"Thine, when around thy litter's track all day "Thine most when friends turn pale, when traitors fly, "Amidst the din of all things fell and vile, Hate's yell, and envy's hiss, and folly's bray, "Yes: they will pass away; nor deem it strange: That is the punishment which a great fully. "And Jeffrey, too," he added, man inflicts on his assailants. The warn- with a sort of suppressed sob, as he fining should make us careful. It is not ished the enumeration. There he faltered safe to expose ourselves to the shafts of and stopped short. The simple pause of the immortals. At the same time it may feeling was more touching and more exreässure the meanest who desires to be pressive than the most labored panegyric remembered. Let him wait patiently and could have been. Recovering his compowatch assiduously, and the opportunity to sure, he went on to sketch in brilliant but wound a great man, to sting him into re- gloomy colors the terrible scenes which taliation, to extort a retort which the Europe had witnessed during the five world will not willingly let die, is almost years of war and revolution. And then sure some time or other to arrive. The he turned to ourselves. "The madness publicans and the pharisees of Edinburgh of 1848," he said, "did not subvert the bided their time. Their labor has not British throne. The reaction which folbeen in vain they have earned an imper-lowed has not destroyed British freedom. ishable notoriety. The wrong indeed was redressed, as far as redress was possible. Reparation was made. The people of Edinburgh, all of them at least who did not belong to the most sectarian of sects, were eager to remove an unseemly stain from the escutcheon of their city. They succeeded. The broken ties were renewed; the old member once more met his constituents in kindness. Five years had passed since he had stood among them-and the years had left their marks upon all in that assembly-upon him not the least. Disease had even then begun its work. The burly form was bent and attenuated; but the eye was still full of light, and the silver voice, though enfeebled, was liquid and syren-like as ever. It was the last great speech he ever made, and it recalled his greatest efforts. He was visibly affected when he rose, and when he alluded to the men of Edinburgh who had been taken away since he last stood among them, to the friendly faces and voices who would greet him no more, his voice shook pain And why is this? Why has our country, with all the ten plagues raging around her, been a land of Goshen? Every where else was the thunder, and the fire running along the ground-a very grievous storm-a storm such as there was none like it since man was upon the earth, yet every thing tranquil here; and then again thick night, darkness that might be felt, and yet light in all our dwellings." This was the most striking passage in his speech-a passage rendered impressive to his hearers not more by the scriptural simplicity and elevation of its language, than by the grand earnestness of the speaker as he uttered it. The orator warmed with his theme; with the most skillful and stinging irony he attacked his opponents; with the bravest and most honest zeal he vindicated his friends. For a time the exhaustion of disease was overcome: his eye sparkled, his voice glowed; he was again the athlete in the proud confidence of his prime. But the excitement could not sustain him long: his voice failed him; and when he told his hearers in feeble accents: 66 In no case whatever shall I again be a member | ble thread might be snapped without of any ministry; during what may remain warning at any moment; and some at of my public life, I shall be the servant of least among them felt grateful that the none but you," they saw that he spoke atonement which they owed to the greattruly; that he had really done with cabi- est orator and historian of his generation nets and governments here, that the fee- had not been delayed till it was too late. SHIRLEY. PROFESSOR BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, SILLIMAN, SEN. THE following sketch, to accompany the | ber of scholars from all parts of the United portrait in the previous number, was not States; and from that time until the prereceived in time for insertion. It was sent, a period of more than sixty-five prepared to accompany a portrait of Pro- years, Mr. Silliman has been almost uninfessor Silliman published in Vienna in terruptedly connected with the same seat 1857, being one of a series of one hun- of learning. dred portraits of men of science, residing in different countries in Europe, and in the United States, copies of which have been received in this country. BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, Doctor of Medicine and of Laws, Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology in Yale College, Founder and Editor of the American Journal of Science and Arts, President of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, President of the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists, Honorary Member of the Smithsonian Institution, Member of the Geological Societies of London and Paris, of the Royal Geographical Society of Berlin, of the Royal Mineralogical Society of Dresden, of the Natural