'hi '■ ^^j!^5v\ -■•'"'^t;t;j>,-^ :9ir''M& ms^' w^^^^^/-'<^ (^a.^^^-^>^ ^^ s MEMORIAL OF ALEXIS CASWELL, D.D., LL.D. BORN JANUARY 29, 1799. DIED JANUARY 8, 1877. U>AK KASM MEMOIE: FROM THE N. E. HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL REGISTER, FOR JULY, 'is??; By WILLIAM GAMMELL. O 162 MEMOIR. The deatli of this beloved and honored educator took place at his residence in Providence, R. I., on the eighth day of January, 1877, at the age of nearly seventy-eight years. He had been a member ef the New England His- toric, Genealogical Society since 1870, and was an active promoter of its objects. His high character, his honorable services as a teacher of science, and the eminent positions which he so worthily filled, unite in demanding a somewhat extended notice of his life and career in the pages of the Register. Alexis Caswell was a twin son of Samuel and Polly (Seaver) Caswell, and was born in Taunton, January 29, 1799. His twin brother Alvaris is still living in a vigorous old age in Norton. Before the birth of the twins there were born of the same parents one sister and three brothers, and one sister and two brothers afterwards. The younger sis- ter died in childhood. All the others lived to mature age. The eldest brother and the twin brother alone remain. The family has resided in Taunton from the first settlement of the town. At the date of its incorporation in 1639, the name of Thomas Caswell .appeared in the list of its house- 6 MEMOBIALOF holders and proprietors. Like the other original settlers he probably came from Taunton, in Somersetshire, England, and his Avill was admitted to probate in 1697, which was undoubtedly the year in which he died. From him in the sixth generation the subject of this notice was descended in a direct line. His grandfather, Ebenezer Caswell, who was born in Taunton, June 30, 1731, married Zibiah White, the great-grand-daughter of Peregrine White, who was born on board the Mayflower while anchored off Cape Cod, Nov. 20, 1620, and who died in Marshfield, July 22, 1704. His ancestors, from the date of their settlement in New England, had been owners and tillers of the soil, and, as was to be expected, his own early years, were devoted to agricultural labors on his father's estate. As manhood approached, he soon formed the purpose of obtaining a liberal education in order that he might prepare for some profes- sion. For this the Academy in his native town afforded the facilities which he. required. He accordingly, in 1815, be- came a member of this institution, of which the Rev. Sim- eon Doggett was at that time the preceptor. In September, 1818, at the age of nineteen years, he entered the freshman class in Brown University. Among his classmates were William Allen Crocker and Samuel Leonard Crocker, of Taunton, who had been his fellow students at the Academy, and an unusual number of others whose names have since been well known to the public. Among them may be men- tioned the Rev. Benjamin Clarke Cutler, Isaac Davis, Thomas Kinnicutt, Solomon Lincoln and Jacob Hersey Loud. His college life was distinguished for industry, and on his graduation in 1822 he bore the highest honors of his class, and according to the usage, spoke the valedictory addresses at commencement. During this period, also, he experienced ALEXIS CASWELL. 7 that moral change which made him a genuine and earnest christian man, and which, more than any other event, shaped his entire subsequent life. In July, 1820, he became a mem- ber of the First Baptist Church in Providence, and of that church he continued to be a member so long as he lived, every year binding him to it by closer ties and more tender associations, till his character and influence came at length to be regarded as precious treasures by all his brethren. Immediately on completing his college residence he accepted an appointment as tutor in the institution now known as Columbian University, at Washington, D. C, an institution which was then in its infancy, having been founded only in the year preceding; and he entered upon his duties there in September, 1822. In the performance of these duties he spent the five following years. The presi- dent of the College was the Rev. Dr. Staughton, a Baptist clergyman from England, who had considerable reputation for eloquence and learning, and with him Mr. Caswell also studied theology and practised the composition of sermons. The years spent at Washington were years of earnest work, varied with occasional attendance on the debates in one or the other house of congress, and with vacation excursions into Virginia, to the homes of students who resided at the college. In one of these excursions he visited ex-President Madison, and also ex-President Jefferson, and shared the hospitalities of each of these venerable men. Public life at Washington fifty years ago was invested with an interest for an educated young man which it no longer possesses, and the debates in congress seemed then to have an importance wliich they have long since lost. The time to him passed quickly away, and he always looked back upon it as a profile able period of his life. It undoubtedly created within him 8 MEMORIAL OF the tastes and inclinations which led him to the profession that he adopted, and which controlled his subsequent career. In the summer of 1827 the finances of the institution with which he was connected became embarrassed, and Mr Caswell with others of its instructors withdrew from it. He immediately returned to New England in search of employment, intending probably to seek a settlement as a minister of the gospel. He was soon invited to visit Hali- fax, N. S., where a few families of culture and refinement, who had been connected with the Anglican church, were desirous of forming a Baptist church and maintaining wor- ship as a separate congregation. In this journey he was the companion of the Rev. Irah Chase, D.D., at that time a professor in the Theological Institution at Newton, Mass. The church was formed, and the services of Mr. Caswell proving acceptable, he was ordained as its minister on the 7th of October, 1827. Here he spent nearly a year, and here, as it proved, he began and ended his settled ministry of the gospel. In August, 1828, he received an intimation that his services would be required in Providence by the church of which he was a member, as assistant to the venera- ble pastor, the Rev. Dr. Gano, who had become disabled by ill health. He soon returned to Providence, arriving there just before the death of Dr. Gano. While temporarily sup- plying the pulpit of this church, the professorship of Mathe- matics and Natural Philosophy in Brown University became vacant by the resignation of the Rev. Alva Woods, D.D., and he was chosen to fill the vacant chair. The position was an honorable one, and was also in harmony with his intellectual tastes and his previous occupations. He immediately accepted the appointment, and the work on which he entered became the work of the remainder of his life. ALEXIS CASWELL. 9 He was now once more a resident at the place of his edu- cation, a professor in the college in which he had spent the years of his student life, and with whose history and sur- roundings he was familiar. He was in the thirtieth year of his age, and in the full vigor of his manly strength. The college, eighteen months before, had passed from the presi- dency of Dr. Messer to that of Dr. Wayland, who had brought to its administration great energy of character and rare enthusiasm for the work of education. He had estab- lished a higher standard of instruction and a more exact system of discipline than had before prevailed. The change was so marked that it for a time encountered no little opposition. Professor Caswell, however, gave to it his hearty support, and entered into the new arrangement with energy and zeal. His influence began immediately to be felt among those who were under his tuition and care. The college was at that time but imperfectly provided either with books or with the means of scientific illustration and experiment. Its departments of instruction were not fully organized, and new sciences had been added to its course of study before professors were appointed to teach them. He was always ready to assume any additional duties that were required to meet the emergency. In this manner, in addition to his own regular work, he at different times taught classes in chemistry, in natural history, in ethics and in constitutional law. The funds of the institution, too, were exceedingly inadequate to its wants, and he was soon enlisted in an enterprise for increasing them. In labors like these for the general prosperity of the University did he begin his career as a professor, and they were but a specimen of those that marked it to its close. He was always self- sacrificing and public spirited, and wholly beyond his 10 MEMORIAL OF special department of instruction, lie rendered services of great importance to the institution with which he was connected. No life is more uniform and quiet than that of a college instructor. He is constantly occupied with scientific or literary studies, and with the teaching of classes. He can seldom mingle in the excitements which lie without the sphere in which he lives. He has cares and annoyances, and, it may be, ambitions, all his own, but they are not like those of other men. He has few public relations compared with those of other professional men. The rule is now undoubtedly far less inflexible than it was fifty years ago, but it has not essentially changed. Such a life is still com- paratively without events, and is distinguished mainly by the uniformity of its current. Such was it in the case of Professor Caswell. Day succeeded day, and year followed year, and still he was at the same work of study and of teaching. In 1850 the style of his professorship was changed from that of mathematics and natural philosophy to that of mathematics and astronom}^, a portion of his former work having been assigned to another. Of the science of astronomy he was an assiduous votary, and though he had not the advantages of an observatory, yet with such instruments as he had at command, he was constantly scanning the starry heavens and watching the occultations and transits which they revealed. He also kept himself carefully informed of the progress made in the science, and was in frequent correspondence with several of its eminent promoters. In 1855 the presidency of the University became vacant by the resignation of Dr. Wayland, who had filled the office since 1827. Professor Caswell was now the senior member of the faculty, and had rendered important ser- ALEXIS CASWELL. 11 vices to the UniYersity and to the cause of education, and it was naturally expected that he would be chosen to fill the vacancy. In this expectation he probably shared. Another, however, was preferred, on the ground that certain advan- tages would be secured by calling to the position one who had not hitherto been connected with the University. The occurrence made no change in his devotion to its interests. He continued to discharge the duties of his professorship without any apparent disappointment, and he gave to the new president the same cordial support which he had given to his predecessor. In 1860 he went abroad with Mrs. Caswell, and spent a year in travelling in Europe. During his absence he made the acquaintance of many eminent men of science, visited several of the great observatories, and attended the meet- ings of some of the leading scientific associations, both of Great Britian and the Continent. Returning in 1861, he resumed his duties and continued them till the autumn of 1863, when he resigned the professorship, after a service of thirty-five years. This service had been almost un23rece- dented in duration, and had been in many ways productive of signal advantages to the University. He was greatly respected and beloved by the scholars whom he taught. His public spirit had aided in promoting and securing many improvements, and he had the happiness of seeing the insti- tution making constant progress during the period of his connection with it — a progress to which his own labors and character had largely contributed. The cessation of regular academic occupations was of course a very great change in his habits of life. He, however, soon supplied their place, and filled up his unaccustomed leisure with scientific studies and philanthropic labors of various kinds in the 12 MEMORIAL OF community. He had a share in nearly every important enter- prise of this character that was undertaken, and he always yielded readily to the claims which the higher interests of society are constantly making on the time and energies of generous-minded citizens. He also became actively con- cerned in the management of certain financial corj)orations with which his interests were connected, and was made the president of the National Exchange Bank, and also of the American Screw Company, both of which were established in Providence. In September, 1867, the presidency of the University again became vacant by the resignation of the Rev. Dr. Sears, who had held it for twelve years. No small difficulty was experienced in obtaining a successor. An election was made, but it was declined, and the vacancy was not finally filled till the following January, when Dr. Caswell was chosen president. He Avas now sixty-nine years of age ; but he was in good health, and the duties to which he was called were, for the most part, such as he had been familiar with during his whole professional life. His occupancy of the position, of course, could not be regarded as other than temporary, either by himself or by those who elected him. It was deemed a judicious arrangement for meeting a some- what critical emergency in the affairs of the University, and he entered upon it with a cheerful confidence in his resources. With the office, while he held it, no duties of instruction were connected, in order that his energies might not be overtasked. The experiment was not without its risks, and the success in which it resulted afforded a very gratifying proof not only of the facility with which he could resume, at a late period of life, the academic labors which he had laid aside, but also of the intellectual vigor and the ALEXIS CASWELL. 13 genial Spirit which years seemed scarcely to have abated. His administration was entirely creditable to him, and his venerable character and long services contributed to its success. He withdrew from the office in September, 1872, having held it four years and a half, and he left the Univer- sity in all respects in a better condition than that in which he found it. Its students had become more numerous ; its funds had been increased; a new professorship had been established, and an important enlargement had been made of its museum of natural history. The years of his presi- dency, added to those during which he was a professor, make the whole period of his services in Brown University thirty-nine and a half years — a period not equalled, save in a single instance, by any other officer of instruction in its entire history. In the year following his resignation he was elected a trustee, and two years later he was elected a fellow in its corporation, thus continuing his connection with its management to the end of his life. As appears from the foregoing sketch, the entire active life of Dr. Caswell, with the exception of the brief year of his ministry at Halifax, was spent in the study and teaching of science, a work eminently favorable to the culture of the intellect and the elevation of the character. Such a work is, of itself, a contribution to the interests of science, for it extends its influence over many minds, and trains a multi- tude of students to be its votaries, its promoters or its dis- coverers. Such may now be found among his pupils, whose first aspirations were awakened and encouraged by him. Neither of the sciences, however, which he was engaged in teaching was such as to invite him, in any special degree, to original researches of his own. If astronomy is an excep- tion, it is only with the aid of an observatory and the special 14 M E M O E I A L O F facilities which it affords, that such researches can be attempted with advantage. But he was an expert mathe- matician and a thorough expounder of the laws of mechanical philosophy ; and with the progress of astronomical science he kept up a minute acquaintance, and was exceedingly fond of its study. For this purpose he maintained a fre- quent correspondence with those who were prosecuting it in circumstances more propitious than his own. He was one of the early members of the American Association for the Promotion of Science, and often served on its important committees. He was President of this Association for a year, and delivered the customary official address at its annual meeting, held in Springfield, in 1859. He was also one of those who are named in the Act of Congress, approved March 3, 1863, which created the National Academy of Science. At the preliminary meeting of its members for organization, held in New York the following April, he was made temporary secretary and also chairman of the committee on the plan of organization. When the Academy was organized and its members were arranged in sections, he was assigned to the section on astronomy, geography and geodesy. He was also, at the same meeting, appointed on a committee created at the request of the Navy Department, to report upon certain questions relating to the method of preparing and publishing charts of winds and currents, and also of the sailing directions connected therewith. It was one of the objects of the Academy to give advice on questions of science when called upon to do so by the government of the United States. At the annual meeting held in January 1866, in accordance with an appointment previously made, he read a carefully pre- pared paper on the life and scientific services of the late ALEXIS CASWELL. 16 Professor Benjamin Silliman, a member of the Academy, who had died just before the preceding annual meeting. Very early in his career as a man of science, he began to keep a daily meteorological record, which he continued to the end of his life. These records were published every month in the Providence Journal, and compilations of them have appeared in the volumes of the Smithsonian Institution. He also, at the invitation of Professor Henry, the head of that Institution, delivered a course of lectures on astronomy in its hall, at Washington, in the winter of 1858. The published writings of Dr. Caswell are comparatively few, and these for the most part are scattered among the transactions of learned societies, or the scientific and literary periodicals to which they were contributed. He had no fondness for the preparation of text-books, though often urged to the undertaking in connection with some one of the sciences which he was engaged in teaching. Even the few papers which he published were prepared at the solici- tation of the editors of the journals in which they appeared. He of course wrote a large number of annual reports, for the University and for the various institutions, literary, charitable and religious, with which he was connected, and in which his services were very frequently put in requisition for this purpose. He published now and then a discourse prepared for some public occasion. He also wrote fre- quently for the newspaper press, and often discussed subjects in a series of articles which were thus presented to the public. Apart from publications of this kind, the fol- lowing list contains all those with Avhich his name is known to be connected : Oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Brown University in 1835. 16 MEMOKIALOF Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, an Article in the Chris- tian Review for June, 1836. "The Principle of Emulation" in connection with educa- tion, an article in the North American Review for October, 1836. On Zinc, as a covering for Buildings, American Journal of Science, April, 1837. Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, an article in the Christian Review for December, 1841. Four lectures on Astronomy, delivered at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C, in 1858. Address at the opening of the session of the American Association for the Promotion of Science, at Springfield, in 1859. Meteorological Observations at Providence, from 1830 to 1860, published in the Quarto Series of the Smithsonian Institution, vol. xii. Memoir of John Barstow, an article in the Historical and Genealogical Register for October, 1864. Memoir of Benjamin Silliman, LL. D., read before the National Academy of Science and published in its Annual Volume for 1866. Sermon on the Life and Christian work of the Rev. Francis Wayland, D. D., 1868. The Future of Africa, from the Baptist Quarterly, July 1875. From his character and services as a man of science we turn to contemplate him in his relations to the community and to the interests of philanthropy and religion. His services here have already been incidentally alluded to as signally honorable and useful. His natural benevolence was very strong, and this quality of his character was ALEXIS CASWELL. 