6 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY ■ 



day of his death, which occurred on the second day of August, 1859. 

 The distinguishing traits of his character were his unwavering fidelity 

 to his convictions, and the passionate intensity Avith which he gave 

 himself to the work before him. He usually had some chosen great 

 end in view, to accomplish which he labored with a zeal and energy of 

 which few, even of the strongest men, are capable. The Asylum at 

 Woi'cester is perhaps the noblest of the monuments which attest his 

 efficiency when a member of the State Legislature ; the great and 

 sudden improvement of the common schools in Massachusetts shows 

 that his oft-quoted and oft-praised reports give no exaggerated view 

 of his ability and success as Secretary of the Board of Education ; the 

 feelings which, after a lapse of eight years, are awakened in Massa- 

 chusetts by any allusion to his course in Congress, bear conclusive 

 testimony to his intense devotion, while there, to the single cause for 

 which he took a seat in the House ; and the voice of his pupils at 

 Antioch College assures us, that, for the last six years of his life, he 

 gave himself up wholly to the interests of his charge. Abstemious 

 and economical in his habits, he was generous to those who needed his 

 aid ; full of tender affections, and repressing them only for fear that 

 they should lead him to be too lenient to wrong-doers. So great was 

 his scorn of all vice, and so unflinching his exposure of moral weak- 

 ness, that few knew how deep and loving was his heart. His chief 

 fault arose from that which was his highest virtue. Careful to attempt 

 only what he thought he ought to do, he considered success to be a 

 duty, and threw himself upon his work with such an intense energy 

 as to render him incapable, for tha time, of seeing the possibility of any 

 other course, or any other opinion. But this want of breadth was 

 atoned for by the superior effectiveness which it gave him in behalf 

 of whatever he undertook. 



Thomas Nuttall was born of humble parents at Settle, in the 

 West Riding of Yorkshire, in the year 1786, and died at Nutgrove, (an 

 estate in Lancashire bequeathed to him by his uncle,) on the 10th of 

 September last. Although his life began and closed in England, 

 nearly his whole Scientific career belonged to this country, and was 

 devoted to American Natural History. When he immigrated to the 

 United States in 1808, at the age of twenty-two years, he no doubt 

 brought with him a fondness for the pursuits in which he afterwards 

 excelled ; but his knowledge was acquired here, mostly in the field, 

 and through his own explorations. His extended explorations began, 



