PROFESSOR SOPHOCLES.

Harvard College loses a picturesque figure by the death of Professor Sophocles, who, in personal appearance and habits, was a veritable type of the antique. Gray and hirsute, his dark complexion and piercing eyes gave him a weird aspect, and he passed his days and nights in one corner of a college dormitory in lone communion with the spiders which he was wont to feed and cherish, and the tomes in which the lore of old Hellas was entombed, many of whose graces and beauties were visible to no eye within the academic shades as they were to his. Reserved and uncommunicative as a recluse, he had a few chosen friends with whom he loved to talk of his favorite studies. About the college grounds he moved shyly, as if trying to avoid recognition or the necessity of recognizing others. In the class-room he was somewhat grim, and chary of the lore at his command. He was rather an instructor of scholars than of students, and his vast erudition showed itself in his grammars and lexicons more than in the conduct of recitations, which with him was rather formal and unfruitful, though his occasional lectures were rich with suggestions for those who could profit by them. His early life, before he came to this country to be-come in an almost accidental way a teacher of the teachers in Greek learning, was shrouded in a mystery, real or apparent, which he always refused to dispel. Born near Mount Pelion and educated in the Mount Sinai Monastery, he, for some unexplained reason, came to this country when a young man, and after a period of study drifted into teaching, and became finally one of the most distinguished members of the Harvard faculty. [Times.