i6 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



" and, I believe I may say, a well-grounded confidence." 

 Three weeks later he, too, can announce an addition to the 

 family honours : " I had the pleasure this morning of re- 

 " ceiving a gold medal as a prize for an essay on a depart- 

 " ment of Physiological Botany." 



By this time he had fairly entered on the labours of 

 authorship. These were not indeed lightly undertaken. 

 His home-training had impressed him with a serious and 

 steadfast purpose ; and while circumstances had led him to 

 the profession of medicine, in which he had no expectation 

 of special success, he had embraced the study of science 

 with a vivid moral ardour which gave it, for him, the force 

 of a vocation. This vocation he sedulously nourished ; he 

 threw into it the whole power of his being. The life of 

 Kepler awakened in him an eager and enthusiastic devo- 

 tion ; and he recurred to it again and again long afterwards 

 as a support in protracted and perplexing inquiries. A 

 collection of passages from the works of Herschel, Whewell, 

 Mrs. Somerville, Channing, and other writers, entered in 

 his commonplace-book, reveals some of the guiding motives 

 of his thought ; one of these, to which he often referred 

 through half a century of teaching and research, is here 

 subjoined. It was derived from a Lecture on Universal 

 History by Schiller, with whose life and spirit he was ac- 

 quainted through the pages of Carlyle. 



Just as sedulously as the trader in knowledge severs his own 

 peculiar science from all others, does the lover of wisdom strive 

 to extend its dominion and restore its connection with them. I 

 say to restore, for the boundaries which divide the sciences 

 are but the work of abstraction. What the empiric separates, 

 the philosopher unites. He has early come into the conviction 

 that in the dominion of the intellect, as in the world of matter, 

 everything is linked and commingled, and his eager longing for 

 universal harmony and agreement cannot be satisfied by frag- 

 ments. All his efforts are directed to the perfecting of his 



