poetry and such things, to address themselves to the problem of society. This confusion is the inevitable end of such falsehoods and nonsense as they have been embroiled with.

Carlyle has, best of all men in England, kept the manly attitude in his time. He has stood for scholars, asking no scholar what he should say. Holding an honored place in the best society, he has stood for the people, for the Chartist, for the pauper, intrepidly and scornfully teaching the nobles their peremptory duties.

His errors of opinion are as nothing in comparison with this merit, in my judgment. This aplomb cannot be mimicked; it is the speaking to the heart of the thing. And in England, where the morgue of aristocracy has very slowly admitted scholars into society, a very few houses only in the high circles being ever opened to them, he has carried himself erect, made himself a power confessed by all men, and taught scholars their lofty duty. He never feared the face of man.

GEORGE L. STEARNS.

"Who, when great trials come,

Nor seeks nor shunnes them; but doth calmly stay Till he the thing and the example weigh:

All being brought into a summe

What place or person calls for he doth pay."

GEORGE HERBERT.

GEORGE L. STEARNS.'

We do not know how to prize good men until they depart. High virtue has such an air of nature and necessity that to thank its possessor would be to praise the water for flowing or the fire for warming us. But, on the instant of their death, we wonder at our past insensibility, when we see how impossible it is to replace them. There will be other good men, but not these again. And the painful surprise which the last week brought us, in the tidings of the death of Mr. Stearns, opened all eyes to the just consideration of the singular merits of the citizen, the neighbor, the friend, the father, and the husband, whom this assembly mourns. We recall the all but exclusive devotion of this excellent man during the last twelve years to public and patriotic interests. Known until that time in no very wide circle as a man of skill

1 Mr. Emerson paid this tribute to the nobility of character, and eminent services to the republic, of his friend, Major George L. Stearns, at his funeral at Medford, on the 18th of April, 1867.