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TO the native-born New Englander the name of Prescott has, for more than a century, possessed associations that give to it the stamp of genuine distinction. Those who have borne it have belonged of right to the true patriciate of their Commonwealth. The Prescotts were from the first a fighting race, and their men were also men of mind; and, according to the times in which they lived, they displayed one or the other characteristic in a very marked degree. The pioneer among them on American soil was John Prescott, a burly Puritan soldier who had fought under Cromwell, and who loved danger for its own sake. He came from Lancashire to Massachusetts about twenty years after the landing of the Mayflower, and at once pushed off into the unbroken wilderness to mark out a large plantation for himself in what is now the town of Lancaster. A half-verified tradition describes him as having brought with him a coat of mail and a steel helmet, glittering in which he often terrified marauding Indians who ventured near his lands. His son and grandson and his three great-grandsons all served as officers in the military forces of Massachusetts; and among the last was Colonel William Prescott, who commanded the American troops at Bunker Hill. Later, he served under the eye of Washington, who personally commended him after the battle of Long Island; and he took part in the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga—a success which brought the arms of France to the support of the American cause.

In times of peace as well, the Prescotts were men of light and leading. Their names are found upon the rolls of the Massachusetts General Court, of the Governor's Council in colonial days, of the Continental Congress, and of the State judiciary. One of them, Oliver Prescott, a brother of the Revolutionary warrior, who had been bred as a physician, made some elaborate researches on the subject of that curious drug, ergot, and embodied his results in a paper of such value as to attract the notice of the profession in Europe. It was translated into French and German, and was included in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales—an unusual compliment for an American of those days to receive. Most eminent of all the Prescotts in civil life, however, before the historian won his fame, was William Prescott—the family names were continually repeated—whose career was remarkable for its distinction, and whose character is significant because of its influence upon his illustrious son. William Prescott was born in 1762, and, after a most careful training, entered Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1783. Admitted to the bar, he won high rank in his profession, twice receiving and twice declining an appointment to the Supreme Court of the State. His widely recognised ability brought him wealth, so that he lived in liberal fashion, in a home whose generous appointments and cultivated ease created an atmosphere that was rare indeed in those early days, when narrow means and a crude provincialism combined to make New England life unlovely. Prescott was not only an able lawyer, the worthy compeer of Dexter, Otis, and Webster—he was a scholar by instinct, widely read, thoughtful, and liberal-minded in the best sense of the word. His intellectual conflicts with such professional antagonists as have just been named gave him mental flexibility and a delightful sanity; and though in temperament he was naturally of a serious turn, he had both pungency and humour at his command. No more ideal father could be imagined for a brilliant son; for he was affectionate, generous, and sympathetic, with a knowledge of the world, and a happy absence of Puritan austerity. He had, moreover, the very great good fortune to love and marry a woman dowered with every quality that can fill a house with sunshine. This was Catherine Hickling, the daughter of a prosperous Boston merchant, afterward American consul in the Azores. As a girl, and indeed all through her long and happy life, she was the very spirit of healthful, normal womanhood—full of an irrepressible and infectious gayety, a miracle of buoyant life, charming in manner, unselfish, helpful, and showing in her every act and thought the promptings of a beautiful and spotless soul.

