his love for love. 
 
 " And so beside the silent sea 
 I wait the muffled oar; 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 31 
 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 " I know not where his islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
 And again, of " Our Master " : — 
 
 " In joy of inward peace, or sense 
 Of sorrow over sin, 
 He is his own best evidence. 
 His witness is within. 
 
 "No fable old, nor mystic lore. 
 Nor dream of bards and seers ; 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 Of the oblivious years, — 
 
 " But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 A present help is He ; 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 And love its Galilee. 
 
 " O Lord and Master of us all ! 
 Whate'er our name or sign. 
 We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call. 
 We test our lives by Thine. 
 
 "We faintly hear, we dimly see. 
 In differing phrase we pray; 
 But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 
 The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 
 
 " The homage that we render Thee 
 Is still our Father's own. 
 
32 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Nor jealous claim or rivalry 
 Divides the Cross and Throne. 
 
 " Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
 What may Thy service be ? — 
 Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
 But simply following Thee; 
 
 " Thy litanies, sweet offices 
 Of love and gratitude ; 
 Thy sacramental liturgies. 
 The joy of doing good." 
 
 Those verses shine like the stars of heaven from 
 the depths of a serene calm. But at the same 
 time they bring very near our own hearts the 
 heart from which they flow; and while they 
 , heighten our admiration of the poet, they make 
 us know better, and love more warmly, the man. 
 
 And how pleasant are all the director glimpses 
 he gives us of himself and his surroundings ; the 
 portraits of his family in " Snow-Bound " and else- 
 where : the father, prompt and decisive, wasting 
 no breath when any work was to be done, but 
 full of interesting talk at the fireside of New Eng- 
 land tale and legend, and of his own ride on 
 Memphremagog's wooded side, or adventures with 
 the trappers, the Indians, and the French ; the 
 dear mother, — 
 
 " Recalling in her fitting phrase, 
 So rich and picturesque and free 
 (The common, un-rhymed poetry) 
 Of simple life and country ways). 
 The story of her early days," — 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 33 
 
 or, with look more grave and soberer tone, telling 
 some tale from Sewell's History or Chalkley's 
 Journal, — a woman as ready to give her nights 
 to the needs of some poor sick neighbor as to at- 
 tend to her own household during the day ; and 
 that youngest and dearest, the sister, " lifting her 
 large, sweet, asking eyes," — she who appears so 
 often on the poet's page, so near and dear, both 
 before and after she passed beyond the veil, of 
 whose companionship in his studies (is it not?) 
 he says : — . 
 
 " Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon 
 
 O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, 
 The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, 
 
 Or sound of flute o'er a moonlight sea, 
 Or the low, soft music perchance which seems 
 To float through the slumbering singer's dreams, — 
 
 " So sweet, so dear, is the silvery tone 
 
 Of her in whose features I sometimes look, 
 As I sit at eve by her side alone. 
 
 And we read in turns from the self-same book — 
 Some tale, perhaps, of the olden time. 
 Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. 
 
 " Then when the story is one of woe, — 
 
 Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon bar, — 
 Her blue eyes glisten with tears, and low 
 
 Her voice sinks down like a moan afar ; 
 And I seem to hear the prisoner's wail, 
 And his face looks on me, worn and pale. 
 
 " And when she reads some merrier song, 
 Her voice is glad as an AprU bird's, 
 3 
 
34 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 And when the tale is of war and wrong, 
 A trumpet's summons is in her words, 
 And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, 
 And see the tossing of plame and spear." 
 
 But how we cherish every ghmpse he gives us 
 of himself, especially that idyl of his boyhood, 
 " In School Time," which, by the way, Matthew 
 Arnold lately praised for " the inestimable virtue 
 of concreteness " : — 
 
 " ' I 'm sorry that I spelt the word, 
 I hate to go above you. 
 Because ' — the brown eyes lower fell — 
 ' Because, you see, I love you.' " 
 
 Or when he tells us of his poetic visions, 
 how, — 
 
 "While he wrought with strenuous will 
 The work his hands had found to do, 
 He heard the fitful music still 
 
 Of winds that out of dreamland blew. 
 The din about him could not drown 
 What the strange voices whispered down ; 
 Along his task-field weird processions swept, 
 The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped. 
 
 " The common air was thick with dreams, — 
 He told them to the toiling crowd ; 
 Such music as the woods and streams 
 
 Sang in his ear he sang aloud ; 
 In still, shut bays, on windy capes. 
 He heard the call of beckoning shapes. 
 And, as the gray old shadows prompted him. 
 To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends 
 grim." 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 35 
 
 And how delightful the glimpses he gives us 
 of his cherished friends : Emerson, who " might 
 Plato's banquet grace," — 
 
 " Shrewd mystic, who upon the back 
 Of his Poor Richard's Almanac 
 Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream, 
 
 Links Menu's age of thought to Fulton's age of steam ; " 
 
 and Bayard Taylor, and Sumner, and the Carey 
 sisters, and Agassiz, and Longfellow, and Fields ; 
 and, not least, though less renowned, that noble 
 old teacher of Providence School, Moses C. Cart- 
 land ; and he who, with Whittier, is still left us 
 from the great circle of our greatest bards, " Our 
 Autocrat " : — 
 
 " His laurels fresh from song and lay, 
 Romance, art, science, rich in all ! " 
 
 " Long may he live to sing for us 
 
 His sweetest songs at evening time. 
 And, like his Chambered Nautilus, 
 To holier heights of beauty climb ! " 
 
 I cannot refrain from reading a part of the 
 lines on " The Prayer of Agassiz " : — 
 
 " On the isle of Fenikese, 
 Ringed about by sapphire seas, 
 Fanned by breezes salt and cool. 
 Stood the Master with his school. 
 Over sails that not in, vain 
 "Wooed the west wind's steady strain, 
 
36 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Line of coast that low and far 
 Stretched its undulating bar, 
 "Wings aslant along the rim 
 Of the wares they stooped to skim, 
 Rock and isle and glistening bay. 
 Fell the beautiful white day. 
 
 " Said the Master to the youth : 
 'We have come in search of truth, ! 
 
 Trying with uncertain key 
 Door by door of mystery ; 
 We are reaching, through His laws, 
 To the garment-hem of Cause, 
 Him, the endless, unbegun, 
 The Unnamable, the One 
 Light of all our light the Source, 
 Life of life, and Force of force. 
 As with fingers of the blind. 
 We are groping here to find 
 What the hieroglyphics mean 
 Of the Unseen in the seen, 
 What the Thought which underlies 
 Nature's masking and disguise, 
 What it is that hides beneath 
 Blight and bloom and birth and death. 
 By past efforts unavailing. 
 Doubt and error, loss and failing, 
 Of our weakness made aware, 
 On the threshold of our task 
 Let us light and guidance ask, 
 Let us pause in silent prayer ! ' 
 
 " Then the Master in his place 
 Bowed his head a little space, 
 And the leaves, by soft airs stirred. 
 Lapse of wave, and cry of bird 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 37 
 
 Left the solemn hush unbroken 
 Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 
 While its wish, on earth unsaid, 
 Bose to heaven interpreted. 
 
 "Even the careless heart was moved. 
 And the doubting gave assent, 
 With a gesture reverent, 
 To the Master well-beloved. 
 As thin mists are glorified 
 By the light they cannot hide, 
 All who gazed upon him saw. 
 Through its veil of tender awe. 
 How his face was still uplit 
 By the old sweet look of it. 
 Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer. 
 And the love that casts out fear. 
 
 " Who the secret may declare 
 Of that brief, unuttered prayer? 
 Did the shade before him come 
 Of the inevitable doom. 
 Of the end of earth so near. 
 And Eternity's new year ? " 
 
 It is true eminently of Whittier, as it is of all 
 the members of that bright galaxy of American 
 authors to which he belongs, that in his works he 
 has always respected the limits of the moral law. 
 Herein our authors have been true artists as well 
 as true men. Nothing which is morally evil can 
 be admirable, either in nature or in art ; for that 
 which is morally evil is in itself unlovely and hid- 
 eous, and as repulsive to any true aesthetic sense 
 as it is revolting to sound moral feeling. But 
 
38 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Whittier is entitled to much more than the neg- 
 ative praise of avoiding the evil ; he has conse- 
 crated himself to the good. He has felt that the 
 bard is also the priest, the champion of God and 
 man. He knows that the divine afflatus, the in- 
 spired voice, have been given him for a holj pur- 
 pose, and that he holds them in trust. To that 
 trust, as to every other, he has been faithful ; 
 and now, in the most blest and the happiest part 
 of life, the long golden evening or the Indian 
 summer of a good man's days, the love of all the 
 good encircles him, and he has within him the 
 reward of a conscience void of oflFense. How 
 different this sweet and tranquil old age, how 
 different the strains of Whittier's " St. Martin's 
 Summer" and " My Psalm" from the premature 
 decay and the dismal wail of that brilliant man of 
 genius, Lord Byron, who on completing his thirty- 
 sixth year, a few days before he died, wrote these 
 words : — 
 
 " My days are in the yellow leaf ; 
 
 The flowers and fruits of love are gone; 
 The worm, the canker, and the grief 
 Are mine alone ! 
 
 " The I fire that on my bosom preys 
 Is lone as some volcanic isle ; 
 No torch is kindled at its blaze — 
 A funeral pile." 
 
 Compare with this sad confession our poet's 
 cheerful words : " I mourn no more my vanished 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 39 
 
 years ! " " The windows of my soul I throw wide 
 open to the sun." 
 
 Nature, says James Kussell Lowell, choosing 
 between the Puritan and the Quaker for her New 
 England poet, — and he seems to think that the 
 Dame was herein reduced to a hard alternative, 
 — chose the Quaker. It is an honorable title 
 which will cling to Whittier in distant genera- 
 tions — that of " The Quaker Poet." And if I am 
 not mistaken, some of the best characteristics 
 of our bard are derived from the gentle sect in 
 which he was reared, and which he so truly loves. 
 The meditative mind, the calm introspection, the 
 love of nature and the love of man, the native 
 refinement which seems inborn in Quaker blood 
 (and is so well described in Whittier's lines on 
 " The Friend's Burial " : — 
 
 " With her went a secret sense 
 Of all things sweet and fair, 
 And Beauty's gracious providence 
 Refreshed her unaware ; 
 
 " She kept her line of rectitude 
 With love's unconscious ease ; 
 Her kindly instincts understood 
 All gentle courtesies ; 
 
 "An inhorn charm of graciousness 
 Made sweet her smile and tone, 
 And glorified her farm-wife dress 
 With beauty not its own ; ") — 
 
 and the moral indignation launching words that 
 
40 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 are half battles against the wrong, and fighting 
 in the fierce but bloodless warfare of reform at 
 the same time that it rings the Christian bells of 
 peace : all these, so characteristic of Whittier, are 
 characteristic of the Friend. 
 
