had fallen to him, after he had learned to do without help or patronage,
as Dr. Samuel Johnson did, while undergoing Lord Chesterfield, he might
have been at the head of the Massachusetts bar,--a proud position, to be
sure, at any time within the last fifty years,--or, at any rate, in the
foremost rank, long before his death.

He had, withal, a great fondness for mechanics, and one at least of his
inventions, the "Pierpont or Doric Stove," was a bit of concrete
philosophy,--a miniature temple glowing with perpetual fire,--a
cast-iron syllogism of itself, so classically just in its proportions,
and so eminently characteristic, as to be a type of the author. He had
been led through a long course of experiment in the structure of grates
and stoves, and in the consumption of fuel, with the hope of superseding
Saratoga, for himself at least, by making our terrible winters and our
east winds a little more endurable. No man ever suffered more from what
people sometimes call, without meaning to be naughty, _damp cold
weather_.

In addition to the "Portrait," he had written a New-Year's Address or
two, and a fine lyric, which was said or sung--I forget which--at the
celebration of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow; so that after he went off
to Baltimore, and the "Airs of Palestine" appeared in 1816, those who
knew him best, instead of being astonished like the rest of the world,
regarded it as nothing more than the fulfilment of a promise, and went
about saying, or looking as if they wanted to say, "Didn't we tell you
so?"

And yet, with the exception of two or three outbreaks and flashes, there
was really nothing in his earlier manifestations to prefigure the
"unrolling glory" of the "Airs," or to justify the extravagant