I do not wish to make him too much a hero.  “Death,” says Bacon, “openeth the gate to good fame.”  When a neighbor dies, his form and quality appear clearly, as if he had been dead a thousand years.  Then we see what we only felt before.  Heroes in history seem to us poetic because they are there.  But if we should tell the simple truth of some of our neighbors, it would sound like poetry.  Winthrop was one of the men who represent the manly and poetic qualities that always exist around us,—­not great genius, which is ever salient, but the fine fibre of manhood that makes the worth of the race.

Closely engaged with his literary employments, and more quiet than ever, he took less active part in the last election.  But when the menace of treason became an aggressive act, he saw very clearly the inevitable necessity of arms.  We all talked of it constantly,—­watching the news,—­chafing at the sad necessity of delay, which was sure to confuse foreign opinion and alienate sympathy, as has proved to be the case.  As matters advanced and the war-cloud rolled up thicker and blacker, he looked at it with the secret satisfaction that war for such a cause opened his career both as thinker and actor.  The admirable coolness, the promptness, the cheerful patience, the heroic ardor, the intelligence, the tough experience of campaigning, the profound conviction that the cause was in truth “the good old cause,” which was now to come to the death-grapple with its old enemy, Justice against Injustice, Order against Anarchy,—­all these should now have their turn, and the wanderer and waiter “settle himself” at last.

We took a long walk together on the Sunday that brought the news of the capture of Fort Sumter.  He was thoroughly alive with a bright, earnest forecast of his part in the coming work.  Returning home with me, he sat until late in the evening talking with an unwonted spirit, saying playfully, I remember, that, if his friends would only give him a horse, he would ride straight to victory.

Especially he wished that some competent person would keep a careful record of events as they passed; “for we are making our history,” he said, “hand over hand.”  He sat quietly in the great chair while he spoke, and at last rose to go.  We went together to the door, and stood for a little while upon the piazza, where we had sat peacefully through so many golden summer-hours.  The last hour for us had come, but we did not know it.  We shook hands, and he left me, passing rapidly along the brook-side under the trees, and so in the soft spring starlight vanished from my sight forever.