a credit to the American press. But we can have been an American lawyer, probably a not help thinking that a more succinct ac- successful orator, perhaps a politician. But count and a more modest volume would have while he was at college a mischance befell served the purpose better. Mr. Prescott's him, leading to consequences which put an life was the happy and fortunate one-very end to all thought of public life. One day fortunate, in spite of all his privations-of & after dinner, there was some rough play going successful student and writer, and there is in on in the hall among a number of undergradreality but one point in it on which any uates. Prescott was leaving the hall, and, strong or peculiar interest gathers. Mr. as he turned round to see what was passing, Ticknor expatiates at excessive length on de-a hard piece of bread hit him full in the open tails which are too common to be character-eye, and injured him so severely that sight istic, unless the narrator himself can make was irrecoverably lost. The brain, too, rethem so by skill of his own. The book is too ceived a shock; and this, though he seemed long, and not very well arranged; one part to recover his general health at the time, was repeats another with too little variation; and followed within two years by an extraordiMr. Ticknor has not always taken the care, nary inflammation of the remaining eye, which which a practised writer might naturally be proved to be connected with a deep rheuexpected to take, to prevent our meeting the matic tendency, never to be subdued and same thing again where there was no need of with difficulty to be kept within limits. The its recurrence. The book is largely inter- eye was saved; but from this time its health spersed with letters. Some are interesting and functions were feeble and capricious. It and curious; but a great number have noth- had to be most jealously watched and huing in them of more consequence than the mored, and the use of it carefully measured name of the writer; and there are not un-out; and as all substantial improvement in frequent instances of that want of judgment it soon appeared to be beyond hope, life was so often shown by modern biographers in henceforth to be regulated with a view to printing for the public what was meant, and preserve and spare its precarious power. suited, only for the eye of a friend. 46 He reckoned time by eyesight," he said, 'The great interest of Mr. Prescott's career as distances on railroads are reckoned by lies in the singular way in which a painful hours." For some time the sufferer seemed and disabling accident eventually directed doomed to a life without improvement or him to that which made his fame,-in the fruit. Literature appeared as much cut off way in which it controlled and shaped the as law or business from a man to whom an course of his life, and, by its cross and vexa- open page was full of mischief and peril. tious consequences, drove him against his But his singular hopefulness and patience, own purposes and plans into pursuits in and his cheerful strength of heart, found which he found unexpected success and good ways, by degrees, out of the entanglement fortune. It further lies in the effect of this of crippling and imprisoning circumstances. accident on his own character and habits; He read whenever he could with safety, and in the resolution, contrivance, and dauntless as much as he could, and stopped when readpatience with which he kept up his struggle ing became dangerous. He was largely read against its increasing pressure; in the heavy to, and happily found those whose affection odds against his being able effectually to willingly submitted to hours of reading, while master such disheartening impediments to he sat facing the darkest corner of the room, new and large and laborious knowledge, in and listening insatiably. In this way he spite of which he accomplished what he un- gradually became acquainted with the best dertook; and in the way in which, to the examples of English, French, and Italian very last, his work was, in a degree different writing; but his work was merely preparafrom the conditions imposed on most men, a tory; he had no subject in view which atrace against time. In fact, confined as he tracted him, and for which he read. By was to such necessarily protracted and te- degrees he felt that he should like to be an dious processes of gathering his materials, it author, but without having anything to was ever a question whether he could finish write about. A sort of accident led him to before his day was up. Mr. Prescott, if a subject. In the course of his reading he nothing unusual had happened to him, would had attempted to learn German, and,' for reasons which hardly seem adequate ores, ¦ more, as his command over the hidden treashad persuaded himself that it was beyond ures of archives and libraries increased, and his reach. To make up for the disappoint- as documents poured in upon a writer who ment, Mr. Ticknor introduced him to Spanish. He entered with increasing interest into Spanish reading, and when he began to cast about for a subject on which to write himself, early Spanish history suggested itself, along with the revolutions of republican Rome, and the history of Italian, and then of English, literature. But objections accumulated against the classical, the Italian, and the English subjects, and left him more and more inclined to the Spanish one. Then the Spanish one gradually narrowed itself, and at the same time deepened in interest; and at length he distinctly put before his mind the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. He has recorded