JOHN PICKERING, THE SCHOLAR, died in the month of May, 1846, aged sixty-nine, within a short distance of that extreme goal which is the allotted limit of human life. By Scholar I mean a cultivator of liberal studies, a student of knowledge in its largest sense,--not merely classical, not excluding what in our day is exclusively called science, but which was unknown when the title of scholar first prevailed; for though Cicero dealt a sarcasm at Archimedes, he spoke with higher truth when he beautifully recognized the common bond between all departments of knowledge. The brother whom we mourn was a scholar, a student, as long as he lived. His place was not merely among those called by courtesy _Educated Men_, with most of whom education is past and gone,--men who have studied; he studied always. Life to him was an unbroken lesson, pleasant with the charm of knowledge and the consciousness of improvement. The world knows and reveres his learning; they only who partook somewhat of his daily life fully know the modesty of his character. His knowledge was such that he seemed to be ignorant of nothing, while, in the perfection of his humility, he might seem to know nothing. By learning conspicuous before the world, his native diffidence withdrew him from its personal observation. Surely, learning so great, which claimed so little, will not be forgotten. The modesty which detained him in retirement during life introduces him now that he is dead. Strange reward! Merit which shrank from the living gaze is now observed of all men. The voice once so soft is returned in echoes from the tomb. I place in the front his modesty and his learning, two attributes by which he will be always remembered. I might enlarge on his sweetness of temper, his simplicity of life, his kindness to the young, his sympathy with studies of all kinds, his sensibility to beauty, his conscientious character, his passionless mind. Could he speak to us of himself, he might adopt words of self-painting from the candid pen of his eminent predecessor in the cultivation of Grecian literature, leader of its revival in Europe, as Pickering was leader in America,--the urbane and learned Erasmus. "For my own part," says the early scholar to his English friend, John Colet, "I best know my own failings, and therefore shall presume to give a character of myself. You have in me a man of little or no fortune,--a stranger to ambition,--of a strong propensity to loving-kindness and friendship,--without any boast of learning, but a great admirer of it,--one who has a profound veneration for any excellence in others, however he may feel the want of it in himself,--who can readily yield to others in learning, but to none in integrity,--a man sincere, open, and free,--a hater of falsehood and dissimulation,--of a mind lowly and upright,--of few words, and who boasts of nothing but an honest heart."[159] [159] Erasmi Epist., Lib. V. Ep. 4.