"His life was a noble lesson to students, particularly in the steadfast sticking to duty to the very last. He never appeared in public. He did not love prominence. His influence was quiet and subtle. But his name will remain long in human memory." Among the speakers was Dr. John Fiske, who said,-- "Some thirty years ago, there appeared a history of Pontiac. It at once attracted attention because it made real men of the Indians and gave a true insight into their real character and importance in history. It was because Parkman showed a full knowledge of them that he first got hold of the world. He was more powerful than Prescott because he was true to life. "He was a great historian because coupled with his knowledge were a philosophic insight and a poetic instinct. We can be thankful to heaven for sending us such a scholar, artist, and genius before it was too late. "Parkman is the most American of all our historians because he deals with purely American history, but at the same time he is a historian for all mankind and all time, one of the greatest that ever lived." The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, March, 1894, contained an appreciative article on Francis Parkman by James Schouler, the prominent law-writer, and author of "A Constitutional History of the United States." Mr. Schouler said,-- "The illustrious scholar and historian whose death we have deplored so recently, found physical drawbacks to his work to hinder and discourage. But all the greater is his meed of success because he surmounted them. His life was, on the whole, a happy one, and rounded out in rare conformity to its appointed task; he passed the Psalmist's full limit of years, as few of our English-speaking historians have done; and, however slow or painful might have been his progress, he completed in his riper years the great enterprise which he had projected in early life. Like one of those fair roses which in hours of recreation he so fondly cultivated, his literary reputation has lingered in full blossom, dispersing its delicate fragrance and beauty among all beholders." The following tribute is from the pen of E. Irenæus Stevenson, in Harper's Weekly:-- "In Parkman's hand, history charms us as only the finer fiction can charm. Clear, sober, and elegant in his style, a natural artist in his diction, he gave picturesqueness, life, movement, to what he wished to set before his reader. The child and adult reader alike find him acceptable. He sacrificed nothing to mere literary effect,--sincerity was of his essence. Passages in his books linger in one's memory like chords of grave music; but not as if the lamp and premeditation had enabled them to be put into the page. To Americans his works are of thoroughly high interest and importance; and even in view of the impermanency of so much that is delightful, useful, and distinguished in the world's literature, it is not easy to fancy that they can be superseded."