He was the most
assiduous visitor that I ever conducted through the University
buildings, intelligently interested in a great variety of objects and
ideas. Late in the afternoon he suddenly said, with a fresh eagerness:
"Now I will visit the tomb of Channing." We drove to Mount Auburn, and
found the monument erected by the Federal Street Church. The Emperor
copied with his own hand George Ticknor's inscriptions on the stone, and
made me verify his copies. Then, with his great weight and height, he
leaped into the air, and snatched a leaf from the maple which overhung
the tomb. "I am going to put that leaf," he said, "into my best edition
of Channing. I have read all his published works,--some of them many
times over. He was a very great man." The Emperor of Brazil was a Roman
Catholic.
Channing's philanthropy was a legitimate outcome of his view of
religion. For him practical religion was character-building by the
individual human being. But character-building in any large group or
mass of human beings means social reform; therefore Channing was a
preacher and active promoter of social regeneration in this world. He
depicted the hideous evils and wrongs of intemperance, slavery, and war.
He advocated and supported every well-directed effort to improve public
education, the administration of charity, and the treatment of
criminals, and to lift up the laboring classes. He denounced the bitter
sectarian and partisan spirit of his day.
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