Dealings with the Dead (Vol. 1&2). Lucius M. Sargent

vast and how various his learning!—“Qui sermo! quæ præcepta! quanta notitia antiquitatis! … Omnia memoria tenebat, non domestica solum, sed etiam externa bella: cujus sermone ita tum cupide fruebar, quasi jam divinarem id, quod evenit, illo extincto, fore, unde discerem, neminem.” Surpassingly delightful were the outpourings, till some thoughtless wight, by an ill-timed allusion, opened the fountain of bitter waters—then, history, literature, the arts, all were buried in gurgite vasto, giving place to Jefferson’s injustice, the Mazzei letters, and Callender’s prospect before us—quantum mutatus ab illo!

      How forcibly the dead are quickened, upon the retina of memory, by the exhibition of some well known and personally associated article—the little hat of Napoleon—the mantle of Cæsar—“you all do know this mantle!” I have just now drawn, from my treasury, an autograph of John Adams, bearing date, Jan. 31, 1824, and a lock of strong hair, cut from his venerable brow, the day before. In October of that year, he was eighty-nine years of age; and that lock of hair is a dark iron gray. I have also taken from its casket a silver pen, and small portable inkstand attached, which also were his. The contemplation of these things—I came honestly by them—seems almost to raise that venerable form before me. I can almost hear him repeat those memorable words—“The Union is our Rock of Safety as well as our Pledge of Grandeur.”