AN ADDRESS

COMMEMORATIVE OF

JOHN BROCKLESBY, LL.D.

LATE PROFESSOR EMERITUS IN TRINITY COLLEGE

BY
SAMUEL HART, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN LA.XGUAGE AND LITERATURE

yC::>

BY APPOINTMENT OF THE

ASSOCIATION OF THE ALUMNI

HARTFORD
THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD COMPANY, PRINTERS

JOHN BROCKLESBY, LL.D.
FROM 1842 TO 1882 PROFESSOR AND
FROM 1882 TO 1889 PROFESSOR EMERITUS
IN TRINITY COLLEGE
BORN IN WEST BROMWICH, ENGLAND
OCTOBER 8, 1811
DIED IN HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
JUNE 21, 1889

QUI A UTEM DOCTI FUERINT
FULGEBUNT QUASI SPLENDOR FIRMAMENTI
ET QUI AD lUSTITIAM ERUDIUNT MULTOS
QUASI STELLAS IN PERPETUAS AETERNITATES

ADDRESS.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Alumni :
At the Commencement of this College in 1882,
Dr. John Brocklesby, after forty years of faithful
and honored service, retired from active duties and
received the well-earned title of Professor Emer
itus. It fell to my lot, as I had for some years
been his associate, to continue during the next
year the work which he had left unfinished. This
I was not willing to do without paying some slight
tribute to the character and the labors of the good
, and wise man who had so long had charge of such
important departments of College work ; and when
I first met the more advanced of his classes, I
spoke to them in words a part of which you will, I
trust, allow me to repeat now.
" I wish to say something which shall, in its
poor way, testify to our recognition of the debt
which we and the whole academic body owe to the
eminent Professor who has, since I met you last,
retired from active duties in connection with the
College. Forty years ago he came here, after a
successful undergraduate course in the halls of his
own alma mater and an experience in tutorial
work there. There is but one person living of the
Trustees who elected him to the Seabury Profes
sorship made vacant by the resignation of Profes
sor Davies ; and of those who were his colleagues
when he was placed in the chair of Mathematics

and Natural Philosophy, not one survives. Forty
successive classes have had the benefit of his in
struction, extending at first through three years of
the undergraduate course, and then, when he was
relieved by the appointment of an assistant, con
fined to the important departments in which he
had always been most interested. If I were asked
to tell of the work which he has done and the
name which he has gained for himself, I might
speak of the scientific books, accurate and schol
arly and clear, which have been so widely used,
and of the scientific investigations the results of
which have brought him deserved honor; but I
would rather point you to the work which he has
done within the College walls, and to the respect
with which he has been and is regarded by those
who, during all these years, have had the privilege
of knowing him. He may well look back with
pleasure upon the work of the study and the lec
ture-room, all that he has learned and all that he
has taught ; but I cannot well conceive of a deeper
pleasure than that which must be his as he knows
that one after another, in a long succession of gen
erous youths, has been drawn to him with a most real
affection. As Dr. Brocklesby's name stands to-day
on our roll as Professor Emeritus, it forms a link
between the former undergraduates and the College,
there being none of his pupils, I am sure, who does
not feel that he owes much to his scholarship, his
kindliness, and his true Christian character."
Seven years have passed ; and at the beginning
of the work of a new College year the Alumni of
the College have made it my duty to pay the trib
ute of respect and affection to the much-loved Pro
fessor who rested from all the labors of life just
before our last Commencement. I little thought.

when I wrote the words which I have just repeated,
that I should use them again; but the thoughts
which they so imperfectly expressed are the thoughts
which all who knew him tried to express over his
newly-made grave and would wish to express now.
The feelings of affection were not first called forth
by the presence of death ; we did not then change
our estimate of the man or our way of speaking
about him ; the words which then came to our lips
were not the conventional words of a funeral eu
logy ; we spoke of him, and we speak of him now,
as we had spoken of him when he was our teacher
and our friend. A life is worth the living if it
calls forth the esteem of so many men of varied
natural dispositions and varied habits of thought;
it is worth while to pass through life if so strong
and true an affection can follow us beyond the
grave ; it is worth while to leave behind one's
self a memory such as that which the ancients
thought to be a sure proof that a good life does
not end.
One who is Professor Brocklesby's senior on
academic rolls writes me that he recalls him when
he was a boy at his father's house on the Talcott
mountain and studying in preparation for College
at a neighboring town, " dressed in a white round
about suit, for all the world like an English school
boy, at his play and at his books, gentle and brave,
sweet-tempered yet courageous, equally eager on
the playground and in the class-room. There
were many things in his character," he continues,
" that could only be explained by his early home-
life." Professor Brocklesby, as we knew him, was so
truly and loyally an American that we were sur
prised when we first learned that he was an Eng-

