The Earle family : Ralph Earle and his descendants

2l8 THE EARLE FAMILY [Seventh
as the principal of a school for young ladies, in Clinton street. In
1S70 he visited Europe, and in 1871 was appointed Professor of
Natural Science in Ilaverford College, Pa. He also served several
months as acting-professor in the University of Pennsylvania, in the
place of Professor Frazer, who had died in office. In 1875, a new
chair, that of Philosophy and Logic, was established in Ilaverford,
and he was transferred to it. The subjects now coming under his
charge were particularly congenial and agreeable to a man of his
mental constitution. On the organization of Bryn Mawr College,
Pa., he was appointed Lecturer on l'sychologv and Logic in that
institution. In 1886 he presided at the commencement exercises of
Haverford College, as Acting-President. This was essentially the
closing act of the labor of his life. In the foregoing vear he had a
severe attack of pneumonia, from which he never fully recovered.
This was followed by a complication of diseases, in which the action
of the heart was seriously affected. He now failed rapidly until his
decease, which took place at his residence on the College grounds.
He was the embodiment of the student and the teacher. His leis-
ure time throughout Ins mercantile life was religiously devoted to the
laborious investigation of subjects, both physical and mental, main
of which are among the most abstract, occult and profound. The
great scope and thoroughness of this research are attested by the one
hundred and thirty-five papers by him which, through a series of
years, were published by the American Philosophical Society, of
which he was a member, for several years one of the secretaries, and
latterly one of the vice-presidents. Their titles, with those of his
other writings, indicate a wide range in philology, meteorology,
physics and mental philosophy. For the last twenty years or more,
his investigations were chiefly directed "to the confirmation of the
general postulate that ' all physical phenomena are due to an Omni-
present Power, acting in ways which may be represented by har-
monic or cyclical undulations in an elastic medium.'" He was a
contributor to Silliman's American Journal of Arts and Sciences,
the Journal of the Franklin Institute, The London, Dublin and
Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine, and the Co?nptcs Rendus, of
Paris. He published, in 1S44. The Eleme?its of Arithmetic. Part
First, which was followed by Part Second ; in 1848, the Common
School Arithmetic; in 1850, another arithmetic, prepared in conjunction
with Horace Mann ; and in 1SS4, Elements of Meteorology