 It is in no narrow sectarian sense that I would 
 accept for our bard this title. There is something 
 broader and nobler in the essential spirit of Qua- 
 kerism than has ever yet been displayed on any 
 large stage. Hampered by narrow prejudices 
 which it inherited from Puritanism, driven by 
 persecution into exaggerated protests against the 
 ways of other branches of the church universal, 
 it has never done full justice to its inherent 
 Catholicity. 
 
 No other system of Christianity unites better 
 and reconciles better the conflicting tendencies 
 of Hellenism and Hebraism. Accepting and re- 
 vering the Bible, it respects and reveres also the 
 voice of God within the soul. The letter of the 
 book guards it from vagary and mysticism ; the 
 freshness of the spirit shields it from narrow in- 
 terpretations. The Society of Friends has always 
 shown a love of mental culture ; its spirit, if un- 
 hampered, would show that tendency in a much 
 greater degree. Puritanic Quakerism has not al- 
 ways smiled on Art ; but genuine Quakerism wel- 
 comes every form of Art whose influence is whole- 
 some, and through which breathes an effluence of 
 the Great Spirit, who speaks to his creatures in 
 
PRESIDENT CHASE'S ORATION. 41 
 
 Beauty as well as in Might. Who, then, is better 
 fitted for the sacred office of bard, than a true 
 son of that Society, who recognizes in the All 
 Father the ever-present Friend of his children, 
 speaking to them in all the lovely forms of nature, 
 inspiring all the lovely productions of art ; whose 
 Spirit is always lying close to our spirits, whom 
 we serve in renouncing self, defending the op- 
 pressed, or helping the wretched, and whom we 
 honor when we point out the beauty of his crea- 
 tions, whether in the outward universe, or in the 
 mind and heart and soul of man ? 
 
 But we will not claim for sect or party what 
 belongs to mankind. Whittier is ours ; but he is 
 no less the world's. As one of the world's poets, 
 as one of the world's benefactors, we enshrine 
 him to-day in our Valhalla. I congratulate this 
 noble school, its officers and students, both those 
 now here, taking part in a celebration which, for 
 the poet's sake, they will remember as long as 
 they live, and those who are yet unborn ; I con- 
 gratulate this cultured community and the friends 
 of good letters everywhere, on the acquisition of 
 this speaking and living likeness. I congratulate 
 ihe generous donor on his wise and happy choice 
 of a gift to give to this cherished seat of learning. 
 No words that have flowed from those lips, or 
 have been written by that hand, — no words that 
 shall come from them in the years which we hope 
 our Heavenly Father will still extend to our 
 
42 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 much-loved bard and friend, — no thought of his 
 heart, no act of his life, can ever inspire a regret 
 that he was singled out for this distinction. The 
 lessons which those pictured lips shall teach — let 
 us trust for centuries to come — to the young 
 lives flowing in and out before them as steadily 
 
 " As in broad Narragansett the tides come and go," 
 
 shall be lessons of purity, and nobleness, and 
 truth ; of love of nature, of love of literature and 
 art ; of hatred of every form of wrong ; of love 
 of man, of country, of liberty, and of God. And 
 as, from year to year, young men and maidens, 
 old men and matrons, shall gaze upon those eyes 
 glowing with intelligence and feeling, and those 
 features sensitive as the mimosa, but calmed by 
 the smile of God which rests upon them, many a 
 lip shall breathe the grateful benediction : — 
 
 " Blessings be with him, and undying praise. 
 Who gave us higher loves and nobler cares ! " 
 
 The orator's delivery was extremely graceful ; 
 his rendition of passages from the principal poems 
 of Whittier beautiful and felicitous. It was evi- 
 dent that in preparing his oration he had en- 
 tered heartily into the spirit which the necessities 
 of the occasion demanded. The audience was in 
 full sympathy with the speaker and very ap- 
 preciative. At 11.45 the oration was concluded 
 and then an adjournment was had until 2.30 
 o'clock. The school gave a dinner to its guests. 
 
ADDRESSES. 43 
 
 while Ardoene, the caterer, served dinner for 
 others. 
 
 In the afternoon there was a much larger at- 
 tendance than in the morning, Alumni Hall, as 
 well as the library, being completely filled. The 
 exercises opened with the singing of " Mark, the 
 Merry Elves of Fairy Land," by members of the 
 school. 
 
 ADDRESS OF AUGUSTINE JONES, PRINCIPAL OF 
 THE SCHOOL, ACCEPTING THE PORTRAIT. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, — It is my agreeable 
 duty, in the name of Friends' School, to receive 
 this portrait of John G. Whittier. It is forty-five 
 years since Charles F. Coffin, the donor of it, was 
 a pupil in the school. A little later, he was an 
 efficient member of its corps of teachers. He has 
 been during many years an active, earnest, and 
 faithful njember of the special committee having 
 the school in charge. And whatever success has 
 attended the school in recent years is due as 
 much to him as to any one of his worthy asso- 
 ciates. 
 
 But to crown all he has given us this beauti- 
 ful and lifelike picture. There is such " sweet 
 reasonableness " in the subject, time, and place 
 of this noble generosity, that its eternal fitness is 
 evident to all. A devoted personal friend and 
 ardent admirer of the poe^ he has entered into 
 this undertaking with all his heart. And he was, 
 
44 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 moreover, fortunate in his artist. We shall not 
 find in this countenance, approaching fourscore 
 years, all the fire of youth ; but we may behold 
 what is of far greater worth, the rich maturity of 
 ripe, full life and character. We have rounded 
 and perfected manhood. We have the repose 
 consequent upon a great life-work completed and 
 well done. Here the interior life, the soul, the 
 man, are revealed. This achievement still va,oxe 
 commands our grateful admiration because that 
 subtle spirit has so frequently baflSed the skill of 
 photographer and engraver, and so often eluded 
 the power of art. 
 
 Massachusetts occupied an enviable place in 
 the politics of the country and at the helm of 
 state during the last generation. It was because 
 she had men possessed of genius and conscience. 
 It was because she had a poet whose still small 
 voice of freedom stirred the popular l^eart and 
 summoned it to duty. But poetry was not his 
 only service. He had practical wisdom. He had 
 far-reaching prophetic insight into men and meas- 
 ures, and became, though half concealed by his 
 modesty, a guiding star in politics. 
 
 The beauty and glory of the homes, lakes, 
 rivers, and mountains of New England are en- 
 shrined in his verse, " As in their amber sweets 
 the smothered bees." Sir Philip Sidney says, 
 "Nature never set forth the earth in so rich 
 tapestry as divers poets have done." 
 
ADDRESSES. 45 
 
 The scenery of Scotland is full of enchantment, 
 but how much of it has come from the songs of 
 the Ploughman of Ayrshire, and from the genius 
 of Sir Walter Scott, the Wizard of the North. 
 
 " There is no glory in star or blossom, 
 Till looked on by a loving eye." 
 
 But above, beyond, and greater than all, how 
 the royal law of Scripture, " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself," runs like a golden thread 
 through all his work ! 
 
 Art is long. Many generations, we trust, will 
 enter into our labor, will be influenced by this 
 picture to emulate the noble life and character it 
 represents. The deathless singer and his imper- 
 ishable themes will live together. 
 
 KEMARKS BY OTHER FRIENDS. 
 
 Julia Ward Howe,^ being introduced, spoke sub- 
 stantially as follows : In the reading of the letters 
 which we have just heard, I see that prior engage- 
 ments have rendered it impossible for many of 
 the writers to be present. I had a mind to say 
 that my own engagements would make it impossi- 
 ble for me to come, yet I came. Napoleon, when 
 an officer said that a certain thing was impossible, 
 said, " Let me never hear that word again," and 
 it seems to me that we should put that word to 
 
 1 Julia Ward Howe was invited to speak early, as she was com- 
 pelled to leave, to meet another engagement. 
 
46 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 scorn. I feel it a favor to be able to come here 
 and pay honor to this dear, noble, illustrious man, 
 to whom we owe so much. I took pleasure this 
 morning in listening to the perfect account of the 
 life of Whittier, and it would seem superfluous for 
 me to attempt here to enlarge upon it. So I will 
 borrow something else, for I feel upon this occa- 
 sion the right to speak to the young people whose 
 faces before me are so bright and full of frankness. 
 Let me say what Whittier should be to the chil- 
 dren of the future. I could claim a grandmother's 
 right to speak to them, for the youngest are not 
 the least by any means. 
 
 We say of Sumner and Phillips, they were great 
 men. Of Whittier we need not say he was, — he 
 is a great poet. In the future it will be said that 
 he was a man supremely concerned for the public 
 good and for the welfare of the whole human race. 
 The lowest, the poorest, the meanest, the suflering 
 people, degraded not so much in their own per- 
 son, but in the feeling of the communities where 
 they were, — it was for these that he made his 
 voice ring ; it was in their behalf that he chal- 
 lenged public criticism, and in this good work he 
 became a man of power and of might. He was 
 no fighter in the world's sense of the word. It 
 was said of Charles Sumner that on one occasion 
 some one asked his mother why he did not carry 
 a pistol with him to Washington. His mother 
 replied: "What would Charles do with a pistol? 
 
ADDRESSES. 47 
 
 He would shoot himself!" [Laughter.] Neither 
 did Whittier have -that military spirit. He ex- 
 erted another and more potent influence ; a power 
 of deep Christian sweetness of soul ; and it was 
 with this that he conquered and harmonized op- 
 posing forces by striking that key-note which 
 other people have been obliged to come to. I 
 wish to mention another thing which was brought 
 forward this morning, and which struck me with 
 very much force> and that was his generous re- 
 gard for the men of his times. He had not the 
 envious desire to keep others back. We shall 
 remember him in this magnanimity, as taking 
 along with him all the great souls of his day, and 
 remember it of him as long as memory lasts. 
 
