NOVEMBER 113 



expired very soon after. I had a very great regard for 

 him, and he deserved it. He was a man little known to 

 the world in general shy, reserved to strangers, cold 

 and rather austere in his manners, and, being very short- 

 sighted, made people think he meant to slight them when 

 he had no such intention. He was not fitted to bustle 

 into public notice, and such ambition as he had was not 

 of the noisy and ostentatious kind. But no man was more 

 beloved by his family and friends, and none could be more 

 agreeable in any society when he was completely at his 

 ease. He was most warm-hearted and affectionate, sincere, 

 obliging, disinterested, unselfish, and of unscrupulous in- 

 tegrity ; by which I mean integrity in the largest sense, 

 not merely that which shrinks from doing a dishonourable 

 or questionable action, but which habitually refers to 

 conscientious principles in every transaction of life. He 

 viewed things with the eye of a philosopher, and aimed 

 at establishing a perfect consistency between his theory 

 and his practice. He had a remarkably acute and 

 searching intellect, with habits of patient investigation 

 and mature deliberation ; his soul was animated by ardent 

 aspirations after the improvement and the happiness of 

 mankind, and he abhorred injustice and oppression, in all 

 their shapes and disguises, with an honest intensity which 

 produced something of a morbid sentiment in his mind 

 and sometimes betrayed him into mistaken impressions 

 and erroneous conclusions. 



' The expansive benevolence of his moral sentiments 

 powerfully influenced his political opinions, and his deep 

 sympathy with the poor not only rendered him inexorably 

 severe to the vices of the rich, but made him regard with 

 aversion and distrust the aristocratic elements of our 

 institutions, and rendered him an ardent promoter of the 

 most extensive schemes of progressive reform. But while 

 he clung with inflexible constancy to his own opinions, 



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