Obituary.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, M. D., LL.D., Litt. D., D. C. L., Professor of Anatomy Emeritus, died yesterday at his home, 296 Beacon street, Boston. About ten days ago he came to the city in poor health, and last Friday he was taken seriously ill. He was suffering from asthma, but the physician in attendance left him yesterday morning, thinking he was in no danger. His death, hastened by heart failure, occurred suddenly at about noon.

Dr. Holmes was born in Cambridge on the twenty-ninth of August, 1809, and lived in the old house which formerly occupied the site of the present Gymnasium. He prepared for college at Phillips Andover Academy and entered Harvard in 1825. At his graduation he delivered the commencement poem, and was one of the sixteen members chosen into the Phi Beta Kappa.

After giving up the profession of law, on which he had started, in 1833 he began a course of medical studies. This he continued abroad with great devotion for three years, mostly in Paris. In 1839 he received the appointment of professor of anatomy at Dartmouth, and in 1847 he succeeded Dr. J. C. Warren as professor of anatomy and physiology in the Harvard Medical School. Here he worked hard and faithfully and won much distinction as a physician. At the time of his death he was senior member by appointment of the Harvard Faculty.

Dr. Holmes's deservedly great reputation in his profession was equalled and even exceeded by his fame as a writer of both prose and verse. While in college, he contributed largely to the Register, one of the forerunners of the Advocate. His first brilliant piece was the poem he delivered at the Phi Beta Kappa dinner after his return from Paris. The Atlantic Monthly first brought his name prominently before the public as the author of the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," which was received with great favor. Since then his success has been uninterrupted.

The most significant fact in regard to Dr. Holmes's death is that it ends an important epoch in the history of American literature. Dr. Holmes was the last of the remarkable group who have represented the best that there is in the prose and poetry of New England, and whose works will have a lasting value, - Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Whittier and Holmes. To these writers there is now no worthy successor. With the death of Dr. Holmes the period of New England's literary preeminence comes to a close.