 My young friends, this may seem like an old 
 woman's tale. Concern yourselves largely for the 
 public good. Exert that noble courage which 
 exists in all. Find it, keep it, and serve those 
 who need your services most. 
 
 As I sat here this morning and listened to the 
 orator's description of the coming of the poets, I 
 seemed to see that procession come sweeping in. 
 What kings ever made such records as these men, 
 who have left behind them names honored and 
 revered ? And not the least in this procession, 
 as it metaphorically swept through the hall, was 
 Whittier. This one, I thought, has come to stay. 
 [Applause.] 
 
48 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 President Thomas Chase, the orator of the 
 morning, then said : — 
 
 I have taken up enough of your time already, 
 and it was my intention to beg you to allow me 
 to sit in silence this afternoon, listening with you 
 to the many distinguished speakers who are as- 
 sembled on this platform and whom we all want 
 to hear. But the address we have just heard 
 from Julia Ward Howe suggests to me a single 
 remark. 
 
 In choosing extracts from Whittier to read to 
 you I felt an embarrassment — the embarrassment 
 of riches — from the fact that there was so much 
 more that it would be well to read than the time 
 would allow. Among the pieces which I wished 
 to quote were those beautiful lines on Dr. Howe, 
 " The Hero," beginning, — 
 
 " Oil for a knight like Bayard, 
 Without reproach or fear ! " 
 
 and if I had known that " the hero's " distin- 
 guished wife would be present, I should certainly 
 have introduced them in the oration. If any of 
 these boys and girls are not already familiar with 
 that delightful poem, I hope you will become so. 
 I hope you will commit it to memory. And I 
 hope you will all remember, as one of the most 
 pleasant incidents of this very interesting occa- 
 sion, the address you have heard from Mrs. Howe, 
 the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." 
 She is a woman of genius, a woman of every social 
 
ADDRESSES. 49 
 
 grace, and an eloquent woman, as we have all 
 had evidence ; but while she is highly regarded 
 on these grounds she is much more to be honored 
 because, like Whittier and her heroic husband, 
 she has consecrated all her gifts and graces to the 
 service of God and her fellow-men. This is al- 
 ways the highest distinction. I commend her ex- 
 ample for imitation, as we both have commended 
 the example of Whittier, to you and to us all. 
 
 EzEKiEL G. Robinson, D. D., the eminent Presi- 
 dent of Brown University, spoke as follows, with 
 a feeling and sympathetic delivery that will long 
 be remembered : — 
 
 It is now more than thirty years since I first 
 learned to admire the poems of Whittier. My 
 first real acquaintance with his poetry began on 
 this wise : A lawyer friend, who had been bred a 
 Quaker, whose instinctive sympathies were with 
 all the oppressed, and who had achieved an hon- 
 orable distinction in one of the larger cities of 
 a " Border State " as the defender of friendless 
 fugitives from slavery, said to me one day : " Are 
 you acquainted with the poems of John G. Whit- 
 tier ? " My reply was, that I knew of him only 
 as the author of certain fugitive anti-slavery po- 
 ems that I had seen in the newspapers. A few 
 days later he laid on the centre-table of the draw- 
 ing-room of my home a volume of his collected 
 poems. From that day to this I have been an 
 
50 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 admiring reader of whatever of his has come 
 within my reach. 
 
 And what he writes for poetry is poetry. It 
 is not a mere rhythmic arrangement of words, 
 a jingle of rhymes, but a real revelation of the 
 hidden beauty of nature and of human life. His 
 earliest pieces are not, to my mind, his best. 
 The moral and political ends they aimed at were 
 of the noblest ; but the aims were too manifest 
 and too directly pursued to admit of the highest 
 or the most easy and graceful flights. When 
 verse is made the vehicle either of homily or of 
 invective, the muse rarely soars to her highest or 
 sings in her purest tones. But John G. Whittier, 
 whatever his theme, could never be other than a 
 genuine poet. 
 
 Had he written no more than " Among the 
 Hills," and the winter idyl, " Snow-Bound," these 
 would have sufl&ced to keep his memory green 
 so long as the English language shall last. Both 
 these are spontaneous overflows of the true po- 
 etic soul. And they are also realistic in the high- 
 est and best sense of that term. Absolutely free 
 from every trace of the sensual and even sen- 
 suous realism of an existing popular school, they 
 yet are strictly true to every pure and noble 
 aspect under which Nature presents herself He 
 never permits his idealism to exaggerate the real 
 coloring of what he sees, but his keen vision 
 everywhere detects and discloses what prosaic 
 
ADDRESSES. 51 
 
 eyes, without his aid, might never discover. He 
 constantly helps us 
 
 "To find in all that meets our eyes 
 The freshness of a glad surprise." 
 
 He has depicted the coming on, the progress, and 
 the conclusion of a New England snow-storm in 
 the country, with a literalness and a minuteness 
 of description that could hardly be surpassed, and 
 yet with a fullness and richness of poetic spirit 
 that no one has yet equaled. 
 
 And Whittier is preeminently the poet of New 
 England. No one has yet equaled him in his 
 appreciation and picturing of New England scen- 
 ery, of New England life, of New England 
 thought, and of New England love of liberty and 
 truth. And he is also distinctively an American 
 poet, while at the same time none the less the 
 poet of Nature, of Christianity, and of Human- 
 ity. 
 
 Associating in past years with men of every 
 shade of belief and of no belief, he has yet kept 
 untarnished the beauty and the simplicity of his 
 own Christian faith. For unbelief he has a pity- 
 ing eye, singing mournfully, — 
 
 "Alas for him who never sees 
 The stars shine through his cypress trees." 
 
 Tolerant of other creeds than his own, he tells us 
 in words worthy to be put where every eye can 
 read them : — 
 
52 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 "All hearts confess the saints elect 
 Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
 And melt not in an acid sect 
 
 The Christian pearl of charity ! " 
 
 And in what ■worthier place could the portrait 
 of Whittier hang than in this school-room, where 
 for generations to come the young who shall 
 gather here to fit themselves for life shall look 
 on it, while they repeat and re-repeat his verses ? 
 It will give something of the emphasis of the liv- 
 ing tongue to his written words. Who can tell 
 what inspiration to high endeavor and noble liv- 
 ing will be looked into their young hearts from 
 the^ speaking eyes of this canvas ? May the youth 
 now here not have long to wait before the orig- 
 inal of the portrait shall, himself stand here, giv- 
 ing the benediction of his living presence and 
 receiving some of the grateful honor all our 
 hearts would gladly render him. 
 
 Colonel William Goddaed, A. M., a distin- 
 guished citizen of Providence, and Trustee of 
 Brown University, said : — 
 
 A scholar sat in his lonely chamber, sur- 
 rounded by the yellow books, which were his 
 sole companions, — his single ray of sunshine. 
 Early weary of the ceaseless strife of life, and 
 shrinking from contact with human suffering, he 
 had sought peace and benumbing quiet, in place 
 of the struggle for the victories of truth and 
 right. 
 
ADDRESSES. 53 
 
 And now he thought of the high hopes and 
 the confident dreams of his youth, and sadly 
 wondered what manner of man he wou^d have 
 been, if only he had fought and won the battles 
 for which he was once so eager — if only his lips 
 had ever sung the brave songs of youth. As his 
 clouded fancy stretched away from the narrow 
 walls of his little life to the wide scenes pictured 
 by his youthful imagination, there came to him a 
 consciousness of a visible presence, whose grave 
 eyes held for him both love and pity, and whose 
 face, silent and solemn, looked through the long 
 and noble lines of age with unwandering stead- 
 fastness and exhaustless pathos. And who was 
 this voiceless stranger, coming unbidden to dis- 
 tract his reveries and puzzle his imagination ? 
 Long and silently he looked upon the folded 
 hands and into the depths of the passionless 
 eyes, and slowly came the conviction of his iden- 
 tity ! 
 
 With all his soul he knew then that this was — 
 
 " Himself that never was, himself alas, that could not be ! " 
 
 The portrait upon which I have looked to-day 
 with so much interest recalls to me this poetic 
 legend. In those deep and mournful eyes I seem 
 to see something of reproach for wasted oppor- 
 tunities and purposeless endeavors. The great 
 gifts which glorify the life of Whittier are indeed 
 denied to us, but his consecration of all his pow- 
 
54 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 ers to His service from whom they come, to the 
 relief of sorrowing humanity, and to the noble 
 cause of freedom, how little we have ever imi- 
 tated ! And it is because our feet have been so 
 lagging in that service to which he devoted his 
 long and illustrious life ; because we have been 
 content to let other arms than ours wield the 
 blades sharpened against oppression and wrong, 
 that his image speaks to us of what we might 
 have been. 
 
 His task has been — 
 
 " The poor to feed, the lost to seek, 
 To proffer life to death, 
 Help to the erring — to the weak, 
 The strength of his own faith." 
 
 " To plead the captive's right, remove 
 The sting of hate from law, 
 But soften in the fire of love 
 The hardened steel of war." 
 
 It is meet that we should place his image 
 upon these walls, which echo with the maxims 
 that have guided his noble life and sustained him 
 in the dread hours of despondency. It is well 
 that from his face and example the young and 
 the old should learn the true source of the in- 
 spiration which kindled his song to accents of 
 highest devotion, and make him poet, priest, 
 and prophet. 
 
 Of Whittier's rank among contemporary po- 
 ets, I will not pause to speak. From other and 
 
ADDRESSES. 55 
 
 wiser lips you have heard the language of affec- 
 tionate eulogy and discriminating criticism. I 
 think his poem, "My Psalm," will solace the 
 weary hearts of men and quicken their flagging 
 purposes, until the English language ceases to be 
 a living tongue. 
 
 In the tributes paid to his character and ge- 
 nius, in the grateful appreciation of his services 
 to humanity, "in man's highest homage earned, 
 and woman's noblest love," Whittier must taste 
 the sweetness of an almost posthumous fame. 
 And still, laus Deo, he live^to charm us with the 
 melody of his song ; to instruct us by the worthi- 
 ness of his life. 
 
 We send him our warmest greetings, and we 
 join in the fervent prayer that his days may be 
 long in the land that his voice has helped to re- 
 deem from the curse of slavery, and that is so 
 much the richer for all that he has given to it. 
 
 " Age hath its opportunities no less than youth itself, though 
 
 in another dress ; 
 And as the evening twilight fades away, the sky is filled with 
 
 stars, invisible by day." 
 