17 heightened by his sense of religious duty to his fellowmen. He was interested in every enterprise that was designed to relieve the miseries or to elevate the character of the human race, or to bring them under the influence of true religion. In him the poor always found a friend and a benefactor. A teacher himself, he was a life-long promotor of popular, as well as of scientific, education. He was also enlisted in the efforts of those who were engaged in the abolition of war, and of those who were laboring for the benefit of the freed- men of the South, and scarcely less in the improvement of their brethren in Africa. Even before his days of leisure began, he generously shared in the labors and expenditures of the public charities of Providence, and he soon began to give to these charities much of his time and attention. His continued connection with the Boards of the University has been mentioned, and it did not fail to bring with it some special cares and duties. At the organization of the Rhode Island Hospital in 1863, he was appointed one of its trustees, and after faithfully discharging this trust for twelve years, he was, in 1875, chosen president of the Hos- pital, an office which he continued to hold to the end of his life. He performed for this important institution a great amount of work, and afforded it much valuable aid by his counsels. Such was the estimation in which his services and character were held by those who were associated with him in the management of the hospital, that a few of his friends have, since his death, endowed a free bed within its walls in honor of his memory, which is to bear forever the name of " The President Caswell Free Bed." He was also, for several years immediately preceding his death, one of the inspectors of the State Prison, where he often conducted religious services on Sundays ; and he was much interested 18 MEMORIAL OF in the questions relating to prison discipline, and in the well being of those whom this discipline concerns. The religious opinions and sentiments of Dr. Caswell were decided and earnest, and they blended gracefully with every attribute of his character and entered into all the pursuits and scenes of his life. Though they were asso- ciated with positive articles of faith and united him with a particular branch of the Christian Church, they were very far from being exclusive or narrow. They were derived rather from the Bible than from any school of theology. As was well said of him by his recent pastor at his funeral, " His secret life was nourished out of profound convictions, out of a perpetual communion with an invisible world and a living God. His were not occasional excursions into spiritual regions, but a constant walk with God. There was in him a beautiful, we may say, an uncommon combination of the spiritualities of a sincere religion with the activities, the interests, the joys of life." His religious faith and his scientific conclusions were never seriously at variance with each other. He believed that Nature and Revelation were alike, in their respective modes, manifestations of the charac- ter and will of God, and he did not doubt that the teachings of the Bible, when rightly interpreted, would prove to be in full harmony with the teachings of all true science. His faith in the Copernican system was scarcely greater than his faith in the ultimate prevalence of Christianity throughout the world. He believed it to be designed to become the religion of mankind. He was, therefore, an earnest advo- cate and a liberal promoter of Christian missions, as one of the most important agencies for reclaiming and improving the human race. He watched their operations and rejoiced in their successes in every quarter of the globe. He regarded A L EX'I'S CAS WE L L . 19 them as tlie grandest enterprise in CTiristian history, and as the. continuation of the work begun by the Apostles at the comrriand of our Lord himself; and he delighted to con- template their connection with the ultimate destiny of man as an immortal being. The life of such a man could hardly fail to be happy. His temperament was cheerful and his liealth almost uni- formly good. Though in early life he was wholly dependent on his own exertions, industry and prudence had secured for him a liberal competence. His relations to others were kindly and benignant, and his domestic life was singularly fortunate. He bore the trials and sorrows, from which no human lot is free, with serene composure and with devout submission to the Divine Will. He lived to nearly four- score years, and yet without seeming to be old. With his faculties scarcely dulled by age, with his children and grand- children around him, he received the consideration and respect which are always so readily accorded to those who have served well the generation to which they belong. He was called to suffer from no wasting disease, from no linger- ing decay of strength. He was withdrawn by only a few days of illness from the activities and duties in which he greatly delighted, and he died as he had lived, in calm submission to his Heavenly Father's will, and with an unfaltering faith in the life and immortality which are brought to light in the gospel. Dr. Caswell was twice married : first, on May 7, 1830, to Esther Lois, daughter of Edward K. Thompson, of Provi- dence, who died June 25, 1850 ; second, on January 31, 1855, to Elizabeth Brown, daughter of Thomas Edmands, of Newton, Mass., who survives her husband. Of the first marriage six children were born, of ^whom three died in 20 MEMORIAL. infancy, and three survive their father, viz. : Sarah Swoope, wife of James B. Angell, LL.D., president of the Univer- sity of Michigan ; Dr. Edward Thompson Caswell, physician of Providence, and Thomas Thompson Caswell, Paymaster in the Navy of the United States. MEMORIAL: PREPARED FOR THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND PUBLISHED IN ITS PROCEEDINGS. By Prof. JOSEPH LOVERING, OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. :»,T / ]'■(•) :> ■;: i : ;: V ( / i *.;;.< i .- «; 5: 'i y > d /.iiior.iii: '. ./. : On the Stli of January, 1877, Rhode Island lost, by death, an accomplished man of science, and one of her best citizens. Alexis Caswell was born in Taunton, Mass., on the 29th of January, 1799. His ancestors, on the father's side, were prosperous farmers, and were among the earliest settlers of Taunton. Thomas Caswell, of the fifth genera- tion preceding, came, according to tradition, from Somerset- shire, England. His will was admitted to probate in 1697; only fifty-eight years after the incorporation of Taunton. The grand-father of Alexis married Zibiah White, who was the great-grand-daughter of Peregrine White, the first born of the Pilgrims in America on Board the May-flower, Novem- ber, 1620. Alexis Caswell, after spending his early years upon the farm, was prepared for college at the Bristol Academy in Taunton. Little is known of his character and attainments at this time ; but, if the child is father of the man, he must have been amiable, docile, and full of high ambition. At the age of nineteen he entered Brown Univer- sity, over which Dr. Messer then presided. His course in college was eminently successful; and, at his graduation, in 1822, he received the first honors. From 1822 to 1827, he was connected with Columbian College, Washington, D. C, as tutor or professor of lan- guages ; at the same time studying theology under Dr. Stoughton, the President. In the autumn of 1827, he went with Dr. Irah Chase (professor in the Newton Theological Seminary fi-om 1825 to 1843), to Halifax, for the purpose of 24 MEMORIAL OF establishing the Granville Street Baptist Church in that place. His plans were changed, in consequence of an invi- tation which he received from the people to remain among them. He was ordained on the 7th of October, and settled over them as their pastor. Having preached to them accept- ably for a year, he received an invitation from the First Baptist Church in Providence in the summer of 1828 to assist the Rev. S. Gano, the pastor of that church. He had been in Providence only a few weeks, when he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Brown University. "With the exception of the time when he visited Europe, in 1860-1861, he discharged the laborious duties of this office for thirty-five years, to the complete satisfaction of the government and the pupils of the institution. Engaging in its instruction soon after Dr. Wayland's accession to the presidency, he was his strong support throughout an able and vigorous administration. In many respects, one was the fitting complement of the other, and respect and confidence were felt equally on each side. In 1840, while Dr. Wayland was absent in Europe, Professor Caswell discharged the duties of President ; and, during the last three years of President Wayland's official term. Professor Caswell, under the title of Regent, relieved him from all the anxieties of discipline, bringing to this delicate duty qualities df mind and heart which secured good order without alienating the affection of the students. When Dr. Caswell resigned his professorship in 1863, he was sixty-four years of age ; and had fairly earned the leisure and the retirement which are the reward and luxury of old age. But he was still young in the best sense of the word ; young in his feelings, in his habits of industry, in his intellectual faculties, in the good constitution which he had ALEXIS CASWELL. 26 inherited from his father, (who died in 1851 at the advanced age of ninety-one), and young in his passion to serve his day and generation to the end. Accordingly, he engaged in active affairs with a vigor and success which younger men might well have envied. Refreshed by five years, not of repose, but of a change of his intellectual diet, he again obeyed the voice of his Alma Mater, which called him, in 1868, to the Presidency of Brown University ; Dr. Sears, his predecessor, having been summoned to an urgent and diffi- cult service by the strong voice of patriotism and humanity. Although Dr. Caswell had been moving for a few years outside of the University domain, his heart was always there. He knew, better probably than any one else, the wants, the resources, and aims of the institution ; and, notwithstanding that he stood on the brink of threescore years and ten, he brought to his high position the vigor, the freshness, and the hope of youth. Among the various needs of the University which he pressed upon the attentiori of the corporation, in his annual reports, was the establishment of an astronomical observatory, sufficient for the purposes of instruction if not of research. Soon after leaving the office of president, in 1872, Dr. Caswell was elected into the Board of Trustees, and, in 1875, he was chosen a fellow of the corporation. In 1841, he received the degree of D.D., and, in 1865, that of LL.D. ; both from his own University. For nearly fifty years, he had been associated with it, either as student, teacher, president, trustee, or fellow : and in each and all of these relations, he had reflected back all the honors which he had received as a favorite son. Earnest, devoted, and generous himself, he had the power and the disposition to enlist others, of larger means, in the same cause. None of its distinguished children 4 26 MEMORIALOF has exceeded him, perhaps none has equalled him, in length of service and fidelity to its sacred trusts. The special function and the high delight of Dr. Caswell were those of an educator. When he began his profession of teacher, he shared the fate of his contemporaries in older and richer universities in a new countiy. He was responsible for all the instruction given in mathematics and natural philosophy ; in fact, he alone represented the scientific side of the institution to which he was attached. Afterwards, a professor of chemistry, and at a much later period professors of natural philosophy or mathematics, were associated with him; so that, in 1850, his own duties were restricted to astronomy, from 1851 to 1855 to mathematics and astronomy, and after 1855 to natural philosophy and astronomy. It could not be exjDected of any man who was required to scatter his energies over a variety of subjects, which in a well appointed university would tax the best efforts of half a dozen professors, that he should have much leisure or dispo- sition for original investigation in one direction. It was enough, and more than enough, for the most laborious and ambitious teacher that he should maintain a high standaid of scholarship in the wide field which circumstances forced him to cultivate. Much has been written during the last few years in regard to the endowment of scientific research. But this is a luxury of which no one dreamed in Dr. Caswell's day ; and its strongest advocates at the present time are not in agreement as to the best way of accomplishing the desirable result. Mr. Huxley may be correct in his opinion that a moderate amount of teaching will not check but stimulate the zeal of the original explorer. But no one will think that a mind, wearied by excessive teaching, distracted by a multiplicity of topics, and prevented from rising in his ALEXIS CASWELL. 27 instruction to the Alpine heights of science by the dulness or indiffeience of the average student who despairs even of reaching the table-land, is a congenial soil for advancing human knowledge. Under such circumstances, one of two things must happen — either the work of teaching will be neglected, or that of original research will be left to men more favorably placed. It must not be inferred from these remarks that Dr. Cas- well was contented to remain stationary. At no time, since his scientific life began, has it been an easy task even to keep in sight the few who are steadily advancing the outposts of science ; and, of late, it is quite impossible without con- centration. Dr. Caswell's predilection was for meteorology and astronomy. During the period of twenty-eight and a half years (from December, 1831, to May, 1860), he made, with few interruptions, a regular series of meteorological observations, at the same spot on College Hill, in Provi- dence. These observations, precise as regards temperature and pressure, and including also much information on winds, clouds, moisture, rain, storms, the aurora, &c., have been published in detail in Vol. XII. of the "• Smithsonian Con- tributions to Knowledge," and fill 179 quarto pages. Dr. Caswell continued his observations in meteorology with unabated zeal, to the end of 1876 ; covering, in all, the long period of forty-five years. It is to be hoped that the latter portion of the series will be published soon under the same favorable auspices as the former. If it be true, as the Astronomer Royal of Greenwich believes, that meteorology is in too crude a state to claim the rank of a physical science, such labors as those of Dr. Caswell are among the means of making it one. And, certainly, at this moment, the interests and hopes involved in the subject are beyond 28 M E M O R I A L O F anything which Dr. Caswell could liave imagined when he began his work. Dr. Holyoke's meteorological observations in Salem, (published in the Memoirs of this Academy,) began in January, 1786, and continued to March, 1829. Mr. Hall's observations in Boston, (also published in the Memoirs of the Academy), embrace a period of forty-nine years, viz.- from 1821 to 1865. The observations of Dr. Hale, also made, in Boston, between 1817 and 1848, are preserved in the archives of the Academy for future publication. These various series, arranged in sequence, may answer the question, — What changes has a century brought to the climate of New England ? So far as the observations are contemporaneous, they will indicate the amount of influence to be ascribed to local causes or instrumental defects. In 1858, Dr. Caswell delivered four lectures on astronomy at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. They were of the liighest order of popular instruction, and, on that account, were thought by Professor Henry worthy of being permanently preserved in his printed report for that year. Whatever may have been, or may still be, the conflict between science and theology, there is no conflict between science and religion ; least of all in Dr. Caswell's mind. He says in his introductory remarks : " The mechanism of the heavens, in proportion as we comprehend more and more of its vastness and seeming complexity, bears witness to the enduring order and harmony of the universe, and points with unerring certainty to the superintending agency of an intelligent and infinite Creator." And again : " We spon- taneously pay the tribute of our homage to all great achieve- ments. But in no case is homage more just or more enduring than that which all cultivated minds pay to him who stands as the minister and interpreter of Nature, and makes known ALEXIS CASWELL. 29 to US her laws and her mysteries. Many such adorn the annals of astronomy." Dr. Caswell joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its second meeting, which Avas held at Cambridge in 1850. Although he made no formal contribution to its proceedings, he was a frequent attendant upon the annual meetings, took part in the discussions, and always gave dignity to its deliberations by his character and his words. In 1855, the Association had its ninth meeting in Providence ; and the hospitable reception then given to it, and the hearty appreciation felt for its labors, were largel)^ due to his influence. The members expressed their gratitude for this service by electing him as the vice-president for the next meeting, in Montreal. But the death of the President elect, Professor J. W. Bailey of West Point, called Dr. Caswell to the chair. At this large representation of the science of the Continent (the only meeting which has taken place outside of the limits of the United States), he sustained the credit of his country on a foreign soil, by his dignified presence and his manly eloquence, . to the great satisfaction of all his associates. At such a time and in such a position. Dr. Caswell appeared to great advantage. By his dignity, his address, and his courtesy, he was eminently qualified to be a presiding officer ; and he was gifted with a fluency, a felicity, and a weight of speech which rose to the requirements of the occasion. At the next meeting of the Association in Baltimore, the president and vice-president elect were absent, and every hand was uplifted in favor of placing Dr. Caswell again in the chair. Having been called to preside over two of the most brilliant gatherings of this scientific body, he was expected to discharge the last duty of a retiring president by giving the address at Springfield. 30 MEMOEIAL OF After showing that science had an intellectual value far transcending its practical use, he discussed the objects, the opportunities, and the hopes of science in America ; drawing his illustrations chiefly from astronomy, partly because it was his favorite study, and partly because it had the start of all others in material resources. In this excellent address, admirable in thought, spirit, and style. Dr. Caswell reiterates his conviction that genuine science is not unfriendly to religion. " We participate in no such fear. We wish explicitly to exonerate this Association from all suspicion of undermining, or in any manner weakening, the foundations of that faith which an apostle says was once delivered to the saints. We cannot admit the opinion that any progress in science will ever operate to the disparage- ment of that devout homage which we all owe to Him in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways. Science, on the contrary, lends its sanction and adds the weight of its authority to the sublime teachings of revela- tion." In this connection, two other scientific publications of Dr. Caswell may be mentioned : I. On Zinc as a covering for buildings ; " American Journal of Science," 1837. II. Review of Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens ; " Christian Review," 1841. Dr. Caswell was elected an Associate Fellow of this Academy in 1850. He was one of the original members of the National Academy of Sciences. He wrote for that body a Memoir of that worthy pioneer in American Science, Benjamin Silliman, which has been printed in one of its volumes of Proceedings. In this retrospect of the life and labors of Dr. Caswell, he has been seen almost exclusively in his professional relations as the student and teacher of science. And here his mind ALEXIS CASWELL. 31 look more delight in ranging over a wide field than in dissecting some single flower or tracing the path of a soli- tary molecule, although that may be a microcosm in itself. He could not have become one of Berkeley's minute philosophers. He was no specialist, though he was never superficial. If he was not himself an original discoverer, he understood and admired the discoveries of others, and led others to do likewise. At one time he taught Butler's Analogy at the university, and with as fresh an enthusiasm as if that alone had been the chosen work of his life. And wherever there was a gap in the means of instruction, he was the person thought to be fitted to fill it. His whole nature revolted at the suggestion of becoming a book-worm or a secluded student. He was emphatically a man of the world, though not of it. He was interested in trade, manu- factures, and finance. He was a good citizen, and took an active part in promoting the industrial, intellectual and moral welfare of his city, his State, and the whole country. His sympathies were deep and generous. Always welcomed in the circles of the refined and educated, he will be no less missed in the homes of the poor and the unfortunate. His heart and mind and strength were liberally expended in the administration of the public charities of the city and State. Dr. Caswell was an earnest speaker, and a clear, warm, and vigorous writer. To his publications, already mentioned, may be added : 1. <P H K oration in 1835. II. Review of WhewelFs Bridgewater Treatise ; " Christian Review," 1836, III. Article on Emulation ; " North American Review," 1836. IV. Address at the funeral of Rev. J. N. Granger, 1857. V. Memoir of John Barstow. VI. Sermon on the Life and Christian work of Dr. Francis Wayland. 