THE VARIETIES OF HUMAN GREATNESS. 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER , 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HON. NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, LL. D., F. R. S., 
 
 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 THE CHURCH ON CHURCH GREEN, 
 
 MARCH 25, 1838. 
 
 BY ALEXANDER YOUNG. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. 
 
 1838. 
 
His, mihi dilectum nomen manesque verendos, 
 His saltern accumulem donis, et fungar amico 
 Munere ! Non totns, raptus licet, optime praeses, 
 Eriperis. Redit os placidum, moresque benigni, 
 Et venit ante oculos, et pectore vivit imago." 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by CHARLES C. LITTLE and JAMES 
 EROWN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
87X4 
 
 TO 
 TIJJE CHILDREN 
 
 OF 
 MY DEPARTED PARISHIONER AND FRIEND. 
 
 THIS DISCOURSE 
 
 is 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
If any apology should be deemed necessary for the freedom and frequency 
 with which I have introduced into this discourse quotations from the old 
 writers, (most of the longer ones having been omitted in the delivery), 1 
 would plead in my defence the following judgment of Coleridge. 
 
 " Why are not more gems from our early prose writers scattered over the 
 country by the periodicals ? Great old books by the great old authors are not 
 in every body's reach ; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than 
 to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those 
 who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every book- worm, when 
 in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, an illustration, that 
 does his heart good, hasten to give it." 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
 1 CHRONICLES, XXIX. 12. 
 
 IN THINE HAND O LORD, IS POWER AND MIGHT J AND IN THINE HAND IT IS 
 TO MAKE GREAT, AND TO GIVE STRENGTH UNTO ALL. 
 
 IJST nothing, as it seems to me, is the sovereignty of 
 God more strikingly displayed, than in the diversities of 
 personal endowment, and the consequent varieties of hu- 
 man greatness. Man, with his limited and short-sighted 
 wisdom, aims, in all his plans and operations, and espe- 
 cially in his modes of intellectual and moral culture, 
 at uniformity. If he could have his own way, and 
 there were no conflicting and counteracting influences 
 in nature, he would, in his systems of education, run us 
 all in the same moulds, shape us in the same unvarying 
 and inflexible forms, and send us out into the world 
 exact counterparts and copies of one another. But 
 Divine Providence, in the plenitude and profusion of its 
 power, seems, throughout the whole extent of creation, 
 to pursue an entirely opposite course, and to delight in 
 variety. The naturalist tells us that in the vegetable 
 kingdom no single leaf is exactly like its fellow, and we 
 know on whose testimony it is that we believe that 
 
" one star differeth from another star in glory." There 
 are, too, the same varieties of human power and great- 
 ness, as there are inequalities on the earth's surface, 
 gradations in the scale of animal life, and diversities in 
 the instincts and capacities of the several races of the 
 brute creation. 
 
 It is the doctrine of my text, that " it is in the Lord's 
 hand to make great." All power and might are his, 
 and all human greatness, of every sort and degree, 
 physical strength, intellectual vigor, genius, talent, wis- 
 dom, are all alike his gifts. He is the author of all the 
 powers and faculties of man, from the highest to the 
 lowest ; which, accordingly, in their several places and 
 appropriate degrees, are all to be honored and culti- 
 vated. It is a narrow and unworthy feeling to dis- 
 parage any of these divine endowments, or to despise 
 any of the various indications of human power and 
 greatness. The mind must not say to the body, "I 
 have no need of thee ;" nor yet the senses to the spirit, 
 " We have no need of you." For man is not one power 
 or faculty, but many. It behooves every one, then, to 
 stir up and cultivate the peculiar gift of God which is 
 in him, and thereby cause a various tribute of glory to 
 ascend from earth to heaven. For God is truly glori- 
 fied by the full developement and right exercise of our 
 several faculties, and by their consecration to the increase 
 and diffusion of knowledge, virtue and happiness on the 
 earth. Not in vain is this prodigal variety of human 
 gifts, if God be honored and man blessed by it. 
 

 Let us, my hearers, take a survey of some of the 
 prominent varieties of human greatness. Let us see 
 how they have been viewed and estimated. Let us 
 look at them as so many manifestations of divine energy 
 in man. 
 
 In the first place, and at the lowest point of the scale, 
 stands physical greatness, strength of body, power of 
 limb, capacity of labor and endurance, material energy 
 and force. At some periods in the world's history, and 
 at certain stages of man's growth, before the mental and 
 moral faculties are unfolded, and the higher principles 
 of our nature have gained the ascendency, and civiliza- 
 tion spread her restraining and refining influences, this 
 species of greatness has been the most in honor and 
 demand. When the earth was one vast forest, and the 
 wild beast prowled on the frontiers of the infant settle- 
 ments, and waged a desperate and hardly unequal war- 
 fare with man, then physical strength was, of course, 
 alone cultivated and prized. The great ones of that 
 period were the men of giant frames, and tough muscles, 
 and arms of iron the Samson and the Hercules of 
 their tribe. The primitive, or as we choose to call it, 
 the fabulous history of our race, is full of the marvellous 
 exploits of these renowned heroes, who protected the 
 rising hamlets, with their flocks and herds, from the de- 
 predations of the wild boar and the wolf. In the early 
 annals of almost every nation, ancient and modern, we 
 meet with a great man of this sort, who, by mere phy- 
 sical strength, cleared the land of some ferocious animal, 
 
8 
 
 the terror of the surrounding villages, and thereby 
 gained for himself everlasting gratitude and fame. St. 
 George, the tutelary saint of England, was only the 
 great dragon -slayer of his day. 
 
 We come down a little later in the history of our 
 race, and we find another form of greatness, closely 
 allied to the preceding, beginning to display itself 
 namely, martial prowess, or, as it was originally and dis- 
 tinctively called, warlike virtue. Hardly are the wild 
 beasts exterminated, than there springs up, as it were 
 from the dragon's blood and teeth, a horde of oppressors, 
 strong, proud men, who declare that their strength shall 
 be the law of justice, and that their might shall rule in 
 the earth men who wrong the poor, spare not the 
 widow, nor reverence the grey hairs of the aged. 
 These are the sons of Anak and Belial, whose con- 
 tinued and aggravated oppressions at last raise up 
 an indignant band, who, though inferior in muscular 
 strength, are enabled, by the invention of weapons, and 
 by their superior agility and skill, to put themselves on 
 a level with these haughty oppressors, and cope with 
 them in personal combat. They become the guardians 
 of innocence, the avengers of wrong, the giant-quellers 
 of their day in a word, the great men of their time. 
 In a later age, the institution of chivalry was only the 
 reproduction of the same remedy on the recurrence of 
 the same evil. In both cases the feeble and the friend- 
 less were generously protected against outrage by the 
 strong and stout-hearted. 
 
9 
 
 Here we have the germ of military greatness, which, 
 as soon as war was made a business, and bloodshed a 
 pastime, became the greatest curse that ever afflicted 
 our race. From the earliest times down to those in 
 which we live, martial glory has, in every age, continued 
 to dazzle the eyes of the stupid world ; and I know not 
 but that even now, after the dear-bought and bitter ex- 
 perience of ten thousand battle-fields, military greatness, 
 in the opinion of the majority of men, stands at the head 
 of all greatness. The fame of the Caesars, the Attilas, 
 and the Napoleons, the great manslayers, still sheds a 
 blighting and baleful influence over the prospects of hu- 
 manity, as their bloody victories did over the pleasant 
 fields of an industrious peasantry.* 
 
 But let us pass on from these exhibitions of physical 
 greatness to the higher and nobler manifestations of 
 human power. Physical strength man shares in com- 
 mon with the brute ; but the " spirit within him is the 
 candle of the Lord," kindled from the great source of 
 light, and " the inspiration of the Almighty hath given 
 him understanding." When, therefore, we would con- 
 ceive worthily of man, we think of him as an intelligent 
 
 * See Southey's beautiful little poem on the Battle of Blenheim. 
 
 " They burned the country all around, 
 And wasted far and wide, 
 And many a new-born infant there, 
 And tender mother died ; 
 But things like this, you know must be, 
 At every famous victory." 
 
 2 
 

 10 
 
 being, possessed of vast capacities, comprehending the 
 universe in his ken, and " with large discourse looking 
 before and after." And when we would form an idea 
 of a superior kind of greatness, we think of the giants 
 of intellect, of Aristotle and Bacon, the great lights of 
 philosophy and science, men who have enlarged the 
 domains of thought and carried forward the human race 
 with them ; though at the same time they themselves 
 " stride on so far before the rest of the world that they 
 dwindle in the distance." 
 
 Of all the various branches of intellectual pursuit, 
 that science which explains the system of the universe, 
 and reveals the mechanism of the heavens, must always 
 take the lead as the most sublime and marvellous ; and 
 the foremost and most successful cultivators of this 
 science will always be classed among the greatest of 
 men. What, indeed, can be more astonishing, than that 
 a being like one of us, endowed apparently with no 
 higher or different powers, should be able to obtain so 
 minute and accurate a knowledge of those distant plan- 
 ets, and be as well acquainted with their constitution, 
 elements, and laws, as the geologist, the chemist, the 
 botanist, with the appropriate objects of their sciences ? 
 Nothing gives me so exalted an idea of the power of man, 
 and the extent and reach of his capacities, as his ability to 
 calculate, with unerring precision, the distances of those 
 twinkling orbs, to determine their figures, magnitudes, 
 and velocities, to measure their weight, estimate their 
 relative attractions and disturbing forces, delineate their 
 
11 
 
 orbits, register their laws of motion, fix the times of their 
 revolution, and predict the periods of their return.. To 
 a common mind, uninstructed in the science, there is 
 nothing that appears so much like divine wisdom. A 
 Galileo, a Kepler, a Newton, seem to him to belong to 
 another race, a higher order of beings. They appear to 
 possess some additional faculties. "What a vast in- 
 terval, indeed, from the imperfect notions of the Chal- 
 dean shepherd and the Phoenician mariner to the ' Ce- 
 lestial Mechanics ' of a La Place ! " 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that the majority of men, cer- 
 tainly of uneducated men, are utterly incredulous to the 
 statements of astronomical science. "Tell a plain 
 countryman," says Bishop Hall, " that the sun, or some 
 higher or lesser star, is much bigger than his cart wheel, 
 or at least so many scores bigger than the whole earth, 
 he laughs thee to scorn, as affecting admiration with a 
 learned untruth ; yet the scholar, by the eye of reason, 
 doth as plainly see and acknowledge this truth, as that 
 his hand is bigger than his pen." Indeed, nothing can 
 be more certain than the doctrines of Astronomy. They 
 rest on impregnable foundations, on the demonstrations 
 of mathematical evidence, than which nothing, except 
 the evidence of consciousness, can be more satisfactory 
 and conclusive. 
 
 " Happy," says Gilbert Wakefield, " that man who 
 lays the foundations of his future studies deep in the 
 recesses of geometry, that 'purifier of the soul,' as 
 Plato called it, and in the principles of mathematical 
 
12 
 
 philosophy; compared with whose noble theories (I 
 make.no scruple to declare it) our classical lucubrations 
 are as a glimmering of a taper to the meridian splendors 
 of an equatorial sun. What subject of human contem- 
 plation shall compare in grandeur with that which de- 
 monstrates the trajectories, the periods, the distances, 
 the dimensions, the velocities and gravitations of the 
 planetary system ; states the tides ; adjusts the nutation 
 of the earth, and contemplates the invisible comet wan- 
 dering in his parabolic orb, for successive centuries, in 
 but a corner of boundless space ? which considers that 
 the diameter of the earth's orbit, of one hundred and 
 ninety millions in length, is but an evanescent point at 
 the nearest fixed star to our system ; that the first 
 beam of the sun's light, whose rapidity is inconceivable, 
 may be still traversing the bosom of boundless space 1 
 Language sinks beneath contemplations so exalted, and 
 so well calculated to inspire the most awful sentiments 
 of the Great Artificer ; of that Wisdom which could 
 contrive this stupendous fabric, that Providence which 
 can support it, and that Power whose hand could 
 launch into their orbits bodies of a magnitude so pro- 
 digious." * 
 
 It was a science that early engaged the notice of 
 men, and, to its honor be it spoken, it has always ex- 
 erted a purifying and elevating influence on its votaries. 
 Indeed, how could it be otherwise? Who can look 
 
 * Gilbert Wakefield's Memoirs, I. 103. 
 
13 
 
 upon those brilliant points, and not fancy them the 
 spangled pavement of a divine abode ? There is virtue 
 as well as poetry and philosophy in them. They shed 
 down a healing and restorative influence upon their 
 worshippers. They are the symbols of endurance and 
 perpetuity. "When I gaze upon the stars, do they 
 not seem to look down on me as if with pity from their 
 serene spaces, like eyes glistening with heavenly tears 
 over the little lot of man? Thousands of human 
 generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swal- 
 lowed up of time, and there remains no wreck of them 
 any more ; and Arcturus, and Orion, and Sirius, and 
 the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and 
 young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the 
 plain of Shinar." 
 
 Another variety of human greatness is practical 
 talent; by which I understand a talent for business, 
 skill in affairs, a faculty of compassing ends and of 
 swaying the judgments and wills of others, and compel- 
 ling them to execute our purposes and behests. This, 
 unquestionably, is a high endowment, enabling its pos- 
 sessor, when it is skilfully used, to wield a mighty influ- 
 ence and to bring about vast results. At the present 
 day, it is in great repute, and perhaps is more estimated 
 than any other species of talent, far more, I think, than 
 it intrinsically deserves. For often it is a minute species 
 of wisdom, narrow in its views, limited in its plans, and 
 selfish in its aims. The mere practical man is, after all, 
 but an imperfect specimen of humanity. He is little 
 
14 
 
 fitted, by his habits of thought and action, to manage 
 public affairs, discuss the great questions of morals or 
 government, or legislate on the complicated interests of 
 a people. The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus 
 says of such men, " Without these a city cannot be 
 inhabited, and they will maintain the state of the world. 
 But they shall not be sought for in public council, nor 
 sit on the judges' seat ; they cannot declare justice and 
 judgment." And the most popular writer of the pre- 
 sent age observes, "those who live in public business, 
 and of course in constant agitation and intrigue, know 
 but little about the real and deep progress of opinions 
 and events. Immersed in little political detail and the 
 struggling skirmish of party, they seem to lose sight 
 of the great progressive movement of human affairs. 
 They put me somewhat in mind of a miller, who is 
 so busy with the clatter of his own wheels, grindstones, 
 and machinery, and so much employed in regulating 
 his own artificial mill-dam, that he is incapable of 
 noticing the gradual swell of the river from which he 
 derives his little stream, until it comes down with such 
 force as to carry his whole manufactory away before it." * 
 Let it be remembered that I have been speaking of 
 mere practical talent. When, however, this is combined 
 with intellectual power, and guided by humane and 
 benevolent feelings, then is manifested a species of 
 moral greatness, from the influence of which the most 
 important and beneficial results have redounded to the 
 
 * Lockhart's Life of Scott, Vol. V. Chapter 7. 
 
15 
 
 world. It becomes the instrument of advancing civil- 
 ization, improving the condition of our race, mitigating 
 the woes of humanity, lessening the dangers and expo- 
 sures of life, and prolonging the term of human exist- 
 ence. For my own part, I would rather have been the 
 discoverer of vaccination, the inventor of the safety- 
 lamp, or the author of " The Practical Navigator," than 
 stand at the head of all the merely speculative philo- 
 sophers and theorists that have ever lived. The names 
 of Jenner, and Davy, and Howard, the preservers and 
 benefactors of their species, in real greatness how do 
 they transcend those of the famous military heroes, the 
 destroyers of their fellow-men ! Burke mentions it as 
 the high praise of Howard, that " he visited all Europe 
 to take the gauge and dimensions of misery;" and he 
 adds that " his plan was as full of genius as of human- 
 ity." "Maria d'Escobar," we are told by Sir James 
 Mackintosh, " a Spanish lady, first brought a few grains 
 of wheat into the city of Lima. For three years she 
 distributed their produce among the colonists, giving 
 twenty or thirty grains to each farmer. By this supply 
 of food she brought into existence more human beings 
 than Napoleon destroyed. If she had come from 
 Egypt to Attica in the earlier days of Grecian history, 
 she would have been a goddess. Sir John Malcolm 
 introduced potatoes into India. That benefit may be 
 remembered long after his Persian mission is forgotten. 
 If Lord Wellesley had accomplished the abolition of 
 infanticide, his name would have been held in everlast- 
 
16 
 
 ing remembrance. All the negotiations and wars, 
 which appear so splendid at present, will, in a history 
 of twenty years hence, not occupy ten pages. So 
 nearly, in some parts of human conduct, does the dis- 
 tribution even of fame agree with the dictates of that 
 eternal justice which declares, that whosoever shall give 
 to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water, 
 shall in no wise lose his reward. The smallest act of 
 benevolence, especially of benevolence towards those 
 who spread truth, is sure to reward itself, and is likely 
 to be praised by future generations." 
 
 We come at last to the highest species of human 
 greatness, namely, pure moral and spiritual greatness. 
 Would we view man in his noblest aspect, we must 
 turn from mere physical operations and intellectual 
 pursuits, and survey his moral and spiritual nature. 
 " The proper study of mankind is man." The noblest 
 of sciences is moral science ; the highest philosophy is 
 the philosophy of man's spiritual nature ; and the most 
 glorious exercise of his powers is in developing and 
 cultivating his religious instincts. The man who de- 
 votes himself, singly and earnestly, to the cultivation of 
 moral principle and spiritual truth, who labors to extend 
 through the community a reverence for right, duty and 
 virtue, and by the persuasive influence of his own 
 example and the deep fervor of his own cheerful and 
 unaffected piety, diffuses all around him the same trust- 
 ing confidence in God and the same unwavering reli- 
 ance upon a benignant Providence that fill his own 
 
17 
 
 bosom that man seems to me to have attained to the 
 highest endowments of human nature, and reached the 
 summit of earthly greatness. And it is worthy of 
 remark that this was the sentiment of the most illus- 
 trious and successful investigator of chemical science 
 which this age has produced I mean Sir Humphry 
 Davy. "I envy," says that great philosopher, "no 
 quality of the mind or intellect in others ; not genius, 
 power, wit, or fancy. But if I could choose what would 
 be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful to me, I 
 should prefer a firm religious belief to every other 
 blessing. For it makes life a discipline of goodness, 
 creates new hopes when all earthly hopes vanish, and 
 throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the 
 most gorgeous of all lights ; awakens life even in death, 
 and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and 
 divinity ; makes an instrument of torture and of shame 
 the ladder of ascent to paradise; and, far above all 
 combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delight- 
 ful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the 
 blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sen- 
 sualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, anni- 
 hilation, and despair." 
 
 You have doubtless perceived, my hearers, long ere 
 this, that the train of my remarks has been suggested 
 by the solemn event which has recently deprived this 
 community of one of its most efficient and valuable 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 members, this congregation of one of its firmest pillars, 
 and the scientific world of one of its brightest orna- 
 ments. A great light has suddenly gone out while it 
 was yet beaming brightly and beneficently on the 
 world. An eminent man has fallen in the midst of 
 us one whom God had made singularly great in more 
 than one of the departments which I have just speci- 
 fied. His position as a public man, the various posts 
 and offices which he filled, his relation to the Univer- 
 sity and to other literary institutions and philosophical 
 societies, and the prominent place which he confess- 
 edly occupied at the head of the scientific men of this 
 western continent, are sufficient, apart from any pri- 
 vate considerations, or feelings of personal respect, to 
 justify the notice which I now propose to take of his 
 life and character. There was much in that life instruc- 
 tive and encouraging, particularly to the young, the 
 friendless, the poor. There was much in that char- 
 acter worthy of eulogy and imitation. Let me speak 
 out my impressions and recollections of him with that 
 simplicity and frankness which he loved. 
 
 The late NATHANIEL BOWDITCH was born at Salem, 
 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on the 26th day 
 of March, 1773. He was the fourth child of Habakkuk 
 and Mary Ingersoll Bowditch. His ancestors, for three 
 generations, had been shipmasters, and his father, on 
 retiring from that "perilous mode of hard industry," 
 carried on the trade of a cooper, by which he gained a 
 
19 
 
 scanty and precarious subsistence for a family of seven 
 children.* 
 
 I had a curiosity to trace up the life of this wonder- 
 ful man, if possible, to his childhood, to ascertain his 
 early character and powers, and the influences under 
 
 * The names of the children were (I mention them in the order of 
 their ages) Mary, Habakkuk, Elizabeth, NATHANIEL, William, Samuel, 
 and Lois. "William, who died in 1799, at the age of twenty-three, is said 
 to have been quite as remarkable, in his childhood, as Nathaniel. They 
 seem to have been a short-lived race, five of them having died before the 
 age of twenty-three, and the eldest in 1808, at the age of forty-two. The 
 old ladies, mentioned hereafter, told me the melancholy tale that they re- 
 collected seeing two of the daughters, Mary and Lois, both of them mar- 
 ried women, pining away with a consumption in the same room, and 
 dying within a few months of each other. Nathaniel was about the same 
 time, 1808, at the age of thirty-five, attacked with a severe hemorrhage at 
 the lungs. In consequence of this he took a journey with his friend, the 
 Hon. Thomas W. Ward, now of this city; and on their arrival at Ded- 
 ham, so feeble did he appear, that the compassionate innkeeper asked 
 Mr. Ward where his friend belonged, and advised him to return home 
 immediately, for he doubted whether he would live to reach the next inn. 
 Not long after his removal to Boston he fell twice suddenly in the street, 
 which excited the most alarming apprehensions in the minds of his 
 friends, they fearing that he might at any time be taken off by apoplexy. 
 But Dr. Bowditch ascertained by experience that this falling was occa- 
 sioned by his walking immediately after dinner. He accordingly post- 
 poned his walk to a later hour in the day, and never had a recurrence of 
 the complaint. Earlier in life, in consequence of poring over figures 
 whilst sitting up to watch with a friend, he was attacked with inflam- 
 mation and weakness of the eyes, which compelled him to favor them 
 for two years. All these things should be taken into consideration in 
 forming a just estimate of the amount and extent of his labors. He 
 never would have been able to accomplish so much without the strictest 
 regularity in diet and exercise. 
 
20 
 
 which his mind and heart had been formed. Accord- 
 ingly, on a recent visit to Salem, I took a walk, of some 
 two or three miles, to see a house where he used to say 
 that he and his mother had lived when he was as yet 
 hardly advanced beyond infancy. My walk brought 
 me among the pleasant farm-houses of a retired hamlet 
 in Essex county; and I found the plain two-story 
 house, with but two rooms in it, where he dwelt with 
 his mother ; and I saw the chamber- window where he 
 said she used to sit and show him "the new moon 
 with the old moon in her arm,"* and, with the poetical 
 superstition of a sailor's wife, jingle the silver in her 
 pocket that her husband might have good luck, and she 
 good tidings from him, far off upon the sea. I entered 
 that house and two others in the vicinity, and found 
 three ancient women who knew her well, and remem- 
 bered her wonderful boy. I sat down by their fire- 
 sides and listened with greedy ear to the story, which 
 they gladly told me, of that remarkable child, remarka- 
 ble for his early goodness as well as for his early great- 
 ness. Their words, uttered in the plain, hearty English 
 of the yeomanry of Massachusetts, uncorrupted by the 
 admixture of any foreign gibberish, f I took down from 
 
 * See the grand old ballad of " Sir Patrick Spens," the oldest in the 
 language, in Percy's Reliques, Allan Cunningham's Scottish Songs, or 
 Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 f What a pity it is that our noble language, of itself adequate to all 
 purposes, should be in such danger of being converted into a Babylonian 
 jargon of French and German. The late " History of the French Revo- 
 
' 
 
 21 
 
 their lips, and now give them without any alteration 
 or improvement. 
 
