342 CALEB CUSH1NG. 



dropping their petals. But Nature drugs the victim of her last ex- 

 periment, and her anodyne saves him from the spectacle of his own 

 transformation from the strong man up to whom others looked, and on 

 whom they leaned, to the helpless invalid whose weakness only pity- 

 ing eyes behold, and whose little remnant of life is only prolonged by 

 the hourly ministry of gentle and loving hands. 



We look back through these last years of infirmity, and see the 

 quick-witted student, the hard-working young physician, the enthusi- 

 astic botanist, the accomplished scholar, the eminent practitioner, the 

 sententious, finished, and effective writer ; the reformer, who, in a lecture 

 of one hour, inaugurated such a change of medical opinion and practice 

 as no other essay or work by an American author ever did in this 

 country ; the social innovator, who, by his origination of rural ceme- 

 teries, has done more for the beauty and health of our whole land than 

 perhaps any other one man has ever effected ; the philosopher, who in 

 health was the most cheerful as well as one of the most unwearied of 

 workers, and who, when the evil days came upon him, in which he 

 might have been excused for saying, " There is no pleasure in them," 

 bore every burden of infirmity which was laid upon him with more 

 than resignation, — with an unfaltering equanimity which makes his 

 years of weakness as memorable as those of his strength and activity. 



HON. CALEB CUSHING, LL.D. 



The Hon. Caleb Cushing, LL.D., died at his residence, in New- 

 buryport, Massachusetts, on the 2d of January last. Born on the 17th 

 of January, 1800, he was on the verge of completing his seventy- 

 ninth year. He was graduated at Harvard University, as the third 

 scholar in rank, in the distinguished class of 1817, and remained at 

 the University for two years as Tutor in Mathematics aud Natural 

 Philosophy. He soon afterwards entered on the practice of the law, 

 for which he had studied at Cambridge in the mean time. From this 

 period, his long life was tilled out, almost to the very end, with pro- 

 fessional or public labors, and no man of his time has left a record of 

 more indefatigable industry. He was the Representative of Newbury- 

 port in the Legislature of Massachusetts in 1825, and was repeatedly 

 in the service of the State, either as Representative or Senator, in sub- 

 sequent years. In 1835 he was elected to the House of Representa- 

 tives of the United States, and remained a member of that body, by 

 successive elections in the Essex District, until 1843. He was then 