32 MEMORIAL. Truly was it said of Dr. Caswell, at his funeral, that nature did much for him, but that grace had done even more. Firm and earnest in his own religious convictions, inflexible in his own peculiar theology, he had no taint of illiberality in his intellect or his heart ; ever abounding in that Christian charity which thinketh no evil of any who conscientiously worshipped the same God from a different altar. He had mingled in the affairs of practical life more than usually happens to an academic career, but the purity, the integrity, and the simplicity of his character were superior to its surroundings ; and, to the end, he seemed as much in place in the pulpit as if he had never left the profession of his early choice. There was no austerity in his goodness ; hence it attracted those who could not have been driven. Sweet in temper, cheerful in disposition, gentle, affectionate, affable, hospitable, he was happy in his life, and even more happy in his death. After his long day, in which he had not labored in vain, his sun went suddenly down in a cloudless sky. And behold the end of such a man : it is all honor, and affection, and peace. The press, the univer- sity, the church, and the State, have borne witness to the excellence of his character and the usefulness of his life. DISOOUESE DELIVERED BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF BROWN UNIVERSITY, JUNE 19, 1877. By JOHN L. LINCOLN, LL.D., PROFESSOR IN BROWN UNIVERSITY. Mr. President and Brethren of the Alumni : — We are here to-day to do honor to the memory of a good man, who was very dear to us all. We come as a fraternity of scholars to the home of our early studies to commemorate the virtues of a departed brother, an elder brother, a paternal friend, — a true and loyal son of our Alma Mater, Avho was crowned alike in his youth and his age with her highest honors, and who, after a long career, of faithful labor performed in her service, in promoting the interests of learning, education and religion, has finished his course, and serenely passed to his final rest. As we greet each other at this returning season of reunion, and renew the fellowships and memories of former years, how we miss that benignant presence which so long has been wont to shed such a cheerful air over all our assemblies I Alas ! that no more is to enter here that erect and gracious form, fitting shrine of the upright and benevolent spirit that dwelt within it; no more shall shine upon us that kindly face with its sunny smile ; those lips which have so often discoursed to us words of mild wisdom and good cheer, are closed to all human speech, and the beauty of that life, on which we have loved to gaze, catching from it incentives to every virtue, has gone forever from our sight, and lives for us now only in the remembrance of grateful hearts. But, my friends, is it not good to know that in such remem- brance, he is yet living himself, although dead, and long will continue to live? This remembrance it is ours to cherish 36 M E M O E I A L O F and perpetuate to-day, rather than to awaken afresh the sense of grief which we felt when we first heard of his death. Five months have already gone since that word fell upon our ears, " Dr. Caswell is dead ; " since on that soon succeeding January day we followed his mortal remains to the grave, and amid the chill winter air hopefully gave them to the trust of earth. In this interval, time and reflection and the discipline of life have been doing their appointed healing office ; and even as in the kindly changes of nature that cold January air has yielded to the gentle breath of spring, and now to the warm, rich atmosphere of these days of June, so the first sharp sense of personal bereavement has softened and mellowed into tender memo- ries of all that he was, and all that he was to us, and thoughts of gratitude for the gift Ave had in him, so great and for so long ; and thus as we gather here, while we are conscious of the void which has been made in our academic circle, we will give the hour not to mourning, but to grateful commem- oration. For myself, in attempting this service to which you have called me, I do not forget that elsewhere it has already been well and worthily done. In other places, where the influence of our departed friend has been felt, affectionate tributes of respect to his memory have been paid. And I am aware that I must needs follow only with unequal steps in the path of those, our brothers and friends, who, when the event of his death had just occurred, were the first to give fitting expression to the general sentiment it awakened, describing with eloquent pen the usefulness of his life and the worth of his character, or with eloquent voice saying over him, in the church where in youth his religious vows had been heard, and where, by the blessing of God, they had been amply fulfilled even to ripe old age, their words of ALEXIS CASWELL. 37 tender eulogy, and. of benediction and farewell. And yet — if in this place and in this presence, the very fittest of all for this service, if here, the place of his education and of ours, where during the years of nearly half a century he studied and taught and counselled and labored with the full measure of his intellectual ability, and with all the affection and the sympathy of his generous nature — if here we were to be silent of him, where his image still seems to linger and walk among us, no memorial word to say, though it were only a repetition of what has already been said, surely we should feel that we were untrue to him and to ourselves, and to our University, the cherishing mother of us all. No, my friends, we are discharging a grateful office at once of academic duty and of academic love ; we are trying too to discharge one of the best of offices of good letters, to which we have here been trained, when we endeavor to set before us the life and character of our venerated instructor and brother, and to lay to heart the lessons which they teach. We go back over a period of nearly sixty years to reach the time when our departed friend, who was so intimately associated with all these academic scenes during the greater part of his long life, looked upon them himself for the first time — when, on an early day of September, 1818, he first entered these grounds, afterwards so familiar to his steps, and presenting himself as a candidate for admission to the Fresh- man class in the examination room in University Hall, or, as it was then called, the "College edifice," registered his name as Alexis Caswell, son of Samuel Caswell, of Taunton, Massachusetts. He was then a young man of nineteen, having been born on the twenty-ninth day of January, 1799. Hither had he come from an humble but happy home, where he had been reared under influences most propitious, as our 38 MEMORIAL OF New England annals abundantly show, to the development of native talent and of the noblest qualities of character. Let us look back to that early home of his, with its inmates and scenes, before we go on with his college life and all that followed it. He came of a genuine New England stock. His father was descended, on the paternal side, through a worthy ancestry of Taunton farmers, from Thomas Caswell, one of the first settlers of that town ; and on his mother's side he had Pilgrim blood in his veins, being a descendant in the fourth generation from Peregrin«i White, who was born on board the Mayflower, in November, 1620, and derived his name Peregrine from his having been the first child of English descent born in these parts, then so foreign to the Pilgrim fathers. He had in him some of the qualities which might have been expected from such an origin ; a nature rather severe, with good sense, a clear intelligence and a strong family feeling. I have read many letters written to this father by his son Alexis. They are models of dutiful affection, but they are imbued with a sense of filial awe which belongs to the best days of Puritan family life. His mother was a woman of native refinement, quite in advance of her surroundings, and of a sweetness and gentleness of nature, which seems to have passed into her son ; her life went on, too, in her family under the quiet control of a deep piety, and reached out beyond it, a blessing to all the neigh- borhood. Her husband survived her for more than thirty years, but her place in his heart and home ever remained unfilled ; and I have been told that he never spoke of his lost wife to his children with " a steady voice or an undim- nied eye." In the home of such parents our friend grew up to boyhood and youth, one of a family of nine children ; only two of whom now survive, one of these a twin brother ALEXIS CASWELL. 39 of Alexis, who is living in a vigorous old age on his farm not far from the old Caswell homestead. Here in a New England farmer's home he was trained to those habits of self-denial and honest labor, which invigorate the body and quicken the faculties of the mind, and build up a manly character. In after-life, when talking to his children of these early years, he used to tell them, that his father's two chief heroes were Washington and Franklin, and that he fed and nurtured his boys with " Poor Richard's Maxims " and the memories of the virtue and valor of the Father of his country. Also, that it was his custom to look sharply after such an education as his children could get at the district school ; and in the long winter evenings, when the family were gathered about the capacious fire-place, he was wont to put hard questions to his boys of what they had learned, and to set them to the solving of arithmetical puzzles of his own making. Doubtless these home lessons had their influ- ence in strengthening the desires which early stirred in his son Alexis of obtaining a liberal education. These desires ripened to purpose and action ; and, his worthy father consenting, he entered upon a course of study preparatory to college. This course he pursued chiefly at the Bristol Academy, in Taunton, under the instruction of the Rev. Simeon Doggett, who graduated at this College in 1788. The academy was far from his father's house, and our aspiring student had a long five miles walk every day, in winter's cold and summer's heat, to get to school in the morning and home again at night. A pleasant reminiscence of that period he especially loved to recall ; that there was a certain cluster of pine trees near by the road where, in the summer days, he always turned aside to rest him under the friendly and fragrant shade, and at the same time to con 40 MEMOKIALOF over his lessons in the Latin grammar. We may believe that in those school walks he was less consciously studying other and larger lessons than those of his Latin grammar or other books or speech of men. Nature was ever about him as he walked, declaring the glory of God in the heavens and in all the works of His hand ; before his eyes she spread her ample page with all its pictured teachings of sky and wood, and field, and hill and vale, and in all the varied aspects of the seasons, in the gray, sullen air of winter, with its waste of snows, in the grace of summer, and in all the rich glow of autumn. Here were lessons, large and unbought, for the opening mind of the young student, filling it with stores of precious knowledge, and, perhaps, also then first quick- ening it to the observant study of the forces and laws which govern the diversified phenomena of the outward world. These years of study thus passed away, and brought him to that September day in 1818, when he came to Providence and asked for admission to college. A classmate of his has given me, in a few touches, a view of him, as he appeared when he saw him then for the first time, which, I am sure, will interest you all. He says, that when awaiting the ordeal of examination, he was greeted by an athletic, bright-looking young man, to whom he felt himself strongly attracted by the kind manner with which he met him. He felt at first sight an influence going out from the stranger, which inspired his confidence. There was a kindness of heart which glowed in the face, and its warmth was felt in the grasp of his hand. Who would not recognize our Caswell in this sketch of that young man sixty years ago? It is not strange that that meeting was the beginning of a fast friendship that continued through all those sixty years, "unchanged, undimmed by the lapse of time." Others ALEXIS CASWELL. 41 there were who entered college with him, and who then, or soon after, formed with him like intimate relations of life- long friendship. That was a class — the class of 1822 — which was " distinguished for the number of conspicuous men it contained, as well as for the warm personal friendships which have always bound its members to each other." Of these members only nine now survive. Let me pronounce their names as they stand in our Triennial ; and many years yet may they continue to belong to the roll of our living graduates : William Barry, Joseph Smith Covell, Samuel Leonard Crocker, Isaac Davis, Joseph Whitney Farnum, Solomon Lincoln, Jacob Hersey Loud, John Pierce and Edward Seagrave. Some of them are with us here to-day. We bid them welcome, doubly welcome, for their own sakes, and for the sake of their classmate, whom they seem to bring with them to us from those distant years. I am indebted to the sketches which they have given me, diawu by their own friendly memories, for such views as I may now present of that classmate's college life. In them we see him as conspicuous among his fellows for a strong and vigorous mind, directed by a serious purpose and generous love of excellence to the largest attainments of which he was capable. He had the gift for labor and intent study, that patient mental application, which is at once a mark of ability and a pledge of success. It was his habit to perform all college tasks as well as he was able. But while he made honorable attainments in the ancient classics, and by atten- tion to the rhetorical exercises was favorably known as a writer and a speaker, yet he more readily won distinction in scientific than in literary studies. In the mathematics he rose to eminence as a scholar in the first year, and subse- quently held a like rank in natural philosophy. Later in the 42 M E M O E I A L O F course he was especially interested in ethics and in meta- physics, and he gained the high place he held in his class by his proficiency in these studies, no less than in the mathe- matical. But he was no more admired for his intellectual superiority than he was loved for his genial social qualities. He was ever drawn to glad intercourse with his companions ; and the page of no book, however loved, had greater charms for his eye and his heart than the face and the society of a friend. He entered as heartily into the play of college life as into its work ; and it is said that he excelled in it as well. The tradition comes down to us that he could wrestle successfully with the strongest men on the college campus, and that he was a match for the best in all other athletic sports. The exercise of these social qualities he kept, how- ever, under the control of a prevailing earnestness of purpose ; and he passed through the temptations of college life, to which men of genial natures and popular manners are especially exposed, with no blemish upon his good name. But it was not till about the middle of his collegiate course that he came into the experience alike of the moral restraints and the peaceful freedom of that Christian faith which we have always associated with his subsequent life. There was a day in the spring term of his Sophomore year which he was wont to count as his spiritual birth-day. It was in a time of unusual religious interest in college, one of those remarkable seasons which sometimes visit college and other communities, when the verities of Christian truth come home to men's minds with unwonted power and assert themselves as supreme in all human thought and action. It was at such a time that he met the question of personal religion as it is presented to all men in the New Testament, and answered it, through the mercy of God, in a believing ALEXIS CASWELL. 43 acceptance of Christ as a Saviour and Lord. Often has he told me of those experiences of his college days ; how he was conscious of new motives to study and to all living, how all life seemed invested with a new and immortal significance, as he felt himself to be a renewed child of God, a redeemed disciple of Cluist, and consecrated to his service. In July of that year, he was baptized in this city by Dr. Gano, and received into the communion of the First Baptist Church, of which church he continued to be a mem- ber to the end of his life. Such are some of the chief aspects of our friend's college life. When it was near its close, " it was the general feeling of the class," as one of its members writes me, " that Cas- well would have its highest honors on the day of graduation ;" and I find it modestly mentioned in the last letter which he wrote home from college to his father, that the Faculty had appointed him to deliver an oration at Commencement with the valedictory addresses. We may believe that he acquitted himself with credit as he trod the Commencement stage on that day, when for the first time he stood as a speaker on this spot, where in the coming years he was so often to stand, on many an occasion alike of the church and the college. Very natural and very pardonable it has been for many a young man, on a like eventful day of his life, to indulge for a brief hour in ambitious visions of the great and good things he is destined to reach as he peers out into the future, that stretches away all bright and alluring before him. But if it had been given on that Commencement day to our then youthful friend, himself all unused to the play of fancy, to be told by the lips of some friendly seer what was awaiting him, as he may have gazed down the long vista of the future vears ; how soon he was to return as a teacher 44 MEMORIALOP to the University, where now he was staying his farewells as a student ; that he was to see its new fortunes, then just rising under bright auspices, move onward through more than a quarter of a century under a strong and sure guidance into ever enlarging ranges of usefulness and fame ; new instructors coming up from within itself to unite with ability and zeal in increasing its power as a place of discipline and culture, and new benefactors, some of them kindred in blood and others kindred in spirit to him whose liberality had given it a name, and afterwards richly honored that name by yet more munificent gifts, and all now emulous of their predecessor in adding to its endowments ; its domain thus opening out and widening far beyond its former narrow limits ; new buildings erected upon its grounds and furnit;hed with ample resources of science and letters for a larger and better education ; the wise provisions for its adornment rendering it with the passing years more academic in its appearance ; the trees planted in its soil lifting themselves up into stately trunks and wide-spreading branches, and lending to the whole spot, already favored by nature, more and more the aspect and air of classic shades ; and if he had been told that he was to stand by the side of the distin- guished President of the University in that auspicious era of its history, and to be one of his principal counselors and friends and that by and by, after bringing aid to another prosperous and able administration of the affairs of the College, he should himself succeed to the presidency, thus rising from the ranks to the post of chief ; and that on retir- ing from the honorable discharge of those high responsibilities it should be granted him still to do good additional service in its councils in his declining years ; and that ere his eyes should close on these familiar scenes, he should see, and ALEXIS CASWELL. 45 partly under his own superintendence, the foundations laid and the walls arise of a noble edifice, destined to receive within its capacious spaces the accumulated stores of learn- ing, which no one more than himself had labored to gather into the garners of the college, as its most precious wealth ; — ^if this or something like this had then in prophetic whispers reached his ears, how would his always sober mind have turned away from it all, as a strange and idle dream. And yet all this, and more than this, is history for us to-day, as we review his now completed life. But before he begins that life-work, he has to pass through additional years of preparation. At his graduation he was expecting to spend his life in the ministry of the gospel, and with this end in view he received from the church to which he belonged a formal approbation of his design to pursue a course of theological studies. But he was soon appointed to a tutorship in Columbian College, in Washington, D. C; and having accepted this appointment, he entered upon the duties of the ofiice in January, 1823. His services in this position were so highly valued that in 1825 he was elected to the professorship of the ancient languages. The institu- tion in which he thus began his career as a college instructor, had been established only a year before under the direction of the Baptist General Convention of the United States, with special reference to the training of young men for the Christian ministry. Though subject to many fluctuations in its history, it has since done good service in academic as well as professional education ; at the present time it has large endowments and an able Faculty, and under the name of Columbian University takes high rank among the learned institutions of the country. It was the fortune of Professor Caswell to be in those early professional years one of a 46 MEMORIALOF circle of aspiring young men, who afterwards became eminent in their chosen pursuits. William Ruggles, who was his college friend, was already there as a Professor, and remains there to this day, one of the oldest and most honored of the many who have gone forth from the walls of Brown to become college instructors ; also Robert Everett Pattison, afterwards so well known as pastor of the First Baptist Church in this city, and later as President of Waterville College, now Colby University; Thomas J. Conant was also there, just beginning that career as a linguist, which has since become so illustrious, and fortunately for the interests of American Biblical scholarship is not yet completed ; also James D. Knowles, a native of this city, where, in his youth, he gave promise of that high distinction as a writer and a scholar, which he lived to fulfill, but who was suddenly removed by death, when in the full maturity of his powers, from the midst of his most useful labors as Professor of Sacred Rhetoric and Pastoral Duties in the Newton Theo- logical Institution. We have the testimony of the two surviving members of this academic circle, that Professor Caswell was in those years an able and successful teacher in the studies, both classical and mathematical, in which he gave instruction. He commanded the respect of his pupils by his talents and his knowledge, and won their confidence and love by the kindly interest which he showed in all their progress and welfare- While engaged in his immediate professional labors, he pursued a course of theological studies under the direction of the President of the College, Dr. William Staughton, who had a high reputation as a theologian and an eloquent preacher. He also diligently pursued the study of Hebrew under the instruction of Dr. Irah Chase, then a professor in ALEXIS CASWELL. 