 There were three of these crones, it will be recol- 
 lected; and the accounts which they severally gave, 
 both of the child and his mother, perfectly coincide, as 
 will be seen, without any discrepancy, and therefore 
 mutually confirm one another's statement of things and 
 appearances as they existed upwards of sixty years 
 ago. The boy was at this time about three years old. 
 
 The first one that I saw and interrogated said that 
 Nat. was "a beautiful, nice, likely, clever, thoughtful 
 boy. Learning came natural to him ; and his mother 
 used to say that he would make something or nothing." 
 I asked her whether she had ever heard what became 
 of him. "O yes," she replied, "he became a great 
 man, and went to Boston, and had a mighty deal of 
 learning." " What kind of learning ? " I asked. " Why," 
 she answered, " I believe he was a pilot, and knew how 
 to steer all the vessels." This evidently was her simple 
 and confused idea of " The Practical Navigator." 
 
 The second old lady stated that "Nat. went to 
 school to her aunt, in the revolutionary war, in the house 
 where we were sitting, when he was about three years 
 
 lution," in many respects a noble work, would stand some chance of 
 going down to posterity, had it been written in the English tongue for 
 although some of the words may be Saxon, yet the idiom throughout is 
 any thing but English. A man who has shown himself capable, in his 
 beautiful Life of Schiller, of writing in a simple and pure style, ought to 
 be ashamed of these miserable affectations. 
 
22 
 
 old, and that she took mightily to him, and that he was 
 the best scholar she ever had. He learnt amazing fast, 
 for his mind was fully given to it. He did not seem 
 like other children ; he seemed better. His mother was 
 a beautiful, nice woman." 
 
 The third old lady said that " Nat. was a little, still 
 creature ; and his mother a mighty free, good-natured 
 woman. She used to say, ' Who should n't be cheerly 
 if a Christian should n't ?' Her children took after her, 
 and she had a particular way of guarding them against 
 evil." 
 
 These I testify to be their very words, as I pencilled 
 them down at the time. And they show, I think, very 
 clearly, the influence of the mother's mind and heart 
 upon the character of her son. Of that mother, in 
 after life, and to its close, he often spoke in terms of 
 the highest admiration and the strongest affection, and 
 in his earnest manner would say " My mother loved 
 me idolized me worshipped me."* 
 
 After leaving the dame's school, the only other in- 
 struction he ever received was obtained at the common 
 public schools of his native town, which were then very 
 inferior to what they have since become, being wholly 
 
 * These circumstances concerning the childhood of Dr. Bowditch were 
 obtained since the delivery of the discourse, but are inserted in this place 
 as interesting facts, worth preserving, as indicative of his early capacities 
 and character. No apology, I trust, will be needed for the minuteness 
 with which I have detailed them. To his future biographer they will be 
 invaluable, and for his use chiefly were they gathered up and preserved. 
 
23 
 
 inadequate to furnish even the groundwork and elements 
 of a respectable education. I have heard it stated, on 
 the authority of one of his schoolfellows, that the only 
 book in their school was a dictionary,* which belonged 
 to the master, who gave out the words from it to be 
 spelt by the boys. I have likewise been told by one 
 who lived in Salem at the time, that the master of this 
 school, an Irishman, by the name of Ford, a person of 
 violent and passionate temper, gave young Bowditch, 
 when he was about five or six years old, a very diffi- 
 cult sum in arithmetic to perform. His scholar went 
 to his desk, and soon afterwards brought up his slate 
 with the question solved. The master, surprised at 
 the suddenness of his return, asked him who had been 
 doing the sum for him ; and on his answering " Nobody 
 I did it myself," he gave him a severe chastisement 
 for lying, not believing it possible that he could, of him- 
 self, without any assistance, perform so difficult a ques- 
 tion. It is believed that he did not afterwards have the 
 grace to ask the pardon of his quick-witted pupil. 
 
 It was highly honorable to him, that although he had 
 not himself enjoyed the benefits of a liberal or learned 
 education, he felt the importance and acknowledged the 
 value of it ; and accordingly gave to his children the 
 best which the country afforded, and took a deep in- 
 
 * Speaking of the dictionary, it may be worth stating that Dr. Bow- 
 ditch had upwards of a hundred dictionaries, of different kinds, in his 
 library. 
 
24 
 
 terest, and, for many years, an efficient agency in the 
 concerns of its principal University.* 
 
 But the advantages of school, such as they were, he 
 was obliged to forego at the early age of ten years, 
 " his poverty and not his will consenting," that he might 
 go into his father's shop and help to support the family. 
 He was soon, however, transferred as an apprentice to a 
 ship-chandler, in whose shop he continued until he 
 went to sea, first as a clerk, afterwards as supercargo, 
 and finally as master and supercargo jointly. It was 
 whilst he was in the ship-chandler's shop that he first 
 manifested that strong bent, or what is commonly called 
 an original genius, for mathematical pursuits. Every 
 moment that he could snatch from the counter, was 
 given to the slate. An old gentleman, who used fre- 
 quently to visit the shop, said to his wife, one day, on re- 
 turning home, " I never go into that shop but I see that 
 boy ciphering and figuring away on his slate, as if his 
 very life depended upon it ; and if he goes on at this 
 rate, as he has begun, I should not at all wonder if, 
 at last, in the course of time, he should get to be an 
 almanac-maker ! " this being, in his view, the summit 
 of mathematical attainment. 
 
 From his earliest years, indeed, he seems to have had 
 an ardent love of reading, and he has been heard to 
 say that, even . when quite young, he read through a 
 
 * Dr. Bowditch was elected a Fellow of the Corporation of Harvard 
 College in 1826, and held that place at the time of his death. 
 
25 
 
 whole Encyclopedia, from beginning to end, without 
 omitting a single article.* 
 
 He sailed on his first voyage, on the llth of January, 
 1795, at the age of twenty-two, in the capacity of 
 captain's clerk, on board the ship Henry, of Salem, 
 owned by Elias Hasket Derby, Esq., and commanded 
 by Captain Henry Prince, who still lives to glory in the 
 fame of his clerk, f Captain John Gibaut, with whom 
 young Bowditch had been engaged the year before in 
 taking a survey of the town of Salem,! had previously 
 been appointed to the command of the ship, and had 
 invited his friend to accompany him as clerk. He con- 
 sented; but in consequence of some. misunderstanding 
 subsequently springing up between the owner of the 
 ship and Captain Gibaut, he relinquished the command, 
 and of course his agreement with his friend was at an 
 end. Mr. Derby, however, on the appointment of Capt. 
 Prince, said to him, "Do you know young Bowditch?" 
 " Yes, very well." " How should you like to have him 
 go in the ship with you ? " "I should like it above all 
 
 * Since the last page was struck off*, I have ascertained that after he 
 left the ship-chandlery, kept by Messrs. Ropes &; Hodges, he was for 
 some time a clerk in the grocery store of Samuel C. Ward, at which 
 time he was able to calculate the eclipses of the moon, and most of the 
 phenomena recorded in the almanacs of that day. 
 
 t Captain Prince was present when this discourse was repeated in 
 the First Church in Salem, on the afternoon of the same day that it was 
 delivered at Church Green, in Boston. 
 
 t Captain Gibaut used to say, that he depended entirely upon his 
 young friend for taking the angles. 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 things," said the captain. He accordingly went on 
 board as clerk, although his name was entered on the 
 shipping-papers as second mate. The ship sailed for 
 the Isle of Bourbon, and returned home after an 
 absence of exactly one year. 
 
 His second voyage was made as supercargo, on 
 board the ship Astraea, of Salem, belonging to the 
 same owner, and commanded by the same captain. 
 The vessel sailed to Lisbon, touched at Madeira, and 
 then proceeded to Manilla, and arrived at Salem in May 
 1797. 
 
 At Madeira, the captain and supercargo were very 
 politely received by Mr. Pintard, the American consul 
 there, to whose house the ship was consigned, and 
 were frequently invited to dine with his family. Mrs. 
 Pintard had heard from another American shipmaster 
 that the young supercargo was " a great calculator," and 
 she felt a curiosity to test his capacities. Accordingly, 
 she said to him one day at dinner, " Mr. Bowditch, I 
 have a question which I should like to have you an- 
 swer. Some years since," naming the time, " I received 
 a legacy in Ireland. The money was there invested, and 
 remained some time on interest; the amount was sub- 
 sequently remitted to England, where the interest 
 likewise accumulated ; and lately the whole amount 
 has been remitted to me here. What sum ought I to 
 receive?" She of course mentioned the precise dates 
 of the several remittances, as she went along. Mr. 
 Bowditch lay down his knife and fork, said it was a 
 
27 
 
 little difficult, on account of the difference of currency 
 and the number of the remittances; but squeezing the 
 tips of his fingers, he said, in about two minutes, "The 
 sum you should receive is <843 15s. 6|d." "Well, 
 Mr. clerk," said Mrs. Pintard to the head clerk of the 
 house, an elderly person, who was esteemed a very 
 skilful accountant, " you have been figuring it out for 
 me on paper ; has he got it right ? " " Yes, Madam," 
 said the clerk, taking his long calculation out of his 
 pocket, "he has got it exactly. And I venture to say, 
 that there is not another man on the island that can do 
 it in two hours." 
 
 In August, 1798, he went in the same ship with 
 Capt. Prince, on his third voyage, to Cadiz, thence to 
 the Mediterranean, loaded at Alicant, and arrived at 
 Salem in 1799. 
 
 On the voyage from Cadiz to Alicant, they were 
 chased by a French privateer, and having a strong ar- 
 mament of nineteen guns, they prepared for action. 
 The post assigned to Bowditch was the cabin, and his 
 duty was to hand the powder upon deck. In the 
 midst of the preparations for the engagement, Captain 
 Prince had a curiosity to look into the cabin, and see 
 whether all things were going on right there; and, to 
 his astonishment, he found Bowditch calmly sitting at 
 the table, with his slate and pencil, and figuring away, 
 as usual. The thing was so ludicrous, that Captain 
 Prince burst out a laughing, and said, "Well, Mr. 
 Bowditch, can you be making your will now ? " 
 

 28 
 
 " Yes," was his good-natured reply. After this affair, 
 (the French privateer having hauled off without mo- 
 lesting them) the supercargo requested to be stationed 
 at one of the guns, and his request was granted. 
 Captain Prince testifies, that in all cases of danger, 
 he manifested great firmness and presence of mind. 
 
 The fourth and last voyage which they made to- 
 gether, was in the same ship, from Boston to Batavia 
 and Manilla. They sailed in August, 1799, and arrived 
 there in September, 1800. 
 
 On their arrival at Manilla, a Scotchman, by the name 
 of Murray, asked Captain Prince how he contrived to 
 find the way there, through such a long, perplexing, and 
 dangerous navigation, and in the face of the north-east 
 monsoon, by mere dead reckoning, without the use 
 of lunars, it being a common notion at that time, that 
 the Americans knew nothing about working lunar ob- 
 servations. Captain Prince told him that he had a crew 
 of twelve men, every one of whom could take and 
 work a lunar observation as well, for all practical purpo- 
 ses, as Sir Isaac Newton himself, were he alive. Mur- 
 ray was perfectly astounded at this, and actually went 
 down to the landing-place one Sunday morning to see 
 this knowing crew come ashore.* 
 
 * One of the most characteristic and amusing nautical anecdotes 
 that it has ever been my good fortune to meet with, is contained in the 
 fourth volume of Baron Zach's " Correspondance Astronomique" page 62. 
 
29 
 
 Mr. Bowditch was present at this conversation, and 
 as Captain Prince says, sat " as modest as a maid," said 
 not a word, but held his slate-pencil in his mouth. 
 Another person on the island, a broker, by the name of 
 
 It is so good that I thought it worth translating, and now venture to ap- 
 pend it in a note, notwithstanding its length. The Baron is relating the 
 sensation caused at Genoa, by the arrival there, in 1817, of that splendid 
 packet, the " Cleopatra's Barge," owned by George Crowninshield, Esq. of 
 Salem. He says that he went on board, with all the world, " and it hap- 
 pened," to use his own words, " that in inquiring after my friends and 
 correspondents at Philadelphia and Boston, I mentioned, among others, 
 the name of Mr. Bowditch. 'He is a friend of our family and our neigh- 
 bor at Salem,' replied the captain, a smart, little old man, ' and that young 
 man whom you see there, my son, was his pupil ; in fact, it is he, and not 
 myself, who navigates the ship. Question him a little, and see if he has 
 learnt any thing.' Our dialogue was as follows : ' You have had an ex- 
 cellent teacher of navigation, young man ; and you could not well help 
 being a good scholar. In making the Straits of Gibraltar, what was the 
 error in your reckoning ? ' The young man replied, ' Six miles.' ' You 
 must then have got your longitude very accurately ; how did you get it ? ' 
 * Hirst by our chronometers, and afterwards by lunar distances.' ' What ! 
 do you know how to take and calculate the longitude by lunar distances ?' 
 The young captain seemed somewhat nettled at my question, and 
 answered me with a scornful smile ' 1 know how to calculate the lon- 
 gitude ! Why, our cook can do that ! ' ' Your cook ! ' Here the owner 
 of the ship and the old captain assured me that the cook on board could 
 calculate the longitude very well, that he had a taste and passion for it, 
 and did it every day. * There he is,' said the young man, pointing with 
 his finger to a negro at the stern of the ship, with a white apron before 
 him, and holding a chicken in one hand and a butcher's knife in the 
 other. ' Come forward, Jack,' said the captain to him; ' the gentleman 
 is surprised that you can calculate the longitude ; answer his questions.' 
 I asked him, * What method do you use to calculate the longitude by 
 lunar distances ? ' His answer was, ' It's all one to me : I use the 
 methods of Maskelyne, Lyons, Witchel, and Bowditch ; but, upon the 
 
30 
 
 Kean, who was present, said to Murray, "If you knew 
 as much as I do about that ship Astraea, you would'nt 
 talk* quite so glib." " Why not ? what do you know 
 about her ? " " Why, sir, I know that there is more 
 knowledge of navigation on board that ship, than there 
 ever was in all the vessels that ever floated in Manilla 
 Bay." 
 
 The knowledge which these common sailors had ac- 
 quired of navigation, had been imparted to them by the 
 kindness of Mr. Bowditch. Captain Prince says that 
 one day the supercargo said to him, "Come, Captain, 
 let us go forward and see what the sailors are talking 
 about, under the lee of the long-boat." They went 
 forward accordingly, and the Captain was surprised to 
 find the sailors, instead of spinning their long yarns, 
 
 whole, I prefer Dunthorne's ; I am more used to it, and can work with it 
 quicker.' I could not express my surprise at hearing this black face 
 talk in this way, with his bloody chicken and knife in his hand. 
 ' Go,' said Mr. Crowninshield to him, ' lay down your chicken, bring 
 your books and your journal, and show the gentleman your calcu- 
 lations.' The cook soon returned with his books under his arm. He had 
 Bowditch's Practical Navigator, The Requisite Tables, Hutton's Tables 
 of Logarithms, and the Nautical Almanac. I saw all this negro's calcu- 
 lations of the latitude, the longitude, and the true time, which he had 
 worked out on the passage. He answered all my questions with won- 
 derful accuracy, not in the Latin of the caboose, but in the good set 
 terms of navigation. This cook had been round the world, as cabin- 
 boy, with Captain. Cook in his last voyage, and was well acquainted with 
 the particulars of his assassination at Owhyhee, on the 14th of February, 
 1779." 
 
31 
 
 earnestly engaged with book, slate and pencil, and dis- 
 cussing the high matters of ta'ngents and secants, alti- 
 tudes, dip, and refraction. Two of them, in particular, 
 were very zealously disputing, one of them calling out 
 to the other, " Well, Jack, what have you got ?" " I've 
 got the sine" was the answer. " But that an't right," 
 said the other, "/say it is the cosine." * 
 
 I am happy to be able to corroborate the statements 
 of Captain Prince, by the testimony of a gallant officerf 
 in our navy, who sailed in the Astraa the two last 
 voyages to Alicant and Batavia. In a letter recently 
 written, with the sight of which I have been favored, 
 after speaking in terms of the warmest gratitude of the 
 kindness and attention with which Mr. Bowditch 
 treated him, when a poor sea-sick cabin-boy, and ac- 
 
 * Besides these four voyages with Captain Prince, Dr. Bowditch made 
 two others, as I have before remarked, the last in the combined capacities 
 of supercargo and master. Captain Prince says, that although he had 
 such a thorough knowledge of navigation, he knew but little about what 
 is technically called seamanship. He also mentions the fact, which he 
 had often heard him repeat, that although, in his youth, he had long 
 lived in the vicinity of the ship-yards, he had never seen a launch ; and 
 rather scouted the idea that such a sight, or any thing like it, should be 
 able to draw him away from his books. Captain Prince likewise testi- 
 fies that during the whole course of these four voyages, he does not re- 
 collect the slightest interruption of harmony and good feeling between 
 them. 
 
 t Charles F. Waldo, Esq. sailing-master in the United States' Navy, 
 now stationed at the Navy Yard in Charlestown. He was wounded in 
 the engagement between the Constitution and the Java. 
 
32 
 
 knowledging his great obligations to him for instructing 
 him in navigation, he goes on to say that it was Mr. 
 Bowditch's practice to interest himself in all the sailors 
 on board, and to take pains to instruct all who could read 
 and write, in the principles of navigation. The conse- 
 quence of this was, that every one of those twelve 
 sailors, who could read and write, subsequently rose to 
 the rank of captain or chief mate of a ship. Indeed, 
 at Salem, it was considered the highest recommenda- 
 tion of a seaman, that he had sailed in the same ship 
 with Mr. Bowditch, and this fact alone was often suffi- 
 cient to procure for him an officer's berth. In illustration 
 of this . statement, he mentions the fact that on his 
 second voyage the first and second mates had been sail- 
 ors in the same ship on the previous voyage. He also 
 speaks of Mr. Bowditch's urbane and gentlemanly de- 
 portment to every one on board, and says that he never 
 appeared so happy as when he could inspire the sailor 
 with a proper sense of his individual importance, and of 
 the talents he possessed, and might call into action. 
 
 Capt. Prince relates a little incident that occurred 
 under his observation, that is worth preserving. In 
 the year 1796, there was an Englishman in Boston, 
 who called himself a professor of mathematics. He 
 boasted a great deal about his mathematical knowledge, 
 and said that he had not found any body in this country 
 who knew any thing about the science. "I have a 1 
 question," said he, " which I have proposed to several 
 persons here who are reputed the most knowing, and 
 
33 
 
 they cannot solve it." This Englishman was a friend 
 of E. H. Derby, Jr. of Salem, to whom Capt. Prince 
 had some time previously said that he thought Mr. 
 Bowditch "the greatest calculator in America." Mr. 
 Derby and the Englishman being one evening at the 
 theatre, and the latter repeating the remark about his 
 question, " Well," says Mr. Derby, " there is a young 
 man sitting opposite in that box, who, I think, will do it 
 for you. You had better hand it over to him." Accord- 
 ingly, after the play was over, the problem was brought 
 to the house where Capt. Prince and Mr. Bowditch 
 boarded, by a man named Hughes, who asked him 
 whether he thought he could solve it. " Yes," w r as his 
 instantaneous reply. The next morning Hughes called 
 and asked him how he got along with the question. 
 "I've done it," says Mr. Bowditch, and I wish you 
 would tell the Englishman that the answer is the loga- 
 rithm of such a number," naming it. In addition to this, 
 I have heard that the American mathematician said, 
 "Tell your friend that I have got a question which puz- 
 zled me once a good while before I could make it out, 
 and I should like to have him try his hand upon it." He 
 gave him the question, and it was handed over to the 
 Englishman ; but nothing more was heard of it. For 
 once, he had probably got enough of mathematics.* 
 
 * I have heard it said that the name of this Englishman was Nichols, 
 a bookseller, the same who published an edition of Playfair's Geometry 
 in Boston. 
 
 5 
 
34 
 
 Capt. Prince states some facts in relation to the origin 
 of one of Mr. Bowditch's principal works, which will be 
 interesting to all, particularly to all seafaring men, for 
 whose especial benefit I record them. Every thing re- 
 lating to " The Sailor's Own Book " must be acceptable 
 to them. He states that on the day previous to their sailing 
 on their fourth and last voyage together, Mr. Edmund M. 
 Blunt,* a noted publisher of charts and nautical books, 
 then residing at Newburyport, came to Boston, where 
 the ship lay, on purpose to see Mr. Bowditch. In the 
 course of the conversation between them, which Capt. 
 Prince overheard, Mr. Blunt said, "If you had not cor- 
 rected the declination, I should have lost the whole of 
 the last edition ;" meaning the last edition of John Ham- 
 ilton Moore's book on Navigation, then in common use 
 on board our vessels. " Why," continued he, " can't 
 you be good enough to look over Hamilton Moore again, 
 more carefully 1 Take a copy of it with you, and mark 
 whatever you may find ; and when you get home, I will 
 give you a new one." " Well," replied Mr. Bowditch, 
 " I will." On the home passage Capt. Prince says that 
 Mr. Bowditch remarked to him, " Now I am going to 
 assist Blunt, and begin with Hamilton Moore." When 
 he had been engaged upon it several days, Capt. Prince 
 
 * Mr. Blunt subsequently removed to the city of New York, where he 
 pursued the same line of business, and became the principal nautical 
 publisher in the United States. He now resides at Sing Sing, and the 
 business is carried on by his sons. 
 
