Mr. Coffin's more serious productions are his arguments before Congressional and State legislative committees; his pamphlets on the labor question, railways, and patents; his addresses before general audiences and gatherings of scientific, commercial, and religiously interested men; his life of Garfield, as well as that of Lincoln; and those voluminous contributions made to the daily or weekly press, and to magazines, and to reviews. Editors often turned to him for that kind of light and knowledge that the public needed when grave issues were before the church, the city, the commonwealth, the nation. In speaking or writing thus, he used a less ornate style, less fervid rhetoric, and spoke or wrote with direct, business-like precision. In a word, he suited his style to the work in hand. But, because he attracted and delighted, while teaching, his young readers, that critic must be blind or unappreciative who cannot see also the purpose of a master mind. The mature intellect of Carleton which animates and informs the pretty stones, educated also up and on to the nobler heights of historical reading. Strictly speaking, in the light of the more rigid canons of historical knowledge and the research demanded in our days, and when tested by stern criticism, Mr. Coffin was not a historical scholar of the first order. Nor did he make any such pretension. No one, certainly not himself, would dream of ranging his name in the same line with those of the great masters, Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, or Parkman,--men of wealth and leisure, as well as of ability. He painted his pictures without going into the chemistry of colors, or searching into the mysteries of botany, to be absolutely sure as to the classification of the fibres which made his canvas. His first purpose was to make an impression, and his second, to fix that impression inerasably on the mind. For this, he trusted largely the work of those who had lived before him, and he made diligent and liberal use of materials already accumulated. He would paint his own picture after making the drawings and arranging his tints, perspective, lights, and shadows.