was not detained long at the work-bench. The story of a carpenter-boy studying Euclid and solving algebraic problems, made a stir in the village of Willington, where he then lived. Nor could the eager youth any longer study alone. Sparks became restless under the double goad of his ambition and his disadvantages, and plucking up courage, one day marched bravely into the presence of the Rev. Hubbell Loomis, an intelligent and cultivated clergyman, requesting his counsel and instruction. Mr. Loomis examined him carefully, and, taking him as an inmate of his house, taught him mathematics gratuitously, and induced him to commence the study of Greek and Latin, encouraging the spirit of independence—which was very lively in Sparks—by allowing him to shingle his barn as partial compensation for board and tuition.

Hitherto, the life of a schoolmaster had been his utmost ambition, and the trials he made satisfied him that, with his love of knowledge and desire to impart it, he would ultimately be able to succeed. The prospect of a college course had not yet dawned on him. But, from his patron Loomis to others of greater influence the carpenter's merit spread wider and wider, until the Rev. Abiel Abbott, then a clergyman at Coventry, Connecticut, procured for him a scholarship at Phillips Exeter Academy, upon a benevolent foundation, to which meritorious pupils of limited means were admitted without charge for board and instruction. On the 4th of September, 1809, he left Tolland, Connecticut, and walked the one hundred and twenty miles to Exeter, New Hampshire, becoming a scholar of the Academy for two years. Here he first met, as fellow pupils, his life-long friends, Palfrey and Bancroft. He studied diligently, and made rapid progress; yet, anxious to preserve his independence, and to obtain what was necessary for his personal comfort without further tax on friends or obligation to strangers, he taught, during one winter of these two years, a school at Rochester in New Hampshire. In one of his memorandums he sums up his tuition thus: "the whole amount of my schooling was about forty months, which was the length of time I attended school before I was twenty years old."

But the great hope of his heart—a hope that had been gradually kindled—was at last to be realized, and, in 1811, at the age of twenty-two, through the active interest of President Kirkland, Sparks entered Harvard University, on a Pennoyer scholarship. Yet, the res angusta domi pursued him still. It is said, that, "in consequence partly of ill health and partly of poverty," he was unable to pass more than two entire years, of his four, at Cambridge. To eke out a slender but necessary income, he obtained leave of absence during parts of his Freshman and Sophomore years, and spent the time as a private teacher in the family of Mr. Mark Pringle, at Havre de Grace, Maryland. He was there when the British, under Admiral Cockburn, plundered and partly destroyed the village; and here, probably, he enjoyed the only military experience of his life, by serving, as a private, in the Maryland militia, called out to guard the neighborhood. The inhabitants, it is related, generally fled to the woods, and but few, among whom was Sparks, remained to witness the barbarous behaviour of the enemy. Fifteen months of this leave of absence were, thus, spent in our State, in the bosom of an excellent and refined family, by whose members he was warmly esteemed; and, at length, he received his degree of Bachelor of Arts, at Harvard, with the class of 1815.

His college course, notwithstanding its interruptions, was successful. President Kirkland used to say, in his quaint way, "Sparks is not only a man, but a man and a-half." He graduated with high honors. In his senior year he gained the Bowdoin prize for an essay on the physical discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, an essay which is remembered in the traditions of the University as "a masterpiece of analytic exposition, philosophical method, lucid and exact statement."

This successful essay was, perhaps, the key of his life and character, for his mind was emphatically clear, exact, analytic, mathematical; and throughout his career, the same qualities were distinct in whatever he investigated or wrote. It has, indeed, been said that his merits were already recognized by the rival University of Yale, and that offers for his removal thither had been made during one of his years at Harvard; but the friendly influence of Dr. Kirkland prevailed over those allurements, and he remained constant to his patron and college.

The years 1816 and 1817 were passed by the graduate in teaching a private school at Lancaster, Massachusetts. He finished his college course at the advanced age of twenty-six, and had now added two years more to the score. At Lancaster he cultivated those habits of methodical industry which always characterized him afterwards. Soon after undertaking the school, he wrote: "I board at Major Carter's, a mile and a quarter from my school, to and from which I walk twice a day. I rose this morning an hour before sunrise, and rode five or six miles before breakfast, an exercise which I shall continue regularly. My school occupies six hours, and I have resolved to devote, and thus far, have devoted, six hours of the twenty-four to study." Before this, he has a memorandum of walking from Cambridge to Bolton, twenty-six miles; setting out at half-past one, and arriving at Bolton at eight in the evening.

In 1817, at the age of twenty-eight, and two years after graduation, his alma mater recognizing the tendency of his mind towards the exact sciences, as well as the extent of his acquirements, chose him tutor in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard. There also, very soon afterwards, chiefly under the instruction of the Rev. Dr. Ware, who was then the Hollis Professor, he commenced the study of divinity, pursuing it zealously during two years, being, at the same time, the "working editor" of the North American Review. Its numbers from May, 1817, to March, 1819, inclusive, were edited by him. In May, of the latter year, at the age of thirty, he was called to Baltimore and ordained in this city as the first pastor of the Unitarian church which had just been erected. On this memorable occasion, the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing preached that discourse in exposition of the Unitarian faith, which has been so widely celebrated, published, and read in America and Europe: a discourse which is said to have "caused more remark on its theological views, while more controversy grew out of the statement of doctrines therein declared, than any single religious discourse in this country ever occasioned."

As clergyman of this congregation, Mr. Sparks remained a resident of our city for four years. He is well remembered in the families of his own church and of other religious societies, among whose members his firm but genial manners always made the studious and estimable gentleman a welcome guest. He was a steadfast laborer among his congregation; but the ultimate literary drift of his life was already beginning to develop itself, having probably received an impetus from his editorial task on the North American Review. In addition to his clerical duty in Baltimore, he did a great deal of work in editing the Unitarian Miscellany, in publishing his well-known Letters on the Comparative Moral tendency of the Unitarian and Trinitarian Doctrines, which drew on him the controversial notice of that renowned champion, Dr. Miller, of Princeton, and produced a discussion, which, instead of estranging the combatants, strengthened their personal relations, and increased their mutual confidence and respect. In after years, when Mr. Sparks required a Life of Jonathan Edwards for his American Biography,