47 the theological department of the institution. There, too, having received license from the church of which he was a member, he began his course as a preacher, sharing with other members of the Faculty, the duty of conducting the Sunday academic service in the College chapel, and also preaching occasionally in the pulpits of some of the churches of Washington. His sermons at that time, as described by those who heard them, were didactic and practical, and simple in structure and expression. They were carefully written, but delivered without the use of manuscript in the pulpit, and with a calm earnestness of tone and manner, which carried the conviction to the hearers that the speaker was in the possession, by personal faith, of the truth he was preaching, and longed that they should share with him, by the same means, such a precious possession. These pulpit services, with the studies which they required, were preparing Professor Caswell for a year of ministerial labor which was near at hand, and was to be one of marked interest and usefulness in his life. In the summer of 1827, having resigned his professorship, he returned to New England. In the following September he accompanied Dr. Irah Chase, who had become Professor of Biblical Theology in the Newton Theological Institution, on a journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia, whither Professor Chase had been called to assist in the formation of a Baptist church. The circumstances of this call to a city so distant, and the capital of a British province, were somewhat peculiar. A considerable number of the citizens in Halifax had, on account of a change of religious views, withdrawn from the communion of the English Church, and had adopted Baptist sentiments. They had built a chapel, and had begun to hold divine service in it, and they now desired 48 MBMORIALOF to be united in church fellowship, as a company of baptized believers. As the Baptist denomination then held a very humble place in Halifax and in the province, they were obliged to look abroad for the needed ecclesiastical aid, and accordingly sent to Newton to solicit the offices of Professor Chase, who was well known as an American Baptist theo- logian and minister. Professor Caswell being then on a visit to Newton, assented to the request of his former theological instructor to accompany him on this ecclesiastical mission. Having assisted in the services which were held at the formation of the church, and the dedication of their house of worship, he yielded to the earnest solicitation of the people to remain for a time in Halifax, and labor among them as their minister ; and as it seemed needful for such a service that he should be ordained, he received ordination on Sunday, the 7th of October, and immediately entered upon his ministry. Thus, only ten days after his arrival in a city and among a people till then wholly unknown to him, he was exercising the functions of an ordained minister. But he sufficiently explains such a fact in a few words of a letter, which he wrote at that time to his father. " I must tell you," he says, "that I never met in any place with so cordial a welcome as here. There are Christians here who have opened to me their hearts and their homes." The simple truth of the matter was, that though he had come among strangers, he directly found himself among Christian brethren and friends. They desired and needed a spiritual teacher and guide ; their wants touched and opened wide the warm sympathies of his own Christian heart; it was just such an opportuiiity as he coveted, in which his love of doing good in the care and cure of souls might find scope for exercise. It proved to be a ministry fruitful of good to ALEXIS CASWELL. 49 himself and his people. It was one which laid under contri- bution all the resources he could command, both intellectual and spiritual ; for though the church was not large, yet it united, especially in the persons of its leaders, intelligence, culture and social consideration with a simple and sincere piety, and an earnest desire for growth in Christian knowledge and experience, and in Christian service. There are surviving members of that company of disciples in whose hearts is yet fragrant the memory of the services of him whom they love to speak of as their affectionate young pastor, their eloquent young preacher. Rev. Mr. Caswell; to whose burning Avords in the pulpit, and earnest counsels in their homes, they trace back their first religious impres- sions or their quickening to a truer and better Christian living. I am inclined to think that we, who have known only his quite unimpassioned ministrations in subsequent years, when he would come from his scientific and profes- sional labors of the week to what is called an occasional supply on the Sunday, have an inadequate idea of his warm and persuasive pulpit manner in those early days, when, with all his time and thoughts and energies devoted to continuous work as a parish minister, he was wont to preach to his own people from a full mind and glowing heart, the truth which he had studied and prayed over with direct reference to their immediate wants. His successor in the care of the church, and who was then one of his parishioners. Rev. Dr. E. A. Crawley, writes me that he counts " it a precious duty to contribute, any aid, however small, toward a record of his friend's ministerial labors." He says that " he was a popular and attractive preacher, and that his discourses, which were written, but preached without the use of notes, attracted full and often overflowing houses." 7 50 MEMOEIALOF In his pastoral relations he was no less useful. There his power of sympathy and his kindly address, together with his ease and tact in personal religious intercourse, at once increased his influence with the people, and by giving him a better insight into their daily life, enabled him to adapt his ministrations more perfectly to their wants. His ministry thus exercised was attended with a continuous religious interest in the parish. A large congregation was gathered, and from it accessions were made to the church. The church grew also in Christian character and usefulness, as well as in numbers, and became, as it continues to be to this day, a source of spiritual good to the community in which it was established. While Professor Caswell was in Halifax he was invited to take the Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Phil- osophy in Waterville College; but not feeling himself at liberty at that time to leave the work in which he was engaged, he declined this invitation. He had not, however, been inducted by any formal service into the pastoral charge of the church to which he ministered, nor had he made any arrangement for permanent settlement; his ministry only continued from month to month, in accordance with the wishes of the people, and with his own sense of duty and his growing attachment to the work. But toward the end of July, 1828, he was invited by the First Baptist Church, in Providence, to supply their pulpit during the month of August. Rev. Stephen Gano, or Dr. Gano, the name by which he was so widely known-»-and then and yet a bright and venerable name — had recently resigned the pastoral care of that church, after a most fruitful ministry of thirty-six years ; he was now very near the end of his long and beneficent life. Accordingly Professor Caswell left Halifax ALEXIS CASWELL. 61 amidst the regrets of his people, tempered however by the hope that he might return and settle with them ; with some expectation on his own part of such a return, but yet with a painful feeling that he was perhaps sundering pastoral relations to the church to which he had become strongly attached. The call to Providence seemed to him a call to country and home, a call to do service for the church of his early love, and, as it proved, of his later, his life-long love ; and it was a call which he obeyed. But soon after his arrival in Providence a quite unexpected but decisive turn was given to his plans and to his whole life. He was offered the Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Brown University, which had just been made vacant by the resignation of Rev. Alva Woods, D. D. He accepted the offer and was elected Professor at the meeting of the Corporation in September, and entered upon his duties with the beginning of the academic year. And now, after those preparatory years, he has on him the robe of full manhood, and has come to this College and to this city to do the good work of his life. In the six years since his graduation, the University had undergone great changes. The President of his college days. Dr. Messer, had resigned the presidency two years before, and none of his own college instructors were now in active service. President Wayland was new in his office. His administration was just above the horizon, and though here and there a dark portent had been discerned, yet the heavens were all bright with signs that foretokened its rise to the ascendant. It was a fortunate time for Professor Caswell to begin his career. I may add that it was a fortunate event for Dr. Wayland that in Professor Caswell one was called to his side, -destined to enter into the most intimate personal 52 MEMOBIALOF and official relations with him, and to lend him most efficient and loyal aid through the whole period of his government of the college. The events of Dr. Wayland's administration, together with the virtues and services of his life, are famil- iar to us all ; and if they ever need to be freshened in our memory, we have them embalmed and treasured up with a pious and scholarly care by his distinguished pupil, Professor George I. Chace, in his commemorative discourse pro- nounced before the Alumni at the Commencement in 1866. It belongs to the service, which has been assigned to me, to touch the history of that administration only so far as to illustrate the share contributed by Professor Caswell to its usefulness and renown. ^ In all the noble cares and unwearied efforts of President Wayland to promote the interests of the University, there was no. one of his associ- ates on whom he more fully relied and to whom he was more largely indebted for cooperation, than Professor Caswell. To his good sense and well-balanced judgment, and especially to his sincerity and integrity, and his disinter- ested fidelity, he could safely turn in every new emergency, and in the security of such qualities repose every new counsel and measure, with a calm confidence of sympathy and support. These two men, venerated and loved by so many of us as the pupils of both, by all of us as Alumni and friends of the University, how they were one in personal friendship of each for the other, how one they were, as united friends, in their common and long tried attachment to our Alma Mater, as they watched and worked together for all that concerned her welfare and good name during a period of nearly thirty years ! What a rich and beautiful study is here of exalted friendship, of the union of good men in promoting precious interests of society! Thus it was ALEXIS CASWELL. 53 that Professor Caswell came to be associated with all the great movements which emanated from the mind of Dr. Wayland for the elevation of the character and reputation of the College, in the increase of its endowments, or the enlargement of its means of education and culture. To enumerate all the services which he thus rendered would require us to traverse the whole of that era of the fortunes of the College. A characteristic, and, perhaps, sufficient illustration of this part of my theme may be drawn from his labors in behalf of the library, which he always and most justly deemed to be one of the commanding interests of the institution, and vitally connected with all its other interests. By his personal solicitations, a large part of the subscrip- tions were procured which constitute the present library fund. For twenty-three years he was a member of the library committee, for eleven 5'^ears its secretary, and for four its chairman. These labors, begun thus early, were continued to the end of his life, in the last year of which he was a member of the committee for the building of the new Library. I have been naturally led to mention these more general services of Professor Caswell before speaking of his labors in his own department of college study and instruction. He was at first chosen Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and for several years he was responsible for all the scientific instruction of the College. In 1850, the style of his professorship became and afterwards continued to be that of Mathematics and Astronomy ; his professional labors were thus given to mathematics and to departments of the science of nature. But I think it must often have occurred to those who knew him well, that this bent of his life was determined somewhat by circumstances, and not exclusively 54 MEMOBIAL OF by predominant tendencies of his mind. We have seen that for four years he was occupied as a professor with instruction in the ancient classics, and his success in teaching those studies seemed to show that he might have attained distinc- tion, if he had been devoted to their pursuit. Indeed, for the Latin language he cherished a fondness throughout his life, and I have often had occasion to observe at our term 'examinations with what eager interest he would listen to recitations from his favorite Latin authors, and how that pleasant smile of his would come over his face as he drew out by a question the fuller meaning of some word, or the poetic or literary force of some fine passage. He had also strong native tendencies to ethical and theological inquiries ; and when his mind moved at will, it seemed to incline readily to such inquiries, and the studies to which they lead. It^ was the fortune of my class, and of classes before and after us, to have his instructions in Butler's Analogy ; and I think we must be assured by our recollections of those valuable hours, that however much he was wont to insist professionally upon the superiority of demonstrative reason- ing in respect to the certainty of its conclusions, he was no less alive to the sovereign authority of probability as the guide of human life in its gravest concerns. That great argument for the defence of religion which he then used to unfold so clearly and enforce so earnestly as a Christian teacher, was familiar to his thoughts and his lips in all subse- quent years ; and I have been informed that at the scientific meeting at Montreal in 1857, at which he presided, he astonished an English clergyman who made some allusion to a passage in the Analogy, by at once quoting the whole passage from memory, without a word of deviation from the well-known peculiar style of that work. Of Professor ALEXIS CASWELL. 65 Caswell as a mathematician and a student of science, it does not become me to speak in critical detail with confidence in my own judgment, as my pursuits as a teacher have lain in a province so remote and so different ; but I suppose that those of"*Tis that are best qualified to judge will agree in the opinion, that he fully developed in his professional life, those unusual mental aptitudes which he discovered in his college days for. the ready comprehension and knowledge of mathe- matical truths, and of their manifold applications in those great progressive sciences to which the mathematics are subsidiary and fundamental. Though he did not by original thought make contributions to the science of quantity, he was a well-read and learned mathematician ; he had studied and mastered the works of some of the greatest writers of the science, and was conversant with the results of their researches. But while it was not his fortune to employ the mathematics as an instrument of discovery, he main- tained in practice as well as theory, the established view of the value of mathematical studies as a means of intellectual discipline. His opinions on this subject were fully unfolded in the discourse whieh he delivered before the Rhode Island Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, on " The Mathemati- cal studies as a Branch of Liberal Education." This discourse well illustrates the cast and habit of his mind ; it is clearly and strongly conceived, the thoughts, though not striking for their originality, valuable for their justness and good sense, and their elevating influence, presented in an exact method and with a straightforward sequence from the premises to the conclusions, expressed with force and energy of diction, and lighted up in some passages with a glow of feeling, which revealed Avhat we all know so well, that the mathematical writer had in him a heart, whose current. 56 MEMORIAL OF flowing ever fresh and warm, could not be chilled or dulled by the nearest presence and touch of the abstractions of quantity and number. Professor Caswell was well versed in the applied mathematical sciences, and strove by assiduous study to keep himself abreast with their extended and s^\^ft progress in their various lines of investigation and discovery. But the department for which he had a special predilection, and for which he had by habit a growing mental fondness, was that oldest and grandest of the sciences of nature — the science of Astronomy. Here was the centre of his choicest scientific thinking and service ; here he was at home as a laborious and successful student ; and it was a true and satisfying home for his mind, where its noblest cares and most studious labors were employed, where the scientific and the ethical tendencies of his nature met and united in har- monious action. His intellect found amplest scope in the far-reaching applications of mathematical science to the vast celestial spaces, and the movements of the multitudinous worlds which traverse them on their boundless journeys through all but eternal periods ; and his devout soul was lifted by these sublime studies above and beyond the universe itself, to adoring contemplations of its Creator and Ruler, whose glory it all declares, whose are the laws that bind and hold in harmony all its complex phenomena, whose messengers are the stars, and " whose lofty works are ever- more glorious as on the first day." In the Avinter of 1858, Professor Caswell delivered a course of four lectures on astronomy at the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. They were deemed by the Secretary of that Institution of so high value that they were published in an appendix to the annual report for that year. We are all aware of his contributions to meteorological ALEXIS CASWELL. 