Hill

much against his wishes, to accept the presi-
dency of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio,
in which his wife's kinsman, Rev. Henry Whit-
ney Bellows [g.z/.], was enthusiastically inter-
ested. His studies in education fitted him admi-
rably for the post, but the financial insecurity of
the college compelled him to spend his energies
in securing funds for running expenses. In 1862
the war forced the college to suspend, and Hill
was called to the presidency of Harvard.

His administration was not without opposi-
tion, because of his liberal theology, predilec-
tion towards science, and lack of executive abil-
ity. Unfortunately the latter gave some cause
for criticism, and the death of his wife in 1864,
together with the incurable illness of his second
wife, Lucy Elizabeth Shepard of Dorchester,
whom he married in 1866, and a breakdown in
his own health, saddened Hill's years at Har-
vard ; yet, during a period of war and financial
unrest, he introduced the elective system, the
Academic Council, and that germ of graduate in-
struction, the University Lectures, and warmly
encouraged scientific investigation.

His resignation was accepted in 1868, and fol-
lowing a year of travel and another representing
Waltham in the legislature (1871), he sailed
with his friend Agassiz on an expedition to South
America, In 1873 he returned to assume the
pastorate of the First Church in Portland, Me.,
where he spent eighteen happy years preach-
ing, writing, lecturing, and interesting himself
in scientific and educational experiments. His
Lowell Lectures delivered in 1870 were pub-
lished, somewhat revised, as a series of articles
in the Bibliotheca Sacra (January i874-April
1875), and in book form as A Statement of the
Natural Sources of Theology (1877). In 1876
he published The True Order of Studies^ giving
expression to his belief that education should
embrace an organization of all knowledge; in
February 1878 he printed in the Unitarian Re-
view an address on "Geometry and Biology" in
which he cautioned his hearers against Darwin's
theory of accidental variation. One of his prin-
cipal tenets was that "there must be algebraic
and geometric law at the basis, not only of each
organic form, but of the series of forms" (Geom-
etry and Faith, 3rd ed., 1882). He collaborated
with G. A. Wentworth in the preparation of A
Practical Arithmetic (1881). A volume of poems,
In the Woods, and Elsewhere, appeared in 1888.
Four years after his death were published, under
the title Postulates of Revelation and of Ethics
- (1895), the lectures he had delivered at the
Meadville Theological School on natural theol-
ogy, In the spring of 1891, as he was returning

Hill

to Portland from Meadville, he was overtaken
by illness at the home of his daughter in Wal-
tham, Mass., where after several months of suf-
fering he died. He was survived by four daugh-
ters and three sons, one of whom was Henry
Barker Hill [q.v.~\, professor of chemistry at
Harvard.

[Sources include Hill's article, "Books that Have
Helped Me," in Forum, Dec. 1889; memoirs by A. P.
Peabody, in Proc. Aw. Acad. Arts and Sci.t vol. XXVII
(1893) and by H. C. Badger, in Spirit and Life, Jan.
1892; J, H. Allen, Sequel to "Our Liberal Movement"
(1897) ; Unitarian Rev., Dec. 1891; Christian Register,
Feb. 18,1892, and Sept. 5,1912; Portland Press, Jan. 7,
1917; Tributes to the Memory of Rev. Thomas Hill
(1892); Daily Eastern Argus (Portland, Me.), Nov.
23,^1891; and an unusually complete file of letters, the
basis of a biography in preparation. See also Francis
A. Christie, The Makers of the Meadville Theol School
(1927), ch. 15; C. W. Eliot, Harvard Memories
(1923); and T. B. Peck, The Bellows GeneaL (1898).]

W.G.L.

HILL, THOMAS (Sept 11, i820-June 30,
1908), landscape painter, was bora at Birming-
ham, England, whence in his early childhood his
parents, Thomas and Maria Hill, emigrated to
the United States. After a common-school edu-
cation at Taunton and Gardner, Mass., he was
apprenticed to a coach-painter, and in 1844 he
secured employment in Boston as a decorator,
acquiring a wide reputation as a grainer and
hair-line scroller. In time his trade took him to
Philadelphia, where, at the Pennsylvania Acad-
emy of the Fine Arts, he first drew from life. In
1853 one of his canvases was awarded the first
prize at the exhibition of the Maryland Insti-
tute, Baltimore. Owing to ill health, in 1861 he
went to San Francisco and opened a studio. He
painted many portraits and won for his large
painting, "The Merchant of Venice," the first
prize at the San Francisco Art Union in 1865.
Encouraged by his success, he went to Paris and
enrolled himself in 1866 as a pupil of Paul Mey-
erheim, who, when shown some of his sketches
made at Fontainebleau, advised him to devote
himself to landscape. With that object in view,
Hill settled in Boston in 1867. While there he
painted several New England mountain subjects
and the panoramic canvas, "Yosemite Valley,"
which was exhibited with much journalistic ac-
claim at the Childs Art Gallery, Tremont Street.
The piece was reproduced in 1870 by process of
chromo lithography by L. Prang & Company and
was also engraved as a frontispiece to J. M.
Hutchings' Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in
California (1870). The original was acquired
by Charles Crocker of San Francisco.

Again on account of his health, Hill returned
to California where he could live an outdoor life.
He remained chiefly in the Yosemite Valley and
at Wawona, Mariposa County. He was a tire-

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