MEMOIR OF THE LATE DR. HENRY. 133 
of the last century, and devoted in largest mea- 
sure to the glorious epoch of Scheele, Cavendish, 
Black, Priestley, and Lavoisier. As the histor- 
ian of his favourite science, it was Dr. Henry’s 
design to have pursued the method so success- 
fully traced by Sir James Mackintosh in his 
invaluable dissertation on Ethical Philosophy— 
that of developing the progressive advances of 
the science through the lives and triumphs of 
its most eminent cultivators. The biographical 
notice of Dr. Priestley, made public in the first 
volume of the Reports of the British Association, 
was to have formed one of this gallery of histori- 
cal portraitures. Such objects, and especially 
the calm retrospect of the advances of know- 
ledge, and the deliberate estimate of the services 
of genius, Dr. Henry conceived to be the appro- 
priate employment of advancing years, which, 
while they chill the active energies of invention 
and creation, ripen the judgment and incline to 
contemplative habits, to which they minister the 
accumulated materials of past study and exper- 
ience. The evening of life, 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 