the date when he decided upon it; but he decided upon that which was to color all his thoughts, and give its special character to his reputation as a writer, with only the vaguest and most general notions of what his subject contained. had achieved a great reputation and shown his ability to use them, his work involved, not merely the reading of scores of books, but the mastery and arrangement of hundreds of more or less fragmentary manuscripts, with all their difficulties of deciphering and connection. Or else he had to undertake the investigation of collateral and indispensable, but uncongenial, subjects,-like the study, repulsive to a mind averse to anything connected with mathematics, of the monetary system of the fifteenth century, or the hieroglyphics and astronomy of the Aztecs. Were it not that the process was manifestly accompanied, and more than recompensed, by so much enjoyment, it would be positively painful to read of his continual and vigilant precautions, often in the event rendered vain, to keep a most limited use of his eye; of the petty and rigorous self-discipline, and measuring out of everything,-time, food, exercise, glasses of wine,-by which for forty years he kept up his powers to the working pitch; of the odd shifts and contrivances by which he had to supply those ready faculties which most men use without thinking of them when they have a book to consult or a page to write; of the increased and, to the imagination, oppressive strain on one set of organs—those of memory, and of the inward unassisted power of construction and arrangement-necessary to make up for the necessity of foregoing all but absolutely indispensable service from his single eye. Never was the The account given by Mr. Ticknor of the production of this, and the works which followed it, is a remarkable instance of the power of will and management over the most discouraging difficulties. When Prescott wrote to Mr. Everett in Spain, asking for books, Mr. Everett naturally advised him to come to Spain and examine the libraries for himself. It was precisely the thing which he felt from the beginning to be hopeless. If he could not write history without seeing and searching for himself, he must give up the thought of doing it at all. Most men would have felt that to enter on an unlimited" thorn in the flesh " more realized, than in and minute study of books and manuscripts with one bad and treacherous eye was a folly, horrible even to think of. Prescott-quoting Johnson's saying, that no man can compile a history who is blind,-resolved to accept the unfavorable condition, and to try whether, in spite of it, he could not write up to the best standard in point of accuracy of statement and originality of research. Even in the first plan of his first work he laid out for himself an accumulation of materials truly formidable to be worked up by a man who could do so little to consult books for himself; but the plan and materials grew under his hand, and the materials of his first work were light compared with what he had to deal with in his succeeding ones. More and Mr. Prescott's forty years' endurance of his troublesome and capricious eye. To many people it would seem almost less tantalizing to have lost it at once; but he was nettled when the Edinburgh Review spoke of him as being blind. "He sometimes felt obliged to consider the contingency of losing the use of it altogether, and had the courage to determine, even in that event, to go on with his history." "The first thing to be done, and the thing always to be repeated day by day, was to strengthen as much as possible what remained of his sight." He enters resolutions in his diary about it. "I will make it my principal purpose to restore my eye to its primitive vigor, and will do nothing habitually that can seriously injure it." For a time, his care was rewarded by increased Spanish read by a person who did not understrength in the organ but, though he never stand a word of what he was reading. In became blind, the powe of sight began grad-time it came to his having to decipher ancient, ually to fail. In severa of his last years he and often almost illegible, handwriting by used his eye only thirtyive minutes in the means of the sagacity and readiness of othday, divided exactly by th watch into por-ers; and all that he could use for himself tions of five minutes each, ith at least half were short notes or extracts, written out in a an hour between. In the tribution of his large round hand, from passages which he day, and in everything else, lived, as far as had told his secretary to mark in the course he could, by his doctor's ruk. He had to of the reading, and the words of which he guard also against another enny,-rheuma- could take in rapidly and easily in his subsetism. When he was called inthe morning, quent hours of meditation. If his eye haphe was told the state of the therometer, and pened to be refractory or threatening, these he had made the most minutememoranda notes were read over to him, sometimes a about the amount and regulan of his dozen times, with any others which he might dress; and "finding it difficult, says Mr. have written down, and had transcribed in Ticknor, "to do so in any other way, he the same large hand, of his own thoughts. caused each of its heavier external portions Another of his contrivances was reprinting, in to be marked by his tailor with the umber large type and on one side only of the page, of ounces it weighed, and then put tem on the portion of an important book-the book according to the temperature, sure thatheir specified was the translation of Ranke's weight would indicate the measure