Hill, Northampton, then under the care of Mr. Cogswell and Mr. Bancroft.
The historian of the United States could hardly have dreamed that the
handsome boy of ten years was to take his place at the side of his
teacher in the first rank of writers in his own department. Motley came
to Round Hill, as one of his schoolmates tells me, with a great
reputation, especially as a declaimer. He had a remarkable facility for
acquiring languages, excelled as a reader and as a writer, and was the
object of general admiration for his many gifts. There is some reason to
think that the flattery he received was for a time a hindrance to his
progress and the development of his character. He obtained praise too
easily, and learned to trust too much to his genius. He had everything
to spoil him,--beauty, precocious intelligence, and a personal charm
which might have made him a universal favorite. Yet he does not seem to
have been generally popular at this period of his life. He was wilful,
impetuous, sometimes supercilious, always fastidious. He would study as
he liked, and not by rule. His school and college mates believed in his
great possibilities through all his forming period, but it may be doubted
if those who counted most confidently on his future could have supposed
that he would develop the heroic power of concentration, the long-
breathed tenacity of purpose, which in after years gave effect to his
brilliant mental endowments. "I did wonder," says Mr. Wendell Phillips,
"at the diligence and painstaking, the drudgery shown in his historical
works. In early life he had no industry, not needing it. All he cared
for in a book he caught quickly,--the spirit of it, and all his mind
needed or would use. This quickness of apprehension was marvellous.
"I do not find from the recollections of his schoolmates at Northampton
that he was reproached for any grave offences, though he may have
wandered beyond the prescribed boundaries now and then, and studied
according to his inclinations rather than by rule. While at that school
he made one acquisition much less common then than now,--a knowledge of