taxes the attention as to render it difficult to master them, and arrive at those generalizations of science, which are alone of interest to most readers.

In person, PERCIVAL was somewhat below the medium height, and rather slight and frail. His countenance was indicative of his extreme sensitiveness and timidity; pale and almost bloodless; the eye blue, with an iris unusually large, and when kindled with animation, worthy of a poet; the nose rather prominent, slightly Roman in outline, and finely chiseled; while the forehead, high, broad and swelling out grandly at the temples, marked him as of the nobility of the intellect. You might be reminded, by his appearance, of WORDSWORTH's lines:

"But who is he with modest looks
And clad in homely russet-brown?
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.
He is retired as noon-tide dew,

Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you

He will seem worthy of your love.
The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth

Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,

The harvest of a quiet eye,

That broods and sleeps on his own heart."

In his dress he was eccentric. Those who but casually met him, might have mistaken him for some old farmer in low circumstances, and correspondingly clad. His usual suit was of "hard times," and often the worse for wear; his head surmounted by an old glazed linen cap, with the glazing nearly all worn off in the course of the long service it had He seemed to withdraw himself as much as possible from all intercourse with his fellow men, and to surrender himself wholly to intellectual pursuits. During the winter that he spent in our city, he scarcely formed an acquaintance,

seen.

and hardly one in fifty of our citizens knew him by sight. His house in New Haven, Conn., where he spent most of his life, has but one entrance, and that in the rear; and he lived among its people but not of them, almost as secluded and cut off from human fellowship, as a hermit in the solitude of a desert. He was hardly known in his whole life to speak to a woman. He shunned society as most men would the pestilence. An account of his first and last appearance at a social gathering, was related by a correspondent of the Knickerbocker magazine some years ago. A lady, with whom he had become acquainted, in giving her instruction in French or Latin, persuaded him to attend a party on the occasion of her birth-day. He got as far as the entrance hall, gazed wildly around him for a moment upon the gay assemblage, his large blue eyes dilating like a frightened fawn's, and turned and fled out of the house. He had none of the maddened play of pulse, and the frenzy of passion that have driven astray and into ruin so many men of imaginative tendencies, but represented the other extreme. Every thing about him was pure and platonic. If he indited a bacchanal song, it related to a wine more idealized than Keats' "beaker full of the warm South "-to the wine of a vintage whose purple clusters had ripened upon the sunny hill-sides of the imagination. As he advanced in years, he seemed to grow more and more a mere embodiment of intellect, and his "Platonic Drinking Song" breathes the aspiration of his later life:

It may be, after all, that this man, outwardly so cold and passionless, had had his life blighted and darkened at the outset by some sorrow-some crushed affection—which, jarring rudely upon his too finely strung nature, left it maimed

and saddened ever after. There have been such intimations; and the lines just referred to, seem to hint of a life whose current had not flowed uninterrupted by some disappointment that had turned it violently from its native direction-turned it, perhaps, from the sun-lit domain of the affections, and the charities of domestic life, into the colder, sterner region of purely intellectual pursuits, and the companionship of books,

-yet it flowed on, solitary, and somewhat sadly, it may be, but serenely and uncomplainingly, until swallowed up in the gulf of death. Let us trust that the spirit which animated this busy brain, now quiet forevermore, which had toiled so assiduously through long and lonely years of laborious study, heaping up the lore of the past, garnering up all the treasures of Science and Literature, attaining almost encyclopedian knowledge, now realizes its aspiration, and "rising proudly o'er the grave," finds, in the gladder life that lies beyond, its "noblest course begun."

The resolutions were then unanimously adopted, and the Society adjourned one week.

APPENDIX No. 8.

THE LATE WILLIAM A. WHITE.

We are no longer prevented by any feeling of delicacy from expressing our sentiments concerning this citizen, over whom a cloud of mystery has hung for seven long months. Those who knew him best, have most deeply felt his absence, and although the circumstances under which he died are very, very painful, and we recall with shudder the last inoments or rather hours of his life, his friends who have been haunted with a variety of conjectures, will now find painful satisfaction in the solution of the mystery, so far as it is a solution, while those who are perhaps too much disposed to judge others by themselves and have, therefore, settled down upon opinions derogatory to the character of Mr. WHITE, will learn a wholesome lesson, in the discovery, that there has been a man more ready to injure himself than others.

Mr. WHITE was 38 years of age. Of his early history, the writer has little knowledge. His boyhood was spent in Watertown, Mass., and he was blessed with all the favorable influences of a New England village, which did not fail to leave their impression upon him. His sense of religious obligation early burned to manifest itself in the substantial form of Humanity, and soon after he was graduated at Harvard College in 1838, he became earnestly engaged in the great reforms of the day; and always generous almost to a fault, he thus devoted, not only his time and strength, but also a

goodly portion of his large inheritance, to the causes of Temperance and Anti-Slavery. He was either editor or frequent contributor of reform journals in Boston, for a number of years, and frequently spoke at anti-slavery and temperance meetings in that city, and throughout the country, and fearlessly exposed himself to danger where he felt that any good might be accomplished. He was in advance of his age. He was pioneer in a cause, which though then despised, is now very generally espoused. As another says of him: "He studied law, but practised the gospel." If in common with men who engage in good works, and in accordance with the universal imperfections of human character, he loved the notoriety which he thus gained, who is therefore to take from him the credit of heartiness? Indeed, it is not to be questioned, that he would have found other means of giving himself prominence, if his sympathy for suffering fellow-beings had not been quick, and his moral sense been strong. With all the property he inherited, he must have seen before him a career of affluence as a man of wealth, but his ambition was of a nobler grade. He was impatient with conservatives, and despised those whose God was the dollar. He moved to the West with high purposes, locating in Madison somewhat over three years ago. Our citizens will long remember him as a disinterested and public-spirited man-one who, though glad to be widely known as engaged in good works, never sought popularity, and never would stoop to pandering or sycophancy to obtain the honors of office.

He was far above the common level of the community — above it in moral purpose and power, as well as in intelligence and independence.

W. A. WHITE was one of such men as this western country needs, but whose worth cannot be appreciated, because it cannot be reckoned by dollars and cents. If he lacked anything good, it was nothing so much as worldly wisdom; and judging by results, as the world is too apt to judge, he