James Russell Lowell and His Friends by Edward Everett Hale

Mr. Lowell's real connection with the daily work of the college ceased in 1876, when he accepted the offer of the mission to Spain. It covered the period when he wrote most, and when, as his cousin has said so well, in the passage I have cited, his work in prose and poetry proved to be most satisfactory to himself. His duty afterwards as a diplomatist, in Spain and in England, was of value to the country and of credit to himself. And his life as a man of letters had prepared him for such work. But, all the same, it is as a man of letters that he will be most generally remembered.

During the twenty-one years from 1855 to 1876 the college was going through the change which has made it the university which it is. It had not only enlarged in the number of pupils, but the purposes and range of all persons connected with it widened with every year. This change from the "seminary," as President Quincy used to call it, to the university of to-day has not been wrought by any spasmodic revolution planned by either of the governing bodies at any given time. It has come about, healthy and strong, in the growth of the country-let us even say in the improvement of the world.