From the collection of the George Peabody Library
Collection number: 863.32 D6 1617
In 1843, four years before his first visit to Spain, Wallis acquired a rare edition of Cervantes' masterpiece printed in Belgium in 1616-1617 which he presented to the Peabody Library on January 17th, 1877.
Mr. Wallis was a friend of The Johns Hopkins University from its founding in 1876. He delivered a speech in celebration of the university's seventh anniversary on February 22, 1883 and spoke on what is still a timely topic, "The Johns Hopkins University in its Relations to Baltimore," emphasizing the special "reason for rejoicing in the standards and methods which this university will establish and maintain among us, and in all our institutions of learning, by the authority of its example and position, and by the sheer and downright force of its intellectual preponderance."
Both the city of Baltimore and The Johns Hopkins University would later
celebrate the
"authority" of Mr. Wallis' own "example": At his
death on April 11, 1894,
he bequeathed several of his rare Spanish books to the university library,
many of which are still consulted by students and faculty in the Milton S.
Eisenhower Library at Homewood and in the Peabody
Library. Baltimore, for
its part, honored his exemplary citizenship by erecting a statue which
still stands at the east end of Mount Vernon Place.
