In entering the church, Dr. Nott had deprived the world of a statesman of no ordinary calibre, but in the eyes of the Protestant, as of the Catholic Church, in the country which had its precedents to make, as in that which had precedents a thousand years old, the maxim, “once a priest always a priest,” kept him in the pulpit, to which he had no irresistible call, and to which the accident of his career only had led him.  Had the church to which he belonged been organized with an episcopal government, he had certainly been its primate; but in the vague and incoherent condition of the Congregational churches, to one of which he belonged, there was no career beyond that of the isolated pastorate of a single congregation.  In this insufficiency of interest for an active and influential life there was only the educational calling left to satisfy his enormous mental activity, and in this he found his place.  The future, which may look for his record in libraries, or in the results of research, scientific or literary, will not find him to occupy a position.  He had, however, great mechanical inventive powers, as well as a marvelous knowledge of human nature; the former solved the problem, amongst others, of anthracite coal combustion for American steamers.  In the latter lay his qualifications as the greatest teacher of young men of his generation.

Nobody could know him except the pupils to whom he disclosed himself, and to whom his kindly and magnanimous nature was unreservedly open, and they were few, and the list is fast being canceled; when we are gone, no one will ever comprehend how he could have been what he was.  But the power he always exercised over his favorite boys was extraordinary; any of us would have done anything permitted to human nature to satisfy his wish.  An instance of his influence, occurring later in my life, will illustrate his power over his old pupils.  When, several years subsequent to my graduation, and on the election of Lincoln as President, I had used what influence I could enlist with the government (my brother being a prominent Republican) to get the appointment as consul to Venice, which was generally given to an artist, the principal petition in my favor went from Cambridge.  It was written by Judge Gray (now on the Supreme Court bench), headed by Agassiz and signed by nearly every eminent literary or scientific man in Cambridge, but it lay at the Department of State more than six months, unnoticed.  In the interim the war broke out and I had gone home from Paris, where I was then living, to volunteer in the army; but, being excluded by the medical requirements, and the ranks being full,—­800,000 volunteers being then enrolled,—­I turned to my project for Venice, and wrote a word to Dr. Nott, recalling his promise of years before to use his influence in my favor, if ever it were needed.  He inclosed my letter, with one containing an indorsement of it, and sent it to Seward, the Secretary of State, and the appointment—­not to Venice, which had just been given to Howells, but to Rome—­came by return of post.