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admirers of the past view the march of time through a moral 
telescope, one end of which points to what has been, the other 
to what will be. When they look at the former, every thing 
appears magnified and softened, and surrounded with a bril- 
liant halo; but when they would scan the latter, instead of 
turning their instrument, they apply their eye to the opposite 
extremity, and thus see the field of view contracted, and the 
objects scattered over it shrunk almost to atoms.” 
Hehad pursued his daily search for plants during four years 
before the writer of this memoir became acquainted with him; 
yet then, and for several years after, he went to “the ebb,” 
wading perhaps for hours, sometimes up to the knees, some- 
times much farther, and few spring-tides passed, in which he 
was not rewarded with the new or the rare. ‘The day on 
which he got nothing, he said nothing, and he wished to 
forget it; but the next day he went forth in hope, as to a 
field in which fresh laurels might certainly be won. 
His disregard to bodily comforts on these occasions 
proved very prejudicial to his health. Instead of changing 
his wet clothes upon his return, he sat down to examine his 
plants. If he found any to be new, he proceeded, while they 
were yet fresh, to figure them, as he always maintained that 
the delicate fibres of the Alge were torn in drying, so that 
they never re-assumed their natural appearance. With clothes 
all dripping he sat down to this office, which the fastidious- 
ness of his taste, and his love of correctness, often rendered 
tedious, and though shivering with cold, he always persisted 
in his work till it was finished, by which time the water had 
partially evaporated before a large fire, and he maintained 
that it was unnecessary to change his dress. Such habits, in 
a climate not the most favourable, could not fail to affect the 
constitution of the most robust, and this was eminently the 
case with that of Captain Carmichael. He did not calculate 
that while he gratified his botanical ardour, he brought 
debility and decay on his bodily system; or that he rendered 
a speedy grave, and shortened opportunity of acquiring 
knowledge, as certainly the consequence by sitting in damp 
clothes, as he would have admitted ignorance and uselessness 
