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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. 
 

 
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