...lth, leisure for the pursuits of scholarship, a sense of intimate concern with the great issues of the past, and a diffusion of intellectual tastes throughout the community. It was no accident that Sparks and Ticknor, Bancroft and Prescott, Motley and Parkman, were Massachusetts men. Jared Sparks, it is true, inherited neither wealth nor leisure. He was a furious, unwearied toiler in the field o...