 John L. Lincoln, LL. D., Professor of the Latin 
 Language and Literature in Brown University, 
 said : — 
 
 Mr. Principal, — I will rise in response to your 
 kind call, if only to express my thanks to my 
 friend, the donor of this portrait, for making this 
 delightful occasion, and to yourself for inviting 
 
56 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 me to attend it. It is a rare pleasure to be pres- 
 ent at such a literary gathering, to see unveiled 
 to view the portrait of a gifted and good man, 
 and to hear testimonies to his genius and worth 
 from so many distinguished persons. You are 
 having here for Whittier, in the house of his 
 friends, a veritable jubilee time ; for it is now 
 about fifty years since he first began to attract 
 notice by verses contributed to the papers of his 
 native town of Haverhill. And as we recall to- 
 day his breathing thoughts and burning words in 
 rebuke of human bondage and in defense of hu- 
 man freedom, we remember too that a chief dis- 
 tinction of the old Jewish jubilee year was the 
 liberation of all the slaves of the land. Nothing 
 in all Whittier's fame and character is more dis- 
 tinctively his, than — 
 
 " A hate of tyranny intense, 
 And hearty in its vehemence," — 
 
 which he himself says, in one of his proems, is 
 shown in his poetry ; and all will bear him wit- 
 ness, as he there also declares, that if to him be- 
 long — 
 
 "Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 
 
 Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song," — 
 
 yet, like them, he has laid his " best gifts " on " the 
 shrine of Freedom." He is a writer in whom one 
 hardly knows whether to admire more the virtues 
 of the man, or the genius of the poet. For my- 
 self, however, I always think of him first, as a 
 
ADDRESSES. 57 
 
 thoughtful, earnest, and good ■ man, his large hu- 
 man heart always strong and warm in throb- 
 bing, living sympathy with all that touches the 
 weal or the woe of mankind ; then as having in 
 his nature a poet's soul, sensitively alive to all 
 sweet and noble impulses from nature or from 
 the life of men, and as possessing too that gift of 
 just and musical expression, which enters largely 
 into the endowment of a poetic nature. Whit- 
 tier's expression is always simple, natural, and 
 truthful, sometimes intensely energetic, often most 
 touching in its tender pathos, and not unfre- 
 quently it rises to the grand. The energy of his 
 language is sometimes even terrible in its tone 
 and force, when he is rebuking tyranny and op- 
 pression. Indeed some of his poetry, in his 
 " Voices of Freedom," shows that he had a power 
 of withering invective, which, under the impulse 
 of moral indignation, he could use with enormous 
 eflfect. You spoke, sir, just now, of one of Whit- 
 tier's friends, as " a war-horse in the contest for 
 freedom." I think we must count in Whittier, 
 too, as one of the war-horses ; and his charges 
 were sometimes impetuous, and did fearful exe- 
 cution in the ranks of the enemy. But Whittier 
 was not only the poet of freedom, nor only the 
 poet of humanity, counting " nothing foreign to 
 him, which was truly human." I love to think 
 of him as a New England poet. How familiar to 
 his poet eye and soul, as also to his heart, was all 
 
58 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 that belongs to New England scenery ; and with 
 what truth to Nature has he delineated its fea- 
 tures in his poetry, its hills and meadows, its 
 streams and forests, its farm-houses and old home- 
 steads, with their barns and orchards, and all else 
 he had so often looked upon in " the dear old 
 landscapes of his boyhood ! " And not only the 
 outward scenes of his native New England has he 
 described in his verse ; with like truth to reality 
 has he pictured its interiors too, the homes and 
 hearths of New England, and all the checkered 
 human life, albeit often so homely, that went on 
 there, and which he knew and remembered so 
 well. In that idyl of " Snow-Bound," with what 
 a loving memory, quickened by a warm Chris- 
 tian faith, has he recalled and vividly imaged 
 the forms and characters of his own home and 
 kindred, and with a poet's touch has shaped and 
 rounded into ideal being and living all that long 
 since broken "household circle." But I have 
 recalled two of Whittier's shorter poems which 
 seem to me especially to " speak to the condi- 
 tion " of these young people before us, the pupils 
 of this school. As you look, my young friends, 
 upon this portrait to-day, and listen to all which 
 is said to you of Whittier himself, you may be 
 thinking of him only as a man far advanced in 
 years, and quite remote from yourselves. But I 
 want you to read of him and think of him as he 
 appears in these poems, once as young as your- 
 
ADDRESSES. 59 
 
 selves, and at school as you now are, and in the 
 midst of his studies and his companionships in 
 them, carrying in him the hopes and the fears, 
 the thoughts and the day-dreams too of his youth ; 
 and so touched and impressed by all these influ- 
 ences of his school-days, that he loved to recall 
 them all in after years, and give living expres- 
 sion to them in living verse. How does all this 
 appear in that charming poem, which he has en- 
 titled " Memories," where he recalls, — 
 
 " A beautiful and happy girl 
 
 With step as light as summer air, 
 
 Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, 
 
 Shadowed by many a careless curl 
 Of unconfined and flowing hair." 
 
 Let me read to you some of these " memories," 
 — one or two stanzas at least : — 
 
 "How thrills once more the lengthening chain 
 
 Of memory, at the thought of thee ! 
 Old hopes, which long in dust have lain. 
 Old dreams, come thronging back again, 
 
 And boyhood lives again in me ; 
 I feel its glow upon my cheek. 
 
 Its fullness of the heart is mine. 
 As when I leaned to hear thee speak. 
 
 Or raised my doubtful eye to thine." 
 
 "And wider yet in thought and deed 
 Diverge our pathways, one in youth ; 
 
 Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, - 
 
 While answers to my spirit's need, 
 The Derby dalesman's simple truth. 
 
60 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, 
 
 And holy day, and solemn psalm ; 
 For me, the silent reverence, where 
 
 My brethren gather, slow and calm-" 
 
 One or two stanzas let me now give you, in 
 conclusion, from that lyric of kindred tone, en- 
 titled "■ My Playmate " : — 
 
 " The pines were dark on Eamoth hill, 
 Their song was soft and low. 
 The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
 Were falling like the snow. 
 
 "The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
 The orchard birds sang clear ; ' 
 The sweetest and the saddest day 
 It seemed of all the year. 
 
 " For, more to me than birds or flowers, 
 My playmate left her home, 
 And took with her the laughing spring, 
 The music and the bloom. 
 
 " She left us in the bloom of May ; 
 The constant years told o'er 
 Their seasons with as sweet May morns. 
 But she came back no more. 
 
 " O playmate in the golden time ! 
 Our mossy seat is green. 
 Its fringing violets blossom yet. 
 The old trees o'er it lean. 
 
 " And still the pines of Eamoth wood, 
 Are moaning like the sea, — 
 The moaning of the sea of change 
 Between myself and thee ! " 
 
ADDRESSES. 61 
 
 Abraham Payne, an eminent lawyer of Provi- 
 dence, who has recently lost his sight, was the 
 next speaker? 
 
 I cheerfully respond to your call, though per- 
 haps it would be better, according to the custom 
 of your people, to sit still and let " expressive 
 silence muse His praise." I have had some ex- 
 perience in public speaking, but this is my first 
 attempt to address an audience which I cannot 
 see, and I must ask you to excuse defects. The 
 men who planted the seeds of empire here in 
 New England were a little hardened by dogma 
 and deficient in charity. They lacked a just ap- 
 preciation of soul liberty and the humane tem- 
 per ; if there has been any favorable change in 
 this respect it is largely due to the people called 
 Friends, and conspicuous among them is the man 
 whose portrait you place to-day where his pic- 
 tured lips will repeat to you from generation to 
 generation his long defense of freedom and of 
 man. 
 
 It is sometimes said that an individual without 
 ofi&ce, or wealth, or power, can do very Httle, but 
 I doubt if there is an official in church or state 
 in this country, whose utterance on a moral ques- 
 tion would have more weight with thoughtful 
 
 1 As he revealed his blindness to the audience, its sympathy with 
 him was very strong, and when he recited a verse from the " Eternal 
 Goodness " which was in gilt letters on the wall of the room, visible 
 to all present but himself, there was a silence to be felt. The en- 
 tire address made a striking impression. 
 
62 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 men and women, than a short letter printed in a 
 newspaper and signed " Thy friend, John G. 
 Whittier." 
 
 I have often said that it seems to me that no 
 other man or woman had more to do with that 
 true metanoia on the subject of domestic slavery 
 which began Avhen a mob composed of men " of 
 property and standing " put a rope around the 
 neck of Garrison in the streets of Boston, and 
 went on until the way was prepared for the man 
 
 . . . "whose grave is holy 
 
 By the broad and prairied Sangamon," 
 
 and whose " gaunt hand " wrote the proclamation 
 which 
 
 ..." freed a race, 
 
 And made his place 
 
 In Time's Walhalla sure." 
 
 There are some verses by Whittier, — I cannot 
 repeat them, — in which he defends the plain 
 Quaker Meeting-House and the silent worship 
 there. One of our own poets has written : — 
 
 "Pass ye the proud fane by, 
 
 The vaulted aisles by flaunting folly trod, 
 And 'nealh the temple of the uplifted sky, 
 Go forth and worship God." 
 
 I think the man who has lost the power to enjoy 
 them is not likely to undervalue the influences 
 of external nature or the magnificence of temple 
 worship; but I agree with the sentiment of the 
 
ADDRESSES. 63 
 
 verses to which I refer, that when all external 
 objects are withdrawn, and all voices are silent, 
 the soul of man gets easiest access to the Source 
 of Strength, and gains the help which enables him 
 to lay aside every weight, and run with patience 
 the race set before him. 
 
 Amidst " the maddening maze of things " by 
 which they are surrounded, Christians of every 
 name look for the time when " one by one the 
 fiends of ancient wrong" shall have gone out; 
 and the golden age come in which He will bring 
 in his time — 
 
 . . . "from out whose hand 
 
 The centuries fall like grains of sand." 
 
 Then 1 think all men will hear one voice speaking 
 in the Psalms of David, the Sermon on the Mount, 
 and the poetry of Whittier. The man who can 
 honestly pray '' Have mercy upon me — according 
 to the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out 
 my transgressions," will feel that they indeed are 
 blessed who hunger and thirst after righteousness 
 and recognize the " Eternal Goodness," saying : — 
 
 " Who fathoms the eternal thought ? 
 Who talks of spheme or plan? 
 The Lord is God ! He needeth not 
 The poor device of man. 
 