57 research. These consist in a series of observations made, with few interruptions, during a period of more than forty years. Abstracts of these were made by him every month for the Providence Journal; but they were published in full for a period of nearly twenty-nine years, from 1831 to 1860, in the twelfth volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, covering nearlj^ two hundred quarto pages. Professor Henry, the Secretary of the Institution, wished to have them in permanent form, " being impressed with the service which they would render to the progress of meteoro- logical research." Professor Caswell's attainments in science gained him an honorable rank among the scientific men of the country. In 1850 he was elected Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A memoir of his life and services was read at the recent annual meeting of the Academy by Professor Lovering of Harvard College. He was a member of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Science, and took active part in the discussions at its annual meetings. He presided at the meeting of the Association which was held in Montreal, in 1857, where, to quote the words of Professor Lovering, " he sustained the credit of his country on a foreign soil by his dignified pres- ence and his manly eloquence, to the great satisfaction of all his associates." At the next meeting of the Association, the President and Vice-President being absent, he was unanimously chosen to fill for a second time the place of presiding officer. At the meeting in Springfield, in 1859, he delivered an address before the Association as its retiring President. I have recently read this address, and I am glad to have my impression of it confirmed by the opinion of the eminent Professor from whom I have already quoted, who 8 58 M E M O R I A L O F describes it as " admirable in thought, spirit and style." If I may expand a little the Professor's words, I would say that the address is especially admirable for the Cln^istian spirit which pervades it, giving additional dignity to the thought and a finer virtue to the style. I love to think of our ven- erated instructor as standing before that assembly of the scientific men of the land, and maintaining and illustrating the doctrine that true science is the minister and interpreter of religion and of the Christian revelation. "I shall not hesitate," he says, " to declare here my profound conviction that true science is in harmony with the Bible, rightly interpreted. Any seeming discrepancy which baffles the resources of ingenuity to reconcile, is but the varying ripple in the mighty swell of the ocean, whose exact form no power of analysis can express, and no skill of pencil can sketch." I will add as another illustration of the estimation in which Professor Caswell was held among scientific men, that on the establishment of the National Academy of Sciences by Congress in 1863, he was one of the fifty men of science in the United States, who were selected by the government as the original corporators. Professor Caswell's power of communicating knowledge as a teacher was not fully equal to his faculty of acquiring it as a student and a scholar. He made the impression on his classes of being a Professor in his sciences, able and learned, and imparting his abundant and well-ordered know- ledge with ready speech and ample illustration ; but he did not so much excel as a teacher in stimulating the minds of his pupils, and in moulding their intellectual character. If my revered instructor was listening to me now, — and I confess I have all the while the thought that though invisi- ble, he is yet one of my hearers, — I think he would not chide ALEXIS CASWELL. 59 me for saying that he did not always hold us to so strict an account for the vigorous action of our own minds upon our tasks ; and that sometimes in his own thorough interest in his subjects, he would be drawn away by a certain class of questions into excursions of remark, somewhat remote from the educating province of the hour ; but certainly we should all say that these excursions were alwa3's interesting and useful, though perhaps most enjoyed by men in the class who were least ambitious of the opportunities to recite. But how ready he always was with ability and resources to meet the real wants of pupils who were willing and resolved to learn ; and how patient and considerate with those whom nature had not blessed with mathematical endowments. And I think that he showed his good sense as well as his kindness in treating with indulgence such men in the class as had to study the mathematics even in spite of nature and their stars. Those ingenious devices and inventions in the class-room, which among students, belong to the "idols of their tribe," never seemed to disturb Professor Caswell. He saw and knew them, and often when their authors were least aware of it, but he did not always visit them with animadversion ; as Tacitus says of Agricola, omnia scire, non dmnia exsequi ; often he disposed of them with a judicious pleasantry, which was generally quite efficient ; but in more serious cases, the look of that benignant eye and troubled face, resting upon the offender, was a severer censure than the gravest lecture from a man of more austere nature. He could rebuke, however, if need be, and that with severity, too, but it was a rebuke that came from the heart; you felt that it was made in the interests of truth; it stirred no hard feeling, and left no stinging remembrance, as when one is pierced by 60 MEMOKIALOF an arrow of censure which has been tipped with satire ; in short, it was a moral rebuke, and wrought its wholesome moral effect. Indeed, in the class-room and in all the interior discipline of college, a large part of which devolved upon him, a chief source of his success was in his fine personal character. You never felt as a student that he held only official relations to you ; he never met you with professional stateliness or reserve ; the man in him was far more and better than the mere professor, the man of large heart, of generous sympathies and warm affections ; as you came into his lecture room or study, you felt that you were in the air of a genial humanity, in a friendly, humane presence, that inspired your confidence and awakened your love. An unspeakable blessing is it for a young man in his college days to have such a teacher ever moving before him and near him, and insensibly distilling into his developing nature and life the fine virtues of a true character ; whose words of counsel and warning, of admonition and encouragement, are not drawn out from a sense of official duty, but flow forth spontaneously from a living fountain of goodness and kind- ness in the heart. I can recall an instance of his personal influence ; how he quite won the heart of a student, who, in his first college term was summoned home by the tidings of his father's sudden illness, and reached the door where he had gone out only two months before with that father's blessing upon his head, now only to join the procession that was bearing him to the grave. When that youth came back to college, the first and great grief of his life heavy on his heart. Professor Caswell came directly to see him at his room, which was next to his own ; and as he took his hand so tenderly in his own, and spoke to him in those low tones of his, such comforting words, the fatherless boy felt rising ALEXIS CASWELL. 61 in him the hope that he had a teacher near by him, who might be his paternal friend ; and such I have reason to know he was and has been through a long series of subse- quent years ; and in turn there has been cherished for him in a grateful heart, a reverent, filial love. Professor Caswell came to his work as a college teacher from amid the active duties of the Christian ministry ; and that sacred calling, in its essential spirit and habit, he never forsook, but lived in it to the end of his professional career. To his habitual conception, religion and education were indis- solubly united, and the Christian religion was the soul and the sacred presiding genius of a place of education. To his view, a college was a place not merely of a liberal education but of a Christian liberal education ; not Christian, however, in the sense of giving theological instruction, or only of training men to be of service as pastors and preachers, though he never forgot that leading design of the fathers of this college, and other colleges of New England ; but Chris- tian in the more catholic sense of educating and rearing up Christian men for Christian service in whatsoever vocation and business of life. It was the belief of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, that the function of a teacher, no less than of a parish minister, was the cure of souls. It was in the spirit of such a belief that Professor Caswell lived and labored as a college teacher ; he must needs be a Christian teacher, if a teacher at all, and a Christian minister in the large sense of that word, because he was a Christian man. As we recall his image as he walked before us amid the daily scenes of life, we see that he was always deeply concerned to promote the spiritual welfare of his pupils, assured, as he was, that only by holding right personal relations to their Creator and to the Saviour of the world, through the renewing grace of 62 MEMOEIALOF the gospel, could they be prepared as educated men to serve their generation by the will of God. He was wont to attend the religious meetings held in college. Sometimes he preached in the College chapel, usually on such occasions drawing from his devout study of the Word, and from his own rich Christian experience some practical truth, Avhich he clearly set forth and affectionately enforced upon his young hearers, striving to confirm the faith of believers and to win the thoughtless and indifferent to the obedience of the gospel. In times of unusual religious interest he labored with a truly pastoral care for the spiritual good of the students, guiding thoughtful minds, rejoicing with such as had come into the faith and hope of a Christian life, and exhorting all to be true to their convictions of duty in such days of visitation. These labors into which he entered the more gladly from the remembrances quickened in him of the experiences of his own college days, have been in turn gratefully remembered by many of his pupils in their own subsequent years. But his religious influence was not one of times and seasons ; it was daily and habitual, the outgoing of his own inner life ; and the teaching of his lips was hallowed by the example of his own devout living. In the midst of such occupations and services. Professor Caswell spent a little more than thirty-five years. Having labored by the side of President Wayland to the end of his administration, he continued to serve the College with a like fidelity and zeal during eight years of the eminently success- ful administration of President Sears. In the academic year of 1840-41, during the absence of Dr. Wayland in Europe, he discharged the duties of President pro tempore. At the Commencement, in 1841, he received from the University the well-merited honor of the degree of Doctor of Divinity. ALEXIS CASWELL. 63 One year, beginning with June, 1860, he devoted to travel and observation in Europe, visiting England and the Conti- nent, and spending the winter in Italy. In England and Scotland he received marked attentions in scientific circles, especially from distinguished mathematicians and astrono- mers, connected with the universities and the royal observa- tories of those countries. In November, 1863, when at the age of sixty-four, Dr. Caswell resigned his Professorship. But some years were yet to be added to this already long term of official College service. In the winter of 1868, he was summoned by the voice of the Corporation to the Presidency of the University. He was then at the verge of three score years and ten ; never insensible to the kind consideration of his friends, he felt the summons to be an honor ; gladly, however, if he might have consulted his own ease, perhaps his own judg- ment, would he have preferred to spend in the retirement, which he had sought, such additional years as it might please Heaven to grant him. But his beloved Alma Mater as represented, not only by the Corporation, but also by the Faculty, and by the graduates, a great majority of whom had been his pupils, called him to this new and responsible service ; and he accepted the call. He was elected President, February 7th, 1868 ; and was inducted into office by the Chan- cellor of the University, in the presence of members of the Corporation, and the Faculty and the undergraduates, in Manning Hall, on the morning of February 17th, being the first day of the second College term ; and then conducting, as he had done so often in the years of his Professorship, the usual chapel service, he entered upon these new official duties. Dr. Caswell was cordially welcomed to the post of chief by 64 MEMORIALOF the Faculty by whom he had been highly esteemed in former years as senior Professor, and he enjoyed their confidence and cooperation throughout his administration. It was gratifying to the graduates that the new President had been chosen from their own number, and on the basis of long and well-approved service in their own College. We all remem- ber that President Caswell opened the exercises of his first Commencement by gathering the Alumni about him at a meeting in Manning Hall, to consult and plan together for the promotion of the interests of the University of their common love. It was thus under his auspices tliat the present Alumni Association was formed; and he was unanimously elected as its first President. As President of the College he proved himself to be fitted to administer its affairs in a somewhat pecular crisis of its history ; to unite more closely its friends, and to set it forward in a new career of prosperity. Under his Presidency its resources were enlarged and new departments of study were organized and provided with means of instruction. The Museum of Natural History, which is becoming a valuable interest of the University, owes its origin and establishment to his well ordered plans and efforts. He administered the Presidential office in a spirit of manly independence, and stood firmly, at whatever cost of personal convenience and personal interest, to the responsibilities which devolved upon him. To dwell upon the manner in which he conducted the discipline of the College would only be to illustrate from a higher point of view what I have already said of his career as a Professor. In his intercourse with the students, he so tempered his official dignity with the courtesy and kindness of a friend, silently drawing all into a reciprocal relation of Christian gentlemen, that he was universally esteemed and loved. ALEXIS CASWELL. 65 At the commencement in 1872, Dr. Caswell retired from the Presidency, having resigned the office at the end of the preceding 3'^ear. It was an interesting and impressive public service with which he closed his long official career. It had been the custom of the first three Presidents, Manning, Maxcy and Messer, to deliver a Baccalaureate address to the graduating class on Commencement Day. By the request of the class of 1872, President Caswell revived this good custom, though in a new form, and preached a Baccalaureate sermon to the class in the First Baptist Meeting-House, on the afternoon of the Sunday preceding Commencement. The circumstances gave to the occasion a peculiar interest. The President was now in his seventy-fourth year ; he had himself graduated just fifty years before ; he had been con- versant with two academic generations, and was now to minister parental counsels to a class belonging to a third generation. ' That class, too, had begun their undergraduate course when he was just beginning his course as President ; and they were now to go forth together from the College walls. True to the spirit and tenor of his long life, the venerable speaker chose for his theme the words of the wise Hebrew preacher : " Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." I cannot better close what I have had to say of him as a college Professor and President, than by quoting the closing words of that Baccalaureate sermon : " Receive, my young friends, from one who just fifty years ago stood where you now stand, whose life has been passed among college students, and who has watched your own progress with parental solicitude, receive I pray you each one, as from a father, as a parting word, this precept of my text, 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.' " QQ MBMORIALOF I have been speaking of the good which Dr. Caswell accomplished in his professional life. But he was more than an academic man ; within no seclusion of learned study could such a nature and character as his have been content to dwell. He was born for companionship with his kind ; he loved the air and light of the world of human life, and his sympathies ran forth and touched it with a living contact on every side. He belonged to this community no less than to the University ; and he watched and followed, as Avith a personal concern, its fortunes and affairs. There is hardly an institution among us established for the promotion of general intelligence, or for the relief of suffering and want, or for the moral and religious elevation of the people, in which he has not borne a leading part, either in its origin or in its after history. He was one of the pioneers in counsel and labor in the establishment of our system of public instruction, and was for many years a member of the School Committee. He was one of the earliest friends of the Providence Athenseum, and for eight j^ears was one of the Board of Directors, and for eight years more was Vice- President of the institution. He was one of the original Trustees of the Rhode Island Hospital, and a member of the Building Committee. He was elected President of the institution, November, 1875, and still held that office when he was taken from among us. Alas ! that before the day arrived for this commemorative service, another President, his successor, must be snatched away, in the vigor of his age and his fine intellectual powers, and in the midst of valuable public services, an eminent citizen of this community and graduate of this College, my classmate and friend, Dr. Thomas Perkins Shepard. With the interests of this noble charity, Dr. Caswell was identified from the beginning, and by his counsels and efforts he ever assisted in shaping the ALEXIS CASWELL. 67 course of its influence. We have all heard, and I am sure with admiration, of the tribute paid to his memory by cer- tain friends of the Hospital, who, by their contributions, have endowed a free bed in the institution, to be called the " President Caswell Free Bed." All honor to these liberal friends for so worthy a memorial, which, while it enlarges the usefulness of this benevolent institution, perpetuates in it the name of one who was an example of devotion to its interests. But for our friend the one supreme organization on earth for the good of man was the church of Christ. In this was the home of his best affections, the scene of his best thoughts and labors. In it, all was unspeakably precious in his eyes ; its ordinances, its services, its communion, its agencies for the spread of the gospel and the redemption of the world. This cherished habitude of his soul he found expressed in those verses, which he loved to read and sing, written by Dr. D wight, who was also President of a New England college, and in early life a mathematician ; " I love thy kingdom, Lord, The house of thine abode ; The church our blest Redeemer saved With his own precious bloo<l. For her my tears shall fall. For her my prayers ascend ; To her my cares and toils be given. Till toils and cares shall end. Beyond my highest joy I prize her heavenly ways, Her sweet communion, solemn vows, Her hymns of love and praise." In this house of God, where for more than half a century he was a devout worshipper, in the church, in communion 68 MEMORIALOF with which he here worshipped, everything seems to recall his image, even to speak his name. That place, where he used to sit, and, as one who Avas once his pastor has told us in public, sat ever as a loyal hearer ; the pulpit where so often he himself ministered the word ; the communion table where so often lie broke the bread of remembrance, and drew his brethren in devotion nearer their remembered Lord ; the Sunday School, where he was a teacher and superintendent; the prayer-meetings, which he attended even in the midst of busiest professional labor — these and all else that belongs to the life of the church, how filled they are with hallowed memories of him ! The useful ministries of his own Christian life went on through the ministries of five succes- sive pastors, all of whom in their turn had in him a wise counsellor, a willing helper and a sympathizing friend. In the absence of the pastor, or when the church was without one, the cares of the pastoral office rested largely upon him, and they were taken up and borne with a serene fidelity. In every emergency, and especially in any season of sorrow, to him all looked, nor looked in vain, for the needful counsel and aid. When the church was bereaved of their beloved pastor. Rev. Dr. Granger, that good man of brave heart and high purpose, in whose sudden death the interests of religion, far beyond his own parish, and the cause of Christian mis- sions at home and in distant lands, suffered a. like heavy blow, it was his, while he mourned as a near friend, as well as a parishioner, to stand before his brethren, and speak the words of comfort and instruction, and set forth the life and services of the departed minister. And another similar service we here and now recall. When that unspeakable calamity befell not only this church, but also the community and the Christian world, the death of the great and good ALEXIS CASWELL. 