190 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



said that "if he had lived we might have known something,") 

 the accomplished master of words thought it not unmeet to record 

 that the fallen Professor, who had been snatched away by a pre- 

 mature death, was only "the more attractive and lovely because 

 the virtues and graces which he joined to the highest repute for 

 learning were embellished by a handsome person." The same tribute 

 of admiration might be paid with equal justice to the revered Pro- 

 fessor whose "good gray head" has just vanished from our sight. 



The fascination of Professor Henry's manner was felt by all 

 who came within the range of its influence by men with whom he 

 daily consorted in business, in college halls, and in the scientific 

 academy ; by brilliant women of society who, in his gracious pres- 

 ence, owned the spell of a masculine mind which none the less was 

 feminine in the delicacy of its perceptions and the purity of its sensi- 

 bilities; by children, who saw in the simplicity of his unspoiled 

 nature a geniality and a kindliness which were akin to their own. 

 A French thinker has said that in proportion as one has more intel- 

 lectuality he finds that there are more men who possess original 

 qualities. It was the breadth and catholicity of Henry's intelligence 

 which enabled him to find something unique and characteristic in 

 persons who were flat, stale, and unprofitable to the average mind. 



Gifted with a mental constitution which was "feelingly alive to 

 each fine impulse," he possessed a high degree of aesthetic sensibility 

 to the beautiful in nature and in art. It cannot be doubted that a 

 too exclusive addiction to the analytic and microscopic study of 

 nature, at the instance of science, has a tendency to blunt in some 

 minds a delicate perception for the "large livingness" of Nature, 

 considered as a source of poetic and moral inspiration, but no such 

 tendency could be discovered in the intellectual habitudes of Pro- 

 fessor Henry. To a mind long nurtured by arts of close and crit- 

 ical inquiry into the logic of natural law he none the less united a 

 heart which was ever ready to leap with joy at "the wonder and 

 bloom of the world." When on the occasion of his first visit to 

 England, in the year 1837, he was travelling by night in a stage- 

 coach through Salisbury Plain, he hired the driver to stop, while 

 all his fellow-passengers were asleep, that he might have the privi- 

 lege of inspecting the ruins of Stonehenge, as seen by moonlight, 



