414 Biographical Sketch of the [Dec. 



and labour, at the moment his hands appeared to be full of other 

 things." 



A matrimonial connexion which Dr. Clarke had now for some 

 time contemplated, rendering it necessary for him to enter into 

 professional life, he determined to take holy orders, and was or- 

 dained by his old friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, in Dec. 

 1805, and immediately instituted to the vicarage of Harlton, 

 belonging to Jesus College. On the 25th of March, 1806, he 

 was married to the lady of his choice, Miss Angelica Rush, the 

 fifth daughter of Sir William Rush, of Wimbledon ; and to this 

 union, from which, and for reasons apparently cogent, unhappy 

 consequences had been anticipated by his friends, his future life 

 was indebted for its greatest happiness, and even its prosperity. 



The course of Dr. Clarke's life now turns from this happy 

 union to a department of his labours, which had long been upper- 

 most in his own thoughts, and next to his * Travels,' obtained 

 for him his highest distinctions, as a literary man : — viz. his Lec- 

 tures on Mineralogy. During the whole course of his travels, 

 that science, and the objects connected with it, obtained 

 everywhere the greatest share of his attention, and had been 

 cultivated by him with the greatest success ; to which several 

 circumstances had contributed. Low at that time as was this 

 branch of natural history in our Universities, it had risen under 

 a variety of encouragement and patronage — the result of policy 

 as well as of taste — to a high degree of importance in every pub- 

 lic establishment for education on the Continent; and, as Mr. 

 Clarke brought letters of recommendation to the most eminent 

 professors wherever he went (an advantage which his own spirit 

 always contributed to improve), he was in all places cheerfully 

 admitted to a participation of all the local discoveries or improve- 

 ments, and supplied with specimens of all such minerals as they 

 respectively produced. But this was not all ; the course of his 

 travels often led him to remote districts, particularly in the 

 eastern and southern parts of Russia, not accessible to the ordi- 

 nary mineralogist ; and as he spared neither pains nor money 

 in his researches, besides a very ample store of minerals more 

 or less known, he brought to England several rare and valuable 

 specimens, which were for some time almost peculiar to his 

 collection : and it may be affirmed generally, that of all the fruits 

 of his travels, his acquisitions in this department were infinitely 

 the most precious in his eyes. To bring forward, therefore, this 

 collection before the public eye, and with more advantage than 

 his own limited apartments would permit, — to communicate to 

 others the lights which he himself had obtained, and to dissemi- 

 nate throughout the University a portion of that flame which 

 burned within himself, were, from the first, subjects infinitely more 

 pressing in his mind, than the hope of reputation or advantage 

 from any other quarter ; and as the only obvious means of 



