260 Biographical Account of Dr. John Rolison. (Aprit, 
subjects, in which we of this islanc-are charged by our neighbours 
with being so extremely deficient. 
The same facility, and the same general tone, was to be seen in 
his lectures and his writings. He composed with singular facility 
and correctness, but was sometimes, when he had leisure to be so, 
very fastidious about his own compositions, 
In the intercourse of life, he was benevolent, disinterested, and 
friendly, and of sincere and unaffected piety. In his interpretation 
of the conduct of others, he was fair and liberal, while his mind 
retained its natural tone, and had not yielded to the alarms of the 
French Revolution, and to the bias which it produced. 
His range in science was most extensive ; he was familiar with 
the whole circle of the accurate sciences, and there was no part of 
them on which, if you heard him speak or lecture, you would not 
have pronounced it to be his fort, or a subject which he had studied 
with more than ordinary attention. Indeed, the rapidity with 
which his understanding went to work, and the extent of ground 
he seemed to have got over, while others were only preparing to 
enter on it, were the great features of his intellectual character, 
In these he has rarely been exceeded. With such an assemblage 
of talents, with a mind so happily formed for science, one might 
have expected to find in his writings more of original investigation, 
more works of discovery and invention. I must remark, however, 
that from the turn his speculations and compositions took, or rather 
received from circumstances, we are apt to overlook what is new 
and original in a great part of them. An article in a dictionary of 
science must contain a system, and what is new becomes of course 
so mixed up with the old and the known, that it is not easily dis- 
tinguished. Many of Mr. Robison’s articles in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica are full of new and original views, which will only strike 
those who study them particularly, and have studied them in other 
books. In Seamanship, for example, there are many such re- 
marks; the fruit of that knowledge of principle which he com- 
bined with so much experience and observation. Carpentry, Roof; 
and many more, afford examples of the same kind. The publica- 
tion now under the management of Dr. Brewster, will place his 
scientific character higher than it has ever been with any but those 
who were personally acquainted with him. With them, nothing 
can add to the esteem which they felt for his talents and worth, or 
to the respect in which they now hold his memory. 
Articue II. 
Account of an Accident which happened in a Coal-Mine at Liege in 
1812. By Thomas Thomson, M.D. F.R.S, 
In the preceding volumes of the Annals of Philosophy a variety 
of dismal accidents has been detailed, which occurred in the coal- 
