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BENJAMIN HALLOWELL.

It is idle to speculate as to what the singularly gifted scholar who was yesterday laid to his rest in the Friends' burial ground at Sandy Springs might have been, if he had chosen to become a leader rather than a teacher of men.
His career might have been that of a great publicist or jurist if his cultivated tastes had not led him to prefer "the cool, sequestered vale of life."
His talents were of the highest orde, and if they had been associated with even a moderate amount of ambition his name might have been as conspicuous among statesmen as it is among mathematicians and philanthropists.

But he will be remembered not for what he might have been, but for what he really was.
If he did not attain the highest place in the temple of fame, he certainly was the centre of a circle of devoted friends that expanded with his ripening years.
His large philanthropy took in the freedmen and the Indian, and both will remember him as a wise benefactor.
He may be said to be the author of what is now known as the "Indian peace policy," and President Lincoln as well as President Grant frequently sought his advice as to the methods to be pursued in dealing with the emancipated slaves and the untutored savages.
In the religious denomination to which he belonged (the Society of Friends) he exercised a commanding influence, and was by common consent regarded as the ablest man in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting.

The fair daughters of Maryland have often brought men into the State who have done her great honor, and Mr. Hallowell was one of those who became a Marylander by the accident of marriage.
He was born in Pennsylvania, near the city of Philadelphia, in 1799, and was educated at the "West Town Boarding School," quite a celebrated institution in those days, controlled by the Society of Friends.
Miss Farquhar, of Montgomery county, sister of Prof. Farquhar, one of the most prominent educators in Maryland, was pupil in the same school, and she and Mr. Hallowell, after they had passed through the prescribed course of study, both became teachers.
Miss Farquhar subsequently returned to her Maryland home; Mr. Hallowell followed, and became Professor of Mathematics in a school at Nair Hill, Montogomery county, established by the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends.
There could be only one conclusion to such a Quaker romance: Prof. Hallowell and Miss Farquhar were married.
This was about the year 1820.
His wife died some eighteen months ago.

Professor Hallowell subsequently founded a boarding school at Alexandria, which he made one of the most famous educational institutions south of Mason and Dixon's line.
Many of his pupils were sons of Senators, members of Congress and officers of the army and navy residing in Washington, and others came from the far South, from Mexico, from the West Indies, and even from England.
Professor Hallowell's great reputation as a mathematician led many persons who were desirous of having their sons admitted to the West Point Military Academy and to the Naval School at Annapolis to send them to his school to be put through a course of mathematical training.
This school continued to flourish and to gain in reputation until broken up by the war.
Prof. Hallowell retired from its management some years before, and was succeeded by his son, Professor Henry C. Hallowell, and his son-in-law, Hon Francis Miller, now United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Benjamin Hallowell returned to his farm in Montgomery county, and there he spent the remainder of his days, except that he was for a brief period at the head of the Maryland Agricultural College.
While engaged in teaching he frequently delivered lectures upon the natural sciences, which were attended by the elite of Alexandria and Washington, and he kept up a correspondence with the most distinguished scientific men on both sides of the ocean.
He published several works upon mathematics and mechanical philosophy, and during his later years he devoted a good deal of his time to the investigation of social and economic questions.
He was fond of writing Sunday school books, catechisms and instructive stories for the young.
Some twenty years ago a druggist in Alexandria made a mistake in compounding a physician's prescription and Prof. Hallowell swallowed a poisonous mixture that came near terminating his life.
He never fully recovered from the effects of the poison, although he lived to be seventy-eight years of age.
He leaves three children—Prof. Henry C. Hallowell, of Sandy Springs; Mrs. Miller (wife of Hon. Francis Miller) and Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., a merchant in Philadelphia.

BENJAMIN HALLOWELL.

A TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY—WORK AND CHARACTER OF THE PROFESSOR—HIS CONNECTION WITH THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.

To the Editor of The Tribune.

SIR: Several years ago, when Benjamin Hallowell was only a name to me, I was a guest at a beautiful home near Sandy Spring, the seat of the Montgomery Friends.
My host, a prominent Marylander, was of the community, and I accompanied him one Sunday to the Quaker meeting house; a rude, old-time brick structure, in the margin of a primitive forest of considerable extent.
Most of the congregation were in their places when we entered.
I had hardly taken my seat when my attention was arrested by one of the most striking looking men I have ever seen.
Almost in front, facing me, on the raised platform against the wall with the elders, sat a man of seventy, of just less than gigantic mould, with a grand, massive head, scantily crowned with longish white hair, a lofty brow, and noble features bowed in reverential reverie, with closed eyes, with his shoulders above the heads of the common men about him, dwarfed to pigmies by his presence.
I was not familiar with the leading names of the friends, but knew I was looking at an extraordinary man.
I glanced from him over the silent assembly of serene, silent men and women, and back at the noble form before me, in molding which nature had reverted to the great primitive type, which she now so rarely produces.
The spirit and presence of the silent worship stole upon me.

