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his attention and his patronage. Of one Society (the Geological) 

 he was, I believe, one of the original founders, as well as one of its 

 first Presidents, and always an anxious and zealous member ; under 

 his auspices was the Magnetic Observatory commenced in the 

 University, which promises to supply so perfectly a desideratum 

 in British Science, and which must so powerfully tend not only 

 to the elucidating of the most recondite and interesting problems 

 in natural knowledge, but to the practical improvement of many of 

 the most important instruments of general utility ; and the very 

 latest plan proposed by him to the Board of the University, was 

 one for extending instruction in natural history, and rendering the 

 acquisition of information in its varied departments more acces- 

 sible. To mental science he had paid in early life considerable 

 attention, and the respect he felt for it is manifest in the creation 

 of the professorship of Moral Philosophy. All who have heard 

 him as a preacher in the University must remember the clear and 

 lucid style, the mild and earnest, and persuasive manner which, in 

 spite of physical defects, rendered him most attractive in the pul- 

 pit ; and they cannot forget the accuracy of conception, and keen 

 and discriminating judgment which could penetrate into the depths 

 of the metaphysics of theology without obscuring the subject, or 

 dimming its sanctity. Some idea of what he was as a preacher 

 may be had from the volume of sermons he published on some of 

 the most abstruse topics in Divinity ; and a specimen of his taste and 

 judgment in the metaphysics of literature is exhibited in some beau- 

 tiful but fragmentary dissertations published several years since in 

 the Dublin Journal of Science. As a writer our President has not 

 left much; the elementary but admirable works alluded to, the 

 essays and sermons, I believe, comprise the whole ; his business 

 was not so much to advance science himself as to stimulate and 

 direct others ; not to press forward in his own person, leaving the 

 path in darkness, but to hold high the torch for the young aspirant, — 

 to mark the road. It is, however, an interesting fact, that he has 

 left a large collection of manuscripts behind, the natural result 

 of a well-stored, active, and inventive mind, and it is not to be 

 doubted but that our fellow academic and Vice-President, the heir 

 of his name and of his talents, will not suffer a grain of his father's 

 gold to be lost. 



