126 Character and Merits of 



been a most generous and intelligent judge of the achievements 

 of others, as well as the most eloquent expounder of that great 

 and magnificent system of knowledge which has been gradually 

 evolved by the successive labours of so many gifted indivi- 

 duals. He possessed, indeed, in the highest degree, all the 

 characteristics both of a fine and powerful understanding, at 

 once penetrating and vigilant, but more distinguished, perhaps, 

 for the caution and sureness of its march, than for the bril- 

 liancy or rapidity of its movements, and guided and adorned 

 through all its progress by the most genuine enthusiasm for all 

 that is grand, and the justest taste for all that is beautiful in 

 the truth or the intellectual energy with which he was habitually 

 conversant. 



To what account these rare qualities might have been turned, 

 and what more brilliant or lasting fruits they might have pro- 

 duced, if his whole life had been dedicated to the solitary cul- 

 tivation of science, it is not for us to conjecture ; but it cannot 

 be doubted that they added incalculably to his eminence and 

 utility as a teacher; both by enabling him to direct his pupils 

 to the most simple and luminous methods of inquiry, and to im- 

 bue their minds, from the very commencement of the study, 

 with that fine relish for the truths it disclosed, and that high 

 sense of the majesty with which they were invested, that predo- 

 minated in his own bosom. While he left nothing unexplained or 

 unreduced to its proper place in the system, he took care that 

 they should never be perplexed by petty difficulties, or be- 

 wildered in useless details, and formed them betimes to that 

 clear, masculine, and direct method of investigation, by which, 

 with the least labour, the greatest advances might be accom- 

 plished. 



Mr. Playfair, however, was not merely a teacher ; and has 

 fortunately left behind him a variety of works, from which other 

 generations may be enabled to judge of some of those qualifica- 

 tions which so powerfully recommended and endeared him to his 

 contemporaries. It is, perhaps, to be regretted, that so much 

 of his time, and so large a proportion of his publications, should 

 have been devoted to the subjects of the Indian astronomy, and 



