The Education of Charles Callahan Perkins

""You know, I suppose, the Charles Perkinses - with whom I lately spent an evening. Mrs. P. is spicy and Mr. P. - sugary, shall I say? - No, full of sweetness and light - especially sweetness. He is repeating before the Lowell Institute a course of lectures on Ancient Art, which he gave last winter to the University, Careful and sound, but without the divine afflatus."" - Henry James ""Mr. Charles C Perkins was one of those citizens who exerted, by his excellence of character and the ideal standard he imposed upon himself, an ennobling influence on whomsoever came across his path.... A man of ripened culture, familiar with the art centres of the Old World as with the streets of his native Boston, a skilled musician who had studied with the masters and heard all the greatest singers and instrumentalists of his day, it would have been but natural had he looked at the musical situation of Boston in 1851 with a disheartenment which should have caused him to turn from the vista of endless drudgery and fruitless labor. He had brought home from Europe a purpose and hopefulness and discerned the wants and capabilities of his native city and country.... It is to the lesson of Mr. Perkins's life that we wish to point. He had wealth and yet no more sought mere idle luxury than he did money. He chose the better part - labored early and late in directions where his taste reinforced his industry and gave the fruit of his research liberally to those who longed for knowledge and yet had not the wherewithal to enter its schools. Such lives are not frequently led by rich American scholars. Would that more men of wealth and cultivated tastes regarded themselves as did Mr. Perkins - as holding their culture as a public trust, with consequent responsibility to teach among the people"". - The Boston Evening Transcript ""As a critic of art and a writer upon art subjects Charles Callahan Perkins gained something more than a national reputation, .. Few men were better fitted to discuss artistic questions than he. His broad culture, his technical training, his wide study, his enthusiasm, and above all his eminently refined and exquisite taste, combined to make him 'facile princeps' among American connoisseurs."" - The New York Times