Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

one for either branch of the discourse," How are the mighty fallen!"

The college on Nott's accession had but few students, and was poorly endowed. It soon began to gain the former, and the state provided the latter by its act of 1814, which granted a sum of two hundred thousand dollars for its benefit, to be derived, however, from the proceeds of certain lotteries sanctioned for the purpose. Dr. Nott turned his financial and business skill to the matter, and secured a handsome endowment for the institution.

Eliphalet Nott.

In 1854 the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Nott's presidency was celebrated at Union, at the time of Commencement in July. A large number of the graduates assembled, and addresses were delivered by the Hon. Judge Campbell of New York, and by President Wayland of Brown University, who pronounced an academical discourse on the topic of The Education Demanded by the People of the United States. Dr. Nott himself spoke with his old eloquence, and various speeches were delivered at a special meeting of the alumni.

The particular influence of Dr. Nott in the administration of the college has been the practical turn which he has given to its discipline, in calling forth the earnest, manly qualities of his pupils, and repressing the opposite proclivities of youth. This is a personal influence for which he will be gratefully remembered.

Dr. Nott's publications have been chiefly in the periodicals and newspapers, and mostly anonymous. His Addresses to Young Men, Temperance Addresses, and a collection of Sermons, are his only published volumes. He has written largely on "Heat," and illustrated his theories by the practical achievement of the stove bearing his name. In the Digest of Patents, thirty appear granted to him for applications of heat to steamengines, the economical use of fuel, &c. In 1851 the Rev. Laurens P. Hickok was appointed VicePresident.

Laurens P. Hickok was born in Danbury, Fairfield co., Ct., December 29, 1798. His father, Ebenezer, was a substantial farmer of strong mind and sound judgment, and of leading influence in the town, especially in ecclesiastical matters. Until sixteen, his son labored on the farm in summer and attended the district school in winter. He then was prepared for college by a noted teacher of the day, Captain Luther Harris, of Newtown; entering Union, and graduating in 1820. His mind was led to the study of theology, and he was licensed as a preacher by the Fairfield East Association in 1822. He preached at Newtown, and some years later was the successor to Dr. Lyman Beecher at Litchfield. In 1836 he became Professor of Theology in Western Reserve College, Ohio, and for eight years performed the influential duties of that post. In 1844 he removed to the Auburn Theological Seminary, and in 1852 accepted the Professorship of Mental and Moral Science, with the Vice-Presidency of Union College.

Desirous of placing mental philosophy on a firm basis to supersede partial and false systems tending to infidelity, he published in 1850 his Rational Psychology. He has also published a volume, Empirical Psychology, or the Human Mind as given in Consciousness. His System of Moral Science was published in 1853 as a college textbook. It is mainly divided into two parts, treating of pure morality and positive authority. Under the former are considered personal and relative duties to Mankind, and duties to Nature and to God; under the latter, Civil, Divine, and Family Government. Dr. Hickok has written articles in the Christian Spectator; the Biblical Repository, particularly on the à priori and à posteriori proofs of the being of God; and some contributions to the Bibliotheca Sacra. Various sermons on special occasions and college addresses have appeared from his pen.

In the list of Professors of Union appear two bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church-Dr. Brownell of Connecticut, who, a graduate of the college, filled the chairs of Logic, Belles Lettres, and Chemistry, in different appointments from 1806 to 1819, and the Rt. Rev. Dr. Alonzo Potter, of Pennsylvania, who was at different times Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and of Rhetoric, from 1822 to 1845. Among the older Professors, the Rev. Andrew Yates, held the chair of the Latin and Greek Languages from 1797 to 1801, and of Moral Philosophy and Logic for a number of years subsequently to 1814. The Rev. Thomas Macauley, a graduate of the college of 1804, was at first tutor, and subsequently for two periods, from 1811 to 1814, and from 1814 to 1822, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. The Rev. Robert Proudfit assumed the Professorship of Greek and Latin in 1812, and has now the rank of Emeritus Professor. In 1849 Mr. Tayler Lewis was appointed to the Professorship of Greek Language and

[graphic]

* Dr. Potter has extended the influence of his Episcopate by the sound Christian philosophy of his published Discourses, and by the course of Lectures on the Evidences of Christ anity, in which he bore a leading part in Philadelphia, in the fall and winter of 1858 4. Before his election to his Bishopric, Dr. Potter had published an elementary work on "Science and the Arts of Industry," one on "Political Economy," and on "The School, its Uses, Objects, and Relations."

