The History of Dartmouth College Part 19

"A robust mental strength requires various and solid food. The best growth is symmetrical. There is a common bond--_quoddam commune vinculum_--in the circle of knowledge, that cannot be overlooked. Men do not know best what they know only in its isolation. Even Kant offset his metaphysics by lecturing on geography; and Niebuhr, the historian, struggled hard and well to keep his equilibrium by throwing himself into the whole circle of natural science and of affairs. Such, also, are the interdependencies of scholarship, that ample knowledge without our specialty is needful to save us from blunders within.

Olshausen was a brilliant commentator, and the slightest tinge of chemistry should have kept him from suggesting that the conversion of water into wine at Cana was but the acceleration of a natural process.

A smattering of optics would have prevented Dr. Williams from repeating the old cavil of Voltaire, that light could not have been made before the sun. A moderate reflection upon the laws of speech and the method of Genesis would have restrained Huxley from sneering at the 'marvelous flexibility' of the Hebrew tongue in the word 'day,'

and a New York audience from laughing at the joke rather than the joker. Some tinge of ethical knowledge should have withheld Max Muller from finding the grand distinctive mark of humanity in the power of speech. The merest theorist needs some range of reality for the framework of his theories, and the man of broad principles must have facts to generalize. Indeed, a good memory is the indispensable servant of large thought, and however deficient in certain directions, the great thinkers have had large stores. 'The best heads that have ever existed,' says an idealist,--'Pericles, Plato, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton,--were well read, universally educated men, and quite too wise to undervalue letters. Their opinion has weight, because they had the means of knowing the opposite opinion.'

"While every year increases the impossibility of what used to be called universal knowledge, it also emphasizes the necessity of a scholarship that has its outlook toward all the vast provinces of reading and thought. It cannot conquer them, but it can be on treaty relations with them. The tendency of modern science is, of necessity, steadily toward sectional lines and division of labor. It is a tendency whose cramping influence is as steadily to be resisted, even in later life, much more in early training. We are to form ourselves on the model of the integer rather than the fraction of humanity. The metaphysician cannot afford to be ignorant of the 'chemistry of a candle' or the 'history of a piece of chalk,' nor the chemist of the laws of language, the theologian of astronomy and geology, nor the lawyer of the most ancient code and its history. Mill himself made complaint of Comte's 'great aberration' in ignoring psychology and logic.

"Intellectual fetichism is born of isolation, and dies hard. While in the great modern uprising we may boast that the heathen idols have been swept away from three hundred dark islands of Polynesia, new 'idols of the cave' stalk forth upon the world of civilized thought.

We are just now much bewildered with brightness in streaks, which falls on us like the sunlight from a boy's bit of gla.s.s, and blinds our eyes instead of showing our path. Half-educated persons seize fragments of principles and s.n.a.t.c.h at half-truths. Crotchets infest the brains, and hobbies career through the fields of thought.

Polyphemus is after us, a burly wretch with one eye. Better if _that_ were out.

"The remedy is, to correct our narrowness by a clear view of the wide expanse. We must come out of our cave. We must link our pursuits to those of humanity. Breadth and robustness given to the mental const.i.tution in its early training shall go far through life to save us from partial paralysis or monstrosity.

"To insure this result, however, we must add to that fullness of material the quality of mental equipoise or mastery, the power of grasping and managing it all. A man is to possess, and not to be 'possessed with,' his acquisitions. He wants an intellect decisive, incisive, and, if I might coin a word, concisive.

"The power to unify and organize must go with all right acquisition.

Knowledges must be changed to knowledge. It takes force to handle weight. Some men seem to know more than is healthy for them. It does not make muscle, but becomes plethoric, dropsical, adipose, or adipocere. Better to have thought more and acquired less. Frederick W.