69 Wayland, his intimate personal friend, as we have seen, his colleague in the labors of the church as well as of the Col- lege, it was his again to stand on the same spot, and give voice to the sentiment of grief which pervaded that vast mourning presence, and with an eloquence of thought and feeling that came from a large and true heart, and from a mind quickened to its utmost, and all in earnest with his theme, to rise as he fully did, to so trying and exigent an occasion, and unfold and hold up to contemplation and emulous study the grand character and life of that servant of God. While Dr. Caswell was thus abundant in labor in his own church, he was also actively interested in union with his brethren of other churches, and not only of his own denomination, but of other communions as well, in all efforts to advance the progress of religion and the interests of humanity. With the simplicity and forgetfulness of self which constitute the dignity of all Christian service, he mingled freely and cordially with his brethren in all assem- blies for the promotion of the general good, counting all as fellow-servants with himself of one ]\Iaster, and counting him only as first and chief Avho was willing to be last of all and servant of all. And beyond the bounds of our own City and State, he was alike interested in all great Christian enterprises, and in the institutions organized to insure their suceess. He was among the earliest of his denomination to recognize the need of an educated ministry, and of institu- tions of sacred learning, to act in friendly union with the College in securing such a ministry for the churches. During all his life. Dr. Caswell was one of the most efficient friends of the Newton Theological Institution. He was the third President of its Board of Trustees, succeeding in that office the venerated Dr. Sharp ; and for many years he bore 70 MEMORIALOF an active part on the Board of Trustees, and on Committees of Examination, as well as by liberal contributions, in pro- moting the usefulness of that seminary of learning. But no enterprise of the Christian church was so dear to his heart as that of foreign missions. He was conversant with the origin of the missions of his own denomination, as well as of other denominations, and not only in this country, but in other lands ; and with the zeal of a student and the faith of a Christian he followed them on their march of beneficent progress over the heathen world. In this great theme his piety moved on in harmony with certain aptitudes of his mind, as well as with some of his favorite studies. He had a remarkable geographical talent, by which he readily comprehended and remembered the relations of countries to one another, as well as their own features of land and water, and soil and climate, and also the manners and customs of their inhabitants ; and with this talent he had a peculiar fondness for books of travel ; especially was he versed in the recent literature of African travel, and the last work of the latest writer you would be sure to find on his table, with the maps and illustrations spread out before him. But never were these talents, original and acquired, so quickened and aglow in action as when under the inspira- tion of the missionary spirit, and never did he bend to learned book or new map with so enthusiastic an interest, as when he was tracing^ out on the world's surface the lines made by the peaceful victories of the religion of Jesus, the Master's prayer the while on his lips, " Thy kingdom come," and His last command in his heedful ear, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." He attended, whenever it was possible, the annual meetings of the Baptist Missionary Union, in which he bore a prominent ALEXIS CASWELL. 71 part. He was chosen President of the Union at its meeting in 1867, and was reelected in 1868, and presided at the memorable annual meeting held the next year in Boston. That office has been filled by good men in other years, but never more worthily than by him at that time ; and his brethren saw in their presiding officer a Christian man who united with a manly utterance and maintenance of his own convictions the exercise of that charity, which " hopeth all things, endureth all things," the "charity that never faileth." After his resignation of the Presidency of the University, Dr. Caswell was granted some remaining years of life, which, while relieved from the pressure of daily official cares, yet went on to the last in an uninterrupted discharge of various duty. He had reached old age, but it was a ripe and vigor- ous one ; it was quite what Tacitus calls cruda ac viridis seneetus ; rather I may say, it quite corresponded to Cicero's picture of old age, in that charming dialogue which our friend loved to read. It brought no infirmities of body or mind, it withdrew from no active pursuits, it gave exalted pleasures and occupations, it imparted new dignity to the countenance and more weight to the character ; and while it was not far from the earthly end, it opened, all the nearer, visions of a better life to come. At the meeting of the Corporation, in which he retired from the Presidency, he was chosen a member of the Board of Trustees, and in 1875 a member of the Board of Fellows ; so that it was his fortune to lend his active coiiperation to a third college administration ; and we have heard in this place the grateful acknowledgement of his successor, that he was his " most cordial supporter, his trusted friend and his confidential adviser." He continued to have a full share in the manage- 72 MEMORIAL OP ment of the various institutions with which he was connected. In these last years he was also one of the Inspectors of the State Prison ; where, besides the labors which he performed for the good of the convicts, he often preached to them and instructed them in the Sunday school. In these years, he seldom appeared in public as a speaker except when some special occasion seemed to draw him to such a service. One such occasion I recall, which occurred in the last year of his life, when he had reached the age of seventy-seven ; an occasion which for us, as sons of this College, has an academic interest. It was a public meeting held in Boston at the Music Hall to do honor to the memory of the great ^philanthropist, Dr Samuel Gridley Howe, who went forth to the heroic labors of his life from the walls of Brown, in the class of 1821. Dr. Caswell was asked to be present and to speak of Dr. Howe's college life, three years of which he knew as a fellow student and friend. It was an imposing occasion where, in an assemblage of all classes of citizens, were represented the intelligence and culture, the wisdom and benevolence, and the official dignity of the City of Boston and the State of Massachusetts. Speakers of known fame were there, whose addresses were eloquent alike in thought and expression. But I have been told by a gentleman who was the chaplain at that memorial service, and also one of the speakers, that Dr. Caswell's speech was the charm and life of the occasion. Not so much as a great intellectual effort ; for though not unpremeditated, it was yet unwritten and extemporaneous ; but it was genuine and natural in all the conception and the delivery, the dignity of the venerable speaker and his voice and language reminding one of Homer's words of Nestor, "out of his tongue there flowed a speech sweeter than honey." As one said who ALEXIS CASWELL. 73 wrote of it, it was " a perfect, vivid, fresh picture of Dr. Howe, just as he was in his youth." It touched the heart of the audience, and struck its many chords into unison with the speaker and his theme. The editor of one of the Boston journals was so impressed with the address that he made it the point of departure for a disquisition on the superiority of extemporaneous over written speeclies, of the unstudied utterances of the heart over the most finished intellectual efforts of eloquence. And I cannot refrain from repeating here the words of another writer, in describing the so characteristic impression then made by our departed friend. " As Dr. Caswell talked," the writer says, " it seemed impos- sible that he himself had passed his three score years and ten, for he carries those years only as a crown, not as a burden ; and the very sunshine of youth still warms and softens his clear, strong voice, and gives vivacity to his manner." Ah I such indeed he truly was, not only in public, but yet more in private, in his ever dear home, in society, and in selecter circles of his friends, as we know full well, who were wont to see him in the mild radiance of his declining days. In those days how he loved more and more to retire into that familiar study, and there amidst his books, carry on his favorite studies ; thus, when growing old, adding every day to the stores of his knowledge, quotidie aliquid addiscens. In the last conversation I had with him about his intellectual occupations, and it was only a month before he departed, I found he had been busied for some time with two quite distinct subjects ; the one was a renewed study of the life and labors of Livingstone, the other was the last learned work of the German Helmholtz, on " The Sensations of Tone as a basis for a Theory of Music ; " but these labors were destined to be left unfinished. Only three weeks before 10 74 M E M O E, I A L O F his last sickness, he stood in this place once more to say- affectionate words of remembrance at the funeral service of one of the oldest members of this church, whom in his youth he had known as a companion in the Christian life. In that service was the shadow cast before of the all too soon coming event. The last time that he went out from his house it was to attend a meeting in the committee-room of this church ; there were uttered his last counsels, there some of his brethren joined with him in his last prayer outside his own home. On the next morning, the twenty-seventh of December, he was seized with a violent illness, which was succeeded by great prostration of strength. For several days, however, his son, who was his medical attendant, discovered no dangerous symptoms. But he himself seemed to be sure that it was his last sickness ; and with the calm conviction, which he expressed, .that his earthly work was done, he began to look forward with cheerful faith to the last hour. On the Friday before the Monday on which he died, the disease assumed the form of acute bronchitis, and from that time his physician abandoned all hope of his recovery. But he lingered through the Saturday, and through one more Sabbath day, and the succeeding night, the body growing weaker, but the mind clear, and the soul in perfect peace. Though from distressed breathing he could say but little, yet now, even more than in all his former life, his conversation was in heaven^ whence he was looking for the Saviour ; and the words were on his lips, " Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." At early morn on Monday, the 8th of January, when the light was glimmering through the closed shutters, he asked that they might be opened, that he might once more greet the sun in his coming. Ah! how he loved the light to the last, his face ever toward the sun ! As the ALEXIS CASWELL. 75 shutters were opened and let in upon the dying saint the first morning beams, his eyes gazed upon them, and then turned and fastened upon the face of his son, who was watching by his side ; and in a few moments more they were fixed in death. His spirit had gone with the new coming- day. Fortunate man^ in the opportunity of his death ! Happy servant of his God, thus to pass from the dawn of an earthly day to the pure and changeless light of that heavenly world, where they have no need of the sun^for the Lord God giveth them light. We who survive him here, may now love to remember how fortunate he also was in the brightness of his life. He was one of a rare class of men, who at once deserve and conciliate universal esteem, who are happy themselves and impart happiness to others. How happy, and how welcome he was in all circles of society, the humblest and the highest alike, the young no less than the old ; " nobody could be his enemy, everybody was his friend." He had an eminently sound and healthy nature, well- balanced and harmonious in itself, its faculties and moral sentiments, and keeping itself in right relations of feeling and action towards all men and all things. Here we seem to discover the source of his fine personal qualities, here the germs of those excellences of character which were his under the discipline of religion. He was clear in his percep- tions, and unusually free from prejudice ; just in his judgments, but without asperity ; dignified but unpretending ; warm in his affections, without a trace of false sentiment ; patient of labor and care, and never knowing aught of sickly despondency ; gentle and yielding whenever he might be, but unswerving in his convictions, and simply impreg- nable against all compromise with evil in any form; wise 76 M E M O E, I A L O F and cautious, without artifice and indirection ; bright and merry of disposition, but earnest and free from levity ; of an evenness and sweetness of temper, which no disappointment could sour, no injury could ruffle ; an urbanity and courtesy not merely well-bred, but native and heartfelt ; growing old at last in years, but of a perpetual youth in heart and bearing ; in all his life, doing justice and loving mercy and ivalking humbly with his God. Do you say, had then our human friend no faults ? He had faults, I doubt not, but it is hard to remember them, in the remembrance of his pre- vailing virtues. I will quote you what was written to me of him by one of his oldest friends. " He was nearer," says he, " to my ideal of a faultless character than any other whom it has been my happiness to know." That is the testimony of a grave and cautious man, who had known him well for more than fifty years. But he was conscious himself of his faults, and labored to correct them. Early in life he discovered that evil of heart out of which come all faults and all sins, and he sought and found the all-sufficient remedy in the grace of the Gospel. Henceforth his nature and life were rooted in God's saving truth ; the Christ of his faith was his Redeemer and example, and his character drew its virtue and its flavor from the cross of his Lord. The faith of his manhood and his age was the faith which was born in him in his youth ; the faith of the church into which he was baptized. But his heart was of no sect ; his charity was as broad as God's commandments, as Christ's holy Gospel, and it embraced in its ample folds all that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. In his piety there was blended with a reverent awe of the Supreme Being as the Father of all, an exalted and tender conception of Jesus Christ our Lord as a Divine Person, the image of the invisible God, as One in whom ALEXIS CASWELL. 77 it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell. To Him he listened as a teacher, who spake as never man spake. Him he obeyed as his Master, Him he loved as a gracious and ever near friend ; and when the last earthly moment came, it was as the rending of a thin veil, and he walked with Him by sight, to be forever with the Lord. Mr. President and brethren of the Alumni : with a theme that makes us linger, I have yet detained you too long. A few closing words and I have done. In the loss of him whom we have assembled to commemorate, has been sundered one of the last ties that bound us to the elder days of our Alma Mater. He was one of a company of great and good men, illustrious in their academic generation, whose character and labors were the strength and glory of the University while they lived, and are now embalmed among its choicest historic memories. Their names occur to you as I speak, their forms arise to your view, their gathered presence seems to the mind to move before us again, a noble procession that used to pass entire before our eyes in by-gone years, but in these recent ones has been gradually receding, and thinning more and more, till now that he has gone it seems to be all lost to our sight. But a voice seems to reach us from all that vanished presence, there is the eloquent memory of those fathers and benefactors of the University, which bids us walk in that path of labor in its service, which they trod to the end, and have left radiant with their footsteps. Let us emulate their academic, their Christian example. Those of oui^ number by whose appointment I have stood here to-day were charged with the further duty of procuring either a por- trait or a marble bust of Dr. Caswell, to be placed in one of the halls of the University. It is a privilege to lend any aid in the performance of so pious a duty. Let us have his 78 ' MEMORIAL.. image represented in worthiest form of art, which, on glow- ing canvas, or in speaking marble, may grace and honor the halls which he honored and graced so long with his living presence. But as we have learned from a great Roman writer in the finest biography of ancient letters, we pay his memory the truest honor, the truest filial piety, by our admiration, and so far as nature allows, by our imitation of his example. The canvas, the marble, whatsoever external memorial, is frail and perishable ; the form of character is everlasting, and this we may seize and express, not by foreign material and art, but by a like character of our own. It is good and ennobling to behold our departed friend in those heavenly scenes whither he has gone ; there re-united forever to the associates and partners, alike in church and in college, of his glorious earthly toils. If the Roman orator, unblessed by revelation, could break forth into exultant joy at the prospect of departing to the divine council of souls, surely with the vision which He places in our hearts, in whom life and immortality have been brought to lights we may see His redeemed ones, united in high and holy converse in the heavenly world, beholding together His glory, and enjoying the full felicities of His everlasting kingdom. To that blest kingdom and its sweet societies, into which entrance has been ministered to him, the heart of one of his pupils who owes him more than any words of his own can express, would fain go after him now in filial salutation, while it cherishes the wish that his benediction might rest upon this service, which, all imperfect as it is, has yet been done in sincerest honor of his dear memory : " Salve, care parens, alti nunc Ktheris ha3res, Et fruere aetcrnis, qua; tibi parta, bonis ! Discipulique tui voceni cognosce supremam, Quae voluit memores omnes esse tui." FUNERAL SERVICES, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH JANUARY 11, 1877. Order of Services 1. HYMN.—" Jerusalem the Golden." 2. READING OF THE SCRIPTURES, 3. CHANT.—" The Lord is my Shepherd," 4. ADDRESS, 5. PRAYER, 6. HYMN.—" Abide with Me." 7. ADDRESS, 8. BENEDICTION. 9. HYMN.—" Paradise, O Paradise." Rev. E. G. Taylor, D. D. Rev. S. L. Caldwell, D.D. Rev. S. L. Caldwell, D.D. Presidext Robinson. 10 PRAYER AT THE GRAVE, Rev. Thacher Thayer, D.D. ADDRESS OF REV. DR. CALDWELL. On our way to the grave, we halt for an hour in this ancient house, survivor of so many fleeting generations, that here we may say our words of farewell and benediction over one who, more than anybody living, I had almost said among the departed, seems to belong here, a part and fixture of the place. Here he has been coming and going for almost three- score years. Here his young vows to God were made, when he had just come of age, and here have they most piously, most constantly, been fulfilled, even down to old age. Here his best affections dwelt ; here he received his academic honors ; here he was the pillar on which the church leaned ; the loyal hearer, the generous giver, the trusted counsellor, the beautiful example. As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion ; like the fragrant perfume in the high priest's robes, his spirit of peace, of gentleness, of charity, has been the blessing of this house and church of God for almost two generations. And here where he has been so long a fixture ; here where our affections, our desires, our very wants cling to him, and will not let him go, we have come to-day to dismiss him to the great company of the departed, to the society of so many who have gone before him, to be with the venerable pastor who gave him baptism, with Pattison and Granger, whose hands he held up, and whose spirit mated with his; to be with Wayland, his great chief and colleague in academic service, over whose coffin on this very spot he 84 MEMORIALOF spoke for us our thoughts of sorrow and comfort; to the mighty commonwealth of sanctified spirits, and to their Lord and his, after whose likeness he aspired, and whose face he is so glad to see. And here where there is so much to be said of Dr. Cas- well, there is little need of saying anything. He is as thoroughly known as man can be. He let his light shine. He was no academic recluse. His sj-mpathies were open and diffusive. His hand was stretched out, and he touched the people and the life around him on every side, high and lowly alike. I think of St. Paul's words : " Ye are children of the light and of the day." For he was one of them, trans- parent, luminous, even with the light of Christ. His was one of those natures born in the sunshine and of it, so fine in texture, and so radiant with internal light ; so beaming with goodness and graciousness ; so hard to provoke, so responsive to everybody, that nobody could be his enemy, that every- body was his friend. It would be a grave mistake to suppose because his life was so closely related to this place, because he loved it and sought it, and received so much from it, that his life had no deeper spring. Social, hospitable and responsive as his nature was, believing as he did in the institutions of Christ- ianity and observant of its ordinances, his secret life was nourished out of profound convictions, out of a perpetual communion with an invisible world and a living God. His were not occasional excursions into spiritual regions, but a constant walk with God. And then there was in him a beautiful, we might say, uncommon combination of the spiritualities of a sincere religion with the activities, the interests, the joys of life. It was for him no abrupt transi- t-ion from the church to the parlor, even from this world to ALEXIS CASWELL. 