attentiveness to all whom he admires and loves. His moral portrait is limned by the hand of one who had known him most thoroughly on his favorable side as a friend for nearly all his lifetime, in this private epistle: “NEW YORK, Sunday morning, May 24, 1874. “MY DEAR OAKES,—Your letter of the 22d reached me yesterday morning, and was read and re-read with pleasure. When you tell me you foot up sixty-seven, I find it difficult to believe you, and if you refer me to the record I shall still exclaim with Beau Shatterly (do you remember how poor Finn used to play it?), ‘D—n parish registers! They’re all impudent impositions and no authority!’ “There are a few exceptional men in the world who project their youth far forward into their lives, and this not so much from force of constitution as from the size of their hearts. You are one of these few phenomenal men. That you may long continue to flourish in perennial spring is my sincerest prayer. You have been just and generous (except to yourself),—to what extent you forget. I think the recording angel must sometimes curse your good deeds, you have given him or her or it (there is no sex to angels) so many to record in that huge log-book which is kept up aloft for future reference. In the race for salvation, while the saints (professional) are plying steel and whipcord, jostling each other and riding foul, you will distance them and go into the gate at an easy canter under no pull at all. As for me, it is different. I stood near the pyramid of Caius Sextius at Rome, at the grave of Keats, and read his epitaph by himself, ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water,’ and said, That ought to be mine. However, I went up the steps of the Santa Scala on my knees, invested fifty francs or so in indulgences, and left the Eternal City whiter than snow,—but perhaps only as a whited sepulchre is sometimes whiter than snow. “Excuse my levity. You will read between the lines and find plenty of sad and serious thoughts there. If I did not valiantly fight against bitter memories, I should cave. “Yours entirely, “F. A. D.”