,898 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
accompanied Prof. Edwards A. Park of that institution upon 
a prolonged European tour, then somewhat of a novel under¬ 
taking for Americans, involving many hardships as well as a 
considerable expenditure of time. 
The travelers left New York during the last week of June 
1842, in a sailing packet for Hamburg, where they arrived 
■early in August after an ocean voyage of forty-seven days. To¬ 
gether they made a leisurely survey of Germany; but then sep¬ 
arated, “in order to be forced to speak German altogether.” 
Butler continued his journey through Austria, Italy, Switzer¬ 
land and France—being for several months in residence as a 
.student at the University of Jena—and then went to England 
;and Scotland, reaching America towards the close of 1843. 
While abroad, he corresponded for the New York Observer , 
and after returning delivered in or near New England several 
hundred popular lectures upon his extended travels. 
He was soon engaged as supply in Congregational pulpits, 
first at West Newbury, Massachusetts, and next at Burlington, 
Vermont; but after six months in each parish became a pro¬ 
fessor and acting president at Norwich (Vermont) university. 
Holding this chair for but two years, during which he frequent¬ 
ly supplied pulpits, he returned definitely to the ministry (Oc¬ 
tober 1847),being successively pastor of Congregational parish¬ 
es in the Vermont town of Wells Biver and the Massachusetts 
town of South Danvers (now Peabody) ; and then taking a sud¬ 
den move westward to assume charge (November 18, 1852) of 
the First Congregational church in Cincinnati. In January 
1855 we find him professor of Greek in Wabash college, at 
Orawfordsville, Indiana; and at the close of the college year in 
1858 accepting a call to the then starveling University of Wis¬ 
consin, as professor of ancient languages and literature. It 
was not long before the people of Madison—in those days a 
rustic town of six thousand souls—began to recognize the abili¬ 
ties of the stranger, then in his forty-fourth year, as is evident 
from an item in the Wisconsin State Journal for the second of 
December: “Prof. Butler, who has recently become connected 
with the State University, is an eloquent and brilliant lecturer, 
