/. Peter Lesley. — Fraser. 135 
mellow voice was not heard) and when nothing of interest was 
before the Society, drew upon his stores of information in 
order that those who had taken the trouble to attend might not 
depart without profit. 
In 1872, on the reorganization of the faculty of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, he was elected by the trustees profes- 
sor of geology and mining, and dean of the faculty of science. 
In 1874 the state of Pennsylvania established a second geolog- 
ical survey and Lesley was named as director. The hundred 
volumes and thousands of maps and sections of this survey will 
be his most enduring monument. Every line of text and illus- 
tration in the survey passed under his eye and not infrequently 
he made alterations in both, — sometimes without the approval 
of the author and in such cases in disregard of his own vehe- 
ment protest against similar action of his former chief, H. D. 
Rogers: but he always believed such alterations absolutely nec- 
essary. 
The character of professor Lesley was composite, but whol- 
ly noble. He was really two closely united men ; the one, 
an artist and Schivarmcr to the tips of his fingers : a master 
of persuasive elocution, of incisive rhetoric, and of the subtle 
art of design with pencil and brush. He was an enthusiast 
and an optimist — all this by nature. But another man was in- 
tertwined with this natural man, viz., the artificial business 
man, whose duties it was to keep severe watch over the natural 
man's expressions and judgments, to reduce his speculations 
to the practicable, and to lower the tone of his professional ut- 
terances from inspiration to business. This man was often 
lamentably melancholy, undemonstrative and even cynical, yet 
from a trifle which happened to strike his mind in a certain 
way, the entire artificial man was thrown off in an instant and 
he was the genial, hopeful, natural Peter Lesley once more. 
Impressionable and emotional, as are all artistic tempera- 
ments, there was nothing sordid or base even in his faults, 
which were chiefly due to an abstraction which often made 
him oblivious of the present, and sometimes impaired his ap- 
preciation of the relative proportions — the mental perspective 
— of things. He was generous to prodigality towards others 
while careless of his own ease and comfort. "Plain living and 
high thinking" was the motto on which he moulded his life. His 
tall and rugged figure, imposing though disdainful of the em- 
