Norton never wrote about himself, if it could be avoided, unless his recollections of early years, as read before the Cambridge Historical Society, and reported in the second number of its proceedings, may be regarded as an exception. Something nearest to this in literary self-revelation is to be found, perhaps, in his work entitled “Letters of John Ruskin,” published in 1904, and going back to his first invitation from the elder Ruskin in 1855. This was on Norton’s first direct trip to Europe, followed by a correspondence in which Ruskin writes to him, February 25, 1861, “You have also done me no little good,” and other phrases which show how this American, nine years younger than himself, had already begun to influence that wayward mind. Their correspondence was suspended, to be sure, by their difference of attitude on the American Civil War; but it is pleasant to find that after ten months of silence Ruskin wrote to Norton again, if bitterly. Later still, we find successive letters addressed to Norton—now in England again—in this loving gradation, “Dear Norton,” “My dearest Norton,” “My dear Charles,” and “My dearest Charles,” and thenceforth the contest is won. Not all completed, however, for in the last years of life Ruskin addressed “Darling Charles,” and the last words of his own writing traced in pencil “From your loving J. R.” I have related especially this one touching tale of friendship, because it was the climax of them all, and the best illustration of the essential Americanism of Norton’s career. He indeed afforded a peculiar and almost unique instance in New England, not merely of a cultivated man who makes his home for life in the house where he was born, but of one who has recognized for life the peculiar associations of his boyhood and has found them still the best. While Ruskin was pitying him for being doomed to wear out his life in America, Norton with pleasure made his birthplace his permanent abode, and fully recognized the attractions of the spot where he was born. “What a fine microcosm,” he wrote to me (January 9, 1899), “Cambridge and Boston and Concord made in the 40’s.” Norton affords in this respect a great contrast to his early comrade, William Story, who shows himself in his letters wholly detached from his native land, and finds nothing whatever in his boyhood abode to attract him, although it was always found attractive, not merely by Norton, but by Agassiz and Longfellow, neither of whom was a native of Cambridge.