It was of this admirably mated pair that William Hickling Prescott, their second son, was born, at Salem, on the 4th of May, 1796. The elder Prescott had not yet acquired the ample fortune which he afterward possessed; yet even then his home was that of a man of easy circumstances—one of those big, comfortable, New England houses, picturesquely situated amid historic surroundings.[2] Here young Prescott spent the first twelve years of his life under his mother's affectionate care, and here began his education, first at a sort of dame school, kept by a kindly maiden lady, Miss Mehitable Higginson, and then, from about the age of seven, under the more formal instruction of an excellent teacher, Mr. Jacob Newman Knapp, quaintly known as "Master Knapp." It was here that he began to reveal certain definite and very significant traits of character. The record of them is interesting, for it shows that, but for the accident which subsequently altered the whole tenor of his life, he might have grown up into a far from admirable man, even had he escaped moral shipwreck. Many of his natural traits, indeed, were of the kind that need restraint to make them safe to their possessor, and in these early years restraint was largely lacking in the life of the young Prescott, who, it may frankly be admitted, was badly spoiled. His father, preoccupied in his legal duties, left him in great part to his mother's care, and his mother, who adored him for his cleverness and good looks, could not bear to check him in the smallest of his caprices. He was, indeed, peculiarly her own, since from her he had inherited so much. By virtue of his natural gifts, he was, no doubt, a most attractive boy. Handsome, like his father, he had his mother's vivacity and high spirits almost in excess. Quick of mind, imaginative, full of eager curiosity, and with a tenacious memory, it is no wonder that her pride in him was great, and that her mothering heart went out to him in unconscious recognition of a kindred temperament. But his school companions, and even his elders, often found these ebullient spirits of his by no means so delightful. The easy-going indulgence which he met at home, and very likely also the recognised position of his father in that small community, combined to make young Prescott wilful and self-confident and something of an enfant terrible. He was allowed to say precisely what he thought, and he did invariably say it on all occasions and to persons of every age. In fact, he acquired a somewhat unenviable reputation for rudeness, while his high spirits prompted him to contrive all sorts of practical jokes—a form of humour which seldom tends to make one popular. Moreover, though well-grown for his age, he had a distaste for physical exertion, and took little or no part in active outdoor games. Naturally, therefore, he was not particularly liked by his school companions, while, on the other hand, he attained no special rank in the schoolroom. Although he was quick at learning, he contented himself with satisfying the minimum of what was required—a trait that remained very characteristic of him for a long time. Of course, there is no particular significance in the general statement that a boy of twelve was rude, mischievous, physically indolent, and averse to study. Yet in Prescott's case these qualities were somewhat later developed at a critical period of his life, and might have spoiled a naturally fine character had they not been ultimately checked and controlled by the memorable accident which befell him a few years afterward.

In 1803, the elder Prescott suffered from a hemorrhage from the lungs which compelled him for a time to give up many of his professional activities. Five years after this he removed his home to Boston, where the practice of his profession would be less burdensome, and where, as it turned out, his income was very largely increased. The change was fortunate both for him and for his son; since, in a larger community, the boy came to be less impressed with his own importance, and also fell under an influence far more stimulating than could ever have been exerted by a village schoolmaster. The rector of Trinity Church in Boston, the Rev. Dr. John S. Gardiner, was a gentleman of exceptional cultivation. As a young man he had been well trained in England under the learned Dr. Samuel Parr, a Latinist of the Ciceronian school. He was, besides, a man possessing many genial and very human qualities, so that all who knew him felt his personal fascination to a rare degree. He had at one time been the master of a classical school in Boston and had met with much success; but his clerical duties had obliged him to give up this occupation. Thereafter, he taught only a small number of boys, the sons of intimate friends in whom he took a special and personal interest. His methods with them were not at all those of a typical schoolmaster. He received his little classes in the library of his home, and taught them, in a most informal fashion, English, Greek, and Latin. He resembled, indeed, one of those ripe scholars of the Renaissance who taught for the pure love of imparting knowledge. Much of his instruction was conveyed orally rather than through the medium of text-books; and his easy talk, flowing from a full mind, gave interest and richness to his favourite subjects. Such teaching as this is always rare, and it was peculiarly so in that age of formalism. To the privilege of Dr. Gardiner's instruction, young Prescott was admitted, and from it he derived not only a correct feeling for English style, but a genuine love of classical study, which remained with him throughout his life. It may be said here that he never at any time felt an interest in mathematics or the natural sciences. His cast of mind was naturally humanistic; and now, through the influence of an accomplished teacher, he came to know the meaning and the beauty of the classical tradition.

