whom he walked between Boston and Cambridge, and talked by the way. 

 He doubted not he should, out of this body, continue the studies which his 

 friend with the microscope and himself with the telescope had begun ; and 

 Agassiz was of the same mind. He thought some point in the constellation 

 Hercules would furnish a good and favorable post whence his observations 

 might be carried on ! As one wants to look around any object of interest, to 

 behold a mountain on the other side, or see the interior of some temple of 

 Vesta, or Arch of Titus with the "golden candlestick " from Jerusalem which 

 was the spoil of war, so he coveted (and has he not reached ? ) another station 

 from which to survey the stars. Is this not so much a conclusion of logic, 

 as a sentiment of hope ? It is not, therefore, less stable and trustworthy for 

 the human soul, in which all noble sentiments are co-ordinate powers with 

 the pure intellect, and, at least, of not inferior worth. 



But I think the pious confidence was born in him, and came from his 

 stock, and the strain of his blood. He was a kinsman, a nephew, of Ichabod 

 Nichols, whom he strongly resembled, my own minister, a true divine and 

 man of genius, one like Coleridge inspired in monologue, and of whom Jona- 

 than Phillips told me that Channing, after listening to his brother on a certain 

 occasion, declared that Nichols was superior in strength to himself, and he 

 could have written no such discourse. It is to Nichols, more than any one 

 out of the house of my own kith and kin, that I am in debt for the first awak- 

 ening of my mind to a sense of its destiny in the grandeur of Christian 

 truth ; and, if I have ever kindled another mind with the same sacred fire, 

 the flame was transmitted as from torch to torch and headland to headland 

 in ancient Greece. My preacher and pastor was an enthusiast, while a ra- 

 tionalist; and I lighted my candle from his ever-burning wick. It is the 

 master in him which the scholar feels is his best gift, whether he paint, sing, 

 play, or discourse ; for the true master ends in giving the scholar to himself. 

 The chief part of my poor faculty was from my partaking my teacher's tone 

 and method, and my pleasure in this particular service of to-day is enhanced 

 by the association of the names of Peirce and Nichols in my own memory 

 and thought. 



What a winsome and gracious, as well as powerful presence, like his 

 uncle's, was that of Benjamin Peirce ! The long soft locks turning to iron- 

 gray, the sweet and sober face, the gentle voice with no harsh guttural note, 

 the impressive brow in which the causal and the ideal forces and organs b.oth 

 strove and both prevailed, the manner alike of loftiness and lowliness, as of 

 one who knew whereof he affirmed, yet deferred to whatever Wisdom had to 



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