550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ence Leing highly esteemed in this institution, and its library 

 being well supplied with books on those subjects, Stallo improved 

 his leisure hours in studying them. 



In the fall of 1843 Mr. Stallo became Professor of the Higher 

 Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry in St. John's College, 

 Fordham, a position which he held till 1847, when he returned 

 to Cincinnati and entered upon the study of the law. 



He was admitted to the bar in 1849, and came rapidly into a 

 large j^ractice. In 1853 he was appointed by the Governor of 

 Ohio to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of Justice Stan- 

 ley Matthews as judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Hamil- 

 ton County, and was elected by the people in the same year to 

 that oiSce for the full term. After discharging the duties of this 

 position for two years, with satisfaction to the bar and the pub- 

 lic, he resigned it in 1855, in order to continue his more lucra- 

 tive practice. He thus lived, an eminent and respected citizen of 

 Cincinnati, one of whom the German element especially was 

 proud, prominent in the rational discussion of all questions of 

 public interest, and active in all measures for advancing the pub- 

 lic welfare, till, in 1885, he was appointed by President Cleveland 

 to be the diplomatic representative of the United States at the 

 court of the King of Italy. 



According to Koerner's " German Element in America," the 

 study of the higher mathematics, in which his professorial posi- 

 tions engaged him, led him logically to the investigation of the 

 German philosophy, and consequently to the cultivation of those 

 habits of thought which are exemplified in his principal pub- 

 lished works. The first fruit of these reflections appeared in the 

 book entitled " General Principles of the Philosophy of Nature, 

 with an Outline of some of its Recent Developments among the 

 Germans, embracing the Philosophical Systems of Schelling and 

 Hegel, and Oken's System of Nature," which was published in 

 Boston in 1848. 



The credit is given to this publication, by an eminent sci- 

 entific author, of having marked an epoch in the education of 

 American thinkers. The views then expressed by the author 

 have been modified and in part rejected by his riper experi- 

 ence; but they were not the less full of suggestion and inspi- 

 ration, giving a new conception of nature, and opening unex- 

 plored vistas of thought to the student. This was at a time 

 when the conception of unity and organic plan in nature, though 

 already seen by poets like Goethe, had scarcely entered into the 

 minds of English-speaking students of science. The second part 

 of this early volume of Stallo's was not less welcome to such in- 

 quirers from the fact that it included brief expositions of the 

 philosophic views of Kant, of Fichte, and of Schelling, serving as 



