THEODORE PARKER.
"Sir Launcelot! ther thou lyest; thou were never matched of none earthly knights hands; thou were the truest freende to thy lover that ever bestrood horse; and thou were the kindest man that ever strooke with sword; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall foe that ever put spere in the rest." La Morte d'Arthur.
In the year 1828 there was a young man of eighteen at work upon a farm in Lexington, performing bodily labor to the extent of twenty hours in a day sometimes, and that for several days together, and at other times studying intensely when work was less pressing. Thirty years after, that same man sat in the richest private library in Boston, working habitually from twelve to seventeen hours a day in severer toil. The interval was crowded with labors, with acquisitions, with reproaches, with victories, with honors; and he who experienced all this died exhausted at the end of it, less than fifty years old, but looking seventy. That man was Theodore Parker.
The time is far distant when out of a hundred different statements of contemporaries some calm biographer will extract sufficient materials for a true picture of the man; and meanwhile all that each can do is to give fearlessly his own honest impressions, and so tempt others to give theirs. Of the multitude of different photographers, each perchance may catch some one trait without which the whole portraiture would have remained incomplete; and the time to secure this is now, while his features are fresh in our minds. It is a daring effort, but it needs to be made.
Yet Theodore Parker was so strong and self-sufficing upon his own ground, he needed so little from any other, while giving so freely to all, that one would hardly venture to add anything to the autobiographies he has left, but for the high example he set of fearlessness in dealing with the dead. There may be some whose fame is so ill-established, that one shrinks from speaking of them precisely as one saw them; but this man's place is secure, and that friend best praises him who paints him just as he seemed. To depict him as he was must be the work of many men, and no single observer, however intimate, need attempt it.
The first thing that strikes an observer, in listening to the words of public and private feeling elicited by his departure, is the predominance in them all of the sentiment of love. His services, his speculations, his contests, his copious eloquence, his many languages, these come in as secondary things, but the predominant testimony is emotional. Men mourn the friend even more than the warrior. No fragile and lovely girl, fading untimely into heaven, was ever more passionately beloved than this white-haired and world-weary man. As he sat in his library, during his lifetime, he was not only the awakener of a thousand intellects, but the centre of a thousand hearts;—he furnished the natural home for every foreign refugee, every hunted slave, every stray thinker, every vexed and sorrowing woman. And never was there one of these who went away uncomforted, and from every part of this broad nation their scattered hands now fling roses upon his grave.
This immense debt of gratitude was not bought by any mere isolated acts of virtue; indeed, it never is so bought; love never is won but by a nobleness which, pervades the life. In the midst of his greatest cares there never was a moment when he was not all too generous of his time, his wisdom, and his money. Borne down by the accumulation of labors, grudging, as a student grudges, the precious hour that once lost can never be won back, he yet was always holding himself at the call of some poor criminal, at the Police Office, or some sick girl in a suburban town, not of his recognized parish perhaps, but longing for the ministry of the only preacher who had touched her soul. Not a mere wholesale reformer, he wore out his life by retailing its great influences to the poorest comer. Not generous in money only,—though the readiness of his beneficence in that direction had few equals,—he always hastened past that minor bestowal to ask if there were not some other added gift possible, some personal service or correspondence, some life-blood, in short, to be lavished in some other form, to eke out the already liberal donation of dollars.
There is an impression that he was unforgiving. Unforgetting he certainly was; for he had no power of forgetfulness, whether for good or evil. He had none of that convenient oblivion which in softer natures covers sin and saintliness with one common, careless pall. So long as a man persisted in a wrong attitude before God or man, there was no day so laborious or exhausting, no night so long or drowsy, but Theodore Parker's unsleeping memory stood on guard full-armed, ready to do battle at a moment's warning. This is generally known; but what may not be known so widely is, that, the moment the adversary lowered his spear, were it for only an inch or an instant, that moment Theodore Parker's weapons were down and his arms open. Make but the slightest concession, give him but the least excuse to love you, and never was there seen such promptness in forgiving. His friends found it sometimes harder to justify his mildness than his severity. I confess that I, with others, have often felt inclined to criticize a certain caustic tone of his, in private talk, when the name of an offender was alluded to; but I have also felt almost indignant at his lenient good-nature to that very person, let him once show the smallest symptom of contrition, or seek, even in the clumsiest way, or for the most selfish purpose, to disarm his generous antagonist. His forgiveness in such cases was more exuberant than his wrath had ever been.
