a charge to the Grand Jury, defining, with great clearness, the extent and limitations of popular sovereignty, the constitution of a State, and admonishing them of the issues of open rebellion. Afterwards, when the military force of the State was called out to suppress open insurrection, he offered his services in the field. He was a delegate to the convention to frame a new constitution; and finally, in the trial of Mr. Dorr, sealed, with a judicial sentence, his faith in "the great truth, that popular sovereignty can exist only in a legally organized people, and can act only through the forms of its organizations and in accordance with its constitution and laws." While on the bench he produced nearly all his prose writings. In January, 1838, he delivered two lectures on Aboriginal history, be fore the Rhode Island Historical Society. In them, he narrates in language clear, glowing, sinewy, the main events of their subjection and extermination. As if imbued with the hereditary sympathies and resentments of the red man, he has given their chivalrous exploits a heightened coloring and historical completeness, redeeming the subject at once from the tediousness and distortions of the Pilgrim Annalists. The winter following, he delivered, before the Massachusetts Historical Society, a lecture upon the "Idea of the Supernatural among the Indians"-a fitting sequel to the two preceeding. It is pleasing and elegant, with at times a Wordsworthian loftiness of sentiment-philosophy and history illuminated with the chastened splendor of poetry. But the great work of his life-the nucleus of his speculations through many years and the basis of his fame as a thinker-is the Panidea. Its publication and reception form a striking comment upon the intellectual character of the age. Its worth, originality and reach of thought were acknowledged; but the sublime mystery, how the Infinite One is involved everywhere in the finite many, seemed out of place and old-fashioned as the theme of a book, in this age of novels, periodicals, and light reading, when, like a grub, thought seems only spinning its own sepulchure. The book was deemed too abstruse to appear in a seperate form, but a proposal was made that it should appear in some magazine, since a few extra copies might then be struck off at a slight expense. The author replied: "That old simile of the moth allured by the light to fly again and again into the blaze until it is consumed has its thousand-fold applications. The thought of having my treatise printed for private use induces me to address you again-not that I expect pecuniary gain-not that I anticipate fame, I should be content to forego either, but it seems to me that the work contains some ideas that would be of use to the world, and I feel unwilling to let them die on my hands, without having their usefulness tested or their falsity shown." But the editor, to whom the book was submitted, found it too substantial, requiring too much reflection, for his columns. The author agreed, at last, to purchase two fifths of the work himself, and in 1846 the book appeared under the anonymous signature "Theoptes." But to most men its very title-page is a Gorgon's-head. They are sure that nothing but infidelity, mysticism, or transcendental puzzles can lurk under such hard names. The critics avoid it utterly. Its solid logic cannot be volatilized into a popular review, and such only do they feel themselves called upon to write. So does it fare with metaphysics in this nineteenth century-it does not blend and flow on with the general stream, but to men's fancies is a maelstrom, with vortices whirling and sucking its victims down fearful and bottomless deeps. But, although the book is written with elaborate precision, it must be admitted that the objections to it are not without cause. Coleridge, speaking of an Essay by Charles Lamb, written upon a man who lived in past time, said that he once thought of adding to it an essay on a man who did not live in time at all, but one side of it, or collaterally. If such a person should fancy to write metaphysics, his system would perhaps result in a Panidea. Theoptes divests himself wholly of the relations of time and space, or rather, retiring entirely from the world of the senses, views them as they exist in the Pure Reason. But this is not all, he requires the reader to retire with him, and, in this empyrean of naked abstractions, to follow out his reasonings with scarcely a sensuous image to assist the apprehension of their logic. His metaphysics are more exacting than the purest mathematics, for in them the ideal conceptions may be symbolized and reasoned upon in lines and cyphers, but here, except by the "visual formula" (the first, perhaps in a series of symbols, yet to be invented, to give to metaphysics a mathematical certainty,) the mind is unaided by outward types. The consequence is that, even when the system is understood, it lies so far out of all ordinary experience that it requires an effort to realize the state of mind necessary to discuss it, and an effort of such sort that only scholars and thinkers will ever be likely to make it. His oration on the influence of scientific discovery and invention on social and political progress, developes and illustrates some of the thoughts of the Panidea. He had originally devoted many pages in this work to an exposition of the philosophy of history and the law of progress. Among the fragments of this essay, the subject of this oration is thus spoken of: "In treating of social and political progress, I might be disposed to consider that progress merely in an intellectual point of view, leaving out every moral and religious element, and then I might find the cause of that progress in the progress of science and art. I might trace the discoveries in science, and the inventions in art, to a law of suggestion derived from the supreme reason, and acting from generation to generation, and then show how those discoveries and inventions reflected their influence into all social and political institutions, and eventually controlled their action. But this would be a comparatively limited view-it would not embrace the whole man—however true in itself, it would be less than all the truth pertaining to humanity." I quote this remark, because the deductions of this oration have been sometimes taken in a sense less qualified than the author seems to have intended. His discourse on the Rhode-Island Idea of Government, delivered the winter previous to his death, is a special application of the Panideal philosophy to history, and shows how fruitful it is in beautiful thoughts. It traces the idea of "Soul-Liberty" from its first indistinct twinklings in the Middle Ages, as it struggled fitfully through the mists and shadows of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as it crossed the Atlantic with the little band of persecuted pilgrims, till at last it shone out in all