those on which we were then entering. He put at the head of his poem called "The Tocsin," in his printed volume, these strong words of Daniel Webster: "If the pulpit be silent, whenever or wherever there may be a sinner bloody with this guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust," words which met precisely his own ideas of the matter. He saw his duty with a clear eye; he followed it with a brave heart. "The age was dull and mean," as Whittier sang later; the press was servile; Congress was busy with matters of purely material interest, with tariffs and banks; the pulpit followed the pews, instead of going before. He could not imitate the example. He could not, we say; for we doubt whether to him there was any temptation. Every fibre of his heart trembled with indignation at the meanness and crime which he saw abroad and in high places. Speech, vivid and direct, was a moral necessity of his nature; and he spoke. Of course, he gave mortal offence. There was not, perhaps, a parish in the land which could have borne such truths as he told, with composure. The opposition was bitter and powerful. It only strengthened his resolution. "Damn braces, bless relaxes," says Blake. "I will stand in a free pulpit, or I will stand in none," exclaimed Mr. Pierpont. Up went the standard of free speech. Down went all considerations of salary and livelihood. The war grew hotter and hotter, and it lasted full seven years. It was one man against many; it was poverty against wealth. Yes, but it was also right against wrong; and, as it has been before and shall be again, so it was then. The right conquered. The "one with God was a majority." All the ingenious hatred of personal enemies was fruitless to bring against him, on any charge, sufficient evidence to procure an unfavorable judgment from a council of which some of the members would not have been sorry for the opportunity of condemning him. The council, however, while returning a decision which was in the main a triumph for Mr. Pierpont, took occasion to express their opinion, that his communications to the parish had been marked by "a degree of harshness, levity, personality, ridicule, and sarcasm, at variance

with Christian meekness." Easily said by placid clergymen without enemies or exciting topics, who understood little of the depths of that sensitive and fiery nature, and felt little of the impulse which prompted its utterances. Possibly, in the heat of earnest speech in the pulpit, he had allowed his indignation, while denouncing the sin, to scorch the sinner with a "Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" Possibly, in the everlasting interchange of letters which preceded the council, he had allowed too full play to his magnifi cent power of sarcasm and to his withering scorn. But we cannot look very hardly upon these faults. They were very human faults. As to the first, the prevailing weakness of all preaching is likely long to continue, what it has always been, a safe and mild indefiniteness in treating of sin, which is ill calculated to awaken remorse or penitence in the sinner. How much more manly was the severity of his reproaches than the polite apathy with which it was contrasted! Reforms are rarely advanced by compliments, but more often by the plain words, "Thou art the man." And, in regard to the personal controversy, it is to be remembered that Mr. Pierpont was a deeply injured man. He was, while fighting the battle of justice and truth in the community and the nation, struggling single-handed in the defence of his own personal honor, against a band of wealthy and determined men who were seeking his ruin. It was very serious work with him; and he must be a pretty strenuous advocate of non-resistance who can withhold his admiration for the gallantry and spirit and dignity with which he carried it through.

On the main point, however, the judgment of the council was decisive. Nothing that Mr. Pierpont had said in the pulpit on those odious topics furnished the least reason for advising a dismissal. "Cela constate que la tribune est libre." The freedom of the pulpit was vindicated, and was never again to be questioned. It was worth all the misery and all the scandal of that seven years' war to get that principle so fairly recognized and declared.

Mr. Pierpont remained in Boston until 1845, when he resigned his place at Hollis Street, and removed with his

family to Troy, whither he had been called to the charge of the small Unitarian Society, then recently formed. Troy is a bustling and prosperous little city, whose social life is vastly different from that of New England, and could have but small attractiveness for a man like him; but yet, in the four years of his residence there, its people grew into some dim recognition of his quality. It was, however, an exile; exile from old friends, from the old church, from the streets and homes which the varying experiences of nearly thirty years had endeared; exile cheerfully borne, with serenity, if not entire content. How welcome was the call which drew him to Medford, in 1849, we may easily imagine. How entirely happy and beautiful his life was there, those best know who saw him in the calm and deep peace of his own home at West Medford. It was the placid autumn of his life. He was resting after the heats of his fervent summer. He had done his part in the great warfare; and though his enthusiasm for the good cause never abated till the day of his death, yet his active service in it may be said to have practically ceased from the time when he left the Hollis-street pulpit. Younger hands had taken up the old banner which he had carried so high in the earlier days. The nation was now fast waking up; and though wickedness seemed as strong as ever, and even more bold than ever, there was good hope that it was at length to be met and overcome by something as bold, and stronger.

