The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1856-07-16
4ersonaI gkettbts,
JAMES GATES PERGIvAL.

AT the May monthly meeting of the
Executive Committee Of the Wiscon-
sin State Historical Society, immediate
10 afterthe committee had been called to
order. MI. D. j. Powers PRESIDENT
have been requested to announce, in ap-
propriats terms, the painful intelligence
of the death of James Ct. Percilval-a
name which should be preserved in the
memorials of this Society, and an event
to which is due the most solemn forms
of private and public grief. In his ma
ture age, in the ripeness of his fame,
with his honors thick upon him, a noble
man-one of an imperial race has
uassed to his long home. Terms more
eloquent than l can command, should
celebrate the sad departure which no re-
turning follows, of one SO gifted and so
rood as he. No common words or stin-
ted measure of sorrow should mark the
dissolution of that gentle soul from the
form it animated. His death occurred
on the morning of the second instant, at
Hazel Green, in the western part of this
State.
DIR. PerciVal, at the time of his death,
had arrived at nearly the. age of sixty
one. He was q native of Connecticut,
and had been a resident of this State
about three years. He was a graduate,
at the age of twenty, of Yale College,
and at the age nf twenty-five commenced
the practice of medicine. He held, for
. brief period, a professorship at West
Point-a opposition from which he retir-
ed solely on account of his excessive tim
idity, which rendered the discharge of
his duties exceedingly painful. He has
published several volumes of poems, a
translation of Malte Bruins Geography,
and Geological reports of Connecticut
and Wisconsin.
DR.. PerciVal was a man of vast learn
ing. His researches had extended into
almost every. field of literature and sci
snce. As a linguist, he had no superior
in his age. He was an accomplished
botanist, geologist physician and poet.
He was a pioneer in American letters
and study. Many of his best poems
were given to the world when all it's cor
ners echoed with the fame of Byron,
Moore, Wordsworth aud Scott. Amid
the trumpet tones oftheir sounding verse,
his pure melodies stole into life, and
found their way to a nations heart, and
a nations love. Without genius SO
great, or 30 profound as theirs, he has
vet married to immortal verse sweet
thoughts and noble emotions-patriot-
ism, beauty, truth, affection. The e1-
ternal works of nature had for him end
less charms and ravishments. To him, the
earth was yelled and mantled in beauty,
and, to use his own fine figure, " the walls
that close the universe with crystal in !"
were eloquent with echoes of music aud
voices, proclaiming beauties and pow
ers-
"Unfading beauties nnd unyielding powers.
The overbending sky, the green-vested
earth. the tempest swinging wood, the
singing of birds, the sweetness of fow-
ers, the parting day aud returning dawn,
were to him a passion and an appetite.
He loved them with a poets love.
With man he mingled but little. To
the great world of pleasure and bust
ness he never entered. For ten years
he lived in the strictest seclusion-his
most intimate friends could scarcely OBJ
tain access to him he refused all social
intercourse, and was pronounced insane.
It was not until driven by absolute
want, that he emerged from his retreat,
and assumed the employment that
brought him to the West. He here en-
tered upon his duties, but his d~istaste
for society abided with him. He prose-
euted his searches alone with nature, its
eternal forms and profound mysteries.
He explored them with the eye of poe
try and the science. The one invested
them with beauty, the other with utili-
ty, and in his results the loneliness and
the use of the world walked hand in
hand. The flower on which the dew
drop shone had for him poetical delight.
the rock which concealed sunless treas
ures had for him more than scientific in
terest. The petals of the blossom were
to him a curious laboratory, were sun
light and shower, warmth and winds,
hidden auses and sky influences, where
3 beautiful and wonderous chemistry
we're outvieing the dreams of the alchy-
mist, and transmitting to color and per-
fume and sweetness the common earth
from which it grew. The thunder smit-
ten boulder carried his mind far back
through unregistered centuries, to when
its now impenetrable mass was yielding
clay, through which insects and tiny
monsters roamed at will, and left their
forms in enduring petrifeation for the
study of mankind, after e millennium of
of ages had passed away, after the del
uge had transported it to q distant land,
and successive races of men had become
extinct around it. In him, the poet aad
naturalist were SO curiousiy blended,
H. H. ill.,, - ao4L