Under Gardiner, Prescott's indifference to study disappeared, and he applied himself so well that he was rapidly advanced from elementary reading to the study of authors so difficult as Æschylus. His biographer, Mr. Ticknor, who was his fellow-pupil at this time, has left us some interesting notes upon the subject of Prescott's literary preferences. It appears that he enjoyed Sophocles, while Horace "interested and excited him beyond his years." The pessimism of Juvenal he disliked, and the crabbed verse of Persius he utterly refused to read. Under private teachers he studied French, Italian, and Spanish—a rather unusual thing for boys at that time—and he reluctantly acquired what he regarded as the irreducible minimum of mathematics. It was decided that he should be fitted to enter the Sophomore Class in Harvard, and to this end he devoted his mental energies. Like most boys, he worked hardest upon those studies which related to his college examination, viewing others as more or less superfluous. He did, however, a good deal of miscellaneous reading, opportunities for which he found in the Boston Athenæum. This institution had been opened but a short time before, and its own collection of books, which to-day numbers more than two hundred thousand, was rather meagre; but in it had been deposited some ten thousand volumes, constituting the private library of John Quincy Adams, who was then holding the post of American Minister to Russia. At a time when book-shops were few, and when books were imported from England with much difficulty and expense, these ten thousand volumes seemed an enormous treasure-house of good reading. Prescott browsed through the books after the fashion of a clever boy, picking out what took his fancy and neglecting everything that seemed at all uninteresting. Yet this omnivorous reading stimulated his love of letters and gave to him a larger range of vision than at that time he could probably have acquired in any other way. It is interesting to note the fact that his preference was for old romances—the more extravagant the better—and for tales of wild and lawless adventure. An especial favourite with him was the romance of Amadis de Gaule, which he found in Southey's somewhat pedestrian translation, and which appealed intensely to Prescott's imagination and his love of the fantastic.

His other occupations were decidedly significant. His most intimate friend at this time was William Gardiner, his preceptor's son; and the two boys were absolutely at one in their tastes and amusements. Both of them were full of mischief, and both were irrepressibly boisterous, playing all sorts of tricks at evening in the streets, firing off pistols, and in general causing a good deal of annoyance to the sober citizens of Boston. In this they were like any other healthy boys—full of animal spirits and looking for "fun" without any especial sense of responsibility. Something else, however, is recorded of them which seems to have a real importance, as revealing in Prescott, at least, some of those mental characteristics which in his after life were to find expression in his serious work.

The period was one when the thoughts of all men were turned to the Napoleonic wars. The French and English were at grips in Spain for the possession of the Peninsula. Wellington had landed in Portugal and, marching into Spain, had flung down the gage of battle, which was taken up by Soult, Masséna, and Victor, in the absence of their mighty chief. The American newspapers were filled with long, though belated, accounts of the brilliant fighting at Ciudad Rodrigo, Almeida, and Badajoz; and these narratives fired the imagination of Prescott, whose eagerness his companion found infectious, so that the two began to play at battles; not after the usual fashion of boys, but in a manner recalling the Kriegspiel of the military schools of modern Germany. Pieces of paper were carefully cut into shapes which would serve to designate the difference between cavalry, infantry, and artillery; and with these bits of paper the disposition and manœuvring of armies were indicated, so as to make clear, in a rough way, the tactics of the opposing commanders. Not alone were the Napoleonic battles thus depicted, but also the great contests of which the boys had read or heard at school—Thermopylæ, Marathon, Leuctra, Cannæ, and Pharsalus. Some pieces of old armour, unearthed among the rubbish of the Athenæum, enabled the boys to mimic in their play the combats of Amadis and the knights with whom he fought.

Side by side with these amusements there was another which curiously supplemented it. As Prescott and his friend went through the streets on their way to school, they made a practice of inventing impromptu stories, which they told each other in alternation. If the story was unfinished when they arrived at school, it would be resumed on their way home and continued until it reached its end. It was here that Prescott's miscellaneous reading stood him in good stead. His mind was full of the romances and histories that he had read; and his quick invention and lively imagination enabled him to piece together the romantic bits which he remembered, and to give them some sort of consistency and form. Ticknor attaches little importance either to Prescott's interest in the details of warfare or to this fondness of his for improvised narration. Yet it is difficult not to see in both of them a definite bias; and we may fairly hold that the boy's taste for battles, coupled with his love of picturesque description, foreshadowed, even in these early years, the qualities which were to bring him lasting fame.

