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��nYTRODUCTION

��In a little pocket diary started just before sailing for the Azores, these words were jotted down by my mother on March 21, 1865 : "Spent the day with the Randalls — en- joyed it. J. says he never will attach himself to any young life again as he did to dear Stanley."

This resolve held to the end. Stanley had no successor in John Randall's heart. The shock of his death at Get- tysburg (the story of which is told in the "Harvard Memorial Biographies " ) in no way weakened Randall's earlier friendships, but did prevent the formation of new ones of equal strength. Intensity and tenacity, whether of thought or purpose or affection, were the sovereign traits of his character ; and, when they encountered the inevitable, the result was a volcanic eruption which wrought a desola- tion like that of the " Mysterio," the lava beds at Fayal, where no green thing has grown in two hundred years. How few there are who can comprehend such a nature as this aright ! It is the fate of such to be misunderstood to the end, because so few human souls are capable of a great love or a great grief.

In reality, this second great bereavement of Randall's life goes far to explain what was to me its most puzzling phenomenon — the apparent diversion of a most serious, lofty, and unworldly spirit to the accumulation of worldly wealth. By his own ability and indomitable energy, he multiplied the comfortable family inheritance into a great fortune, ten times as large as he found it. From the period of the civil war, he almost wholly ceased to increase his invaluable art collections or to take much interest in the writing of poetry. In the summers I found him plunged in extensive and expensive alterations in the house at Stow, which he himself regretted in his last years — "but it was an amusement," he added, "even if it did cost

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