 " I walked with bare hushed feet the ground 
 Ye tread with boldness shod ; 
 I dare not fix with mete and bound 
 The love and power of God. 
 
64 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 " Ye praise his justice ; even such 
 His pitying love I deem; 
 Ye seek a king; I fain would touch 
 The robe that hath no seam. 
 
 " Ye hear the curse that overbroods 
 A world of pain and loss ; 
 I hear our Lord's beatitudes 
 And prayer upon^the cross. 
 
 " And so beside the silent sea 
 I wait the muffled oar ; 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 " I know not where his islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air, 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
 Hon. Jonathan Chase, the able and distin- 
 guished Representative in Congress from Rhode 
 Island, and a pupil in the school in 1837, spoke 
 as follows : — 
 
 I believe, as Professor Lincoln does, that we 
 should not let occasions like this pass without 
 improving them by endeavoring to instruct the 
 young people as to their real import. It is 
 given to but few to be great in this world. 
 Very few are gifted much above their fellows. 
 You will have your time of trying to write po- 
 etry, as most of us have and failed : you may 
 then learn to understand that true poetry is 
 
ADDRESSES. 65 
 
 the poetry of ideas. The best illustration of 
 this is found in the Psalms ; translate them into 
 any language and they are still poetry. Not 
 that there is measure and rhyme in them, but 
 because they are based upon subjects of real, 
 living, and ever-recurring interest to mankind, 
 illustrated by beautiful and harmonious ideas. 
 But there is one thing, my young friends, most 
 worthy of remembrance. True it is that few of 
 you can expect ever to become such a poet as 
 Whittier, but you can all live poetical lives as he 
 has done. When we read the works of a great 
 author, full of high and noble sentiments, we ex- 
 pect to find an equally high character in the au- 
 thor. We look for purity in the author of Faust. 
 When we read Carlyle we expect to find him 
 a man who can rise to the importance of little 
 things, but in this how often are we disappointed. 
 Whittier has lived a life in keeping with the high 
 ideal which he has written. In his life as in his 
 writings he has had for the poor and suffering 
 everywhere a most tender and gentle sympathy. 
 For the good and beautiful the warmest love and 
 appreciation, but firm as adamant against all tyr- 
 anny, oppression, and wrong. He loves the man 
 and hates only his evil deeds. It is well then 
 to catch the shadow of such a life ere it passes, 
 and to lift it up to incite us to do and to be 
 better. 
 
66 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Hon. James N. Bufftjm, ex - mayor of Lynn, 
 Mass., and an early, active, and prominent Abo- 
 litionist, was next introduced : ^ — 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — It gives ■ 
 me great pleasure to be present on this occasion, 
 and listen to so many able speeches in honor of 
 an old and true friend and co-laborer in the cause 
 of human freedom. It is seldom that a reformer 
 receives in his lifetime such high appreciation as 
 has been given here to-day, and yet it is all true ; 
 and more could be added, and not then transcend 
 the reality. 
 
 Most of the speakers have dwelt upon the ge- 
 nius of the Poet, the purity and sweetness of his 
 verse, his great insight into Nature, and his won- 
 derful harmony with all her higher laws. But it 
 seems to me that while that is all true, no one 
 can appreciate his life-work so well as those who 
 have labored with him in those dark days of 
 mobs and persecutions, in storm and violence, 
 when men and women took their lives in their 
 hands and went forth on their great errand of 
 mercy, not knowing but the same martyrdom 
 would be their lot that had come upon others. 
 
 It is not the poetry in itself that gives Whit- 
 tier's work its highest character; it is only when 
 viewed in connection with the times, and when 
 you consider the amount of real pluck that it re- 
 quired to speak at all, then it becomes sublime 
 
 1 Mr. Buffum was a pupil in tlie school in 1827. 
 
ADDRESSES. 67 
 
 and transcendently eloquent. There is another 
 view of the question which we old Abolitionists 
 know, which the outside world does not know, 
 that is, that he was not only great himself, but 
 that he thrust greatness upon others. 
 
 Whittier could write prose that was eloquent 
 and poetic as well as verse. Many grand s|3eeches 
 made on great occasions bore evidence of his ge- 
 nius. Whittier was never an orator, but was the 
 maker of orators. It was his fire that kindled the 
 flame which caused Emerson to say that the anti- 
 slavery cause had made eloquence dog-cheap. 
 
 I cannot forbear saying a word of one of my 
 dearest friends, from 1837 to the day of his death, 
 — Wendell Phillips. To him more than any 
 other man I am indebted for whatever of abil- 
 ity I have to stand before you and speak my 
 thoughts with any satisfaction to myself or of in- 
 terest to you. It has been said that I was edu- 
 cated ^t this institution. It is not so. I began 
 my education here, and I am thankful for it, and 
 only wish I could have had the finish and polish 
 you give your scholars at this later day. It was 
 at this school that I took up my first geography, 
 my first grammar, and almost my first arith- 
 metic ; but my real education was gained in the 
 great conflict with oppression and tyranny on the 
 broad platform of humanity, in the hot conflict, 
 side by side with those noble souls and grand 
 heroes who lived and died that our country might 
 
68 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 be free. It would be impossible, were I compe- 
 tent, to do justice to their characters at this time. 
 
 Wendell Phillips came into our cause when we 
 were in the hottest conflict with the slave power, 
 when the nation was sinking into a fatal and 
 deadly slumber. He was one of the greatest and 
 richest contributions our cause ever received, in 
 character and station, in education and eloquence, 
 and commanding personal presence. Among all 
 the great men this nation has produced, no one, 
 take him all in all, has ever surpassed him ; and 
 yet with all his rich gifts and splendid endow- 
 ments, he came and laid himself and all that he 
 had, a living sacrifice on the altar of humanity. 
 He lifted up his voice like a trumpet, and showed 
 the people their sins, and the nation its trans- 
 gressions, until the chains were melted from four 
 million slaves. Pausing for a short time to view 
 the greatness and splendor of that achievement, 
 he too has gone to his eternal rest, but with a 
 greatness and grandeur that has lit up the gloom 
 of the past, and has forever made radiant the path 
 of the future. It would give me great pleasure 
 to speak of others who have immortalized their 
 names and gone home to their reward, did time 
 permit. 
 
 Your Principal has invited me to speak to you 
 at some future time upon reminiscences of the 
 anti-slavery conflict, when I hope to meet and in- 
 terest you. 
 
ADDRESSES. 69 
 
 Gertrude W. Cartland, of Newburyport, Mass., 
 said : ^ — 
 
 I think if John G. Whittier had been present 
 on this occasion, in view of the kindly thoughts 
 that have been turned to him, and the kindly 
 words that have been spoken, his feelings of 
 grateful appreciation might have found expres- 
 sion somewhat as he responded seven years ago 
 to the greetings of his friends who gathered 
 around him upon the completion of his three- 
 score years and ten. 
 
 " Beside that milestone where the level sun, 
 Nigh unto setting, sheds his last low rays 
 On word and work irrevocably done, 
 Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, 
 
 I hear, O friends ! your words of cheer and praise 
 Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
 Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, 
 A beggar slept, and crownM Caliph woke. 
 Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise 
 I see my life-work through your partial eyes ; 
 Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs 
 A higher value than of right belongs. 
 You do but read between the written lines 
 The finer grace of unfulfilled designs." 
 
 And now, dear brothers and sisters, as we must 
 
 ^ Gertrude W. Cartland, from her connection with the Poet, 
 was felt at once to be in a certain sense his representative, and 
 her words made a deep and lasting impression. She has re- 
 cently published Scripture Passages and Parallel Selections from 
 the Writings of Whittier. She was a Principal of the School in 
 1852. 
 
70 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 soon go forth from this pleasant gathering, re- 
 turning to our different paths, our respective 
 fields of service, may I be permitted, as a parting 
 word, to express the wish, which I cannot doubt 
 springs up in all our hearts for ourselves, and 
 one for another, that whatever may be our period 
 in life, the morning, the noontime, or the even- 
 ing of our days, we may be so living, in loving, 
 faithful obedience to our Divine Master, in hum- 
 ble reliance upon his mercy, in sustaining Chris- 
 tian trust, that we too, in contemplating the clos- 
 ing hour, may be prepared to adopt the prayer- 
 ful, touching, words of him whose noble work 
 and Christian character have ,been our theme to- 
 day. 
 
 " I trust in thee, O Father ! Let thy spirit 
 Be with me then to comfort and uphold ; 
 No gate of pearl, no branch of palm, I merit, 
 Nor street of shining gold. 
 
 " Suffice it, if my good and ill unreckoned, 
 
 And both forgiven through thy abounding grace, 
 I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
 Unto my fitting place ; 
 
 " Some humble door among the many mansions, 
 
 Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, 
 And flows forever through heaven's green expansions 
 The river of thy peace." 
 
 John C. Wtmak, of Valley Falls, whose spark- 
 ling wit and forcible oratory are widely known 
 
ADDRESSES. 71 
 
 and appreciated, was next called upon. He 
 said : — 
 
 Mr. Principal and Ladies and Gentlemen, — In 
 view of the very satisfactory speeches which have 
 been made, and of the fact that I am announced 
 as the last speaker on this occasion, I wish I could 
 feel that in this instance the Scriptures might be 
 verified, and that in point of excellence, the last 
 speech might be the first, and the first last. 
 
 I confess I feel no little embarrassment in stand- 
 ing upon this platform with such an audience be- 
 fore me, and so many distinguished scholars and 
 speakers around me, and I am seeking in vain 
 for a solution of the conundrum how I happen to 
 be here. 
 
 This I feel to be true : No person here, how- 
 ever learned or eloquent, can be more in sympa- 
 thy with this occasion than I am. And it seems 
 to me especially encouraging and inspiring to 
 come together at this time in such peace and 
 harmony as we find here, — away from torchlight 
 processions, bands of music, fireworks, and other 
 arguments of similar character so largely relied 
 upon in the political campaign of this year to 
 capture if not convince the voter; away from 
 speeches of such vilification and vituperation as 
 were never heard before ; away from the consid- 
 eration of vice and dishonesty such as is charged 
 against the two candidates for the presidency now 
 before the people of this country for their suf- 
 
72 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 frages ; away from disposition or desire to discuss 
 the follies and frailties of our kind, but here to 
 devote ourselves to the contemplation of a char- 
 acter in whom there is no guile ; who never has 
 written or spoken a word, never committed an 
 act, and, I think I may say, never had a thought 
 which, were they all known to the public, need 
 cause him one single regret or even the sem- 
 blance of a blush. 
 
