class-room. If it were possible to awaken interest, he developed it; if any latent ability lurked in the nature of his pupils, he stirred it into action. In the general assembly room he was always a felt presence. His prayers were earnest and devout, his reading of Scripture impressive and reverential. We all felt the depth and sincerity of his religious character, and were more or less elevated and refined by his influence. His power was that of a pure, cultivated, and honest man. His prevailing mood was eminently cheerful, with no shading of frivolity. His smile was ever ready when a smile was appropriate; and when occasion called for it, he was capable of a sternness which a recreant pupil would not readily provoke a second time. He was an excellent disciplinarian, although he was sometimes accused of too great austerity by those who did not fully understand his character. His tastes were cultivated and refined. He was an excellent literary critic, as his students sometimes found to their chagrin and mortification, when they received back their compositions with transverse lines drawn through their finest passages. No one, so far as I know, ever had the temerity to call in question the purity of his private life, while only a favored few were permitted to know the depth and tenderness of affection of which he was capable. He loved music, and was himself possessed of a voice of great sweetness, which he used with excellent skill and judgment. His soul was in harmony with the beautiful, whether of sight or sound, both in nature and art." Of equal weight is the verbal testimony which I have received from a prominent member of our own body, well known to you all (Charles Hutchins, Esq.), who, from being his pupil, became his trusted and intimate friend. He spoke of the same intensity with which he threw himself into his work, of which Mr. Cady makes mention. He would sometimes dwell upon a favorite passage, or an expressive idiom, until his eyes would moisten with tears, and in unfolding its beauty and force, would exclaim, "Call that a dead language! it is the most expressive form that this thought has ever assumed; it has lived for ninety generations, and it will perish only with the mind that gave it birth." The charge of conservatism, so often preferred,

1

1 The Hon. Yung Wing, to whom I have already referred, in a letter to Charles Northend, Esq., thus speaks of him: "I found in Mr. Hammond a strong friend from first to last. I recall him with feelings of admiration as a noble man in every sense of the word. His voice was clear and sonorous, and

was doubtless well grounded. But it was a conservatism which did him honor. It was not narrow, bigoted, obstinate, nor blind; it was broad, generous, candid, and intelligent. It grew out of

every tone of it was filled with a deep sympathy, flowing naturally from a great heart. He had a highly cultivated mind, and his thoughts were those of a strong man. His taste for all that is beautiful in art, nature, and literature, was highly cultivated, and he was peculiarly gifted to inspire his pupils with noble aspirations, and to instill into them a love of the truth."

The Rev. John W. Harding, of Longmeadow, one of the trustees of Monson Academy, spoke as follows at his funeral: "I have been requested to speak of Mr. Hammond's connection with Monson Academy. But that is to speak of his life work, his first, and best, and latest love. His heartstrings were intertwined with this institution; his best energies and aspirations were bound up with it. He had a just appreciation of the important functions of a Christian school. No perfunctory or dilettante teacher of niceties and technicalities, he did not teach Latin and Greek, his favorite studies, for the sake of grammar, quantity, accidence, pronunciation, but for their higher educational intents, their logical discipline, their æsthetic training, their mental inspirations, their bearing upon the athletic, manly development of the intellect and the heart.

"Mr. Hammond was a true educator, in that he brought out what was in his pupils. He taught them how to exercise themselves, to express themselves. This was abundantly manifest in the annual exhibitions of the academy. It was far more than the common school-boy declamation. It was, to a signal degree, the expression of youthful minds who had begun to handle their faculties well. There was individuality, originality. In the utterances of the young men, there were evidences of Mr. Hammond's careful, interested, personal, special criticism, to a large extent his personal inspiration and suggestion. But it was that kind of prompting which is legitimate, helpful, not destructive of the personality of the student's own thought, leaving intact his own primary methods of expression, and carrying him further and stronger in his own line, waking him up to a consciousness of his own powers, starting him well on his literary career.

