Still drops some joy from withering life away."[157]
Scholarship, Jurisprudence, Art, Humanity, each is called to mourn a chosen champion. Pickering the Scholar, Story the Jurist, Allston the Artist, Channing the Philanthropist, are gone. When our last catalogue was published they were all living, each in his field of fame. Our catalogue of this year gathers them with the peaceful dead. Sweet and exalted companionship! They were joined in life, in renown, and in death. They were brethren of our fraternity, sons of Alma Mater. Story and Channing were classmates; Pickering preceded them by two years only, Allston followed them by two years. Casting our eyes upon the closing lustre of the last century, we discern this brilliant group whose mortal light is now obscured. After the toils of his long life, Pickering sleeps serenely in the place of his birth, near the honored dust of his father. Channing, Story, and Allston have been laid to rest in Cambridge, where they first tasted together the tree of life: Allston in the adjoining church-yard, within sound of the voice that now addresses you; Channing and Story in the pleasant, grassy bed of Mount Auburn, under the shadow of beautiful trees, whose falling autumnal leaves are fit emblem of the generations of men.
It was the custom in ancient Rome, on solemn occasions, to bring forward the images of departed friends, arrayed in robes of office, and carefully adorned, while some one recounted what they had done, in the hope of refreshing the memory of their deeds, and of inspiring the living with new impulse to virtue. "For who," says the ancient historian, "can behold without emotion the forms of so many illustrious men, thus living, as it were, and breathing together in his presence? or what spectacle can be conceived more great and striking?"[158] The images of our departed brothers are present here to-day, not in sculptured marble, but graven on our hearts. We behold them again, as in life. They mingle in our festival, and cheer us by their presence. It were well to catch the opportunity of observing together their well-known lineaments, and of dwelling anew, with warmth of living affection, upon the virtues by which they are commended. Devoting the hour to their memory, we may seek also to comprehend and reverence the great interests which they lived to promote. Pickering, Story, Allston, Channing! Their names alone, without addition, awaken a response, which, like the far-famed echo of Dodona, will prolong itself through the live-long day. But, great as they are, we feel their insignificance by the side of those great causes to which their days were consecrated,—Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love, the comprehensive attributes of God. Illustrious on earth, they were but lowly and mortal ministers of lofty and immortal truth. It is, then, the Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist, whom we celebrate to-day, and whose pursuits will be the theme of my discourse.
Here, on this threshold, let me say, what is implied in the very statement of my subject, that, in offering these tributes, I seek no occasion for personal eulogy or biographical detail. My aim is to commemorate the men, but more to advance the objects which they so successfully served. Reversing the order in which they left us, I shall take the last first.
John Pickering, the Scholar, died in the month of May, 1846, aged sixty-nine, within a short distance of that extreme goal which is the allotted limit of human life. By Scholar I mean a cultivator of liberal studies, a student of knowledge in its largest sense,—not merely classical, not excluding what in our day is exclusively called science, but which was unknown when the title of scholar first prevailed; for though Cicero dealt a sarcasm at Archimedes, he spoke with higher truth when he beautifully recognized the common bond between all departments of knowledge. The brother whom we mourn was a scholar, a student, as long as he lived. His place was not merely among those called by courtesy Educated Men, with most of whom education is past and gone,—men who have studied; he studied always. Life to him was an unbroken lesson, pleasant with the charm of knowledge and the consciousness of improvement.
The world knows and reveres his learning; they only who partook somewhat of his daily life fully know the modesty of his character. His knowledge was such that he seemed to be ignorant of nothing, while, in the perfection of his humility, he might seem to know nothing. By learning conspicuous before the world, his native diffidence withdrew him from its personal observation. Surely, learning so great, which claimed so little, will not be forgotten. The modesty which detained him in retirement during life introduces him now that he is dead. Strange reward! Merit which shrank from the living gaze is now observed of all men. The voice once so soft is returned in echoes from the tomb.
I place in the front his modesty and his learning, two attributes by which he will be always remembered. I might enlarge on his sweetness of temper, his simplicity of life, his kindness to the young, his sympathy with studies of all kinds, his sensibility to beauty, his conscientious character, his passionless mind. Could he speak to us of himself, he might adopt words of self-painting from the candid pen of his eminent predecessor in the cultivation of Grecian literature, leader of its revival in Europe, as Pickering was leader in America,—the urbane and learned Erasmus. "For my own part," says the early scholar to his English friend, John Colet, "I best know my own failings, and therefore shall presume to give a character of myself. You have in me a man of little or no fortune,—a stranger to ambition,—of a strong propensity to loving-kindness and friendship,—without any boast of learning, but a great admirer of it,—one who has a profound veneration for any excellence in others, however he may feel the want of it in himself,—who can readily yield to others in learning, but to none in integrity,—a man sincere, open, and free,—a hater of falsehood and dissimulation,—of a mind lowly and upright,—of few words, and who boasts of nothing but an honest heart."[159]
I have called him Scholar; for it is in this character that he leaves so excellent an example. But the triumphs of his life are enhanced by the variety of his labors, and especially by his long career at the bar. He was a lawyer, whose days were spent in the faithful practice of his profession, busy with clients, careful of their concerns in court and out of court. Each day witnessed his untiring exertion in scenes little attractive to his gentle and studious nature. He was formed to be a seeker of truth rather than a defender of wrong; and he found less satisfaction in the strifes of the bar than in the conversation of books. To him litigation was a sorry feast, and a well-filled docket of cases not unlike the curious and now untasted dish of "nettles," in the first course of a Roman banquet. He knew that the duties of the profession were important, but felt that even their successful performance, when unattended by juridical culture, gave small title to regard, while they were less pleasant and ennobling than the disinterested pursuit of learning. He would have said, at least as regards his own profession, with the Lord Archon of the Oceana, "I will stand no more to the judgment of lawyers and divines than to that of so many other tradesmen."[160]
It was the law as a trade that he pursued reluctantly, while he had true happiness in the science of jurisprudence, to which he devoted many hours rescued from other cares. By example, and contributions of the pen, he elevated the study, and invested it with the charm of liberal pursuits. By marvellous assiduity he was able to lead two lives,—one producing the fruits of earth, the other of immortality. In him was the union, rare as it is grateful, of lawyer and scholar. He has taught how much may be done for jurisprudence and learning even amidst the toils of professional life; while the enduring lustre of his name contrasts with the fugitive reputation which is the lot of the mere lawyer, although clients beat at his gates from cock-crow at the dawn.