All these boyish amusements, however, came to an end when, in August, 1811, Prescott presented himself as a candidate for admission to Harvard. Harvard was then under the presidency of the Rev. Dr. John Thornton Kirkland, who had been installed in office the year before Prescott entered college. President Kirkland was the first of Harvard's really eminent presidents.[3] Under his rule there definitely began that slow but steady evolution, which was, in the end, to transform the small provincial college into a great and splendid university. Kirkland was an earlier Eliot, and some of his views seemed as radical to his colleagues as did those of Eliot in 1869. Lowell has said of him, somewhat unjustly: "He was a man of genius, but of genius that evaded utilisation." It is fairer to suppose that, if he did not accomplish all that he desired and attempted, this was because the time was not yet ripe for radical innovations. He did secure large benefactions to the University, the creation of new professorships on endowed foundations, and the establishment of three professional schools. President Kirkland, in reality, stood between the old order and the new, with his face set toward the future, but retaining still some of the best traditions of the small college of the past. It is told of him that he knew every student by name, and took a very genuine interest in all of them, helping them in many quiet, tactful ways, so that more than one distinguished man in later life declared that, but for the thoughtful and unsolicited kindness of Dr. Kirkland, he would have been forced to abandon his college life in debt and in despair. Kirkland was a man of striking personal presence, and could assume a bearing of such impressive dignity as to verge on the majestic, as when he officially received Lafayette in front of University Hall and presented the assembled students to the nation's guest. The faculty over which he presided contained at that time no teacher of enduring reputation,[4] so that whatever personal influence was exerted upon Prescott by his instructors must have come chiefly from such intercourse as he had with Dr. Kirkland.

It is of interest to note just how much of an ordeal an entrance examination at Harvard was at the time when Prescott came up as a candidate for admission. The subjects were very few in number, and would appear far from formidable to a modern Freshman. Dalzel's Collectanea Grœa Minora, the Greek Testament, Vergil, Sallust, and several selected orations of Cicero represented, with the Greek and Latin grammars, the classical requirements which constituted, indeed, almost the entire test, since the only other subjects were arithmetic, "so for as the rule of three," and a general knowledge of geography. The curriculum of the College, while Prescott was a member of it, was meagre enough when compared with what is offered at the present time. The classical languages occupied most of the students' attention. Sallust, Livy, Horace, and one of Cicero's rhetorical treatises made up the principal work in Latin. Xenophon's Anabasis, Homer, and some desultory selections from other authors were supposed to give a sufficient knowledge of Greek literature. The Freshmen completed the study of arithmetic, and the Sophomores did something in algebra and geometry. Other subjects of study were rhetoric, declamation, a modicum of history, and also logic, metaphysics, and ethics. The ecclesiastical hold upon the College was seen in the inclusion of a lecture course on "some topic of positive or controversial divinity," in an examination on Doddridge's Lectures, in the reading of the Greek Testament, and in a two years' course in Hebrew for Sophomores and Freshmen. Indeed, Hebrew was regarded as so important that a "Hebrew part" was included in every commencement programme until 1817—three years after Prescott's graduation. In place of this language, however, while Prescott was in college, students might substitute a course in French given by a tutor; for as yet no regular chair of modern languages had been founded in the University. The natural sciences received practically no attention, although, in 1805, a chair of natural history had been endowed by subscription. An old graduate of Harvard has recorded the fact that chemistry in those days was regarded very much as we now look upon alchemy; and that, on its practical side, it was held to be simply an adjunct to the apothecary's profession. A few years later, and the Harvard faculty contained such eminent men as Josiah Quincy, Judge Joseph Story, Benjamin Peirce, the mathematician, George Ticknor, and Edward Everett, and the opportunities for serious study were broadened out immensely. But while Prescott was an undergraduate, the curriculum had less variety and range than that of any well-equipped high school of the present day.

A letter written by Prescott on August 23d, the day after he had passed through the ordeal of examination, is particularly interesting. It gives, in the first place, a notion of the quaint simplicity which then characterised the academic procedure of the oldest of American universities; and it also brings us into rather intimate touch with Prescott himself as a youth of fifteen. At that time a great deal of the eighteenth-century formality survived in the intercourse between fathers and their sons; and especially in the letters which passed between them was there usually to be found a degree of stiffness and restraint both in feeling and expression. Yet this letter of Prescott's might have been written yesterday by an American youth of the present time, so easy and assured is it, and indeed, for the most part, so mature. It might have been written also to one of his own age, and there is something deliciously naïve in its revelation of Prescott's approbativeness. The boy evidently thought very well of himself, and was not at all averse to fishing for a casual compliment from others. The letter is given in full by Ticknor, but what is here quoted contains all that is important:—