though insufficient in degree, was favorable in kind. It was taken pleasantly, with a cheering companion, and in forgetfulness of his solitary labors. If three or four of his literary friends had gone with him to his parish, and walked with him there as they had done at Andover, he might have been indebted to them for his life. Professor Tholuck of Halle, who is more familiar with biblical literature than with our manners and customs, recently assigned three reasons for not visiting the United States; first, the rifeness of our mob spirit, which might, as he said, endanger his life; secondly, the prevalence of dyspepsia, which is somewhat peculiar to our students; and thirdly, the want of promenades in our cities and villages. It was a promenade, which Mr. Homer needed at South Berwick, to allure him from his books, and fascinate his eye during the solitary ramble. The probability is, that had he always lived in the groves of the academy, and walked by the gently flowing Ilissus, he had glided smoothly through a long and honorable life. But a man cannot always live in a sequestered bower, nor is that the scene for the perfecting of the soul. It is well that he must wrestle with the perplexities of life. It is an old Chinese proverb, that a gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man be improved without adversity. When the subject of this notice left his retreat at Andover, and hastened to his parochial toils, he exposed his constitution to a sudden shock. Without a habit of athletic labor, without interest in any employment which he could pursue in the open air, with a system exhausted by the efforts of his Senior year, he was ill fitted for the multiplied responsibilities which he chose to heap upon himself as a pastor. But the melancholy issue of his life is reserved for a future section. It is enough to say,

"In his own mind our cause of mourning grew,
The falchion's temper ate the scabbard through."

RESULTS OF MR. HOMER'S SCHOLARSHIP.

The fruits of mental application are not always tangible. They are seen in the character rather than the exploits of the mind. There is a mellowness of feeling, a refinement of sensibility, a generous and liberal spirit, which, more than any display of erudition, betoken the scholar. The subject of this memoir found the reward of his studies, not so much in the treasures of knowledge which he had amassed, as in the nice adjustment of his moral and mental power, the beautiful symmetry of his tastes and affections and faculties, the balancing, not indeed exact, but more accurate than is common, between one energy and another of his mind and his heart. One of his friends has aptly remarked, that "he displayed the perfectness of growth, a kind of finish, even in his early youth; the shrub possessing the same proportion of parts as the tree which it will become ere long." He had also that candor of mind which comes of an enlarged scholarship. He could never have been a partizan in theology, as a young man often loves to be, and he would probably have done much good by his freedom from that narrow spirit which will cling to a sect or school, be it new or old. But the richest fruit of his scholarship was seen in his increasing capacity for improvement. The rapidity of his mental advances seemed to be accelerating every day, until a half month before his death. He had laid a broad and deep foundation for an intellectual structure which would have risen fair and high.

Before he had closed his twenty-second year, he had accumulated much that would have quickened his mental growth for a long time to come. He had written numerous essays and orations, four quarto volumes of notes on his collegiate studies, eight volumes of abstracts and theses upon the topics of his Seminary course, had acquired six foreign languages,

some of which he had mastered, had studied with philosophical acumen the writings of Hesiod, Herodotus, Longinus, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Aeschylus and Euripides, and many of the old English prose authors; had written an analysis of each book in the Iliad and of the Odyssey, with copious annotations upon them, a critical disquisition also upon each of the minor poems and fragments ascribed to the father of poetry, an analysis of the orations of Demosthenes and Aeschines, with extensive criticisms upon each, and various translations from Latin and German commentators upon the sacred and classical writings. He had also collected materials for at least three courses of lectures upon Homer and Demosthenes, and thought himself prepared to finish these courses with but little additional study, and within a short time. A synopsis of these lectures, with a catalogue of the authorities which he considered most important for reference, is published at the close of the present volume.

MR. HOMER AS A FRIEND.

It is not as a scholar that Mr. Homer is most pleasantly remembered, but as a friend. There was an affectionateness and a confiding frankness in his heart and manner, which wound others around him in a strange way. The beauties of his social nature still linger in the remembrance, like the spent breathings of an Aeolian harp, and we would fain muse upon them in silence, rather than describe them to a stranger. His companions never admired so much as they loved him, and they cling to his memory with a tenacity that will never let it go. Their feelings toward him now that he has gone, are his highest praise. They prove that his character was a combination of such virtues as have won the lasting esteem of all who were admitted into the sanctuary of his heart, and that his influence will be the greater and the better as he was the more intimately known. It is said of an

eminent preacher, that all who never associated with him will be profited by his discourses. The usefulness of the sermons in the present volume will be increased by the familiar knowledge of their author's character. It is somewhat singular, that each of his friends supposed himself to be the peculiar object of Mr. Homer's regard, and each has said, without suspecting the same to have been said by another, I imagine that he disclosed his feelings to me as freely and confidentially, as to any one living." And even now, he seems, like a good portrait, to be fixing his eye distinctively and winningly upon every individual of his chosen brotherhood.

He did not select his associates logically, by way of inference from any sermon of Bishop Atterbury or Dr. Blair on the choice of companions, nor after a wise calculation of the benefit he might receive from them; not because they were rich, nor because they were popular, nor because they were learned did he choose them, but because he was drawn to them by the mutual attractions of his own and their nature. He was their friend before he judiciously resolved to be so. Neither did he confine his attachments to those who were cast in his own mould. He preferred circumstantial varieties amid general sympathies. Nor was he blind to the imperfection of his associates; he saw it, and frankly reproved it, but with all their faults he loved them still. He sometimes indulged them with his confidence merely because they wished it. He freely gave them his hand because they gave him their hearts. He acted on the principle which Dr. Payson commends, "The man that wants me is the man I want." He said of himself, "Alas, I am susceptible, very susceptible, too susceptible;" and if any one appealed to his generosity, or his pity, or his christian benevolence, the appeal was not in vain. Hence he would sometimes contract an intimacy less profitable to himself, than it was flattering to his comrade. He did not draw near to men in their prosperity,

and find himself otherwise employed in their adversity, nor when his friends were in pain did he study as calmly as if it were well with them. When the multitude frowned upon men whom he valued, he was not "ashamed of their chain." True worth, wherever he discerned it, he would commend, though it were hidden from the view of others, by some unpleasant traits with which it was combined.

It is soothing to recall the interest which was ever manifested by Mr. Homer in those of his fellow students who needed his sympathies. He ministered to his sick classmates as one who suffered with them, and if any of his fellow travelers in the walks of literature were arrested by death, he missed them and spoke of them as his brethren. When young men are herded together in a public institution and secluded from the humanizing influences of the domestic circle, they often become obtuse in their sensibilities, and acquire a roughness and a coarseness which they mistake for the sign of manhood; and when they bear one of their number to the grave, they sometimes affect to be superior to such refinements of expression as are prompted by nature in its truth and healthfulness. In more instances than one, our departed friend perceived some heartless formality at the obsequies of a comrade, and with his peculiar delicacy strove to prevent its recurrence. He remembered as one of the most pleasing, though melancholy services of his life, how he once smoothed the pillow of a dying classmate,1 studied to ascertain the most exact proprieties of the funeral rites, and then attended the cold remains to the home of the bereaved parents, who resided a hundred miles from Amherst, and were ignorant of the death of their son until a half hour before the corpse arrived. During this journey in an inclement season of the year, and over well nigh impassable roads, his sensibilities were so much excited, that for days after his re

1 Mr. D. C. Rowell.