its surpassing glory upon the wilderness home of Roger Williams. It shows its development here, and influence upon the State-its magnificent results and glorious destiny. It breathes his own fervent love of liberty, his exulting thankfulness at the mind's escape from the vassalage of error into the freedom of a great and exalting truth, and his faith that the winding policies of man are ever ignorantly developing the order of Divine Providence. He sometimes made use of a novel illustration of the manner in which a nation, notwithstanding the free activity of the individual, is impelled to fulfil the Divine purposes. "During a violent snow-storm, a flock of sheep belonging to a farmer on the small islands in the Vinyard Sound, moved in a mass across one of those bleak and exposed commons, into the ocean, and every one of the whole number was drowned. The manner in which it was done was as follows: The violence of the storm was such that they collected together in a mass for mutual shelter; but standing thus together, those behind, or on the windward side, were constantly passing around to the front or leaward side, and they thus gradually advanced toward the sea. Their owner in vain attempted to oppose their progress, he could but retard it, and the whole mass still moved on, until all were buried in the ocean. This rural incident is highly emblematical of a nation under the government of its predominant idea. The individuals of which it consists in general, voluntarily act in accordance with its idea, and carry the nation forward to its destiny-some there may be who act adversely to it nay, a whole generation may do so-but in so doing they do but retard it for a time, they are forced at last to obey the idea which is a law to the whole, and thus ultimately fulfil the nation's destiny." He was still busied with these august speculations, and earnest in the discharge of his official duties, when an illness, from which at first no serious results were anticipated, put a period to his life. He had returned from a laborious session indisposed, and gradually grew worse. He was himself the first to predict a fatal termination, and resigned himself with cheerful composure. Death was to him no startling thought. He had already gazed into its abyss of awful secrets, and surrounded it with a beautiful philosophy. It was but to divest himself of his sensuous relations and live on amid eternal realities to fold together the scroll of the material universe, and read, with purified vision, the wonderful Apocalypse of the Spirit. He gave his last instructions with affectionate concern, but as quietly as if he were merely to take a brief journey, and to the last conversed with his physician with his usual familiar and bantering manner. To a friend who expressed his sorrow at the event, he replied, "Yes, my disease is rapidly approaching the crisis, but to myself it matters little which way the balance turns, and I do not know that it does to others. I have done what I thought to be my duty." The next day, July 26, 1847, he ceased to breathe. He died in the undiminished vigor of his intellect, with a full confidence in the Divine Providence, and requested that his tombstone should be engraved with the Rhode Island coat of arms, and the inscription, "HIS TRUST WAS AND IS IN GOD." In his person, Mr. Durfee was corpulant, of the middle height, with greyish eyes, a voice flexible and powerful, and a forehead and face marked with thought and reflecting the varying movements of his mind. Physically indolent almost to a proverb, he was in mind thoughtful, meditative, with seasons of great intellectual activity and never sunk in listlessness, for he knew that the passions of the soul, like Michael Scott's demon, though excellent servants while busied, became its destroyers when suffered to remain unemployed. In his manners he was simple, unpretending, with a Pythagorean love of silence; yet in his affable moods exchanged his thoughts with mirthful vivacity, while upon subjects of philosophy or politics he held his listener by the abundance of his ideas, the compass of his intellect and the vividness of his expression. He seldom sprinkled his conversation with personalities, was charitable to the follies and weaknesses of others and gladly recognised susceptibilities of virtue in the wickedest of men. In the captivating accomplishments of social intercourse he was excelled by hundreds. Cloistered in his own choice thoughts, even amid the lively gossip of the crowded drawing room, its gaieties and dissipations vexed and pestered rather than amused him. He loved the true the grand-the beautiful, humanity in its diviner attributes, and nature in her aspects of imposing grandeur or placid loveliness, rather than in her delicate pencilings on leaf and flower, and these tastes, too exclusively cultivated, added to his natural reserve, unfitted him for the agreeable trifling, the showy graces, and the festive hilarity of social life, while they led him to despise its fopperies, frivolities, gloss and heartlessness. To some his love of truth and justice may have seemed severe; but, if he evinced something of the stern spirit of the Roman censor, he yet possessed a heart that keenly felt for human sufferings and temptations, that melted with childlike tenderness even at the death of a sparrow, and flashed indignant scorn at cruelty in every shape. He had formed to himself a lofty ideal of humanity, "the abstract of the moral, intellectual, and physical perfections of all grades of society, the person divested of all adventitious qualities of time, place and circumstance, the individual who, through order and law has attained to that perfection of his nature, in which by acting in obedience to the dictates of the pure Reason he renders all other law inoperative and unnecessary,"-a conception never to be realized, but which could not fail to ennoble all his aspirations. As a student, he read much, rather than many books. In oratory he loved the copious eloquence of Cicero and Burke, the luminous and. impassioned logic of Demosthenes and Webster-the minds that pen" etrate to the marrow of a subject and unfold it from its inmost principles, or upon the fluctuations of human fortunes reflect the steady light of great ideas. In poetry his reading was so confined as to suggest a doubt whether he was so deeply enamored of his art as became a professor. But if his favorites were few they were well chosen. Homer, (Pope's translation,) Virgil, Shakspeare, and Milton, those vast orbs of song, "Whither, as to their fountains, other stars he read with deep and repeated pleasure, and compensated for his exclusiveness by an appreciative attachment. In his historical studies he possessed that happy faculty of great minds, to seize almost intuitively those central facts, which, being rightly interpreted, constitute the philosophy of history. When composing his poem he read the history |