[merged small][ocr errors]

Targhe Lewig

Tayler Lewis was born in Northumberland, in Saratoga county, New York, in 1802. His father was an officer in the Revolutionary war, and was an honored member of the Cincinnati Society at its close, when he had passed through its scenes and served with distinction in the battles of Monmouth and Germantown, at the siege of Fort Stanwix, and in the storming of the redoubts at the taking of Cornwallis at Yorktown. His mother was of a Dutch family in Albany, a niece of John Tayler, from whom our author derives his christian name, for many years Lieutenant-Governor of the state in the days of Tompkins and Clinton. Mr. Lewis graduated in 1820 at Union College, Schenectady, in the class of Judge Kent, Governor Seward, and Comptroller John C. Wright. He studied law in the office of Samuel A. Foot in Albany, in company with William Kent Though attracted by the study of such writers as Coke, Fearne, Blackstone, and Butler, and much interested in the logical questions of the law of evidence and real estate, he was not at ease with the practical conduct of the profession, touching which he had some conscientious scruples. He, however, rejecting offers of partnership at Albany, pursued the profession in the retired village of Fort Miller, Washington county, New York, where he had sufficient time for reflection, and where, at the suggestion of a clerical friend, he entered on the study of Hebrew to fill up the mental vacuum. The new occupation engrossed all his time and attention. He gave his days and nights to Hebrew. This led to a close and diligent study of the Bible in the language of the Old and New Testament. Homer and Plato followed with equal zest. Six years were devoted to biblioal and classical studies, pursued with a scholar's unction and a pure love of literature, with no thought of using the stores thus accumulating in

teaching or composition, or with any prospect of leaving the humble village. Nine years had now passed, when it became evident that law or literature must be relinquished. The former was the readiest sacrifice. In 1833 he married, abandoned the law, and took a classical school in the village of Waterford. In 1835 he went to Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence county, where he remained two years, then returned to Waterford, and shortly afterwards, through the influence of Mr. Foot and his old classmate Judge William Kent, was appointed Professor of Greek in the University of the City of New York. At this time he also became an active writer for the higher reviews, The Literary and Theological, the Biblical Repository, and others, to which he has continued a frequent contributor. His topics have been the relations of theology and philosophy, following generally the ideas of Calvin; the questions of the day in morals, politics, church and state government, and natural science regarded in their religious bearing.*

His special classical studies have been subordinate to those philosophical discussions. In 1845 he published a semi-classical, semi-theological work, Plato contra Atheos, and he has since prepared A Translation of Plato's Theaetetus, with notes and illustrations on its adaptedness to our own times. In 1844 he also published a volume on The Nature and Ground of Punishment.

The discoveries of geology and astronomy, in

[graphic]

A list of these Miscellaneous Writings will be valuable to our readers. It offers many points of reference and special "aids to reflection."

