OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : MAY 29, 1866. 103 



that negotiations were pending for the further lease of the 

 Hall now occupied by the Academy. The subject was recom- 

 mitted. 



The Corresponding Secretary read, in abstract, the following 



Report of the Council. 



Through a wholly unprecedented mortality, the Academy has lost 

 during the past year seventeen members, among them its Vice-Presi- 

 dent and its Treasurer. Six of our deceased brethren were Resident 

 Fellows, three were Associates, and eight Foreign Honorary Mem- 

 bers. 



Of the Resident Fellows thus removed, five were of the Third Class, 

 comprising the honored names of Spai"ks, Beck, Livermore, "Worcester, 

 and Fitzpatrick, and one, Mr. J. Patten Hall, was of the Second Class. 



Jared Sparks was born at WilUngton, Connecticut, in 1789. His 

 boyhood was passed in the then usual pursuits, and with no more than 

 the then wonted opportunities and privileges of boys in the country. 

 He, however, early manifested a strong inclination and capacity for 

 mathematical study, and, with such aid as he could derive from stray 

 books on navigation that fell in his way, he attained to the calculation 

 of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena, and in one instance fur- 

 nished the mutanda for the year's almanac. He learned a carpenter's 

 trade, and connected with it the profession of a district schoolmaster. 

 With no distinct purpose other than that of qualifying himself for the 

 successful and honorable discharge of this last-named calling during 

 the winter months, he sought the tuition of his pastor, Rev. Mr. Loomis, 

 (afterward President of Shurtleff College, Illinois, and still living,) and 

 under his direction commenced a course of classical study, undertaking 

 to pay Mr. Loomis by shingling his barn. One day, when he was at 

 work on the barn, his teacher asked him to come into the house, and 

 construe a passage in Virgil in the hearing of Rev. Mr. Abbot, then 

 minister of Coventry. Mr. Abbot perceived at once the rich promise 

 that there was in the young carpenter, and wrote to his brother-in-law, 

 the principal of Exeter Academy, to solicit a scholarship for him. The 

 application was successful, and young Sparks walked to Exeter, more 

 than a hundred miles, in three days, Mr. Abbot (who with his wife 

 was meditating a visit to his brother and sister) conveying his trunk 

 behind his own chaise. 



After a novitiate, in which he showed masterly power of acquisition, 