Robertson, in his prime, wrote,--'I will answer for it that there are few girls of eighteen who have not read more books than I have;' and Mrs. Browning confessed,--'I should be wiser if I had not read half as much;' while old Hobbes, of Malmesbury, caustically remarked,--'If I had read as much as other men I should know as little.' It may serve as a hint to the omnivorous college student. Cardinal Mezzofanti knew, it is said, more than a hundred languages. What came of it all? A eulogy on one Emanuele da Ponte. He never said anything in all the languages he spoke! What const.i.tutes the life of an intellectual jelly-fish? Even the brilliancy of Macaulay was almost overweighted by the immensity of his acquisitions. The vivid glitter of details in his memory may sometimes have dazzled his perception of a _tout ensemble_, and for principles it was his manner to cite precedents. A mult.i.tude of lesser lights have been almost smothered by superabundance of fuel.

A man knows Milton almost by heart, and Shakespeare too, can quote pages of Homer, has read Chrysostom for his recreation, is full of history, runs over with statistics right and left, and withal is strong in mother-wit. But the mother-wit proves not strong enough, perhaps, to push forth and show itself over the ponderous debris above it, the enormousness, or, if you please, the enormity of his knowledge.

"It requires a first-cla.s.s mind to carry a vast load of scientific facts. Hence the many eminent observers who have been the most illogical of reasoners. What a contrast between Hugh Miller and his friend Francia; the mind of the latter, as Miller describes it, 'a labyrinth without a clew, in whose recesses was a vast amount of book-knowledge that never could be used, and was of no use to himself or any one else;' the former wielding all his stores as he swung his sledge. What is wanted is the comprehensive hand, and not the prehensile tail.

"Involved in such an equipoise is the decisiveness, the willforce, that not only holds, but holds the balance. Common as it may be, it is none the less pitiable to be just acute enough constantly to question, but not to answer--forever to raise difficulties, and never to solve them. Wakeful, but the wakefulness of weakliness. Fine-strung minds are they often, acquisitive, subtle, and sensitive, able to look all around their labyrinth and see far into darkness, but not out to the light. It is by nature rather a German than an Anglo-Saxon habit. It is not always fatal even there. De Wette, 'the veteran doubter,'

rallied at the last, and, like Bunyan's Feeble-mind, went over almost shouting. In this country, youth often have it somewhat later than the measles and the small-pox, and come through very well, without even a pock-mark. Sometimes it becomes epidemic, and a.s.sumes a languid or typhoidal cast,--not Positivism, but Agnosticism. It is rather fashionable to eulogize perplexity and doubt as a mark of strength and genius. But whatever may be the pa.s.sing fashion, the collective judgment of the ages has settled it that the permanent state of mental hesitancy and indecision, in whatever sphere of thought and action, is and must be a false condition. It indicates the scrofulous diathesis, and calls for more iron in the blood. It is a lower type of manhood.

It abdicates the province of a human intelligence, which is to seek and find truth. It abrogates the moral obligation to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good. It revolts from the great problem of life, which calls on us to know, and to know that we may do. Out upon this apotheosis of doubt. It is the sick man glorying in his infirmity, the beggar boasting of his intellectual rags.

"The comprehensive and decisive tend naturally to the incisive. The power to take a subject by its handle and poise it on its centre is perhaps the consummation of merely intellectual culture. When all its nutriment has been converted into bone and muscle and sinew and nerve, then the mind bounds to its work, lithe and strong, like a hunting leopard on its game. It was exactly the power with which our Webster handled his case, till it seemed to the farmer too simple to require a great man to argue. It was the quality that Lincoln so toiled at through his early manhood, and so admirably gained,--the power of presenting things clearly to 'plain people.' You may call it 'the art of putting things,' but it is the art of conceiving things. It is no trick of style, but a character of thinking, and it marks the harvest-time of a manly culture.

"I will add to this enumeration one other quality, one without which this harvest will not ripen. I speak of mental docility and reverence.

A man will have looked forth to little purpose on the universe if he does not see that, even with his expanding circle of light, there is an ever-enlarging circle of darkness around it. He will have compared his achievements with those of the race to little profit, if he does not recognize his relative insignificance, gathering sands on the ocean sh.o.r.e.

