Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch. 27 



books from that library and to consult and study tliern at pleasure. 

 This inestimable advantage has made me deeply a debtor to the 

 Salem Athenseum ; and I do therefore give to that Institution the 

 sum of one thousand dollars, the income thereof to be for ever 

 applied to the promotion of its objects and the extension of its 

 usefulness." 



Lhave two remarks to make on this shigularly interesting'ex- 

 tract. In the first place, it seems to me there was something like 

 a special providence in the capture of that library, consisting of 

 such a peculiar class of books, by a Beverly vessel, and its being 

 brought into the port of Salem rather than any other port in the 

 United States. Here was apparent design, the fitting of means 

 to ends. The books came exactly to the place where they were 

 wanted ; to the only place, probably, in the country where they 

 were wanted. They came, too, at the right time, just in season 

 to be used by the person who could make the best possible use of 

 them, and to whom they were, above all computation, valuable 

 and necessary. If this be not an act of Providence, I hardly 

 know what is. 



The good Dr. Kirwan mourned, no doubt, over the loss of his 

 books, and not least of all that they had become so utterly mis- 

 placed and useless. He probably thought that the vessel which 

 contained them might as well have been wrecked on the coast of 

 Africa, and the leaves of his philosophical works employed to 

 adorn the heads and persons of the Caffres and Hottentots, a use 

 to which we are told " The Practical Navigator" was once put 

 by the inhabitants of one of the South Sea islands.* But had 

 the learned philosopher known that his lost library had supplied 

 the intellectual food for the growth of one of the greatest scien- 

 tific, men of his age, he might, perhaps, have become reconciled 

 to his loss.f 



* " It happened tliat among the few articles saved from the sliip, [the whale-ship 

 Mentor, of New Bedford,] was a copy of ' Bowditch's Navigator ; ' an article of 

 as little use as we can conceive any, one thing to have been at that place. But the 

 ingenuity of the females, who also have their passion for ornaments, tore out the 

 leaves of the book, and making them into little rolls of the size of one's finger, 

 wore them in their ears, instead of the tufts of grass which they usually employed 

 to give additional attractions to their native charms." — American Quarterly Review 

 of Holderis Narrative, Vol. XX, p. 25. 



t Since the above was written, I have learnt that the gentleman into whose 

 hands Dr. Kirwan's library fell, offered to remunerate hira for the loss which he 

 had sustained. He however declined receiving any compensation, and expressed 

 himself gratified that his books had fallen into such good hands. 



