92 



MEMOIB OF THE LATE MR. JOHN JDST, OF BUBY. 



secret sources of life and raotive, raaHy deep founts of feeling 

 and affection, which are only rarely, if at all, revealed even 

 to the closest intimates, the oldest and most valued friends. 

 Wise as beautiful is that saying of the Old Scripture — "The 

 heart knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger doth not 

 intermeddle with his joy." This difficulty (not to say impossi- 

 bility) of interper\etrating another's mind, is greatly increased, 

 when, as in the present case, that mind is veiled in the folds 

 of a shrinking and reserved disposition. Were it asked or 

 expected, then, that our deceased friend should be portrayed 

 as he was, in all his relations to the unseen world of thought, 

 no less than to this visible and palpable world of action, the 

 task must have been relinquished from a fitting consciousness 

 of inability to perform it. All that can be offered here, is a 

 brief memoir derived from personal knowledge and observa- 

 tion, and the recollections of friends and kindred — a record 

 of the outer life alone, of what the man said and wrote, 

 accomplished and suffered, rather than of what he thought 

 and felt, struggled for and aspired after, — in short, a sketch 

 not so much of what he was, as of what he did. 



Diffidently is this rendered to the Society, with the sole 

 desire to place before it, however defectively and feebly, a 

 true and faithful record of the life's pursuits and labours of 

 its departed associate. For no tribute can be honourable to 

 the memory that fails in fidelity or departs from truth. If 

 less of direct eulogium be made than is felt by the writer, or 

 is thought meet by this Society, let it be attributed to no 

 coldness of regard, to no blindness to rare merit; but rather 

 to a desire to shun any semblance of the inflated exaggeration 

 of the French eloge, and to keep to the honest simplicity of a 

 plain English memoir. Our loss, — the loss of science and of 

 society, — will be far better estimated and appreciated by a 

 bare record of what our friend laboured to effect, and what 

 he really did accomplish, than by the most laboured eulogy 

 or highly-wrought panegyric. 