"The wide range and rapid outburst of modern learning tend undoubtedly to arrogance and conceit. We gleefully traverse our new strip of domain, and ask, Were there ever such beings as we? Yes, doubtless there were,--clearer, greater, and n.o.bler. Wisdom, skill, and strength were not born with us. All the qualities of manly thought, though with ruder implements and cruder materials, have been as conspicuously exhibited down through the ages past as in our day. The power of governing, ability in war, diplomacy in peace, subtle dialectics, clear insight, the art of conversation, persuasive and impressive speech, high art in every form, whatever const.i.tutes the test of good manhood, has been here in full force. It would puzzle us yet to lay the stones of Baalbec, or to carve, move, and set up the great statue of Rameses. Within a generation, Euclid of Alexandria was teaching geometry in Dartmouth College, and Heraclides and Aristarchus antic.i.p.ated Copernicus by sixteen centuries. No man has surpa.s.sed the sculptures of Rhodes, or the paintings of the sixteenth century. The cathedral of Cologne is the offspring of forgotten brains. Such men as Anselm were educated on the Trivium and Quadrivium. Five hundred years ago Merton College could show such men as Geoffrey Chaucer, William of Occam, and John Wickliffe. If the history of science can produce four brighter contemporary names than Napier, Kepler, Descartes, and Galileo, let them be forthcoming. But when, still earlier by a century and a half, we behold a man who was not only architect, engineer, and sculptor, and in painting the rival of Angelo, but who, as Hallam proves, 'antic.i.p.ated in the compa.s.s of a few pages the discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Maestlin, Maurolycus, and Castelli immortal,' it may well 'strike us,' he suggests 'with something like the awe of supernatural knowledge;' and in the presence of Leonardo da Vinci the modern scientist of highest rank may stand with uncovered head.

"If wisdom was not born with us, neither will it die with us. There will be something left to know. Our facts will be tested, our theories probed, and our a.s.sertions exploded by better minds than ours. If it be true, as Bacon says, '_prudens interrogatio dimidium scientiae_,' it is also true, '_imprudens a.s.sertio excidium scientiae_.' We are in these days treated to 'demonstrations' which scarcely rise to the level of presumptions, but, rather, of presumption. There is an acc.u.mulation of popular dogmatism that is very likely doomed within a century to be swept into the same oblivion with the 'Christian Astrology,' of William Lilly and the 'Ars Magna' of Raymond Lully--a ma.s.s of rubbish that is waiting for another Caliph Omar and the bath-fires of Alexandria.

"It will not answer to mistake the despotism of hypothesis for the reign of law, nor physical law for the great 'I AM.' True thinkers must respect other thinkers and G.o.d. They cannot ignore the primal utterances of consciousness, the laws of logic, nor the truths of history. Foregone conclusions are not to bar out the deepest facts of human nature, nor the most stupendous events in the story of the race.

Hume may not rule out the settled laws of evidence the moment they touch the borders of religion; nor may Strauss, by the simple a.s.sertion that miracles are impossible, manacle the arm of G.o.d. Comte may not put his extinguisher upon the great underlying verities of our being, nor Tyndall jump the iron track of his own principles to smuggle into matter a 'potency and promise' of all 'life.' Huxley cannot play fast and loose with human volition, nor juggle the trustiness of memory into a state of consciousness, to save his system; nor may Haeckel lead us at his own sweet creative will through fourteen stages of vertebrate and eight of invertebrate life up to the great imaginary 'monera,' the father and mother of us all. It will be time to believe a million things in a lump when one of them is fully proved in detail. We have no disposition, even with so eminent an authority as St. George Mivart, to denominate Natural Selection 'a puerile hypothesis.' We will promise to pay our respects to our 'early progenitor' of 'arboreal habits' and 'ears pointed and capable of movement,' when he is honestly identified by his ear-marks, and even to worship the original fire-mist when that is properly shown to be our only Creator, Preserver, and Bountiful Benefactor.

"Meantime, as a late king of Naples was said to have erected the negation of G.o.d into a system of government, not a few eager investigators seem to have a.s.sumed it as a basis of science. And so we reach out by worship 'mostly of the silent sort' toward the unknown and unknowable, the 'reservoir of organic force, the single source of power,' ourselves 'conscious automatons' in whom 'mind is the product of the brain,' thought, emotion, and will are but 'the expression of molecular changes,' to whom all speculations in divinity are a 'disregard of the proper economy of time,' and to whom, also, as one of them has declared, 'earth is Paradise,' and all beyond is blank.