It is inevitable, in describing him, to characterize his life first by its quantity. He belonged to the true race of the giants of learning; he took in knowledge at every pore, and his desires were insatiable. Not, perhaps, precocious in boyhood,—for it is not precocity to begin Latin at ten and Greek at eleven, to enter the Freshman class at twenty and the professional school at twenty-three,—he was equalled by few students in the tremendous rate at which he pursued every study, when once begun. With strong body and great constitutional industry, always acquiring and never forgetting, he was doubtless at the time of his death the most variously learned of living Americans, as well as one of the most prolific of orators and writers.
Why did Theodore Parker die? He died prematurely worn out through this enormous activity,—a warning, as well as an example. To all appeals for moderation, during the latter years of his life, he had but one answer,—that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him, and had their strength to draw upon. All his physical habits, except in this respect, were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to "from six to twelve," but I have Mr. Parker's own statement of the fact) without ultimate self-destruction. Nor was this the practice during his period of health alone, but it was pushed to the last moment: he continued in the pulpit long after a withdrawal was peremptorily prescribed for him; and when forbidden to leave home for lecturing, during the winter of 1858, he straightway prepared the most laborious literary works of his life, for delivery as lectures in the Fraternity Course at Boston.
He worked thus, not from ambition, nor altogether from principle, but from an immense craving for mental labor, which had become second nature to him. His great omnivorous, hungry intellect must have constant food,—new languages, new statistics, new historical investigations, new scientific discoveries, new systems of Scriptural exegesis. He did not for a day in the year nor an hour in the day make rest a matter of principle, nor did he ever indulge in it as a pleasure, for he knew no enjoyment so great as labor. Wordsworth's "wise passiveness" was utterly foreign to his nature. Had he been a mere student, this had been less destructive. But to take the standard of study of a German Professor, and superadd to that the separate exhaustions of a Sunday-preacher, a lyceum-lecturer, a radical leader, and a practical philanthropist, was simply to apply half a dozen distinct suicides to the abbreviation of a single life. And, as his younger companions long since assured him, the tendency of his career was not only to kill himself, but them; for each assumed that he must at least attempt what Theodore Parker accomplished.
It is very certain that his career was much shortened by these enormous labors, and it is not certain that its value was increased in a sufficient ratio to compensate for that evil. He justified his incessant winter-lecturing by the fact that the whole country was his parish, though this was not an adequate excuse. But what right had he to deprive himself even of the accustomed summer respite of ordinary preachers, and waste the golden July hours in studying Sclavonic dialects? No doubt his work in the world was greatly aided both by the fact and the fame of learning, and, as he himself somewhat disdainfully said, the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was "a convenience" in theological discussions; but, after all, his popular power did not mainly depend on his mastery of twenty languages, but of one. Theodore Parker's learning was undoubtedly a valuable possession to the community, but it was not worth the price of Theodore Parker's life.
"Strive constantly to concentrate yourself," said the laborious Goethe, "never dissipate your powers; incessant activity, of whatever kind, leads finally to bankruptcy." But Theodore Parker's whole endeavor was to multiply his channels, and he exhausted his life in the effort to do all men's work. He was a hard man to relieve, to help, or to cooperate with. Thus, the "Massachusetts Quarterly Review" began with quite a promising corps of contributors; but when it appeared that its editor, if left alone, would willingly undertake all the articles,—science, history, literature, everything,—of course the others yielded to inertia and dropped away. So, some years later, when some of us met at his room to consult on a cheap series of popular theological works, he himself was so rich in his own private plans that all the rest were impoverished; nothing could be named but he had been planning just that for years, and should by-and-by get leisure for it, and there really was not enough left to call out the energies of any one else. Not from any petty egotism, but simply from inordinate activity, he stood ready to take all the parts.
In the same way he distanced everybody; every companion-scholar found soon that it was impossible to keep pace with one who was always accumulating and losing nothing. Most students find it necessary to be constantly forgetting some things to make room for later arrivals; but the peculiarity of his memory was that he let nothing go. I have more than once heard him give a minute analysis of the contents of some dull book read twenty years before, and have afterwards found the statement correct and exhaustive. His great library,—the only private library I have ever seen which reminded one of the Astor,—although latterly collected more for public than personal uses, was one which no other man in the nation, probably, had sufficient bibliographical knowledge single-handed to select, and we have very few men capable of fully appreciating its scholarly value, as it stands. It seems as if its possessor, putting all his practical and popular side into his eloquence and action, had indemnified himself by investing all his scholarship in a library of which less than a quarter of the books were in the English language.