And so it was that, while in these later years Mr. Hammond was thought to lag behind the demand for philological minutiæ, the mint, anise, and cumin, he never did neglect the weightier matters that belong to an older, and possibly truer, system of linguistic studies. He might be called old-fashioned; but he had tasted the old wine, and was not afraid to maintain that it was better than the new.

Mr. Hammond believed in individual and adaptive teaching more than in the machine-like process of graded class-rooms and systematic courses. Withont doubt he lost prestige for the academy as a fitting school for college, by his steadfastness in his own methods, which were thus somewhat aside from prevailing fashions. And yet, if I mistake not, his candidates for college made better than average proof of his educational ability. His impress and his foundations told to no mean advantage as time went on. How many who occupy high rank in professional and other walks of life, lament his death with sincerity and heartiness of affection and respect that are accorded to none but great masters! He was great in character, a grand personality, marked, indeed, with idiosyncrasies, strong peculiarities, prominent handles for invidious or depreciating criticisin—the smaller criticism of those who could not, or

some of the best qualities of his character. He studied education more from its historic than from its psychological side. He based his own opinions more upon the lessons of experience than the

would not, take him in the grander wholeness of his personality. But there was in that wholeness, a certain largeness, a rare combination of manly qualities, of native powers, of rounded culture, the classical sense, the historical instinct, the spiritual discernment, the sturdy Christian principles, swift intuitions, strong prejudices accordingly, but, withal, the tenderest sensibilities. We remember his eye, how radiant of his soul, the nervous workings of that expressive mouth, the strong, quick grasp of his warm hand, his ponderous and sturdy walk, his intense sympathies with nature and with man, not the rich neighbor only, or the chosen few, but with humanity in its manifold relations and widest scope. I thus summarize his qualities, to hold up the man as ever behind the teacher, and his large personality as the prime secret of his educational success.

The Rev. R. H. Howard gives the following testimony. "Mr. Hammond was a true teacher. There was not the first thread of pedantry in his composition. He despised quackery of all kinds. He was thorough and exhaustive in all his inquiries. Few of his contemporaries had larger attainments, or wider information; few had more active or more penetrating minds. He was quite a bibliophilist, and was fond of curious and recondite lore. He was an able writer, excelling especially in the line of annals and biography. Within a few years past he has prepared histories, model compositions of their kind, of some of the most important academic institutions of the State. He was a veteran teacher. Without a doubt he was one of the leading educators of the Commonwealth. As a teacher, his specialty was the classics. How often have I thought that, if many of our professors in college would bring to their classes the affluence of learning and the same quenchless enthusiasm which Mr. Hammond was wont to do, much more would be accomplished. Think of the long line of young men that this royal teacher has fitted for college. Nor did ever a student sit at his feet that he did not put his impress on; for, as just intimated, Mr. Hammond was an enthusiast. No valley of dry bones was ever yet so seared or parched that he could not make it live again—make it sweet with incense, and vocal with melody and joy. If ever a teacher could invest — articles,

Hebraic points and the force of Greek particles."

with interest, and inspire the greatest dullard in school with a passionate ardor for classical pursuits, that' man was Charles Hammond. He was one of Nature's noblemen -as large hearted as he was large brained. Modest, simple, frank, generous to a fault; self-sacrificing, devoted to his friends, and kind, helpful, and sympathetic towards all; the very soul of candor, of honor, and of truth; no man more cordially abominated bigotry, meanness, or pretense than he, or more heartily appreciated real worth. Nature had built him up after one of her most liberal patterns. There does not live, perhaps, a man of finer feeling, of more generous impulses, or of nobler instincts, than was our lamented friend. His commanding form only fittingly expressed the largeness of his manhood, the breadth of his liberality, and the power and urgency of his convictions. As to his methods and theories, whether as an educator or in regard to social, political, and religious matters, Mr. Hammond was conserv