But it was Mephistopheles who said,--

"'The little G.o.d of this world sticks to the same old way, And is as whimsical as on creation's day; Life somewhat better might content him, But for the gleam of heavenly light which thou hast lent him.

He calls it Reason--thence his power's increased To be far beastlier than any beast.

Saving thy gracious presence, he to me A long-legged gra.s.shopper seems to be, That springing flies and flying springs, And in the gra.s.s the same old ditty sings.

Would he still lay among the gra.s.s he grows in.'

"But even the man of theories might grant that the scheme of one great, governing, guiding, loving, and holy G.o.d is a theory that works wonders in practice for those that heartily receive it, and is a conception of magnificence beside which even a Nebular Hypothesis with all its grandeur grows small. And the man of facts may as well recognize what Napoleon saw on St. Helena,--the one grand fact of the living power of Jesus Christ in history, and to-day; a force that is mightier than all other forces; a force that all other forces have in vain endeavored to destroy, or counteract, or arrest; a force that has pushed its way against wit and learning and wealth and power, and the stake and the rack and the sword and the cannon, till it has shaped the master forces of the world, inspired its art, formed its social life, subsidized, its great powers, and wields to-day the heavy battalions; a force that this hour beats in millions of hearts, all over this globe, with a living warmth beside which the love of science and art is cold and clammy. Surely it would be not much to ask for the docility to recognize such patent facts as these. And I must believe that any mind is fundamentally unhinged that despises the profoundest convictions of the n.o.blest hearts, or speaks lightly of the mighty influence that has moulded human events and has upheaved the world. It has, in its arrogance, cut adrift and swung off from the two grand foci of all truth, the human and the divine.

"Of the several qualities,--the wakefulness, precision, fullness, equipoise, and docility--that form, in other words, the motion, edge, weight, balance, and direction of the forged and tempered intellect,--I might give many instances. Such men as Thomas Arnold and Mr. Gladstone instantly rise to the thoughts,--the one by his truth-seeking and truth-finding spirit moulding a generation of English scholars, the other carrying by the sheer force of his clear-cut intellect and magnanimous soul the sympathies of a great nation and the admiration of Christendom. But let me rather single out one name from the land of specialties and limitations,--Barthold George Niebuhr, the statesman and historian. Not perfect, indeed, but admirable. See him begin in his early youth by saying,--'I do not ask myself whether I can do a thing; I command myself to do it.' Read the singular sketch of his intellectual gymnastics at twenty-one, spurring himself to 'inward deep voluntary thought,' 'guarding against society and dissipation,' devoting an hour each day to clearing up his thoughts on given subjects, and two hours to the round of physical sciences; exacting of himself 'an extensive knowledge of the facts'

of science and history; holding himself alike accountable for minute 'description,' 'accurate definitions,' 'general laws,' 'deep reflection,' and 'distinct consciousness of the rules of my moral being,' together with what he calls the holy resolve--'more and more to purify my soul, so that it may be ready at all times to return to the eternal source.' How intensely he toiled to counteract a certain conscious German one-sidedness of mind, visiting England to study all the varied phenomena of its robust life, and yet writing home from London, at twenty-two,--'I positively shrink from a.s.sociating with the young men on account of their unbounded dissoluteness.' His memory, not inferior to that of Macaulay or Scaliger, he made strictly the servant of his thinking. Amid all the speculative tendencies of Germany, he became a man of facts and affairs. Overflowing with details, he probed the facts of history to the quick, and felt for its heart. Fertile in theory, he preserved the truth of science so pure as 'in the sight of G.o.d,' not 'to write the very smallest thing as certain, of which he was not fully convinced,' nor to overstrain the weight of a conjecture, nor even to cite as his own the _verified_ quotation he had gained from another. Practicing on his own maxim to 'open the heart to sincere veneration for all excellence' in human act and thought, not even his profound admiration for the surpa.s.sing genius of Goethe could draw him into sympathy with the heartlessness and colossal egoism of his later career. In the midst of public honors he valued more than all his delightful home and literary life, and his motto was _Tec.u.m habita_. Surrounded by Pyrrhonism, and bent by the nature of his studies toward skeptical habits, how grandly he recovered himself in his maturity, and said,--'I do not know what to do with a metaphysical G.o.d, and I will have none but the G.o.d of the Bible, who is heart to heart with us.' 'My son shall believe in the letter of the Old and New Testaments, and I shall nurture in him from his infancy a firm faith in all that I have lost or feel uncertain about.' And his last written utterance, signed 'Your Old Niebuhr,'

