48 MEMOIR OF DR WRIGHT. 



clearing sentiments of gratitude and affection, drew 

 close the ties which nature has entwined around the 

 domestic hearth. Thus arose an attachment afford- 

 ing scope and exercise for the best and purest attri- 

 butes of humanity, but liable, alas ! like all human 

 possessions, to premature decay. Let us indulge the 

 delightful assurance, that the interruption which their 

 intercourse sustained by the too early death of a young 

 man of the highest promise, was only destined to con- 

 tinue for a season, and that their restoration to each 

 other has now been placed beyond the reach of ca- 

 sualty or change. 



In the course of the summer of 1778, Dr Wright 

 made the tour of the west of Scotland, partly in pur- 

 suit of the objects of that delightful science which 



Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in stones, and good in every thing — 



and partly with a view to make the personal acquaint- 

 ance of those literary and scientific correspondents 

 with whom he had long been on habits of epistolary 

 intercourse. Of this number was the Earl of Buchan, 

 at whose seat, in the neighbourhood of Linlithgow, 

 Dr Wright spent several happy days. 



On his arrival in Edinburgh, at the conclusion of 

 his tour, Dr Wright was invited to become a mem- 

 ber of the Royal College of physicians. But in the 

 uncertainty under which he still laboured as to the 

 course which it might be necessary for him to pursue, 

 and in the precarious condition in which his finances 

 unfortunately remained, making so small a matter as 



