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in the words of one, " as well as the sculptor would know the product
of his chisel; " and the other, " as well as a painter, who had studied
a face for a week, and painted it. upon the canvass, could know the
portrait as his own work, wherever he might see it."
If anything more were needed, it is found in the conformitv of the
jaw of Dr. Parkman to the mould which Dr. Keep had; which mould
corresponded with all the peculiarities of the jaw of Dr. Parkman,
picked out from the smouldering ashes, and, by that true lover of
science and uncompromising seeker for the truth, Dr. Wyman, put
together, and produced here before us. If he had produced here Dr.
Parkman's right hand, with a scar upon it which every one of his
friends had known, the evidence of identity could not be more conclu-
sive. When we consider that here is a man in this culprit's dock, with
such advantages of education and of culture as he has enjoyed, who
is himself a devotee of science, - and we feel that he has so debased
and betrayed his high vocation and mission as to have slain, either in
anger or in cold blood, whichever it may be, his fellow-man, and his
benefactor and friend, - it almost sickens us ; we feel that there is no
shield for any of us against the commission of great crimes ; that
culture, science, and all the ennobling and purifying influence of edu-
cation, are utterly lost upon us. To find them subjected to such base
uses as that chemist's laboratory has witnessed, prompts us to exclaim,
with the poet,
'1 Oh star-eyed science! hast thou wandered there
To waft us back the tidings of despair?"
But we recover and are refreshed only when we go to the other
fact which this case discloses, that, although science had been debased
to the purpose of destroying those remains, yet science, in its true
vocation, in its nobler scope, sifts and penetrates those smouldering
ashes, and evokes from them those materials with which it recon-
structs almost the entire body which science had vainly attempted to
destroy. This gives to us a renewed assurance of respect for science !
And I cannot pass from this part of the case without expressing a
feeling which has been often in my mind during the solemnities of
this trial-the honor that is due to that noble profession through
whose ministers this assurance has come to us. When we have wel-
comed them to our bedsides, amid our trials and sufferings, we have
loved and honored them; but when we meet them here, and see them
takinP the stand, as they do, most reluctantly, against one of their own
brotherhood, - forgetting, or rather trampling under foot, all those
considerations which arse from caste, from class, and giving them-
selves unreservedly to the truth, let it strike where it may, let it fall
where it will,-they challenge and are worthy of the highest honor;
and they have my humble reverence. One of their number, whom we
looked to have been here, and whose aid, in another recent capital trial,
I had occasion to seek- in which his testimony showed how much
he would have added to the impressiveness of this-has passed away
from us, since these investi0'ations commenced,- a man who honored
the community in which he lived, who honored the profession to
which he belonged, and who, for the cause of science, has been removed
from us too soon, - I refer to the late Dr. Martin Gay, whose testimony
to that scene down- in yonder prison, and over at that Medical College,
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