mineralogy, and Smyth became a full professor of mathematics. He filled that chair until his death. He was a man of marked individuality of character. His personal appearance and a somewhat brusque manner of address gave him the nickname. of "Old Ferox," among his students, but no man had a kinder heart or exhibited a truer loyalty to his friends. Many a story was told of his sturdy championship of relatives and others in whom his interest was aroused. His eminent son, of whom this memoir is written, inherited this quality to the fullest extent, as became manifest on several critical occasions. Professor Smyth prepared and published a series of mathematical text-books-elementary algebra, advanced algebra, analytical geometry, trigonometry, and a treatise on the differential and integral calculus. Mathematical science has advanced greatly since his day, but so far as these text-books profess to lead the student they are not surpassed by any modern works for logical arrangement and clearness of statement. His courses were not popular. The college curriculum required every student to take them to the bitter end, calculus; but he was an inspiring and helpful teacher of all who had a taste for mathematics. He was much more than a teacher. He possessed great influence in local affairs, particularly in school matters. Moreover, he was a keen politician in the best sense, though he never sought or held public office, an ardent anti-slavery man, and an earnest and active patriot when the War of 1861 broke out. At the close of the war he undertook, almost unaided, the task of raising funds for the erection of a memorial hall for Bowdoin College, in honor of the alumni and students of the institution who served in the army and navy in defence of the Union. While engaged in this service he travelled throughout the State of Maine soliciting subscriptions. His health was impaired by his exertions. in this cause, and he died in 1868. If the foregoing sketch seems to be of undue length in a memoir of his son, it has been introduced as explanatory of traits that reappeared in the character of his son.

Egbert was born a year after his father became full professor in the college. His name was given in memory of his uncle, Egbert Benson Coffin, who was graduated at Bowdoin in 1823 and died in 1827.

It is easy to trace back the qualities which distinguished

him in after life to the environment of his early years. In the little town where he was born and grew up to manhood, the college and the church were everything, and church and college were so connected that it was hardly possible to think of one without considering the other also. The president and all the professors with the exception of Cleaveland were "Orthodox Congregational" ministers. So were a majority of the trustees and overseers of the college. Compulsory attendance at prayers twice a day and at church twice on Sundays, and a pervading religious atmosphere, were irksome and repellent to many of the students, but they controlled the whole life of those who were religiously inclined. To a mind and disposition like that of young Smyth the influence of his own home, of the families of all with whom he associated in Brunswick, of the college and the church, one career only was open and attractive an education and the ministry.

He was fitted for college at a private school and at Dummer Academy, entered Bowdoin in 1844, and was graduated in 1848 among the first scholars in the class. For a short time he taught a school in Farmington, New Hampshire, but in 1849 was appointed tutor in Greek at Bowdoin, a position which he held for two years, and then entered the Bangor Theological Seminary, from which institution he was graduated in 1853. After a year passed as resident licentiate at Andover Theological Seminary he was elected professor of rhetoric and oratory in Bowdoin College. In 1856 he was ordained to the Congregational ministry, and was transferred and made Collins professor of natural and revealed religion-a chair previously occupied by those two eminent theologians Calvin E. Stowe and Roswell D. Hitchcock. He held that professorship until 1863, when he was chosen professor of ecclesiastical history in Andover Theological Seminary. During a part of his last year at Bowdoin 1862-1863- he studied in Germany, at Berlin and Halle. In 1857 he married Elizabeth B. Dwight, daughter of the Rev. Dr. William Theodore Dwight, who was for thirty-three years pastor of the Third Congregational Church of Portland. Dr. Dwight (Yale, 1813) was a son of President Theodore Dwight of Yale College. Mrs. Smyth was thus a descendant of Jonathan Edwards.

Four of his brothers were also graduated at Bowdoin: William Henry, 1856; Newman, 1863; Frederick King, 1867; and George Adams, 1868.

Professor Smyth's task as professor of natural and revealed religion was peculiarly difficult. It would not have been so if it had been limited to officiating at morning prayers, preaching a weekly-week-day-sermon to such of the students as cared to attend the service, and teaching Paley's "Natural Theology" and Wayland's "Moral Science" to the underclassmen. But it was one of the conditions of the foundation that the professor should visit the students regularly in their rooms and converse with them on the subject of their souls' salvation. That must have been a burdensome duty at any time to a man possessed of a sense of humor and a knowledge of young men. It was already getting to be an impossible task when Smyth took the professorship, and although I can testify from personal experience that he did not wholly neglect the duty, I can also give the assurance that he did not push its performance to the point of making his direct ministrations intolerable.

But at that time and in that college the students had every reason to expect constraint and coercion in religious matters. In 1855 the late Charles Carroll Everett, a native of Brunswick, and a graduate in the class of 1850, having been two years a tutor, was chosen professor of modern languages for two years. It was, and still is, the custom to elect a professor for a probationary term, at the end of which, if he was elected simply as a professor, no term being specified, he was elected for life. Unfortunately or rather fortunately for Dr. Everett and for the Harvard Theological School - he was a Unitarian. So strong was denominational feeling at that time that when Everett came up for election in 1857 the trustees and overseers refused to make the appointment. A few years later President Leonard Woods who had by that time resigned the presidency told the story of Everett's rejection to me, then an alumnus of but a very few years. He concluded the narration with the epigrammatic remark, "They thought to make the professorship of modern languages a bulwark of orthodoxy."

The professorship in his own college was not Smyth's proper place. His duties and his associations must have had a narrowing rather than a broadening tendency. His students cannot have been wholly mistaken in regarding him as inclined to intolerance theologically and as extremely rigid in his view of what to them were venial offences. But that was a con

sequence of his environment, it was not a natural trait,and when his work and his surroundings became more congenial his true character had a chance to assert itself. Although his connection with the teaching force of the college ceased with his transfer to Andover, he cherished to the end of his life his love for his alma mater and his interest in its welfare. In 1874 he became an overseer of Bowdoin, and in 1877 was chosen one of the trustees of the institution, a position which he held until his death. He was most constant in his attention to the duties of the trusteeship, and was zealous in his advocacy of all measures which he deemed advantageous, and equally unrelenting in opposition to changes which he regarded as harmful. One of the last of his services to the college was the preparation of a powerful argument against dropping Greek as a requirement for admission to the college. The times were against him, and many of those who agreed with him in principle were compelled, by the fact that most of the fitting schools had already dropped Greek, to vote against him.

At Andover Professor Smyth had full scope for all his powers. He went there at the age of thirty-four years, a young man in the vigor of life and full of enthusiasm. Professor Edward Y. Hincks, his colleague in the seminary, prepared for the New England Historic Genealogical Society1 a memoir of Professor Smyth, from which I take the following illuminating passage:

The student of church history has, as a very important part of his task, to trace the development of Christian doctrine. Tracing the genesis of that belief, and comparing it with other forms of Christian thought, excludes the opinion that it is the perfect and ultimate formulation of truth, and suggests points of view from which its defects may be seen. Different types of theology differ, for reasons which it is not necessary to mention here, in respect to the relative degrees to which the corrective influence of the history of doctrine is congenial to them. The New England theology was less appreciative of the value of this influence than many others. This was due in part to its noblest qualities, to its containing a protest of the Christian reason against certain defects of the ancient doctrine; in part to the circumstances of its origin, to its having originated in a new country, and in the minds of men who necessarily lived in a certain re1 Register, LIX. 13, January, 1905.