35 
 
 passed by him in the cabin, and said, " Well, sir, you 
 seem to put a great many black marks on Johnny Moore." 
 " Yes," replied Mr. Bowditch, " and well I may, for he 
 deserves it ; his book is nothing but a tissue . of errors 
 from beginning to end." * After he had been hard at 
 work for some time, Capt Prince said to him, "If I were 
 you, I would sooner make a new book than undertake 
 to mend that old thing." Mr. Bowditch smiled and said, 
 " I find so many errors that I intend to take out the 
 work in my own name." Capt. Prince closed the con- 
 versation by adding, " I think you ought to do so, for 
 the work will be new, and the fruit of your own labor, 
 
 * As an illustration of the dangerous blunders of Moore's work, I will 
 mention a fact related to me by my worthy parishioner and friend, 
 John Waters, Esq. of this city. He states that in the beginning of the year 
 1800, he was returning from Canton in the ship Eliza, and that some- 
 where this side of the Cape (he thinks off the West India Islands), in 
 taking the sun's declination one day, they turned to Moore's " Table XVII. 
 of The Sun's Declination for the years 1792, 1796, 1800, 1804," to which 
 the stupid fellow had appended the remark, " each being leap year" In 
 consequence of thus erroneously making 1800 a leap year, he gives the 
 declination on the 1st of March 7 11', whereas by reference to the 
 Nautical Almanac of that year it will be found to be 7 33', mak- 
 ing a difference of twenty-three miles. Mr. Waters fortunately had a Nau- 
 tical Almanac on board, and likewise a copy of Pike's Arithmetic, which 
 explained the reason why the year 1800 was not leap year. In conse- 
 quence of this he escaped the dangers to which other vessels in the same 
 latitude were subjected ; for he afterwards read in the newspapers of 
 several ships that were wrecked solely by reason of that blunder. It 
 was, indeed, quite time for Hamilton Moore to be laid up, high and 
 dry, on the shelf. Mr. Waters's copy of Moore, the tenth edition, he has 
 shown me, and kindly explained to me the error. I hope I have made 
 it intelligible to other landsmen. 
 
36 
 
 and will be the best work on navigation ever published ;" 
 a prediction that was wonderfully fulfilled to the letter.* 
 Such was the germ of " The New American Practical 
 Navigator," the first edition of which he issued in the 
 year 1800, at the age of twenty-three ; a work abound- 
 ing with the actual results of his own experience, and 
 containing simpler and more expeditious formulas for 
 working the nautical problems.f This work has been of 
 immense service to the nautical and commercial interests 
 of this country. Had Dr. Bowditch never done any 
 thing else, he would still, by this single act, have confer- 
 red a lasting obligation upon his native land ; and the 
 national legislature might well acknowledge it by erecting 
 a monument to his memory. Just consider the simple 
 
 * The anecdotes relating to the early and the nautical life of Dr. Bow- 
 ditch have been collected since the Discourse was delivered. It was 
 thought best, however, to insert them in their place, in the body of the 
 Discourse, in order to furnish a continuous narrative. Those relating to 
 the voyages of Capt. Prince were lately taken down from that gentle- 
 man's own lips by the Hon. JOHN PICKERING, of this city, who has very 
 kindly favored me with the minutes, from which the present narrative is 
 drawn up. Mr. Pickering, who, for many years, enjoyed the intimacy 
 and friendship of Dr. Bowditch, has been appointed by the American 
 Academy of Arts and Sciences to pronounce the Eulogy before that body 
 in May next. The choice could not have fallen in a better place, and the 
 Academy may then expect a full and adequate exposition of the scientific 
 attainments and labors of their distinguished President. 
 
 f Before publishing his own work, Mr. Bowditch had prepared for Mr. 
 Blunt two corrected editions of Moore's book, in which he had actually 
 discovered and corrected eight thousand errors in the nautical tables, as he 
 himself testifies in the preface to the last stereotype edition. 
 
37 
 
 fact, that every vessel that sails from the ports of the 
 United States, from Eastport to New Orleans, is navigated 
 by the rules and tables of his book. And this has been 
 the case nearly ever since its publication, thirty-eight 
 years ago. I am also informed, that it is extensively 
 used in the British and French navies. Notwith- 
 standing the competition of other English and American 
 works on the subject, " The Practical Navigator " has 
 never been superseded. It has kept pace with the 
 progress of nautical science, and incorporated all its suc- 
 cessive discoveries and results ; and the last edition, 
 published within the last year, contains new tables and 
 other improvements, which will probably secure its un- 
 divided use by our seamen for years to come.* 
 
 * " In preparing this edition," he says, " I have been very much as- 
 sisted by my son, J. INGERSOLL BOWDITCH, who compiled most of the 
 new tables, and carefully examined those which were taken from other 
 works. By associating him with me, many improvements have been 
 made which otherwise would not have been introduced." 
 
 In compiling " The Navigator," he was essentially aided by a series 
 of manuscript journals, preserved in the East India Museum at Salem. It 
 is one of the regulations of the East India Marine Society, to whom that 
 splendid collection belongs, that each member shall keep a journal of 
 every thing remarkable that has occurred, and that he has observed, during 
 his voyage. On his return his journal is examined by a special commit- 
 tee, who extract whatever they think valuable, and copy it into large vol- 
 umes, kept for that purpose. Dr. Bowditch was accustomed to say, that 
 these volumes contained a mass of nautical information that could be 
 fouDd no where else in the world. 
 
 On the 13th of May, 1801, a committee, appointed by the East 
 India Marine Society, reported that " after a full examination of the 
 
38 
 
 The quiet and leisure of the long East India voyages, 
 when the ship was lazily sweeping along under the 
 steady impulse of the trade-winds, afforded him fine 
 opportunities for pursuing his mathematical studies, as 
 well as for indulging his taste for general literature. It 
 
 System of Navigation presented to the Society by one of its members, 
 (Mr. Nathaniel Bowditch) they find that he has corrected many thousand 
 errors existing in the best European works of the kind ; especially those 
 in the tables for determining the latitude by two altitudes, in those of 
 difference of latitude and departure, of the sun's right ascension, of am- 
 plitudes, and many others necessary to the navigator. Mr. Bowditch 
 has likewise, in many instances, greatly improved the old methods of 
 calculation, and added new ones of his own. That of clearing the ap- 
 parent distance of the moon, and sun, or stars, from the effect of parallax 
 and refraction, is peculiarly adapted to the use of seamen in general, and 
 is much facilitated (as all other methods are) in the present work, by the 
 introduction of a proportional table into that of the corrections of the 
 moon's altitude. His table nineteenth of corrections to be applied in the 
 lunar calculations, has the merit of being the only one the committee are 
 acquainted with. He has much improved the table of latitudes and lon- 
 gitudes of places, and has added those of a number on the American 
 coast hitherto very inaccurately ascertained. This work therefore is, in 
 the opinion of the committee, highly deserving of the approbation and 
 encouragement of the Society, not only as being the most correct and 
 ample now extant, but as being a genuine American production ; and as 
 such they hesitate not to recommend it to the attention of navigators, 
 and of the public at large." This is signed by Jonathan Lambert, Ben- 
 jamin Carpenter, John Osgood, John Gibaut and Jacob Crowninshield, 
 Committee. 
 
 In two voyages across the Atlantic, which I made in 1834, I found 
 myself often poring over the mate's " Practical Navigator," and, omitting 
 the tables and the rules for taking and working lunars, and a few other 
 things of the same sort, I found it quite a readable book, and about as 
 interesting as any on board. 
 
39 
 
 was at these times that he learnt the French* and 
 Spanish languages, without any instructed Subse- 
 quently in life he acquired the German and the Italian. 
 He had previously commenced the study of Latin at 
 the age of seventeen. The first Latin book that he 
 undertook to read was a copy of Euclid's Geometry, 
 which had formerly belonged to the Rev. Dr. Byles,t 
 of Boston, and having been purchased at the sale of 
 his books, was presented to the young mathematician 
 by his brother-in-law, David Martin, of Salem.J The fol- 
 lowing words I copy from the blank leaf in the beginning 
 of the book, "Began to study Latin Jan. 4, 1790." 
 He afterwards read Newton's "Principia,"a copy of which 
 book, rare, doubtless, at that time in this country, had 
 
 * I have heard it stated, that, on the voyage to Manilla, the ship sprung 
 a leak, and was obliged to put into the Isle of France to refit. Young 
 Bowditch was the only one on board who knew any thing about French, 
 having learnt it from his grammar on the voyage ; and this casual know- 
 ledge thus proved of essential service to the interests of the owners, as 
 well as to the crew of the ship. He used to say that nothing that he 
 learnt ever came amiss. 
 
 f Dr. Bowditch mentioned this fact one day as he was walking up 
 Common (then Nassau) street, with Dr. George Hayward, of this city, 
 and expressed a desire to see the house where the eccentric owner of this 
 book had lived. The book is now in his library. 
 
 t David Martin married Mary, the eldest sister of Dr. Bowditch. She 
 died in 1808, at the age of forty-two, when her only child, and the only 
 surviving descendant of the male line of his family, with the exception 
 of his own six children, was received into his house and treated as his 
 own child, as appears from this item in his will : " Whereas my niece, 
 Elizabeth Bowditch Martin, has from youth resided in my family and 
 been to me as a daughter," &c. I have so regarded and comprehended 
 her in the Dedication of this Discourse. 
 
40 
 
 come into his possession through the kindness of the 
 learned and reverend Dr. Bentley, of Salem. Dr. Bent- 
 ley told him that he could not give him. the book, as it 
 had been presented to him by a friend, but said he 
 would loan it to him, and that he might keep it till it 
 was called for. He did keep it ; it was never called for ; 
 it is still among his books ; and Dr. Bowditch has more 
 than once taken it down from the shelf and showed it to 
 me.* 
 
 What he once learned he ever afterwards remem- 
 bered, and it may be mentioned as an instance of the 
 singular tenacity of his memory, that, on lately reading 
 the splendid " History of the Reign of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella," f the last book he read through, and one for 
 
 * This is Dr. Bowditch's own account of the mode in which he came 
 into possession of this book, which his own family, as well as myself, 
 recollect to have heard often from his lips ; and, moreover, the fact is so 
 recorded, by his direction, in the catalogue of his library. But a very 
 respectable merchant of Salem informs me that Dr. Bentley gave him 
 the book, and he loaned it, in the manner above-mentioned, to Mr. Bow- 
 ditch. Strict regard for accuracy leads me to append this statement. 
 
 f By WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT, Esq. This noble contribution to the 
 youthful literature of our country is, at the same time, one of the most 
 remarkable instances, in literary history, of the triumph of genius over 
 difficulties and discouragements. It seems almost incredible, that so ex- 
 tensive a work, demanding the perusal of so many books, and the consul- 
 tation of so many authorities, could have been composed without the full 
 and free use of the eyes. And yet it is a fact known to me, that the author, 
 although he wrote the book through with his own hand, never saw the 
 words while he was writing them. His work is a noble evidence of his 
 perseverance as well as of his learning and good taste, and reflects honor 
 upon himself as well as upon his country. 
 
41 
 
 which he expressed the highest admiration, he re- 
 marked that many of the incidents in it were quite fa- 
 miliar to him, he having once read the great work 
 of Mariana on the History of Spain, in the original lan- 
 guage, in the course of one of his voyages. The 
 French mathematician, Lacroix, acknowledged to a 
 young American that he was indebted to Mr. Bow- 
 ditch for communicating many errors in his works, 
 which he had discovered in these same long India 
 voyages. . 
 
 In the year 1806, Mr. Bowditch published his accu- 
 rate and beautiful chart of the harbors of Salem, Beverly, 
 Marblehead, and Manchester, the survey of which had 
 occupied him during the summers of the three preced- 
 ing years. So minutely accurate was this chart, that 
 the old pilots said he had found out all their professional 
 secrets, and had put on paper points and bearings 
 which they thought were known only to themselves. 
 They began to fear that their, services would no longer 
 be needed, and that their occupation and their bread 
 were gone.* 
 
 The extraordinary mathematical attainments of the 
 young sailor soon became known, and secured to him 
 
 * Dr. Bowditch took great delight in every accurate scientific work of 
 this sort ; and I recollect his speaking, in terms of the highest admira- 
 tion, of the survey of George's Shoal, recently made by the accomplished 
 Lieut. Wilkes. He described it to me one evening very minutely, told 
 me how it had been done, and spoke in the warmest manner of the 
 science and skill which it evinced. 
 
 6 
 
42 
 
 the notice of our most distinguished men, among others 
 that of the late Chief Justice Parsons, himself an em- 
 inent mathematician, and likewise the deserved, yet 
 wholly unexpected, honors of the first literary institution 
 in the land. In the summer of 1802, at the age of 
 twenty-nine, his ship lying wind-bound in this port, he 
 went out to Cambridge to attend the exercises of Com- 
 mencement Day; and whilst standing in one of the 
 aisles of the church, as the President was announcing 
 the honorary degrees conferred that day, his attention 
 was aroused by hearing his own name called out as a 
 Master of Arts. The annunciation came upon him like 
 a peal of thunder ; it took him wholly by surprise. He 
 has been heard to say that that was the proudest day 
 of his life ; and that of all the distinctions which 
 he subsequently received from numerous learned and 
 scientific bodies, at home and abroad,* (among which 
 may be mentioned his election as a Fellow of the Royal 
 Society of London, an honor to which few Ameri- 
 cans have ever attained), there was not one which af- 
 forded him half the pleasure, or which he prized half so 
 highly, as this degree from Harvard. It was, indeed, 
 
 * Dr. Bowditch was President of the American Academy of Arts and 
 Sciences from 1829 to the time of his death. He was also a Fellow of 
 the Royal Societies of Edinburgh and Dublin ; of the Astronomical Soci- 
 ety of London ; of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadel- 
 phia ; of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences ; of the Literary 
 and Philosophical Society of New York ; Corresponding Member of the 
 Royal Societies at Berlin, Palermo, &c. &c. &c. 
 
43 
 
 his first honor, his earliest distinction ; it was not only 
 kindly meant, but timely done ; and it no doubt stimu- 
 lated him to perseverance in his scientific pursuits, as 
 well as created that interest which he always took in the 
 prosperity of that institution. 
 
 On quitting the sea, in 1804, he became the Presi- 
 dent of a Marine Insurance Company in Salem,* the 
 duties of which he continued to discharge till the year 
 1823, when, on the establishment of "The Massachu- 
 setts Hospital Life Insurance Company," in this place, 
 he was elected to the office, being considered the per- 
 son best qualified for. this highly responsible station, 
 from his habits of accurate calculation and rigid method, 
 
 * While residing at Salem he was frequently solicited to accept posts 
 of honor and emolument in various literary institutions, in different parts 
 of the country. Though his salary as President of the Insurance Com- 
 pany was small, being only twelve hundred dollars, yet the larger offers 
 from a distance could not induce him to leave his blessed New England 
 home. Thus in 1806, he was chosen to fill the Hollis Professorship of 
 Mathematics at Harvard University, vacated by the promotion of Pro- 
 fessor "Webber to the Presidency. In 1818, he received a letter from 
 Mr. Jefferson, requesting him to accept the Professorship of Mathematics 
 in the new University at Charlottesville, in Virginia. Mr. Jefferson says 
 in his letter (which is now before me), " We are satisfied we can get 
 from no country a Professor of higher qualifications than yourself for our 
 mathematical department." And in 1820, on the death of Mr. Ellicott, 
 Professor of Mathematics at the United States' Military Academy at 
 West Point, he received a letter from Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of 
 War, desiring him to permit his name to be presented to the President 
 to fill the vacant chair. Mr. Calhoun says in that letter (which also I 
 have now before me), " I am anxious to avail myself of the first mathe- 
 matical talents and acquirements to fill the vacancy." 
 
44 
 
 and his inflexible integrity. Immediately on accepting 
 the office he removed to this city at the age of fifty, and 
 has here spent the last fifteen years of his life. 
 
 It scarcely needs to be stated that he discharged the 
 duties of his high trust with the greatest fidelity and 
 skill, and to the entire satisfaction of the Company. 
 The capital was five hundred thousand dollars. But, at 
 his suggestion, the Company applied to the Legislature 
 for additional power to hold in trust and loan out the 
 property of individuals. This power was granted ; and 
 upwards of five millions of dollars, nine tenths of which 
 belong to females and orphans, have been thus received 
 and invested. This institution has, in this way, been of 
 incalculable service, it being in fact nothing more nor 
 less than a Savings Bank on a large scale. " Provi- 
 dence " I use his own language, in his parting letter to 
 the Directors " has seen fit to bless our efforts to make 
 it an institution deserving of public regard." It deserves 
 to be mentioned, that Dr. Bowditch was never willing 
 to receive and tie up any investment, without himself 
 seeing or hearing in writing from the person in whose 
 behalf the investment was to be made, and ascertaining 
 that it was done with his or her full and free consent, 
 and that the individual perfectly understood the mode 
 and conditions of the investment, before it was put into 
 the dead hand of the institution. 
 
 I may here also notice the fact, perhaps not generally 
 known, that during the late unexampled commercial 
 embarrassments and financial difficulties, when almost 
 
45 
 
 all our moneyed institutions have sustained heavy losses 
 from the bankruptcies of their debtors, " and," to use 
 his own words in the same letter, " by having dealt with 
 corporations, whose affairs have been managed with a 
 recklessness which has never before been witnessed in 
 this country," yet so carefully and skilfully have the af- 
 fairs of The Life Office been managed, that, although the 
 largest moneyed institution in New England, having a 
 capital equal to ten common banks, and with a loan out 
 of six millions, its loss has not been greater than that 
 sustained by some of the smallest banks. 
 
 It was a hard struggle for Dr. Bowditch to break 
 away from the pleasant scenes and associations of his 
 native place. There were his earliest friends, and there 
 his strongest ties. But he felt that he owed it to his 
 family to make the sacrifice of personal attachments and 
 preferences ; and for some time he and his amiable con- 
 sort fondly cherished the hope, of returning and spend- 
 ing their last days in the City of Peace.* Soon after his 
 coming to town he joined this religious society, and here 
 continued to worship till the time of his death. 
 
 It w r as in the year 1800 that he married, for his 
 second wife, his cousin, Mary Ingersoll, a lady of singu- 
 lar sweetness of disposition and cheerful piety, and who, 
 by her entire sympathy with him in all his studies and 
 
 * On his leaving Salem, a public dinner was given him by his fellow- 
 citizens, as a testimony of their respect. No man ever left that place 
 more regretted. 
 
46 
 
 pursuits, lightened and cheered his labors, and by re- 
 lieving him from all domestic cares, enabled him to go 
 on, "with undivided mind and undistracted attention, in 
 the execution of the great work, on which his fame, as 
 a man of science, rests. He has been heard to say, that 
 he never should have accomplished the task, and pub- 
 lished the book in its present extended form, had he 
 not been stimulated and encouraged by her. When 
 the serious question was under consideration as to the 
 expediency of his publishing it at his own cost, at the 
 estimated expense of ten thousand dollars (which it ac- 
 tually exceeded), with the noble spirit of her sex, she 
 conjured and urged him to go on and do it, saying that 
 she would find the means, and gladly make any sacrifice 
 and submit to any self-denial that might be involved in 
 it. In grateful acknowledgment of her sympathy and 
 aid, he proposed, in the concluding volume, to dedicate 
 the work to her memory a design than which nothing 
 could be more beautiful or touching. Let it still be ful- 
 filled.* 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to say that this was a 
 Translation and Commentary on the great work of the 
 French astronomer, La Place, entitled "Mtcanique 
 
 * This noble-minded and excellent woman, whose unfailing cheerful- 
 ness and vivacity rendered her admirably suited to be the wife of such a 
 man, was the daughter of Jonathan and Mary Hodges Ingersoll. She 
 was born December 4, 1781, and died in Boston on the seventeenth of 
 April, 1834. Her father is still living in Windsor, Vt., at the advanced 
 age of eighty-seven years, and his only surviving child, George H., re- 
 sides at Charlestown, N. H. 
 
47 
 
 / 
 
 Celeste" in which that illustrious man undertakes to ex- 
 plain the whole mechanism of our solar system, to ac- 
 count, on mathematical principles, for all its phenomena, 
 and to reduce all the anomalies in the apparent motions 
 and figures of the planetary bodies, to certain definite 
 laws.* It is a work of great genius and immense depth,, 
 and exceedingly difficult to be comprehended. This 
 arises not merely from the intrinsic difficulty of the sub- 
 ject, and the medium of proof employed being the 
 higher branches of the mathematics, but chiefly from 
 the circumstance that the author, taking it for granted 
 that the subject would be as plain and easy to others as 
 
 * La Place himself, in his Preface, states the object of his work as 
 follows. " Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Newton pub- 
 lished his discovery of universal gravitation. Mathematicians have, 
 since that epoch, succeeded in reducing to this great law of nature all 
 the known phenomena of the system of the world, and have thus given 
 to the theories of the heavenly bodies and to astronomical tables, an un- 
 expected degree of precision. My object is to present a connected view 
 of these theories, which are now scattered in a great number of works. 
 The whole of the results of gravitation, upon the equilibrium and mo- 
 tions of the fluid and solid bodies, which compose the solar system, and 
 the similar systems, existing in the immensity of space, constitute the 
 object of Celestial Mechanics, or the application of the principles of me- 
 chanics to the motions and figures of the heavenly bodies. Astronomy, 
 considered in the most general manner, is a great problem of mechanics, 
 in which the elements of the motions are the arbitrary constant quan- 
 tities. The solution of this problem depends, at the same time, upon 
 the accuracy of the observations, and upon the perfection of the anal- 
 ysis. It is very important to reject every empyrical process, and to 
 complete the analysis, so that it shall not be necessary to derive from 
 observations any but indispensable data. The intention of this work is 
 to obtain, as much as may be in my power, this interesting result." 
 
48 
 
 to himself, very often omits the intermediate steps and 
 connecting links in his demonstrations.* He jumps 
 over the interval, and grasps the conclusion as by intui- 
 tion. Dr. Bowditch used to say, " I never come across 
 one of La Place's ' Thus it plainly appears? without 
 feeling sure that I have got hours of hard study before 
 me to fill up the chasm, and find out and show how it 
 plainly appears." It was in the year 1815, at Salem, 
 that he began this herculean task, and finished it in 
 two years, in 1817. The Commentary kept pace with 
 the Translation ; but whilst the publication was in hand, 
 his alterations and additions were so numerous that it 
 might almost be considered a new draft of the work. 
 Let it not be said, in disparagement of the labors of 
 Dr. Bowditch, that this was not an original work, but 
 merely a translation. Suppose that it had been so. 
 
 * Dr. Bowditch himself says, in his Introduction to the first vol- 
 ume, " The object of the author, in composing this work, as stated by 
 him in his Preface, was to reduce all the known phenomena of the 
 system of the world to the law of gravity, by strict mathematical 
 principles ; and to complete the investigations of the motions of the 
 planets, satellites, and comets, begun by Newton in his Principia. This 
 he has accomplished, in a manner deserving the highest praise, for its 
 symmetry and completeness ; but from the abridged manner, in which 
 the analytical calculations have been made, it has been found difficult to 
 be understood by many persons, who have a strong and decided taste 
 for mathematical studies, on account of the time and labor required, to 
 insert the intermediate steps of the demonstrations, necessary to enable 
 them easily to follow the author in his reasoning. To remedy, in some 
 measure, this defect, has been the chief object of the translator in the 
 Notes." 
 