facts of consciousness. He brought new theories to the test of established facts, rather than to the philosophy of the human mind. He was satisfied with what had worked well, and may have been too little inclined to inquire what would work better. If he sought improvement, he would more naturally take his guidance from Samuel Moody, Timothy Dwight, Eliphalet Pearson, and Jeremiah Day, than from Herbert Spencer and George Combe. This was a necessary consequence from his decided historic taste. Distance of He pre

time undoubtedly lent some enchantment to his view. ferred to adopt a method that was historically safe and sound to one that was theoretically safer and sounder. He well understood that movement did not necessarily mean progress. Nor, in his devotion to history, was he deaf to the voice of philosophy. If new views were broached, if the very foundations of educational science were broken up, and new methods and systems advocated, their authors found no more attentive or respectful listener than Dr. Hammond. The wise educator, like the wise navigator, will prefer to use his anchor rather than his sail in unknown waters, and with no light to direct his course. Eneas was warned to sail round Sicily rather than attempt the perilous passage between Scylla and Charybdis. It is not given to man to keep with strict precision the middle course between the a priori and the a posteriori roads, along which the human mind is struggling to gain new truths.

His personal interest in his pupils was intense. The poor boy, fighting his way through poverty to get an education, found in him a father as well as a teacher; he poured out his money like water in aid of such pupils.

The last words that fell from his lips were a message to a deative. The good old ways, well worked, were good enough for him, not that he arbitrarily or unreasoningly repelled all new things. He was not by any means averse to true progress. He felt inclined, however, to make haste very slowly.

"There was a fine and delicate humanity about Mr. Hammond, very beautiful to witness. The writer remembers to have seen him on one occasion sit for a whole hour, and that when other duties were pressing, and late in the evening, engaged with a youth who had applied for admission to the high school, and who was extremely anxious to succeed, gently leading him to a full realization of what at a glance was only too obvious to the examiner - his utter unfitness as yet for such a promotion. And then, when at length the disappointed child burst into tears, the fatherly tenderness with which this great teacher soothed, and encouraged the boy not to despond, but by and by to try again, was touching and beautiful indeed."

serving pupil who was struggling for an education without money and without friends.

There are several ways in which teachers may be classed, and one is that adopted by the great teacher, the mint-anise-andcumin class and the weightier-matters-of-the-law class. The former class sometimes gain great fame for thoroughness from the fuss which they make, and the pains which they inflict; their scholars imagine that they have been thoroughly instructed when they have only been thoroughly tormented; like the honest Hibernian who objected to paying the exorbitant sum of fifty cents for the painless extraction of his tooth, on the ground that on a previous occasion by another dentist he had been dragged all round the room and was charged only twenty-five. The tooth was drawn, root and branch, but as no pain was inflicted he gravely suspected there had been some want of thoroughness in the operation. Mr. Hammond belonged to the weightier-matters-of-the-law class, and if through him the violated law sometimes spoke out its thunders, it was still more true that through him, in strains as sweet as angels use, the gospel whispered peace.

He delighted to teach Milton, incidentally and formally. Like Burke and Webster, and all great souls, he delighted in the vast range and strength of his thought and in the flights of his imagination beyond the bounds of space and time. From the great Roman he would often show how the greater English epic had scared higher above the Aonian mount than its Greek and Roman models.

The study of language was with him a work of real pleasure. He did not, however, rest merely in its paradigms and forms, in its syntax, prosody, and idiomatic peculiarities. It was the thought-side of language on which he loved to dwell, and it was as a medium of thought that language had for him its greatest charms. He taught Cicero, not as a means of enforcing and illustrating Latin grammar, simply, but he taught Latin grammar as a means of revealing the thought and the mind of Cicero, and the thought and mind of Rome as well. He taught Virgil, not as a collection of longs and shorts, dactyls, spondees, and hexameters ; but he taught prosody as a means of reaching the harmony of the language, in which poetry naturally clothes itself. But he knew well that language would not yield its treasures of thought without much labor bestowed upon its various and capricious forms. Like the aurifer