contains a lament that 'depth, sincerity, originality, heart and affection are disappearing,' and that 'shallowness and arrogance are becoming universal.' After all allowances for whatever of defect, one can well point to such a character as an ill.u.s.trious example of true and manly culture.

"Shall I say that such a culture as I have endeavored to sketch, it is, and will be, the aim of Dartmouth College to stimulate? I cannot, at the close of this discourse, compare in detail its methods with the end in view, and show their fitness. The original and central college is surrounded by its several departments, partly or wholly professional, each having its own specialty and excellence. The central college seeks to give that rounded education commonly called Liberal, and to give it in its very best estate. It will aim to engraft on the stock that is approved by the collective wisdom of the past, all such scions of modern origin as mark a real progress. By variety of themes and methods it would stimulate the mental activity, and by the breadth of its range it would encourage fullness of material, both physical and metaphysical, scientific and historic. It initiates into the chief languages of Europe. By the close, protracted concentration of the mathematics, by the intuitions, careful distinctions, and fundamental investigations of intellectual and ethical science, and by the broad principles of political economy, const.i.tutional and international law, as well as by a round of original discussions on themes of varied character, it aims to induce precision and mastery. And all along this line runs and mingles harmoniously and felicitously that great branch of study for which, though often severely a.s.sailed because unwisely defended or inadequately pursued, the revised and deliberate judgment of the ablest and wisest men can find no fair subst.i.tute,--the study of the cla.s.sic tongues. Grant that it may be, and often is, mechanically or pedantically pursued. Yet, when rightly prosecuted, its benefits are wide, deep, and continuous, more than can be easily set forth--and they range through the whole scale, rising with the gradual expansion of the mind. It comprises subtle distinctions, close a.n.a.lysis, broad generalization, and that balancing of evidence which is the basis of all moral reasoning; it tracks the countless shadings of human thought, and their incarnation in the growths of speech, and seizes, in Comparative Philology, the universal affinities of the race: it pa.s.ses in incessant review the stores of the mother tongue; it furnishes the constant clew to the meaning of the vernacular, a basis for the easy study of modern European languages, and a key to the terminology of science and art; it familiarizes intimately with many of the most remarkable monuments of genius and culture; and it imbues with the history, life, and thought which have prompted, shaped, and permeated all that is notable in the intellectual achievements of two thousand years, and binds together the whole republic of letters. To such a study as this we must do honor. We endeavor to add so much of the esthetic and ethical element throughout as shall give grace and worth. And we crown the whole with some teaching concerning the track of that amazing power that has overmastered all other powers, and stamped its impress on all modern history. The college was given to Christ in its infancy, and the message that comes down through a century to our ears, sounds not so much like the voice of a president as of an high-priest and prophet--the 'burden of Eleazar:' 'It is my purpose, by the grace of G.o.d, to leave nothing undone within my power which is suitable to be done, that this school of the prophets may be, and long continue to be, a pure fountain. And I do, with my whole heart, will this my purpose to my successors in the presidency of the seminary, to the latest posterity; and it is my last will, never to be revoked, and to G.o.d I commit it, and my only hope and confidence for the execution of it is in Him alone who has already done great things for it, and does still own it as his cause.' G.o.d has never yet revoked the 'last will' of Wheelock. The college is as confessedly a Christian college as in the days of her origin; and in the impending conflict she sails up between the batteries of the enemy with her flag nailed to the mast and her captain lashed to the rigging.

"The college stands to-day in its ideal and the intention of its managers, representative of the best possible training for a n.o.ble manhood. And I may venture to say, here and now, that if there be anything known to be yet lacking to the full attainment of that conception, if anything needs to be added to make this, in the fullest sense, the peer of the best college in the land, it will be the endeavor of the Trustees and the Faculty to add that thing.

