JOHN LOWELL, Jr., AND HIS FREE LECTURES.
There is often something pathetic about a great gift. The only son of Leland Stanford dies, and the millions which he would have inherited are used to found a noble institution on the Pacific Coast.
The only son of Henry F. Durant, the noted Boston lawyer, dies, and the sorrowing father and mother use their fortune to build beautiful Wellesley College.
The only son of Amasa Stone is drowned while at Yale College, and his father builds Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, to honor his boy, and bless his city and State.
John Lowell, Jr., early bereft of his wife and two daughters, his only children, builds a lasting monument for himself, in his Free Lectures for the People, for all time,—the Lowell Institute of Boston.
John Lowell, Jr., was born in Boston, Mass., May 11, 1799, of distinguished ancestry. His great-grandfather, the Rev. John Lowell, was the first minister of Newburyport. His grandfather, Judge John Lowell, was one of the framers of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780. He inserted in the bill of rights the clause declaring that "all men are born free and equal," for the purpose, as he said, of abolishing slavery in Massachusetts; and offered his services to any slave who desired to establish his right to freedom under that clause. His position was declared to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the State in 1783, since which time slavery has had no legal existence in Massachusetts. In 1781 he was elected a member of the Continental Congress, and appointed by President Washington a judge of the District Court of Massachusetts; in 1801 President Adams appointed him chief justice of the Circuit Court. He was brilliant in conversation, an able scholar, and an honest and patriotic leader. He was for eighteen years a member of the corporation of Harvard College.
Judge Lowell had three sons, John, Francis Cabot, and Charles. John, a lawyer, was prominent in all good work, such as the establishment of the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Provident Institution for Savings in the City of Boston, the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, and other helpful projects. "He considered wealth," said Edward Everett, "to be no otherwise valuable but as a powerful instrument of doing good. His liberality went to the extent of his means; and where they stopped, he exercised an almost unlimited control over the means of others. It was difficult to resist the contagion of his enthusiasm; for it was the enthusiasm of a strong, cultivated, and practical mind."