The elder Professor Norton was one of the most marked characters in Cambridge, and, although never a clergyman, was professor in the Theological School. It was said of him by George Ripley, with whom he had a bitter contest, that “He often expressed rash and hasty judgments in regard to the labors of recent or contemporary scholars, consulting his prejudices, as it would seem, rather than competent authority. But in his own immediate department of sacred learning he is entitled to the praise of sobriety of thought and profoundness of investigation” (Frothingham’s “Ripley,” 105). He was also a man of unusual literary tastes, and his “Select Journal of Foreign Periodical Literature,” although too early discontinued, took distinctly the lead of all American literary journals up to that time. The very beginning of Charles Norton’s career would seem at first sight singularly in contrast with his later pursuits, and yet doubtless had formed, in some respects, an excellent preparation for them. Graduating at Harvard in 1846, and taking a fair rank at graduation, he was soon after sent into a Boston counting-house to gain a knowledge of the East India trade. In 1849 he went as supercargo on a merchant ship bound for India, in which country he traveled extensively, and returned home through Europe in 1851. There are few more interesting studies in the development of literary individuality than are to be found in the successive works bearing Norton’s name, as one looks through the list of them in the Harvard Library. The youth who entered upon literature anonymously, at the age of twenty-five, as a compiler of hymns under the title of “Five Christmas Hymns” in 1852, and followed this by “A Book of Hymns for Young Persons” in 1854, did not even flinch from printing the tragically Calvinistic verse which closes Addison’s famous hymn, beginning “The Lord my pasture shall prepare,” with a conclusion so formidable as death’s “gloomy horrors” and “dreadful shade.” In 1855 he edited, with Dr. Ezra Abbot, his father’s translations of the Gospels with notes (2 vols.), and his “Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels” (3 vols.). Charles Norton made further visits to Europe in 1855-57, and again resided there from 1868 until 1873; during which time his rapidly expanding literary acquaintanceships quite weaned his mind from the early atmosphere of theology.