85 another. Even into old age he carried the genial affections, the pleasant humor, the cheerful temper, which all his days made his religion seem so human, while it was so real. He had severe trials. He took serious views of life. He had a profound sense of moral evil, a profound conviction of its only remedy in the cross of Christ. He walked ever in the great Taskmaster's eye. His cheerfulness never relaxed his sense of responsibility. His religion Avas a pleasure and an inspiration, not a burden. He took trusts with readiness, and trusts many, public, important, came to him. His spirit was public, and no citizen was more forward in all good enterprises than he. For learning, for charity, for his church, his country, for the college, for the city, for hospitals, for missions, who more liberal with his time and money than he ? And no Christian was ever more toler- ant and catholic. He felt his fellowship with all christians, with the whole church. He was no member of an isolated sect, but of the universal church of God. Not because he had no beliefs, or was indifferent about them. He had studied the Scriptures devoutly, if not critically. He had studied ethical and religious philosophy. He had a belief and a system of belief. He knew what he believed, and he sacrificed not an article or a letter out of deference to any- body, while he respected everybody's faith. While his thoughts were much and constantly, and by a sort of natural affinity, drawn to moral and spiritual subjects, his great work as a student and a teacher was in another department. He delighted in the science of numbers and its exactness, especially in that grandest application of it, to the place and motions of the celestial worlds. And to him these lines, and curves, and movements were not laws of matter only, but paths of the Eternal Will going forth on its everlasting 86 MEMOEIALOF journey. He had none of tlie madness of the undeyout astronomer. His mathematics, calm, exact, changeless, could not force him into atheism, or even into doubt. This is his glory ; this is our comfort here to-day, that he gave up neither his science nor his faith. He had learned much of the structure of the universe ; he had learned more of that secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him. There is a hymn of Doddridge's which always seemed to me to have been written for the dying farewell of an astronomer. I am sure it belongs to the spirit and the lips of our friend : Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, With all your feeble light ; Farewell, thou everchangiug moon, Pale empi-ess of the night. And thou refulgent orb of daj% In brighter flames arrayed. My soul, that springs beyond thy sphere. No more demands thine aitl. Ye stars are but the shining dust Of my divine abode ; The pavement of those heavenly courts Where I shall reign with God. And there we leave him now, translated, walking ways unilluminated by the sun, seeing into the mystery of things beyond its brightest beams, seeing light in the light of God, studying the astronomy Vhich his telescope had never pene- trated, having now the exactness of knowledge, where, but yesterday, he had only the confidence of faith. There are griefs too tender, too private for any j)ublic solace. There is a loss which will make itself known in the confidences of friendship and in the ear of God. There are thoughts, memories of him as a husband, a father, a brother, a friend, which death only makes more precious and sacred ALEXIS CASWELL. 87 There is a vacancy which can be filled only by the affections, the trusts, the hopes which go beyond all that is mortal, and take hold of the unseen Christ, of God's unchangeable love. I seem to hear his voice once more, that voice when touched by deep emotion so low, so thrilling, that voice which we shall miss so much, and it calls us away from our worldliness, our selfishness, our unbelief, from our sorrows even ; it calls us to the cross where he laid and left his bur- dens ; to the path of humble penitence and devout conse- cration and useful service and heavenward aspirations, wherQ he followed his master ; to the Eternal God in whom he found his refuge, and in whose bosom he now rests in peace. ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROBINSON. Death brings* us here to day, not as mourners who are bowed down before the inscrutable mystery of a life cut short in the midst of its years. The emblem of our grief is not a broken shaft, but a prostrate column, that having long and unyieldingly sustained every weight that was put upon it, has fallen at last only when the basis of nature on which it rested had itself crumbled away. A life beautiful in its symmetry, and rounded into harmonious completeness, has been fitly ended. " Thou hast come to the grave in a full age : like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season." No one, I am sure, who has intimately known our departed friend, fails to-day to say, from the heart, "• Let my last end be like his." It was in 1833, when as a youth intending to enter college the following year, I first became acquainted with Dr. CasAvell. Our interview, which is as distinctly before me as if it had occurred but yesterday, will be remembered so long as memory shall last. His kindliness of tone and manner, and his appreciative sympathj^, were the same that have characterized his latest days. From that day on, as I have known him with increasing intimacy, I have known him only with increasing reverence and love. Many of us now here, knew him as an instructor, and we knew him as such only to cherish for him a most loyal regard. His recitation room was never a repulsive place. However difficult or abstruse the studies, there was always 12 90 MEMOKIALOF cheerfulness in the pursuit of them, always sunshine in his presence. A combination of circumstances, found partly in the wants of the College and partly in his tastes, determined the devotion of himself to mathematics. But my impression is, that it was not so much for pure mathematics as it was for the so-called mixed mathematics, or more properly speaking, for mathematics as applied to the phenomena of nature, that he was specially fitted both by tastes and mental constitu- tion. In the study of the facts of nature he never tired to the latest day of his life. In his mental characteristics our departed friend was judicial rather than inquisitive. He found far more satis- faction in carefully weighing and critically determining the truth and nature of what others proclaimed as discoveries, than in pushing his own inquiries into unexplored fields. He, moreover, had no taste for the subtilties of speculative philosophy. In a borrowed sense of the word, he was singularly realistic. It was on the ascertained realities, the demonstrable facts of nature and revelation, and not on theories in explanation of the facts, that he rested both in his science and in his religion. Those of us who knew him both as a teacher of mathematics and as a guide in the study of Butler's Analogy, will remember well how he warmed and kindled into something like enthusiasm as he traced the parallel phenomena and facts of the natural and super- natural, and unfolded the argument of that great treatise. Nature did much for our friend in the original compounding of the elements of his being, but grace did more. Habit- uated to self-inspection and constant watchfulness, quickened by an abiding sense of dependence on Divine help, he presented a Christian character, the influence of which ALEXIS CASWELL. 91 every man felt who came under his tuition. He was gentle without weakness, genial without hilarity, courteous without indecision, humorous without a shadow of coarseness, and judicial without prejudice and without partiality. Even his irony and satire, prompted by kindness and tempered with love, left no sting behind. His charity was as broad as the human race. He held firmly to the brotherhood of man. He looked into the face of no Christian whom he did not regard as a fellow disciple of the common Lord. He had his own religious and theological convictions, to which he unswervingly adhered, but his Christian courtesy and charity alike prompted him to a most reverent respect for the convictions of others. It has been my fortune during the past few years to sustain to our revered friend relations which are commonly regarded as of a delicate and hazardous nature, and out of which have too often grown misunderstandings and unkindl}'^ feelings. I was his successor in office, and he was made a member of the corporation, and thus one of the guardians of the institution over which he had presided. But it is my joy to say that never so much as the shadow of a thought of other than the completest harmony and cooperation has ever for an instant existed between us. He has been my most cordial supporter, my trusted friend, my confidential adviser. And when to-day I followed his remains from the household which his presence has for so many years illumined, I felt as if following to his grave a revered father. The many hundreds of saddened countenances which now throng this house bespeak the extent and the depth of the impression which the lengthened life and exalted character of the deceased have made on this community. It certainly is something to be grateful for that one who for almost fifty 92 MEMOBIALOF years has gone to and fro in these streets, in the presence of thousands of scrutinizing eyes, sustaining relations and performing duties the most various, should go down to his grave without so much as a Avhisper of reproach. But the legacy of such a character and example as our lamented friend has left us is of inestimable value to any community. By the college which he so long adorned and honored, the memory of his name, the legacy of his high character and example, will be cherished through generations to come. Were he now to speak to us, I think his words would be : " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter ; fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." One of his favorite hymns was : " My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary." In that Lamb he trusted in life, and in that trust he triumphed in death. FUNERAL OF DR. CASWELL. [From the Providence Journal, J-inuary 12, 1877.] Our readers will find in another column a report of the very interesting and impressive services at the funeral of the lamented Dr. Caswell at the First Baptist Meeting-house, yesterday morning. As might have been expected, a large congregation were gathered in that house, where this good man, who has recently gone from among us, has been for more than half a century a devout worshipper, to unite in the last solemn offices of respect for his memory. While the bell was tolling, which had so often drawn his own willing footsteps to the place of worship, many from all classes of ALEXIS CASWELL. 93 the community were slowly and silently passing in to their places in the church ; the clergy of the city and vicinity, members of the different institutions with which Dr. Caswell had been intimately connected, members of the Corporation of the University, and the faculty and the students, who came in the procession from the College Chapel. At eleven o'clock the long line of carriages brought the family and relatives of the deceased from his late residence, where a private service had been held, to the doors of the church, where they were received as they entered and passed to their seats by the singing by the choir of the hymn " Jerusalem the Golden," a most fitting introduction to the exercises which then followed. These exercises we need not here mention in detail, as they are fully reported in another column. But we are sure that we only give grateful expression to the feelings of all who were present, when we say that they were all in perfect harmony with the nature of the occasion, and left in every mind a sense of complete satisfaction. We are glad that all our readers will have an opportunity to judge for themselves of the varied excellence of Dr. Cald- well's address, to whom was most properly assigned the chief place in these services. It has been our good fortune to listen to him many times when in former years he dis- coursed of Christian truth as a pastor, standing in the place where yesterday he stood once more ; but we think we never heard him when he so fully rose to the occasion and so instructed and delighted his hearers as yesterday, when he so successfully performed his difficult task of portraying the life and character of the venerated Dr. Caswell. Nothing certainly was wanting in the justness and truthfulness which characterized the conception of his theme, nothing in the fineness and tender grace and beauty of speech with which 94 MEMORIAL. it was expressed and adorned. President Robinson, who followed Dr. Caldwell, spoke with earnestness and deep emotion of the value of Dr. Caswell's services as an instruc- tor, and of his valuable life as a christian man, and of the great and irreparable loss which the community have suffered in his death. Very touching, also, was the tribute which he paid Dr. Caswell for the kindness and uniform courtesy which had marked his relations to him as his successor in the Presidency of the college, and most earnest and impressive were his closing words on the great lesson of Dr. Caswell's life, as an illustration of the supreme worth of Christian integrity and goodness. At the close of the services, the remains were borne to the North Burying Ground, followed by a large part of the great assembly, and prayer was offered at the grave by Rev. Dr. Thayer. And thus has been consigned to its last resting place all that was mortal of one that was so long among the foremost of our citizens in ability, in character and in life ; who has filled so well and so long so many relations among us, and in them all has been so honored and loved that we can think of none who will be so much missed. The occasion of which we have been writing in these remarks is one of great moral significance. As we think of it, and as we shall always recur to it in remembrance, it speaks to us, and will ever speak, more eloquently than all words, of the supreme and enduring worth of a good life and character. It will ever be a lesson to us of the dignity and nobleness which is given to human character by Christian piety, teaching us how much true goodness outweighs, in its power over the heart, every other form of eminence which man can reach. TEIBUTES: SELECTED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. DEATH OF EX-PRESIDENT CASWELL. [From the Pkovidexce Jocknal, January 9, 1877.] The death of our distinguished fellow-citizen, Dr. Alexis Caswell, formerly President of Brown University, took place at his residence, in this city, on the morning of Monday, the 8th inst., at the age of nearly seventy-eight years. His illness had been of less than two weeks duration, and was not thought to be attended with serious danger till the third or fourth day before its fatal end. It then assumed the form of acute bronchitis, which he was not able to throw off. He died in the full possession of his faculties and after having been only a few days withdrawn from the activities of his useful and honorable life. Dr. Caswell was born in Taunton, Mass., in January, 1799. He was descended from a sturdy ancestry of farmers in Bristol county, in one of whose towns his twin brother still resides in a vigorous old age. Choosing for himself a different kind of life, he abandoned the occupations of his early youth, and entered Brown University in 1818, where he graduated in the class of 1822, a class distinguished for the number of conspicuous men it contained, as well as for the warm personal friendships which have always bound its members to each other. He spent five or six years in Washington, D. C, as a tutor and Professor in Columbian College, and while there he also studied theology under the direction of Rev. Dr. Stoughton, at that time President of the institution. In the autumn of 1828, he was appointed 13 98 MEMORIALOF to the Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Brown University, as the successor of the Rev. Alva Woods, D.D. This appointment brought him back to Providence, and here he soon became thoroughly identified with the community and, both as a Professor and as a citizen, he has always been held in the highest respect and esteem. His services as an instructor in the University, beginning in 1828, were continued without interruption till his with- drawal from them in the autumn of 1863, a period of thirty- five years. In January, 1868, he was chosen President, and held the office four years and a half, resigning it in September, 1872. His entire official connection with the University thus extended through a period of thirty-nine years and a half, a pe- riod longer than that of any other person named in its annals, with the single exception of his distinguished pupil and asso- ciate. Professor George I. Chace, who was an officer of instruc- tion for forty-one years, from 1831 to 1872. After resigning the Presidency, he was chosen a member of the Board of Trustees, and in 1875 a member of the Board of Fellows. He thus continued to the end of his life to be intimately associated with the place of his early education, and in the several relations which he sustained to it, he has devoted himself to its interests with a fidelity, and ability, and a variety of honorable service, that makes him conspicuous among its benefactors and ornaments. He came to it very soon after the accession of Dr. Wayland to its Presidency, while it was without endowments and with only very imper- fect means of scientific instruction, and while it was still struggling with the gravest embarrassments. He lived to see it attain to a large prosperity, and to a renown which his own services largely helped to secure. Though occupying the chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, he for a con- ALEXIS CASWELL. 99 siderable period rendered assistance in other departments of instruction with which his own was not connected, he had much to do with matters of interior discipline, and was frequently enlisted in soliciting funds, first for the library, and afterwards for other purposes, of the completion of which the University is now receiving the benefits. During all these years of his Professorship, he was respected and beloved by the successive classes of scholars as few instructors have ever been. His genial and kindly nature always made him preeminently the student's friend, and there are many who sat under his teachings who will now recall some act of indulgence for their youthful follies, or of generous aid for their distresses. In science he was distinguished rather for his varied acquisitions and his extensive acquaintance with the depart- ment of science with which he was connected, than for original investigations. Indeed, mathematics and mechanical philosophy afford but a narrow field for such investigations, and in astronomy not much that is new can be achieved with- out the aid of an observatory. He was, however, in constant communication with those who were thus engaged, and kept himself fully informed of the progress which was made in these sciences, and in their applications to the interests of society. He was one of the founders of the American Association for the Promotion of Science, and presided at some of its annual meetings. He was also one of the small number of scientific men who met in Washington, several years ago, under the auspices of the government, to form the American Academy of Science. His advancing age, how- ever, has seldom allowed him to participate in its subsequent proceedings. 100 MEMOEIALOF In his relations to the community, few men among us have been more favorably known or more highly esteemed. His services have at all times been generously given to the interests of education, philanthropy and religion. He was one of the early members of the School Committee in this city, at a time when such a position had not become an object of ambition, and, before any Superintendent for the schools had been appointed, he was actively engaged in devising and carrying into operation the methods of public instruction, of which we have ever since been receiving the benefits. In other capacities he has constantly aided in sustaining those social interests which are indispensable alike to the high character and real prosperity of every commu- nity, and which always occupy the attention and care of the best citizens. He was one of the original Trustees of the Rhode Island Hospital, and since November, 1875, he has been its President. He has given to that institution a great deal of careful attention, and, with an occasional exception, he has prepared every one of its annual reports. He has during the past few years been a member of the Board of Inspectors of the State Prison, where he has also frequently conducted religious services, and in various ways, both official and unofficial, busied himself in the promotion of the well-being of the prisoners. His published writings are not numerous and they have been mainly on scientific subjects. They have appeared for the most part in scientific journals and magazines, and in the reports of the Smithsonian Insti- tution. Nor can we omit to mention with grateful appreciation, the carefully prepared meteorological tables, which, for forty years, he has contributed to the Journal, and which have been looked for with so much interest, every month by its readers. ALEXIS CASWELL. 