ARTICLE II.-IN MEMORIAM.-PROFESSOR JAMES PROFESSOR JAMES HADLEY was born in Fairfield, Herkimer County, New York, March 30, 1821. This town was for many years the seat of a flourishing Medical Institution, in which his father, at the time of his birth, was Professor of Chemistry. There was also in the town a well known Academy, which during Prof. Hadley's childhood and youth was under the care of Rev. Dr. David Chassel, a man of Scotch descent and Scotch characteristics. Dr. Chassel was Prof. Hadley's sole instructor, aside from the members of his own household, with one or two inconsiderable exceptions, from the age of seven years until he entered college. Of Dr. Chassel he always spoke with great affection and respect. The household abounded in intellectual activities and stimulating excitements, and was filled with the atmosphere of sympathy and love. He was from the first a child of delicate organization, as is the wont of great scholars, and from very early years became the pride and pet of the village. He was a bright-eyed and frolicsome boy, caring for several years more for play than for study, though his quick observation, his rapid acquisitions, and his tenacious memory, distinguished him very early above all his peers. When he was nine years old he was afflicted with a white swelling upon his knee, the consequence of a casual injury, which was followed by a year and a half of severe suffering, and disabled him for life. During this long and painful illness, he still held his place of preeminence, his playmates vying with one another for the privilege of trundling the bright-eyed sufferer in his invalid's carriage. "Sweet are the uses of adversity," and these sweet uses are manifold, but in no respect are they more conspicuous than in the lives of men eminent for literary achievements. Many a random blow-an unlucky accident, as it would be called,—has developed and matured a great genius, by sharpening the wits, by turning the mind in on itself, by chastening the feelings, * A discourse delivered at the funeral services, November 18, 1872. by shutting up the roving and scattered thoughts to books, reflection and imaginative power, or determining the sufferer to a secluded and bookish life. So it was with Prof. Hadley. As a mere child he had indeed never misspelled a word, and in learning to read, had tasked himself to read the earliest sentence which he mastered with the letters inverted. He had also begun Latin at seven, but it was not till his early discipline of seclusion and suffering was perfected, at the age of ten and a half or eleven years, that he gave himself to study and to books. From that time his life was that of a systematic and energetic scholar. He did not abandon play. Nothing could repress the exuberance of his spirits or the force of his bodily activity. He soon learned with or without his crutch to perform feats of surprising agility. But his papers show that as early as fourteen he began to map out the work of his days and weeks, and that his scheme of study was most liberal and involved severe effort. He edited a literary newspaper, furnishing the matter for entire numbers himself and writing these out in the fair chirography which he acquired by self-schooling. These papers are still preserved and abound in various and sprightly jeux d'esprit in prose and verse, on topics humerous and grave, such as all boys delight in. At the age of fifteen he picked up a Hebrew Chrestomathy, and, with some help, taught himself the elements of the Hebrew language. At about this age he occasionally heard the recitations of his own class, and the scene is well remembered when this slender and delicate boy sat upon the knee of one of his classmates, and heard the lesson through. None of us can doubt that he heard it thoroughly and keenly, and boldly scrutinized the work of his stalwart associates. A little later Dr. Chassel made him his assistant in hearing some of the classes. The next three years he served acceptably as a regularly elected assistant in the school. At the age of nineteen and a half, he entered Yale College, coming hither at his own suggestion. His father and brother were graduates of other colleges, and his mother naturally shrunk from sending this delicate and darling son so far away among strangers. But he insisted on coming, because he thought he should find here what he desired. He applied for admission to the Junior class. President Woolsey examined him in Greek, and after hearing him read a little and asking him a few questions, expressed his entire satisfaction. When the examination was finished he told him that he could take any position in the class which he might desire. Little did he think at that hour what a blessing had come to the college in this modest stranger, who knocked at her door at the sixth hour-how this youth should be stimulated and refreshed by his own example and scholarship, and take the torch of Greek and other learning from his own hand to transmit it newtrimmed and replenished to another generation; so that when he should die he himself should say of him "he was a great scholar, great for any part of the world." While in college, he pursued special studies in almost every term, in one term German, in another Spanish, in another the Calculus, in another Hebrew, but was foremost in his class, which graduated in 1842. He remained a year as resident graduate, devoting himself especially to mathematical studies. During this year his attention was drawn to certain difficult problems in the mathematical journal then conducted by Prof. Pierce, of Cambridge. These problems he solved with such ingenuity as to attract the attention of the distinguished Professor, who has repeated the remark more than once, that he could not forgive