He was the son of Col. Henry Sargent of Leicester, a man of prominence, who exercised much influence in all the public affairs of his town and county. A bright and somewhat precocious lad, he early developed the disposition for study, entered Harvard College at the age of 15, and graduated in the class of 1834. The relations he established with the institution and with his classmates were among the happiest and most abiding of his life. After graduation, he began the study of medicine with Dr. Edward Flint of Leicester, a prominent and successful practitioner, and after remaining there about a year, continued the study with Dr. James Jackson of Boston, attending the course of medical lectures there and also at Philadelphia, and receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine from his Alma Mater in 1837. He was almost immediately thereafter appointed to the position of House Physician in the Massachusetts General Hospital, and in 1838 visited Europe and remained for two years, continuing his studies mainly in the hospitals of Paris and of London. Returning to this country in 1840, he established himself in practice in Worcester, where he early obtained the leadership in the profession, a position he held unchallenged for the period of nearly or quite a generation. In 1850 he again visited Europe, and was engaged in professional study and observation there for nearly a year, and still again in 1868. The fruits of this study and observation in larger fields were manifest through his life, in the ease and certainty with which he assumed and held the highest rank in the profession, and enured to the lasting benefit of thousands of the sick and suffering among whom his daily labors were wrought.

It is remarkable that amid the engrossments of so extended professional and other intellectual pursuits, he should have been able to develop so decided a capacity for actual business-using that term in its more restricted and literal sense, and to be recognized as a man whose associa

Probably in

tion in such enterprises was very valuable. these he found a relaxation from professional labor, a welcome variety, and so turned to them the more readily the powers of his quick and versatile mind. The Life Assurance Co., the Gas Light Co., the Institution for Savings, the Worcester Bank, all availed themselves of his services in the capacity of President, Vice-President, or Director; and he held other business relations, not few nor insignificant.

He

In institutions whose purpose was principally or wholly eleemosynary, his co-operation was justly considered of great value. The Lunatic Hospital, the City Hospital, and the Memorial Hospital, were in turn objects of his interest and fostering care. In each of them he served several years as Trustee and was one of the Board of the Memorial Hospital from its incorporation in 1870 till his death. was the originator of the plan of the Medical Improvment Society in 1845, and member or Councillor of several of the well known associations for the advancement of professional learning and practice in the county and State. His influence in the profession, among his contemporaries, and especially upon the younger members, was of the highest tone, and for effective power and result has hardly ever been equalled in the State.

As a member of this Society and a Councillor, he has been valuable and valued-a faithful attendant, and useful contributor. Three reports of the Council which he made in different years attest the versatility of his talent and his ready adaptation of style to subject. These have all been published and form part of our Proceedings. The founding of a new religious society in the city of Worcester in 1845 called out the largest sympathy, and the most earnest cooperation on the part of Dr. Sargent, one of the very few men on whose efforts and zeal the results of the enterprise depended, and by whom it was carried through to permanent and marked success. With no less enthusiasm he

identified himself early with the great moral and religious movement which had for its distinct and definite object the abolition of human slavery, and, amid the doubts, perplexities and obloquy which from time to time attended the progress of that movement, continued in constant and unshaken faith to the end.

To the University recently established in the city of Worcester, of which he was early elected a Trustee, he gave much thought, as a possible means of the greatest intellectual good, an institution for the advancement of learning on the higher planes, and the enlargement of the boundaries of human knowledge. The views he held and from time to time expressed, as to the present opportunities such an endowment as this affords, were marked by luminous intelligence, the largest liberality, and bright, courageous hope. Probably no man of his years was more imbued with the enthusiasm of youth in intellectual things. Venerating the ancient ways as admirably adapted to their times and the objects sought through them, he yet saw and was not afraid to be known to see, that new occasions bring new duties, and that time makes ancient good uncouth. These things are stated here not by way of eulogy, since eulogy is in no sense the object of these sketches; but because, being true, they may serve as an encouragement to associates who are so rapidly coming into the places of seniority, to grow old as wisely, as liberally, as nobly as did he.

For the Council.

JOHN D. WASHBURN.

NAVAL HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION.

BY EDWARD E. HALE.

THE naval history of the American Revolution has hardly attracted the attention it seems to deserve.

It is not difficult to account for such inattention. Movements on land are connected together, and a certain dramatic unity can be made out, from the study of them or the description of them. But, in the Revolution, those naval conflicts in which two or three vessels only were engaged were much more important in the aggregate than the few battles of great fleets. America, indeed, had no great fleets. Her sea victories, which were many, and her losses, which were many, were generally the results of separate encounters.

Now, when the number of such encounters is several hundred in a year, the most painstaking annalist may be excused if he devotes little time or attention to those of less importance, and, indeed, if he dismisses the year's work by some single sweeping statement. In fact, we have the authority of Almon's Remembrancer for saying that, in the year 1777, 467 vessels of the English commercial fleet were captured. Probably the English captures of American merchantmen were not so many. But the Americans had still a large commercial marine in that year. The English took several of our vessels of war, and we took some of theirs. I name this year because it precedes the declaration of war by France. It is then probable that seven or eight hundred captures were made by one side or another, about two a day. If that is a fair average, from which to estimate

the encounters at sea, seven years of war must have given about five thousand such encounters. It is a matter of course that history shall make no record of the greater part of them. Indeed, our leading histories are satisfied when they tell the story of the privateering exploits of the beginning, of the attack on Bermuda and the Bahamas, two or three of Paul Jones's most picturesque exploits, and the experiences of the fleets of the Count de Grasse and of D'Estaing. This is not unnatural. But it is, after all, perpetual dropping which wears away the stone, and a careful estimate of the public opinion of England, will probably show that the loss, in seven years, of nearly three thousand vessels from the merchant marine of England had more to do with the absolute change of public opinion in England between 1775 and 1781 than any other special cause which can be named. The merchants did not like to pay insurance ranging from forty per cent. in a year, even to sixty per cent. sometimes; and a nation of shopkeepers, which would not have grumbled much under the taxes which Lord North's government imposed, became restive and recalcitrant under the terrible checks inflicted on their foreign trade. Of one year it is said that only forty vessels escaped out of the four hundred in the African trade. Of the same year, it is said that nearly half of the fleet which traded directly between Ireland and the West Indies was taken. Abraham Whipple, in one vessel, took ten West Indiamen out of a fleet which did not number fifty in all.

It is the privilege of the gentleman who prepares the Council report that he may ask such questions or suggest such inquiries as seem of interest to him in his own line of study. In the few minutes in which I shall detain the society, I do not make any attempt to tell the story of the naval experiences of the Revolution. I have hoped, however, that I might call the attention of gentlemen interested in such studies to the need of a larger and fuller review of the subject than has been made, particularly by speaking of