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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. 
