not attract the interest of such as love nothing but the marvelous, and are pleased only when they are amazed, for they exhibit no unhealthful precocity, and he lived too long to present the most striking and dazzling contrast between his years and his powers. On the other hand, his productions may receive but little regard from those who can discover no merit where the indications of youth have not been equaled by the attainments of manhood, and where the seal of a great name has not been stamped upon essays which betoken more of value than they contain. But although he did not live long enough to invest his early efforts with the interest which they might have borrowed from the high scholarship which be promised, he was not called away until he had exhibited some mental processes which may well receive the notice of meditative minds, nor until he had made himself immortal in the memory of some friends, who loved him because they knew him, and who will honor his name by the continued study of his character.

MR. HOMER'S CHILDHOOD.

William Bradford Homer was born in Boston, January 31, 1817. He was the second son of Mr. George J. and Mrs. Mary Homer. On the maternal side, he was a lineal descendant, of the eighth generation, from William Bradford, a passenger in the May-flower, and the second governor of Plymouth colony. From the age of five years until within six months of his death he was a pupil in the schools, and the whole course of his pupilage seems to have been one of success. "Behave as well as Bradford Homer," was a remark sometimes made by his teachers to his fellow pupils. The severest chastisement which he ever received from an instructer, was the following admonition, "Bradford, be careful to keep truth on your side." So deeply was his spirit wounded by this reprimand, that even in maturer life he

never could meet the reprover without uneasiness. He was, from the first, a truth-loving boy, and the mere suspicion of unfaithfulness to his word, was one of the most mortifying punishments he could receive.

It was a principle with his parents, as with the mother of George Herbert, that " as our bodies take a nourishment suitable to the meat on which we feed, so our souls do as insensibly take in vice by the example or conversation with wicked. company; that ignorance of vice is the best preservation of virtue, and that the very knowledge of wickedness is as tinder to inflame and kindle sin, and to keep it burning." In accordance with this principle, great care was taken to prevent Bradford from associating with improper companions. He was often sent, of a holiday, with a few select associates, to a quiet rural residence in the vicinity of Boston, and was furnished there with such amusements as nurtured a distaste for the dissipating scenes of a parade-ground. He was kept a stranger to the indecorous language and sports so frequent among the children in large cities. No improper word would pass his lips, because none would enter his ear. He was unacquainted with the vocabulary of vice, and when he afterwards read it in Shakspeare, he read it with the simplehearted innocence of a child. He preserved, through life, the same unsophisticated spirit. His words, his manners, and his whole appearance proved him to be guileless and untainted, "the purity of his mind breaking out, and dilating itself, even to his body, clothes and habitation."

When about seven years of age, he went through a private course of exercises in elocution, under the care of Mr. William Russell of Boston, and early acquired that flexibility and distinctness of speech, which contributed to his subsequent success in the pulpit. In his eleventh year, he was sent to Amherst, Mass. where he spent three years as a member of Mt. Pleasant Classical Institution, and afterwards, with the exception of a single twelve-month, and of occasional

brief vacations, he never resided under his father's roof. Whenever the boy left home, it was with suppressed tears, and for a day or two after his arrival at the institution, he was sorely and sadly homesick. For days before the close of his term, his heart would leap for joy at the thought of revisiting his friends; and when, with elastic step, he had alighted from the stage-coach at his parent's door, he entered the house with boundings of heart, and brought hilarity with him. In the words of his father, "to have seen his glad and happy countenance on meeting his friends, after a few month's separation from them, would have moved the heart of a stoic." That he retained his innocent dispositions during so long continued an exile from his kindred, is one sign of the excellence of his moral temperament. His early and protracted absence was, perhaps, more serviceable to him, than it would have been to ordinary children. Had his attachment to home, and his disposition to cling around a few intimate and choice friends been met with no opposing influences, his character might have been deficient in the masculine virtues. But his residence among strangers obliged him to plan for himself, and counteracted those effeminate tendencies which are often encouraged in sensitive and confiding children. To the stranger who noticed his pliant manners and conciliating temper, he might have appeared to fail in manliness and independence; but his intimate friends always recognized in him "a mind of his own."

