166 Biographical Account of 



Aussee, in Styria, in June, he wrote his brother, ** Not- 

 withstanding the long, severe, and distressing malady 

 under which I still labour, I am not entirely without the 

 hope of ultimate recovery, and the few pleasures that I 

 retain in this very state of earthly purgatory have prin- 

 cipally reference to the enjoyments and prospects of my 

 friends, and I indulge in the idea that you are well and 

 happy, and enjoying a life which I can say I only support, 

 supposing that it pleases Omniscience to preserve me for 

 some ends which I cannot understand, but which I trust 

 belong to the great plan of goodness and mercy belonging 

 to his divine mind." It was thus that he reconciled him- 

 self to his sufferings. He next proceeded to Ischl, where 

 he planned his " Consolations in Travel," a work which 

 one cannot fail to admire, whether it be regarded as a piece 

 of beautiful writing, or as the last efforts of a great and 

 good man. At Wurzen he amused himself with writing a 

 literary curiosity, viz., a romance, to which he affixed the 

 title of *'The Last of the O'Donoghues, an Irish Story." 

 It is a kind of historical piece, the scene, being Ross Castle 

 on the Lakes of Killarney. 



On the 30th of August, he arrived at Lay bach. From 

 thence, on the 6th of October, he went to Trieste expressly 

 for the purpose of trying some experiments which he 

 meditated on the torpedo. Here, through the attention of 

 the English consul he was supplied with two recently 

 caught torpedos. The result of this investigation con- 

 stituted his last communication to the Royal Society. He 

 sums up his views in it with regard to the different kinds 

 of electricity. *' Common electricity is excited upon non- 

 conductors, and is readily carried oflf by conductors and im- 

 perfect conductors. Voltaic electricity is excited upon com- 

 binations of perfect and imperfect conductors. Animal 

 electricity resides only in imperfect conductors forming the 

 organs of living animals, and its objects in the economy of 

 nature is to act on living animals. Magnetism, if it be a 

 form of electricity, belongs only to perfect conductors, and 

 in its modifications to a particular class of them." His 

 brother following up the investigation concluded that the 

 electricity of the terpedo is not of a peculiar kind ; but the 

 mode of its production he could not detect. He found that 



