ceased, who wished some opportunity to express their sense of loss, their respect for his memory, and their estimation of his character and services. Governor Andrew and staff, General Andrews and staff, Chief Justice Bigelow, and other prominent public men, were present. The escort was performed by the Cadets.

"The coffin was placed in front of the pulpit, and was profusely covered with the most exquisite flowers. One by one the wreaths were placed upon the lid by loving hands, as the best expression of the cherished memories of the past. The following inscription was upon the plate:

REV. ARTHUR BUCKMINSTER Fuller,

Chaplain of the 16th Regiment of
Massachusetts Volunteers;

Killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Va.,
11th December, 1862,

Aged 40 years.

'I must do something for my country.'

These words were his fitting epitaph; and few there are who have so well succeeded in matching a single electric word and deed together. Margaret Fuller Ossoli was an artist in words; she left behind her many a sentence of the rarest depth and beauty,-"lyric glimpses," Emerson called them, and her glorious life in Italy joins with her tragic death to throw back upon those brilliant phrases the lustre of a corresponding self-devotion. Less gifted in intellect, less devoted to artistic culture, her brother and pupil left behind him this one utterance of self-devotion, putting to it, within that same hour, the seal of death. It may yet make his memory as lasting as her own.

1845.

PETER AUGUSTUS PORTER.

Colonel 129th New York Vols. (afterwards 8th New York Heavy Artillery), August 17, 1862; killed at Cold Harbor, Va., June 3, 1864.

IN

N how many of the students of Harvard does every favoring element seem to have combined-culture, purity, self-reliance, and courage-to give promise of high and noble achievement. One only boon of Fortune they lacked, her last and most reluctant gift,- opportunity. At length that opportunity came: it was their death. A good Providence granted them to die, and in their death accorded them the achievement of every possibility life could have bestowed. Of such was Peter Augustus Porter, a graduate of Harvard of the Class of 1845. He died in the service of his country on the 3d of June, 1864, at the battle of Cold Harbor.

There was something impressive and noble in the circumstances of his death. Young, gifted, happily married, and with children growing up about him, using all his powers and opportunities with a high and noble aim, Colonel Porter had endeared himself to a large circle of friends by ties of more than ordinary strength and permanence. Favored in birth, and early master of his own career, he resolved that no external advantage of position should help him to any station he had not first merited by his own labor. We all know the results he achieved; but few have followed and appreciated the conscientious labor and study, the severely simple and unostentatious life, which preceded them. His more distinguished merit, however, and higher grace consisted in his benevolence and kindness of heart, in his large and constant, though secret charities, and in his consideration and tenderness towards the poor, the suffer

ing, and the bereaved. However attractive he may have appeared in social life, and however valued for his eminent powers, his best intellectual gifts were ever reserved for the quiet hours spent with those whose relations with him were purely personal and domestic.

My first acquaintance with Colonel Porter was at the University of Heidelberg, where he appeared in my room,— a fair-haired, sunshiny youth, shadowed only by the loss of his aged and beloved father. An orphan, on the threshold of life, his career at Cambridge just terminated, with all that fortune could add to the most noble and generous natural endowments, he had left all behind him to enter on the labors of a student; and at an age when most men deem their culture achieved, he earnestly and humbly commenced anew the great task of self-education. "I want culture," he would say; "I want the equal development of all my faculties, the realization of the true, the good, and the beautiful; and for this I am willing to give my whole life if necessary, but I desire no results which are not based on solid and real knowledge." At a much later period, when time had chastened and tempered his qualities, he was still faithful to this ideal. When urged to choose a career among the many opportunities which presented themselves, he said: "My call has not come; I must bide my time; I can wait, but I cannot give myself, for the sake of occupation or success, to that which my heart does not tell me I am fitted for. I am conscious of the possession of all my faculties in their prime. Whatever I could have been I still could be; but I cannot choose, I must be chosen." The last time I saw him,—it was in command of his regiment at Fort McHenry, I reminded him of this conversation. He smiled sweetly but sadly as he said: "I have done my duty as I have known it. For the two years I have been in command of my regiment, I have hardly been away from it a single day. We are thoroughly drilled for artillery and for infantry service. We are ready for duty: we are waiting for our turn."

His mind seemed singularly old-fashioned, and even in his early youth he had all the graces and courtesies of age. "I am a generation before you all," he would say: "I am the son of an old man. I reach back to the war of 1812. I was born almost in the wilderness. My father rode on horseback through the length of Ohio, to visit my mother in Kentucky, before his marriage. There was nothing but a bridle-path then."

To this adherence to the elder tradition we may trace the source of those hospitalities, generous yet unostentatious, which characterized his home; and his home for all humane purposes was wherever he himself was. Rich and poor were ever received by him with equal kindness, for his nature was alike Christian and kingly. We saw in him. the scion of a stately old oak, grafted on a new and vigorous stock; a gentleman of the old school gracefully adapting himself to the duties of republican life. In accordance with this element of his character was his position, partly inherited and partly adopted, on the great question of human liberty, to which he bore his testimony in humane and generous actions, down to the last great sacrifice, when he gave to it his life.

His reading was thorough and solid, and confined to the best books. He was particularly drawn to the older English classics, whose stately and sober style found a response in his own character. His studies had always a direct reference to a future American literature; and I used to cherish the idea that he was destined to take a high rank among its pioneers. He had carefully and patiently examined, with this view, all the elements of our poetry from its commencement, and, with a correctness of taste which amounted almost to an instinct, had stored his memory with its most striking passages. His own verses were carefully written, and elevated in their thought and diction; but he was coy of expression, and has left but few poems. It was in conversation, perhaps, that his rare combination of native

and acquired powers showed to the greatest advantage. Gentle and wise, with a beautiful fulness of expression and illustration, and a wit that was at once considerate and unrestrained, no one was more valued and cherished than he, wherever the best elements of culture were appreciated.

He being the third of his family, in direct descent, who had borne arms in the service of our country, each of the wars which tell its history had added to the lustre of his name. His grandfather, Dr. Joshua Porter, a physician in Salisbury, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College, was colonel of a regiment in the Revolutionary war, and took part in the battle of Saratoga. His father, Major-General Peter B. Porter, also born in Connecticut, an officer of great distinction in the war of 1812, bore a most important part in the military events on the Northern frontier, and at the battles of Lundy's Lane and the sortie from Fort Erie gained a name for courage and conduct which the historian of that period called upon his son, while yet an infant, to emulate. Later in life General Porter occupied the office of Secretary of War under John Quincy Adams.

Colonel Porter was born at Black Rock, near Buffalo, New York, on July 14th, 1827. His mother was Letitia Grayson, daughter of John Breckenridge of Kentucky, AttorneyGeneral under Jefferson, and was widely known as a person of the highest principles and benevolence. He had the misfortune to lose her when he was only four years old, her place being thenceforth supplied by the tender affection of an only sister. At the age of seventeen he lost his father, and was thus early initiated into the responsibilities of life. He entered Harvard University, in the Sophomore class, in 1842, graduating in 1845. After this, he spent several years in Europe, as a student at the Universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, and Breslau. On his return, in 1852, he married (March 30th) his cousin, Miss Mary C. Breckenridge, a lady greatly respected and beloved by all who knew her, but who was taken from him by death in the