All unusual learning, however, brings with it the suspicion of superficiality; and in this country, where, as Mr. Parker himself said, "every one gets a mouthful of education, but scarce one a full meal,"—where every one who makes a Latin quotation is styled "a ripe scholar,"—it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the true from the counterfeit. It is, however, possible to apply some tests. I remember, for instance, that one of the few undoubted classical scholars, in the old-fashioned sense, whom New England has seen,—the late John Glen King of Salem,—while speaking with very limited respect of the acquirements of Rufus Choate in this direction, and with utter contempt of those of Daniel Webster, always became enthusiastic on coming to Theodore Parker. "He is the only man," said Mr. King more than once to the writer, "with whom I can sit down and seriously discuss a disputed reading and find him familiar with all that has been written upon it." Yet Greek and Latin were only the preliminaries of Mr. Parker's scholarship.
I know, for one,—and there are many who will bear the same testimony,—that I never went to Mr. Parker to talk over a subject which I had just made a speciality, without finding that on that particular matter he happened to know, without any special investigation, more than I did. This extended beyond books, sometimes stretching into things where his questioner's opportunities of knowledge had seemed considerably greater,—as, for instance, in points connected with the habits of our native animals and the phenomena of out-door Nature. Such were his wonderful quickness and his infallible memory, that glimpses of these things did for him the work of years. But, of course, it was in the world of books that this wonderful superiority was chiefly seen, and the following example may serve as one of the most striking among many.
It happened to me, some years since, in the course of some historical inquiries, to wish for fuller information in regard to the barbarous feudal codes of the Middle Ages,—as the Salic, Burgundian, and Ripuarian,—before the time of Charlemagne. The common historians, even Hallam, gave no very satisfactory information and referred to no very available books; and supposing it to be a matter of which every well-read lawyer would at least know something, I asked help of the most scholarly member of that profession within my reach. He regretted his inability to give me any aid, but referred me to a friend of his, who was soon to visit him, a young man, who was already eminent for legal learning. The friend soon arrived, but owned, with some regret, that he had paid no attention to that particular subject, and did not even know what books to refer to; but he would at least ascertain what they were, and let me know. (N.B. I have never heard from him since.) Stimulated by ill-success, I aimed higher, and struck at the Supreme Bench of a certain State, breaking in on the mighty repose of His Honor with the name of Charlemagne. "Charlemagne?" responded my lord judge, rubbing his burly brow,—"Charlemagne lived, I think, in the sixth century?" Dismayed, I retreated, with little further inquiry; and sure of one man, at least, to whom law meant also history and literature, I took refuge with Charles Sumner. That accomplished scholar, himself for once at fault, could only frankly advise me to do at last what I ought to have done at first,—to apply to Theodore Parker. I did so. "Go," replied he instantly, "to alcove twenty-four, shelf one hundred and thirteen, of the College Library at Cambridge, and you will find the information you need in a thick quarto, bound in vellum, and lettered 'Potgiesser de Statu Servorum.'" I straightway sent for Potgiesser, and found my fortune made, it was one of those patient old German treatises which cost the labor of one man's life to compile and another's to exhaust, and I had no reason to suppose that any reader had disturbed its repose until that unwearied industry had explored the library.
Amid such multiplicity of details he must sometimes have made mistakes, and with his great quickness of apprehension he sometimes formed hasty conclusions. But no one has a right to say that his great acquirements were bought by any habitual sacrifice of thoroughness. To say that they sometimes impaired the quality of his thought would undoubtedly be more just; and this is a serious charge to bring. Learning is not accumulation, but assimilation; every man's real acquirements must pass into his own organization, and undue or hasty nutrition does no good. The most priceless knowledge is not worth the smallest impairing of the quality of the thinking. The scholar cannot afford, any more than the farmer, to lavish his strength in clearing more land than he can cultivate; and Theodore Parker was compelled by the natural limits of time and strength to let vast tracts lie fallow, and to miss something of the natural resources of the soil. One sometimes wished that he had studied less and dreamed more,—for less encyclopedic information, and more of his own rich brain.