49 
 
 What then? Was it not still a benefaction to this 
 country and to Great Britain, thus to bring it within 
 the reach and compass of the American and English 
 mind ?* It is truly said by an old writer, " So well is he 
 worthy of perpetual fame that bringeth a good work to 
 light, as is he that first did make it, and ought always to 
 
 * The only attempts that have been made in England to grapple with 
 the great work of La Place are, 1. "An Elementary Treatise upon Ana- 
 lytical Mechanics, being the First Book of the Mecanique Celeste of La 
 Place ; translated and elucidated with Explanatory Notes, by the Rev. 
 John Toplis, B. D., London. 1814." 8vo. 2. " Elementary Illustra- 
 tions of the Celestial Mechanics of La Place, [by Thomas Young, M. D.} 
 London. 1821." 8vo. 3. "A Treatise on Celestial Mechanics, by P. 
 S. La Place; translated from the French, and elucidated with Explana- 
 tory Notes, by Rev. Henry H. Harte, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. 
 Part First, Book First, 1822. Book Second, 1827. Dublin." 4to. 
 
 It is not surprising that two out of the three translators of parts of La 
 Place's work in England are clergymen. The clergy in England, as 
 well as on the continent, and in this country, have ever been not only 
 among the warmest patrons, but the foremost and most successful cul- 
 tivators, of all branches of science and letters. Passing over the names 
 of continental scholars, we have, in science, the names of Flamsteed, 
 astronomer royal, Barrow and Whiston, both professors of mathematics 
 at Cambridge, Bp. Sprat, one of the founders of the Royal Society and its 
 first historian, Thomas Birch, the author of the more extended history of 
 the same Society, Joseph Priestley, Richard Kirwan, Dr. Pearson, lately 
 deceased, and among the living, Whewell, Buckland, Kirby, Sedgwick, 
 Conybeare, Lardner, Baden Powell, Prof, of Geometry at Oxford, James 
 Gumming, Prof, of Chemistry at Cambridge, &c. &c. The published 
 Translations and Reports of " The British Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Science," show that some of the most prominent and active 
 men at its sessions are clergymen. Then, in classical literature, we 
 have the two great names of Richard Benlley and Gilbert Wakefield, and 
 in history, Robertson. 
 
 In this country, while the clergy have done their full part in the ad- 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 be reckoned the second father thereof."* But the fact 
 is, it is more than half an original commentary and ex- 
 position, simplifying and elucidating what was before 
 complex and obscure, supplying omissions and defi- 
 ciencies, fortifying the positions with new proofs and 
 
 vancement of science and letters, the history of the country has been 
 almost exclusively written by them. Witness the names of Cotton 
 Mather, Thomas Prince, Gordon, Eliot, Holmes, Belknap, Smith of 
 New Jersey, Trumbull, Freeman, Sparks, George Bancroft. In phi- 
 losophy, the great name of Jonathan Edwards stands at the head ; and 
 glancing over the names of Witherspoon, Samuel Smith, and President 
 Dwight, we have, among the living, Dr. Miller and President Wayland. 
 In mechanical philosophy, the late Dr. Prince, of Salem, had no equal. 
 In general literature and criticism, the name of Edward Everett is 
 in itself a host; Dr. Channing, as an essay-writer, has no rival ; and in 
 the department of theology, let me point to the recent contributions of 
 Norton and Palfrey. The editors of our principal Reviews, the North 
 American, the New York Review, the Christian Examiner, have been 
 and still are clergymen; e. g. E. Everett, Sparks, Prof. Palfrey, Dr. 
 Hawkes, Dr. Walker, F. W. P. Greenwood; and the best and most 
 popular writers in them, including the names just mentioned, are of the 
 clerical profession, e. g. Andrews Norton, Orville Dewey, W. B. 0. Pea- 
 body, H. Ware jr., George Ripley, and many others, whom I have 
 not space to specify. It will be seen that I only glance at this subject; 
 it deserves to be followed up. It has been too much the fashion to 
 represent the clergy as a body apart by themselves, taking no interest 
 in any thing but their professional studies, and doing nothing to promote 
 the progress of general knowledge. Nothing can be more untrue and 
 unjust than this charge. I believe it will be found that the clergy, as a 
 body, in this country, have done more for general literature, history, 
 philosophy, and science, than all other professions and occupations, put 
 together. See 2 Corinthians xii. 11. " Every man," says Lord Bacon, 
 " is a debtor to his profession." I want to pay my debt. 
 
 * John Bale's Conclusion to John Leland's " Laborious Journey and 
 Search for England's Antiquities." 
 
51 
 
 giving additional weight and efficiency to the old ones ; 
 and, "above all, recording the subsequent discoveries, and 
 bringing down the science to the present time.* I have 
 heard it said that La Place, to whom Dr. Bowditch sent 
 a list of errors, (which however he never had the grace 
 to acknowledge in any way),f once remarked, " I am 
 sure that Mr. Bowditch comprehends my work, for he 
 has not only detected my errors, but has also shown 
 me how I came to fall into them." 
 
 The manner in which he published this work affords 
 a striking illustration of the spirit of independence, which 
 was a prominent feature in his character. He had 
 been frequently solicited and urged by his numerous 
 
 * It is highly honorable to the sex, that the best, may I not say, the 
 only Exposition of La Place's work that has appeared in England, is 
 from the pen of a female, the accomplished MARY SOMERVILLE, wife of 
 Dr. Somerville, of Chelsea Hospital ; a lady, who to profound acqui- 
 sitions in science, and a practical skill in several of the elegant arts, adds 
 the faithful discharge of all household duties. On visiting her house in 
 1S33, in company with a son of Dr. Bowditch, I remember observing 
 that the walls of the drawing-rooms were hung round with the beautiful 
 productions of her own pencil. The Edinburgh Review said of her work, 
 entitled " The Mechanism of the Heavens," on its first appearance, in 
 1821, " This unquestionably is one of the most remarkable works that 
 female intellect ever produced, in any age or country ; and, with respect 
 to the present day, we hazard little in saying that Mrs. Somerville is the 
 only individual of her sex in the world who could have written it." 
 
 f This, possibly, may have been an inadvertence, or the letter of 
 acknowledgment may have miscarried on the way. It is certain that 
 his widow received the son of the American mathematician with great 
 kindness and consideration, when, in the year 1833, he went to Paris to 
 pursue his medical studies, carrying out with him the second volume of 
 
52 
 
 wealthy friends, and by eminent scientific men, and 
 formally requested by the American Academy of 'Arts 
 and Sciences, to permit them to print it at their ex- 
 pense, for the honor of the country, and for the cause 
 of science. He was well aware, however, that there 
 was not sufficient taste in the community for such 
 studies to justify an enterprise which would involve a 
 great outlay, and, as he thought, would bring him 
 under pecuniary obligations to others. I recollect con- 
 versing with him once on this subject, when he said to 
 me, in his usual ardent way, " Sir, I did not choose to 
 give an opportunity to such a man (mentioning his 
 name) to point up to his book-case and say, 'I pa- 
 tronized Mr. Bowditch by subscribing for his expensive 
 work,' not a word of which he could understand. 
 No. I preferred to wait till I could afford to publish it 
 at my own expense. That time at last arrived ; and if, 
 instead of setting up my coach ? as I might have done, I 
 
 his father's work. He was immediately invited to a splendid soiree, and 
 on entering the brilliant saloon, filled with the savans of France, he was 
 unexpectedly greeted by seeing on the centre table, the only thing on 
 it, the identical volume which he had brought over with him a deli- 
 cate compliment, which none but a graceful French woman would have 
 thought of paying. Madame La Place subsequently sent to Dr. Bow- 
 ditch the noble bust of her husband, which now stands on the secretary 
 in the Library. This bust is ultimately to go to Harvard College, ac- 
 cording to the following provision in his Will. 
 
 " Item. The bust of La Place, presented to me by his widow, and 
 which was brought to me from Europe by my son Henry, I give to my 
 said son for life, and at his death to said President and Fellows of Har- 
 vard College." 
 
53 
 
 see fit to spend my money in this way, who has any 
 right to complain ? My children I know will not." 
 
 The first volume of the work was published in the 
 year 1829,* the second in 1832, and the third in 1834, 
 each volume containing about a thousand quarto pages. 
 
 * The London Quarterly Review, three years after the appearance of 
 Dr. Bowditch's first volume, expressed the following high opinion of its 
 merits. *' The idea of undertaking a translation of the whole ' Mecanique 
 Celeste,' accompanied throughout with a copious running commentary, 
 is one which savors, at first sight, of the gigantesque, and is certainly 
 one which, from what we have hitherto had reason to conceive of the 
 popularity and diffusion of mathematical knowledge on the opposite 
 shores of the Atlantic, we should never have expected to have found 
 originated or, at least, carried into execution, in that quarter. The 
 first volume only has as yet reached us ; and when we consider the great 
 difficulty of printing works of this nature, to say nothing of the heavy 
 and probably unremunerated expense, we are not surprised at the delay 
 of the second. Meanwhile the part actually completed (which contains 
 the first two books of La Place's work) is, with few and slight exceptions, 
 just what we could have wished to see an exact and careful translation 
 into very good English exceedingly well printed, and accompanied 
 with notes appended to each page, which leave no step in the text of 
 moment unsupplied, and hardly any material difficulty either of conception 
 or reasoning unelucidated. To the student of ; Celestial Mechanism ' 
 such a work must be invaluable, and we sincerely hope that the success 
 of this volume, which seems thrown out to try the feeling of the public, 
 both American and British, will be such as to induce the speedy appear- 
 ance of the sequel. Should this unfortunately not be the case, we shall 
 deeply lament that the liberal offer of the American Academy of Arts 
 and Sciences, to print the whole at their expense, was not accepted. Be 
 that as it may, it is impossible to regard the appearance of such a work, 
 even in its present incomplete state, as otherwise than highly creditable 
 to American science, and as the harbinger of future achievements in 
 the loftiest fields of intellectual prowess." Vol. XL VIII. p. 558. 
 
54 
 
 The fourth and last volume was nearly completed at 
 the time of his decease. He persevered to the last in 
 his labors upon it, preparing the copy and reading the 
 proof-sheets in the intervals when he was free from 
 pain. The last time I saw him, a few days previous to 
 his death, a proof-sheet was lying on his table, which 
 he said he hoped to be able to read over and correct.* 
 The publication of the book proved, as he anticipated, 
 and as I have already mentioned, a very expensive un- 
 dertaking, it being one of the largest works and most 
 difficult of execution ever printed in this country, and 
 at the same time one of the most beautiful specimens of 
 typography. A young friend of mine,t a member of 
 this church, of singular purity and worth, who worked 
 as a compositor on one of the volumes, lost his life, as 
 I believe, by his unremitting application to this very 
 trying and perplexing piece of mechanical art. His 
 widow, who is now present and hears me, will bear 
 witness that she was kindly visited in her bereavement 
 by Dr. Bowditch, and generously remembered by him. 
 
 * The precious original manuscript will be hereafter preserved in 
 the library at Cambridge, according to his direction in his Will. " Item. 
 Having received from the President and Fellows of Harvard College 
 my first public literary honor, and having been for many years intimately 
 connected with its administration, I give to that institution my manu- 
 script copy of ' The Translation of La Place's Mecanique Celeste.' " 
 
 f John W. Macnair, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, died in this city, 
 February 27, 1833, aged 33. His name is appended as compositor to 
 the second volume. The three first volumes of the work were printed 
 by Isaac R. Butts; the fourth by the Boston Stereotype Company. 
 
55 
 
 Though the work, on its appearance, met with more 
 purchasers than the author ever expected, still the cost 
 was a heavy draught on his income, and an encroach- 
 ment on his little property. Yet it was cheerfully paid ; 
 and besides that, he gladly devoted his time, his talents, 
 and may I not add, his health and his life, to the cause 
 of science and the honor of his native land. That work 
 is his monument. 
 
 Si MONUMENTUM QUJERIS, ASPICE LIBRUM.* 
 
 He needs no other monument ; and at the same time it 
 is the most precious and honorable legacy that he could 
 bequeath to his children.f 
 
 * I have ventured to alter a little and apply to Dr. Bowditch, the well- 
 known epitaph on Sir Christopher Wren, beneath the dome of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, London : " Si MONUMENTUM QUJERIS, CIRCUMSPICE." 
 
 t Among the numerous services which Dr. Bowditch rendered to the 
 cause of good learning and the diffusion of useful knowledge, after he 
 came to Boston, was the deep interest and the active part which he took in 
 the Boston Athenaeum. When, in 1826, the Perkins family, in that liberal 
 spirit which has ever characterized them, gave to the Athenaeum six- 
 teen thousand dollars, on condition that an equal sum should be raised 
 from other sources, Dr. Bowditch exerted himself to the utmost to ac- 
 complish the object. Many of the best friends of the institution thought 
 the enterprise a hopeless one, and were indisposed even to make an 
 attempt to raise the amount. But Dr. Bowditch said, " It is a good thing, 
 let us try it ; if we fail, we fail in a good cause." He called personally 
 on many individuals to solicit subscriptions, and chiefly in consequence 
 of his exertions, the additional sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars 
 was raised. 
 
 The permitting the books to be taken out of the library was another 
 measure proposed and effected by him. Strenuous opposition was made 
 
56 
 
 In delineating the character of Dr. Bowditch, it de- 
 serves to be mentioned, first of all, that he was emi- 
 nently a self-taught and self-made man. He was the 
 instructer of his own mind, and the builder up of his 
 own fame and fortunes. Whatever knowledge he pos- 
 sessed, and w r e have seen that it was very great, was 
 
 to it ; but he believed and said that the circulation of the books would 
 make the library ten times more useful, and he persevered till he accom- 
 plished the measure. It was always a favorite object with Dr. Bowditch 
 to render books easily accessible to those who wanted them, and could 
 make a good use of them. He doubtless remembered the difficulties 
 under which he labored in early life for want of books, and was disposed 
 to obtain for others the advantages which had been extended to himself. 
 He was Trustee of the Athenseum from Jan. 2, 1826, to Dec. 4, 1833. 
 
 Immediately after his election as Trustee, Dr. Bowditch, perceiving 
 the paucity and poverty of the scientific department of the library, which 
 might all be put into one small compartment, " dum tota domus rheda 
 componitur una," declared that " it was too bad, and a disgrace to the 
 institution and to Boston." He accordingly set about supplying the 
 deficiency, by collecting subscriptions for this express purpose. Col. T. 
 H. Perkins, one of nature's noblemen, whose monument is " The Insti- 
 tution for the Blind," gave $500, his brother James the same amount, 
 Dr. Bowditch himself $250, and other gentlemen $100, among whom 
 should be mentioned the subscribers to " The Scientific Library." With 
 this sum were purchased the Transactions of the Royal Societies of 
 London, Dublin and Edinburgh, of the French Academies and Institute, 
 of the Academies of Berlin, Gb'ttingen, St. Petersburg, Turin, Lisbon, 
 Madrid, Stockholm, and Copenhagen ; forming, as Dr. Bowditch once 
 told the librarian, " the most extensive and complete collection of philo- 
 sophical and scientific works on this continent." 
 
 Dr. Bowditch took a deep and active interest in the " Boston Mechan- 
 ics' Institution," which was established in 1826, and of which he was 
 elected the first President, January 12, 1827. In the winter of 1828, 
 
* 57 
 
 of his own acquiring, the fruit of his solitary studies, 
 with but little, if any, assistance from abroad. Whatever 
 eminence he reached, in science or in life, was the pro- 
 duct of his untiring application and unremitting toil. 
 From his youth up, he was a pattern of industry, enter- 
 prise and perseverance, suffering no difficulties to dis- 
 courage, no disappointments to dishearten him. 
 
 more than a thousand dollars were subscribed for the purchase of appar- 
 atus, chiefly through his influence with his friends, and he headed the 
 list with the sum of one hundred dollars. It is an important fact, that 
 the mode of communicating instruction by popular lectures, now 
 universal, was first introduced in this community by the Boston Me- 
 chanics' Institution, and chiefly by the exertions of the mechanics of this 
 city. Dr. Bowditch resigned the Presidency April 27, 1829, and on May 
 14, he was elected first honorary member of the institution. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was also an honorary member of the Massachusetts 
 Charitable Mechanic Association, having been elected on the 5th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1828. On the 3d of April last, a Eulogy on their departed associate 
 was pronounced before that body by the author of this Discourse, on which 
 day the flags of all the shipping in the port were hauled to half-mast by 
 direction of the Boston Marine Society, of which he was likewise a 
 regular member, having been admitted on the 2d of March, 1830. His 
 sense of the honor thus conferred on him by these elections, and his 
 affectionate regard for these Societies, will be best seen by the following 
 extract from his Will : 
 
 "And, in respect to Boston, the home of my adoption, where, as a 
 stranger, I met with welcome, and where I have ever continued to re- 
 ceive constantly increasing proofs of kindness and regard, I should have 
 been most happy to have made a similar acknowledgment of my grati- 
 tude by legacies to those literary and charitable institutions for which 
 that city has always been so preeminently distinguished. And, in par- 
 ticular, it would have given me pleasure to have noticed the Boston 
 Marine Society, of which I am a member, and the Boston Charitable 
 
 8 
 
58 
 
 Within a few years a very interesting work has been 
 published in England, under the patronage of the So- 
 ciety for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, entitled 
 " The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties." Dr. 
 Bowditch deserves a place in that work, if any man 
 does, and had he died before its appearance, he would 
 unquestionably, like our countryman Franklin,* have 
 occupied a prominent chapter. We sometimes hear 
 persons say, how much they would do if they only 
 had the means and the opportunities. But almost 
 any body can work with means and opportunities. It 
 is the privilege and characteristic of genius to work 
 without means, to be great in spite of them, to accom- 
 plish its object in the face of obstacles and difficulties. 
 
 Mechanic Association, which has placed my name on its small and 
 select list of honorary members ; since these institutions are of a similar 
 character to the Marine Societies in Salem, and have, for one of their 
 important objects, that of affording valuable aid to the destitute families 
 of deceased members. But the pecuniary circumstances of my estate do 
 not permit it." 
 
 * It would be interesting and instructive to draw a parallel and con- 
 trast between the lives, characters and scientific attainments of Franklin 
 and Bowditch, unquestionably the two greatest proficients in science 
 that America has produced. Both rose from obscure situations in 
 humble life, and from the straits of poverty. Both left school at the age 
 of ten years, to assist their fathers in their shops. Both had an early and 
 passionate love of reading, and the vigils of both often " prevented the 
 morning." Both had the same habits of industry, perseverance and 
 temperance. The contrast between their characters would be still more 
 striking than the resemblance. But I cannot go on now. I may resume 
 this topic hereafter. 
 
59 
 
 It was my good fortune, some years since, in one of 
 those familiar interviews with him in his own house 
 with which I was favored, and which those who have 
 once enjoyed them will never forget, to hear him nar- 
 rate, in detail, a history of his early life. From that 
 day to this I have never ceased to regret that, on my 
 return home, I did not instantly put it down upon paper, 
 for the refreshment of my own memory, and for the 
 benefit of others. At this distance of time, I can re- 
 collect but a few, the most striking, particulars ; the rest 
 have faded away and are lost. I remember, however, 
 very distinctly, his relating the circumstance which led 
 him to take an interest in the higher branches of 
 mathematical science. After mentioning his going to 
 sea at an early age, he told me that, in the intervals of 
 his voyages, he endeavored, by himself, to pick up a little 
 knowledge of navigation, and, as preparatory to that, to 
 acquire the elements of geometry. It so happened, 
 that an elder brother of his, who likewise followed the 
 sea, was then attending an evening school for the same 
 purpose. On returning home one evening, he informed 
 him that the master had got a new way of doing sums 
 and working questions ; for, instead of the numerical 
 figures commonly used in arithmetic, he employed the 
 letters of the alphabet. This novelty excited the curi- 
 osity of the youthful navigator, and he questioned his 
 brother very closely about the matter ; who, however, 
 did not seem to understand much about the process, 
 and could not tell how the thing was done. But the 
 
60 
 
 master, he said, had a book, which told all about it. 
 This served to inflame his curiosity ; and he asked his 
 brother whether he could not borrow the book of the 
 master and bring it home, so that he might get a sight 
 at it. (It should be remembered that, at this time, math- 
 ematical books of all sorts were scarce in this country. 
 In the present multitude of elementary works on the 
 subject, we can hardly conceive of the dearth that then 
 prevailed). The book was obtained. It was the first 
 glance that he had ever had at algebra. "And that 
 night," said he, " I did not close my eyes." He read 
 it, and read it again, and mastered its contents, and 
 copied it out from beginning to end. Subsequently he 
 got hold of a volume of the Philosophical Transactions 
 of the Royal Society of London, which he treated 
 pretty much in the same summary way, making a very 
 full and minute abstract of all the mathematical papers 
 contained in it; and this course he pursued with the 
 whole of that voluminous work. He was too poor to 
 purchase books, and this was the only mode of getting 
 at their results, and having them constantly at hand for 
 consultation. These manuscripts, written in his small, 
 neat hand, and filling several folio volumes, are now in 
 his library, and, in my opinion, are the most curious and 
 precious part of that large and valuable collection. 
 
 I have more than once heard him speak in the most 
 grateful manner, and he repeated it the last time 
 that I saw him, of the kindness of those friends 
 in Salem who aided him in his early studies by the loan 
 
61 
 
 of their books. He named particularly the late eminent 
 Dr. Prince,* the pastor of the First Church, who gave 
 him free access to his library ; and he likewise mentioned 
 a society of gentlemen who had a private collection of 
 their own. The manner in which these latter books 
 came into the country, is so remarkable, that I am 
 happy to be able to relate it in Dr. Bowditch's own 
 words, as contained in his last Will. The extract is as 
 follows : 
 
 " Item. It is well known, that the valuable scientific 
 library of the celebrated Dr. Richard Kirwan was, 
 during the revolutionary war, captured in the British 
 Channel, on its way to Ireland, by a Beverly privateer ; 
 and that, by the liberal and enlightened views of the 
 owners of the vessel, the library thus captured was sold 
 
 * It is gratifying to find the clergy, the scientific Dr. Prince, and the 
 learned Dr. Bentley, the earliest encouragers of the precocious powers of 
 the American mathematician. It has always been so. The Christian 
 clergy have, from the beginning down to this day, not only been them- 
 selves the most learned men of their times, but have always been the fos- 
 terers of early talent, and the patrons of unfriended genius. They are the 
 natural, the appropriate guardians of our seminaries of learning. 
 
 "Why is it that the clergy have, of late years, been excluded from 
 their places in the Corporation of Harvard College ? But a short time 
 since, from 1818 to 1828, they had three members there out of seven. 
 They now have but one. Has it been proved that they are incompetent, 
 in any respect, to act as its guardians, or that they can exert a less influ- 
 ence in favor of that institution with the community ? The Corporation 
 now consists of four members of the legal profession, two merchants, 
 and one clergyman. Is this distribution equal? Is it right? Is it ex- 
 pedient ? 
 
62 
 
 at a very low rate; and in this manner was laid the 
 foundation upon which have since been successively 
 established The Philosophical Library, so called, and the 
 present Salem Athenreum. Thus, in early life, I found 
 near me a better collection of philosophical and scientific 
 works than could be found in any other part of the 
 United States nearer than Philadelphia. And by the 
 kindness of its proprietors I was permitted freely to 
 take books from that library and to consult and study 
 them at pleasure. This inestimable advantage has 
 made me deeply a debtor to the Salem Athenaeum ; 
 and I do therefore give to that Institution the sum of 
 one thousand dollars, the income thereof to be for ever 
 applied to the promotion of its objects and the exten- 
 sion of its usefulness." 
 
