The practice of his profession kept him much in fellowship with these scenes; the son had inherited the father's sensibilities and had received his instructions, and in their musings and communings with nature and with each other on this occasion, the father was questioning with himself what manner of man his boy should become; what would be the end of that new departure in the voyage of life; and the son, buoyant with hope, was rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, in the new prospect now opening for the exercise of his powers. Such we may well suppose were their meditations as they approached this "Mecca of the mind." Such was the moral character of the scene when, amid the deep snows of New Hampshire, the father of Daniel Webster, while carrying his son to school, informed him that he was to go to college; and the son, unable to reply, could only lean his head upon his father's bosom and weep for joy. Of this at least we may be sure, that when Charles Hammond came to Monson he knew well why he had come. He had come for no idle day-dreaming, but for a purpose to be realized only by studious toil and patient endurance.

He found at Monson as preceptor the Rev. Sanford Lawton, a strict disciplinarian and lover of hard work, and for four years he remained under his instruction, with intervals devoted to school teaching.

It was during his school life at Monson that his religious life assumed a positive and determined form, and that earnest and generous faith which gave a new direction and greater force to his life work first took complete possession of his soul. In 1835, at the mature age of twenty-two, he entered Yale College. It was an interesting period in the history of our colleges. In some departments of study they were waking to a new life. Classical learning especially was rising in importance, and deepening in thoroughness, finish, and earnestness under the influence of such men as Edward Everett, George Bancroft, Theodore D. Woolsey, Barnas Sears, and others who had studied in the German schools, and caught their spirit, but had not lost their American character; who were able to appropriate what was good without aping what is bad; who had sat at the feet of the great masters- the Buttmanns, the Hermanns, the Heerens, the Böckhs, and the Jacobses, and returned to give an impulse to secondary and higher schools which they have not yet lost. In those days a college commencement was hardly complete without an oration from one of the Everetts.

And once given, these discourses became classic encyclicals to the whole sisterhood of colleges. There was also a moral and religious life pervading the minds of students, a spiritual activity which has now to some extent been supplanted by what has been irreverently termed muscular Christianity. It is quite doubtful if any other college in New England could present in all its departments the array of talent and learning which was at that time shown by the catalogue of New Haven. The president, Jeremiah Day, if less brilliant than his predecessor, Dr. Dwight, was perhaps even more profound in thought, and certainly better versed in science, nor of less influence, through the great force of his personal character. Benjamin Silliman, who has been called the father of American chemical science, was then at the zenith of his fame and usefulness. James L. Kingsley, whose scholarship, general and special, is still proverbial, was professor of Latin. Theodore D. Woolsey, whose fame as a Greek scholar has now somewhat faded into that of the statesman and sage, was professor of Greek. Denison Olmsted, a name familiar in science, was professor of physics. Chauncey A. Goodrich, a scholar of rare gifts, and of still rarer attainments, a teacher of great ability and popularity, was the head of the department of polite literature.

These were only a few of the most prominent of a large circle of scholars and teachers, to the sphere of whose influence he was now introduced. They were really large and liberal men, men of learning without pedantry, of culture without conceit, and of worth without pretense. To the guidance and instruction of these men, and to all the higher influences of the place he gave himself with enthusiastic devotion. For the frivolities and nonsense of college life he had little time and less taste. The only drawback under which he labored was the necessity of performing a double service, -doing his college work and paying his college bills. I have known men who entered college without a cent in their pockets and graduated with money at interest. Charles Hammond was not of this number; he could not serve God and Mammon. It was the service of God on which his heart was set, and the enforced diversion from his high purpose to earn money was a serious hindrance to his scholarship, and a great burden upon his spirits. Those who go to college simply to get a diploma or an empty name, esteem it no hardship to obey a summons to spend a goodly portion of the year in a frolic with a district school, or in the pursuit of pleasure under the alias of health.

H

The case is far different with the true scholar; his life is in his higher nature, in the earnest search for truth, in high communion with the wise and good of all ages, in the mastery of science, in generous fellowship and manly conflict with kindred spirits; not at the oar, but at the blackboard; not in the field, but in the forensic; not for the fame "set off to the world in the glistering foil," but for that which

". . . . lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove."