But it was in popularizing thought and knowledge that his great and wonderful power lay. Not an original thinker, in the same sense with Emerson, he yet translated for tens of thousands that which Emerson spoke to hundreds only. No matter who had been heard on any subject, the great mass of intelligent, "progressive" New-England thinkers waited to hear the thing summed up by Theodore Parker. This popular interest went far beyond the circle of his avowed sympathizers; he might be a heretic, but nobody could deny that he was a marksman. No matter how well others seemed to have hit the target, his shot was the triumphant one, at last. Thinkers might find no new thought in the new discourse, leaders of action no new plan, yet, after all that had been said and done, his was the statement that told upon the community. He knew this power of his, and had analyzed some of the methods by which he attained it, though, after all, the best part was an unconscious and magnetic faculty. But he early learned, so he once told me, that the New-England people dearly love two things,—a philosophical arrangement, and a plenty of statistics. To these, therefore, he treated them thoroughly; in some of his "Ten Sermons" the demand made upon the systematizing power of his audience was really formidable; and I have always remembered a certain lecture of his on the Anglo-Saxons as the most wonderful instance that ever came within my knowledge of the adaptation of solid learning to the popular intellect. Nearly two hours of almost unadorned fact,—for there was far less than usual of relief and illustration,—and yet the lyceum-audience listened to it as if an angel sang to them. So perfect was his sense of purpose and of power, so clear and lucid was his delivery, with such wonderful composure did he lay out, section by section, his historical chart, that he grasped his hearers as absolutely as he grasped his subject: one was compelled to believe that he might read the people the Sanscrit Lexicon, and they would listen with ever fresh delight. Without grace or beauty or melody, his mere elocution was sufficient to produce effects which melody and grace and beauty might have sighed for in vain. And I always felt that he well described his own eloquence while describing Luther's, in one of the most admirably moulded sentences he ever achieved,—"The homely force of Luther, who, in the language of the farm, the shop, the boat, the street, or the nursery, told the high truths that reason or religion taught, and took possession of his audience by a storm of speech, then poured upon them all the riches of his brave plebeian soul, baptizing every head anew,—a man who with the people seemed more mob than they, and with kings the most imperial man."
Another key to his strong hold upon the popular mind was to be found in his thorough Americanism of training and sympathy. Surcharged with European learning, he yet remained at heart the Lexington farmer's-boy, and his whole atmosphere was indigenous, not exotic. Not haunted by any of the distrust and over-criticism which are apt to effeminate the American scholar, he plunged deep into the current of hearty national life around him, loved it, trusted it, believed in it; and the combination of this vital faith with such tremendous criticism of public and private sins formed an irresistible power. He could condemn without crushing,—denounce mankind, yet save it from despair. Thus his pulpit became one of the great forces of the nation, like the New York "Tribune." His printed volumes had but a limited circulation, owing to a defective system of publication, which his friends tried in vain to correct; but the circulation of his pamphlet-discourses was very great; he issued them faster and faster, latterly often in pairs, and they instantly spread far and wide. Accordingly he found his listeners everywhere; he could not go so far West but his abundant fame had preceded him; his lecture-room in the remotest places was crowded, and his hotel-chamber also, until late at night. Probably there was no private man in the nation, except, perhaps, Beecher and Greeley, whom personal strangers were so eager to see; while from a transatlantic direction he was sought by visitors to whom the two other names were utterly unknown. Learned men from the continent of Europe always found their way, first or last, to Exeter Place; and it is said that Thackeray, on his voyage to this country, declared that the thing in America which he most desired was to hear Theodore Parker talk.
Indeed, his conversational power was so wonderful that no one could go away from a first interview without astonishment and delight. There are those among us, it may be, more brilliant in anecdote or repartee, more eloquent, more profoundly suggestive; but for the outpouring of vast floods of various and delightful information, I believe that he could have had no Anglo-Saxon rival, except Macaulay. And in Mr. Parker's case, at least, there was no alloy of conversational arrogance or impatience of opposition. He monopolized, not because he was ever unwilling to hear others, but because they did not care to hear themselves when he was by. The subject made no difference; he could talk on anything. I was once with him in the society of an intelligent Quaker farmer, when the conversation fell on agriculture: the farmer held his own ably for a time; but long after he was drained dry, our wonderful companion still flowed on exhaustless, with accounts of Nova Scotia ploughing and Tennessee hoeing, and all things rural, ancient and modern, good and bad, till it seemed as if the one amusing and interesting theme in the universe were the farm. But it soon proved that this was only one among his thousand departments, and his hearers felt, as was said of old Fuller, as if he had served his time at every trade in town.
