Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/612

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578
CHANNING
CHANNING

tals in London. He began to practise in Boston in 1812, and in the same year became lecturer on obstetrics at Harvard. He was appointed in 1815 to fill the new chair of obstetrics and medical jurisprudence, and held it till his resignation in 1854. He became, in 1821, Dr. James Jackson's assistant as physician of the newly established Massachusetts general hospital, and continued there for nearly twenty years. He published “Address on the Prevention of Pauperism” (1843); a “Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, illustrated by 581 Cases,” which attracted much attention both here and abroad, and had a marked effect on that branch of medical science (Boston, 1848); “Professional Reminiscences of Foreign Travel,” “New and Old,” and “Miscellaneous Poems” (1851); “A Physician's Vacation, or a Summer in Europe” (1856); “ Reformation of Medical Science” (1857); and has contributed largely to periodical literature. — Another brother, Edward Tyrrel, educator, b. in Newport, R. I., 12 Dec., 1790; d. in Cambridge, Mass., 8 Feb., 1856. He studied at Harvard, but, like his brother Walter, became involved in the college rebellion of 1807, and was not graduated with his class, but afterward received his degree. He subsequently opened a law-office in Boston, but gave his attention chiefly to literature, and was a member of the club of young men who, in the winter of 1814-'5, projected a bimonthly magazine, whose chief managers were to be Pres. Kirkland, Jared Sparks, George Ticknor, Mr. Channing, Richard Henry Dana, and John Gallison. About this time William Tudor returned from Europe with a matured plan for a quarterly review, and, the two projects having been united, the first number of the “North American Review” appeared in May, 1815. Mr. Channing succeeded Jared Sparks as its editor in 1818, and conducted it with the aid of his cousin, R. H. Dana, till October, 1819, when he was appointed Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory in Harvard. This post he held till 1851, and during that time had great influence over the literary taste of the students, giving direction to the reading of an entire generation of prominent men in all departments of thought. He continued to be one of the foremost contributors to the “North American Review” till his death. His style was much admired for its strength and purity; his taste was severe and critical, and he was a brilliant conversationalist. He published a life of his grandfather, William Ellery, in Sparks's “American Biographies,” and a volume of lectures on rhetoric and oratory, given to the senior class at Harvard, appeared after his death, with a memoir by R. H. Dana, Jr. (Boston, 1856). — William Ellery's son, William Francis, physician, b. in Boston, Mass., 22 Feb., 1820, studied at Harvard, but, determining to follow medicine, was graduated in that department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1844. During 1841-'2 he was assistant on the first geological survey of New Hampshire, and in 1847 served in a similar capacity to the survey of the copper region of Lake Superior. From 1842 till 1843 he was associated with Dr. Henry I. Bowditch in the editorship of “The Latimer Journal” in Boston. Dr. Channing has devoted considerable attention to inventing, and he was connected with Moses G. Farmer in the perfecting of the American fire-alarm telegraph from 1845 till 1851, and the process patented in 1857 is now in general use. In 1865 he patented a ship-railway for the inter-oceanic transit of ships, and in 1877 invented a portable electro-magnetic telephone. He has contributed various articles to the “American Journal of Science,” and has published, with Prof. John Bacon, Jr., “Davis's Manual of Magnetism” (Boston, 1841); “Notes on the Medical Application of Electricity” (1849); and “The American Fire-alarm Telegraph,” a lecture delivered before the Smithsonian institution (1855). — William Ellery's nephew, William Henry, clergyman, son of Francis Dana Channing, b. in Boston, 25 May, 1810; d. in London, 23 Dec., 1884, was graduated at Harvard in 1829, and at the divinity-school in 1833. He was settled as Unitarian minister in Cincinnati in 1839, and became warmly interested in the schemes of Fourier and others for social reorganization. He removed to Boston about 1847, afterward to Rochester and to New York, where, both as preacher and editor, he became a leader in a movement of Christian socialism, while he tended toward a very elevated and somewhat mystical interpretation of the liberal theology of his day. In opinion he was probably more rationalistic than his uncle, the editing of whose life and correspondence (1848) made his chief literary task, but was even more rapt and fervent in his pulpit exercises. These, on principle, he always conducted without notes, to which practice may be ascribed, in part, not only an eloquence of singular spontaneity and power, but a style that frequently became rather rhapsody than argument. As a platform-speaker, on the numerous occasions which (about 1840-'50) created a new era in American oratory, his eloquence has never been surpassed. He was also a frequent contributor to public journals, representing different phases of the intellectual or social interests he had at heart, including the “Present,” which was his personal organ of communication with the public. Besides the memoir of his uncle, he published a translation of Jouffroy's “Ethics” and a memoir of his cousin, James H. Perkins, of Cincinnati, and was chief editor of the memoirs of Margaret Fuller d'Ossoli (Boston, 1852). During a stay in England, about 1854, he became greatly distinguished and admired as a preacher, and in 1857 was established as successor to Rev. James Martineau in the ministry of Hope street chapel, Liverpool. In 1862, being powerfully drawn to America by the civil war, in which the fate of southern slavery was then clearly seen to be involved, he accepted the charge of the Unitarian church in Washington, D. C., and afterward, when the church building was offered and employed as a military hospital, he was chosen chaplain of the house, in which capacity he served about two years. After the war his life was chiefly spent in England, his last visit in America being in 1880, the centenary of his uncle's birth. Mr. Channing was a singularly fervid and consistent idealist, with a buoyant hopefulness of temperament, a sympathetic sweetness and warmth of disposition, and a native piety, which class him rather among saints or mystics than with the active agents of practical reform; yet nothing could be more definite, or, in his own view, more practical, than the specific objects for which he labored. The strongest personal impression of himself, except with those who were close and near friends in his earlier life, he has probably left in England. His only son, who had a distinguished record at Oxford, is a member of parliament. His elder daughter, now dead, was the wife of Sir Edwin Arnold, the poet. His life has been written by Octavius B. Frothingham (Boston, 1886). — Walter's son, William Ellery, author, b. in Boston, Mass., 10 June, 1818, was educated in Round Hill school, Northampton, at the Boston Latin-school, where he had Charles Sumner for an instructor, and at Harvard, but was not graduated.