of wamth Spanish Monarchy"—which he wished to and protection they would afford. Twour- have continually at hand. But it is curious rents of feeling seemed to be constantly mt-that, in spite of Thierry's advice and example, ing in his mind,—the eager, unabated lovef he seems never to have adopted the plan of work and the curious and never satisf dictating. He wrote his works with his own search after expedients to lighten the stres of it, and to economize to the full the useinstrument, called a noctograph, by which his hand, using what seems a clumsy and imperfect that could be got from his bodily powers. en, or rather style, was partially guided in His study was full of odd and whimsically iting, without his having to use his eye. ingenious devices and nice adjustments and adaptations of light and warmth. "The shades and shutters for regulating the exact amount of light which should be admitted, his own position relatively to its direct rays and to those which were reflected from surrounding objects, the adaptation of his dress and the temperature of the room to his rheumatic affections, and the different contrivances for taking notes from the books which were read to him, and for impressing on his memory, with the least possible use of his sight, such portions of each as were needful for his immediate purpose-were all of them the result of painstaking experiments, skilfully and patiently made." But the ingenuity of these expedients was less remarkable than the conscientious consistency with which they were employed from day to day for forty years. Of course the main part of his reading was done by the eyes of secretaries, When he began, he could not find a reader who understood Spanish; but he was not daunted, and he listened to volume after volume of "The re he never put style to paper before all was completely finished. Not only the substance of work, but the arrangement of sentences and aragraphs, and the wording, were all brout to a perfect shape in his mind, after period first of thought and incubation, and then otomposition; and writing was a sort of trantiption from memory. sult,' sa. Mr. Ticknor" was remarkablealmost inedible—as to the masses he could thus hold abeyance in his mind, and as to the length time he could keep them there, and consider d reconsider them without confusion or wealess. Two or three chapters at a time were memory, withola word of them being writus kept on the anvil in his ten down. pages in his mery for several days, and "Hrequently kept about sixty went over the wh mass five or six times, moulding and remiding the sentences at each successive ret. went over in this wayxteen times before it One chapter he was. written out. H and copied out in a secretary deciphered la round hand what Mr. Prescott had thus ritten down, as it were, in the dark; and the work was then | He writes home aboutsharp sayings of Roglaid aside for some months. When the time ers freshly reported and about Macaulay's of revision was come," he chose the hour and conversation and waderful memory; about minutes in cach day-for they were often dinners with Sir. Peel,-who, when he minutes—when his eye would permit him to came into the roor, addressed him in French, read the manuscript, and then he went over taking him for Scibe,—and about the startit with extreme care. 99 "This process," Mr. ling surprise of 'eel's death a few days afterTicknor says, "he never, I think, trusted wards. He defribes a race at Ascot, a pres wholly to the ear." It was part of the work entation at cort, and a Sunday with the for which he saved his eye. He thought that Bishop of Oord at Cuddesdon, where he what was to meet the eye of another should, was much strck with the bishop's trees and once at least, have been seen and judged by the bishop's loquence, but still more, apthe eye of its author. parently, wh the architecture and painted windows of uddesdon church, and the" quite 66 It is a curious example of the contrarieties of character that this man of self-sacri- Roman Cholic" character of a service in fice and devotion to labor used habitually which th whole congregation joined in the to struggle against his indolence and disin- chanting His general impressions of Engclination to work by a system of wages, or land he nothing to distinguish them from bonds of money, to be forfeited if he had those t be found in ordinary foreign accounts. not accomplished his set task in time. It is They re the common generalizations, with satisfactory to see that work so conscientious the ommon looseness and exaggeration, of and a spirit so high and courageous brought our irtues and vices. English "bigotry," their full reward. Mr. Prescott's immediate he'rites in 1850, surpasses anything, in popularity, and the serene but very deep zest a uiet, passive form, that has been witnessed with which he enjoyed it to the last, recall ice the more active bigotry of the times of the happier part of Sir Walter Scott's life, he Spanish Philips; "' and even the cultiwhom, in some of the features of his writ-vated Englishman has no knowledge, no ing,—in his command over the progress an range of ideas or conceptions, beyond his development of a story, his easy, fluer own island. Yet probably Mr. Prescott spirited language, his liberal, manly, ed would not have understood why we smile sensible, but not very profound, vein of rec-when he tells his wife that, as he looked tion, Mr. Prescott often brings back tour through the iron grating on the tomb of thoughts. Beyond his own people, told Walter Scott, the thought suggested to him aristocratic world, literary and socis was was that he was looking" through the