1&S7.] 291 [Garrett. 



was a rare simplicity, indeed genuine modesty and humility, which is 

 oftenest closely allied to a true greatness in the soul, unconscious of itself 

 and busied with lofty studies of omnipotent power and sublimity. It was 

 through this beautiful quality, wliich was perfectly natural and unassum- 

 ing, that he endeared himself much to all of his intellectual associates, 

 whether pupils or companions of his own age. 



lie had a singularly versatile mind, and a comprehensive and richly 

 furnished memory. His writings included a wide range of subjects, upon 

 each of which he displayed much erudition, and they were full of sug- 

 gestivencss. It is seldom that a like capacity is found in one mind, both 

 as a linguist and as a mathematician. He read with the help of dictiona- 

 ries, and was more or less familiar with one hundred and twenty-three 

 languages and dialects, and claimed thorough acquaintance with thirty of 

 them. His knowledge of these was not profound, nor was it marked by 

 the accuracy, in pronunciation and otherwise, which familiar conversation 

 requires. Yet his attainments as a linguist afford a remarkable indication 

 of the scope of his mind and the extent of his memory, and therefore 

 throw an important light upon our estimate of the value of his deeper and 

 more characteristic productions. Occasional contributions to the Proceed- 

 ings of the American Philosophical Society were made on subjects in 

 Comparative Philology, as the paper "On Radical Etymology, " that on 

 the "Mathematical Probability of Accidental Linguistic Resemblances,", 

 on "Sanscrit and English Roots and Analogues," on the "Comparative 

 Etymology of the Yoruba Language," and others. His reputation as an 

 analyst was sufficient to induce the sending to him of an obscure cipher 

 from the War Department for translation during the Rebellion, and, on 

 another occasion, of a Coptic inscription. But although his philological 

 attainments were in no wise mean, his pen was most fertile in other 

 directions. Of over 150 papers contributed by him to various learned 

 bodies, most of them to this Society, not more than one-tenth were philo- 

 logical, and the remainder mostly in meteorology, cosmics and physics. 

 Many of these were fragmentary, — studies, as it were, of great themes, — 

 and in undigested groups ; they were unfinished, like Michael Angelo's 

 marble groups, and needed the master's hand to give them the perfect 

 expression intended. As he grew older, they took more and more a 

 cosmical direction, and his mind struggled to demonstrate from the har- 

 monies of the universe, as the geologist does from the marvelous narrative 

 of the rocks, a cosmical evolution. Going back to the very sources of 

 development with daring genius, he sought, through proofs of the 

 "Quantitative equivalence of the different forms of force which we call 

 light, heat, electricity, chemical affinity, and gravitation," and original 

 theories of nodal accumulation, the truth of which time may affirm, to 

 establish a common law that "All physical phenomena are due to an 

 Omnipotent Power, acting in ways which may be represented by harmonic 

 or cyclical undulations in an elastic medium." A peculiarity of his mental 

 operations was a singular capacity for seeing harmonies and analogies 