"Dartmouth College is fortunate in many particulars. Fortunate in its situation, so picturesque and so quiet, fitted for faithful study, and full of healthful influences, physical and moral; fortunate in being the one ancient and honored as well as honoring college of this commonwealth; fortunate in enjoying the full sympathy of the people around and the entire confidence of the Christian community of the land; fortunate in the great cla.s.s of young men who seek her instruction, with their mature characters, simple habits, manly aims, and resolute purposes; fortunate in a laborious Faculty, whose well-earned fame from time to time brings honorable and urgent calls to carry their light to other and wealthier seats of learning; fortunate in her magnificent roll of alumni, unsurpa.s.sed in its average of good manhood and excellent work, and bright with names of transcendent l.u.s.tre. The genius of the place bespeaks our reverence and awe. For to the mind's eye this sequestered spot is peopled to overflowing with youthful forms that went forth to all the lands of the earth to do valiantly in the battle of life. Across this quiet green there comes moving again invisibly a majestic procession of the faithful and the strong, laden with labors and with honors. In these seats there can almost be seen to sit once more a h.o.a.ry and venerable array of the great and good whose names are recorded on earth and whose home is in heaven. And over us there seems to hover to-day a great cloud of witnesses--spirits of the just made perfect. It is good to be here. I only pray that the new arm may not prove too weak to bear the banner in this great procession of the ages."

CHAPTER XX.

PROF. JOHN SMITH.--PROF. SYLVa.n.u.s RIPLEY.--PROF. BEZALEEL WOODWARD.

Having completed our survey of the work of the successive presidents, the deceased professors now claim our attention.

The following sketch of the life and labors of Prof. John Smith, is, in substance, from "Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit."

"John Smith, son of Joseph and Elisabeth (Palmer) Smith, was born at Newbury, (Byfield parish,) Ma.s.s., December 21, 1752. His mother was a descendant of the Sawyer family, which came from England to this country in 1643, and settled in Rowley, where she was born. The son was fitted for college at Dummer Academy, under the instruction of the well known 'Master Moody.' He early discovered an uncommon taste for the study of the languages, insomuch that his instructor predicted, while he was yet in his preparatory coa.r.s.e, that he would attain to eminence in that department.

"He entered the Junior cla.s.s in Dartmouth College, in 1771, at the time of the first Commencement in that inst.i.tution. He went to Hanover in company with his preceptor and Governor Wentworth, and so new and unsettled was a portion of the country through which they pa.s.sed, that they were obliged to encamp one night in the woods. Their arrival at Hanover excited great interest, and was celebrated by the roasting of an ox whole, at the Governor's expense, on a small cleared spot, near where the college now stands.

"He was admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1773; and immediately after, was appointed preceptor of Moor's school at Hanover. This appointment he accepted; and, while discharging his duty as a teacher, was also engaged in the study of Theology under the direction of President Wheelock. In 1774 he was appointed tutor in the college, and continued in the office until 1778. About this time he received an invitation to settle in the ministry in West Hartford Conn., and, in the course of the same year, was elected professor of Languages in the college where he had been educated. His strong predilection for cla.s.sical studies led him to accept the latter appointment; and until 1787 he joined to the duties of a professor those of a tutor, receiving for all his services one hundred pounds, lawful money, annually. His professorship he retained till the close of his life. He was college librarian for thirty years,--from 1779 to 1809. For two years he delivered lectures on Systematic Theology, in college, in connection with the public prayers on Sat.u.r.day evening. He was a Trustee of the college from 1788 to the time of his death. He also officiated for many years as stated preacher in the village of Hanover. In 1803, the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by Brown University.

"Dr. Smith's abundant and unceasing labors as a professor, a minister, and an author, proved too much for his const.i.tution, and are supposed to have hastened him out of life. He died in the exercise of a most serene and humble faith, on the 30th of April, 1809, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. His funeral sermon was preached by the Rev. Dr. Burroughs of Hanover.

