ii Mr. Pickering’s Eulogy on 
taneous burst of sorrow throughout the nation proclaimed the sin- 
cerest homage to his great attainments in science and his unsullied 
private worth. 
By the Members of this Academy, with whose interests he had 
been so long connected, the loss is severely felt; and your earnest 
desire to exhibit to the public, as distinctly as was known to your- 
selves, that part of his character particularly, which was not so 
obvious to general observers, —I mean his scientific attainments, 
—has led you to adopt this public mode of honoring the memory 
of our departed associate, and to assign to me the arduous, though 
honorable task of discharging this last sad office. If, however, I 
had been permitted to consult my own feelings, it would have been 
my wish, that you should have selected for this duty some member 
of our association whose studies and pursuits were more closely 
allied, than my own, to those of the eminent man, whose rare 
attainments are to form the principal subject of the present occasion. 
I am well aware of the motives, which had an influence in direct- 
ing your choice; but, if my long personal intimacy with our late 
colleague, and my residence for many years in his native town, 
have afforded me personally some peculiar advantages over most of 
the members of our association, yet these advantages, I fear, will 
be outweighed by others, to which I can make no pretensions in 
comparison with some whom I see now before me. But your 
decision has been made; and, whatever may be my own judg- 
ment and feelings in the case, I yield to your opinion, and will 
now proceed to the discharge of the duty which you have assigned 
to me. 
The lives of great and good men, it has often been observed, 
should never cease to be held up as examples, especially to the 
young ; whose minds, as the great philosophical statesman of England 
has justly said, should be formed “to that docility and modesty, 