101 Dr. Caswell was a Christian gentleman of the old school, who carried his religious faith and principles gracefully and without ostentation, into the duties and scenes of his daily life. Though an ordained clergyman and often officiating as such, he was but once, and then only for a short period, in charge of a church. His whole life was passed in the study and the teaching of science. He was broad and liberal in his Christian sympathies, and delighted to commune on the highest themes of human thought, with the wise and the good of every church and of every phase of religious experience. He cherished a serene and unfaltering faith in the religion of the Bible, and never doubted that everything in science and in the history of the world would at length prove to be in harmony with its teach- ings when rightly understood. With these controlling moral qualities were associated delightful amenities of character, which made him a charming companion in all the circles in which he moved. Blessed with rare health and with cheerful views of all things around him, he seemed scarcely to grow old with increasing age, but still to retain the spirit and manners which characterized him in middle life. Though he had reached nearly fourscore years, he had not ceased to be engaged in public duties and services, or to bear a full share in the management of the institutions with which he was connected. Thus has closed his long and honored life, a life made illustrious by high character and noble labors, and crowned with the grateful benedictions of those who have been made wiser and better by what he has done for them. 102 MEMORIAL OF [From the Providence Press, January 8, 1877.] Within a limited circle the event might not have been unexpected, but to the great majority of his fellow-citizens the death of the Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., which occurred this morning at a quarter before seven, comes with sad surprise. The deceased was so long and honorably consj)ic- uous before the commnnity; his goodness of heart was so widely known and his practical interest for his fellow-men so generally recognized, that his character and attainments were familiar to thousands besides those who enjoyed the honor of a personal acquaintance with him or felt the glow of his generous wealth of kindly feeling. While he was warmly interested in finance, manufactures, trade, and, in short, everything that concerned the prosperity of his adopted city and State, Dr. Caswell will be remembered chiefly as the large-hearted and talented gentleman who for half a century was identified with the faculty and board of instruction of Brown University, and than whom no man in the history of the college, with the possible exception of the late Dr. Wayland, exercised a wider, or, on the whole, a more beneficent influence upon the members of that institution. Graduating with honor in 1822, he taught for a while at Columbian College, D. C, but was soon called to the service of his Alma Mater, and assumed, in 1828, the chair of mathe- matics and natural philosophy, which he held until 1850, when he substituted the department of astronomy for that of natural philosophy and continued the charge of these branches until 1864, being afterwards chosen President of the University, and holding that position for several years, as is more fully described elsewhere. Dr. Caswell would have been 78 years old had he lived until the 29th day of this month, and thus, of his long and active life more than two-thirds was passed in direct contact ALEXIS CASWELL. 103 with young and growing minds, on each of whom he rarely failed to leave the impress of the faithful teacher, as well as of the polished, courteous Christian gentleman. It is not possible to survey at a single glance the whole field of usefulness covered by such a life, neither can mere words convey any adequate sense of the loss which its close entails upon the community. It was not a life which strove to set itself upon a pinnacle to be admired of men, nor did it ever covet applause, regardless of its genuine claim to such distinction. It was, in the largest sense, a life devoted to good deeds and illumined throughout by the clear light of Christian faith and charity. It stood firm on the broad facts of revealed religion and sent its influence far and wide to aid and cheer those whose faith was not so strong or whose feet tended to ways more devious and uncertain. It was a life filled with love for its creator and admiration for His visible works ; beginning with the marvels of the heavens, it drew down precepts and guiding laws for the exact regula- tion of mundane affairs, and held its course in the benign influence of such instructions. But above all tribute to the intellectual or even the severely moral excellence of such a life, rises the simple grief and sense of personal bereavement which must fill many hearts at the news that this good man is gone. His place will be vacant in the church which he loved and honored, in the college, in the bank, in the govern- ment of various charities; but there will be no regrets truer or more to be desired than those of the humble hearts which had learned through this half century to know, and to teach their children, how good a friend the great Ruler and Teacher had sent them. The sorrow of these may not appear in resolutions or costly mourning emblems, but it will be none the less genuine and it may outlast all the tokens that the more conspicuous public sorrow will bestow. 104 MEMORIAL OP [From the New York Tribune, January 9, 1877.] The Rev. Dr. Alexis Caswell, ex-President of Brown University, died at his residence, Providence, yesterday morning, at the age of 78 years. He was graduated from Brown University in 1822, and was for a time Professor of Languages in Columbian College, Washington. In 1828 he became Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Brown University, holding the position until 1850, when he was appointed to the chair of Mathematics and Astron- omy, which he filled till 1864. He was President pro tempore of the College in 1840, and was chosen President in 1868, voluntarily retiring in 1872. At the time of his death he was a member of the Board of Fellows, and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Alumni. Since his retire- ment from active duties in the University he has lived quietly in Providence, beloved and honored by the whole community. His erect figure, unbent by age, was one of the most familiar on the streets of the city. In every charitable movement he was foremost, with practical advice and generous aid. His genial bearing has for years been a constant benediction to a city which was crowded with his friends, but contained for him not a single enemy. [From the National Baptist, Philadelphia.^ It was but a few weeks since that the venerable ex-Presi- dent Caswell of Brown University, was present at the Philadelphia Ministerial Conference, and spoke a few words of cheer and good will to his brethren. He seemed in good health, and was filling up his 78th year with cheerful, loving service to God and to man. ALEXIS CASWELL. 105 Last Monday, the hearts of his hundreds of pupils, and his thousands of personal friends, and his many scientific asso- ciates and co-laborers, were saddened by the tidings that after a few days of illness, he was no more. * * * * Kindness, geniality, purity, sweetness, the absence of all guile or bitterness, these were the most marked traits in Dr. Caswell ; and these were refined and elevated by the spirit of Christ till he presented an example, such as is not often seen in our world, of an unblemished and attractive Christian character. As a friend he was most sympathetic and affectionate. The writer recalls particularly his relations to Dr. Pattison and to Francis Wayland, both of whom preceded him to the eternal world At a meeting of the graduates of Brown University, occasioned by the death of Francis Wayland, Dr. Caswell tried to speak of the qualities of his friend, but presently his voice failed him, and^ silence, more eloquent than words, told of his loss and his grief. Few men have been so happy in the evening of life. Years had brought no decrepitude of body or mind. The advancing years shed the hues of autumn; not yet had the snows of winter fallen on his heart. Living in the city which had been his home for half a century, and which in the language of a secular paper, " was full of his friends but did not hold an enemy," rejoicing in the advancement of religion and knowledge, and in the prosperity of the Univer- sity he loved, he was cheerful, serene, yet he welcomed the hour of his release; and he was not, for God took him. At his funeral, on Thursday morning, January 11th, the Baptist church where he professed Christ sixty years before, and where he had worshipped for half a century, presented a scene that reminded many of the spectacle at the funeral 14 I 106 MEMOBIALOF of Francis Wayland, in 1865. The services were in accord with the character and Avishes of the deceased. * * * The remains were laid in the North Burying Ground, where rest the remains of all the deceased Presidents of the University (except Dr. Maxcy, who died in South Carolina); where, are the graves of Stephen Hopkins, of Horace Mann, of Nicholas Brown ; where rests all that could he gathered after the lapse of two centuries, from the grave of Roger Williams. It is an interesting remembrance that Dr. Caswell's last service was in connection with the church of which he was a member. On Tuesday evening, December 26, he was out for the last time attending a meeting of the Standing Com- mittee of the Church. His form unbent by age, his benignant and beaming countenance, his counsels always wise, always kind, will be missed from the assembly, from the social meetings, as well as from the national gatherings of the denomination, while the graduates, as they return yearly to the scene of their education, will feel a vacancy in the absence of him who stood to them as the type of kind- ness, courtesy, sweetness, and serene piety. [From the Christian Herald, Detroit, Mich.] With Dr. Judson and the first Mrs. Judson, with Luther Rice, whom he succeeded in the treasurership of Columbian College, with all the first missionaries, with the original members of the Baptist Triennial Convention, and with the members and management of our Foreign Mission Board through all its history. Dr. Caswell was intimately asso- ciated. The Northern Baptist Education Society was also, ALEXIS CASWELL. 107 officially served by him long and eifectually, and the Newton Theological Seminary has had his steadfast interests and aids during all its history. Of most remarkable memory, boundless general and professional information, and fine social nature, he was the prized friend of multitudes in our ministry, and in all educational associations. His students whom nearly fifty years of teaching multiplied into an army, have all of them the most affectionate and grateful remem- brance of him. The clear light of a good life, has bright- ened from the morning to the evening of his long day, and comes to us now in the beauty of its sunset, reminding us of the glory into which he is translated — comes to us also, and will ever continue to come to men, in beneficent reflections from the minds and characters he has helped and will still help to make pure and luminous. " Non omnis moriar,^^ fits the monument he reared, how much better than the monuments which commemorate the grasping and holding of the prizes called millions in the arena of wealth. [From the Tauxtox Gazette, Jaxuahy 9, 1877.] Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., LL.D., ex-President of Brown University, died at his residence in Providence on Monday, January 8th, at the age of seventy-eight years. This dis- tinguished savant was born near East Taunton village in this city, in 1799, a descendant of Thomas Caswell, one of the first settlers of Taunton, and twin brother of the venerable Alvaris Caswell, a resident of Norton ; also brother of our late townsman, Samuel Caswell, recently deceased. Mr. Caswell prepared for College at Bristol Academy, under the instruction of the late Simeon Doggett, entered Brown University in 1818. He graduated in the large class of 1822, with the late William A. Crocker, and Samuel Pres- 108 MEMORIAL OF brey of this place, John Wilder, George W. Hathaway and others, who have passed away ; also with Samuel L. Crocker, Solomon Lincoln, Jacob H. Loud, well known to our readers, and others eminent in the class. * * * * He has also been engaged in attractive literary and scientific pursuits ; the author of several works ; has written many interesting and able contributions for the press, and has kept an astronomical and meteorological record for over forty years. He had received the highest honors conferred by his Alma Mater, which he wore with a modest grace and efficiency ; he was a diligent and enthusi- astic student in mathematics and astronomy ; an accom- plished scholar, and in the social walks of life a noble, genial^ Christian gentleman, who, during these nearly forty years of scholastic duties, honored the institution with which he was connected, and reflected honor upon his native town. Few men have filled more eminent positions in the walks of learning and science, and few pass away more cherished in scholarly remembrance than Alexis Caswell. [From the Hingham Journal, January 26, 1877.] ***** Dr. Caswell, during his life, filled several other offices of importance to the public, the duties of which he discharged with great fidelity and efficiency. He was liberal in his views of the religious opinions of others, candid in his judgments, ardent in whatever pursuit he was engaged, whether of science, literature or philanthropy. He was public-spirited and patriotic, as shown by his shouldering his musket and marching in the ranks with his fellow-citizens to suppress the Dorr rebellion. He was sagacious to discern ALEXIS CASWELL. 109 the right way to accomplish his designs and practical in his methods of carrying them into effect. Strong common sense was the basis of his action and gave consistency to his character. We should be glad to dwell longer upon his many virtues, but we must leave to others within the sphere of his immediate influence and usefulness, to portray them for the gratification of his numerous friends throughout the country. At a meeting of the Faculty of Brown University, held on Tuesday, January 16, 1877, the following minute was adopted and ordered to be entered upon record, and a copy of it transmitted to the family of the late Rev. Dr. Caswell: It having pleased God to remove from this life the Kev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., LLD., who was for nearly forty years a member of this Faculty, and who held official connection with the University throughout a period of near-ly forty-four 3'ears, the Faculty desire to express and record their profound sense of the loss sustained by the University, and of the personal bereavement experienced by them- selves, in this afflictive event of his death. We recall with the highest appreciation of their importance and value the eminent professional services which he rendered to the University during this long period, in the work of its instruction and discipline as a Professor, and in the administration of its affairs as President. We recall, too, with gratitude, the abundant labors which he most generously and faithfully performed beyond the range of his official duties, in pro- moting the efficiency and fame of the college by the increase of its resources and by the enlargement of its means of usefulness. His noble example of fidelity and devotion to all the interests of our common Alma Mater, is one which we contemplate with admiration, and which we would fain imitate. Ever shall we also gratefully remember the gentleness and kindliness of his nature, his benignant bearing and gracious manners, the truly Christian courtesy, which it has been our fortune to know and to enjoy in all our personal and 110 MEMOllIAL OF official intercourse with him. And above all else in him, that commanded our reverent admiration and love, we shall cherish in lasting remembrance his unsullied Christian character and life, learning from the beneficent influence which they have exerted, and will long continue to exert, how superior is personal, moral and relig- ious excellence to all mental gifts and all knowledge, and how true goodness in its power over the heart, and in promoting the great interests of society, surpasses every other form of eminence, which man can reach. The Faculty direct that this minute be entered upon its records, and a copy be transmitted, with its respectful sympathies, to the afflicted family of the deceased. Benj. F. Clarke, Secretary of the Faculty. At a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Rhode Island Hospital held Jan. 18th, 1877, Messrs. George I. Chace, J. Lewis Diman and Thomas Brown, a committee ap- pointed on the 9th inst., to prepare a minute referring to the death of Rev. Dr. Caswell, to be entered upon the record presented the following : Inasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to remove from this life the Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., LL.D., President of the Ehode Island Hospital, the Trustees of the institution, while recognizing the significance of this event for the entire community, desire especially to place upon record their profound sense of the loss which this Hospital has sustained in (he decease of one who has been closely identified with its interests from the beginning, whose earnest philanthropy was attested in his hearty co-operation with the efforts by which it was placed on a permanent foundation; whose wise counsels have assisted in shaping its administration since its doors were opened to the sick and suffering ; whose untiring devotion to the close of his career was proved in the zealous discharge of the duties of its presiding officer ; and who, during the whole period of this long continued and useful service, illustrated in his quick sym- ALEXIS CASWELL. Ill pathy, his unaffected kindness, and his comprehensive benevolence, the spirit to which this Hospital owed its origin, and by which its beneficent work must be perpetuated. The report of the committee having been received, it was thereupon ordered that the minute be entered upon the records and a copy thereof forwarded to the family of our late President, and that it be published in the Providence and Newport papers. Samuel R. Dorrance, Secretary. Providence, January 20, 1877. In Board of Inspectors, Rhode Island State Prison, at their regular meeting January 9, 1877, the following minute was ordered to be put on record : The Inspectors of the Rhode Island State Prison, receiving, with unfeigned sorrow, intelligence of the death of their associate, the Rev. Dr. Alexis Caswell, would express their grateful apprecia- tion of the wisdom and humanity of his personal counsels and the faithfulness of his public service, and would tender to his bereaved family their cordial sympathy. Augustus Woodbury, Chairman, Jesse Metcalf, Secretary. MEETING OF THE ALUMNI OF BROWN UNIVERSITY RESIDING IN WORCESTER. [From the Worcester Spy, February 8, 1877.] ***** Hon. Isaac Davis, the classmate and lifelong friend of Dr. Caswell, presided, and called upon the committee on resolu- tions, consisting of Judge Chapin, Hon. P. C. Bacon, and Hon. E. B . Stoddard, to report, which they did, as follows : 112 MEMORIAL OF Besolved, That in the death of Key. Alexis Caswell, late President of Brown University, a great and inexpressible loss has come to that institution. Besolved, That by his purity of character, his genial manners, his warm heart, his kindly word and his beaming smile, Dr. Caswell won and retained the love and confidence of the large circle of young ana old who were so fortunate as to come within the sphere of hi^ influence. - ' '^ Besolved, That his learning and erudition, supplemented by hi^*^ hospitable interest in the cause of thorough education and high cul- ture everywhere, gave him a position in the world of letters which few men can fill so naturally and successfully. Besolved, That we, alumni of Brown University, who have known and loved the deceased, hereby tender to his family this token of our respect and sympathy. MEETING OF THE BAPTIST SOCIAL UNION. [From the Provioence Journal, January 17, 1877.] ***** In behalf of the Board of Directors, Professor S. S. Greene, presented the following preamble and resolutions, referring to Rev. Dr. Caswell. Whereas, It pleased our Heavenly Father to remove, by death, on the 8th of January, 1877, the Rev. Alexis Caswell, D.D., LL.D., a revered and honored member of the Social Union, one of its founders, and ever its steadfast friend, and Whereas, We desire to put on record some expression of our sense of the loss, and our esteem for the deceased as a scholar, as a citizen, and as a Christian, therefore Besolved, That our University has sustained an irreparable loss in the death of Dr. Caswell, who, for a period of more than fifty years, was most intimately identified with all its affairs, and whether Pro- fessor, President, or member of its Corporation, was always at the post of duty. That the community has lost one of its most valuable ALEXIS CASWELL. 113 •citizens, one whose heart was responsive to every demand for sympathy and whose hand-was ready to every good work. That the Christian church has lost one of its brightest ornaments, one whose daily life was ample witness to the sincerity of his faith, and reflected in an eminent degree the distinguislied traits of his Hcaveniy Master. Besolved, Tliat we hereby tender to the bereaved family our earn- est sympathy, and that these resolutions be entered upon the records ot the Social Union, and a copy thereof be furnished to the family r the deceased. Very touching and impressive remarks on these resolutions were made by the gentlemen who had long been associated with Dr. Caswell in the official relations of University life. Professors Greene, Lincoln and Clarke, also by Deacon J. C. Hartshorn, who alluded to one of the last acts of the deceased in securing the transfer of one thousand dollars to the Corporation of the University, to constitute the " Mum- ford Scholarship," in accordance with the will of the late Mrs. Mumford, a beloved member of the First Baptist Church. Other remarks were made by Merrick Lyon, LL.D., Rev. J. T. Smith and Stephen R. Weeden, Esq. No member of the Union, it is safe to say, could have been removed by death, whose decease would have elicited so much hearty sympathy as that of Dr. Caswell. His memory is very fragrant and precious, and his sunny smile, and his genial manners, will be missed from its future gatherings. \?5^^ -1> ■'''