70 Memoir oftlie late Francis Baily, Esq.^ F.R.S., Src. 



tific works of Mr. Baily, and noticing, as we cannot help doing, 

 the gradual expansion of his views, and the progressively in- 

 creasing importance of the objects they embraced, we are na- 

 turally led to ask by what means he was enabled thus to live 

 as it were two distinct lives, each so active and successful, yet 

 so apparently incompatible with each other ? how, in what is 

 generally regarded as the decline of life, he could not only ac- 

 complish so much with such apparent ease to himself, but go 

 on continually opening out wider and wider plans of useful 

 exertion in a manner v.'hich seems only to belong to the fresh- 

 ness of youth? The answer to such an inquiry is, no doubt, 

 partly to be found in his uninterrupted enjoyment of health, 

 which was so perfect that he has been heard to declare him- 

 self a stranger to every form of bodily ailment, and even to 

 those inequalities of state which render most men at some 

 hours of the day or night less fit for business or thought than 

 at others. But though this is in itself a blessing of the most 

 precious kind, and, if properly used, a vantage ground of power 

 and success to any one favoured enough to possess it, it must 

 be regarded in his case as subordinate to, though no doubt 

 intimately connected with, a gift of a much higher order, — 

 that of an equable and perfectly balanced intellectual and 

 moral nature, — that greatest of gifts, which has been regarded, 

 and justly, as the only one really worthy to be asked of Hea- 

 ven in this life, — me?is sana in corpore sano. Few men, in- 

 deed, have ever enjoyed a state of being so habitually serene 

 and composed, accompanied with so much power and dispo- 

 sition to exert it. A calm, the reverse of apathy, a modera- 

 tion having nothing in common with indifference, a method 

 diametrically opposed to routine, pervaded every part of his 

 sentiments and conduct. And hence it arose that every step 

 which he took was measured and consequent — one fairly se- 

 cured before another was put in progress. Such is ever the 

 maixh of real power to durable conquest. Hence, too, it arose 

 that a clear natural judgement, and that very uncommon gift, 

 a sound connnon sense viewing all things through a medium 

 unclouded by passion or prejudice, gave to his decisions a cer- 

 tainty from which few were ever found to dissent, and to his 

 recommendations a weight which few thought it right to resist. 

 It is very difficult in speaking of Mr. Baily's character 

 to convey a true impression through the medium of a lan- 

 guage so exaggerative as that which men now habitually use. 

 Its impressiveness was more felt on reflection than on the in- 

 stant, for it consisted in the absence of all that was obtrusive 

 or imposing, without the possibility of that absence being mis- 

 construed into a deficiency, — like a sphere whose form is per- 