"Dr. Smith was enthusiastically devoted to the study of languages through life. He prepared a Hebrew Grammar in his Junior year in college, which is dated May 14, 1772; and a revised preparation is dated February 11, 1774. About this time he also prepared a Chaldee Grammar. The original ma.n.u.script of these grammars, as also the greater part of his lectures on Theology, is deposited in the Library of the Northern Academy of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth College. As early as 1779, he prepared a Latin Grammar, which was first published in 1802, and has gone through three editions. In 1803 he published a Hebrew Grammar; in 1804, an edition of "Cicero de Oratore," with notes, and a brief memoir of Cicero, in English; and in 1809, a Greek Grammar, which was issued about the time of his decease. He published also a Sermon at the dedication of the meeting house at Hanover, 1796, and a Sermon at the ordination of T. Eastman, 1801.

"Prof. Roswell Shurtleff, D.D., says of him: 'Dr. Smith was rather above the middling stature, straight, and well proportioned. His head was well formed, though blanched and bald somewhat in advance of his years. His face, too, as to its lineaments, was very regular and comely. His eyes were of a light-blue color, and tolerably clear.

"'As a linguist, he was minutely accurate, and faithful to his pupils, although I used to doubt whether he was familiar with the cla.s.sic writers much beyond the field of his daily instructions. But in his day, philology, like many other sciences, was comparatively in its cradle, especially in this country. His reputation in his profession depended chiefly on the recitations; and there he was perfect to a proverb. The student never thought of appealing from his decision.

"'In his disposition he was very kind and obliging, and remarkably tender of the feelings of his pupils--a civility which was always duly returned.

"'In religious sentiment, he was unexceptionably orthodox, though fearful of Hopkinsianism, which made some noise in the country at that period. His voice was full and clear, and his articulation very distinct. His sermons were written out with great accuracy, but were perhaps deficient in pungency of application. On the whole, he could hardly be considered a popular preacher.

"'Professor Smith was a man of uncommon industry. This must be apparent from what he accomplished. Besides his two recitations daily, he supplied the college and village with preaching for about twenty years, and exchanged pulpits but very seldom; and, in the mean time, was almost constantly engaged in some literary enterprise. I well remember a conversation with the late President Brown, then a tutor in college, soon after the professor died,--in which we agreed in the opinion, that we had known no man of the same natural endowments, who had been more useful, or who had occupied his talent to better advantage.'"

We give the substance of some leading points of a notice of Professor Smith, in the "Memoirs of Wheelock."

"In 1809 the college experienced an immense loss, in the death of Dr.

Smith. He had devoted his life chiefly to the study of languages. No other professor in any college of the continent, had so long sustained the office of instructor; none had been more happy, useful, or diligent. Though indefatigable in his studies, he was always social and pleasant with his friends, entirely free from that reserve and melancholy, not infrequent with men of letters. At an early age he obtained the honors of this seminary, and even while a young man was appointed professor of the Oriental Languages. These were the smallest moiety of his merit and his fame. Without that intuitive genius, which catches the relation of things at a glance, by diligence, by laborious study, by invincible perseverance, which set all difficulties at defiance, he rose in his professorship with unrivaled l.u.s.tre. He, like a marble pillar, supported this seminary of learning. This fact is worth a thousand volumes of speculation, to prove the happy and n.o.ble fruits of well-directed diligence in study. But the best portrait of Dr. Smith is drawn by President Wheelock, in his eulogium on his friend, from which we make the following extract.

"'Early in life, so soon as his mind was susceptible of rational improvement, his father entered him at Dummer school, under the instruction of Mr. Samuel Moody. It is unnecessary to take notice of the development of his juvenile mind, his attention to literature, and especially his delight in the study of the ancient, Oriental Languages. That distinguished master contemplated the height, to which he would rise in this department; and his remark on him, when leaving the school to enter this inst.i.tution, was equal to a volume of eulogy.

"'His mind was not wholly isolated in one particular branch.

Philosophy, geography, criticism, and other parts of philology, held respectable rank in his acquirements; but these yielded to a prevailing bias: the investigations of language unceasingly continued his favorite object. The knowledge of the Hebrew with his propensity led him to the study of Theology. He filled the office of tutor in the college, when an invitation was made to him from Connecticut to settle in the ministry.