HIS RETIREMENT FROM OFFICE. 129 



tears from my eyes. Dr. Cox, many years ago, told me 

 that the first serious impressions ever produced upon his 

 own mind, arose from his reading my remarks made upon 

 the impropriety of attempting to represent the supreme 

 Jehovah upon canvas. This subject was mentioned by 

 me in connection with a visit to a picture-gallery in Lon- 

 don, in the summer of 1805.* General Williams of Nor- 

 wich, mentioned my honored mother and grandfather Fish, 

 and my father was also named by another, and his cap- 

 tivity ; and a letter was referred to, written to my half- 

 brother, John Noyes, then in College, by his and my 

 mother, and marked by the tears which dropped from her 

 eyes upon the paper. 



In the afternoon of the Commencement, Lynde Alexander 

 Catlin, in a dissertation upon the " Revolutions of Science," 

 mentioned me and my labors with warm approbation. On 

 the evening of the Commencement, by President Woolsey's 

 suggestion, my house was opened at eight o'clock for the 

 calls of the Corporation, the Faculty, the Alumni, the 

 graduating class, and strangers. I should judge that from 

 two hundred to three hundred called in the course of the 

 evening, and there was great cordiality both towards each 

 other and towards me, and I received many warm adieus. 

 Thus I have finished my regular connection with Yale Col- 

 lege, after having been almost fifty-four years an officer of 

 the Institution, three years a tutor, fifty-one a professor, 

 and almost fifty a lecturer. It is a solemn period of my 

 life, and I feel greatly relieved in being released from 

 responsibility. I seem to have attended my own academic 

 funeral, and many to be the mourners on the occasion. It 

 is a great happiness that- my son and son-in-law (J. D. D.) 

 have been thought worthy to succeed me in my duties. My 

 onerous professorship is now divided, and those who may 

 hereafter sustain the duties, will find them less oppressive 



* The picture was in the Truchess Gallery, which I visited in company 

 with the late John McCrackan. 

 VOL. n. 9 



