To most young men Peirce, in his own mathematical demesne, was formid- 

 able or quite inaccessible, the warder of an enchanted tower, whose ban- 

 ner bore a strange device (being interpreted, it said Excelsior] whose speech 

 was foreign, and who paced his battlements with a far-looking manner, 



" His thoughts commercing with the skies." 



But when this wizard stepped down from his post, crossed his moat, and 

 opened his garden gate, nothing could be more attractive than the vistas and 

 plantations he opened to our view. I remember as but yesterday, though it is 

 well-nigh thirty years ago, the blank confusion with which the ill-instructed 

 youth confronted his problems and the Sphinx who gave them out, and the 

 thrill of enthusiasm in the same youth when the range and scope of the 

 mathematical sciences was flashed upon his imagination, in the fascinating 

 lectures, of which he gave us only too few. Few men could suggest more 

 while saying so little, or stimulate so much while communicating next to 

 nothing that was tangible and comprehensible. The young man that would 

 learn the true meaning of apprehension as distinct from comprehension, should 

 have heard the professor lecture, after reciting to him. 



Peirce was a transcendentalist in mathematics, as Agassiz was in zoology; 

 and a certain subtile tie of affinity connected these two men, so unlike in their 

 special genius. Looking up to his familiar stars, Peirce might have said to 

 Agassiz, as Persius to Cornutus, 



Nescio qiiod certe est quod me tibi temperat astrum; 

 " Some star, alone to heaven known, attuned in tone these souls of ours." 



Other professors, genial or learned or wise, or all three in one, like Dr. 

 Walker, adorned in my time the places they held at Cambridge, but Agassiz 

 and Peirce were the men of genius we met there. Alike in this, they were 

 also alike in their enthusiasm, which neither the piercing scepticism of Cam- 

 bridge could wither, nor declining years chill with the frost of age. Indeed, 

 we have fancied that Peirce grew more enthusiastic as he grew older : those 

 long gray locks were not shaken in reproof of youthful eagerness, like so 

 many bald heads we have known, b. ut the magnificent front they encircled 

 smiled a welcome to all that was new and advancing. The thing he dis- 

 trusted was routine and fanatical method, whether new or old ; for thought, 

 salient, vital, co-operative thought, in novel or in ancient aspects, he had 

 nothing but respect and furtherance. Some recent words of his are both 

 characteristic and instructive. He said : 



"Those" who have lived long enough to have observed the growth of 



