170 MEMOIR OF DR WRIGHT. 



" Farewell,"" he concludes, " my dear and excellent friend, 

 may you and your amiable family live long and happily to- 

 gether ; and when time shall be no more, may we all meet in 

 another and a better world. God bless you. -0 



Thus preserving and cherishing, to the close of his 

 career, the same generous sentiments which had mark- 

 ed his whole life, and the noblest disregard of per- 

 sonal comfort, when any exertion of his could promote 

 the advantage of others, it is truly a gratifying spec- 

 tacle to observe the course in which this expiring ef- 

 fort was directed, and to witness the deliberate ear- 

 nestness with which, as a dying man, he pleads 

 the cause of his friend. But although his hand, on 

 this occasion, retained its accustomed steadiness ; al- 

 though his diction followed the traces of his pen with 

 its wonted fluency ; and although the characters as- 

 sumed the same round and print-like regularity of 

 form, for which his autograph was so peculiar, yet 

 the effort had been too great for his enfeebled frame, 

 and exhausted nature sunk under the exertion. 



From this period his remaining strength abated by 

 daily and more perceptible gradations, until, on the 

 19th of September 1819, in the 85th year of his age, 

 he calmly breathed his last. 



No painful struggle disturbed the serenity and com- 

 posure of his dying moments. Like a well-construct- 

 ed piece of mechanism, his frame performed its ap- 

 pointed functions until the perishable materials of 

 mortality could no longer detain the etherial spirit 

 which gave it life and motion. One of his last obser- 

 vations to his friend Dr Gregory, was to direct his 



