replied that he had never read but one work on architecture, and that was "The House That Jack Built."

Halleck enjoyed repeating the comment of a shrewd merchant, that a poet is "a man who has soarings after the infinite, and divings after the unfathomable, but never pays cash."

Halleck's farewell visit to the city he loved so well, in October, 1867, was saddened by the certainty that he would never see his friends again. To his devoted friend and biographer, General Wilson, his last words were: "If we never meet again, come and see me laid under the sod of my native village." On the 22d day of November, 1867, Fitz-Greene Halleck, at the age of 77, was buried in the village cemetery. His venerable sister and cousin, each eighty years old, were the chief mourners. But there were hundreds of villagers and literary and business friends from the metropolis to whom his death was a deep sorrow. The poet had at last found, as his favorite Spenser says:

The porte of reste from troublous toyle,

The world's sweet inn from paine and wearisome turmoyle.

The friends and admirers of Halleck erected at Guilford a monument to the poet's memory. Upon the front tablet were inscribed these lines from "Marco Bozzaris":

One of the few, the immortal names

That were not born to die.

At the dedication of the monument in 1869, a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes was read, the concluding stanzas of which constitute, perhaps, the best tribute to Halleck's memory:

Call not our Poet dead,

Though on his turf we tread!

Green is the wreath their brows so long have worn,-
The Minstrels of the morn,

Who, while the Orient burned with new-born flame,

Caught that celestial fire

And struck a Nation's lyre!

These taught the western winds the poet's name;

Theirs the first opening buds, the maiden flowers of fame!

Count not our Poet dead!

The stars shall watch his bed,

The rose of June its fragrant life renew

His blushing mound to strew,

And all the tuneful throats of summer swell

With thrills as crystal-clear

As when he wooed the ear

Of the young muse that haunts each wooded dell,

With songs of that "rough land" he loved so long and well!

He sleeps; he cannot die!

As evening's long-drawn sigh,

Lifting the rose-leaves on his peaceful mound,

Spreads all their sweets around,

So, laden with his song, the breezes blow

From where the rustling sedge

Frets our rude ocean's edge

To the smooth sea beyond the peaks of snow.

His soul the air enshrines and leaves but dust below!

T

XII

GEORGE GROTE

1794-1871

HE historian of Greece, preeminent in a well-worked field of literature, is George

Grote, a London banker, who during a large part of his literary career was the active business head of the banking-house of Grote, Prescott & Co., Threadneedle street. His business life began at the age of sixteen. For ten years thereafter, he rode horseback to and from the bank and Beckenham, alternating the details of his father's business with studies in German, Political Economy, and the classics. His father had only contempt for his intellectual pursuits, and his mother only severe censure for the liberal tendencies of the boy's unpuritanical mind. Fortunately, at twenty, he became deeply interested in a young woman of fine mind and congenial tastes, whom he succeeded in winning after many discouragements and a wait of five years. The best "appreciation" of the historian's life and character was written by his widow soon after his death.

At the age of thirty-two, the brunt of the banking business was thrown upon him; but