lishman by birth ; but nevertheless he retained to
the last some of the sterling qualities of the typi
cal Englishman, even as his memory went back,
with an Englishman's love, to his father's house in
Oxford, opposite the walls and tower of Christ
Church and not far from the Folly Bridge over
the classic Isis, and to the harbor of Bristol from
which he took his last view of the shores of his
native country. His father, a man of strong and
perhaps somewhat eccentric character, came with
three motherless children to America, because he
was unwilling to live longer under a monarchy ;
and he brought with him, as he came to this new
country, a large part of the equipment for a house
which still stands high up on the hills to the west
of Hartford. There the father trained the son in
those true principles of duty and of life which he
never forgot or abandoned ; there he made him
familiar with the Scriptures, both canonical and
apocryphal, which it was the boy's part to read
daily at family prayers, interchanging them some
times with the epistles of Seneca ; there he learned
from the English Bible and from other master
pieces of the language that clearness and poetry of
expression which marked all that he afterwards
wrote ; there he learned to watch and note and
study the phenomena of nature in earth and sky,
in solid rock and changing cloud and living
things ; and there he began the preparation for his
life-work. I have said that he was so loyal an American
that we did not always remember that he was an
EngHshman. In like manner it may be truly said
that he was so loyally devoted to the interests of
this College, and his life was so closely identified
with it, that we often forgot that his Alma Mater

was the venerable College at New Haven. Yet he
never lost his affection for Yale College, and he
often thought and spoke of his classmates there,
and especially of two who were highly honored
and deservedly loved. Judge Sheffey and Professor
Thacher. Another classmate, whom I have asked for me
moirs of his college days, says of him : " There
could be no other judgment respecting his aim in
entering college than that he meant to avail him
self of all the opportunities afforded him. It
seemed infipracticable to divert his mind from the
work in hand. Whatever were the exercises, he
was totus in tilts, both in the class-room and dur
ing the hours of study. . . . He was not what
some would call a genius, endowed with a kind of
intuitive faculty to solve difficulties at sight ; he
worked hard and steadily for what he acquired.
But when once acquired, it was held fast in full
possession ; and what is more, he was able to im
part his acquisitions to another in a clear and de
liberate way."
Mr. Brocklesby was nearly twenty-four years
old when he took his bachelor's degree in 1835;
and his standing in his class was so near that
of the salutatorian that his was made an honor
appointment with the title of the philosophical ora
tion ; and this honor has been continued at Yale
College since his day, as it had been granted once
before, for the student third in rank in each grad
uating class. At the commencement he not only
delivered the oration appropriate to his appoint
ment, but also took part, with two or three others,
in a dramatic dialogue in verse, of which he was
the author.
After a year spent in teaching and two years de-

10

voted to the study of the law, Mr. Brocklesby
accepted an appointment from his alTua m,ater to a
tutorship in the mathematics. This he held for two
years, declining an offer of the professorship of
Chemistry here. Then, having been admitted to
the bar, he entered upon the practice of the law in
Hartford ; but in 1842 he laid it aside to enter upon
the duties of the Seabury Professorship of Mathe
matics and Natural Philosophy in this College.
The title of the professorship to which he was
thus chosen at the age of thirty-one includes a great
deal ; its duties included even more. In those days
the work of the three lower classes was practically
divided into three equal parts. The Greek and the
Latin each occupied one-third of the time of Fresh
men and Sophomores and Juniors ; and the re
maining third was assigned to Professor Brock
lesby's department and distributed among the pure
mathematics, mechanics, the divers branches of
natural philosophy or physics, and astronomy. He
saw at once that he must, among all the branches
which he was to teach, select some to which he
would specially devote himself; and so, at first,
though he was very far from neglecting the mathe
matics and the other branches of physical study, he
pursued his own investigations more particularly in
the lines of meteorology and microscopy. Soon,
by careful study of what had been written by
others, by painstaking collection of the results of
observation, and by constant and enthusiastic
watching and noting of the phenomena about
him, he collected material for a manual of Mete
orology; and this he published in 1848, at a
time when little attention had been given to
that science in this country.

