degree. He removed early in life to practise the law in Indiana. We seldom meet; but though twenty years intervene, we meet as though we had parted but yesterday. He has been a Judge of the Supreme Court, and, I believe, the most eminent law authority in his adopted State; and he would doubtless have been sent to take part in the National Councils, but for an uncompromising sincerity and manliness in the expression of his political opinions, little calculated to win votes.

And now came the time for a distinct step forward,—a step leading into future life.

It was for some time a question in our family whether I should enter Charles Dewey's office in Sheffield as a student at law, or go to college. It was at length decided that I should go; and as Williams College was near us, and my cousin, Chester Dewey, was a professor there, that was the place chosen for me. I entered the Sophomore class in the third term, and graduated in 1814, in my twenty-first year.

Two events in my college life were of great moment to me,—the loss of sight, and the gain, if I may say so, of insight.

In my Junior year, my eyes, after an attack of measles, became so weak that I could not use them more than an hour in a day, and I was [31] obliged to rely mainly upon others for the prosecution of my studies during the remainder of the college course. I hardly know now whether to be glad or sorry for this deprivation. But for this, I might have been a man of learning. I was certainly very fond of my studies, especially of the mathematics and chemistry. I mention it the rather, because the whole course and tendency of my mind has been in other directions. But Euclid's Geometry was the most interesting book to me in the college course; and next, Mrs. B.'s Chemistry: the first, because the intensest thinking is doubtless always the greatest possible intellectual enjoyment; and the second, because it opened to me my first glance into the wonders of nature. I remember the trembling pride with which, one day in the Junior year, I took the head of the class, while all the rest shrunk from it, to demonstrate some proposition in the last book of Euclid. At Commencement, when my class graduated, the highest part was assigned to me. "Pretty well for a blind boy," my father said, when I told him of it; it was all he said, though I knew that nothing in the world could have given him more pleasure. But if it was vanity then, or if it seem such now to mention it, I may be pardoned, perhaps, for it was the end of all vanity, effort, or pretension to be a learned man. I remember when I once told Channing of this, and said that but for the loss of sight I thought I should have devoted myself to the pursuits of learning, his [32] reply was, "You were made for something better." I do not know how that may be; but I think that my deprivation, which lasted for some years, was not altogether without benefit to myself. I was thrown back upon my own mind, upon my own resources, as I should never otherwise have been. I was compelled to think—in such measure as I am able—as I should not otherwise have done. I was astonished to find how dependent I had been upon books, not only for facts, but for the very courses of reasoning. To sit down solitary and silent for hours, and to pursue a subject through all the logical steps for myself,—to mould the matter in my own mind without any foreign aid,—was a new task for me. Ravignan, the celebrated French preacher, has written a little book on the Jesuit discipline and course of studies, in which he says that the one or two years of silence appointed to the pupil absolute seclusion from society and from books too were the most delightful and profitable years of his novitiate. I think I can understand how that might be true in more ways than one. Madame Guyon's direction for prayer to pause upon each petition till it is thoroughly understood and felt had great wisdom in it. We read too much. For the last thirty years I have read as much as I pleased, and probably more than was good for me.

The disease in my eyes was in the optic nerve; there was no external inflammation. Under the [33] best surgical advice I tried different methods of cure,—cupping, leeches, a thimbleful of lunar caustic on the back of the neck, applied by Dr. Warren, of Boston; and I remember spending that very evening at a party, while the caustic was burning. So hopeful was I of a cure, that the very pain was a pleasure. I said, "Bite, and welcome!" But it was all in vain. At length I met with a person whose eyes had been cured of the same disease, and who gave me this advice: "Every evening, immediately before going to bed, dash on water with your hands, from your wash-bowl, upon your closed eyes; let the water be of about the temperature of spring-water; apply it till there is some, but not severe, pain, say for half a minute; then, with a towel at hand, wipe the eyes dry before opening them, and rub the parts around smartly; after that do not read, or use your eyes in any way, or have a light in the room." I faithfully tried it, and in eight months I began to experience relief; in a year and a half I could read all day; in two years, all night. Let any one lose the use of his eyes for five years, to know what that means. Afterwards I neglected the practice, and my eyes grew weaker; resumed it, and they grew stronger.

The other event to which I have referred as occurring in my college life was of a far different character, and compared to which all this is nothing. It is lamentable that it ever should be an event in any human life. The sense of religion [34] should be breathed into our childhood, into our youth, along with all its earliest and freshest inspirations; but it was not so with me. Religion had never been a delight to me before; now it became the highest. Doubtless the change in its form partook of the popular character usually attendant upon such changes at the time, but the form was not material. A new day rose upon me. It was as if another sun had risen into the sky; the heavens were indescribably brighter, and the earth fairer; and that day has gone on brightening to the present hour. I have known the other joys of life, I suppose, as much as most men; I have known art and beauty, music and gladness; I have known friendship and love and family ties; but it is certain that till we see GOD in the world—GOD in the bright and boundless universe we never know the highest joy. It is far more than if one were translated to a world a thousand times fairer than this; for that supreme and central Light of Infinite Love and Wisdom, shining over this world and all worlds, alone can show us how noble and beautiful, how fair and glorious, they are. In saying this, I do not arrogate to myself any unusual virtue, nor forget my defects; these are not the matters now in question. Nor, least of all, do I forget the great Christian ministration of light and wisdom, of hope and help to us. But the one thing that is especially signalized in my experience is this, the Infinite Goodness and Loveliness began to be [35] revealed to me, and this made for me "a new heaven and a new earth."

The sense of religion comes to men under different aspects; that is, where it may be said to come; where it is not imbibed, as it ought to be, in early and unconscious childhood, like knowledge, like social affection, like the common wisdom of life. To some, it comes as the consoler of grief; to others, as the deliverer from terror and wrath To me it came as filling an infinite void, as the supply of a boundless want, and ultimately as the enhancement of all joy. I had been somewhat sad and sombre in the secret moods of my mind, read Kirke White and knew him by heart; communed with Young's "Night Thoughts," and with his prose writings also; and with all their bad taste and false ideas of religion, I think they awaken in the soul the sense of its greatness and its need. I nursed all this, something like a moody secret in my heart, with a kind of pride