OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 163 



case, evidence, not to be mistaken, of a moral judgment ■which would 

 stand the strictest scrutiny. 



" With him composition was not necessarily connected with the use 

 of the pen. Such was the power of his disciplined memory, that, even 

 when abroad for exercise, he could go on ' weaving his lay,' and con- 

 fiding sentence after sentence to the faithful tablet within him. Be- 

 neath the hoary willows at Nahant, which bound and overshadow 

 ' Prescott's Walk,' he might be seen, day after day, treading alone for 

 hours the short and well-worn path ; and sometimes heard, too, but 

 muttering no ' wayward fancies.' There he marshalled his armies, and 

 fought again battles that had once settled the fate of nations. There 

 gorgeous processions passed in review before him, or tropical scenery 

 clothed the rocks of Nahant. He more than once said to me, that 

 what he considered some of the happiest passages in his works were 

 not only thought out, but mentally fixed in precisely their present lan- 

 guage, on that narrow spot. It will hereafter be numbered among the 

 * remai'kable places ' associated with the history of remarkable minds. 



" But, Sir, I will not anticipate his biographer, or further delay the 

 passage of the Resolutions before you, which I second with my whole 

 heart." 



The resolutions were unanimously adopted. 



Piofessor B. Peirce announced to the Academy the decease 

 of the late William Cranch Bond, Director of the Observatory 

 of Harvard University, as follows : — 



" Mr. President, — How often is it noticed in the affairs of men that 

 affliction waits upon affliction ! It is my sad duty to swell the current 

 of the present sorrow, and draw the attention of the Academy to the 

 loss of another of our most eminent associates, whose far-reaching and 

 well-earned reputation has been reflected back from the older shore of 

 the Atlantic, in one of the distinguished honors so rarely conferred 

 upon those of American birth. William Cranch Bond, the Director of 

 the Observatory of Harvard College, and Phillips Professor of Prac- 

 tical Astronomy, has ascended to the nearer study of the stars, and 

 joined the constellation of the devout astronomers of past ages. I can 

 attempt no elaborate eulogy, but must depend upon those whom Heav- 

 en has gifted with diviner powers of utterance to express the emotions 

 to which we are all ready to respond. 