 I have two remarks to make on this singularly 
 interesting extract. In the first place, it seems to me 
 there was something like a special providence in the 
 capture of that library, consisting of such a peculiar 
 class of books, by a Beverly vessel, and its being 
 brought into the port of Salem rather than any other 
 port in the United States. Here was apparent design, 
 the fitting of means to ends. The books came exactly 
 to the place where they were wanted; to the only 
 place, probably, in the country where they were wanted. 
 They came, too, at the right time, just in season to be 
 used by the person who could make the best possible 
 use of them, and to whom they were, above all com- 
 putation, valuable and necessary. If this be not an act 
 of Providence, I hardly know what is. 
 
63 
 
 The good Dr. Kirwan* mourned, no doubt, over the 
 loss of his books, and not least of all that they had 
 become so utterly misplaced and useless. He probably 
 thought that the vessel which contained them might as 
 well have been wrecked on the coast of Africa, and the 
 leaves of his philosophical works employed to adorn the 
 heads and persons of the Caffres and Hottentots, a use 
 to which we are told "The Practical Navigator" was 
 once put by the inhabitants of one of the South Sea 
 islands.! But had the learned philosopher known that 
 his lost library had supplied the intellectual food for the 
 growth of one of the greatest scientific men of his age, 
 he might, perhaps, have become reconciled to his loss. 
 
 My other remark is, that this item in his Will is an 
 indication of a very prominent feature in his character, 
 namely, his grateful and generous spirit. Dr. Bowditch 
 never forgot a favor ; length of time did not obliterate it 
 from his memory. The kindness shown him when a 
 
 * The reverend Richard Kir wan was a native of Ireland, and was 
 distinguished for his attainments in mineralogy and chemistry. His 
 principal work was his Elements of Mineralogy, published in 1784. 
 He died in 1812. 
 
 f " It happened that among the few articles saved from the ship, [the 
 whale-ship Mentor, of New Bedford] was a copy of * Bowditch's Navi- 
 gator ; ' an article of as little use as we can conceive any one thing to 
 have been at that place. But the ingenuity of the females, who also 
 have their passion for ornaments, tore out the leaves of the book, and 
 making them into little rolls of the size of one's finger, wore them in 
 their ears, instead of the tufts of grass which they usually employed to 
 give additional attractions to their native charms." American Quarterly 
 Review of Holder? s Narrative, Vol. XX. p. 25. 
 
64 
 
 poor boy he remembers and repays by a liberal legacy. 
 The Salem Marine Society, a mutual charitable institu- 
 tion, which had aided his father in his straits by the 
 small annual stipend of fifteen dollars, he repays, and 
 wipes off the obligation, though not his sense of the 
 benefit, by a similar bequest of a thousand dollars.* 
 And the East India Marine Society, whose peculiar and 
 splendid collection of curiosities is so well known, 
 receives a legacy of the same amount.f And let it be 
 
 * Dr. Bowditch remembered, too, the load of wood which annually, 
 when the wintry weather came on, was dropped, without a word being 
 spoken, at his sister's door. He never doubted that it came from the 
 Salem Marine Society. Accordingly, he says in his Will, 
 
 " Item. Whereas several of my relatives have heretofore been mem- 
 bers of that excellent institution, The Marine Society, at Salem, some 
 of whom have received the benefit of its charity fund, under circumstan- 
 ces entitling it to my grateful remembrance, I do now give to that. in- 
 stitution the sum of one thousand dollars, the income thereof to be for 
 ever applied in aid of its charitable objects and purposes." 
 
 t Dr. Bowditch was elected President of the East India Marine So- 
 ciety in 1820, arid held that office until he left Salem, three years after- 
 wards. He entered upon his duties with his usual zeal and energy, and 
 it was by his indefatigable exertions that the Society, with its splendid 
 Museum, was renovated and restored. It had been suffered, in the course 
 of time, by the death and removal of the members, to fall into decay. 
 But Dr. Bowditch revived it, by going round personally and calling upon 
 all the young men that were eligible, and persuading them to join it. In 
 this way, in the course of two years, thirty cr forty active and efficient 
 members were added. It was under his Presidency, too, and by his 
 encouragement, that the valuable catalogue of the Museum was made by 
 Dr. Bass, now Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum. He remembers that 
 Society in his Will as follows : 
 
 " Item. Whereas the Salem East India Marine Society, of which I 
 was formerly President, and in which I have always felt a deep interest, 
 
65 
 
 remembered that these were not the donations of a rich 
 man. He was far from being one. These three lega- 
 cies constituted one tenth part of his whole personal 
 property. Others sometimes give to such institutions 
 from their abundance he from his comparative penury. 
 Let the deed be an example and an incitement to 
 our wealthy men ! 
 
 Had his means permitted, he would gladly have 
 remembered, in the same way, institutions of a similar 
 character in this place. I know that his heart over- 
 flowed with affection and gratitude for the kindness 
 which he had received in this city of his adoption. He 
 told me, in his last illness, that he had been very kindly 
 treated herefar above his deserts. "My services," 
 he added, "have been very amply remunerated;" and 
 I know that the motive which induced him to select the 
 objects of his bounty in his native place rather than- in 
 this town, was the well-known fact that his legacies 
 would go farther and do much more good there than 
 here. He remembered, too, that there were fewer 
 persons there than here who could afford to make 
 bequests of this sort ; and he likewise felt well assured 
 
 as an institution highly creditable to the Commonwealth, possessing a 
 museum of a very rare and peculiar character, collected from distant 
 countries, and affording a proof alike of the enterprise, taste, and liber- 
 ality of such of the citizens of Salem as have followed a sea-faring life, 
 I do now give to that institution the sum of one thousand dollars, the 
 income thereof to be for ever applied to the promotion of the objects for 
 which it was established." 
 
66 
 
 that our rich men were as willing as they were able to 
 take care of our literary and charitable institutions. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch combined, in a very remarkable de- 
 gree, qualities and habits of mind which are usually 
 considered incompatible and hostile. He was a con- 
 templative, recluse student, and, at the same time, an 
 active, public man. He Jived habitually among the stars, 
 and yet, I doubt not, he seemed to many never to raise 
 his eyes from the earth. He was a profound philos- 
 opher, and, at the same time, a shrewd, practical man, 
 and one of the most skilful of financiers. Judging from 
 his published works, you would suppose that he could 
 have no taste nor time for business or the world ; and 
 judging from the large concerns which he managed, 
 and the vast funds of which he had the supervision, 
 involving the most complex calculations and the most 
 minute details, you would say that he could have no 
 taste nor time for study. His example is a conclusive 
 proof and striking illustration of the fact, that there is 
 no inherent, essential, necessary incompatibility between 
 speculation and practice that there need be no divorce 
 between philosophy and business. The man most 
 deeply engaged in affairs need not be cut off from the 
 higher pursuits of intellectual culture; and the scholar 
 need not be incapacitated by his studies from under- 
 standing and engaging in the practical details of common 
 life. In fact, they should be blended in order to make 
 up the full, complete man. Contemplation should be 
 always united with action. This was the doctrine and 
 
67 
 
 the practice of the great father of inductive philosophy, 
 as well as of this his illustrious pupil. "That," says 
 Lord Bacon, " will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, 
 if contemplation and action may be more nearly and 
 strongly conjoined and united together than they have 
 been, a conjunction like unto that of the two highest 
 planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, 
 and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action." 
 And speaking of himself in another place, he says, "We 
 judge also that mankind may conceive some hopes 
 from our example ; which we offer not by way of osten- 
 tation, but because it may be useful. If any one there- 
 fore should despair, let him consider a man as much 
 employed in civil affairs as any other of his age, a man 
 of no great share of health, who must therefore have 
 lost much time, and yet, in this undertaking, he is the 
 first that leads the way, unassisted by any mortal, and 
 steadfastly entering the true path, that was absolutely 
 untrod before, and submitting his mind to things, may 
 somewhat have advanced the design." 
 
 In the management of all his affairs and transactions 
 Dr. Bowditch was a man of great order and system, 
 and he required it of all with whom he had to do, or 
 over whom he exercised any control. He considered 
 that there was a sort of moral virtue in this, and he 
 could not tolerate any thing like negligence or irregular- 
 ity. He doubtless had himself acquired this habit from 
 the nature of his favorite study, which demands the un- 
 divided attention of the mind, and is peculiarly suited 
 
68 
 
 to form habits of exactness and precision. He felt, too, 
 that it was by a strict and undeviating adherence to 
 order and system, that he had been enabled to accom- 
 plish so much in life, to unite the scholar with the finan- 
 cier, the speculative with the practical man. It may 
 have been thought by some, that he carried this love of 
 order to an extreme, and sometimes visited too harshly 
 the deviations from the straight line of his directions. 
 But he felt assured that it was the way to effect the 
 most work and do the greatest good ; he knew that the 
 habit could be easily formed in a short time, and that it 
 would then approve and recommend itself; and therefore 
 he would admit of no apology for infractions of his 
 rules. 
 
 In the common sense of the word, Dr. Bowditch 
 would not be called a public man, although I have ven- 
 tured to call him so ; for though he twice held a seat in 
 the Executive Council of this State, under the adminis- 
 trations of Governors Strong and Brooks,* yet he had 
 no taste for public life, no ambition for political honors. 
 He could not be drawn from " the still air of delightful 
 studies " to mingle in the turmoil and strife of politics. 
 And yet he was a true-hearted and sound patriot, 
 and not a whit the less so for not being a noisy one. 
 He loved his country, and prized her peculiar institu- 
 
 * He was a counsellor in 1815 and 1816, the last of Governor Strong's 
 and the first of Governor Brooks's administration. 
 
69 
 
 tions. He felt a deep interest in the welfare and honor 
 of his native State, and would do any thing to maintain 
 the supremacy of the laws, and preserve the peace and 
 order of the community. He had a remarkably sound 
 and sober mind, good sense being one of its most 
 prominent qualities. Accordingly, he could have no 
 sympathy with those ardent and benevolent reformers 
 who would jumble society into its original elements and 
 bring back ancient chaos again, in order to get a chance 
 to try their hand at making the very best possible com- 
 monwealth out of the fragments.* No. He valued the 
 lessons of experience, and prized the gathered wisdom 
 of past ages. He had faith in other men's intelligence, 
 as well as his own, and trusted in the light that had 
 been reflected from a thousand brilliant minds who had 
 pored and pondered over the great questions of gov- 
 ernment and civil polity, and given us their results in 
 laws and institutions. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch thought, with Governor Winthrop, in 
 his^noble apology for himself, that " there is a great mis- 
 
 * Sir Walter Scott says, in a letter to his son, then on the continent, 
 " It is possible that you may fall into company with some of those tites 
 ichauffies, who are now so common in Germany men who would pull 
 down the whole political system in order to build it on a better model ; 
 a proposal about as wild as that of a man who should propose to change 
 the bridle of a furious horse, and commence his labors by slipping the 
 headstall in the midst of a heath. Prudence, as well as principle, will 
 induce you to avoid this class of politicians, who, I know, are always on 
 the alert to kidnap young men." Lockharl's Life of Scott, Vol. V. Ch. 7. 
 
70 
 
 take in the country about liberty. There is a two-fold 
 liberty ; natural, and civil or federal. The first is com- 
 mon to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, 
 man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty 
 to do what he lists ; it is a liberty to evil as well as to 
 good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent 
 with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of 
 the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining 
 of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and, in time, 
 to be \worse than brute beasts: ' omnes sumus licentia 
 deteriores.' This is that great enemy of truth and 
 peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God 
 are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other 
 kind I call civil, or federal; it may also be termed 
 moral, in reference to the covenant between God and 
 man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and 
 constitutions, amongst men themselves. This liberty is 
 the proper end and object of authority, and cannot 
 subsist without it ; and it is a liberty to that which is 
 good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand 
 for, with the hazard not only of your goods, but of your 
 lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosses this is not au- 
 thority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is main- 
 tained and exercised in a way of subjection to au- 
 thority." * 
 
 The lawless and flagrant assaults upon property and 
 life which have occurred in this country within a few 
 
 * Winthrop's History of New England, II. 229. 
 
71 
 
 years past, casting upon its fair name a stain of dis- 
 honor, grieved him to the heart, and stirred his spirit 
 within him. Conversing with him about one of the 
 earliest and most wanton and unprovoked of these out- 
 rages, I mean the conflagration of a religious house in 
 this vicinity, inhabited solely by women and children, 
 by a ferocious mob at midnight, he told me that had 
 he been summoned, or had an opportunity, he would 
 readily have shouldered his musket, and marched to 
 the spot, and stood in defence of that edifice to the last 
 drop of his blood. There was nothing, indeed, that 
 stirred his indignation like oppression.* 
 
 Immediately after this outrage, he called on the 
 Catholic bishop in this city, and put into his hands a 
 sum of money to buy clothes for the women and child- 
 ren who had lost every thing in the flames. It is an 
 agreeable circumstance, well worth recording, that as 
 soon as the bishop heard of Dr. Bowditch's illness, he 
 sent and informed the family, that, to prevent his being 
 disturbed, the bell of the cathedral, which is in the 
 vicinity of his house, should not be rung during his 
 illness, although it was the season of Lent, and religious 
 
 . * " The Ursuline Convent," on Mount Benedict, in Charlestown, about 
 two miles from Boston, was burnt on the night of the llth of August, 
 1834. The prosecuting officer of the Commonwealth, indeed, did his 
 duty, in attempting to procure a conviction of the offenders ; but the 
 only atonement that was made for this gross outrage upon justice and 
 humanity, was the sacrifice of a scape-offering in the person of a boy, who, 
 after a short imprisonment, was discharged as too poor a victim. 
 
72 
 
 services were going on almost every day. It is pleasant 
 to see kindness thus reciprocated between divergent 
 sects, and the middle wall of separation broken down 
 by the humane and grateful feelings of a common 
 nature. 
 
 The blackened walls of that edifice still remain, a 
 standing monument to the shame of this Commonwealth ; 
 which, after receiving from its proprietors an annual tax 
 for its protection, has, to this day, refused to repair the 
 injury and compensate the wrong. Let the legislators 
 of the State look to it. It is not yet too late to make 
 reparation. Till it is done, the pulpit will not cease 
 to lift up its voice against that infamous assault upon re- 
 ligious liberty. 
 
 Why is it, my hearers, that all the youthful talent of 
 this country is rushing madly into political life ? To 
 how many of these aspirants may we apply, with literal 
 truth, the remark of Lord Bacon, in reference to him- 
 self, that " they were born and intended for literature 
 rather than any thing else, and, by a sort of fatality, 
 have been drawn, contrary to the bent of their own 
 genius, into the walks of public life." * Is it not a great 
 mistake, on their part, to suppose that politics is the 
 only or the principal avenue to enduring fame? Is the 
 science of government the only one worth studying, or 
 
 * Ad literas potius quam ad aliud quicquam natus, et ad res gerendas, 
 nescio quo fa to, contra genium suum abreptus. De Aug. Sci. Lib. 8, 
 Cap. 3. 
 
73 
 
 are civil honors the only ones worth aspiring to? It 
 seems to me that the young men of competent abilities 
 among us, who aim at distinction, those certainly who 
 have leisure and property, might quite as securely seek 
 it in the retired and quiet walks of science and litera- 
 ture, as in the bustling and dusty paths of political life. 
 Are the names of Newton and Milton less eminent 
 than those of Chatham and Fox? Do they not stir the 
 spirit as soon ? ay, even as soon as those of Marlbo- 
 rough and Wellington ? Are Cuvier and La Place names 
 less likely to live than those of the statesmen and mar- 
 shals of France ? Which are the two greatest names 
 in our own annals, the best known and the most hon- 
 ored the world over ? First, Washington ; then Frank- 
 lin ; and the latter chiefly as a philosopher, from his 
 attainments and discoveries in science. 
 
 The example and success of Dr. Bowditch are full 
 of incitement and encouragement to our young men in 
 this particular, and should especially stimulate those 
 who have leisure and fortune to do something to enable 
 our country to take a respectable place in science and 
 letters among the other nations of the earth ; so that the 
 stigma shall not adhere to us of being a race of unlet- 
 tered republicans. Let them look, too, at more than 
 one recent and successful attempt among us in the 
 department of history.* How much may they not 
 
 * Mr. Prescott's " History of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, of 
 Spain," already alluded to, and Mr. George Bancroft's " History of the 
 
 10 
 
74 
 
 accomplish 1 And into what pleasant fields will they 
 not be led ? Into the various departments of natural 
 history, the different walks of exact science, the rich and 
 instructive annals of our own country, and the delightful 
 province of general literature and philosophy. Let them 
 labor in this field, which will reward all their efforts, 
 instead of delving in a stony and sterile soil.* 
 
 Let it not be said that I am wandering from my ap- 
 propriate province in these remarks. I do not thus 
 
 United States." These are very important and honorable contributions 
 to the growing literature of our country; and we rejoice that we can 
 claim them as the works of Massachusetts men and sons of our venera- 
 ble University. Dr. Bowditch had read them both through, and admired 
 them both, and spoke with great delight of the chapter on the Quakers, in 
 the last-mentioned work. But does not Mr. Bancroft, in this chapter, 
 run a little into exaggeration ? He is so full of enthusiasm on the subject, 
 that he seems to adopt the views and feelings he describes, and, for the 
 nonce, to be a very Quaker himself. This enthusiasm in behalf of an 
 injured sect is generous and delightful. Yet there are two sides to that 
 Quaker question in America ; and a young friend of mine, fully compe- 
 tent for the task from the perseverance and accuracy of his investigations, 
 is about to give us the other side. The ancient Quakers, with all their 
 meekness, were the most foul-mouthed of controversialists. Even Roger 
 Williams, the father of religious toleration, could not endure their out- 
 rages and indecencies ; and although he would not suffer the civil magis- 
 trate to trouble them, yet he did not spare them the galling chastisement 
 of the tongue and pen. See his book entitled " George Fox Digged out 
 of his Burrows," and Knowles's " Memoir of Roger Williams," p. 384, 5. 
 * " The mind," says Bishop Hall in his Epistle on ' The Pleasure of 
 Study and Contemplation,' " the mind only, that honorable and divine 
 part, is fittest to be employed of those who would reach to the highest 
 perfection of men, and be more than the most. And what work is there 
 of the mind but the trade of a scholar study ? " 
 
75 
 
 narrow the circle of my professional duties. I feel that 
 I am discharging my duty as a Christian minister, if, by 
 any thing I can say, I can induce a young man to culti- 
 vate the high powers which God has given him, and 
 devote them to the increase of knowledge, thereby 
 enriching his own mind, and at the same time fostering 
 a healthy spirit and diffusing a wholesome taste through 
 the community.* I have no fear that the path of politics 
 will be deserted, or that the republic will suffer detriment 
 from the absence of candidates for its offices and emol- 
 uments. Alas ! these will always be too attractive ; 
 and what we chiefly need is some counteracting influ- 
 ence, some striking example, like that of Dr. Bowditch, 
 to convince our young men that political life is not the 
 only road to eminence, nor the only adequate and hon- 
 orable sphere for the exercise and display of their talents. 
 For affording us this evidence, his memory deserves to 
 be honored, and his name to be held in everlasting re- 
 membrance. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was a remarkably domestic man. His 
 affections clustered around his own fireside, and found 
 
 * " If the invention of the ship," says Lord Bacon, " was thought so 
 noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and 
 consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how 
 much more are letters to he magnified, which, as ships, pass through the 
 vast seas of time, and make ages so distant participate of the wisdom, 
 illuminations and inventions, the one of the other." 
 
 " The ink of the doctors and the blood of the martyrs " says another, 
 " are of equal price." 
 
76 
 
 their most delightful exercise in his " family of love," as 
 he called it in almost his last moments. His attachment 
 to home and to its calm and simple pleasures was, indeed, 
 one of the most beautiful traits in his character, and one 
 which his children and friends will look back upon with 
 the greatest satisfaction. As Sir Thomas More says of 
 himself, "he devoted the little time which he could 
 spare from his avocations abroad to his family, and spent 
 it in little innocent and endearing conversations with his 
 wife and children ; which, though some might think 
 them trifling amusements, he placed among the neces- 
 sary duties and business of life ; it being incumbent on 
 every one to make himself as agreeable as possible to 
 those whom nature has made, or he himself has singled 
 out for, his companions in life." * 
 
 His time was divided between his office and his 
 house; and that must have been a strong attraction, 
 indeed, that could draw him into company.! When at 
 
 * " Dum foris totum ferme diem aliis impertior, reliquum meis, relinquo 
 mihi, hoc est literis, nihil. Nempe, reverse domum, cum uxore fabulan- 
 dum est, garriendum cum liberis, colloquendum cum ministris. Quae ego 
 omnia inter negotia numero, quando fieri necesse est, (necesse est autem 
 nisi velis esse domi tuse peregrinus), et danda omnino opera est, ut quos 
 vitse tuae comites aut natura providit, aut fecit casus, aut ipse delegisti, 
 his ut te quam jucundissimum compares." Preface to the Utopia. 
 
 f If any one would know " how a day should be spent," let him read 
 Bishop Hall's delightful Epistle on that subject. Among other excellent 
 things, he says, " Sweet is the destiny of all trades, whether of the brows, 
 or of the mind. God never allowed any man to do nothing. How 
 miserable is the condition of those men, which spend the time as if it 
 
77 
 
 home, his time was spent in his library, which he loved 
 to have considered as the family parlor. By very early 
 rising, in winter two hours before the light, "long ere 
 the sound of any bell awoke men to labor or to de- 
 votion," and " in summer," like Milton, " as oft with the 
 bird that first rises or not much tardier," he was enabled 
 to accomplish much before others were stirring. "To 
 these morning studies," he used to say, " I am indebted 
 for all my mathematics."* After taking his evening walk 
 he was again always to be found in the library, pursuing 
 the same attractive studies, but ready and glad, at the 
 entrance of any visiter, to throw aside his book, unbend 
 his mind, and indulge in all the gayeties of a light- 
 hearted conversation.! 
 
 were given them, and not lent ; as if hours were waste creatures, and 
 such as never should be accounted for ; as if God would take this for a 
 good bill of reckoning : Item, spent upon my pleasures forty years ! These 
 men shall once find, that no blood can privilege idleness, and that nothing 
 is more precious to God than that which they desire to cast away time." 
 