II

The book was written in the large room next to
the chapel in the old college buildings, which was
afterwards used as a vestry-room, and which some
of us will remember as seeming well suited for
observations on dampness and frost, or rather on
hygrometry and psychrometry. It was a small
volume, and in later years the professor did not feel
satisfied with it ; but it was clear in its explanations,
full in its details, and showed on every page the
painstaking and enthusiastic way in which its
materials had been gathered. He made many
observations with special reference to this work,
of which the most original and valuable was
a gareful study as to the influence of color upon the
deposition of dew, a study which was pursued with
the most diligent care and in the true scientific
spirit, and the results of which accorded with those
of Professor Bache's elaborate investigations as to
the influence of color upon the rate of cooling and
upon radiation. The volume contained many .
notices of usual phenomena so described and ex
plained as to call attention to them and to teach
his students to use their eyes as they walked about,
and also many notices of less usual phenomena,
such as extraordinary rainbows, complicated halos,
St. Elmo's fire (a special example being given of
its appearance on President Totten's umbrella), and
natural snowballs. When we woke one winter morn
ing not many years ago to find the ground about
us covered with these natural balls or rolls of snow
to the number of thousands or millions, we turned at
once to Professor Brocklesby's Meteorology for an
explanation of the wonder and for examples of its
former occurrence. The study of meteorology has
of late attracted so much attention and made such
progress in this country that it is eminently fitting

12

that a due tribute of respect should be paid to a
book which thus early called the attention of students
to the science and excited their interest in it. It
was followed ten years^ later (in 1858) by a manual
of Microscopy, fully illustrated and intended as a
guide to amateur microscopists.
Before this, however. Professor Brocklesby had
published the first edition of his Elements of
Astronomy for the use of schools. This book,
clear in its definitions and explanations without
being unscientific, and interesting without being in
accurate, was a book of great value. As one edition
after another was called for, its statements were
kept abreast of the discoveries of the day, and im
provements of one kind and another were introduced
into it. At one time the chapter on the tides was
entirely rewritten, the author being dissatisfied
with the explanation ordinarily given as to the un
equal effects of the lunar action upon the waters on
different parts of the earth, and proposing what
certainly seems a more satisfactory explanation and
one capable of a very simple statement. And the
later edition or editions — there were some twenty-
five in all — were enriched with an account of the
methods and the apparent results of the most
recent investigations into the physical constitution
of the sun. This volume illustrated particularly
well the ability with which the author could teach
somewhat advanced truths of science to those who
could not be presumed to have had much pre
liminary or preparatory instruction. An astronomy
for schools must confine itself in large part to the
statement of facts and to simple explanations of
some of them ; but Professor Brocklesby was able
to give to those who knew nothing of trigonometry
and but little of geometry, a very clear idea of the

13
methods by which the distance of the sun is com
puted and the time of its axial revolution is deter
mined. The last book which he wrote was a
Physical Geography, a valuable work, fully illus
trated with maps and plates, which gives an excel
lent idea of this great science in all its wide extent.
But Professor Brocklesby's studies were not con
fined to the gathering of material for his written
volumes. Apart from the constant preparation for
the varied duties of the class-room, which included
many experimental lectures in the different branches
of natural philosophy, and in regard to which it is
impossible to speak in detail, he was constantly
studying and noting and writing upon matters of
interest to scientific men and upon scientific mat
ters in which all intelligent men are or ought to be
interested. At meetings of the American Associa
tion (of which, by the way, he was one of the first
elected Fellows) he read papers upon the periodicity
of the rain-fall as compared with that of the solar
spots, upon frozen wells, and upon other subjects.
He contributed to the American yournal of
Science, and in a less formal way to daily and weekly
journals. Often witfi reference to something re
markable in sky or cloud or rain, and sometimes as
putting into form the results of observations or
thoughts that had for one reason or another
specially attracted his attention, many articles from
his pen appeared in the local papers, which were
always read with interest. One of the last was one
of the best, an essay on the two oceans, that of the
water and that of the atmosphere, in which he
pointed out, in many interesting ways, their analo
gies and their differences.
And besides these scientific articles which were
generally known to be his and to which, for that

