12 Memoir of William Maclure. 



a litiera and bearers, in order to conduct him to the sea-coast. 

 Dr. Biirrough faithfully performed his part of the engagement ; 

 but after waiting for some days at the appointed place of meet- 

 ing, he received the melancholy intelligence that Mr. Maclure, 

 after having left Mexico and accomplished a few leagues of his 

 journey, was compelled by illness and consequent exhaustion to 

 relinquish his journey. 



Languid in body, and depressed and disappointed in mind, Mr. 

 Maclure reluctantly retraced his steps ; but being unable to reach 

 the capital, he was cordially received into the country house of 

 his friend, Valentin Gomez Farias, ex-President of Mexico, 

 where he received all the attentions which hospitality could dic- 

 tate. His feeble frame was capable of but one subsequent effort, 

 which enabled him to reach the village of San Angel ; where, 

 growing weaker and weaker, and sensible of the approach of 

 death, he yielded to the common lot of humanity on the 23d 

 day of March, 1840, in the seventy seventh year of his age. 



Thus closed a hfe which had been devoted, with untiring en- 

 ergy and singular disinterestedness, to the attainment and diffu- 

 sion of practical knowledge. No views of pecuniary advantage, 

 or personal aggrandizement, entered into the motives by which 

 he was governed. His educational plans, it is true, were repeat- 

 edly inoperative, not because he did too little, but because he 

 expected more than could be reaUzed in the social institutions by 

 which he was surrounded. He aimed at reforming mankind by 

 diverting their attention from the mere pursuit of wealth and 

 ambition to the cultivation of the mind ; and espousing the hy- 

 pothesis of the possible "equality of education, property and 

 power" among men, he labored to counteract that love of supe- 

 riority which appeared to him to cause half the miseries of our 

 species. However fascinating these views are in theory, man- 

 kind are not yet prepared to reduce them to practice ; and with- 

 out entering into discussion in this place we may venture to as- 

 sert, that what religion itself has not been able to accomplish, 

 philosophy will attempt in vain. 



Mr. Maclure's character habitually expressed itself without 

 dissimulation or disguise. Educated in the old world almost to 

 the period of manhood, and inflexibly averse to many of its es- 

 tablished institutions, he was prone to indulge the opposite ex- 

 tremes of opinion, and became impatient of those usages which 

 appeared to him to fetter the reason and embarrass the genius of 