It was a June morning, and the notes of thrushes and robins came to me from the surrounding forest.
Suddenly little twittering sounds, like the first notes of a bird's song, fell on my ear, and I turned just as the form I so admired was rising.
He rested his trembling hands on the back of the seat before him, with little stoop in his shoulders, and a bending of the head, revealing deep-set, but very fine blue eyes.
The voice was sweet, tender and flute-like.
A little monotonous, but could never have wearied.
The sermon, if such it might be called, was a sort of lofty and beautiful chant.
It was an expression of the depth, purity and peace of that holiness of heart and life to which man may attain, and its outer manifestation of love, benevolence and widest charity.
The language was nervous, happily chosen, simple and pure, and beyond the power of the mere rhetorician.
The matter was so arranged that its clear statement was a great and beautiful argument, while a trill of the voice rendered it touching.
The delivery of this rare homily may have occupied fifteen minutes.
As the preacher was sitting down, another train of thought opened to him, when, with the same little murmur, he arose to his full height, and spoke, perhaps, five minutes longer—not in continuance of the first discourse, but of a germane topic, which illustrated and supplemented it.
He sat down, observed a moment's silence, turned and shooked hands with the man next to him—a signal that the service had closed.

That was Benjamin Howell.
As he passed out, men and boys, matrons and maidens gathered about him, followed him out to his carriage, and did not part with him till he drove away.
He was of them, lived their daily life, went in and out before them, ministering, beautifying and elevating their lives; helping to improve and adorn their homes and fortunes, lighting and conducting them along the upper paths of virtue, culture and benificence; yet so natural and common, that, in a way, they lost the power of appreciating the more striking of his remarkable qualities and powers.

I came to know him well, all these years since I first saw him.
He was a man rarely endowed, and doubtless in his philosophy of life, he secured as much of real value from the world as it is capable of yielding.
Nature had given him most of the striking qualities of intellect, will power, and the rudiments of the strongest human passions, and clothed them with a form of dignity, beauty, and grace.
Seemingly he had but to choose his career, and will his own fortune.
Among his gifts the religious element was large, and this with his early training and surroundings, determined his course.
In history there was but one model.
The spirit of Mary's Son he made his own.
It restrained his ambition, opened his pathway, enlightened his studies, formed his manners, and informed his life.
Politics and the government of the Nation, all great enterprises, were very much, and he kept well informed of them.
The unfolding and fashioning the minds, the frame and structure of the character of the chosen young men of the land, were to him much more.
To that he dedicated himself with a devotion and unreserve which marked his appreciation of its importance.
No youth was ever under his care who did not carry with him through life something of the bent and bias imparted by his hand; as none approached him without reverence or left him without love.

His work was that which lay nearest his hand.
Emphatically he loved his neighbor.
His neighborhood was the universe, and all living things were the objects of his care.
As his manners were the manifestation of his heart and spirit, he was naturally the most graceful and polished of cultured men.
The servants, the coachmen who drove him to the railroad station, always remembered his consideration for them.
If a man may apply the term "lovable" to a man, that was eminently his due.
Nothing bearing life ever came under his care that did not love him as it was capable.
It was beautiful to see him break from a clinging group of lads and maidens and hear him say: "Farewell, now I must go to my Margaret," toward whom he manifested the same ardor of love, and tender observance at seventy-five as in the first days of wedded bliss.

If his life was lovely beyond the usual, his last illness and death were beautiful and touching beyond earth.
His Margaret, passed away nearly two years before his own exit, and it was a sore trial of his faith that he must remain longer.
That the example of his life might lack no perfection, that illness was a protracted bodily torture, gradually growing more intense, till the sources of life were exhausted, yet such were the strength and fortitude of the spirit, that all was endured with a serene smile, calling forth assurances of the mercy and goodness of God.
Sometimes when the anguish was at its greatest, he said to his attendant: "Thee must allow me to groan a little."
He refused anodynes and anæsthetics, saying, "if permitted, he would retain his faculties unclouded."
He wished to note the shades of on-coming death, which, were, also, to be the opening dawn of immortality.
Such an intellect could never be shattered.
Once it seemed to wander, making a luminous track.
As if his great sufferings might disquiet the faith of a favorite daughter in the mercy of Providence, with clearness and energy he demonstrated two or three great mathematical problems; concluding with: "So thee sees daughter, that it is all clear and right."
His method of clarifying and refreshing his mind, even in this illness, was by the solution of a problem.
As the end approached, the glow of the perfect faith became a luminous numbus, on the almost transfigured countenance—instances of which many have read of, but few ever witnessed.
His last words were assurances that the way was clear, the light broad and steady, and the glory serene.
A. G. RIDDLE.
Washington, Sept. 1877.