14
matter, his initials were usually subscribed, he some
times allowed himself in other fields of writing.
Occasionally verses from his pen found their way
into the papers. Two or three extended dramas
which he wrote were never published, and an
epithalamium addressed to his wife on the occasion
of their silver wedding was only distributed to
friends ; but I recall an excellent translation of the
Dies Irae in the metre of the original with its double
rhyme in triplets, which appeared in a religious
paper, and which was worthy of more than a pass
ing notice. And as an example of the labors of
lighter hours, it may suffice to refer to a list of three
hundred or more possible ways of spelling the
word "scissors," published a propos of some dis
cussion as to phonetic spelling.
For Professor Brocklesby's interest in studies
and in letters was by no means confined to those
which specially concerned the work of the depart
ments committed to his care. Besides his constant
study of the English Bible and his constant use of
the Prayer Book, he kept himself familiar with
the writings of the best authors ; he never
wearied of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott,
and he never quite gave up reading Virgil ;
and the lucidity and grace of his writings testifies
not only to a scientific clearness and accuracy of
thought, but also to a literary taste which could not
be satisfied except by a careful choice of words and
an almost poetical balancing of sentences.
For forty years Professor Brocklesby continued
in the unremitting discharge of his duties here,
though, in course of time, their burden was les
sened. There are many changes in a college, not
only in the ceaseless flow of the stream of under
graduate life which passes through academic walls

IS
to come forth freighted with the riches of godliness
and learning and to bear their influences to other
and wider fields, but also in what seems to the un
dergraduates the fixed body of those to whom are
entrusted the duties of government and instruction,
and moreover in the methods, if not the principles,
of the government which they administer and the
instruction which they seek to impart. After only
sixteen years of service. Professor Brocklesby found
himself the senior professor of the Faculty; and
four times he was called upon, in the vacancy of
the presidency, to assume responsible duties as
acting President. But in all the changes of the
College, both external and internal, he was ever the
same : faithful and diligent in every duty, a kind
and sympathetic friend of the students, a wise and
earnest counsellor of his colleagues, an honored and
esteemed citizen. It was one of the professed prin
ciples on which this College was founded, and it is
one which has been constantly maintained, that it
should be a home in which officers and students
should live together as members of one community,
having common interests and pursuing the same
ends. Even if he had not found this the tradition
of our College, Professor Brocklesby would have
done much to establish it. Every student knew
that he had in him a real friend ; the gentleness
and unassuming goodness which showed them
selves in his face were manifest in many words and
deeds of kindness, and still more manifest, if that
were possible, when it was necessary to speak words
of reproof. And in return the students were friends
of the good Professor. There were times when
some of us were thoughtless in our treatment of
him ; but there cannot have been many times when
any one treated him with intentional discourtesy ;

i6
and I am sure that if any one ever did so, he was
soon heartily ashamed of it and willing to confess
that he was ashamed of it. For the Professor was
a true gentleman, to know whom was to esteem
and love him; he was one of those good rnen of
whom Bishop Butler says that they "had rather
be deceived than be suspicious." And thus his
guilelessness. and sincerity and modesty conquered
where other qualities of heart and life would have
provoked opposition and encouraged resistance.
The appreciation of the alumni for Professor
Brocklesby's character and work was never better
shown than at the Commencement-tide of 1880, when
the Connecticut Beta of the Phi Beta Kappa, of
which he was the founder and over which he pre
sided' for the last twenty-two years of his life, pre
sented his portrait to the College. I need not
apologize for quoting here a part of the address in
which the gift was accepted by the Chancellor.
"Who," said Bishop WiUiams, "who that looks
back over all the years that have gone since, in 1842,
the then young professor took up his life in the Col
lege, but must feel that on such an occasion the
silent thoughts of each man's mind are more golden
than any possibilities of uttered speech ? The year
just named was one of the few years since I came
hither as an undergraduate in which I have not been
more or less directly connected with the work of our
College. But I well remember the satisfaction that
was widely felt and expressed when the choice of
the Trustees became known ; and still all that fades
from our thoughts as, looking on this portrait —
and, thank God, on him, too, whom it presents
to us — we offer him our loving gratitude for all
that he has been to and all that he has done for our
Alma Mater during his most honorable period of