 And to me it seems this is the kind of man 
 we should present to our young friends as fur- 
 nishing the standard of character they should 
 imitate and emulate. We have too long been in 
 the practice of over-estimating our great states- 
 men and military heroes. The glory which at- 
 taches to them has been made too attractive and 
 tempting, and a false appreciation given to their 
 value. 
 
 I well remember when Clay, Calhoun, and Web- 
 ster were called the great triumvirate of American 
 statesmen. And at the very zenith of their great- 
 ness a young man in Boston, with a few obscure 
 and almost unknown friends, among the very fore- 
 most of them the man whose picture we to-day 
 unveil, promulgated the idea that human slavery 
 was a crime, and immediate emancipation the only 
 remedy for it. With what a howl of contempt 
 and indignation was the declaration received, but 
 still this fearless advocate of human freedom de- 
 clared, in a voice heard to the uttermost parts of 
 
ADDRESSES. 73 
 
 the Union, " I will be heard," and he was. Archi- 
 medes said, " Give me a point to rest my lever 
 upon, and I will move the world." William Lloyd 
 Garrison found both point and lever in type and 
 printing-press, and he did move the world as it 
 had never been moved by any reformer before or 
 since, and it resulted in the uplifting of the un- 
 shackled hands of four millions of slaves to call 
 down blessings from heaven on the heUd of their 
 great deliverer. In that fierce anti-slavery con- 
 test which preceded the War of the Eebellion and 
 the Emancipation Proclamation, when fidelity to 
 the cause of the slave endangered both life and 
 property, North as well as South, John G. Whit- 
 tier was Garrison's fast friend, and stood shoulder 
 to shoulder with him through it all, not only sup- 
 porting but strengthening and inspiring him. 
 
 And now as we look back over the past thirty 
 years, whom do we find were really the great 
 statesmen of that earlier period? The three I 
 have mentioned sought to develop and increase 
 the wealth and power of this nation by fostering 
 its material resources only. They ignored the 
 rights of four million slaves, and regarded them 
 only as property. Garrison and his associates 
 recognized them as human beings, and saw that 
 in their liberation, education, and elevation would 
 be found the true grandeur and glory of our na- 
 tion. 
 
 The present generation know too little of the 
 
74 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 anti-slavery history and the lessons taught by it 
 of the power of moral ideas. Only a few days 
 since an intelligent woman said to me, " Was it 
 not Webster's speech in favor of the Fugitive 
 Slave Law which stirred up Garrison, and made 
 him an Abolitionist?" She did not know that 
 for twenty years before Webster's 7th of March 
 speech Garrison, Phillips, and Whittier, and men 
 like them,liad been working so persistently to 
 rouse the sense of right in the public mind that 
 when Webster so betrayed liberty, as he did on 
 that occasion, a storm of indignation was roused 
 which even the " godlike Daniel " could not stay 
 or soothe, and, condemned and rejected, he retired 
 to his home by the sea, and died broken-hearted. 
 Webster, Calhoun, Clay, neither of them recog- 
 nized the great work to be accomplished, and aU 
 failed in their purpose. This, then, is the lesson 
 for our young friends to learn : that real great- 
 ness, true nobility, consists in such recognition 
 of the rights of others, no matter how disgraced 
 and disowned, as will prompt the espousal of 
 their cause, and insure fidelity to it till the vic- 
 tory is won. 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 
 
 Augustine Jones then read the following let- 
 ters : — 
 
 Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass., i 
 10th month, 13, 1884. | 
 
 Augustine Jones, Principal of Friends' School, Provi- 
 dence, JR. I. : 
 
 My dear Friend, — I have received the kind invi- 
 tation to be with you on the 24th inst., but it is hardly 
 possible that I can avail myself of it, otherwise than by 
 proxy. My double or " counterfeit presentment " will, 
 of course, be there, and as the party most interested 
 may fitly supply my place. The position assigned it, 
 between the busts of the great English Friend and 
 statesman, and the noble woman who, like the Master, 
 visited " the spirits in prison," seems so far beyond the 
 desert of its original, that if the portrait bad the mirac- 
 ulous power of locomotion attributed to medijeval pic- 
 tures, it would feel constrained to walk out of its frame 
 and seek a humbler place. 
 
 , I have reached an age when flattery ceases to deceive, 
 and notoriety is a burden, and the faint shadow of liter- 
 ary reputation fails to hide the solemn realities of life ; 
 but a genuine token of love and good-will has no limita- 
 tions of time, and is never out of place. I scarcely need, 
 therefore, say that I highly appreciate the generous 
 
76 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 compliment paid me by my mucli-valued friend in plac- 
 ing my portrait in the old and honored institution under 
 thy charge. I confess that I heard the first intimation 
 of his purpose with some surprise and misgiving, as I 
 looked back upon a life, not indeed without honest en- 
 deavor, yet marked by many weaknesses and errors. If, 
 however, this gift of rny friend shall testify our common 
 interest in the Friends' School and faith in the princi- 
 ples and testimonies of its founders, and if it shall serve 
 to remind those who see it that whatever may seem 
 worthy of commendation in the life of its original is 
 due not to himself, but to the divine Providence which 
 surrounded his youth and strengthened his manhood, I 
 shall be more than satisfied. 
 
 I need not say to thee, my dear friend, that although 
 I am a Quaker by birthright and sincere convictions, 
 I am no sectarian in the strict sense of the term. My 
 sympathies are with the Broad Church of Humanity. 
 Nevertheless, if one has to be " hung in effigy," he may 
 have some choice as to the place of execution ; and it 
 goes far in reconciling me to my own fate to know that 
 the ceremony, in which I must be a passive participant, 
 will be performed in a hall of learning of the Society of 
 Friends. I am very truly thy friend, 
 
 John G. Whittiee.i 
 
 Hyde Pake, October 22, 1884. 
 Attgustinb Jones: 
 
 Dear Friend, — My time has been so hopelessly ab- 
 sorbed since getting your letter, that now, at the last 
 moment, I can only snatch five minutes to reply. 
 Thanks for the invitation ! Would that I could be 
 
 1 There was great applause at the conclusion of the reading of 
 this letter. 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 77 
 
 present at the presentation to the institution of the por- 
 trait of our beloved and honored friend, J. G. Whittier. 
 No purer, more beautiful character could be placed be- 
 fore your pupils for their admiration, love, and imita- 
 tion than that of our sv^eet singer, whose notes float 
 to - day v?herever our language is spoken. For half a 
 century the influence of his written testimony and in- 
 spiring song — his example and noble living — rhave 
 been to his generation a sacred benediction, giving to 
 every good cause their words of cheer long after he has 
 been gathered to his fathers. 
 
 In haste, faithfully yours, 
 
 Theo. D. Weld.i 
 
 '■■} 
 
 Athen^um Club, Pall Mall, S. W., 
 October 6, 1884. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your letter reaches me at the moment 
 when I have recommenced inspecting London schools 
 after the holidays. I am much pressed with work of 
 all kinds. I cannot therefore compose anything for the 
 occasion of your festival. I can only express my cordial 
 respect for Mr. Whittier, and my high satisfaction in 
 having met him during my late visit to the States. 
 
 Yours truly, Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Mr. Atjgustinb Jones. 
 
 Cambeidgb, October 17, 1884. 
 Dear Sir, — I am sorry that my engagements do not 
 permit me to accept the invitation to be present at the 
 Friends' School, next week. 
 
 1 Mr. Weld was one of the most eloquent speakers in the early 
 days of the anti-slavery movement; and his contributions to anti- 
 slavery literature were of inestimable value. It was his wife, 
 Angelina E. Grimke Weld, who, with her sister Sarah, by speak- 
 ing in public against slavery, virtually inaugurated the Woman's 
 Kights agitation in this country. 
 
78 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Nothing could be more agreeable to me or to my 
 father's and my mother's son than to take part in any 
 occasion which was intended to do honor to Mr. Whit- 
 tier. 
 
 His name and his presence in my father's household 
 are among my earliest recollections, and I was brought 
 up to honor him, not only for the rectitude and the love- 
 liness of his private character and life, but still more for 
 the devotion of his genius to the great cause which he 
 has lived to see wholly triumphant. 
 
 Tell your boys and girls that however much they ad- 
 mire and love Whittier, they cannot know what a fire 
 and a passion of enthusiasm he kindled in the hearts of 
 the little company of anti-slavery boys and girls of my 
 time, when they read his early poems; nor can they 
 know the solemn joy with which the same boys and 
 girls read those noble verses of Whittier's on the Eman- 
 cipation Proclamation, celebrating the end of the long 
 struggle. 
 
 " Blessings be on him and immortal praise." 
 
 Very truly yours, J. B. Thayee.^ 
 
 AuGtrsTiNE Jones, Esq. 
 
 Haverfoed College, Pa., 10th month, 1884. 
 
 Augustine Jones : 
 
 Dear Friend, — I regret the urgency of professional 
 duties, which prevent my acceptance of thy kind invita- 
 tion to the unveiling of Whittier's portrait. Great as 
 may be the throng of loving and reverent pilgrims who 
 may honor the occasion by their bodily presence, I must 
 content myself with being one of the still greater num- 
 ber who will be spiritual on-lookers and hearty sympa- 
 
 1 Professor in the Harvard Law School. 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 79 
 
 thizers. The grand old " Institution " does not now for 
 the first time bear witness to her appreciation of the 
 poet whose commemoration of the " Blest land of Judea, 
 thrice hallowed in song," has served as a welcome in- 
 spiration to the faith of three generations. For more 
 than a half century her children have been stimulated 
 by the trumpet calls to truth and righteousness, which 
 were engraved on their memories as a pleasant portion 
 of their school instruction. The influence and wide 
 ramifications of that early training were important fac- 
 tors in securing an efficient hearing for the " Voices of 
 Freedom," and in ridding our land of its greatest curse. 
 It is eminently fitting that our loyal regard for a leader 
 who has earned a wide-spread and well-merited renown 
 in so many literary fields should be shown by some pub- 
 lic and lasting testimonial, which may hand down the 
 evidence of our appreciation to children's children. It 
 is fitting that the life-long, earnest, and consistent advo- 
 cate of the great truths which were taught by Fox, and 
 Penn, and Pennington, and which the world still so 
 greatly needs, should be especially held in remembrance 
 at a seat of learning which was established largely for 
 the promotion of those truths. I rejoice, therefore, that 
 in my future visits to the scene of my early experience 
 as scholar and teacher, the speaking likeness of one 
 whom I am glad, for so many reasons, to call my friend, 
 may revive the aspiration, — 
 
 " O spirit of that early day, 
 
 So pure and strong and true, 
 
 Be with us in the narrow way 
 Our faithful fathers knew. 
 