History Societies of Athens, Belfast, Halle, etc., of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston, of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, etc. Professor BENJAMIN SILLIMAN was born August eighth, 1779, in the town of NorthStratford, now Trumbull, Fairfield County, Connecticut. His father, Gold Selleck Silliman, Esq., was a lawyer of distinction, who held during the war of American Independence a commission as Brigadier-General in the militia of Connecticut, and rendered important services to the colonial army. In 1792 the subject of this sketch entered as a student Yale College, a flourishing institution in his native state, which then as now attracted a large num He was regularly graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1796, and Master of Arts in 1799, and at the latter date was also appointed a tutor in Yale College. As it was then his intention to enter for life upon the practice of law, he pursued a course of studies which resulted in his admission to the bar of New-Haven in 1802. Chemistry as a science was then almost unknown in America, but the brilliant discoveries of Lavoisier, Sir Humphry Davy and others, had attracted attention to its importance, and Dr. Dwight, the President of Yale College, became interested in its adoption as a regular department of instruction. With his usual sagacity, he selected Mr. Silliman as the proper person to become a Professor of Chemistry, and the latter consented to abandon his legal studies and accept the new position thus offered to him, provided that time and opportunities should be allowed for the requisite preparation. He accordingly passed a part of the next two years in Philadelphia engaged in scientific studies, and on returning to New-Haven, in 1804, he delivered his first course of lectures to the students of Yale College. In 1805 he visited Europe, purchasing books and apparatus for the institution in which he was now a Professor, and attending in London and Edinburgh the lectures of various eminent men. He returned home after an absence of fifteen months, and soon published an account of his journey in a work which was received by the public with remarkable favor. Not long afterward he made a geological survey of part of his native state, which is believed to have been the first in a series of scientific explorations now widely extended through America. York, Philadelphia, Washington, NewOrleans, St. Louis, and other large cities, he has repeatedly delivered a series of scientific discourses, made popular, while his more scientific lectures at New-Haven have attracted to Yale College young men from every part of the United States, many of whom, now eminent in different departments of research, attribute to Professor Silliman their earliest love of natural science. In 1830 Professor Silliman published a work on chemistry in two volumes, octavo, intended as a manual for those who listened to his lectures. He has also published with notes and appendices, several editions of Henry's Chemistry and Bakewell's Geology. In December, 1807, a meteorite of uncommon magnitude and splendor passed over New-England, and, bursting with loud explosion, threw down large fragments in the town of Weston, Connecticut. Professor Silliman, aided by his friend Professor J. L. Kingsley, immediately visited the scene of this occurrence, and after a thorough investigation published a full account of the phenomenon, accompanied by a description and chem- In addition to the volumes of travels ical analysis of the fragments. This is one before alluded to, he published in 1820 an of the earliest and one of the most inter- account of a journey between Hartford esting and well-authenticated cases of the and Quebec, and in 1853 an account of a fall of meteorites in America. Soon after second visit to Europe made by the author this he first effected the fusion of lime and at an interval of almost fifty years after magnesia by the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, his residence as a student abroad. and in 1822 the fusion and volatilization of charcoal by galvanism. In 1853 Professor Silliman resigned his office as a professor in Yale College and was elected an Emeritus Professor, but at the request of his colleagues he continued to lecture on geology before the students until June, 1855, when he gave his closing academic course. He was succeeded in the department of geology by Professor James D. Dana, and in that of chemistry by his son, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. In 1818 Professor Silliman founded the American Journal of Science and Arts, with which his name is still connected. This Journal, now in its eighty-first volume, a survivor of most of its cotemporaries, has been recognized at home and abroad for forty-two years as the chief repository of American science. Its publication has called for incessant labor, as Notwithstanding the advanced years well as for heavy and unrequited outlays and laborious life of Professor Silliman, upon the part of the editor; but its ac- his vigor of mind and body remain unimknowledged services in the advancement paired, and since his retirement from and diffusion of scientific learning entitle active duties in College he