But it must now be owned that these astonishing results were bought by some intellectual sacrifices which his nearer friends do not all recognize, but which posterity will mourn. Such a rate of speed is incompatible with the finest literary execution. A delicate literary ear he might have had, perhaps, but he very seldom stopped to cultivate or even indulge it. This neglect was not produced by his frequent habit of extemporaneous speech alone; for it is a singular fact, that Wendell Phillips, who rarely writes a line, yet contrives to give to his hastiest efforts the air of elaborate preparation, while Theodore Parker's most scholarly performances were still stump-speeches. Vigorous, rich, brilliant, copious, they yet seldom afford a sentence which falls in perfect cadence upon the ear; under a show of regular method, they are loose and diffuse, and often have the qualities which he himself attributed to the style of John Quincy Adams,—"disorderly, ill-compacted, and homely to a fault." He said of Dr. Channing,—"Diffuseness is the old Adam of the pulpit. There are always two ways of hitting the mark,—one with a single bullet, the other with a shower of small shot: Dr. Channing chose the latter, as most of our pulpit orators have done." Theodore Parker chose it also.
Perhaps Nature and necessity chose it for him. If not his temperament, at least the circumstances of his position, cut him off from all high literary finish. He created the congregation at the Music Hall, and that congregation, in turn, moulded his whole life. For that great stage his eloquence became inevitably a kind of brilliant scene-painting,—large, fresh, profuse, rapid, showy;—masses of light and shade, wonderful effects, but farewell forever to all finer touches and delicate gradations! No man can write for posterity, while hastily snatching a half-day from a week's lecturing, during which to prepare a telling Sunday harangue for three thousand people. In the perpetual rush and hurry of his life, he had no time to select, to discriminate, to omit anything, or to mature anything. He had the opportunities, the provocatives, and the drawbacks which make the work and mar the fame of the professional journalist. His intellectual existence, after he left the quiet of West Roxbury, was from hand to mouth. Needing above all men to concentrate himself, he was compelled by his whole position to lead a profuse and miscellaneous life.
All popular orators must necessarily repeat themselves,—preachers chiefly among orators, and Theodore Parker chiefly among preachers. The mere frequency of production makes this inevitable,—a fact which always makes every finely organized intellect, first or last, grow weary of the pulpit. But in his case there were other compulsions. Every Sunday a quarter part of his vast congregation consisted of persons who had never, or scarcely ever, heard him before, and who might never hear him again. Not one of those visitors must go away, therefore, without hearing the great preacher define his position on every point,—not theology alone, but all current events and permanent principles, the Presidential nomination or message, the laws of trade, the laws of Congress, woman's rights, woman's costume, Boston slave-kidnappers, and Dr. Banbaby,—he must put it all in. His ample discourse must be like an Oriental poem, which begins with the creation of the universe, and includes all subsequent facts incidentally. It is astonishing to look over his published sermons and addresses, and see under how many different names the same stirring speech has been reprinted;—new illustrations, new statistics, and all remoulded with such freshness that the hearer had no suspicions, nor the speaker either,—and yet the same essential thing. Sunday discourse, lyceum lecture, convention speech, it made no difference, he must cover all the points every time. No matter what theme might be announced, the people got the whole latitude and longitude of Theodore Parker, and that was precisely what they wanted. He broke down the traditional non-committalism of the lecture-room, and oxygenated all the lyceums of the land. He thus multiplied his audience very greatly, while perhaps losing to some degree the power of close logic and of addressing a specific statement to a special point. Yet it seemed as if he could easily leave the lancet to others, grant him only the hammer and the forge.
Ah, but the long centuries, where the reading of books is concerned, set aside all considerations of quantity, of popularity, of immediate influence, and sternly test by quality alone,—judge each author by his most golden sentence, and let all else go. The deeds make the man, but it is the style which makes or dooms the writer. History, which always sends great men in groups, gave us Emerson by whom to test the intellectual qualities of Parker. They cooperated in their work from the beginning, in much the same mutual relation as now; in looking back over the rich volumes of the "Dial," the reader now passes by the contributions of Parker to glean every sentence of Emerson's, but we have the latter's authority for the fact that it was the former's articles which originally sold the numbers. Intellectually, the two men form the complement to each other; it is Parker who reaches the mass of the people, but it is probable that all his writings put together have not had so profound an influence on the intellectual leaders of the nation as the single address of Emerson at Divinity Hall.