Addresses.-Faith the Life of Science; delivered before the Phi Beta Phi Society, Union College, 1888. Natural Religion the Remains of Primitive Revelation; Delivered at Burlington, 1889. The Believing Spirit; Phi Beta Kappa Society, Dartmouth College, 1841. The True Idea of the State; Porter Rhetorical Society, Andover, 1848. The Revolutionary Spirit; Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1848. The Bible Everything or Nothing; New York Theological Seminary, 1847. Nature, Progress, Ideas; or, A Discourse on Naturalism; Phi Beta Kappa Society, Union College, 1849. Lectures.-Common School Education; Albany and Troy, January, 1848. Ancient Names for Soul; Albany and Rochester, 1849. Six Days of Creation, two Lectures; New York, January, 1858. Articles in Reviews, &c.-Economical Mode of Studying the Classics; Lit. and Theol. Review, Dec., 1888. Influence of the Classics; Lit. and Theol. Review, March, 1889. Natural and Moral Science; Lit. and Theol. Review, June, 1889. Review of Nordheimer's Hebrew Grammar; Bib. Rep., April, 1841. Review of Nordheimer's Hebrew Concordance; Bib. Rep.. April, 1842. The Divine Attributes as Exhibited in the Grecian Poetry; Bib. Rep., July, 1848. Vestiges of Creation, Review of; Amer. Whig Review, May, 1845. Cases of Conscience; Amer. Whig Review, July, 1845. Human Rights, Art. 1; Amer. Whig Review, Oct., 1845. Human Rights, Art. 2; Amer. Whig Review, Nov., 1845. The Church Question? Amer. Bib. Rep. (60 pp.) Jan. 1846. Has the State a Religion: Amer. Review, March, 1846. The Nature of the Sufferings of Christ; Bib. Rep., July, 1846. Human Justice, or Government a Moral Power; Bib. Rep., Jan., 1847. Second article on the same subject; Bib. Rep., April, 1847. The Bible Everything or Nothing; Bib. Rep., January, 1848. Classical Criticism (Essay on); Knickerbocker, Sept., 1847. Association, or Fourierism; Methodist Quar. Review, Jan., 1848. Chalmers; Bib. Rep., April, 1848. Bible Ethics; Bib. Rep., July, 1848. Astronomical Views of the Ancients; Bib. Rep., April, 1849. Second Article on the same; Bib. Rep., July, 1849. The Spirit of the Old Testament; Bib. Rep., January, 1850. Spirituality of the Book of Job; Andover Bibliotheca, May, 1849. Second Article on the same; Andover Bibliotheca, Aug., 1849. Political Corruption; Whig Review, 1846. The Book of Proverbs; Bib. Rep., April, 1850. Names for Soul; Bib. Rep., Oct., 1850 Review of Hickok's Rational Psychology; Andover Bibliotheca, Jan., 1851. Second Article on the same; Andover Bibliotheca, April, 1851. Three Absurdities of Modern Theories of Education; Princeton Review, April, 1851. Numerous Articles in the Literary World. Theaetetus of Plato; Andover Bibliotheca, Jan., 1858. The Editor's Table; in Harper's New Monthly for three years, with one or two exceptions. Numerous Articles in the New York Observer.

[graphic][ocr errors][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]

their relation to the Biblical narrative, have employed much of his attention. His work published at Schenectady in 1855, entitled The Six Days of Creation; or, Scriptural Cosmology, with the ancient idea of Time- Worlds in distinction from Worlds of Space, is a novel and able view of the subject, displaying distinguished philological research and acumen.

Besides his illustration of these and kindred topics in the more scholastic journals, Professor Lewis has handled most of the great social, political, and philosophical topics of the times in the "Editor's Table" of Harper's Magazine, where his writings have exerted a healthful and widely extended influence.

PROFESSOR ISAAC W. JACKSON, a graduate of the college of 1826, and since 1831 Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, has illustrated his department by the production of text books on "Conic Sections,' Mechanics," and "Optics," in which these subjects are digested with ability, and presented with new researches by the author in a style of noticeable clearness and precision.

9966

A Professorship of Civil Engineering has been held since 1845 by William Mitchell Gillespie, who has given to the public several works illustrating the subject of his instructions. His Manual of Road-Making has passed through a number of editions. In 1851 he published The Philosophy of Mathematics, a translation from the French of Auguste Comte; and in 1855 The Principles and Practice of Land Surveying. An early

publication from his pen appeared in 1845, the sketch of a careful tourist, entitled Rome; as seen by a New Yorker in 1843-4. Mr. Gillespie was born in 1816, and is a graduate of Columbia College of 1834.

The College Programme of the "Civil Engineering Department" shows this subject to be pursued with a philosophical discrimination of its various parts, rendering it a general discipline of the faculties as well as a direct avenue to the large practical business in the country which must be based on the science. The course commences with the second term of the Sophomore year, and may be pursued separately from the classical and purely philosophical studies, the pupil receiving a special certificate of the progress which he may have made. This system of allowing a partial

pursuit of the University Course was introduced as early as 1832, and more fully developed in 1849. The students may engage in various studies at choice, but must attend at least three recitations daily to entitle them to the privilege.

