Notice of the late Sheldon Clark. 231 
are left to presume, that the applications were generally allowed 
to pass sub silentio. 
As my object in this brief. memoir is to present Mr. Clark to 
mankind as a liberal patron of good learning, I shall offer no 
opinions upon his views of moral and metaphysical subjects; but 
some judgment may be formed of them from the pamphlets which 
he printed and distributed. 
It is however probable, that had his warm aspirations after a 
liberal education been indulged ; had he been disciplined in cour- 
ses of exact study, in literature and in science ;—had he been 
brought into conflict with other minds, pushing forward on the 
same journey—had he been placed under the pressure of able in- 
structors in the various branches of human learning, and beneath 
the sunshine of a kindly Christian influence and example, happy 
fruits would have been gathered from his gifted intellect. 
In his laborious rural. employments, he sighed for something 
more liberal and elevated than his daily toil—in his comfortless 
seclusion, (without 0, more than any other, cheers 
man’s solitude, and inflneny eae wat 
he found no favor to his mental ons ab his vigorous and 
shot in wild luxuriance, with little external siccteaia ane ne ca 
pruning ae a 
While therefore his speculati ]y yorndical i i ity, and 
he. seizes his subject with a vigorous grasp: it is not 
that he, like many men of higher name, should sometimes have 
been Sa iwitebanel: in the mazes of his own metaphysics ;—as a 
pilgrim threading a deep forest, wanders around and around, 
and emerges at last at a mistaken point, or emerges not at all, 
but plunges deeper and aise ‘into the 84 of the dark and 
impervious wilderness. - 
