276 DAVID BARCLAY CHAP. 



that trees should not be planted in hedgerows ; and 

 that grass should be laid down along the borders of 

 cornfields. 



Very characteristic of his well-regulated mind is a 

 printed paper of " Advice to Servants " attributed to his 

 hand. It is full of wise moral counsel, yet it reads 

 strangely in these days, dealing as it does with a frankly 

 subordinate class of persons, with scarcely any inde- 

 pendent interest of their own. 1 



Barclay was a fine example of the philanthropic phase 

 of Quakerism in the latter half of the eighteenth century. 

 He had a noble form and presence, and his qualities of 

 mind and heart accorded with it. If he did not wholly 

 escape the benumbing influence of great wealth, his 

 manners were simple, he was just, generous, hospitable 

 and kindly, and he passed through life unblamed, and 

 with a certain reasoned tranquillity, so that when the 

 end came in 1809 at eighty years of age, he seemed 

 rather to cease to live than to undergo the pang of 

 death. He is said to have acted (as did Dr. Thomas 

 Denman) to some extent as his own executor, distribut- 

 ing his ample fortune to his relatives, and having the 

 pleasure of seeing them well established during his own 

 lifetime. 



The son of his beloved daughter, Hudson Gurney, was 

 his principal heir. Upon this talented youth Barclay had 

 lavished much care, inviting a companion a brilliant 

 prodigy of learning afterwards famous as Dr. Thomas 

 Young, the physicist and Egyptologist, to be educated 

 with him. A scholarly young man, already under his 

 friendly notice, was engaged by Barclay as their tutor : 

 this was John Hodgkin, afterwards father of Dr. Thomas 

 Hodgkin, the pathologist, and of John Hodgkin of Totten- 

 ham and Lewes. Gurney grew up a highly trained and 

 accomplished man, but his severance from the Quaker 

 faith in 1804 was a sore grief to his elder relative. As the 

 inheritor of a fortune he had perhaps the less incentive 

 for the full use of his talents, yet he was well known in 



1 A copy is in the Frds. Ref. Lib. 