Yale College for making the man Professor of Greek who should have been the first mathematician of the country. The year following he entered the Theological Seminary, and remained two years, except that from September, 1844, to April, 1845, he acted as tutor in Middlebury College. In September, 1845, he became tutor in this college, and held that office till August, 1848, when he was appointed Assistant Professor of Greek. In July, 1851, when President Woolsey resigned the professorship of Greek, he was elected his successor, and was married the 13th of August. In 1864 he was called to a severe affliction in the death of his brother, Prof. Henry H. Hadley, a man of kindred genius, whom he greatly loved. In February, 1865, he was prostrated by an insidious disease which required release from all active service. In September, 1866, a surgical operation became necessary, which was followed by long continued debility. In January, 1868, he began his college work again, perfectly restored as he thought, but with somewhat lighter labors. Early in the last college year he suffered from a cold inducing a partial relaxation of the vocal organs. Early in the present year he suffered from a similar attack, but he regarded it as temporary, and still insisted that his constitutional force and capacity for work were unabated. A few weeks since, a more active disease assailed him, to the repeated onsets of which he at last yielded, and on Thursday morning, November 14, he gently breathed away his life. These are the brief records of a most honored and useful career, in which has been matured and manifested a character of marked eminence and peculiarities. To some of these peculiarities I ask your attention. As a scholar, Prof. Hadley was remarkable for the extent of his acquisitions. The enumeration of the many languages which he completely mastered, and the many others with which he was more or less familiar, is decisive of this. In the Greek and the Hebrew he was an adept. He was familiar with the Latin, and the principal modern languages, including the Swedish; with Arabic and Armenian; with several Celtic languages, as Welch, Gaelic and Irish; with the Sanskrit, and the different forms of the Gothic. Of late years he has given special and continuous attention to the sources and early forms of the English. It was no uncommon thing with him to devote a few weeks to the special study of the grammar and vocabulary of a language before unknown, and thus appropriate valuable material for his general studies in comparative philology. To most scholars the complete mastery of a single language is the work of many years and distinguishes the life. To it every other study is auxiliary at least, if not secondary. But for Professor Hadley to acquire a language was so easy, and the ends for which he studied language were so broad and comprehensive, that he seemed to be equally at home in many tongues, and to appropriate from many others all that was required for his purposes. In respect to every language which he commenced, he was inclined, however, not to stop with the amount of knowledge which would suffice for any immediate object, but to proceed to the mastery of whatever could be known. We hardly need add that in this extent of linguistic study he was uniformly exact. Indeed the exactness and thoroughness of his habits were incidental to the extent of his studies, even when he studied for the ends of comparative criticism. While he discerned principles with singular sagacity, and made his generalizations with a broad comprehensiveness, he would not be content till he could enforce each principle with abundant illustrations, and justify and enliven his generalizations by an affluence of examples. Most philologists, even among the most eminent, incline either to excess in detail or generalization. To Prof. Hadley it was as natural to remember the particular example as it was to seize the principle which it illustrated. On the one hand, the principle in question was not overlooked by a microscopic attention to the minute; on the other hand, he was slow to accept the conclusions of another, however well accredited, until he had traveled over the entire process by which the original discoverer had reached them, and so to speak, had verified and discovered them for himself. The variety of his knowledge was as remarkable as its extent. He was not only equally at home in several languages, each of a different family and type, which in itself is uncommon, but he was equally master of other branches of knowledge, some of them remote from language and philology. In the pure mathematics he had a special delight-being as a learner and teacher singularly rapid in his insight, clear in his discriminations and ingenious in invention. At an early period of his public life, as we have seen, it was almost a matter of question whether he was not as well fitted for this science as for philology. In the multitude of his linguistic studies, he never abated his interest in the mathematics, and never forgot any problem which he had mastered. He watched with close and interested attention the progress of mathematical physics, and kept himself familiar with the decisive movements which have marked the progress of each of the sciences of nature. In chronology and history he was singularly preeminent. This was not surprising in view of his prevailing tastes and activities. But there was occasion of surprise at the ever renewed evidence that he could retain so many facts so long after they had been specially attended to, or cared for. The events of common life, and the details of college experience, the names and characters of individual pupils, as well as the dates and circumstances of public transactions, were held fast, and as |