As the champion of classical studies, and a student of language, or philologist, he is entitled to be specially remembered. It is impossible to measure the influence he has exerted upon the scholarship of the country. His writings and his example, from early youth, pleaded its cause, and will plead it ever, although his living voice is hushed in the grave. His genius for languages was profound. He saw, with intuitive perception, their structure and affinities, and delighted in the detection of their hidden resemblances and relations. To their history and character he devoted his attention, more than to their literature. It is not possible for this humble pen to determine the place which will be allotted to him in the science of philology; but the writer cannot forbear recording the authoritative testimony to the rare merits of Mr. Pickering in this department, which it was his fortune to hear from the lips of Alexander von Humboldt. With the brother, William von Humboldt, that great light of modern philology, he maintained a long correspondence, particularly on the Indian languages; and his letters will be found preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. Without rashly undertaking to indicate any scale of pre-eminence or precedence among the cultivators of this department, at home or abroad, it may not be improper to refer to his labors in those words of Dr. Johnson with regard to his own, as evidence "that we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the Continent."[152] [152] Preface to Dictionary. If it should be asked by what magic Mr. Pickering was able to accomplish these remarkable results, it must be answered, By the careful husbandry of time. His talisman was industry. He delighted in referring to those rude inhabitants of Tartary who placed idleness among the torments of the world to come, and often remembered the beautiful proverb in his Oriental studies, that by labor the leaf of the mulberry is turned into silk. His life is a perpetual commentary on those words of untranslatable beauty in the great Italian poet:-- "Seggendo in piuma, In fama non si vien, nè sotto coltre: Sanza la qual, chi sua vita consuma, Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia, Qual fumo in aere od in acqua la schiuma."[153] [153] Divina Commedia, _Inferno_, Canto XXIV. vv. 47-51.