Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/294

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OPINION OF A BROTHER.


Yet now, while sullen sounds the wintry wind,
    I sadly mourn thee, on this Gallic shore,
Ordained amid mine own loved land to find
    One friend the less, and one cold tomb-stone more;
But thou, for whom such bitter tears are shed,
Thy glowing strains shall live, when Friendship's self is dead.




His brother, for many years a resident in Europe, remarks to a member of the family: "His compositions, in prose and verse, are before the American people, to whom it pertains to stamp his reputation as an author, and to assign his rank in the rising literature of our country. Competent judges have already pronounced, that it has never produced a writer of more refined and cultivated taste, or more graceful and polished style. To his relatives and intimate friends, who alone could fully appreciate his virtues, it belongs to do justice to his moral worth, by declaring that few persons acted under a deeper and more habitual sense of duty, or labored more faithfully for their own improvement; one great part of the allotted task of man."

An author well qualified to know and to express what fraternal love thus left unsaid, the Rev. William I. Kip, has permitted us to use the following just tribute.

"Of the loss of Mr. Hillhouse, as a man, none can fitly speak but those who, like the writer of this brief sketch, knew him well and loved him much. It