Mr. Elias Peissner, Instructor of Modern Languages, has published a grammar of the German language on a philosophical system, assisting the English student by first exhibiting to him the resemblances of the two tongues, an assistance which starts him far on the journey.

The view of the college buildings which we present includes the whole plan, though only one half is yet completed. The rest is expected to be soon accomplished.

In 1842, on the 22d July, the first semi-centennial anniversary of the college was celebrated by a variety of public exercises, including addresses by the Rev. Joseph Sweetman of the class of 1797, and by the Rev. Alonzo Potter of the class of 1818. There was also a dinner of the alumni presided over by John C. Spencer, who delivered an eloquent speech on the college, and the festivities were well sustained by speech and song from Bishop Doane, the Rev. J. W. Brown, Alfred B. Street, and other honored sons of the institution.

JOHN E. HOLBROOK.

DR. JOHN EDWARDS HOLBROOK, author of North American Herpetology and Ichthyology of South Carolina, was born at Beaufort, South Carolina, 1795. He became a graduate of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and after taking a medical degree in Philadelphia, left home to pursue his professional studies at the schools of Edinburgh and London. Having passed nearly two years in Scotland and England, he proceeded to the continent, where he spent two more years, partly in Germany and Italy, but principally in Paris-always occupied in the study of his pro

fession.

It was among the magnificent collections in the Museum of the Garden of Plants in Paris that Dr. Holbrook began the study of natural history, to which he has since devoted his life.

In 1822 he returned to the United States, and in 1824 was elected Professor of Anatomy in the Medical College of the State of South Carolina, a place which he still holds.

At the time Dr. Holbrook undertook the publication of his great work upon the Reptiles of North America, very little was known of the natural history of these animals in this part of the world, and the difficulties under which he labored from want of books and collections can hardly be appreciated now. In fact, he had to clear the whole field, upon which he has erected a monument which will remain the foundation of that branch of natural history in this country as long as science is cultivated. The work is particularly remarkable for the clearness and fulness of its descriptions, and the total absence of vagaries; the illustrations are natural and correctnot a single figure having been made from dead specimens, and all are colored from life. Of late Dr. Holbrook has been devoting his attention to a work on the fishes of the southern states, of which three numbers have been published, which will undoubtedly maintain the high rank of his previous scientific labors.*

[graphic]

MARIA BROOKS.

maria Brookes

MARIA DEL' OCCIDENTE, to adopt her poetical desig. Maria

nation, was the descendant of a family of Welsh origin. Her grandfather had settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts, before the Revolutionary

war.

He was a man of wealth, and built there a fine house for his residence, from which he was driven when the town was burnt by the British. He retired to Medford, where his granddaughter, Maria Gowen, was born about 1795. Her father was a man of literary cultivation, and enjoyed the intimacy of the professors of Harvard, which doubtless lent its influence to the tastes of the young poetess who, before her ninth year, had committed to memory passages from Comus and Cato and the ancient classics. The loss of her father's property was followed by his death, and with these broken fortunes, at the age of fourteen she became engaged to a merchant of Boston, who provided for her education, and on its completion married her. Mercantile disaster succeeded a few years of prosperity, and a life of poverty and retirement followed. The wife turned her thoughts to poetry and wrote, at the age of twenty, an octosyllabic poem in seven cantos, which was never printed. In 1820 she published a small volume, Judith, Esther, and other Poems; by a Lover of the Fine Arts; in which she struck a new and peculiar view in American poetry. Concentrated and musical in expression, with equal force and delicacy of imagination, it was an echo of the refined graces of the noble old school of English poetry of the seventeenth century, in a new world in the nineteenth.

