Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

At Mr. Lowell's death he left a large fortune to his four children, three sons and a daughter, of whom John Lowell, Jr., was the eldest. Like his father, John was a successful merchant; but as his business was carried on largely with the East Indies, he had leisure for reading. He had one of the best private libraries in Boston, and knew the contents of his books. He did not forget his duties to his city. He was several times a member of the Common Council and the Legislature of the State, believing that no person has a right to shirk political responsibility.

In the midst of this happy and useful life, surrounded by those who were dear to him, in the years 1830 and 1831, when he was thirty-two years of age, came the crushing blow to his domestic joy. His wife and both children died, and his home was broken up. He sought relief in travel, and in the summer of 1832 made a tour of the Western States. In the autumn of the same year, November, 1832, he sailed for Europe, intending to be absent for some months, or even years. As though he had a premonition that his life would be a brief one, and that he might never return, he made his will before leaving America, giving about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars—half of his property—"to found and sustain free lectures," "for the promotion of the moral and intellectual and physical instruction or education of the citizens of Boston."

The will provides for courses in physics, chemistry, botany, zoölogy, mineralogy, the literature of our own and foreign nations, and historical and internal evidences in favor of Christianity.

The management of the whole fund, with the selection of lecturers, is left to one trustee, who shall choose his successor; that trustee to be, "in preference to all others, some male descendant of my grandfather, John Lowell, provided there be one who is competent to hold the office of trustee, and of the name of Lowell." The trustees of the Boston Athenæum are empowered to look over the accounts each year, but have no voice in the selection of the lecturers. "The trustee," says Mr. Lowell in his will, "may also from time to time establish lectures on any subject that, in his opinion, the wants and taste of the age may demand."

None of the money given by will is ever to be used in buildings; Mr. Lowell probably having seen that money is too often put into brick and stone to perpetuate the name of the donor, while there is no income for the real work in hand. Ten per cent of the income of the Lowell fund is to be added annually to the principal. It is believed that through wise investing the fund is already doubled, and perhaps trebled.

"The idea of a foundation of this kind," says Edward Everett, "on which, unconnected with any place of education, provision is made, in the midst of a large commercial population, for annual courses of instruction by public lectures, to be delivered gratuitously to all who choose to attend them, as far as it is practicable within our largest halls, is, I believe, original with Mr. Lowell. I am not aware that, among all the munificent establishments of Europe, there is anything of this description upon a large scale."

After Mr. Lowell reached Europe in the fall of 1832, he spent the winter in Paris, and the summer in England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was all the time preparing for his Eastern journey,—in the study of languages, and the knowledge of instruments by which to make notes of the course of winds, the temperature, atmospheric phenomena, the height of mountains, and other matters of interest in the far-off lands which he hoped to enter. Lord Glenelg, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, gave him special facilities for his proposed tour into the interior of India.

The winter of 1833 was spent in the southwestern part of France, in visiting the principal cities of Lombardy, in Nice and Genoa, reaching Florence early in February, 1834. In Rome he engaged a Swiss artist, an excellent draftsman and painter, to accompany him, and make sketches of scenery, ruins, and costumes throughout his whole journey.

After some time spent in Naples and vicinity, he devoted a month to the island of Sicily. He writes to Princess Galitzin, the granddaughter of the famous Marshal Suvorof, whom he had met in Florence: "Clear and beautiful are the skies in Sicily, and there is a warmth of tint about the sunsets unrivalled even in Italy. It resembles what one finds under the tropics; and so does the vegetation. It is rich and luxuriant. The palm begins to appear; the palmetto, the aloe, and the cactus adorn every woodside; the superb oleander bathes its roots in almost every brook; the pomegranate and a large species of convolvulus are everywhere seen. In short, the variety of flowers is greater than that of the prairies in the Western States of America, though I think their number is less. Our rudbeckia is, I think, more beautiful than the chrysanthemum coronarium which you see all over Sicily; but there are the orange and the lemon."

Mr. Lowell travelled in Greece, and July 10 reached Athens, "that venerable, ruined, dirty little town," he wrote, "of which the streets are most narrow and nearly impassable; but the poor remains of whose ancient taste in the arts exceed in beauty everything I have yet seen in either Italy, Sicily, or any other portions of Greece."