to the Rocky Mountains, thrust himself into a fiery political controversy, or seek to wrest a new truth from the arcana of science....  We remember hearing a brother artist describe him in his studio at Home, engaged for hours upon a picture, deftly shifting palette, cigar, and maul-stick from hand to hand, as occasion required; absorbed, rapid, intent, and then suddenly breaking from his quiet task to vent his constrained spirits in a jovial song, or a romp with his great dog, whose vociferous barking he thoroughly enjoyed; and often abandoning his quiet studies for some wild, elaborate frolic, as if a row was essential to his happiness.  His very jokes partook of this bold heartiness of disposition.  He scorned all ultra refinement, and found his impulse to art not so much in delicate perception as in vivid sensation.  There was ever a reaction from the meditative.  His temperament is Teutonic—­hardy, cordial, and brave.  Such men hold the conventional in little reverence, and their natures gush like mountain streams, with wild freedom and unchastened enthusiasm.”

VIII.

DIVINES.

CHAPTER XXXI.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of June, 1813, and was the eighth child of Dr. Lyman Beecher, the famous Presbyterian divine of New England.  Dr. Beecher was regarded as one of the most powerful champions of orthodox Christianity in the land of the pilgrims, and had the good fortune to be the father of a family whose members have become celebrated for their intellectual gifts.

The most of these gave early promise of their future distinction, but the subject of this memoir was regarded as the dunce of the family.  He grew up as the children of most New England clergymen of that day climbed the road to manhood.  His father’s family was large, and the salary paid by the congregation never exceeded eight hundred dollars, and was not always promptly paid at that.  The good people of the land of steady habits well knew how to drive hard bargains with the Lord’s messengers, and were adepts in the art of securing the “best talent” at the lowest price.  The stern, hard struggle for a livelihood in which the father was engaged prevented him from giving much personal attention to his children, and the mother of young Henry dying when he was but three years old, the boy was left very much to himself.  Like most ministers’ children, he was obliged to “set an example to the village,” and this boy was dosed with Catechism and his father’s stern and gloomy theological tenets until he was sick of them.