others, and was in some points a clearer exposition of my views and
feelings than either of the other books, its predecessors. The poems
"Homesick in Heaven" and the longer group of passages coming from the
midnight reveries of the Young Astronomer have thoughts in them not so
fully expressed elsewhere in my writings.

The first of these two poems is at war with our common modes of thought.
In looking forward to rejoining in a future state those whom we have
loved on earth,--as most of us hope and many of us believe we shall,--we
are apt to forget that the same individuality is remembered by one
relative as a babe, by another as an adult in the strength of maturity,
and by a third as a wreck with little left except its infirmities and its
affections. The main thought of this poem is a painful one to some
persons. They have so closely associated life with its accidents that
they expect to see their departed friends in the costume of the time in
which they best remember them, and feel as if they should meet the spirit
of their grandfather with his wig and cane, as they habitually recall him
to memory.

The process of scientific specialization referred to and illustrated in
this record has been going on more actively than ever during these last
twenty years. We have only to look over the lists of the Faculties and
teachers of our Universities to see the subdivision of labor carried out
as never before. The movement is irresistible; it brings with it
exactness, exhaustive knowledge, a narrow but complete self-satisfaction,
with such accompanying faults as pedantry, triviality, and the kind of
partial blindness which belong to intellectual myopia. The specialist is
idealized almost into sublimity in Browning's "Burial of the Grammarian."
We never need fear that he will undervalue himself. To be the supreme
authority on anything is a satisfaction to self-love next door to the