MEMOIRS, ETC. CHAPTER I. PARENTAGE AND BIRTH.-HOME INFLUENCES.- PERMANENT TRAITS OF CHARACTER EARLY DISPLAYED. - HIS FIRST SCHOOL TEACHER, ETC. THE family of Rantoul is of Celtic origin. The name, not unknown to Scottish history, is derived from two Gaelic words signifying mountain cavern. Robert Rantoul, Jr. was born in Beverly, Mass., August 5, 1805. He was the eldest son of Robert and Joanna Lovett Rantoul. Of his father, ripe in honors as in years, we trust that it may yet be long before we can speak in such terms as delicacy forbids us to apply to the living. His mother, who died in the summer of 1848, was a person of superior discernment and discretion, of a serene and gentle spirit, and of the most cheerful and loving piety,- one whose youth had the wisdom of age, and whose age the guileless simplicity and fresh affections of youth. Under the most salutary home influences, Robert developed in his very infancy the prominent traits of character that marked his whole subsequent life; such as reverence for the truth, frankness, and openness in expressing his convictions, strong domestic attachments, modest and unassuming habits of social intercourse, and uniform courteousness of demeanor towards persons of every age and condition. His childhood has left, in the memory of his superiors in age, recollections of ingenuousness, veracity, modesty, docility, and tender conscientiousness. His advantages for intellectual culture were unusual at that day, when the floodgates of juvenile literature had not been opened, and but little had been done by the press or by improved modes of education to smoothe the ascent of the hill of science. The books to which he had constant access, were those of Berquin, Dr. Aiken, Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, and Hannah More, - all of them writers adapted to awaken the mental curiosity, and to give a right direction to the moral purposes, without fostering the inordinate love of amusement or excitement, which is cherished by so much of the juvenile reading of the present time. He was peculiarly happy in his first school, and to the last day of his life expressed greater obligations to its teacher than to all the instructors in his subsequent career as a student. She was a bold innovator in her department, and had anticipated all that is valuable in the ameliorated school system of the present generation. She was not a mere imposer of tasks or hearer of lessons. School books held a secondary place in her administration. She imparted knowledge orally, read to her pupils extracts from works of history and science, and by a Socratic mode of interrogation drew out their powers of reasoning and judgment. We have before us a journal commenced by Robert in his ninth year, which bears such marks of careful thought, discriminating habits of reading, and accurate expression, as do equal credit to the child and to those who participated in the formation of his character. A single extract from his journal reads as follows: Jan. 4, 1814. Gained the following idea, namely, that I had better sometimes be imposed upon, than never to trust.' From this school he was removed to the public grammar school of his native town, where, with a brief interval under the tuition of Mr., now Rev. Dr., Rufus Anderson, he acquired the rudiments of classical learning. The wishes of his friends and his own tastes and capacities pointing to a liberal education, he was placed, at the age of fourteen, at the Phillips Academy in Andover, then under the tuition of the veteran teacher, John Adams. We cannot better portray his character at that period, and the promise of future eminence which he then gave, than in the words of a class mate and room mate, now a distinguished member of the medical profession, Dr. Ray, of Providence, R. I. "After an interval of more than thirty years, my recollection of his mental manifestations calls up some of that 'especial wonder' which they excited then. The poems he had planned and even begun, the systems of philosophy he had conceived, and the numberless improvements of one kind or another he had meditated, evinced remarkable fertility of mind, and indicated very plainly what were the objects of his ambition. The trait which impressed me most, was his unquenchable thirst for knowledge, which sought for gratification in every field of human inquiry. Whatever arrested his attention, whether it were a paper in the Spectator, a speech in Congress, a new poem of Lord Byron's, or a recent invention in the arts, it absorbed all his faculties, and was thoroughly mastered and digested before he left it. A speculation in metaphysics, or a theory of political economy, seemed to be as welcome as the lightest productions of the press, and more capable of exciting original thought. This extraordinary mental activity was accompanied by great tenacity of memory, which enabled him to retain whatever he once learned, and which, I believe, was never diminished in after life. It placed his immense acquisitions always at his command, and rendered it easy for him, at any time, to pour a flood of light on points which, from men less happily endowed, would have required days and weeks of laborious investigation. His remarks on the books he read showed a degree of originality and independence not often witnessed in lads of his age. He scrutinized very closely what he read, taking nothing on trust, and never passively adopting the conclusions of others, but using them for forming opinions of his own. He was fond of discussion, and was one of those who could argue just as well after being vanquished, which was not often the case, for his command of language, his quickness of apprehension, and great acquisitions, rendered him a formidable opponent. Metaphysics had engaged his attention, like almost every thing else, and judging from my impressions, he had completely mastered Locke. In English literature, his reading had been extensive and critical, and Shakspeare and Milton were his favorite authors. In the politics of the day and the great questions at issue, he was deeply interested, and though the views of a school-boy on subjects which divide the prominent men of the time can be of no moment, except as indicative of tastes and tendencies, yet it is a fact worth notice, that the doctrines of free trade which afterwards constituted a cardinal principle in his political creed, were then advocated as sincerely and earnestly, if not with equal copiousness of illustration, as at any subsequent period. In the political history of the country, and especially of public men, he was well versed, and made it a frequent topic of conversation. His intellectual superiority was universally acknowledged among his companions, the more readily perhaps because it was free from all pretension and conceit. He was equally ready to recognize the merits of others, and feelings of envy or jealousy were never among the number of his moral infirmaties." During his residence at Andover, if not previously, Robert acquired the habit of studying less with reference to the requisitions of his teachers than to the demands of his own intellect, for the sake, not of reciting, but of knowing. His engrossment in the theme that was uppermost in his mind for the time being was so entire, that he could hardly call himself off from it to perform a prescribed task. Thus while his standard very highly transcended that of his school, and his acquirements took a wider range than seemed within the scope of a schoolboy, it seldom happened that his pursuits coincided with the academic course. He undoubtedly held the minutia and the mere technicalities of learning in undue disesteem; but at the same time he was in his novitiate so thoroughly grounded in the rudiments of the classical languages, and in the fundamental principles of mathematics and natural science, that they were ever afterwards at his free command and ready service. In 1822 he entered the Freshman Class at Harvard College. Here he manifested in fuller development the traits that had marked his career at Andover. He was indefatigably industrious, frequently studying fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, but pursuing his studies with so little reference to the college course, as often to absent himself for days together from the regular exercises of his class, or to omit all special preparation for them, and to rely solely on his previous acquisitions or gen |