And it is difficult not to notice, in that essay in which Theodore Parker ventured on higher intellectual ground, perhaps, than anywhere else in his writings,—his critique on Emerson in the "Massachusetts Quarterly,"—the indications of this mental disparity. It is in many respects a noble essay, full of fine moral appreciations, bravely generous, admirable in the loyalty of spirit shown towards a superior mind, and all warm with a personal friendship which could find no superior. But so far as literary execution is concerned, the beautiful sentences of Emerson stand out like fragments of carved marble from the rough plaster in which they are imbedded. Nor this alone; but, on drawing near the vestibule of the author's finest thoughts, the critic almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere. Subtile beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by delicate allusion the key-note of each,—as "Astraea," "Mithridates," "Hamatreya," and "Étienne de la Boéce,"—seem to him the work of "mere caprice"; he pronounces the poem of "Monadnoc" "poor and weak"; he condemns and satirizes the "Wood-notes," and thinks that a pine-tree which should talk like Mr. Emerson's ought to be cut down and cast into the sea.
The same want of fine discrimination was usually visible in his delineations of great men in public life. Immense in accumulation of details, terrible in the justice which held the balance, they yet left one with the feeling, that, after all, the delicate main-springs of character had been missed. Broad contrasts, heaps of good and evil, almost exaggerated praises, pungent satire, catalogues of sins that seemed pages from some Recording Angel's book,—these were his mighty methods; but for the subtilest analysis, the deepest insight into the mysteries of character, one must look elsewhere. It was still scene-painting, not portraiture; and the same thing which overwhelmed with wonder, when heard in the Music Hall, produced a slight sense of insufficiency, when read in print. It was certainly very great in its way, but not in quite the highest way; it was preliminary work, not final; it was Parker's Webster, not Emerson's Swedenborg or Napoleon.
The same thing was often manifested in his criticisms on current events. The broad truths were stated without fear or favor, the finer points passed over, and the special trait of the particular phase sometimes missed. His sermons on the last revivals, for instance, had an enormous circulation, and told with great force upon those who had not been swept into the movement, and even upon some who had been. The difficulty was that they were just such discourses as he would have preached in the time of Edwards and the "Great Awakening"; and the point which many thought the one astonishing feature of the new excitement, its almost entire omission of the "terrors of the Lord," the far gentler and more winning type of religion which it displayed, and from which it confessedly drew much of its power, this was entirely ignored in Mr. Parker's sermons. He was too hard at work in combating the evangelical theology to recognize its altered phases. Forging lightning-rods against the tempest, he did not see that the height of the storm had passed by.
These are legitimate criticisms to make on Theodore Parker, for he was large enough to merit them. It is only the loftiest trees of which it occurs to us to remark that they do not touch the sky, and a man must comprise a great deal before we complain of him for not comprising everything. But though the closest scrutiny may sometimes find cases where he failed to see the most subtile and precious truth, it will never discover one where, seeing, he failed to proclaim it, or, proclaiming, failed to give it force and power. He lived his life much as he walked the streets of Boston,—not quite gracefully, nor yet statelily, but with quick, strong, solid step, with sagacious eyes wide open, and thrusting his broad shoulders a little forward, as if butting away the throng of evil deeds around him, and scattering whole atmospheres of unwholesome cloud. Wherever he went, there went a glance of sleepless vigilance, an unforgetting memory, a tongue that never faltered, and an arm that never quailed. Not primarily an administrative nor yet a military mind, he yet exerted a positive control over the whole community around him, by sheer mental and moral strength. He mowed down harvests of evil as in his youth he mowed the grass, and all his hours of study were but whetting the scythe.
And for this great work it was not essential that the blade should have a razor's edge. Grant that Parker was not also Emerson; no matter, he was Parker. If ever a man seemed sent into the world to find a certain position, and found it, he was that man. Occupying a unique sphere of activity, he filled it with such a wealth of success, that there is now no one in the nation whom it would not seem an absurdity to nominate for his place. It takes many instruments to complete the orchestra, but the tones of this organ the Music Hall shall never hear again.
One feels, since he is gone, that he made his great qualities seem so natural and inevitable, we forgot that all did not share them. We forgot the scholar's proverbial reproach of timidity and selfishness, in watching him. While he lived, it seemed a matter of course that the greatest acquirements and the heartiest self-devotion should go together. Can we keep our strength, without the tonic of his example? How petty it now seems to ask for any fine-drawn subtilties of poet or seer in him who gave his life to the cause of the humblest! Life speaks the loudest. We do not ask what Luther said or wrote, but only what he did; and the name of Theodore Parker will not only long outlive his books, but will last far beyond the special occasions out of which he moulded his grand career.
* * * * *