has continued its founder to the honorable remembrance to take a deep interest in the progress of of every scholar. The first series of fifty science at home and abroad. He has also volumes, ending in 1745, with which Pro- become conspicuous among American fessor Silliman is particularly identified, citizens for many years in the public-spirwill remain a permanent monument to hisited earnestness with which he has aided scientific enthusiasm and perseverance. in the promotion of objects of philanthropy. Professor Silliman was probably the first in America to lecture before a miscellaneous audience on scientific subjects. While discharging his continuous duties as a college instructor and as editor of a scientific journal, he was frequently invited to give public lectures on chemistry and geology, and much of the interest now manifested by Americans in the pursuit of natural science, and many liberal benefactions made for its advancement, can be directly traced to his influence. In Boston, New Professor Silliman has fitly been called the Father of American Science, and although others of his countrymen preceded him in the study of nature, no man probably has done so much as he to awaken and encourage students of science, to collect and diffuse the researches of American naturalists, and to arouse in all classes of the community a respect for learning and a desire for its advancement. The annexed catalogue comprises the titles of most of Professor Silliman's separate publications: American Journal of Science. First Series. Fifty volumes. New Haven, 1818-45. 8vo. Second Series, by Silliman and Dana, still in progress. Thirty-one volumes issued down to 1860. NewHaven. 8vo. Journal of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, in 1805-6. 2 vols. New-York, 1810. 8vo. (Two subsequent editions.) Henry's Elements of Chemistry. Edited with Notes. Three Editions, the last, Boston, 1814. 8vo. pendices. 1st Edition. New-Haven, 1829. Bakewell's Geology. Edited with Notes and Ap8vo. 2d Edition. New-Haven, 1833. 8vo. 3d Edition. New-Haven, 1839. 8vo. Elements of Chemistry in the order of Lectures given in Yale College. 2 vols. New-Haven, 1830. 8vo. Visit to Europe in 1851. 2 vols. 12mo. NewYork, 1853. Six editions. REV. CORTLANDT VAN RENSSELAER, D. D. IN connection with the accurate por- | friend ; a good minister and a good trait likeness of a good man which stands Christian. During his lingering illness, at the head of this number of the ECLECTIC, we record a brief biographical sketch. We desire to honor his memory as a man, as a faithful minister of the gospel, as an active Christian, as an indefatigable laborer in the cause of his Divine Master in every good word and work, and as a friend and classmate in college. He 66 was the son of the Hon. Stephen Van Rensselaer and Cornelia Paterson. These are historical names; the one in New-York, the other in New-Jersey. He was born in the city of Albany, May 25th, 1808. He graduated at Yale College in 1827. He was admitted to the bar in his native state in 1830. The same year, having decided to devote his life to the work of the ministry, he entered the Theological Seminary at Princeton, NewJersey. He was ordained to the sacred office in 1835, and commenced his ministry in preaching to the colored population in Virginia. Circumstances beyond his own control constrained him to leave that chosen field of labor, and in 1837 he was installed the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Burlington, New-Jersey. In 1837 he was chosen Corresponding Secretary and principal executive officer of the Board of Education, under the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in which service he continued to the end of his laborious life. This is a brief record of the more important dates in his professional history. Cortlandt Van Rensselaer was a good son and brother; a good husband and father; a good citizen, neighbor, and which terminated in death at Burlington, July 27th, the General Assembly in session at Rochester, "embracing more than three hundred members, gathered from every state of the Union, (excepting three,) addressed a letter to Dr. Van Rensselaer, then upon his dying bed, expressing their sorrows for his affliction, and their high estimate of his worth and services. That letter was heard in the midst of tears and sighs. It was adopted by the whole assembly rising to their feet, when the oldest minister present gave utterance in prayer to the feelings which swelled every heart. This is an incident unprecedented in our history. No other man was ever so honored. It was a tribute not to greatness, but to goodness. The following is a copy of the letter sent to the Rev. Dr. Van Rensselaer by the General Assembly: "Beloved Brother in Christ Jesus: The General Assembly has learned with deep solicitude of the afflictive dispensation which detains you from its present sessions. It has pleased him whose 'way is in the sea and his path in the great waters,' to visit you with a painful illness. We can not permit you to suppose that the Church which you have loved and served so well, is unmindful of you in this season of trial. And we should do injustice to ourselves not to assure you of our united and cordial sympathy. |