 * He might literally apply to himself the apology of the great Roman 
 orator, " Quare quis tandem me reprehendat, aut quis mihi jure succen- 
 seat, si quantum cseteris ad suas res obeundas, quantum ad festos dies 
 ludorum celebrandos, quantum ad alias voluptates, et ad ipsam requiem 
 animi et corporis conceditur temporis ; quantum alii tribuunt tempesti- 
 vis conviviis ; quantum denique alese, quantum pilse ; tantum mihi 
 egomet ad ha3C studia recolenda sumpsero ? " 
 
 f " Before my meals and after," says Bishop Hall, in the Epistle just re- 
 ferred to, " I let myself loose from all thoughts, and now would forget 
 that I had ever studied. Company, discourse, recreations, are now sea- 
 sonable and welcome. After my latter meal, my thoughts are slight. 
 And now the evening is come, no tradesman doth more carefully take in 
 
78 
 
 There was nothing that he seemed to enjoy more 
 than this free interchange of thought on all subjects of 
 common interest. At such times the mathematician, the 
 astronomer, the man of science, disappeared, and he 
 presented himself as the frank, easy, familiar friend. One 
 could hardly believe that this agreeable, fascinating com- 
 panion, who talked so affably and pleasantly on all the 
 topics of the day, and joined so heartily in the quiet 
 mirth and the loud laugh, could really be the great 
 mathematician who had expounded the mechanism of 
 the heavens, and taken his place with Newton, and 
 Leibnitz, and La Place, among the great proficients in 
 exact science. To hear him talk, you would never have 
 suspected that he knew any thing about science, or 
 cared any thing about it. In this respect he resembled 
 his great Scottish contemporary, who has delighted the 
 whole world by his writings. You might have visited 
 him in that library from one year's end to another, and 
 yet, if you or some other visiter did not introduce the 
 subject, I venture to say that not one word on mathe- 
 matics would cross his lips. He had no pedantry of any 
 kind. Never did I meet with a scientific or literary man 
 so entirely devoid of all cant and pretension. In con- 
 versation he had the simplicity and playfulness and un- 
 affected manners of a child. His own remarks " seem- 
 
 his wares, clear his shopboard, and shut his windows, than I would shut 
 up my thoughts and clear my mind. That student shall live miserably, 
 which, like a camel, lies down under his burden." 
 
79 
 
 ed rather to escape from his mind than to be produced 
 by it." He laughed heartily, and rubbed his hands, and 
 jumped up, when an observation was made that greatly 
 pleased him, because it was natural for him so to do, 
 and he had never been schooled into the conventional 
 proprieties of artificial life, nor been accustomed to con- 
 ceal or stifle any of the innocent impulses of his nature.* 
 Who that once enjoyed the privilege of visiting him 
 
 * Dr. Bowditch used to relate a little anecdote concerning himself, 
 which so strongly and beautifully illustrates the perfect naturalness of 
 his character, that I will venture to subjoin it in a note. 
 
 It will be recollected, that in the year 1824, when General Lafayette, 
 in his progress through the country, among other places, visited Boston, 
 the mayoralty of the city was filled by the Honorable JOSIAH QUINCY. 
 Dr. Bowditch, in common with all the world, had a curiosity to behold 
 the entrance of the nation's guest into the city ; and accordingly ac- 
 cepted an invitation from a friend, whose house was in Colonnade Row, 
 to take a station on his balcony. But finding that the chariot wheels 
 tarried, and the General delayed his coming, he thought that he 
 should have time to go down to his office to transact a little business, 
 and return in season for the spectacle. But, in the mean time, the pro- 
 cession had arrived and passed on, and was fast advancing to State 
 street. He concluded, therefore, to wait where he was, and, in order to 
 get a nearer and better view, took his stand on the steps of the United 
 States' Bank. On the appearance of the barouche in which Lafayette 
 was seated, Dr. Bowditch remarked that he was glad to see Mr. Quincy 
 at his side ; he was the proper man for that place, being the son of one 
 of the earliest and best of the patriots of the Revolution. " As the shout 
 of the multitude rose unto heaven," he said, " I know not how it hap- 
 pened, bat I could not keep my place ; my hat would not stay on my 
 head, nor could I hold my tongue. And, to my astonishment, I found 
 myself, all at once, in the midst of the crowd by the side of the chariot, 
 and shouting with the rest at the top of my voice." The President of the 
 University recollects distinctly seeing him in the position and attitude 
 thus described. 
 
80 
 
 in that library, can ever forget the scene 1 Methinks I 
 see him now, in my mind's eye, the venerable man, 
 sitting there close by his old-fashioned blazing wood 
 fire, bending over his favorite little desk, looking 
 like one of the old philosophers, with his silvery hair, 
 and noble forehead, and beaming eye, and benign 
 countenance ; whilst all around him are ranged the 
 depositories of the wisdom and science of departed 
 sages and philosophers, who seem to look down upon 
 him benignantly from their quiet places, and spontane- 
 ously and silently to give forth to him their instructions. 
 On entering this, the noblest repository of scientific 
 works in the country, I almost fancy I hear him saying 
 with Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Ley den, " I 
 no sooner come into my library, than I bolt the door 
 after me, excluding ambition, avarice, and all such vices ; 
 and, in the very lap of eternity, amidst so many divine 
 souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such 
 sweet content, that I pity all the great and rich who 
 know not this happiness." * If it be possible, let that 
 library be kept together as a memorial of its founder. 
 
 At first sight there may seem someting ludicrous and puerile in this 
 grave philosopher and calculator, this votary of abstract science, huzza- 
 ing in a mixed crowd on a city's holiday. But to me it seems a most 
 natural and beautiful expression of his simplicity, his self-forgetfulness, 
 his utter unconsciousness of greatness, his generous sympathy with the 
 people, and his grateful and ardent patriotism. This little incident can- 
 not fail to raise him in the estimation of every right-minded and single- 
 hearted man. 
 
 * " Libraries are the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, 
 
81 
 
 It may here be remarked, that although mathematics 
 was his chief and favorite pursuit, Dr. Bowditch still had 
 a taste and love for general literature. He was fond of 
 Shakspeare, and remembered and could repeat whole 
 passages from his plays. He loved poetry, particularly 
 the poetry of Burns and our own Bryant and Sprague.* 
 Many of his favorite pieces he not only had by heart, but 
 also had them written down, for convenience' sake, on the 
 
 full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved 
 and reposed." Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning. 
 
 " For him was lever han at his beddes head 
 
 A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red, 
 
 Of Aristotle or his philosophy, 
 
 Than robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie. 
 
 And all that he might of his friends hente, 
 
 On bokes and on lerning he it spente." Chaucer. 
 
 * One of Dr. Bowditch's favorite pieces, which he had often upon his 
 lips, was that exquisite gem of Charles Sprague's, entitled " The Wing- 
 ed Worshippers ; addressed to two Swallows, that flew into a Church 
 during religious service," beginning as follows : 
 
 " Gay, guiltless pair, 
 What seek ye from the fields of heaven ? 
 
 Ye have no need of prayer, 
 Ye have no sins to be forgiven." 
 
 What has become of the author of the splendid Ode on Shaks- 
 peare ? Is he lost for ever to the Muses, and are we to have nothing more 
 from his sweet reed ? Will he not at least collect his poems into a vol- 
 ume for the world's delight ? " A bird that can and will not sing " 
 
 On the appearance of Milliard and Gray's beautiful edition of 
 Milton's Poetical Works, Dr. Bowditch purchased a copy, and soon after 
 said to one of the firm, Mr. James Brown, " I thank you for publishing 
 that edition, for you have led me to read Milton through once more with 
 increased delight." 
 
 11 
 
82 
 
 covers of his mathematical common-place book. I re- 
 collect, among others, thus copied off, " The Cotter's 
 Saturday Night," a selection which evinced at the same 
 time his good feeling and his good taste. I also recol- 
 lect observing on his copy of Newton's Principia many 
 commendatory verses on Newton, selected from Voltaire 
 and other French poets. 
 
 But I must hasten on to speak, as briefly and com- 
 prehensively as I can, of what is the most important 
 part of every man namely, his moral and religious 
 character the qualities of his heart, and his principles 
 of action. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was a man of unsullied purity, the 
 most rigid integrity, and the most uncompromising 
 principle. Through life, truth seems to have been at 
 once the great object of his pursuit, and his ruling prin- 
 ciple of action. " FOLLOW TRUTH," might have been 
 the motto on his escutcheon. " Truth! Truth! Truth!" 
 were among his last words to one whom he dearly 
 loved. He was himself perfectly transparent. A child 
 could see through him.* There was no opaqueness in 
 
 * Dr. Bowditch was perfectly fair and just in the estimate which he 
 formed of his own capacities and gifts. He did not, on the one hand, 
 overrate his talents ; nor, on the other hand, did he, as some do, with a 
 sort of back-handed humility, purposely undervalue his powers, in order 
 to enjoy the pleasure of being contradicted by those about him and told 
 that he was really a much greater man than he seemed willing to admit. 
 As an illustration of this, let me mention a little conversation of his. 
 " People," said he, " are very kind and polite, in mentioning me in the 
 same breath with La Place, and blending my name with his. But they 
 
83 
 
 his heart, any more than in his intellect. It was as clear 
 as crystal, and the rays of moral truth were transmitted 
 through it without being refracted or tinged. In all his 
 intercourse and transactions he was remarkably frank 
 and candid. He revealed himself entirely. He had 
 no secrets. He kept nothing back, for he had nothing 
 to conceal. He lived openly, and talked freely, of 
 himself, and of his doings, and of every thing that was 
 uppermost in his mind. He never hesitated to speak 
 out what he thought on all subjects, public and private, 
 and he avowed his opinions of men and things with the 
 utmost freedom and unconcern. It seemed to me 
 that he never had the fear of man before his eyes, and 
 that it never checked, in the least, the free and full ut- 
 terance of his sentiments. 
 
 He was a singularly modest man. He made no 
 pretensions himself, and there was nothing that he so 
 much despised in others.* He was remarkably simple 
 
 mistake both me and him ; we are very different men. I trust I under- 
 stand his works, and can supply his deficiencies, and correct his errors, 
 and render his book more intelligible, and record the successive advance- 
 ments of the science, and perhaps append some improvements. But La 
 Place was a genius, a discoverer, an inventor. And yet I hope I know 
 as much about mathematics as Playfair ! " 
 
 * As an illustration of Dr. Bowditch's remarkable modesty and 
 simplicity of character, I relate the following little incident, for which I 
 am indebted to JOHN R. ADAN, Esq., one of those who were favored 
 with his friendship and confidence. He tells me that, in the year 1811, 
 the Hon. Walter Folger, of Nantucket, a self-educated man, and quite 
 eminent as a mathematician, and highly respectable in every point of 
 
84 
 
 in all his manners and intercourse with the world. He 
 put on no airs and assumed no superiority on the ground 
 of his intellectual attainments, but put himself on a 
 level with every one with whom he had any concern. 
 He reverenced integrity and truth wherever he found 
 them, in whatever condition in life. He felt and showed 
 no respect for mere wealth or rank. He fearlessly re- 
 buked, to his face, the mean and purse-proud nabob, 
 and " condescended to men of low estate. "' 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was a truly conscientious man. He 
 was always true to his moral as well as intellectual con- 
 victions, and followed them whithersoever they led. 
 He had great faith in the rectitude of his moral percep- 
 tions, and in the primary decisions of his own judgment 
 and moral sense ; and he carried them forth and acted 
 
 view, having been successively a judge of the Common Pleas, a senator 
 in the Legislature of this State, and a member of Congress, came to 
 Boston, and expressed a desire to see Mr. Bowditch. Mr. Adan accord- 
 ingly accompanied him to Salem. Mr. Folger immediately proceeded 
 alone to Mr. Bowditch's house, and knocked at the door, which was 
 opened by Mr. Bowditch himself, when the following conversation en- 
 sued. Folger. " Is Mr. Bowditch at home ? " Bowditch. " Yes, sir, 
 that is my name." F. " But I wish to see Mr. Bowditch, the astron- 
 omer and mathematician." B. "Well, sir, folks sometimes call me by 
 those names." F. " My name, sir, is Walter Folger, of Nantucket. I 
 have long corresponded with Mr. Bowditch the mathematician, and I 
 want to see him." B. " I am the very person, then, and I am very 
 happy to see you. Walk in." F. " Well, upon my word, sir, I did not 
 expect to find my correspondent so young a person. I thought I should 
 see an older head upon those shoulders." He went in, and had a most 
 delightful interview. Mr. B. was at this time thirty-eight years old. 
 
. 85 
 
 them out instantly. The word followed the thought, 
 and the deed the feeling, with the rapidity of lightning. 
 This straight-forwardness and frankness were among 
 the secret causes of the remarkable influence which he 
 confessedly exercised over the minds and judgments of 
 others. By his honesty, as well as by his resoluteness 
 and decision, he was the main-spring of every thing 
 with which he was connected. By this moral influence 
 he controlled and swayed all men with whom he was 
 associated. As Ben Jonson says of Lord Bacon, "he 
 commanded where he spoke." * 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was a man of ardent natural feelings, 
 and of an impetuous temperament. He was strong in 
 his attachment to men and to opinions, and was not 
 easily turned from any course of speculation or action, 
 which he had once satisfied himself was right, wise 
 and good. At the same time, he always kept his mind 
 open to evidence ; and if you brought before him new 
 facts and arguments, he would reconsider the subject, 
 
 * The Hon. SAMUEL T. ARMSTRONG, formerly Lieutenant Governor 
 of the Commonwealth, and under whose administration, as Mayor of the 
 City, the iron fence round the Common was undertaken and completed, 
 has told me the following anecdote, which illustrates Dr. Bowditch's 
 decision of character. He was standing at the bottom of the Common 
 one day, conversing with Dr. Bowditch, and, among other things, men- 
 tioned the obstacles that had been thrown in his way in attempting to 
 carry the mall through the bury ing-ground. " Sir," said Dr. Bowditch, 
 " it depends entirely upon you. If you say ' VoloJ it will go. If you say 
 ' NoloJ it won't." "I did not exactly understand his Latin words," said 
 the Mayor, " but I knew what he meant, and I acted accordingly." He 
 said " Volo," and the thing was done. 
 
86 . 
 
 deliberately, not hastily, and the next day, perhaps, 
 would tell you that you were in the right, and that he 
 had altered his mind. He was sometimes quick, warm, 
 and vehement in expressing his disapprobation of the 
 character or conduct of an individual, particularly if he 
 thought that the person had practised anything like 
 duplicity or fraud. In such cases, his indignation was 
 absolutely scorching and withering. But he never 
 cherished any personal resentments in his bosom. He 
 did not let the sun go down upon his wrath. His 
 anger was like a cloud, which passes over the disk of 
 the moon, and leaves it as mild and clear as before ; or, 
 as the judicious Hooker's was represented to be, " like 
 a vial of clear water, which, when shook, beads at the 
 top, but instantly subsides, without any soil or sediment 
 of uncharitableness." 
 
 Let me relate an incident illustrative of this remark- 
 able trait in his character. Dr. Bowditch had been 
 preparing a plan of the town of Salem, which he 
 intended soon to publish. It had been the fruit of 
 much labor and care. By some means or other, an 
 individual in the town had surreptitiously got posses- 
 sion of it, and had the audacity to issue proposals to 
 publish it as his own. This was too much for Dr. 
 Bowditch to bear. He instantly went to the person, 
 and burst out in the following strain : " You villain ! 
 how dare you do this? What do you mean by it? 
 If you presume to proceed any farther in this busi- 
 ness, I will prosecute you to the utmost extent of the 
 

 87 
 
 law." The poor fellow cowered before the storm of 
 his indignation, and was silent ; for his wrath was terri- 
 ble. Dr. Bowditch went home, and slept on it ; and 
 the next day, hearing from some authentic source that 
 the man was extremely poor, and had probably been 
 driven by the necessities of his family to commit this 
 audacious plagiarism, his feelings were touched, his 
 heart relented, his anger melted away like wax. He 
 went to him again, and said, " Sir, you did very wrong, 
 and you know it, to appropriate to your own use and 
 benefit the fruit of my labors. But I understand you 
 are poor, and have a family to support. I feel for you, 
 and will help you. That plan is unfinished, and con- 
 tains errors that would have disgraced you and me had 
 it been published in the state in which you found it. 
 I'll tell you what I will do. I will finish the plan ; I 
 will correct the errors ; and then you shall publish it 
 for your own benefit, and I will head the subscription 
 list with my name." 
 
 What a sublime, noble, Christian spirit was there 
 manifested ! This was really overcoming evil with 
 good, and pouring coals of fire upon the poor man's 
 head. The natural feeling of resentment, which God 
 has implanted within all bosoms for our protection 
 against sudden assault and injury, was overruled and 
 conquered by the higher, the sovereign principle of 
 
 conscience.* 
 
 * Compare Bishop Butler's admirable sermons on " Human Nature " 
 and " Resentment," in which this subject is handled in a masterly man- 
 
88 
 
 I ought to have mentioned, in an earlier part of this 
 discourse, that Dr. Bowditch was, in all his habits of life, 
 a very regular and temperate man. He never tasted 
 any wine till the age of thirty-five.* He approved the 
 remarkable changes which have been effected in the 
 customs of society, within a few years, by " The Tem- 
 perance Reform," and he heartily rejoiced in the success 
 of that good cause. God bless it and speed it ! and 
 give its advocates discretion and sobriety as well as 
 courage and zeal ! If they would crush the serpent, 
 they must have the wisdom of the serpent and the 
 harmlessness of the dove. 
 
 I hope I may be pardoned in now mentioning a cir- 
 cumstance, known probably only to myself, and which, 
 though of a personal nature, I venture to relate, both in 
 discharge of the debt of gratitude which I owe to his 
 memory, and as a very striking illustration of two traits 
 in his character his independence, and the strength 
 and the constancy of his attachments. At an early 
 stage in my ministry in this place, some twelve years 
 
 ner by the prince of ethical writers. Why is it that we hear, in these 
 days, the pernicious sentiment avowed and inculcated, that we are to 
 follow impulse and feeling rather than reason and principle? So 
 thought not those great lights of philosophy, Samuel Butler and John 
 Locke. 
 
 * During the latter years of his life Dr. Bowditch was accustomed to 
 drink two glasses of wine a day, one after dinner, and the other in the 
 evening. This he called his " certain quantity." If he ever exceeded 
 this, which was seldom or never, he classed the excess, in his mathe- 
 matical phrase, among " the uncertain quantities." 
 
80 
 
 ago, at one of those periods of discouragement and 
 despondency through which every young and inexperi- 
 enced minister is called to pass, particularly in a large 
 city like this, and which are calculated to cower and 
 crush the spirit of every one who has not nerves of 
 steel and a heart of flint, at that trying moment Dr. 
 Bowditch stood by me firm as a rock. He assured 
 me of his confidence, his approbation, and his firm 
 adherence. " Never mind it," said he, " go on and do 
 your duty, and be not anxious about the result. I will 
 stand by you to the last." These few words, from such 
 a man, were encouraging. They cheered my heart, 
 they nerved my mind, they strengthened my hands, 
 they enabled me to go forward without fear. I felt 
 as though I had Atlas under me, shoring me up.* This 
 assurance, too, was entirely voluntary and unsought; 
 and only a few months before his death he again al- 
 luded to the subject, commended the quiet and steady 
 course which I had pursued, and congratulated me on 
 the result in the peaceful and prosperous condition of 
 the parish. 
 
 No one has ever before heard me, in public or pri- 
 vate, allude to this subject. For I am not one of those 
 who tell their griefs and sue for sympathy. I appeal to 
 you, my faithful parishioners, whether you have ever 
 heard me lisp a syllable of complaint on this point. I 
 
 Atlas, 
 
 sethereum qui i'e/t cervicibus axem." 
 
 12 
 
90 
 
 kept my feelings to myself; and I now speak thus pub- 
 licly of the matter, as a mere incident in the annals gf 
 the parish, and with no feeling but that of gratitude to 
 the memory of my independent and unflinching friend.* 
 
 * Next to the inestimable service of parental guidance and instruc- 
 tion, I have always considered this the greatest favor ever rendered to 
 me in the whole course of my life, with the single exception of the price- 
 less benefit conferred on me by him who was the benefactor of my 
 youthful mind, and first imbued it with a love of good learning. It gives 
 me pleasure thus to acknowledge the debt which I owe to my early 
 instructer, B. A. GOULD, Esq. (for fourteen years, from 1814 to 1828, the 
 accomplished and successful Master of the Boston Latin School) to whom 
 I can in literal truth apply the words in which Cicero speaks of his pre- 
 ceptor, Licinius Archias : " Si quid est in me ingenii, quod sentio quam 
 sit exiguum ; aut si qua exercitatio dicendi, in qua me non infitior medi- 
 ocriter esse versatum ; aut si hujusce rei ratio aliqua, ab optimarum 
 artium studiis ac discipline, profecta, a qua ego nullum confiteor setatis 
 meae tempus abhorruisse ; earum rerum omnium vel in primis hie A. 
 Licinius fructum a me repetere prope suo jure debet. Nam quoad lon- 
 gissime potest mens mea respicere spatium prseteriti temporis, et pueri- 
 tise memoriam recordari ultimam, inde usque repetens, hunc video mihi 
 principem et ad suscipiendam et ad ingrediendam rationem horum stu- 
 diorum extitisse." 
 
 When, in the year 1828, certain measures and occurrences took 
 place, in connection with the College, one in particular of a very painful 
 nature, my views and feelings were probably as strong, and as strongly 
 expressed, as those of any person in the community ; but not more strongly 
 to others than they were to Dr. Bowditch himself. More than once I 
 have had long and warm conversations with him on these points ; and 
 though my views were unaltered, I will bear testimony to the perfect 
 kindness and candor with which he listened to my dissent ; and this is 
 not the only instance in which I have differed from him decidedly, but 
 amicably. When these facts are considered, and it is known that his 
 eulogist has never been his echo nor parasite, it is hoped that the strong 
 terms in which his character has been commended in this Discourse will 
 
91 
 
 In his religious views, Dr. Bowditch was, from ex- 
 amination and conviction, a firm and decided Unitarian. 
 But he had no taste for the polemics or peculiarities of 
 any sect, and did not love to dwell on the distinctive 
 and dividing points of Christian doctrine. His religion 
 was rather an inward sentiment, flowing out into the 
 life, and revealing itself in his character and actions. 
 It was at all times, and at all periods of his life, a con- 
 trolling and sustaining principle. He confided in the 
 providence and benignity of his Heavenly Father, as 
 revealed by his blessed Son, our Lo.rd, and had the 
 most unshaken confidence in the wisdom and rectitude 
 of all the divine appointments. He looked forward with 
 firm faith to an immortality in the spiritual world. 
 
 He said to one, in his last illness, "From my boyhood 
 my mind has been religiously impressed. I never did 
 or could question the existence of a Superintending 
 Being, and that he took an interest in the affairs of men. 
 I have always endeavored to regulate my life in subjec- 
 tion to his will, and studied to bring my mind to an 
 acquiescence in his dispensations ; and now, at its close, 
 I look back with gratitude for the manner in which he 
 has distinguished me, and for the many blessings of my 
 
 not be set down to flattery nor to the partiality of friendship. I am not 
 conscious of having overstated or exaggerated anything. I certainly have 
 aimed at drawing a true and just portrait. Those who knew him per- 
 sonally, will judge how far I have succeeded. While writing, I feel all 
 the time as though I heard his voice in my ear " If you say anything 
 about me, tell the truth, the whole truth." 
 
