136 
of science, where he continued to observe with the same 
patient precision, and publish with the same courage all he 
knew. 
He says«in his autobiography, reviewing the list of his 
publications, that it seemed as if he had written and pub- 
lished too much, — that, had he spent more time in preparing 
his productions, their literary execution would have been 
more creditable, and the thoughts more mature and effec- 
tive; but the peculiar circumstances of his early life com- 
pelled him to a course which, probably, he adds, “ were I to 
live my life over again, I should pursue essentially the same.” 
But the subjects on which he wrote were novel, requiring 
original research, and the descriptions of them scientific 
accuracy rather than literary elegance. This is his self 
excuse, gratuitous and unnecessary ; for the style, especially 
of his later works, is sufficiently scholarly, and the order, as 
well as the expression, of his thoughts, lucid and complete. 
This, however, is no place for the reading of a critical 
review of his geological or of his religious works. I can 
only group them in such a way before your imagination as 
to paint the foreground, the background, arid the middle dis- 
tance of his soul’s life. In the foreground, the terraces of 
the Connecticut and Deerfield valleys, the fossil footprints 
on the quarries of Hadley, and the flattened pebbles of the 
gneiss ; the middle distance full of the local geology of 
Massachusetts and Vermont, Martha’s Vineyard, Portland 
and its vicinity, Texas, Western Asia, and the world at 
large, with a thousand physical and social subjects, all inter- 
esting to his active, serious, and affectionaté mind; and in 
- the background, Alps on Alps of sacred dogma and religious 
— aspi with glaciers interspersed of cosmic speculations, 
and aeeper vales of self-consecration, self-sacrifice, and 
__ beneficence, bearing their harvests of good fruit. 
