"I know not whether it were most of nature, or habit, that our friend was so distinguished for acuteness, directness, and singleness of the mind,--a mind not especially intuitive and rapid, not noticeably free in its conceptions, wide in its survey, or comprehensive in its generalizations, moving rather on an extended line than an enlarged area, but subtle and clear as light; sharp, piercing and discriminating as electricity; pointed, direct, and exact as the magnet; conclusive, positive, and decisive as the bolt of heaven. His processes were simple, natural, easy, and continuous, not stiffly regulated by scholastic laws, but strictly conformable, and his results inevitable. Give him his definitions and his postulates which, though not given, he would, like other resolved reasoners after his method, sometimes take, at his own risk, and he would go round or through the circle, or make his traverses in darkness and storm, and never lose his meridian, or be confused in his reckoning; and he would come back precisely to his starting-point laden with success, his points all proved. It was well said of him by a curious and critical observer of scholars, that, as a logician, he was not exceeded in the country. "Our professor had made large attainments in the science to which he was especially devoted,--the Metaphysics. He read whatever was worth the reading, of which, however, he chose to be an independent judge, but he thought more, so that his attainments were emphatically his own. He was not like what so many now become in this department of study,--a mere follower, imitator, panegyrist,--but a searching critic and judicious commentator. He had a higher range of speculative inquiry than most of the more ambitious men who have exceeded him in popular effect, and he corrected his inquiries by a better logic, and a more simple faith. But I have sometimes thought him too much of a recluse for his greatest profiting in this respect. He loved best the retirement of his own study, and was rarely seen outside of it, except when required by his official duties. He abjured the artificial forms and fashions of social life, the bustling confusions of trade and commerce, and the whirl and finesse of political agitations. He never would stand on a platform, nor be seen at an anniversary, nor harangue a popular assembly. He was happiest in solitude where, undisturbed, he could solve the abstruse problems of ethics, or be a delighted critic of metaphysical theories, or seek to penetrate the mysteries of theology. He was consequently in danger of contemplating his subjects, like so many others of his time, both in Church and State, too much in their refined essence, and too little in their comprehensive practical relations; rather as things, in his judgment, ought to be, than as they are; too much in the light of a fictitious principle, and too little in that of experience, history, and analogy; rather according to God's original constitution than the actual