Nor is it unfair to remember just here that he bore one of the few really historic names in this country.  He never spoke of it; but we should all have been sorry not to feel that he was glad to have sprung straight from that second John Winthrop who was the first Governor of Connecticut, the younger sister colony of Massachusetts Bay,—­the John Winthrop who obtained the charter of privileges for his colony.  How clearly the quality of the man has been transmitted!  How brightly the old name shines out again!

He was born in New Haven on the 22d of September, 1828, and was a grave, delicate, rather precocious child.  He was at school only in New Haven, and entered Yale College just as he was sixteen.  The pure, manly morality which was the substance of his character, and his brilliant exploits of scholarship, made him the idol of his college, friends, who saw in him the promise of the splendid career which the fond faith of students allots to the favorite classmate.  He studied for the Clark scholarship, and gained it; and his name, in the order of time, is first upon the roll of that foundation.  He won the Townshend prize for the best composition on History.  For the Berkeleian scholarship he and another were judged equal, and, drawing lots, the other gained the scholarship; but they divided the honor.

In college his favorite studies were Greek and mental philosophy.  He never lost the scholarly taste and habit.  A wide reader, he retained knowledge with little effort, and often surprised his friends by the variety of his information.  Yet it was not strange, for he was born a scholar.  His mother was the great-granddaughter of old President Edwards; and among his ancestors upon the maternal side, Winthrop counted seven Presidents of Yale.  Perhaps also in this learned descent we may find the secret of his early seriousness.  Thoughtful and self-criticizing, he was peculiarly sensible to religious influences, under which his criticism easily became self-accusation, and his sensitive seriousness grew sometimes morbid.  He would have studied for the ministry or a professorship, upon leaving college, except for his failing health.

In the later days, when I knew him, the feverish ardor of the first religious impulse was past.  It had given place to a faith much too deep and sacred to talk about, yet holding him always with serene, steady poise in the purest region of life and feeling.  There was no franker or more sympathetic companion for young men of his own age than he; but his conversation fell from his lips as unsullied as his soul.

He graduated in 1848, when he was twenty years old; and for the sake of his health, which was seriously shattered,—­an ill-health that colored all his life, he set out upon his travels.  He went first to England, spending much time at Oxford, where he made pleasant acquaintances, and walking through Scotland.  He then crossed over to France and Germany, exploring Switzerland very thoroughly upon foot,—­once