friends he was not thirteen years

and a

half old. Attached to literature as he was, he confined not himself within its limits. Into the causes of things he was eager to penetrate. External nature had, in his eyes, numerous charms; and its diversified appearances and products appeared to him to demand investigation. That he would hereafter have viewed human nature also with a penetrating glance, and have nicely discriminated the varying proportions of light and shade in different characters, his observations clearly evinced.

That he was eminent for industry will perhaps be concluded. But though this be an encomium to which he had not any peculiar claim, his industry, within the last eighteen months of his life, was considerably increased; and he was still more estimable for the

qualities of the heart than for those of the understanding. His general behaviour (and this is a happy medium rarely attended to in the dawn of life) was equally remote from the bashfulness which disconcerts, and from the confidence which elates. Though highly accomplished, he was destitute of pride; though ambitious of praise, he was perfectly free from envy and jealousy : whilst sprightly in his conversation, and gay in his disposition, his character was exalted by piety, and he had a strong conviction of the importance of virtue. Generosity and disinterestedness predominated in his conduct, and gratitude in his breast was a principle of vigorous operation. Forgiveness, in case of any injury or affront, whether supposed or real, appeared to be in him a virtue, for the

practice of which no effort was requisite. He was graceful and attractive in his manners; his flow of spirits was scarcely ever subject either to languor or to intermission; and he seemed formed to enjoy and to communicate pleasure. Cold indifference to the interests of others was a stranger to his bosom; the quickness of his tread, the illumination of his face, and the expression of his fine eyes, often announced to his relations and his friends his warmth of attachment and eagerness to oblige; and small indeed is the number of those whom disease has cut down so early in the spring of life, who will be remembered with equal tenderness by an equally large proportion of their acquaintance. But his excellencies did not generate supineness. Moral improvement was with him an

object of serious and not unfrequent meditation; and he had, in fact, within the last two years, made perceptible progress in the cultivation of several virtues.

The nature also of his amusements, or the manner in which he entered into them, indicated the bright or the amiable qualities of his mind; and, when viewed in connexion with his solid acquisitions, justified the conclusion, that he exhibited the probable presages and inherited the genuine stamina of future greatness. Among the methods. of relaxation, which his own inclination suggested, were miscellaneous reading and rational conversation: in the former his choice of books; in the latter the questions he proposed, the anecdotes he related, the arguments he urged, evinced his unusual ripeness of

intellect and versatility of talents. `Possessed of a well-disciplined eye, and a steady hand, he was singularly dexterous in the use of a refracting telescope; and being acquainted with the situation of a number of the constellations and of many single stars, he pointed to them with an admirable degree of celerity. Having melted pieces of glass, he endeavoured to polish them, that they might serve as lenses, and he formed an hygrometer. The pen, the pencil, the chess-board, and the tools of the carpenter, were by him regarded equally as the instruments of amusement; and the atlas and the globe, the. barometer and the thermometer, each, in its turn, supplied him with entertainment. In the drawings which he executed, sometimes in a finished style, and sometimes with more than ordi