and strong, but years had made no change in the qualities of his heart or in the general characteristics of the man. He had still the same slender, erect figure, the same hearty, ringing tones in his voice, the same animated and confident manner, and the same kindness and good-will expressed in his whole bearing. Any one who saw much of him, even if not an intimate friend, must have perceived his strong, plain common-sense, his contempt for everything mean and underhand, his resolution, firmness, and courage in the performance of his duty, the great purity of his character, and, above all, a manly straightforwardness in his every action, word, and look; for there never seemed to be the slightest disguise about him. His friends, of course, understood the generosity of his character and the strength of his attachments; but few could know how devoted he was to the interests of some whom he looked upon as especially committed to his protection, what acts of generous kindness he was constantly performing for them, and how much they and their home mingled in all his thoughts and plans.

The following extract from a letter written by the distinguished commander, whose vessel, the Cayuga, led the fleet in the famous passage of the forts below New Orleans, and who had known him since his first entrance into the Navy, indicates in what estimation he was held in that service where the best years of his life were spent.

"The character of Dr. Wheelwright was singularly free from reproach of any kind. He had the love and respect of all who ever sailed with him. He ranked high in his own corps as a skilful and thorough physician, and was distinguished always for his sympathy with, and careful attention to, the sick. He adorned our profession by many noble qualities. With winning and affable manners, he combined firmness, a high conscientiousness, a firm adherence to whatever was right, and an uncompromising resistance to injustice and wrong.

"He lived for others more than for himself; and this is proved

by the manner of his death, which was caused by his devotion to our sick and wounded sailors after the battle of New Orleans.....

"No one who knew Dr. Wheelwright speaks of his loss without emotion; but to those who were intimately associated with him, his loss is beyond repair. His life was as gallant and costly a sacrifice as any which the Rebellion entailed on our country."

Dr. Wheelwright was never married. His remains were buried at Mount Auburn, August 14th, 1862.

1837.

JAMES RICHARDSON.

Private, Twentieth Connecticut Vols. (Infantry), August, 1862; died at Washington, D. C., November 10, 1863, of disease contracted in the service.

IN

N portraying most of the younger men whose memoirs are contained in this volume, one is naturally led to compare them with what they would, perhaps, have been in times of peace. But in writing of the men of middle age, one compares them with what they previously were. To some the war only supplied a new direction for powers already developed and mature. To some, on the other hand, it brought a complete transformation; or if not quite that, yet a consummation so rapid and perfect as to seem like transformation, giving roundness and completeness to lives previously erratic or fragmentary. Of this there was no more striking instance than in the case of James Richardson.

"A prophet is never called of God until the age of forty," says the Arab proverb. James Richardson had all his life been loved and blamed, criticised and idolized, without ever finding his precise or proper working place on earth. When at forty-five he left his preaching and his farm, to enlist as a private soldier, then his true and triumphant Christian. ministry began, and he continued in it till his death.

I remember watching his college eccentricities when I was a boy in Cambridge, and was largely occupied, like most Cambridge boys, in studying human nature as exhibited among the undergraduates. Long after, I was associated with him in post-graduate studies at the same university, where he lingered long; and I have known him ever since. And any acquaintance with him came near to inti

macy, because of his open and eager nature and his warmth of heart.

James Richardson was born in Dedham, Massachusetts, May 25th, 1817. His mother's maiden name was Sarah Elizabeth Richards. His father was Honorable James Richardson of Dedham (H. U. 1797), a man who had been a good deal in public life, and was in his old age quite an entertaining relic of the stern Federalist days. I remember his fighting his battles over by the fireside, and telling me anecdotes of my grandfather, a warm Federalist like himself. The old man and his son seemed as intimate with each other as two school-boys, and it was easy to see whence the latter had inherited some of his marked qualities.

In his autobiography in the Class Book, he says:

"The earliest event of importance, in my mental and spiritual education, was the death of a mother, when I was but three years old. An epidemic had swept through the little village of Dedham, and three of our family, including myself, became its subjects. My mother and baby brother fell its victims; and though I survived, my constitution has not yet wholly regained its former healthy tone. The death of a mother at this tender age, when I most required her guarding love, was a circumstance of almost incalculable injury Her form and features are indelibly impressed upon my mind; and the remembrance of her teachings in the holy quiet of the Sabbath mornings, when my heart was fresh in innocence and warm in happiness, even now oft fills my eyes with blissful tears. From her I inherited the love of harmonious sounds; and before I could utter articulate words, do I remember catching from her lips the notes of some simple melodies.

to me.

"After my mother's death, on account of my father's frequent absences on business connected with different public offices, I was left almost wholly to the care of a nurse and other family domestics, who governed me only by fear, and who rewarded me only with tales of murder, bloody-bones, ghosts, and hobgoblins. The best influence of such treatment was to excite the love of the marvellous to an undue degree of action.

“To my father ... I owe the cultivation of my imagination

and my love of the beautiful. Added to his fine poetical taste was a deep love of nature; and after my fifth year my frequent rambles with him, especially on Sabbath evenings, imbued me, in some small degree, with his own spirit. The sports and games which boyhood so generally pursues had no interest for me. I loved to roam the fields, to commune with Nature in her sublimity and in her beauty, in her strength and in her cunning. I would sit for hours gazing upon the mountain rock, the giant oak, the leaping, dancing streamlet, admiring their simple grandeur or reclining under the shade of some ancient tree. I would listen to the sighing zephyr, as it made sad music among the fresh foliage, or to the low murmuring of the rippling stream, till my soul was lost in the misty maze of its own meditations. Or, again, I would watch the yellow-bird, as she lined her downy nest with the soft fur of the mullein-leaf, and the honey-bee as she rolled herself in the farina of the rose's cup. Nature was my study, nature was my delight. By my father I was first introduced to the conversation of the English poets, and many of their sweetest verses I learned to repeat on his knee. It was in my sixth summer that I first fell to rhyming, and a happy boy was I!-happy in that state of purity and innocence which had not yet fallen a prey to the passions and temptations of the world, happy in an undisturbed peace, not in the triumph of spiritual victory. One evening, ere the light of the moon had displaced the last blush of fading day, as I pressed my early pillow, the thoughts of my great Father's bounty came rushing in a full tide of grateful feeling over my soul, and I gave that joy expression in poetic measure. At the returning day I repeated it to my sister, and as she had advanced a step beyond me, in learning to write, she kindly volunteered to put it on paper for me and hand it up to the schoolmistress among the compositions of her class. Of course the schoolmistress, the scholars, and other foolish friends gave me exaggerated and undue praise, which fostered still more my rhyming propensity, imbued me with a desire of praise, and puffed me up with a nonsensical vanity, which, without the balance of firmness and pride, has marked my character, and injured me no little, even up to the present day. The devotional character of my rhymes, my peculiar course of reading, and the character of my conversation and feelings, induced my friends to suppose that I had inherited the deep religious cast of mind that distinguished my