Page:Matthew Fontaine Maury 1806-1873.pdf/8

 his mind to be dulled or his ardor for study to be dissipated by the variety of his professional labors or his continual change of place, but who, by the attentive observation of the course of the winds, the climate, the currents of the seas and oceans, acquired those materials for knowledge which, afterwards, in Washington, he systematized in charts and in a book,—charts which are now in the hands of all seamen and a book which has carried the fame of its author into the most distant countries of the earth. Nor is he merely a high authority in Nautical Science. He is also a pattern of noble manners and good morals, because in the guidance of his own life he has always shown himself a brave and good man. When that cruel civil war in America was imminent, this man did not hesitate to leave home and friends, a place of honor and an office singularly adapted to his genius—to throw away, in a word, all the goods and gifts of Fortune—that he might defend and sustain the cause that seemed to him the just one.

"'The victorious cause pleased the gods,' and now, perhaps, as victorious causes will do, it pleases the majority of men; and yet, no one can withhold his admiration from the man who, though numbered among the vanquished, held his faith pure and unblemished, even at the price of poverty and exile."

In that day's work, typical of England's ever-advancing civilization, Cambridge honored herself in honoring a man, the exponent of high character and of world-wide service. But we may not linger there, even to enjoy with the Maurys the Strawberry Festival in the garden of Britain's Astronomer-Royal, John Couch Adams, co-discoverer, with Le Verrier, of the Planet Neptune.

This sketch must be brief, but a logical discussion of Maury's career necessarily includes some account of his ancestors and incidental reference to his own early environment—his home, his pursuits, his education.

Reviewing the history of all nations, ever and again the pages are found blurred by the cruelties of political and religious persecution. Thus it was for centuries in France: there was no escape for the Huguenots from torture and death, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, except to abjure their faith or to seek refuge in foreign lands. Many of the most intelligent,