PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 215 



steamer Mistletoe, or haply taking note of electric charges sent 

 through imaginary wires at his bidding* — the soul of Joseph 

 Heury passed away from the earth which he had blessed and 

 brightened by his presence. He died ten minutes after twelve 

 o'clock, on the 13th of May, 1878. 



From these imperfect notes on the Life of Prof. Henry, I pass 

 to consider some of his traits and characteristics as a man. 



He was endowed with a physical organization in which the 

 elements that composed it were not only fine and finely mixed, 

 but were cast in a mould remarkable for its symmetry and manly 

 beauty. The perfection of his " outward man" was not unworthy 

 of the "inward man" whom it enshrined, and if, as a church 

 father has phrased it, "the human soul is the true Shechinah," it 

 may none the less be said that these "fleshly nooks" of ours 

 never appear to so much advantage as when, transfigured by this 

 Shechinah, they offer to the informing spirit a temple which is as 

 stately as it is pure. When Dr. Bentley was called to write the 

 epitaph of Cotes (that brilliant scholar of whom Newton said 

 that, "if he had lived we might have known something"), the ac- 

 complished master of words thought it not unmeet to record that 

 the fallen Professor, who had been snatched away by a premature 

 death, was only " the more attractive and lovely because the vir- 

 tues and graces which he joined to the highest repute for learn- 

 ing 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 Prof. 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 pre- 

 sence, owned the spell of a masculine mind which none the less 

 was feminine in the delicacy of its perceptions and the purity of 



* Prof. Henry took great delight in the acoustical researches which, 

 during the closing years of liis life, he made at sea, on board the steamer 

 Mistletoe, while it was in electricity that he won his first triumphs as a 

 scientific man. That his first love and last passion in science still filled 

 his thoughts in his dying moments was attested by the words which 

 «ven then fell from his lips, in sleep. 



