204 Memoir of Rev. John Prince, LL. D. 



scandal or gossip. During his long ministry, I do not believe that 

 he has ever been even susjoected of widening a breach by tale-bear- 

 ing, of raising a laugh at another's expense, or of uttering a syllable 

 to the disparagement of a single member of the community. All 

 the notices he took, and all the circumstances he related, in which 

 other men were concerned, were only such as could be made to 

 point a general moral, and illustrate a principle of human nature 

 without affecting any individual injuriously. What I have now said 

 will commend itself to his friends as a true and accurate feature of 

 his character, and it strikingly illustrates his judgment and p.udence, 

 the integrity of his mind, the tenderness of his feelings, and his strong 

 sense of justice towards all men. 



His passion for knowledge, receiving a particularly strong bias from 

 the manual occupation to which he served an apprenticeship, inclined 

 him, with peculiar interest, to the pursuit and cultivation of the sev- 

 eral branches of experimental natural philosophy. On the 10th of 

 November, 1783, just four years from the day of his ordination, 

 when 32 years of age, he communicated to the scientific world, his 

 improved construction of the Am Pump. His letter giving the first 

 account of it, addressed to President Willard, of Harvard College, 

 may be seen in the first volume of the Memoirs of the American 

 Academy. The present generation can form no conception of the 

 interest awakened by this admirable invention, not only in this coun- 

 try, but throughout Europe. His name was at once enrolled among 

 the benefactors and ornaments of modern science, and on that roll 

 it will remain inscribed until science itself shall be no more. The 

 philosophical journals of the day emulated each other in praising the 

 scientific research and profoundness of reasoning displayed in the 

 construction. The American philosopher was allow^ed to have sur- 

 passed all former attempts in the same department. His name is 

 recorded, by an eminent writer, in connection with that of the fa- 

 mous Boyle, among "those who have improved the instruments of 

 science and of whose labors we are now reaping the benefit."* The 

 machine is still called, by way of distinction, "the American Air 

 Pump," and its figure was selected to represent a constellation in 

 the heavens, and imprinted upon celestial globes. 



* Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, by George Adams— Lon- 

 don, 1799, vol. 1, p. 44— 54. Rees' Cyclopedia, Art. Air Pump. Analytical Re- 

 view, July, 1789. Nicholson's Journal, vol. 1, p. 119. The best account of the 

 American Air Pump is to be found in Dobson's Supplement to the Encyclopedia 

 Brittannica, Art. Pneumatics. 



