MINUTE BY ORLANDO MEADS. 133 



with what a large view and just appreciation of the claims of all 

 the various departments of liberal knowledge; how skillfully he 

 guarded it through the manifold perils of its earlier years; with 

 what vigilance and stern integrity he protected and secured the 

 trust funds, not only from loss, but from perversion to improper 

 purposes, or to the promotion of local and selfish interests; how 

 scrupulously he held himself aloof from all entanglements with 

 gainful enterprises and from everything that could withdraw his 

 thoughts from the high duties to which he had devoted himself; 

 and how strongly he thus entrenched himself in the respect and 

 confidence not only of those immediately associated with him, but 

 of the whole American people is well known to us, and is wit- 

 nessed to by the voice that now comes to us from every part of the 

 country. 



In commemorating his public services we should not omit to 

 notice the valuable gratuitous services he has rendered to the coun- 

 try for so many years as president of the Light-House Board, nor 

 should we fail also to record the not less important relation in 

 which, as the head of the Smithsonian Institution, he has stood to 

 the Government as its trusted adviser in all matters involving 

 scientific inquiry. Every successive administration for the last 

 thirty years has had the benefit of his wise and disinterested coun- 

 sels, and has ever given to him its fullest confidence. But above 

 all should we bear witness to the great moral worth and dignity of 

 the example he has furnished in our own country and in our times 

 of a man of the highest intellectual endowments and with more 

 than ordinary aptitude for success in the practical walks of life 

 giving himself, from the very outset of his career, with stern inflexi- 

 bility of purpose, exclusively to the pursuit of science for its own 

 sake, esteeming its path one of all-sufficient honor and distinction, 

 and its satisfactions and rewards higher and better than all other 

 worldly success, content to live simply and virtuously, so be it 

 only that it might be " in the pure and serene air of liberal studies." 



He was a man of warm affections and of a most sincere, generous, 

 and noble nature. His sympathies with all earnest seekers after 

 truth, and especially with the young, were ever quick and ready. 

 He loved truth for its own sake, and had an utter detestation of 



