Arts and Letters

Mr. Rives’s volumes entitled The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848, constitute a history of events leading up to the war of 1848. Its publication revealed the author as a foremost American historian, and gave him a chair in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. To those unacquainted with his career the event was perhaps startling, but to his nearer circle and the more observant critics it was a foregone conclusion. His long, full, active life had been a preparation for exactly such a culmination. His was the well-known Virginia family which gave to the public service senator and diplomat, with a great engineer and authors of renown. He, however, descended on his mother's side from famous New York Colony stock, was born in New York City in 1849, and died there in 1917. Educated at Columbia, and in Cambridge, England, he was eminent both in scholarship and sport. His vocation was the law; being rather more devoted to jurisprudence than to practice at the bar, it was as a legal adviser and administrator that he early became a foremost citizen of the metropolis. He was Assistant Secretary of State to Mr. Bayard under Cleveland, president of the commission to revise the New York charter, Corporation Counsel, and a member of the Rapid Transit Commission. He was a director of four great financial corporations and president of the New York Hospital. But above all he was president of the Public Library and of the Trustees of his Alma Mater. From three leading universities he received the highest academic degree. He was the author of many papers and monographs, and of several volumes, local in interest, as well as of the more national work mentioned above. This recapitulation, together with the fact that in some circles he was virtually a social dictator by reason of his varied gifts, his recognized station, and his judicious pronouncements, are sufficient to explain his presence in our company, for membership in the Academy should indicate not only great achievement but personal qualities equally eminent.

His personality was very marked and in our day quite exceptional. Imposing in looks and figure he possessed in high degree the two un-American traits of reticence and tranquillity. Saevis tranquillus in undis might have been his motto. Indeed he was a man of the William of Nassau type, aware of his opportunities, silent when candor did not forbid. Sternly self-respecting, he took the responsibilities of his own opinions and was entirely fearless in action. In the sense of knowing and keeping company with the best in life and letters he was an aristocrat, his private library was one of the most select known to the present writer. Yet he was essentially democratic in the power of putting himself in every man's place and securing every man's point of view.

This was the secret of his enormous influence. His writing is thoroughly studied, its contents are carefully constructed, and his judgments are eminently fair. Identical qualities were exhibited in his life. The Public Library of New York literally enfolds the masses of the city in its "interpreter's" palace; Columbia University represents in almost exact proportion each single element in the total population of the metropolis. Both became under the Board over which he presided so democratically popular that their numerical enormity renders their vast resources scarcely as adequate as the pence in a palmer's scrip. But like tire pilgrim they take little thought for the distant scene and march on in the present. For such a policy Mr. Rives felt and assumed his full share of obligation and was always at the post of duty.

While in a sense history was his avocation, yet in his devotion to "door-step" activities he was the outstanding example that service in the larger sphere is valuable in almost exact proportion to its perfection in its immediate surroundings.