DEATH OF J. S. BUCKMINSTER. 463 val between his active career and his shattered frame. At once, as though stricken on sunken rocks, in the calm, blue sea, and amidst the cloudless heaven, hist noble intellect became a wreck. The silver cord endured no loosening from its hold, it snapped asunder, and was gone! It should certainly be cause of deep gratitude that he was cut down at once, without the slow decay, without the loss of one of those brilliant and fascinating qualities that so won the love of his contemporaries. That he did not live to become the sepulchre of his dead intellect, demands the devout gratitude of all who knew him. From the records of an interleaved register, I am able to give some account of the employment of the few days before the attack of his last, fatal illness. On the 26th of May, he preached the sermon already mentioned, and attended a funeral in the afternoon. On the 27th, election day, the funerals of two children are recorded. On the evening of the 28th, after attending the convention of ministers, he performed the ceremony of marriage for two couples, apparently at his own house. On Sunday, he repeated, in his own pulpit, with alterations, the sermon prepared for the society already mentioned, dividing it into two sermons, for morning and afternoon. In the evening, he received the usual visiters in his study. On Monday afternoon, he met with the association of ministers; and we may easily suppose it was a day of more than his usual exhaustion and lassitude, after the labors of the week and of the Sabbath. On Tuesday evening, June 2d, he met the committee of the parish on parish business, and afterwards attended, and took part, as was always a delight to him, with his musical society. On Wednesday, he had so violent an access of his disorder as completely to prostrate his physical powers, and to deprive him of his reason, which returned only at momentary intervals during the seven days that the struggle between life and death continued. On Tuesday, June 9th, he expired, with a serene and blissful expression of countenance, that seemed already to foreshadow the higher world for which the departing spirit was winged. During the whole of his short illness, his bed was surrounded, and the apartments of the house thronged, with anxious friends, lingering, with fond regret, over the insensible form from which genius, but not beauty, had departed; listening, with breathless attention, to catch the inarticulate sounds, in which the more ex⚫perienced ear of the physician detected the words of prayer. Friends and strangers, the merchants, as they met on 'change, and all, as they paused from their daily toil, whispered to each other words of hope or fear; and a public and fearful calamity seemed to hang over the town. It is delightful to recollect that the last rational exercise of his mind, the last conscious act of his life, was joining in the devotional music of the choir of his church. It was no doubt the very moment in which he would wish to die, as he has said, in one of his earliest letters, in the swelling notes of celestial praise, he could wish to dissolve into sound.' In the music in which he delighted, it seemed, indeed, as though departed spirits came to announce and to bear testimony to a future union. The close of his life, so in unison with its whole aim, has added a sweetness to his memory that embalms it for ever. SERVICES AT PORTSMOUTH, AND BOSTON. -REINTERMENT AND MONUMENT OF J. S. BUCKMINSTER. 1812. As we draw towards the close of the life of my father, I would fain record that the cheerfulness and apparent health which he enjoyed in 1808, and the three succeeding years, had suffered no interruption. He had been, through life, a man of much domestic grief. The sensibility of his heart had been often wrung by the loss of children at the age when they are the most lovely and attractive, when the opening faculties awaken the most tender interest in the parent, and the sorrow occasioned by their loss is as acute, though not perhaps as enduring, as when they die at a later age. At the loss of his second wife, in 1805, whom he loved with a passion fond almost to idolatry, those who witnessed the agony of his grief trembled, lest his reason or his life should become the sacrifice to an attachment to which the energy of his soul and the sensibility of his heart were wholly given. In 1808, and in the three succeeding years, he had recovered from the desolating effect of this and other losses. His daughter remarks, in a letter found in the preceding pages, that she had never known him in better health and spirits. His daughters were now old enough to be to their father, not only domestic assistants, but companions and friends; and the more youthful society that was drawn to the parsonage, by finding companions of their own age there, was a great accession of pleasure and of cheerful conversation to Dr. Buckminster himself. My brother, also, when he came from Boston to visit his family, was usually accompanied by one of his young friends, which added much to the cheerfulness of the party assembled in what was called, par eminence, the little parlor.' In the summer of 1808, he allowed himself the recreation of a journey to the beloved scenes of his youth. As he travelled with his own horse and chaise, and a daughter for a companion, it was a journey of formidable length. He visited New Haven, at the season of Commencement, and enjoyed, for the last time, the renewal of old associations, and the delightful reminiscences of college days. It was true that younger classes had risen up which knew not Joseph,' yet it was a singular and fortunate circumstance, that a large number of the class of 1770 had, like him, gone up to visit their Alma Mater, and others of the classes to whom he had been tutor, so that the renewal of old associations was as complete and delightful as possible. In 1809, he was twice invited to preach occasional sermons, at the ordination of Rev. Mr. Thurston, at Manchester, N. H., and before the Female Charita - FAMILY OF DR. BUCKMINSTER. 467 ble Society of Newburyport. Both of the sermons. were requested for the press, and they are among the most vigorous and interesting of his productions. It was a peculiar cause of anxiety to my father that the solitary situation of his son, (obliged to make the parsonage-house his residence,) and his singular liability to illness, compelled the necessity of dividing his family, and the sacrifice of the society of his eldest daughter. The second was, unfortunately, at that time, too much of an invalid to be much from under the parental roof, and the others were all too young to leave home, except under the care of the elder sisters. But, as their brother's house was a pleasant residence, and Boston presented so much rarer advantages of education for the younger children, one or two were constantly with their brother, and away from home. To a man so tender in his domestic affections, these blanks in the family circle were peculiarly painful. At the time of which I speak, my father's appearance was that of a person in the full vigor of life. In 1808, he was fifty-seven years old. His remarkably striking form was unbent and unworn. The raven black of his hair was just beginning to be streaked with gray, and the temples were fringed with silver. He was often, at this period of his life, while he was a widower, solicited to join social parties, where his daughters were invited, and his presence, while it checked all undue mirth, was thought to add much to the cheerfulness of the party. But the young were not those with whom he could the most readily find sympathy, and, while his house was filled with them, he often, no doubt, felt doubly alone. |