iron freely opened to him. The most ftering bars which fence in the marble sarcophagus compliments arrived from men lik Guizot of our great and good Washington; and Humboldt; a closer and more lightful when he describes the Duke of Wellington, correspondence began with Engl friends. on his first introduction to him, "as a strikMr. Prescott writes familiarly to My dear ing figure, reminding me of Colonel Perkins Carlisle," and when he came a visit to in his general air, though his countenance is England, he was received withhe heartiest fresher." The fiercest thing in the book is welcome by the Percys and thHowards. It an impatient and sweeping condemnation of might have been wiser, we hink, to have Mr. Carlyle's "French Revolution." Mr. abridged the account of English visit Carlyle is utterly wrong, he thinks, in the and the letters in which heescribed it; but grim comedy which he interweaves with his American biographers ar tourists are not account, and the "whole thing is, both as alone in feeling the difulty of reticence. to forme and to fond, perfectly contemptiThe letters contain som/musing gossip, and ble." This is a kind of measure of Mr. show to illustrious ho-something in the Prescott's depth. A disciple and admirer way of Mrs. Stowe hat impression they of Mably would hardly understand the way have made on their lustrious guests; but in which Mr. Carlyle treats history. there is nothing ill-pured in Mr. Prescott's it must be said that it was the measure which letters, and the maimpression derived from he himself very faithfully and modestly took them is of the clouded and unfeigned of his own powers and aims. In one of the pleasure with wh1 he enjoyed his welcome. numerous memoranda in which he reviews or But his own prospects and capacity, he writes of ary 4, 1772. He was prepared for college a work which he was then planning: "I will not seek to give that minute and elaborate view of the political and economical resources of the country which I attempted in Ferdinand and Isabella,' and for which I have such rich materials for this reign. But I must content myself with a more desultory and picturesque view of things, developing character as much as possible, illustrating it by anecdote, and presenting the general features of the time and of the court. The work in this way, though not profound, may be amusing, and display that philosophy which consists in the development of human passion and character. Great events, told with simplicity, will interest the reader; and the basis on which the narrative throughout will rest will be of the most authentic kind, enabling me to present facts hitherto unknown and, of course, views and deductions not familiar to the student of history." From The Transcript. DEATH OF JOSIAH QUINCY. THIS venerable man fell into his last slumber yesterday afternoon. He died without a pain or a struggle, about five o'clock, at his country-seat in Quincy, having passed beyond the rare old age of ninety-two. This announcement of an event for which, by reason of his many years, the community and friends and relatives have been prepared, will still be received with sorrow. It takes from us one of our most prominent and noblest citizens, who was a living tie between the past and the present, the youthful associate of the fathers of the republic, and the patriarchal friend and fellow-worker of their sons. at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and He resigned his place on the Bench in 1823 to become Mayor of Boston, which office he filled in the most energetic manner until 1829, and many marked changes and improvements in the condition and the affairs of the city are due to his boldness and fidelity whilst at the head of the municipal government. In 1829 he succeeded Dr. Kirkland as President of Harvard College. He retired from that office in 1845. Besides filling these prominent places, Mr. Quincy was connected with various societies and took an active part in almost every enterprise that aimed to benefit the material, educational, and moral interests of the commonwealth. He was fearless, nervous, and direct as a speaker, and his speeches and orations are a part of the political and patriotic literature of New England. He used his pen with force, clearness, and point, and in addition to many occasional pamphlets and letters, has left the "Municipal History of Boston," the "History of Harvard College," and a "Life of John Quincy Adams," as among the evidence of his industry and research, and his interest in every question of public importance. The lished on the eightieth birthday of the author, and shows that fourscore years had not abated his mental vigor. Mr. Quincy was too widely respected and honored to need special eulogy. His public" Municipal History of Boston" was pubservices, his clear and vigorous mind, his strong and upright character, are known throughout the land. His name is intimately associated with the history of Massachusetts for a period exceeding the usual term of mortal life. The briefest mention of the events of his remarkable career will show what he was and how much he did,-how large was his ability and how bravely and diligently he used it. The son of Josiah Quincy, Jr., and Abigail Phillips, he was born in Boston, Febru It would not become us in these necessarily hasty paragraphs to attempt any comments on the grand, intense, and vigorous life of Mr. Quincy, or to delineate even in rapid outlines his robust and marked character. His works and his words remain to praise him; and his memory will be cherished as one of the ablest men of his day. We may not close, however, without reference to the |