But, when the long contest culminated in actual war, he could bear no longer the inaction of his village life. He had not been used to a place in the rear of the army. He must go to the front now, and be once more, but literally now, as in the old times figuratively, face to face with the enemy. He was seventy-six years old. So much the better: he would set the example to younger men. He applied for and received the chaplaincy of the Twenty-second Massachusetts Infantry, and marched with his regiment to the capital. These Boston streets, that forty years ago saw the tall form passing to and fro in the affairs of his ministry, saw now the same form, not less erect, marching in the midst of a thousand

bayonets to the defence of the same cause for which he had fought, but with other weapons, through all those long years. It was a magnificent flash of sentiment. But sentiment will not supply the place of physical strength; and the old hero had for once over-estimated his own vigor, and underrated the hardships of military life. The regiment, marching in the late autumn, went at once into camp on Hall's Hill, one of the range of bleak eminences which stretches along the west bank of the Potomac. The weather was growing cold. The days were tedious, the nights long. We shall never forget the account, half ludicrous and wholly pathetic, which Mr. Pierpont gave us of the misery he endured during those terrible nights; how he lay down without undressing, for the cold; and, after a half-dozen snatches of sleep, from each of which he awoke supposing it was morning, and as many long intervals of restless tossing, he would get up, and go stamping about the camp to keep his blood from freezing,—to the astonishment of the guards. A few weeks of this experience had pretty well satisfied him of the uselessness of continuing it; and, when one morning—having applied for leave of absence for three days to Col. Wilson, who had forwarded the application to Gen. Martindale, who probably did not know John Pierpont from John Smith-the paper came back scrawled over with the brusque endorsement, "What does your chaplain want with three days' leave of absence? Give him two days," the little rebuff went straight to the sensitive heart of the old man, and convinced him of the mistake he had made. He went to Washington, and thence wrote to Mr. Wilson, resigning his chaplaincy.

Being then in Washington, without employment, and needing the support of a regular income, he went to Mr. Chase, and stated his position. "I have no letters," he said, "and no personal acquaintance with you: I can only tell my story." The secretary said at once that nothing more was needed. "If you don't know me, I know you very well, and need no letters to tell me what you are. If you will come again to the Treasury to-morrow, I will see in the mean time what I can do." The result was the pleasant and useful labor, in

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which Mr. Pierpont spent some three years, of collating and condensing, from a series of a dozen or more of huge manuscript volumes, the decisions of the Department in regard to the Customs since the foundation of the Government. The work was congenial, and, though responsible, not onerous; the hours of labor were from nine to three, which insured him abundant leisure; he was removed from any distasteful association with the great body of clerks in the Department, occupying a small room with a single companion of nearly his own age; his residence at Washington brought him in frequent contact with men whom he was glad to meet, and who were glad to meet him on the common ground of character and service. His life, we believe, was wholly contented and happy. He was on terms of friendship with Mr. Lincoln, and was able to bring him much consolation at the time of the death of his child. His task completed, he received the formal thanks of the Department for the manner in which it had been accomplished, and was promoted to a higher clerkship. He made an annual visit to the old places and friends at the East, and was in the full enjoyment of one of these visits, when his life ended, suddenly, quietly, without pain or shock, the sleep of life changing to the sleep of death.

The busy day, the peaceful night,
Unfelt, uncounted, glided by:

His frame was firm, his powers were bright,
Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

Then, with no throbs of fiery pain,

No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,

And freed the soul the nearest way.

Here is a long life, which at the first look does not seem a very successful one. The wisdom of the world would have made something very different out of all that talent and energy. His ministry ended in something very like banishment. His unremitting industry ended in an old age of poverty and enforced labor. The friends, the associates, the co-laborers of his manhood were not those of his age. And, when he died, his funeral was held, not in the old church