 Give strength the evil to forsake, 
 The cross of Truth to bear. 
 
80 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 And love and reverent fear to make 
 Our daily lives a prayer ! " 
 
 Affectionately thy friend, 
 
 Pliny Eaele Chase.^ 
 
 Magnolia, Mass., September 17, 1884. 
 My DEA^t Me. Jones, — I am ^ sorry to say that my 
 engagements will make it quite impossible to come to 
 Providence, on the very interesting occaions to which 
 you so kindly invited me. As an earnest admirer of 
 Mr. Whittier for long years, and claiming the honor of 
 his friendship, it would give me unfeigned pleasure to 
 be present with you at that time. I have the pleasure, 
 also, of an acquaintance with John Bright, and should 
 like to see his bust, but must be contented to look at it 
 in the picturesque views of your institution which you 
 have had the goodness to send me. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 James Freeman Clarke. 
 
 Wakwick, E. I., October 6, 1884. 
 Deab Fkiend, — I wish it were in my power to 
 take part in the exercises to be held in honor of John 
 G. Whittier, on the 24th inst. 
 
 I was born and bred in the vicinity of many of the 
 scenes which he has hallowed by his beautiful poetry. 
 
 I have always had the profoundest admiration for 
 him as a man as well as a poet. 
 
 I do not feel strong enough to say all that is in my 
 heart. I must remain 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 Thomas M. Claek.^ 
 
 1 Professor of Philosophy and Logic in Haverford College. He 
 was a teacher in the school in 1840. 
 
 ° Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Bhode Island. 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 81 
 
 Bevekly Farms, Mass., July 16, 1884. 
 
 My dear Sie, — It is with great regret that I find 
 myself unable to accept the polite invitation you send 
 me for the 24th of October, 
 
 I need not say that I share in the universal feeling of 
 love, honor, reverence for our cherished New England 
 poet, John Greenleaf Whittier. I hold no living coun- 
 tryman of mine in higher esteem, nor is there one to 
 whom I would more willingly pay the tribute of respect 
 signified by my attendance on the occasion for which I 
 am invited. 
 
 Some time ago I told my friends who asked my 
 presence at various celebrations, that I had determined 
 to avoid all public meetings for the present, feeling that 
 I should be much better for keeping away from fatigu- 
 ing and exciting meetings of all kinds. I have had a 
 good deal to keep me busy, and I feel the need of reg- 
 ular and uniform living. 
 
 It costs me no small amount of time, and it takes 
 some little courage, to resist the constant pressure of 
 invitations from too kind friends. 
 
 All I can do is to thank them, and wish for each 
 particular occasion that I were a score of years younger, 
 so that I might gratify myself by complying with their 
 wishes. 
 
 Believe me, dear sir, very truly yours, 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 Legation op the United States,") 
 London, September 11, 1884. j 
 
 Dear Sir, — I have too vivid a recollection of that 
 Arcadia of Friends in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 
 of the beautiful homes to which I was welcomed, and of 
 6 
 
82 BECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 the kindnesses I, received there, not to feel a deep sym- 
 pathy with any commemoration in which the Society is 
 interested. And how much more do I feel this when 
 your ceremony is in honor of my friend Whittier, whom 
 I have loved and respected for forty years. I send you 
 accordingly, as you request, a few verses, more to ex- 
 press my good-will than as an adequate expression of 
 my share in the universal and afEectionate esteem in 
 which our poet is held. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 J. K. Lowell. 
 Augustine Jones, Esq. 
 
 TO J. G. •WHITTIEE. 
 
 "New England's poet, rich in love as years, 
 
 Her hills and valleys praise thee, and her brooks 
 Dance to thy song ; to her grave sylvan nooks 
 
 Thy feet allure us, which the wood-thrush hears 
 
 As maids their lovers, and no treason fears. 
 Through thee her Merrimacs and Agioochooks, 
 And many a name uncouth, win loving looks. 
 
 Sweetly familiar to both Englands' ears. 
 
 Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake, 
 
 The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold 
 
 Save those of stars, yet for thy brothers' sake. 
 That lay in bonds, thou blew'st a blast as bold 
 
 As that wherewith the heart of Roland brake. 
 Far heard through Pyrenean valleys cold." 
 
 The Pilot Editorial Kooms, ) 
 October 16, 1884. > 
 
 Deae Sie, — I thank you very much for the invita- 
 tion to attend the presentation of Mr. Whittier's por- 
 trait to the Friends' School, and I am deeply sorry that 
 other engagements will not allow me to be present. I 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 83 
 
 revere Mr. Whittier as a man and a poet, and I should 
 
 like to see him honored by painter and orator. 
 
 I am very truly yours, 
 
 John Boxle O'Reilly. 
 Me. Augustine Jones. 
 
 AsHFiELD, Mass., September 22, 1884. 
 
 My dbae Sie, — No man could be more fitly hon- 
 ored in any school than Whittier in yours, and no 
 purer character or more spotless life than his could be 
 commended to the admiration and emulation of youth. 
 The tenderness and sweetness of his song are not 
 greater than its generous humanity and its devoted pa- 
 triotism, and the traditions and spirit of his religious 
 faith have given a certain antique simplicity to his 
 career which personally endear him to his countrymen, 
 as his poetry stirs their admiration and pride. The 
 famous men and women whose portraits in color and 
 marble you are placing in your hall are well called 
 Friends, for friends they are, and have been, of all that 
 is noblest in human endeavor; friends of liberty, and 
 justice, and charity; of the prisoner, the slave, and the 
 outcast. Such men and women are the true saints, can- 
 onized by the gratitude and love and reverence of their 
 fellows ; and it is pleasant to think that the pictured 
 and sculptured forms of these familiar friends of to- 
 day, whose names are on all lips and in all hearts, will 
 inspire your pupils to a life of "plain living and high 
 thinking," as surely as the story of the legendary 
 figures of mythology, or of the heroes of Greece and 
 Rome. 
 
 Among my earliest and happiest recollections as an 
 old Providence boy are those of v^alks and plays in the 
 peaceful fields and groves of your domain, and I wish 
 
84 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 it were possible for me to accept your kind invitation, 
 and to say a word of heartfelt honor to the man and 
 poet whose genius and life and character you commem- 
 orate, and of filial regard for the beautiful city in which 
 I was born. Very truly yours, 
 
 Geokge William Curtis. 
 
 Boston, October 7, 1884. 
 
 My DEAE. Sir, — I fear that I shall be unable to be 
 present on the 24th of this month, when you will place 
 the portrait of my dear and honored friend, John G. 
 Whittier, in the hall of the Friends' Boarding School 
 at Providence. I regret this the more because Whittier, 
 after all his struggles and battles, cannot now enter 
 into any society which does not promptly become a 
 " society of friends." He has triumphed over all obsta- 
 cles, and now stands, in the estimation of the American 
 people, in the front rank of the poets of the nation, and 
 in the front rank of the nation's moral inspirers. In 
 his revered old age no voice is lifted against him, but 
 all voices, of all parties and sects, join in one acclaim to 
 celebrate the virtues and genius of the poet and re- 
 former. 
 
 I have had the privilege of knowing him intimately 
 for many years, and of doing all I could, through the 
 press, to point out his exceptional and original merits 
 as a writer. My admiration of his genius and character 
 has increased with every new volume he has published, 
 and every new manifestation of that essential gentleness 
 which lies at the root of his nature, even when some of 
 his poems suggest the warrior rather than the Quaker. 
 One thing is certain, that the reader feels that the writer 
 possesses that peculiar attribute of humanity which we 
 instinctively call by the high name of soul ; and whether 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 85 
 
 he storms into the souls of others or glides into them, 
 his hot invectives equally with his soft persuasion mark 
 him as a man: a man, too, of might; a man whose 
 force is blended with his insight, and who can win or 
 woo his way into hostile or recipient minds by innate 
 strength or delicacy of nature. I think most of his 
 readers, however much they may love and appreciate 
 separate poems of this fine genius, so bounteously sup- 
 plied with thought, fancy, and imagination, must still 
 feel that the predominant impression which his writings 
 leave on their minds is the impression of the noble, 
 pure, strong, fearless man, John G. Whittier. Renew- 
 ing the expression of my regret at not being able to 
 attend your exercises, I remain very -faithfully yours, 
 
 E. P. "Whipple. 
 To Augustine Jones. 
 
 Bkookline, Mass., October 16, 1884. 
 My deae Sir, — I must no longer delay a grateful 
 acknowledgment of your kind invitation for the 24th 
 inst. It would afford me sincere pleasure to be present 
 at your Friends' School, and to witness the presentation 
 of the portrait of Whittier. Placed as you propose to 
 place it, between the busts of John Bright and Eliza- 
 beth Fry, it will have a companionship as enviable as 
 it will be appropriate. Eloquence, poetry, and philan- 
 thropy will form an inspiring group for your scholars 
 to have ever before their eyes, and may lead them to 
 emulate what they admire. Such a tribute to Whittier 
 is eminently deserved. His exquisite verses are among 
 the treasures of American literature. They breathe a 
 spirit of purity and piety which must wake an echo in. 
 the heart of every Christian, by whatever name he may 
 be called. 
 
86 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Many of them, too, are full of patriotic fire, and will 
 warm the hearts and kindle the courage of young and 
 old in time to come as they have done in the past. ■ 
 
 I rejoice that he is still with us to know how admir- 
 ingly and affectionately he is regarded, not only by 
 " Friends," but by all to whom his brilliant genius and 
 spotless character are known. Regretting my inability 
 to be with you on the interesting occasion to which you 
 so kindly invite me, and with every good wish for the 
 success of your school, I remain, dear sir, very faithfully 
 yours, EoBT. C. Wintheop. 
 
 Mr. Augustine Jones, A. M., Friends' Boarding School. 
 
 New Bedford, October 19, 1884. 
 
