His father, if possessed of less vigor than his predecessors, was yet a man of culture and ability. The traditions of his family forced him into a profession for which he was intellectually but not temperamentally fitted: he should have been a scholar, teacher, and author instead he became a lawyer.īorn in Cambridge, Mass., August 1, 1815, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., came of a line of Colonial ancestors whose legal understanding and patriotic zeal had won them distinction. The story of his life is one of honest and competent effort, of sincere purpose, of many thwarted hopes. His happiest associations were literary, his pleasantest acquaintanceships those which arose through his fame as the author of one book. His services in other than literary fields occupied the greater part of his life, but they brought him comparatively small recognition and many disappointments. yet the narrative in which he details the experiences of that period is, perhaps, his chief claim to a wide remembrance. Two years before the mast were but an episode in the life of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Crowded in the rank and narrow ship,– Housed on the wild sea with wild usages,– Whate’er in the inland dales the land conceals Of fair and exquisite, O! nothing, nothing, Do we behold of that in our rude voyage. This etext was prepared by Robert E Brewer, San Diego, CA.Īssistant Professor of Art in Dartmouth College
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