tution struggling to exist. In raising this college from poverty and insignificance to the position in which he left it, he displayed talents for the despatch of business that would have sufficed for the government of a nation. He obtained some help from the legislature; a large capital was raised by a system of lotteries; his own name was a powerful attraction; and he was, besides, one of the most skilful and laborious of teachers.

Besides governing the college, he found time also to accumulate for himself a colossal fortune. Every one remembers the "Nott Stove," that was in use until within these few years, and which, indeed, is still occasionally seen. Indulging his early taste for the natural sciences, his attention was drawn to anthracite coal, which for many years baffled every attempt to turn it to account as house-warming fuel. Dr. Nott had the good fortune to be the first to overcome this difficulty, and his stove had, in consequence, an immense currency. There was a time when almost every house of any pretensions had a Nott stove in its entry. The stove patents of Dr. Nott produced a vast revenue, so that in his old age he was one of the richest men in the State of New York west of Albany.

In 1854, which was the fiftieth year of his presidency, and the eighty-first of his life, he performed an act which might be styled generous, but which I prefer to call simply sensible. He laid down part of his load. In other words, he gave to Union College, as a permanent endowment, a considerable part of his fortune, namely, a sum of six hundred and ten thousand dollars. By this sum he provided for the support of nine professors and six assistant professors, as well as for the purchase of books and apparatus, the assistance of a large number of meritorious students, and the delivery of annual courses of lectures. Bestowing this endowment upon the college during his own lifetime, he was enabled personally to superintend its investment and expenditure, and he had the pleasure of seeing some of the results of his gift.

The best achievement of a human being is to live a great and good life. Eliphalet Nott was one of the few to whom it was given to do this. Inheriting an almost perfect bodily constitu

tion, a form symmetrical, and a countenance of manly beauty, with talents both to utter and to do, he made the most of these advantages, and used them all in the service of the less gifted of his species; for which purpose, and for that alone, they were conferred upon him. So living, he was one of the happiest and most cheerful of men,

JOHN HOWARD.

NOVEMBER the 1st, 1755, the people of Lisbon were alarmed by that awful rumbling beneath the earth which, as they well knew, usually preceded an earthquake. Before they could escape from their houses, the shock came, which overthrew the greater part of the city, and buried thousands of persons in its ruins. The sea retired, leaving the bottom of the harbor bare, but immediately returned in a fearful wave fifty feet high, overwhelming everything in its course. The inhabitants who could get clear of the ruins rushed in thousands to a magnificent marble wharf, just completed, which seemed to offer a place of safety. This massive structure, densely covered with men, women, and children, suddenly sunk, bearing with it to unknown depths the entire multitude. Not a creature escaped; not a human body rose again to the surface; not a fragment of anything that was on the wharf was ever again seen by human eye; and when, by and by, the water was sounded over the place where it had stood, the depth was found to be six hundred feet. Within the space of six minutes, sixty thousand persons are supposed to have perished; and those who survived were so encompassed about with horror, that they might well have envied those whom the sea had submerged or the falling houses crushed.

Not Lisbon alone, but all Portugal, was shaken by this tremendous convulsion, which was felt, indeed, over a third part of the earth. The same shock which almost destroyed Lisbon shook down chimneys in Massachusetts and jarred the habitations in Iceland. But it was in Portugal that its force was chiefly spent. There, mountains were rent, towns engulfed, farms moved away in a mass, rivers turned from their course,

the whole land desolated, and all the inhabitants paralyzed with terror. When the earthquake had subsided, fires broke out in the prostrated towns, and bands of robbers, in the total suspension of government, ravaged and plundered the helpless people, and committed every kind of abominable excess. During all that winter the sufferings of the people were grievous, and to this day Portugal has not recovered from the stroke.

Such an event, at any time, would have excited universal consternation, and called forth a great deal of remark; but there were some circumstances peculiar to that period which caused it to come with special power upon reflecting minds. The fashionable philosophy then was that of Pope's Essay on Man, which had been translated into French and German, and was continually quoted in society. It was very common to hear such expressions as, "Whatever is is right;" "Partial evil is the general good;" "This is the best of possible worlds;" "Each creature is as happy as is consistent with the happiness of the whole." Sentiments of this kind we now call " Optimism." In the midst of all this shallow talk, came the tidings. of an appalling catastrophe, which struck every soul with amazement and terror, as if to show the futility of all human attempts to form a consistent theory respecting the government of the universe. The youthful Goethe and the aged Voltaire have both left records in their works of the effect of the Lisbon earthquake upon the glib praters of Optimism, as well as of the universal and long-continued horror which it excited in the public mind.

It was this catastrophe which was the means of calling into exercise the latent benevolence of John Howard, who is now styled in all lands and tongues, "the philanthropist."

The father of this benevolent being was noted for his penuriousness. He was a member of the firm of Howard and Hamilton, upholsterers and carpet-dealers, who, for fifty years or more, supplied the fashionable people of London with their wares. In this business, Mr. Howard (who was also named John) acquired a very handsome fortune; so that, beside leaving a liberal independence to his only daughter, he bequeathed to his only son a fine landed estate, two country houses, a house

in London, and seven thousand pounds sterling in money. So penurious was he in his old age, that he permitted his houses to get out of repair to such a degree that it cost his son, on coming into possession, a large sum to render them comfortable. His avarice, however, did not prevent him sending his son to the best schools the dissenters then had in England; but as the teachers in those schools were selected, not for their fitness, but for their creed, they were not always very capable of calling forth the energies of the youthful mind. John Howard, therefore, was a decidedly illiterate man. He spelled very incorrectly, and expressed himself, on paper, in the most awkward and ungrammatical manner. He was, probably, a dull boy, as he was rather a dull man. There is no question that, in point of mere intellect, he was not much above the average of English tradesmen.

It was the custom at that day for the sons of tradesmen, no matter how rich their fathers might be, to be regularly apprenticed for seven years to some business. Young Howard was apprenticed to a great firm of wholesale grocers, to whom his father paid seven hundred pounds premium. In consideration of this large sum, the apprentice was treated like a younger son of the head partner. He was allowed to keep a man-servant and two saddle-horses; he rode in the park like a lord; he took his rides into the country; his pockets had plenty of money in them; and, in short, he was such a grocer's apprentice as the modern world knows nothing about, but whose pranks may be read of in some old books. This particular apprentice, however, was a very serious youth. His father had reared him in the strictest principles of the Calvinistic dissenters, and the boy appears to have imbibed those principles heartily, and lived in accordance with them from his childhood up. He was guilty of none of the excesses common to young men of that day, and to which his circumstances appeared to invite him. At an early period he joined a dissenting church, with which he remained connected through life. In matters of mere doctrine he was moderate and very tolerant, while his conduct was regulated in the most rigid conformity with his profession. Under a quiet