making all Nature resonant with his cries; knowing nothing of envy save from the reports of others, yet never content to be outdone even in veriest trifles; a tropical heart and a cool brain; full of strong prejudices and fine charities, generous and exacting, heedless and sympathetic, quick to forgive, slow to resent, firm in love, transient in hate; to-day scaling the heavens with frantic zeal, to-morrow relaxing in long torpor; fond of long, solitary journeys, and given to conviviality; tender eyes that a word or a thought would fill, and hard lips that would never say die; a child of Nature thrilled with ecstasy by storm and by sunshine, and a cultured scholar hungering for new banquets; dreamer, doer, poet, philosopher, simple child, wisest patriarch; a true cosmopolitan, having largest aptitudes,—­a tree whose roots sucked up juices from all the land, whose liberal fruits were showered all around; having a key to unlock all hearts, and a treasure for each; hospitable friend, husband-lover, doting father; a boisterous wit, fantastic humorist, master of pathos, practical joker, sincere mourner; always an extremist, yielding to various excess; an April day, all smiles and tears; January and May met together; a many-sided fanatic; a universal enthusiast; a large-hearted sectarian; a hot-headed judge; a strong sketch full of color, with neutral tints nowhere, but fall of fiery lights and deep glooms; buoyant, irrepressible, fuming, rampant, with something of divine passion and electric fire; gentle, earnest, true; a wayward prodigal, loosely scattering abroad where he should bring together; great in things indifferent, and indifferent in many great ones; a man who would have been far greater, if he had been much less,—­if he had been less catholic and more specific; immeasurably greater in his own personality than in any or all of his deeds either actual or possible;—­such was the man Christopher North, a Hercules-Apollo, strong and immortally beautiful,—­a man whom, with all his foibles, negligences, and ignorances, we stop to admire, and stay to love.

[Footnote A:  One who met him many years ago in Edinburgh, at the conclusion of a lecture, tells us, as we write these closing sentences, of his splendid figure, as he saw him twirl an Irish shillalah and show off its wonderful properties as an instrument of fun at a fair.]

“CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE.”

  Yes, tyrants, you hate us, and fear while you hate
  The self-ruling, chain-breaking, throne-shaking State! 
  The night-birds dread morning,—­your instinct is true,—­
  The day-star of Freedom brings midnight for you!

  Why plead with the deaf for the cause of mankind? 
  The owl hoots at noon that the eagle is blind! 
  “We ask not your reasons,—­’t were wasting our time,—­
  Our life is a menace, our welfare a crime!

  “We have battles to fight, we have foes to subdue,—­
  Time waits not for us, and we wait not for you! 
  The mower mows on, though the adder may writhe
  And the copper-head coil round the blade of his scythe!