 Augustine Jones : 
 
 Dear Friend, — I thank thee for thy kind invitation 
 
 to attend the reception on Whittier Day, 24th inst. I 
 
 regret that engagements at home will deprive me of the 
 
 pleasure of being present on that interesting occasion. 
 
 Truly thy friend, Joseph Geinnell.^ 
 
 Bloomingdale, N. Y., ] 
 October 20, 1884. 
 
 Dear Me. Jones, — I write to thank you for your 
 kind invitation to be present at the reception of the 
 portrait of the poet Whittier, at Providence, on the 
 24th instant. It is, unfortunately, impossible for me to 
 accept it, as I sail on the 22d. I should have greatly 
 enjoyed being present on so interesting an occasion, as 
 I venture to think that among those who do honor to 
 the bard of Amesbury at your meeting, few, if any, will 
 
 * Hon. Joseph Grinnell was a representative in Congress from 
 Massachusetts in 1843, and during several subsequent terms. He 
 was a personal friend of Daniel Webster. He has recently com- 
 pleted his ninety-sixth year. 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 87 
 
 admire his poetry more than I do. One of the pleasant- 
 est among the very many pleasant memories which I 
 shall bear away with me from your country will be the 
 evening I was privileged to spend with Whittier a few 
 weeks ago. It could scarcely do other than recall the 
 beautiful lines in his own " Prayer of Agassiz " : — 
 
 " As thin mists are glorified 
 By the light they cannot hide, 
 All who gazed upon him saw, 
 Through its veil of tender awe, 
 How his face was still uplit 
 By the old sweet look of it ; 
 Hopeful, wistful, full of cheer 
 And the love that casts out fear." 
 
 To me it seems that so long as the struggle between 
 freedom and slavery endures, whether it has reference 
 to color or to the right of private judgment in matters 
 of opinion, so long will the lofty sentiments embalmed 
 in song by Whittier be on the lips as well as in the 
 hearts of our race on both sides of the Atlantic, and so 
 long will he be recognized as the poet of freedom in the 
 broadest sense. I would, in conclusion, apply to him 
 the last verse in the lines on " G. L. S." : — 
 
 " Never rode to the wrong's redressing 
 A worthier paladin. 
 Shall he not hear the blessing, 
 ' Good and faithful, enter in ! '" 
 
 Wishing you a very successful occasion, and with very 
 agreeable recollections of my visit to your school, 
 I remain, yours truly, D. H. TuKE.^ 
 
 1 D. Hack Tuke, M. D., LL. D., Fellow of the Royal College of 
 Physicians, London ; Co-Editor of the Journal of Mental Science. 
 He was visiting this country when he wrote the above letter. 
 
88 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 Germantown, Pa., lOih month, 21st, 1884. 
 Augustine Jones, Principal of the Friends' School, 
 
 Providence, JR. I. : 
 
 My dear Friend, — It would have given me much 
 pleasure to be present at the reception oE the portrait 
 of John G. Whittier at the Friends' School, Provi- 
 dence, on the 24th inst., did not pressing engagements 
 forbid it. Eightly to value and do honor to our great 
 men was never more the duty of Americans than now. 
 To withhold the worship once given to civil and hered- 
 itary position irrespective of character is well. To de- 
 mand that great gifts and eminent service shall not 
 shield any from being brought to the test of integrity 
 and unselfish virtue is right. To find in the fact of 
 manhood a claim to equality in civil rights, freedom of 
 conscience, and due social consideration is a part of our 
 heritage as citizens of a republic. But to award a gen- 
 erous and unstinted appreciation to what is high and 
 noble in mind and moral character is to give what is 
 justly due and what enriches us. 
 
 We who are absent, then, will unite with you in ac- 
 cording our admiration and heartfelt regard to the mor- 
 alist, whose " changed sense of duty " has ever been 
 inspired by the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 and the spirit of its author ; to the patriot, who has 
 been wont to raise a clarion note for the right, the true, 
 and the merciful, who has cheered the darkest hours of 
 our history with words of hope and courage prophetic 
 of the victory of the good, and has poured condemna- 
 tion on what was base and unjust; to the Poet, who 
 has won an honored place among our three mightiest ; 
 to the man of letters, who has brightened the homes 
 and lives of our people with the light of his verse, and 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 89 
 
 has spoken to the hearts of all classes ; to the Christian, 
 •who has drunk deeply of the spirit of the Master; to 
 the man we love and cherish as a friend, whose out- 
 poured life has pervaded, uplifted our own. 
 Very truly thy friend, 
 
 James E. Khoads.i 
 
 Harvard University, } 
 Cambhi'dgb, Mass., October 21, 1884. f 
 
 My dear Sir, — A meeting of our corporation on 
 Friday next makes it impossible for me to accept your 
 kind invitation for that day. I wish that you may 
 worthily celebrate Mr. Whittier's genius and character. 
 You cannot do him too much honor. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Charles W. Eliot.2 
 Principal Augustine Jones. 
 
 WoECESTKR, October 7, 1884. 
 My dear Sir, — It is a great honor even to be 
 thought of in connection with an occasion devoted to 
 the honor of Whittier. His verse has been a comfort 
 and delight to countless multitudes, and will be so long 
 as the English language endures. He has been a great 
 purifying and ennobling force in our self-government. 
 
 It is well that the youth in your school should have 
 before them the likenesses of two such men as Whittier 
 and John Bright. But I cannot attend your celebra- 
 tion in person without neglecting pressing duties, whose 
 call I must obey. I am 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Geo. F. Hoar.3 
 
 1 President of Bryn Mawr College for Young Ladies about to 
 open near Philadelphia. 
 
 2 President of Harvard College. 
 
 ' United States Senator for Massachusetts. 
 
90 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 One Ash, Rochdale, September 29, 1884. 
 
 Mx DEAK Fbiend, — It would be a great pleasure 
 for me if I could be present on the occasion when you 
 will unveil the portrait of your and my excellent friend 
 J. G. Whittier. 
 
 I cannot write to you anything worthy of the day, 
 and of the eminent poet whose services and whose fame 
 you are about to commemorate, but I shall venture to 
 send you a few lines expressive of the feeling I have 
 towards him, and of the sense I have of the great 
 value of his writings. I might fill pages if I were to 
 point out the poems which have especially impressed 
 me. I refer only to three of them which rest always in 
 my mind. 
 
 " The Virginia Slave Mother's Lament " has often 
 brought the tears to my eyes ; it is short, but is worth a 
 volume on the great question which was settled twenty 
 years ago by your great conflict, in which so much 
 treasure and blood was expended to make freedom the 
 heritage of your continent. Those few lines were 
 enough to rouse a whole nation to expel from amongst 
 you the odious crime and guilt of slavery. In the poem 
 of " Snow-Bound " there are lines on the death of the 
 poet's sister which have nothing superior to them in 
 beauty and pathos in our language. I have read them 
 often with always increasing admiration. I have suf- 
 fered from the loss of those near and dear to me, and I 
 can apply the lines to my own case and feel as if they 
 were written for me. The " Eternal Goodness " is an- 
 other poem which is worth a crowd of sermons which 
 are spoken from the pulpits of our sects and churches, 
 and which I do not wish to undervalue. It is a great 
 gift to mankind when a poet is raised up amongst us 
 
LETTERS FROM ABSENT FRIENDS. 91 
 
 who devotes his great powers to the sublime purpose of 
 spreading amongst men principles of mercy and justice 
 and freedom. Tiis our friend Whittier has done in a 
 degree unsurpassed by any other poet who has spoken 
 to the world in our noble tongue. 
 
 I feel it a great honor that my bust should stand in 
 your hall near the portrait of your great poet. Ex- 
 cuse this poor expression of my feelings. I wish I 
 could write to you something more worthy of the oc- 
 casion to which you are looking forward with so much 
 interest. 
 
 Believe me, sincerely your friend, 
 
 John Bright. 
 To Augustine Jones, Esq., Friends' Scliool, Providence, Khode 
 
 Island. 
 
 WHITTIBE. 
 
 A face the children love — a quiet face ; 
 
 The dark and earnest eyes look forth to bless, 
 
 And fill the holy calm with pleasantness, 
 Adding to wintry age a cheering grace, 
 A smile that seems a sunbeam's hiding place — 
 
 A farewell smile; and as, when day is done. 
 
 The warm autumnal glory of the sun 
 Pours through the shining halls of heaven's blue space. 
 A beard as white as hawthorn flowers in spring. 
 
 And holy as the prophets were of old ; 
 
 Lips sacred with the wisdom they have told, 
 And breathing love, and ready still to sing. 
 
 What wonder that the face so calm appears, 
 
 The gentle tongue hath stilled so many fears. 
 
 EeNEST W. SHUKTLErF. 
 
92 RECEPTION OF THE WHITTIER PORTRAIT. 
 
 EW Haven, Coni 
 October 23, 1884. 
 
 Yale College, New Haven, Conn., ) 
 
 4. I 
 
 To Augustine Jo2s-bs : ^ 
 
 Dear Friend, — I congratulate thee and tlie institu- 
 tion under thy care that it is to receive so valuable a 
 gift as a full-length portrait of the eminent patriot and 
 poet whom all good men love and honor. Few, if any, 
 of our poets have exhibited more of the inspiration of 
 true genius. None have added to it the inspiration of 
 ardent zeal for human rights, of sympathy for all that 
 is sweet and tender in human affection, and of devout 
 piety toward the Father of spirits, the Redeemer of 
 men, and the Spirit of all goodness. It would give me 
 great pleasure to be with the brilliant and happy as- 
 sembly which will be present to greet the gift, but my 
 engagements forbid, and I send my hearty congratula- 
 tions. Very respectfully, thy friend, 
 
 Noah Poeter.i 
 
 Pkovidence, October 10, 1884. 
 
 Augustine Jones, Esq., Principal : 
 
 My dear Sir, — I am greatly indebted for your polite 
 invitation to be present (with my family) at the recep- 
 tion of a portrait of John G. Whittier by the Friends' 
 School on 24th inst. 
 
 Whittier's verse has commanded my admiration and 
 his character my homage for fifty years. But few, if 
 any, uninspired pens have had greater influence over 
 my thought and life. I shall try to be present with 
 Mrs. Barstow. Yours truly, 
 
 A. C. Baestow.2 
 
 ^ President of Yale College. This letter was received too late 
 to be read at the meeting. 
 
 ^ A prominent citizen of Providence.