It was in August, 1827, that he become a pupil at Mt. Pleasant, and his tastes were never more gratified than with the beauties of this enchanting spot. Here he devoted much attention to the cultivation of his manners, and became a gentleman before he was a man. He acquired that ease of address and gracefulness of action, which, if attained at all, must generally be attained in early life, and which afterwards secured his admission to circles of society inaccessible to some clergymen. Those minor accomplishments which were

not beneath the notice of a boy at eleven years of age, gave him an influence at twenty-four, which others, equal to him in unpolished worth, could not exert. Men who disliked his doctrines were pleased with the blandness and urbanity of him who enforced them, and his delicacy of form and attitude would recommend the severity of his reproof. "I like him,” said one of his hearers, "because he moves on springs."

He was particularly studious in the Latin, ancient and modern Greek, and French languages. Several of his essays in the ancient Greek were published in successive numbers of a Juvenile Monthly, printed for the pupils of the institution. His progress in the modern Greek was still more flattering. He wrote many compositions in this language, and delivered one of them at a public exhibition, when about twelve years of age. He also conversed in it with considerable fluency. His teacher, Mr. Gregory Perdicari, a native of Greece, and now United States' consul at Athens, was in the habit of taking him to various families in the town, and conversing with him in modern Greek, thus exhibiting him as a kind of literary show. Mr. Homer often alluded to this parade as more conducive to his progress in the native language of Mr. Perdicari, than in humility. His vocal organs being remarkably ductile, and his discipline in the Greek and French pronunciation having been thus early and exact, he afterwards found but little difficulty in catching the sounds of the German and other languages. The recommendations which were written of him by his teachers at Mt. Pleasant, are such, that if he ever saw them, he must have been mature beyond his years, to have borne his faculties meekly. "I have no recollection," says one of them,1" that during the three years of his pupilage at Amherst, I ever had occasion to speak to him in the way of censure. It would be extraordinary indeed, if he were not sometimes found in fault, subjected, as all the students were, to a discipline of some severity; but if 1 Francis Fellowes, Esq.

such were the case, the general correctness of his deportment and amiability of his manners, have, in my mind, suffered no shade of it to rest upon his memory."

It was at Mt. Pleasant, in May, 1828, that the great and radical change occurred in Mr. Homer's moral feelings. There was, at this time, a general religious excitement among the pupils of the institution. The spacious mansion became a temple of worshippers, and the contiguous grove resounded with the voice of prayer. Perhaps at no place is there more of sympathy and contagion, than at a large boarding-school of children, and hence the religious agitations at such a school need to be carefully scrutinized and wisely regulated, or they will be of no permanent benefit. Of the forty boys who manifested symtoms of spiritual life during this revival, not one fifth of the number retained their religious promise. It is to be regretted, that Mr. Homer has left no very specific account of his feelings at this critical period of his life. His letter announcing his conversion is a very simple one, and he seems to rejoice in his change, not so much because it will save his soul, as because it will please his father and his mother; and to be anxious, not so much to persevere in the christian life, as to see his brothers and play-mates turn to God as he has done. Four years after his supposed conversion, when he was about to profess his religious faith, he made the following statement to the committee who examined him for admission to the church.1 "I was much distressed, while at Mt. Pleasant, in view of my sinfulness, but after two or three days, I indulged a hope of pardon. I had, at that time, different views of myself, of God and of Christ, from those which I had previously entertained. I felt a love for my Maker, and wished to devote myself to his service. I began to delight in prayer, and in the bible, which seemed to me a new book. I felt anxiety for the salvation of others, and was induced to converse with them on personal religion. I felt reconciled

1 He was admitted to Park-street church, Boston, in December, 1832.