17
service. How many hearts will thrill, how many
eyes will moisten, as men scattered all over this
broad land shall read the record of this day's
doings, and, recalling many a kind word and help
ful act, shall grasp in thought the hand that they
cannot grasp in deed I How many in coming days,
when our names shall be among the stelligeri of
the College roll, shall pause before this picture, and
listen to the story of a good and noble life 1 "
Then, addressing the Professor, the Bishop
added :
" I cannot but look back to-day to the five years
which we passed together as members of the faculty
of Trinity College. The memory of them will ever
be among the most cherished memories of my life.
For me, those years were all too short, and I could
almost envy you that you were left in the academic
life from which I was taken. We have seen bright
days and dark days here together. But I believe I
can say with perfect certainty that not a doubt of
the future of this College has ever crossed our
minds. But your life and your work are inwrought
into the history of the College, as those of no other
professor have ever been, possibly ever will. It is
wise to say this for you to-day which you would
never say or even think for yourself. And I do say
it out of a full heart, and knowing that I speak for
all who are here, for all who are absent, for all the
sons of our collegiate mother."
If I have spoken thus far, Mr. President and
Gentlemen, of Professor Brocklesby as the diligent
scholar, the faithful teacher, and the loved member
of our academic body, I have not forgotten, nor
would you have me forget, that above all he was a
true Christian. Nay, he studied and taught and
lived as he did because of this. There are those

upon whose life religion has a very real influence,
but whom after all it seems to affect from without ;
it was ifiot so with him, and I may speak as I do
without at the least intruding into the privacy of
the hidden life. We have not the entire picture of
the man until we recall him standing or kneeling in
his place in the Chapel, repeating the well-known
Psalter without book, or reading the Lessons, es
pecially the words of the Prophets, with an eloquence
of expression which was not inconsistent with the
most true reverence. We do not know all of the
spirit in which he studied Nature until we read the
verse which he placed on the title-page of his
Astronomy : " Lift up your eyes on high, and be
hold Who hath created these things. That bringeth
out their host by number-; He calleth them all by
names, by the greatness of His might, for that He
is strong in power ; not one faileth." And when
he saw the rainbow in the sky and thought of the
wonderful laws of refraction and dispersion by
which he was accustomed to explain it, his thoughts
passed to the words of the son of Sirach, and one
who ever heard him quote these will not easily forget
how they sounded then : " Look upon the rainbow,
and praise Him that made it ; very beautiful it is in
the brightness thereof; it compasseth the heaven
about with a glorious circle, and the hands of the
Most High have bended it." He taught the
Natural Theology of the course as one who had
learned to see God's Hand in all the works of
Nature, and he accepted the teaching of Dr.
Pusey's great sermon that it is " Un-science, not
Science," which stands opposed to the Faith. To
the faith of the historic Church he held with all the
firmness and simplicity of his noble soul ; and in a
most real humility he trod in the footsteps of the

19
Master. So it was that, by his example as well as
(when occasion served) by well chosen words, and
by a quiet influence the power of which he never
himself knew, he impressed upon us the ex
cellence, the beauty and strength, of a real
Christian character. Here lay the secret of his
greatest wisdom, and in this is the test by which
we know that his was a truly useful life. " Many
are in high places and of renown ; but mysteries
are revealed unto the meek."
None of you can be more sensible than I am
myself of the inadequacy of the tribute which I have
thus offered to the memory of one who was to me
a teacher, a friend, a colleague, and almost a father.
But I am sure that those who knew him will fill out
the picture the outlines of which I have attempted
to sketch, and will pardon the unskilled hand which
has drawn them amiss. There is something
peculiar in the life of an academic body; there is
to be seen in it a corporate memory (if I "may
venture thus to call it) joined with an individual
forgetfulness. Four years make for the under
graduate an immemorial prescriptive use ; but there
are few undergraduates who do not leave an in
fluence which is felt more than four years after
wards by those who perhaps never heard their
names. So the character and the good deeds of
our founders, of men whose names, like those of
Bishop Brownell and President Wheaton, stand at
the head of our academic roll, are still affecting
each young man who enters these walls and re
ceives a share in the academic life which was drawn
so largely from them. And so we may be sure that
no President or Professor, no graduate or under
graduate, has ever done any worthy deed of devo
tion or truth or self-sacrifice which could by any

