142 The American Geologist. February, 1892 
quette hampered the free flow of his criticism, or the exultant 
prophesy of the betterments of the future. All the fields of all 
knowledge were open before him. He could cull from them what 
suited his theme or his purpose. His soul rose within him as it 
expanded to embrace and express the grandeur of his thought, 
or to enforce the stepsof hisargument. His style was deliberate, 
logical or argumentative? full of comparison and illustration, sel- 
dom impassioned, graceful in delivery, rhetorical, oratorical. He 
was not a quick, impromptu speaker. His lectures had all been 
thought out, as to general trend, beforehand, but the particular 
phraseology, and the adapted illustration were the product of the 
moment. His success as a public lecturer was due to the com- 
pleteness of his knowledge of his themes, the freshness and 
originality of his conceptions and the graceful rhetoric with 
which he spoke. 
He was also a poet, ‘‘very much of a poet,” as stated by Prof. 
Harrington.* There is a tinge of poetic sentiment apparent in 
much of his scientific writing. Poetic comparisons, allusions, 
quotations, either directly metric or in prosaic form, are scattered 
through the more staid discourse, in such a manner that their 
author is revealed as one haying a lively poetic sense and a com- 
mand of the best expression. Had he chosen to clothe his scien- 
tific outreachings into undemonstrated science in measure, he would 
have given to the English language much of the high cosmical 
poetry which Goethe gave to the German. Most of his metric 
compositions, however, were confined to topics of personal and 
domestic nature, and some of them are particularly apt and 
touching. The following is from his poem delivered 15 July, 1872, 
on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his class, at Middletown, Ct. 
Oh, there is a life, within our life concealed— 
The scene of conflicts to no eye revealed— 
A shoreless depth, heaved in a starless night— 
Its billows swelling in resistless might— 
And in the compass of its throes we see 
The conscious proofs of immortality. 
Nothing could exceed the beauty of his short poem ‘lo my 
dear ones in Heaven,’ quoted by Prof. Harrington. 
In short, by his intimate knowledge of the higher relations of 
science to the good of man, and his sympathy with his nobler 
*University memorial address, p. 24. 