92 
 
 lot. I can only say that I am content, that I go willingly, 
 resigned, and satisfied." To another he said, "In my 
 youth I fell in with some young associates who were 
 skeptically disposed, having read the books and imbibed 
 the notions of Voltaire and Paine, and they labored hard 
 to make me of the same way of thinking with them- 
 selves. But I battled it with them stoutly, not with the 
 logic of Locke, for I knew nothing about that, but with 
 the logic here" pointing to his breast. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was very familiar with the Scriptures, 
 both of the Old. and New Testaments, more so than 
 some professed theologians who make it their especial 
 study. He had read the Bible in his childhood, under 
 the eye of a pious mother, and he loved to quote and 
 repeat the sublime and touching language of Holy 
 Writ. * 
 
 * I must always deeply regret, as a Christian minister, believing in 
 the authority and importance of the Christian ordinances, that Dr. 
 Bowditch did not throw the weight of a. public profession of religion into 
 the scale of Christianity, and thereby satisfy the world, as he had already 
 and amply satisfied his family and his friends, of the strength and reality 
 of his religious faith. The public testimony of such a man, possessed 
 of such a sound, clear, discriminating mind, and of such acute and logical 
 powers, to the truth and worth of our holy religion, would have been in- 
 valuable. I believe that he was deterred from doing this solely by his 
 general dislike of professions of every kind. He certainly could not have 
 been prevented by shame or the fear of man. He used to say that people 
 must judge of him by what he was and did, and not by what he profess- 
 ed. But yet, is not the profession of Christianity, by an observance of 
 its peculiar ordinance, an act ? and is not the omission of it equally an 
 act ? A sense of duty compels me to say thus much on this subject. 
 
93 
 
 Such, my hearers, had been the life, and such the 
 character of our distinguished fellow-citizen and beloved 
 fellow-worshipper ; and such was he to the last, through 
 all the agonies of a most distressing illness. In the 
 midst of health and usefulness, in the full discharge of 
 the duties of life, and in the full enjoyment of its satis- 
 factions, the summons suddenly comes to him to leave 
 it. And he meets the summons with the utmost equa- 
 nimity and composure, with the submission of a philoso- 
 pher and with the resignation of a Christian. He cer- 
 tainly had much to live for few have more but he 
 gave up all without repining or complaint. He said 
 he should have liked to live a little longer, to complete 
 his great work, and see his younger children grown up 
 and settled in life. "But I am perfectly happy," he 
 added, " and ready to go, and entirely resigned to the 
 will of Providence." He arranged all his affairs, gave 
 his directions with minuteness, and dictated and signed 
 his last will and testament. While his strength per- 
 mitted, he continued to attend to the necessary affairs 
 of his office, and on the day previous to his death put 
 his name to an important instrument. In the intervals 
 of pain he prepared, as I have already remarked, the 
 remaining copy and corrected the proof sheets of the 
 fourth volume of his great work, the printing of which 
 was nearly finished at the time of his death. It is a 
 little remarkable that the last page that he read was the 
 one thousandth. It was gratifying to him to find that 
 his mind was unenfeebled by disease and pain ; and one 
 
94 
 
 day, after solving one of the hardest problems in the 
 book, he exclaimed, in his enthusiastic way, " I feel that 
 I am Nathaniel Bow ditch still only a little weaker." 
 
 He continued, indeed, in all respects, the same man 
 to the last. He did not think that this was the time to 
 put on a new face or assume a new character. His 
 feelings were unaffected, his manners unchanged, by the 
 prospect before him. He seemed to those about him 
 only to be going on a long journey. To the end, he 
 manifested the same cheerfulness, nay pleasantry, which 
 he had when in health, without, however, the least 
 admixture of levity. In his great kindness, he exerted 
 himself to see many friends, every one of whom, I 
 believe, will bear testimony to his calm, serene state of 
 mind. The words which he spoke in those precious 
 interviews they will gather up and treasure in their 
 memory, and will never forget them so long as they live.* 
 She certainly will not, to whom, when on her taking 
 leave of him she had said " Good night," he replied, 
 
 * Will the Chief Magistrate of the Commonwealth, will the President 
 of the University, ever forget their interviews with the dying philoso- 
 pher ? The Governor, in his beautiful address to the Academy, on 
 introducing the Resolutions that were passed in honor of their illustrious 
 associate, after briefly describing his interview, alludes, in a very modest 
 and touching manner, to the commendation passed by the departing 
 sage on a recent and most painful act of his executive authority. The 
 Governor should know that the language of Dr. Bowditch is but the 
 expression of the public mind, and that he will be sustained in all his 
 measures to maintain the majesty and supremacy of the laws, and 
 preserve the public order and peace. 
 
95 
 
 " No, my dear, say not ' Good night,' but ' Good morn- 
 ing,' for the next time we meet will be on the morning 
 of the resurrection." 
 
 One day, toward the close of his lingering illness, 
 after he had himself given up all hope of recovery, he 
 asked one who stood by him what were the two Greek 
 words which signify "easy death." The word not 
 immediately suggesting itself to the person, and he 
 having mentioned over several phrases and combinations 
 of words, Dr. Bowditch said, "No, you have not got 
 the right word ; but you will find it in Pope's Corres- 
 pondence." The person found the letter, which was 
 the last that Dr. Arbuthnot * wrote to his friend. The 
 conclusion of it is as follows ; " A recovery, in my case, 
 and at my age, is impossible. The kindest wish of my 
 friends is euthanasia." On hearing this read, Dr. Bow- 
 ditch said, "Yes, that is the word, euthanasia. That 
 letter I read forty years ago, and I have not seen it since. 
 It made an impression on my mind which is still fresh. 
 It struck me, at the time I read it, that the good physi- 
 
 * Dr. Arbuthnot was an eminent physician and brilliant wit in the 
 time of Queen Anne, the contemporary and friend of Swift and Pope. 
 He died in 1735. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Pope, says of him, 
 " Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his practice, 
 versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to 
 animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination ; a 
 scholar, with great brilliance of wit ; a wit, who, in the crowd of life, 
 retained and discovered a noble ardor of religious zeal ; a man estimable 
 for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety." 
 
96 
 
 cian who wrote it would certainly have an easy death. 
 It could not be otherwise. The excellent, the virtuous, 
 must be happy in their death." He afterwards fre- 
 quently recurred to this subject, and the day previous 
 to his departure, he said, " This is, indeed, euthanasia." 
 Through the whole of his illness he manifested the 
 same happy and delightful frame of mind. His room 
 did not appear like the chamber of sickness and disso- 
 lution. The light of his serene and placid countenance 
 dispelled all gloom, and his cheerful composure robbed 
 death of all its bitterness and anguish. He exemplified 
 in his own case the sentiment so beautifully expressed 
 by Hafiz, the Persian poet, which he loved to repeat : 
 
 " On parents' knees, a naked, new-born child, 
 Weeping thou sat'st, whilst all around thee smiled ; 
 So live, that sinking in thy last, long sleep, 
 Calm thou may'st smile, whilst all around thee weep." 
 
 He did not wish to see those about him look sad 
 and gloomy. On one occasion he said, "I feel no 
 gloom within me ; why should you wear it on your fa- 
 ces ? " And then he called for Bryant's Poems, and 
 desired them to read his favorite piece, " The Old 
 Man's Funeral." 
 
 " Why weep ye then for him, who, having won 
 The bound of man's appointed years, at last, 
 
 Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done, 
 Serenely to his final rest has past ?" 
 
 And then he went on and commented on the remaining 
 lines of the poem, pointing out those which he thought 
 
97 
 
 were descriptive of himself, and modestly disclaiming 
 others that were commendatory, as not belonging to 
 him ; but which all impartial persons would unite in 
 saying were singularly applicable to his character. 
 
 On the morning of his death, when his sight was very 
 dim, and his voice almost gone, he called his children 
 around his bedside, and arranging them in the order 
 of age, pointed to and addressed each by name, and 
 said, " You see I can distinguish you all ; and I now 
 give you all my parting blessing. The time is come. 
 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, 
 according to thy word." These were his last words. 
 After this he was heard to whisper, in a scarcely 
 audible tone, the words "pretty, pleasant, beautiful." 
 But it cannot be known, whether he was thinking of 
 his own situation as pleasant, in being thus surrounded 
 at such a time by those he loved, or whether he 
 " snatched a fearful joy " in a glimpse of the spiritual 
 world. Soon after this he quietly breathed away his 
 soul, and departed. " And the end of that man was 
 peace." Such a death alone was wanting to complete 
 such a life and crown and seal such a character. He 
 died on Friday, the 16th day of March, and I am now 
 pronouncing his eulogy on the last day of his 65th 
 year.* 
 
 * The disease of which Dr. Bowditch died was found, by a post 
 mortem examination, to be a schirrus in the stomach, a disease of the 
 same type with that which caused the death of Napoleon Buonaparte. 
 
 13 
 
98 
 
 He was buried, as he had lived, privately and without 
 parade or show, on the quiet morning of the last Sab- 
 bath.* His funeral was attended only by his family and 
 two others ; yet, in the person of the Chief Magistrate, 
 I fancied I saw the Spirit of the Commonwealth doing 
 homage to the talents and virtues of her illustrious son. 
 As the hearse passed along through the silent streets, 
 bearing that precious dust to its last resting-place, the 
 snow-flakes fell upon it, the fit emblems of his purity 
 and worth. f And many a wet eye, here, and in the 
 place of his nativity, and elsewhere, wept for him, and 
 many a heart blessed his memory, and mourned that a 
 friend, and a benefactor, and a good man had departed. 
 
 He has built his own monument,! more enduring than 
 
 For four weeks previous to his death, he could take no solid food, and 
 hardly swallowed any liquid. He suffered, however, but little from 
 hunger, but constantly from thirst ; and the only relief or refreshment 
 he could find was in frequently moistening his lips and mouth with cold 
 water. His frame was consequently exceedingly attenuated and his 
 flesh wasted away. At intervals his sufferings were so intense, that, as 
 he said, the body at times triumphed over the spirit; but it was only for 
 a moment ; and the spirit resumed again and retained its natural 
 and legitimate sovereignty. 
 
 * " Funus, sine imaginibus etpompa, per laudes ac memoriam virtutum 
 ejus celebre fuit." Tacitus, Ann. Lib. II. 73. 
 
 t His body was deposited by the side of his wife's, in his own tomb, 
 under Trinity Church, in Summer Street. 
 
 $ And yet I trust that a material and visible monument will ere long 
 be erected upon one of the beautiful knolls of the Cemetery at Mount 
 Auburn, to remind the stranger and the passer-by of the labors, services 
 and worth of this great and good man. I have an idea and plan of my 
 
99 
 
 marble ; and in his splendid scientific name, and in his 
 affectionate and delightful character, has bequeathed to 
 his children the richest legacy. His spirit, I doubt not, 
 
 own on this subject, which I will venture to suggest. Let the ship- 
 masters and mates throughout the United States, and all seamen who 
 have actually used the " Practical Navigator," give one dollar each, 
 (those who please may give more) towards the erection of a monument 
 of white marble, in a style of severe and simple grandeur, befitting 
 his character ; and let the amount be collected in every seaport by the 
 Chamber of Commerce, the Marine Society, and if neither of these 
 exist, by some Insurance Company, or by the Collector of the port. 
 
 Let the monument be a four-sided figure. On one of the faces of the 
 die let there be a few geometrical figures, a circle, a triangle, &c. 
 around a ship in the centre, under full sail, with the American flag fly- 
 ing at the mizzen-peak, and the motto over it, DIRIGO, / guide. On the op- 
 posite face let there be two books, inscribed THE PRACTICAL NAVIGATOR, 
 and MECANIQUE CELESTE. Over the former, let there be a sextant and 
 compass ; and over the latter, the planet Saturn, with its rings, and the 
 constellation Ursa Minor with the pole-star. The inscription maybe 
 as follows : 
 
 [On the third face.] 
 NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, 
 
 THE AMERICAN PILOT AND MATHEMATICIAN, 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE PRACTICAL NAVIGATOR, 
 
 THE EXPOUNDER OF 
 THE MECHANISM OF THE HEAVENS. 
 
 [On the opposite face.] 
 THE SEAMEN OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF 
 
 HIS INESTIMABLE SERVICES, 
 
 RAISE THIS MONUMENT TO 
 THEIR GUIDE AND BENEFACTOR. 
 
100 
 
 and her spirit, will still continue to influence and guide 
 them. And let them remember the sentiment of the 
 Roman annalist, that " the true way of testifying our 
 respect and love for the departed is not to follow them 
 with an unavailing grief, but to remember their wishes 
 and fulfil their injunctions."* They have the satisfaction 
 of reflecting that their parent lived a happy, an honorable, 
 and a useful life. The sailor traverses the sea more 
 safely by means of his labors, and the widow's and the 
 orphan's treasure is more securely guarded in conse- 
 quence of his care. He was the Great Pilot who steered 
 all our ships over the ocean ; and though dead, he yet 
 liveth, and speaketh, and acteth, in the recorded wisdom 
 of his invaluable book. The world has been the wiser 
 and the happier that he has lived in it.t 
 
 * " Non hoc prsecipuum amicorum raunus est, prosequi defunctum 
 ignavo questu ; sed quse voluerit meminisse, quse mandaverit exequi."- 
 Tacitus, Ann. Lib. II. 71. 
 
 f As soon as the news of Dr. Bowditch's death reached Baltimore, the 
 flags of all the vessels were displayed at half-mast ; and the midship- 
 men attached to the United States Naval School at Gosport, Va., on 
 hearing of the same event, resolved, as a testimony of respect, to wear 
 crape on the left arm for thirty days. "Why has not the Secretary of the 
 Navy ordered the flags of our national ships to be lowered in honor of 
 the Great Pilot ? 
 
 t No one can fail to be struck with the remarkable similarity between 
 the circumstances in the life, death and character of Dr. Bowditch and 
 those of Agricola, as described by Tacitus. 
 
 " Finis vitae ejus nobis luctuosus, amicis tristis, extraneis etiam igno- 
 tisque non sine cura fuit. Vulgus quoque, et hie aliud agens populus, et 
 per fora et circulos locuti sunt ; nee quisquam, audita morte Agricolse, aut 
 
101 
 
 He has left an example, as I intimated in the begin- 
 ning of this Discourse, full of instruction and encourage- 
 ment to the young, and especially to those among them 
 who are struggling with poverty and difficulties. He 
 has shown them that poverty is no dishonor, and need 
 be no hindrance; that the greatest obstacles may be 
 surmounted by persevering industry and an indomitable 
 will. He has shown them to what heights of greatness 
 and glory they may ascend by truth, temperance, and 
 toil. He has proved to them that fame need not be 
 sought for solely in political life; although that is a 
 worthy field, and the country must be served, and 
 served, too, not by the worst, but by the best men, not 
 by the factious, the ignorant, the scheming, but by the 
 wisest, the most enlightened, the best accomplished that 
 we have among us ; by men who dare to tell the peo- 
 ple of their duties as well as of their rights ; and who, 
 instead of meanly flattering them for their votes, will 
 boldly speak to them the words of truth and soberness, 
 and point out to them their errors and faults. 
 
 Isetatus est, aut statim oblitus. Quod si habitum quoque ejus poster! 
 noscere velint, decentior quam sublimior fuit : nihil metus in vultu : gratia 
 oris supererat : bonum virum facile crederes, magnum libenter. Et ipse 
 quidem, quamquam medio in spatio integrae setatis ereptus, quantum ad 
 gloriam, longissimum sevum peregit. Quippe et vera bona, quse in vir- 
 tutibus sita sunt, impleverat. Tu verd felix, Agricola, non vitae tantum 
 claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis : ut perhibent qui interfuerunt 
 novissimis sermonibus tuis, constans et libens fatum excepisti. 
 
 " Si quis piorum manibus locus ; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum 
 corpore exstinguuntur magnse animse ; placide quiescas, nosque, domum 
 
102 
 
 Above all, Dr. Bowditch has left us a most glorious 
 and precious legacy in his example of integrity, love of 
 truth, moral courage, and independence. He has 
 taught the young men here, and the world over, that 
 there is nothing so grand and beautiful as moral prin- 
 ciple, nothing so sublime as adherence to truth, and 
 right, and duty, through good report and through evil 
 report. He has, indeed, blessed the world greatly by 
 his science and his practical wisdom; but quite as 
 much, nay, far more, I think, by his upright and manly 
 character. He has taught mankind that reverence for 
 duty, and trust in Providence, and submission to His 
 will, and faith in the rectitude of all His appointments, 
 and a filial reliance upon His love, are sentiments not 
 unworthy nor unbecoming the. greatest philosopher. 
 
 tuam, ab infirmo desiderio et muliebribus lamentis ad contemplationem 
 virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri neque plangi fas est : admira- 
 tione te potius quam temporalibus laudibus, et, si natura suppeditet, se- 
 mulatione decoremus. Is verus honos, ea conjunctissimi cujusque pie- 
 tas. Id filiis quoque prseceperim, sic patris memoriam venerari, ut om- 
 nia facta dictaque ejus secum revolvant, famamque ac figuram animi 
 magis quam corporis coraplectantur. Non quia intercedendum putem 
 imaginibus, quse marmore aut sere finguntur : sed ut vultus hominum, ita 
 simulacra vultus imbecilla ac mortalia sunt; forma mentis seterna, quam 
 tenere et exprimere, non per alienam materiam et artem, sed tuis ipse 
 moribus possis. Quidquid ex Agricola amavirmis, quidquid mirati su- 
 mus, manet mansurumque est in animis hominum, in seternitate tem- 
 porum, fama rerum. Nam multos veterum, velut inglorios et ignobi- 
 les, oblivio obruet. Agricola, posteritati narratus et traditus, superstes 
 erit." 
 
103 
 
 For this we honor and eulogize him ; not for wealth, 
 title, fortune, those miserable outsides and trappings of 
 humanity, but for the qualities of the inner man, which 
 still live, and will live for ever. He studied the stars on 
 the earth may he not now be tracking their courses 
 through the heavens 1 Long ere this, perhaps, he 
 knows all the beauties and the mysteries of their tan- 
 gled mazes has examined the rings of Saturn and the 
 belts of Jupiter, traversed the milky way, and chased 
 the comet through infinity. Methinks I hear his depart- 
 ing and ascending spirit exclaiming, as it wings its flight 
 upwards, in the language of the beautiful hymn: 
 
 " Ye golden lamps of heaven ! farewell, 
 
 With all your feeble light : 
 Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, 
 
 Pale empress of the night ! 
 
 And thou, refulgent orb of day ! 
 
 In brighter flames arrayed, 
 My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, 
 
 No more demands thine aid. 
 
 Ye stars are but the shining dust 
 
 Of my divine abode, 
 The pavement of those heavenly courts, 
 
 Where I shall reign with God. 
 
 The Father of eternal light 
 
 Shall there his beams display ; 
 Nor shall one moment's darkness mix 
 
 With that unvaried day. 
 
 "Many shall commend his understanding; and so 
 
104 
 
 long as the world endureth, it shall not be blotted out. 
 His memorial shall not depart away, and his name shall 
 live from generation to generation." 
 
 
 See page 20. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Some idea of the sensation produced in this community by the 
 decease of Dr. BOWDITCH, may be gathered from the following pro- 
 ceedings of various public bodies, with which he was connected. 
 
 THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 At a special meeting of the American Academy of Arts and 
 Sciences, held March 20th, 1838, the following Resolves were 
 presented by his Excellency Edward Everett, and adopted unani- 
 mously by the Fellows of the Academy : 
 
 Whereas it has pleased Divine Providence to remove from this 
 life NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, President of the American Academy 
 of Arts and Sciences, the Fellows of the Academy, at a special 
 meeting called for the purpose of taking due notice of this melan- 
 choly event, unanimously adopt the following resolutions, expres- 
 sive of their feelings on this sorrowful occasion : 
 
 Resolved, That the Fellows of the American Academy of Arts 
 and Sciences entertain the liveliest sense of the exalted talents 
 and extraordinary attainments of their late President, who stood 
 preeminent among the men of science in the United States, and 
 who, by universal consent, has long been regarded as one of the 
 most distinguished mathematicians and astronomers of the age ; 
 that we consider his reputation as one of the most precious trea- 
 sures of our common country ; that we deeply deplore his loss in 
 the fullness of his intellectual power ; and that we esteem it our 
 sacred duty to cherish his memory. 
 
 Resolved, That in addition to the loss which they have sustained, 
 as members of this scientific body, in being deprived of their dis- 
 tinguished associate and head, whose name has for many years 
 conferred honor on their institution, and whose communications 
 
 14 
 
106 
 
 are among the most valuable contents of the volumes of the 
 Academy's Memoirs, the Fellows of the Academy, as members of 
 the community, lament the loss of a friend and fellow-citizen, 
 whose services were of the highest value in the active walks of 
 life; whose entire influence was given to the cause of good 
 principles; whose life was a uniform exhibition of the loftiest 
 virtues ; and who, with a firmness and energy which nothing 
 could shake or subdue, devoted himself to the most arduous and 
 important duties, and made the profoundest researches of science 
 subservient to the practical business of life. 
 
 Resolved, That the Fellows of the Academy deeply sympathize 
 with the family of their late President in the loss of a faithful, 
 affectionate, and revered parent, and that the officers of the 
 Academy be requested to address to them a letter of respectful 
 condolence. 
 
 Resolved, That the officers of the Academy be a committee to 
 procure a bust in marble of the late President, to be placed in the 
 hall of the Academy, and to adopt and carry into execution such 
 other measures as they may deem expedient, in honor of the 
 memory of one, who among living men of science has left few 
 equals. 
 
 Resolved, That an attested copy of these resolutions be trans- 
 mitted by the Corresponding Secretary to the family of the de- 
 ceased, and to the various learned Societies in Europe and America 
 of which he was a member, and that they be furnished for publi- 
 cation in the papers of the city. 
 
 A true copy of record. Attest, 
 
 DANIEL TREADWELL, 
 
 Recording Secretary. 
 
 Boston, March 21, 1838. 
 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
 At a special meeting of the President and Fellows of Harvard 
 College, held on the 20th of March, 1838, the following preamble 
 and votes were unanimously adopted : 
 
 This Board having been informed of the death, on the 16th 
 
107 
 
 instant, of the Hon. NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, LL. D., a Fellow of 
 this College, it was thereupon unanimously 
 
 Voted, That this Corporation, in common with the friends of 
 science and religion, in this and every land, in which his attain- 
 ments and virtues were known, lament the loss the world has sus- 
 tained by the death of one, not more eminent as. a philosopher, 
 than honored as a citizen, and beloved as a man ; who fulfilled the 
 duties of a public and private life with an assiduity, an exactness, 
 a fidelity and a felicity seldom equalled, and never excelled ; and 
 who, by combining great simplicity of manners and singleness of 
 purpose, with an integrity, through life, without blemish and with- 
 out stain, so acquired the confidence of his contemporaries, as to 
 be regarded as the pillar and pride of every Society of which he 
 was an active member ; the effects of which never failed to be 
 seen and acknowledged in its prosperity and success. 
 