This struggle between obligation and inclination, between the ne-
cessities of the body and the cravings of the soul, continued for
three years, and subjected him to the keen mortification of feeling
that he was not meeting the high expectations of his friends, of
finding himself respectable and respected where he had aspired to
eminence and admiration. Add to this a constitutional tendency
to depression of spirits somewhat marked, and you will not be sur-
prised to know that at the close of his Junior year he had come to
the conclusion to leave college and seek his fortune in the world
without his diploma. At this juncture the father, who had been
distrustful and fearful at the beginning of his course, now came
to the relief of his son, replenished his pocket, and cheered his
spirit. This divided service between teaching and study, unwel-
come as it was to him, was not an unmixed evil. Qui docet,
discit, is an old maxim; and the teaching of the common district
school serves, what is often necessary, to deepen and strengthen
elementary scholarship, to hold the mind to principles and facts
from which it is too prone to wander or too lightly esteem. It
furnishes a fine field for the training of character.
The young
man who has thoroughly mastered all the problems that arise in
the teaching and discipline of a district school, has little to fear
from anything that he may encounter in the higher schools and
colleges.

The district is a microcosm, and its life, its affections, its ambitions, its virtues, its weaknesses, are all concentrated in its school. To mix with this life and to mould it, to preside for a few months over a little republic, to be called again and again to its service, is a triumph for which the young man can well afford the loss of a few pages of Latin and Greek, and it has often proved a surer passport to the prizes of life than the salutatory or the valedic

tory. This certainly was not the training which Mr. Hammond wanted; it may have been that which he needed.

In the spring of 1839, the preceptorship of Monson Academy became vacant, and his alma mater had not forgotten during his four years' absence the promise of his academic life, and without waiting for his graduation from college, which was to take place in the summer, recalled him to her service. In accepting this important position, however, it was not with the purpose of making teaching his permanent occupation. The purpose previously entertained of studying theology was still undisturbed, and the two and a half years which he spent at Monson, was a ripening period of his life. Whatever losses he had incurred while in college by enforced absence in school teaching were now more than repaid by reviews and re-reviews of his college work. It was no merely perfunctory service which he rendered to his pupils. The subjects which he taught were directly in the line of his professional studies, as well as in the very centre of his moral sympathies, and intellectual aims. Self-interest and pleasure alike combined to render his teaching earnest, thorough, and delightful. His associate at this time was one who had been his classmate in the academy, and has since become one of the brighest ornaments of the American pulpit, the Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, N. Y.

In the autumn of 1841, Mr. Hammond began the study of theology at Andover. Here he was no less fortunate than at New Haven, in coming at once under the personal influence and instruction of two of the brighest names in the history of American Biblical scholarship - Moses Stuart and Bela B. Edwards, the Luther and the Melancthon of that distinguished seminary. It is not unlikely that it was by the fame of these two men that his steps were directed to Andover. Under these men, so diverse in their temperaments and so similar in their aims, he passed one of the most profitable years of his life. From these great masters he returned to New Haven to receive the instruction of Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, at that time the greatest name in New England theology. Here he again came in contact with his former teacher, Prof. Chauncey A. Goodrich, who had been transferred from the collegiate to the theological department. On completing his course of professional study in 1844, he was licensed to preach by the Tolland County Association, and was in readiness to enter upon his work when the right field should open to his view. While

waiting for this opening, the preceptorship at Monson again fell vacant, and he was again summoned to that familiar post.

It was just at this time that a book was published in England, and in that book a character revealed which was to affect most powerfully the interests of secondary and higher education throughout the English-speaking world. I refer of course to the "Life of Thomas Arnold." This book he greatly admired, and by it, it is quite probable, his future destiny was decided. The character of Arnold was well calculated to enlist his warmest sympathies. There were just beginning to be developed in his own character the same classical spirit, the same noble enthusiasm, and the same historic taste which distinguished the head master of Rugby. It is not improbable that he saw his Rugby at Monson; that questions like these arose in his mind. And why may not the work which has been so nobly done in Old England be repeated in New England? Will not the same moral forces produce the same results in Hampden as in Warwickshire? Here is the same race, removed but a few generations from those who fought with Hampden and studied with Milton. Thoughts like these may have filled his mind while he pondered the second summons to return to Monson. During his four years' absence he had greatly extended his acquaintance with the best educated men in the country, and had greatly improved his own scholarship, and in the whole course of his education he had been singularly fortunate in being in contact with men distinguished alike for high character and profound learning. He found the academy in a very depressed condition. For forty years the building, originally in advance of its time, had borne without important repairs the buffetings of storms without and the busy, and sometimes mischievous, life within. The return of Mr. Hammond was signalized by a complete renovation, and a large increase of apparatus in the English department. The attendance upon the school had sunk very low; competing institutions, at no great distances, had made large drafts upon its former patronage. But the people of the town rallied to the support of their school. Confident in the abilities and character of their preceptor, whom they had long known, they nobly resolved to hold their own, and not allow an institution which had served so well the town, the country, the State, and the nation, to be eclipsed. The efforts of the trustees, teachers, and citizens were attended with the most gratifying