lowed by individual gratitude or personal affection. They do not amass fortunes, or make testaments, or have statues erected to them. The great world knows little about them and, as a whole, cares little; for though they are no trifling element in its economy, they seem so, to the thoughtless, in the broad scope of an economy so large. If I am right then in supposing that the secret of Mr. Peabody's fame is not to be found in the mere fact of his having given, and given freely, in his life-time, to good objects, where else are we to look for it? Not, surely, in the magnitude of his benefactions. It were shame to judge him by a standard so vulgar and unworthy. It would not only be to scandalize his memory, but to throw away the whole moral and lesson of his life. The homage which is rendered to the givers of great gifts, merely because their gifts are great, is but parcel of that deification and worship of wealth, which is the opprobrium of our times. When this comes in the shape of a tribute to the dead, it is, of course, comparatively free from the personal servility, the self-abasing deference, the mean genuflections, which pay court to the living rich. But it is the same ignoble thing, in its motive and essence, though the sables be wrapped around it, and what men knelt to before may have become as the dust in which they knelt. And just as royalty succeeding is studious and exigent of pomp and splendor, in the obsequies of royalty dead, so, and for the same reason, wealth surviving exaggerates the dignity of wealth departed; and those who adore and would propitiate the one, crowd to canonize and glorify the other. To deal in such a spirit with the man whose birth-day we commemorate, would be to degrade ourselves and crush him, basely, like Tarpeia, with the weight of his own gold. It is the very fact that a million more or a million less would have counted but as a farthing, either way, in the just estimate of his purposes and character, which makes the rare nobility and worth of his example. Without the millions we might perhaps have had less of the pageant, but we should have had none the less of the man. Eleven years ago, it came within the province of the present speaker, on a public and interesting occasion, to illustrate the theme before him by an allusion to Mr. Peabody, who had then taken but the earliest steps in the career of his open beneficence. You will pardon, I hope, the repetition of what was then said, because it puts in a few words precisely the idea which I desire, at this moment, to express; and having been written in advance of the later and more famous charities of our Founder, it will show that those who knew and respected him, then, esteemed the source from which his good deeds sprang, far more for itself than for its fruits. The language then used, was the following: "When I see a man like George Peabody-a man of plain intellect and moderate education-who is willing to take away from the acquisitions of successful trade, what would make the fortunes of a hundred men of reasonable desires, and dedicate it to the advancement of knowledge and the cultivation of refining and liberal pursuits and tastes, among a people with whom he has ceased to dwell, except in the recollections of early industry and struggle—I recognize a spirit which tends to make men satisfied with the inequalities of fortune which is alive to the true ends and purposes of labor-which gives as well as takes-which sees, in the very trophies of success, the high incumbent duties and the noble pleasure of a stewardship for others. And yet, one such man-in himself—in his life and the example which it gives— is worth tenfold more to a community, than all the beneficence of which his heart may make him prodigal." Feeling and believing this, I should be false to my own conception of the honorable duty assigned to me, if I did not protest against regarding what is called the "princeliness" of Mr. Peabody's munificence, as other than an element entirely subordinate, in any just and manly appreciation of his character. And indeed, after all, I must own that the large bounty of ordinary rich men does not impress me, always, as it seems to strike many others. Liberality is a relative thing; and, obviously, what is generous and whole-souled in one person, viewed in its relation to his means and his own wants, may, in the same relation, be niggardly or narrow in another. The good that giving does may be the test of its value, but certainly is not of its merit. That is best determined, humanly speaking, by what it costs the giver to give. I do not mean what it ought not to cost-the agony which miserly reluctance suffers, in parting with a fragment of its hoard, under the torture of entreaty or the dread of shame or death; but that cheerful, conscious and deliberate self-sacrifice, which renders the mite of the widow more precious, a thousand fold, than the gold and frankincense and myrrh of the Magi. I speak of selfsacrifice, for (with a single and melancholy qualification which I shall presently consider) it is hard to understand how there can be much merit in the simple act of giving to others what we do not ourselves need. On the contrary, it is difficult to conceive what greater pleasure a rich man could possibly have in his wealth, than that of pouring out its superabundance in works of kindliness and charity. It is not meant by this to set up a very high standard. I am not talking of disciples, who are to part with all that they possess and follow their Master. It is not a question of surrendering one single reasonable, or even luxurious, personal gratification. I speak of superabundance merely-of that which is over and above what the owner, in any reasonable way, can expend upon himself, his comforts, his tastes, his luxuries, nay, if you please, the vices of his station. But-all these things reserved and cared for-and treating the disposition of the surplus as a selfish gratification merely, and as nothing higher or better, it seems, I repeat, incomprehensible to a genial-I need not say a generous-nature, that a man can possibly get greater happiness out of it than must come from dispensing it in kindness. Gonzalo De Córdova, of Spain, the Great Captain, was one of those who held this faith. "Never stint your hand"-he said to his steward-"there is no mode of enjoying one's property like giving it away." It is true the illustrious soldier may have occasionally treated as his property what did not precisely belong to him; but his preaching was none the worse for this, because his practice with his own came nobly up to it. Going a little more deeply too into the vanities as well as the virtues which this discussion involves, Lord Lytton says, with great point, in one of his more serious works, that "Charity is a feeling dear to the pride of the human heart. It is an aristocratic emotion . . . the easiest virtue to practice." There is no doubt that in the sense in which he speaks of charity, the observation is as just as it is clever. If a rich man covets respect and influence; if he desires to attract sympathy and hear himself praised; to be looked up to, flattered, followed and caressed in life, and have an epitaph, after it, like a player's good report-deserving none of these things, the while there is no cheaper or more certain means of securing them all, than a few judicious investments of his abundance in what ought to be charity. When he purchases, at the same time, by the same outlay, the pleasure of doing good and the incense of gratitude, one cannot feel that the cross which he has taken up is a very heavy one, or that he walks upon celestial heights above the hearts of common men. If I am right then, in assuming that the lesson of our Founder's life lies not in that he gave, or gave before he died, or gave superbly-nor, indeed in all these things combinedwhat is there left that teaches it? We must turn back upon the life itself, to give us answer. Mr. Peabody was not a man of gushing sensibilities, nor did he belong, in any sense, to that class who are free with money because they do not know or feel its value. Indeed there were few of his contemporaries, in whom this latter element of generosity was less developed. He knew all about money, and valued it at its full, current worth. He knew it, as a man knows a friend and ought to know an enemy. That his nature was genuinely kind, all who were near him would have known as well as they know it now-if he had died a bankrupt. His face, alone, told that part of his story, for his smile was of the sort men cannot counterfeit "His eyes, An outdoor sign of all the good within, |