In 1823 the husband of Mrs. Brooks died, when she took up her residence with a relative in Cuba, where she speedily completed the first canto of Zophiel, or the Bride of Seven, which was published at Boston in 1825. The five remaining cantos were written in Cuba. The death of her uncle, a planter of the island, who left her his property, gave her a settled income. She returned to the United States and lived in the neighborhood of Dartmouth College, where her son, now

North American Herpetology, published in Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1842. Ichthyology of South Carolina, published in Charleston: John Russell, 1854.

pursuing his studies the library of the institution Captain Brooks of the United States Army, was supplying materials for the notes to her poem which she was then revising. In 1830 she accompanied her brother to Paris. In London she saw Washington Irving, then attached to the legation, who encouraged her in the production of the poem. With Southey, who warmly admired her poetical powers, and with whom she had held a correspondence from America, she passed the spring of 1831 at Keswick. Zóphiel was left in his hands for publication; and the proof sheets had been corrected by him when it appeared from the press of Kennett, a London publisher, in 1833.

Southey, in the Doctor, has pronounced Maria del' Occidente "the most impassioned and most imaginative of all poetesses."** If any one has

since risen to divide the honor it is Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning; otherwise Mrs. Brooks stands alone in one of the most refined and difficult provinces of creative art. Zóphiël, or the Bride of Seven, is an exquisite tale of an exiled Jewish maiden in Media, surrounded by the agencies of the spiritual world of demons, under the special influence of the fallen angel named in the title, and is evidently founded on the story, in the book of Tobit in the Apocrypha, of Sara the daughter of Raguel in Ecbatane, a city of Media, who was reproached because she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus, the evil spirit had killed, before they had lien with her.' Egla, the maiden, is all that exquisite beauty, grace, and tenderness can combine together in youthful womanhood-and though mostly passive in the story, her character and image are identified to the mind with distinctness. Zóphiël, who is in the place of Asmodeus, is the oriental representative of Apollo,

a spirit sometimes ill; but ere He fell, a heavenly angel.

[blocks in formation]

As this poem has been objected to, though without any sufficient reason, for obscurity in the narrative, we may cite for the reader's convenience a neat analysis of the plot which appeared in a contemporary review in Fraser's Magazine.

Zóphiël, a fallen angel, sees a Hebrew maid, and falls passionately in love with her, at the time that her parents wish her to marry a powerful and handsome Mede, by name Meles, who had won the old people's admiration by his skill in archery, exerted on the occasion of a victim-dove escaping from the altar as the Hebrew couple were about to perform a sacrifice. Meles just then happening to pass, let fly an arrow, and nailed the fugitive to a tree. He is accepted as the daughter's lover, in spite of her aversion. He enters the chamber where she is awaiting him:

But ere he yet, with haste, could draw aside

His broidered belt and sandals,-dread to tell,
Eager he sprang-he sought to clasp his bride:
He stopt-a groan was heard-he gasped and fell
Low by the couch of her who widowed lay,

Her ivory hands convulsive clasped in prayer,
But lacking power to move. And when 'twas day,
A cold black corse was all of Meles there.

Sardius, the king of Media, sends for Meles, who had been his ambassador to Babylon: search is made after him, and his corpse is found. The old Hebrew couple, and their daughter Egla, are brought prisoners to Sardius, and the latter describes the manner of Meles' death, and the circumstance of her being haunted by a spirit. This is taken for the raving of her unsettled brain, although she is detained in the palace, as the king has become enamoured of her. Idaspes, one of the nobles, fearful that Egla was in possession of some deadly art by which Meles fell, and which she might try upon Sardius, dissuades the king from approaching her; and Alcestes is destined to visit her during the night. He is killed by the same unseen hand. Sardius now offers a high reward to him who will unravel the mystery. Then steps forward another noble: he was bold, and descended from some god.

He came, and first explored with trusty blade;
But soon as he approached the fatal bride,
Opened the terrace-door, and half in shade
A form, as of a mortal, seemed to glide;

He flew to strike; but baffling still the blow,
And still receding from the chamber far,
It lured him on; and in the morning, low
And bloody lay the form.

He en

All is dismay at the court. Rough old Philomars next claims permission to expose the trick. ters the chamber, while his armed companions surround every avenue without, to prevent the escape of any fugitive. The precaution was vain, as Egla lay awaiting in bed the rough soldier. She heard Philomars' last struggle, and the suffocating noise of the lengthened death-pang. The next adventurer was Rosanes, who shared the same fate. Altheëtor, the favourite of Sardius, and his youthful musician, now falls ill with excessive love for Egla; his passion 18 discovered, and the king allows him to make the attempt which had proved fatal to so many.