20

possibility affect the corporate life of the college,
without conferring a real benefit not only upon the
College, but also upon all its members. During
the seven years in which Professor Brocklesby
made but infrequent visits to the College, it
followed as a matter of course that he was unknown
to most of those who were occupied here in their
daily pursuits ; though he watched with unfailing
interest everything that could affect the welfare
of the institution to which his life had been given.
But his good work for the College did not cease
when his active service came to a close; as long as
he lived, his kindly care for us was a perpetual
benediction. And for himself the years that
remained were like the time of the ripening of the
shock of golden grain against the hour when it
should be gathered in. The end came with the
peace and quiet which one feels to belong to the
death of the true Christian man ; he fell asleep in
Christ, as the little child, wearied with its happy
labors, trustfully falls asleep on the mother's breast,
to rest till the sun shall rise and usher in the day.
Dr. John Brocklesby will have an honored place
among the men of science and the educators of his
day ; but he will also have, as he has already had
for these many years, an influence for good learn
ing, and good living too, upon many generations
of students who shall yet call this College their
foster-mother. And so we write his name on the
roll of our benefactors, and thank God for his work
and his example.

21

MINUTE ADOPTED BY THE FACULTY.
The Faculty of Trinity College, called together by the
announcement of the death of their colleague, John Brock
lesby, LL.D., for forty years Professor and for seven
years Professor Emeritus in this College, desire to place
on record the tribute of their veneration for his character
and of their high estimate of the value of his long-con
tinued labors in the College. With an unfailing affection
for the institution, he devoted to its welfare the powers of
his mind and the energies of his life; and with an un
feigned interest in each of the many students who received
his instruction and experienced his care, he exerted the
influence of a sympathetic and kind friend. To the wis
dom of a scholar and the simplicity of a true student of
nature he added the gentleness and humility of a disciple
of Christ ; and his memory will be cherished as that of a
good man who served his generation by the will of God.
The Faculty extend to his family the assurance of their
sincere sympathy; and, as a mark of respect to his
memory, they have voted to attend the funeral services
and have placed the symbols of mourning in the College
Chapel.
MINUTE ADOPTED BY THE ASSOCIATION OF THE ALUMNI.
The Alumni Association learns with the deepest sorrow
of the death of Professor John Brocklesby, LL.D. He
is associated with this organization from a very early date,
and has long been the chairman of its standing committee.
We depended upon him for the annual necrology record.
The duty which he so carefully and lovingly discharged
must now fall into other hands, and as he stands first in
the new list in time so we are sure he will stand second to
none, however long the list may become, in the affection

22
which he inspired while living and in the regret caused by
his death. We recall with pride Dr. Brocklesby's intel
lectual power and scientific accomplishments, his numer
ous and valuable contributions to the literature of science,
dating back to times when American books on this or in
deed any branch of learning were infinitely more rare
than at present. But above all we wish to record our
veneration for Professor Brocklesby's character' — his
good sense, his kindness, his guilelessness, his great gen
tleness, and his thorough religiousness. He was very
near indeed to our ideal of the Christian scholar and
teacher. That his reward is great in the Kingdom of
Heaven we cannot doubt.
MINUTE ADOPTED BY THE CONNECTICUT BETA OF THE
PHI BETA KAPPA.
The Connecticut Beta of the Phi Beta Kappa desire to
place on record a tribute of their affectionate esteem for
the memory of Professor John Brocklesby, LL.D., the
Founder and for the past twenty-two years the President
of the Chapter, While they offer to his family the
expression of sympathy, they assure them that his faithful
work for the College will not be soon forgotten, and that
many will always cherish the recollection of so true and
kind a friend.

'ih"<

' Y V r?»'"«r8

->•'¦ s-

(.if \ ',

(lt'.

I Va tto-\-*.f'/4d«-i*