"I could not hope," he says, "to express, by any words at my command, the peculiar charm which Professor Putnam's scholarship and character had for me. I never heard him recite without being impressed with the wonderful perfection of his scholarship. His translation was so faultlessly accurate, and yet in such exquisite taste, his analysis and parsing were so philosophical and minutely exact, and his information upon illustrative points of history, biography, antiquities, and literature, was so full and ready, that I listened with admiration, and to become myself a learner. How often I had the feeling that we ought to change places I and when I had decided to resign my situation in the college, my mind immediately turned to him as a successor, assured that the college would be most fortunate if it could secure his services." It need not be said how fully Professor Putnam reciprocated this esteem, nor what value he attached to the exact and thorough discipline of his instructor. Nor was it in the department of languages alone that he was distinguished, but almost equally in every other, as much in those studies which demand the independent and original action of the mind as those which mainly require close attention, and the faculty of acquisition. His modesty was then, as always, so marked, and his ideal of excellence so high, that it required some sense of duty to bring his powers to a public test. He never thrust himself into a place of responsibility, or sought distinction for distinction's sake. He had in college the desire and purpose which he always retained,--to complete himself in every art and every manly exercise. Hence his study of music, not only as a recreation, but as a discipline; not merely to gratify the ear, though exquisitely fond of the art, and receiving from it a refined and exalted pleasure, but also that he might become acquainted with the thoughts and conceptions of men great in musical genius. The Handel Society, which, from the constant changes of its members, must necessarily fluctuate,--the annual losses not always being met by corresponding gains,--was then in a high state of efficiency. For the sake of study and musical acquisition, it boldly grappled with the difficult works of eminent masters, and with whatever necessary imperfectness of actual performance, it was with sure and lasting results of musical ability and taste and knowledge. It was in this society, I suppose, that Professor Putnam first became practically acquainted with some of the great works of Handel and Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart, and with the lighter but yet substantial excellencies of some of the English masters. Here he cultivated and disciplined his nice ear to the instinctive perception of the hidden harmonies of poetry, to the _feeling_ of those finer beauties which hardly admit of expression in anything so clumsy as our actual speech.