 This Corporation, in common with all others which have been 
 blessed with his counsels and labors, deem it peculiarly their duty 
 distinctly and gratefully to acknowledge the benefits Harvard 
 College has derived from the extraordinary endowments he pos- 
 sessed, and by which, in the exercise of his characteristic zeal, 
 intelligence and faithfulness, he ever sustained and advanced al 
 its interests. 
 
 Voted, That the President be requested to communicate this 
 vote to the family of Dr. Bowditch. 
 
 True extract from the records. Attest, 
 
 (Signed) JAMES WALKER, 
 
 Secretary of the Corporation. 
 
 YALE COLLEGE. 
 
 At a meeting of the President, Professors and Tutors of Yale 
 College, the following resolutions were adopted : 
 
 Resolved, That this faculty have heard, with deep concern, of 
 the death of the Hon. NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, late of Boston ; and 
 that this painful jevent has bereaved not only his family, but his 
 country and mankind ; especially as he was cut off in the vigor of 
 his faculties, in the maturity of his fame, and in the full course of 
 his usefulness. 
 
108 
 
 Resolved, That we respectfully and feelingly sympathize with 
 the children of the illustrious deceased, whose memory, justly dear 
 to the country which he honored, is cherished still more affection- 
 ately by those who were so happy as to call him their father. 
 
 Resolved, That a copy of the above resolutions be transmitted 
 to the family of the late Dr. Bowditch, and that the President of 
 the College be requested to affix to it his signature. 
 
 In behalf of the Faculty, 
 (Signed) JEREMIAH DAY. 
 
 THE BOSTON ATHEN^UM. 
 
 At the stated Quarterly Meeting of the Trustees of the Boston 
 Athenaeum, held April 9th, 1838, the following paper was read, 
 accepted, and ordered to be recorded : 
 
 Since our last meeting, our country has been called to mourn 
 the death of one of its most distinguished men, the late NATHANIEL 
 BOWDITCH. 
 
 The connection of the deceased with the Boston Athenaeum was 
 so beneficial to this institution, that the Trustees are urged alike 
 by official duty and by private feeling to express their sense of his 
 loss. This institution is deeply indebted to the late Dr. Bowditch 
 for the zeal with which he labored to advance its interests. Find- 
 ing it weak, he determined, in connection with several other public- 
 spirited individuals, to make it prosper. Their appeals to the mu- 
 nificence of our wealthy citizens were successful, and the resources 
 of the Athenaeum were greatly increased. For several years Dr. 
 Bowditch, continuing a member of this Board, aided in the applica- 
 tion of the funds which he had done so much to procure, and the 
 high rank which the scientific portion of our library enjoys among 
 similar institutions in the United States, is in a great measure 
 owing to his judgment and exertions. 
 
 But Dr. Bowditch has far higher claims to notice. He stood at 
 the head of the scientific men of this country, ar\d no man living 
 has contributed more to his country's reputation. His fame is of 
 the most durable kind, resting on the union of the highest genius 
 with the most practical talent, and the application of both to the 
 
109 
 
 good of his fellow-men. Every American ship crosses the ocean 
 more safely for his labors, and the most eminent mathematicians 
 of Europe have acknowledged him their equal in the highest walks 
 of their science. His last great work ranks with -the noblest pro- 
 ductions of our age. 
 
 But it is not merely the benefactor of this institution, and the il- 
 lustrious mathematician whose labors have given safety to com- 
 merce and reputation to his country, whom we lament. It is one 
 whose whole life was directed to good ends, who combined the 
 greatest energy with the kindest feelings, who was the friend of 
 every good man and every good undertaking, the enemy of op- 
 pression, the patron of merit, the warm-hearted champion of truth 
 and virtue. It is the companion, whose simple manners and 
 amiable disposition put every one at ease in his presence, notwith- 
 standing the respect which his genius inspired ; and who could 
 turn, apparently without effort, from the profoundest investigations, 
 to take his part with the light-heartedness of a child in the mirth of 
 the social circle. His heart was as tender as his intellect was 
 powerful. His family found him as affectionate as he was wise ; 
 he was equally their delight and their pride. They could have no 
 richer inheritance than his character, and nothing but such a 
 character could afford them consolation for such a loss. 
 
 Filled with a conviction of the truth of what is here stated, the 
 Trustees desire to express it. Therefore, 
 
 Voted, That the Trustees tender their sincere sympathy to the 
 family of the deceased, for the loss of one as estimable in his pri- 
 vate as in his public relations ; and while they know that no ade- 
 quate consolation can be afforded under such a calamity, they 
 trust that some may be felt in the contemplation of a life so glo- 
 riously spent, and which has left such enduring monuments of ex- 
 cellence in every department, whether of science or of practical 
 utility, to which it has been devoted. 
 
 Voted, That the Secretary be instructed to present a copy of 
 the foregoing preamble and resolutions to the family of the de- 
 ceased. 
 
 A true copy from the records. Attest, 
 
 WILLIAM T. ANDREWS, Secretary. 
 
110 
 
 THE LIFE OFFICE. 
 
 At a meeting of the Board of Control of the Massachusetts 
 Hospital Life Insurance Company, held at the office of said Com- 
 pany, on the 19th day of March, 1838, convened in consequence 
 of the death of the Hon. NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, a Director, and 
 the Actuary of the Company, the following votes were unani- 
 mously adopted : 
 
 Voted, That this Board have received, with great grief, the in- 
 telligence of the death of their late respected and beloved asso- 
 ciate, Nathaniel Bowditch. They feel that in him they individually 
 have lost a friend, the company an officer whose services were 
 invaluable, and the country her citizen most eminent in science. 
 For nearly fifteen years his extraordinary powers and attainments 
 have been successfully devoted to the service of this Company. 
 He took an efficient part in laying the foundation of the Institution. 
 The business for which the Corporation was created, was novel in 
 New England ; at its commencement, he accepted the responsible 
 office of Actuary, which he continued to hold till his death. On 
 this officer, more than any other individual, was devolved the ar- 
 duous task of devising and organizing a system for conducting the 
 affairs of the Corporation ; and the Board think it not too much to 
 say, that it is to the clearness and simplicity of the regulations 
 then devised and adopted, and the intelligence, fidelity, and 
 inflexible resolution with which they were adhered to and executed 
 by the Actuary, that the Company are mainly indebted for their 
 success, and the public confidence they now enjoy. In reviewing 
 the long connexion of this lamented officer with the affairs of the 
 Institution, they cannot forbear to express their conviction, that his 
 services have preeminently contributed to its present stability and 
 prosperity. This is not a new opinion of the Board. The annual 
 reports of Committees, accepted by this Board in the life-time of 
 the Actuary, bear witness to the high estimation in which they at 
 all times held his services ; and now that his work is ended, they 
 perform a pleasing, though melancholy duty, in repeating and 
 confirming it. 
 
 Voted, That while the members of this Board deeply lament 
 
Ill 
 
 the death of their distinguished associate, they are not unmindful 
 that there are others by whom it will be more acutely felt. To his 
 distressed family they respectfully offer their warmest sympathy 
 in this severe affliction, with which a wise and merciful Providence 
 has seen fit to visit them. They well know that there is no adequate 
 earthly consolation for the loss of such a parent ; but they hope 
 some alleviation may be found in the reflection that he lived long 
 enough to perform all the duties of a long life, although not per- 
 mitted to attain old age ; that he has left them a bright example, 
 and a name that will be known and honored throughout the world, 
 so long as virtue and science shall be held in reverence. 
 
 Voted, That the Secretary be requested to communicate a copy 
 of the above Votes to the family of the deceased. 
 
 True copy from the records. Attest, 
 
 MOSES L. HALE, Secretary. 
 
 THE CITY OF SALEM. 
 
 At a meeting of the City Council of Salem, on Thursday, March 
 29th, the following Resolutions were unanimously passed in both 
 branches : 
 
 Resolved, That the City Council of the City of Salem have 
 received with deep sorrow the intelligence of the decease of the 
 Hon. NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, LL. D., of Boston, for many years a 
 respected and honored resident of this his native place. 
 
 Resolved, That the City Council and the people of the City of 
 Salem will ever cherish in grateful respect the memory of a 
 townsman of singular simplicity, integrity, purity and benevolence 
 of character, attaining from humble life, by his intellectual 
 and moral energy, the highest honors of science, and the respect 
 and gratitude of the community, as a public benefactor. 
 
 Resolved, That while the City Council acknowledge, with grate- 
 ful pride, the honor reflected from his elevated character and pure 
 fame upon the place of his birth, where his mind and habits were 
 formed, and among whose citizens the largest part of his life was 
 passed, and while they sympathize with his family and the whole 
 
112 
 
 community in a loss so deeply felt by all the friends of learning, 
 benevolence, and truth, they earnestly commend to the admiration 
 and imitation of all, especially the young men of his native place ? 
 the noble example of active and patient industry, unconquerable 
 perseverance, unbending uprightness and faithfulness in all the re- 
 lations of life, and ardent love and constant pursuit of knowledge 
 and truth, which were the foundations of a character of such 
 honorable distinction and rare usefulness. 
 
 Resolved, That the people of Salem have ever retained a deep 
 interest in the happiness and fame of their late lamented towns- 
 man, Dr. Bowditch, since he reluctantly left his native place for a 
 sphere of more extensive usefulness in the metropolis of our Com- 
 monwealth ; and they now receive and acknowledge with grateful 
 sensibility the evidence of his generous remembrance of his first 
 home in the last days of his life, contained in his liberal bequests 
 to three of the most useful and important Institutions of our City. 
 
 Resolved, That as a suitable tribute of respect to the memory 
 of Dr. Bowditch, a public discourse upon his life and character, be 
 delivered in this City, and that a Committee be appointed with au- 
 thority to make all the necessary arrangements to carry this reso- 
 lution into effect.* 
 
 Resolved, That the Mayor be requested to transmit an attested 
 copy of these Resolutions to the family of the late Dr. Bowditch. 
 
 SHIPMASTERS AND SEAMEN. 
 
 At a meeting of Shipmasters, Supercargoes, Officers, and Sea- 
 men, held at the Common Council Room, in Boston, on the 3d 
 of April, Capt. Winslow Lewis was chosen Chairman, and Capt. 
 James W. Sever Secretary. 
 
 The following Preamble and Resolutions were adopted ; 
 Whereas, in the death of Dr. NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, we feel 
 
 * [The city authorities of Salem have since appointed the Honorable DANIEL 
 APPLETON WHITE to deliver the Eulogy on their illustrious son. They 
 could not have selected a person better qualified than Judge White, by his 
 talents, varied acquirements, and personal intimacy with the deceased, to do 
 justice to the subject.] 
 
113 
 
 that the World has to deplore the loss of a distinguished Philoso- 
 pher, our Country a most honorable and high-minded Citizen, and 
 the Maritime Profession a Guide, Preceptor and Friend; 
 
 Resolved, That a Committee of seven be appointed to act in 
 concurrence with such Societies as were honored in bearing upon 
 their rolls the name of Nathaniel Bowditch, and that any mode that 
 shall be adopted to perpetuate the respect and regard with which 
 we cherish his memory, shall have our whole and hearty aid. 
 
 Resolved, That all the members of the Nautical Profession, of 
 this and of the neighboring ports, be respectfully invited to attend 
 an adjourned meeting, to be called by the officers of this meeting, 
 to join with us in such measures as may then be adopted. 
 
 Voted, That the following gentlemen form the Committee, viz. 
 Captains Daniel C. Bacon, William Sturgis, Larkin Turner, 
 Thomas B. Curtis, Winslow Lewis, Henry Oxnard, Caleb Curtis, 
 Samuel Quincy, James W. Sever. 
 
 WINSLOW LEWIS, Chairman. 
 
 JAMES W. SEVER, Secretary. 
 
 THE EAST INDIA MARINE SOCIETY. 
 
 At a special meeting of the East India Marine Society, called 
 for the purpose of noticing the decease and munificent bequest of 
 the Hon. NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, late member and former Presi- 
 dent of said Society, the following Resolutions were unanimously 
 adopted : 
 
 Resolved, That the East India Marine Society have received 
 with deep sorrow and regret the afflicting intelligence of the death 
 of Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch ; by which they have sustained the loss 
 of one of their most honored, useful and important members ; to 
 whose eminent services and the great interest he has manifested 
 during the long period of his connexion with them, evinced at the 
 close of his memorable life by a most liberal bequest, their Institu- 
 tion is indebted for much of the usefulness and celebrity to v/hich 
 it has attained ; and the surviving members of the Society will ever 
 hold in grateful remembrance the services and liberality of one 
 
 15 
 
114 
 
 with whom they consider it the highest honor to have been asso- 
 ciated. 
 
 Resolved, That the members of this Society entertain the highest 
 respect for the memory of the deceased ; and while they acknow- 
 ledge, with pride and gratitude, the inestimable benefits conferred 
 upon them in their peculiar pursuits by the indefatigable zeal with 
 which he has devoted the powers of his great mind to bring into 
 easy and practical use the principles of Astronomy, applicable to 
 Navigation, they, in common with the whole country and scientific 
 world, deeply deplore his loss, in the midst of his usefulness, as a 
 public calamity. 
 
 Resolved, That the members of this Society feel themselves 
 under obligations to the deceased, which it is difficult for them to 
 express, for his elucidating and simplifying the principles of Navi- 
 gation, whereby their path over the ocean has been rendered plain 
 and easy ; and that he has, in his Practical Navigator, been inde- 
 fatigable , in his endeavors to raise and elevate the standard of 
 Nautical Science among seamen. 
 
 Resolved, That this Society will receive with gratitude the 
 liberal legacy bequeathed by the last Will of their late lamented 
 member and former President, in token of his regard and deep 
 interest in them, and that it shall be appropriated for the promotion 
 of the general objects of the Institution, as provided by the said 
 Will. 
 
 Resolved, That the members of this Society, while they most 
 sincerely sympathize with the afflicted family of the deceased 
 under their severe bereavement, derive some alleviation from the 
 recollection that he has left behind him the imperishable monument 
 of a life devoted to the great interests of society, and affording an 
 example of extraordinary talents, untiring industry and persever- 
 ance, combined with extreme modesty and simplicity of manners. 
 
 Resolved, That the Corresponding Secretary be requested to 
 transmit an attested copy of these Resolutions to the family of the 
 deceased, and that they be furnished for publication in the papers 
 of this city. 
 
 A true copy from the records. Attest, 
 
 NATHANIEL GRIFFIN, 
 
 Recording Secretary. 
 
115 
 
 ADDITIONAL NOTES. 
 
 In speaking, on page 42, of the late Chief Justice Parsons as an 
 eminent mathematician, it should have been stated, in a note, that 
 Dr. Bowditch says (Practical Navigator, p. 243, stereotype edition), 
 " This method [of finding the true distance of the moon from the 
 sun, a planet, or a star,] was invented by the author of this work, 
 who also improved WitchelPs method, and 'reduced considerably 
 the number of cases. These improvements were made in conse- 
 quence of a suggestion of the late Chief Justice Parsons, a gentle- 
 man eminently distinguished for his mathematical acquirements, 
 who had somewhat simplified WitchelPs process." 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was admitted a member of the American Academy 
 on the 28th of May, 1799, and was chosen its President in 1829, 
 and held this office till his decease. He received his degree of 
 LL. D. from Harvard University at the Commencement in 1816. 
 He was elected a member of the Royal Society of London on the 
 12th of March, 1818, and his diploma, on parchment, now before 
 me, is signed, among other names, by those of Sir Joseph Banks, 
 President, Sir Humphry Davy, Sir Davies Gilbert, Sir Everard 
 Home, Dr. William Thomas Brande, Dr. William H. Wollaston, 
 Dr. Thomas Young, and John Pond, Astronomer Royal. 
 
 Since the page (96) containing the beautiful lines of Hafiz, was 
 struck off, I have met in J. D. Carlyle's " Specimens of Arabian Po- 
 etry," p. 64 (London, 1810), a different version of the same senti- 
 ment. Carlyle says, " The Persian verses seem to be a translation 
 from our Arabian author." They are addressed " To a Friend 
 upon his Birth-Day." 
 
 " When born, in tears we saw thee drown'd, 
 While thine assembled friends around, 
 
 With smiles their joy confest ; ^ 
 
 So live, that at thy parting hour, 
 They may the flood of sorrow pour, 
 And thou in smiles be drest." 
 
116 
 
 DR. BOWDITCH'S SCIENTIFIC PAPERS. 
 
 The following is a complete and accurate list of the Papers con- 
 tributed by Dr. Bowditch to the Memoirs of the American 
 Academy of Arts and Sciences. It will serve to show the ex- 
 tent of his observations and the variety of his inquiries. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 New Method of Working a Lunar Observation. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 Observations on the Comet of 1807. 
 
 Observations on the Total Eclipse of the Sun, June 16, 1806, 
 made at Salem. 
 
 Addition to the Memoir on the Solar Eclipse of June 16, 1806. 
 
 Application of Napier's Rule for solving the cases of right 
 angled spheric trigonometry to several cases of oblique-angled 
 spheric trigonometry. 
 
 An estimate of the height, direction, velocity and magnitude of the 
 Meteor that exploded over Weston, in Connecticut, Dec. 14, 1807. 
 
 On the Eclipse of the Sun of Sept. 17, 1811, with the longitudes 
 of several places in this country, deduced from all the observations 
 of the eclipses of the Sun, and transits of Mercury and Venus, that 
 have been published in the Transactions of the Royal Societies of 
 Paris and London, the Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia, 
 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 
 
 Elements of the orbit of the Comet of 1811. 
 
 An estimate of the height of the White Hills in New Hampshire. 
 
 On the variation of the Magnetic Needle. 
 
 On the motion of a pendulum suspended from two points. 
 
 A demonstration of the rule for 'finding the place of a Meteor, 
 in the second problem, page 218 of this volume. 
 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 On a mistake which exists in the solar tables of Mayer, La 
 Lande, and Zach. 
 
 On the calculation of the oblateness of the earth, by means of 
 the observed lengths of a pendulum in different latitudes, accord- 
 
117 
 
 ing to the method given by La Place in the second volume of his 
 " Mecanique Celeste," with remarks on other parts of the same 
 work, relating to the figure of the earth. 
 
 Method of correcting the apparent distance of the Moon from 
 the Sun, or a Star, for the effects of Parallax and Refraction. 
 
 On the method of computing the Dip of the Magnetic Needle 
 in different latitudes, according to the theory of Mr. Biot. 
 
 Remarks on the methods of correcting the elements of the orbit 
 of a comet in Newton's " Principia," and in La Place's " Me- 
 canique Celeste." 
 
 Remarks on the usual Demonstration of the permanency of the 
 solar system, with respect to the Eccentricities and Inclinations of 
 the orbits of the Planets. 
 
 Remarks on Dr. Stewart's formula, for computing the motion 
 of the Moon's Apsides, as given in the Supplement to the Ency- 
 clopaedia Britannica. 
 
 On the Meteor which passed over Wilmington in the State of 
 Delaware, Nov. 21, 1819. 
 
 Occultation of Spica by the Moon, observed at Salem. 
 
 On a mistake which exists in the calculation of Mr. Poisson rela- 
 tive to the distribution of the electrical matter upon the surfaces of 
 two globes, in vol. 12 of the " Memoires de la classe des sciences 
 mathematiques et physiques de 1' Institut Imperial de France." 
 
 Elements of the Comet of 1819. 
 
 Dr. Bowditch was also the author of the article on Modern As- 
 tronomy, in the North American Review, vol. XX. pp. 309-366. 
 In the Monthly Anthology, Vol IV. p. 653, there is a brief account 
 of the Comet of 1806, drawn up by him at the request of the 
 Editors. It is believed that this is the whole amount of his contri- 
 butions to our periodical literature. 
 
ELEGY 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF 
 
 DOCTOR BOWDITCH, 
 
 The distinguished Translator of the " Mecanique Celeste" 
 
 REVERED, beloved, adored by all that knew 
 The worth and wisdom of thy matchless mind ! 
 Even thou hast paid the tribute that is due 
 From us to Death the despot of mankind. ' 
 
 For that we weep not none must linger here 
 And none would linger, when life's oil is spent ; 
 As strength and health's frail glories disappear, 
 Fate calls us hence, and Nature cries " content" 
 
 Children may weep ; but 't is for men to know 
 How just the judgment is that dooms decay ; 
 And though we sigh, we bear the lethal blow, 
 And learn from God the lesson to obey. 
 
 So did'st thou feel the necessary law ; 
 So like a sainted sage did'st thou expire ; 
 Calmly thy sense its flickering taper saw, 
 Meekly thy soul gave up its fainting fire. 
 
 The eye the voice the hand, are useless now, 
 Those clay companions of a nobler guest ; 
 Cold as sepulchral sculpture is thy brow 
 Still as the rock thy thought-deserted breast. 
 
 But not the godlike, intellectual flame, 
 With these is quenched. The mind that searched the stars 
 Yet blooms increased in knowledge yet the same ; 
 Time spares the spirit, but the body mars. 
 
 The world is poorer than 't was yesterday 
 But heaven is richer. We have lost indeed 
 A guide and teacher ; but the angels may 
 Rejoice that thou from fleshly chains art freed. 
 
119 
 
 Now shalt thou know the whole of that strange tale, 
 A part of which thy genius grasped before ; 
 Thy Father's hand his secrets shall unveil, 
 And of his myst'ries ope -the sacred door. 
 
 Thou shalt know all while we who, left behind, 
 In darkness grope, are still the slaves of doubt ; 
 Thou seest every thing, but we are blind, 
 Fearing to puff this mortal candle out. 
 
 Pure peace and satisfaction to thy soul 
 Shall the disclosure of heaven's wonders bring ; 
 Across thy faith no curt'ning clouds shall roll, 
 But all be told thee by thy sire and king. 
 
 Must we remain, an*d never read the page 
 Whereon those starry characters are writ ? 
 No thank the warnings of approaching age 
 Ourselves, like thee, this earthy globe must quit. 
 
 Sublime, like thee, our weaker view shall scan 
 The frame and motion of yon orbs of light, 
 Forget what 't is to act and think as man, 
 And see the future opened on our sight. 
 
 With such assurance let us cease to sigh, 
 Live like the wise, and die as fits the brave ; 
 The tomb is but an entrance to the sky 
 The road to bliss lies through the mouldy grave. 
 
 These beautiful lines appeared anonymously in the Boston Daily Advertiser 
 of March 22, a few days after the decease of Dr. Bowditch. Why does not* 
 the author reveal himself? [herself?] Any one might justly feel proud of 
 being able to assert a claim to them. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 12, line 13, after millions, insert of miles. This error occurs in about 
 half the copies. 
 
 Page 36, line 5, for twenty-three, read twenty-seven. 
 " 61, Note, line 10, for 1828 read 1826. 
 " 43, line 11, after office, insert of Actuary. 
 

 
 BOSTON: 
 PRINTED BY FREEMAN AND BOLLES, 
 
 WASHINGTOH-STKEET. 
 
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 FORM NO. DD6 
 
 BERKELEY 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 es