Touching his golden harp to prelude sweet,
Entered the youth, so pensive, pale, and fair;
Advanced respectful to the virgin's feet,

And, lowly bending down, made tuneful parlance there.
Like perfume soft his gentle accents rose,
And sweetly thrilled the gilded roof along;
His warm devoted soul no terror knows,

And truth and love lend fervour to his song.
She hides her face upon her couch, that there
She may not see him die. No groan, she springs
Frantic between a hope-beam and despair,

And twines her long hair round him as he sings.

Then thus:-"Oh! Being who unseen but near
Art hovering now, behold and pity me!
For love, hope, beauty, music,-all that's dear,
Look,-look on me-and spare my agony!
"Spirit! in mercy, make me not the cause,

The hateful cause, of this kind being's death!
In pity kill me first!-He lives-he draws-
Thou wilt not blast ?-he draws bis harmless breath."
Still lives Altheētor;-still unguarded strays
One hand o'er his fall'n lyre; but all his soul
Is lost-given up;-he fain would turn to gaze,
But cannot turn, so twined. Now, all that stole
Through every vein, and thrilled each separate nerve,
Himself could not have told,—all wound and clasped
In her white arms and hair. Ah! can they serve
To save him?" What a sea of sweets!"-he gasped,
But 'twas delight:-sound, fragrance, all were breathing.
Still swelled the transport, "Let me look and thank:"
He sighed (celestial smiles his lip enwreathing),
"I die-but ask no more," he said and sank.
Still by her arms supported-lower-lower-
As by soft sleep oppressed; so calm, so fair-
He rested on the purple tap'stried floor,
It seemed an angel lay reposing there.

Zóphiël, in despair at not having obtained Egla's love, flies to the palace of Gnomes under the sea, following the guidance of Phraërion (Zephyrus), to obtain a draught which shall perpetuate life and youth in Egla. With difficulty they obtain it, but only on condition of taking back to the Gnome king in return a mortal bride. But as they are returning from their strange expedition, a tremendous storm occurs, in which Zóphiël lets fall the spar containing the drops of life. He and his companion reach the Libyan land, and the former is met by Satan himself, who demands of him the relinquishment of the hand of Egla, as he is enamoured of her; but Zóphiël refuses, and defies his power, when the superior fiend makes him feel it, and denounces destruction to his hopes.

The morning sun discovers Helon and Hariph, a young man and his aged guide, on the banks of the Tigris. The former is sorrowful, in consequence of a dream of the preceding evening, when Hariph gives him a box of carneol, as a preservative from evil; for in the hour of imminent danger he was to burn the contents. On proceeding, they come upon Zameïa and her guide, an aged man, overspent with fatigue, and in utter destitution. Zameia had been married to one of the magnates of Babylon; but during the performance of the rights of Mylitta (the Assyrian Venus) she meets Meles, on an embassy at Babylon from Media, and falls desperately in love. During her husband's absence on another embassy she frequently sees Meles, and indulges her guilty passion; but the Mede, however, leaves her, and returns to his own country. The impassioned woman resolves to seek him through the world. Helon and Hariph relieve her. She finds her way to the bower of Egla, and is on the point of stabbing her to the heart, as the murderess of Meles, when Helon and his companion arrive to rescue her. This they effect. Zameïa dies from excess of passion; Helon is wedded to Egla, being the husband predestined for her; Hariph turns out to be the archangel Raphaël, who blesses the pair, and bids the lost spirit Zóphiël to indulge in hope.

The capabilities of this outline in a true poet's hands are manifest, but no one who has not read the poem with care-and whoever reads it once will be apt so to read it again and again-can do justice to the purity, sweetness, variety, and force of the versification, and the warm passionate nature which, without exaggeration or apparent effort, interpenetrates every portion of it. There is no vulgarity in the fate of the lovers. They seem to die worthily in the noble cause of honor

« AnteriorContinuar »