Biographical Memoir of the late Dr Henry. 19 



conceived to be the appropriate employment of advancing years, 

 which, while they chill the active energies of invention and 

 creation, ripen the judgment and inchne to contemplative habits, 

 to which they minister the accumulated materials of past study 

 and experience. The evening of hfe, he often remarked, was 

 far from ungenial to maturity or even vigour in composition, 

 and he readily assented to the similar sentiments so eloquently 

 enforced by Sir James Mackintosh, when characterizing the 

 autumnal fruits of Mr Stewart's genius. It is matter of deep 

 regret, that Dr Henry was not permitted to execute this great 

 design ; for, as a writer, it may safely be pronounced that he 

 was never more happy than in his power of discriminating the 

 finer intellectual distinctions, and of painting vivid yet not over- 

 charged mental resemblances. Maintaining an enlarged com- 

 munion with all orders of intellectual greatness, and an enthu- 

 siastic worshipper of genius in all its manifestations, he delighted 

 in thus offering to it his fervent homage, and in giving worthy 

 expression to the intenseness of his feehngs and convictions, 

 and to the ardour of his sympathy in every discovery that pro- 

 mised to advance the well-being of mankind, and to further the 

 cause of universal truth and science. 



To the members of the Society, who as a body have already 

 placed on record their affectionate respect for his memory, and 

 with some of whom he 'had maintained throughout life an un- 

 broken friendship, cemented by kindred tastes and mutual 

 esteem, it can scarcely be necessary to offer any detailed por- 

 traiture of his moral excellencies. Yet there were some traits 

 rather of manner than of character, which by those not in habits 

 of close intercourse with him, might not, perhaps, have been 

 always rightly interpreted. Thus there was occasionally a 

 reserve of manner that might be regarded as implying coldness 

 of feeling, but which arose solely out of the languor produced 

 by an almost constant state of bodily indisposition, and in- 

 creased by those habits of studious application from which he 

 could never be induced to relax. Though not liable to acute 

 maladies or to such as seemed to endanger life, he had to strug- 

 gle with what is perhaps less supportable, an habitual infir- 

 mity of health and feelings of oppression arising from the slow 



