380 Miscellanies. 
of intelligence among the people, and that wherever ignorance pre- 
vails, idiotism and its intellectual varieties will be frequent, so that 
the chance of insanity and crime increases in proporuon to the gen- 
eral ignorance; and that intellectual aberrations tend inevitably to in- 
crease the amount of crime.—Bull. de la Soc. de Statist. Univ. 
septieme livraison. 
NECROLOGY. 
1, Freperick Pxitie Wiimsen, the first preacher of the parish 
church of Berlin, died in that city on the 4th of May, 1831, at the 
age of sixty one. He was born in Magdeburg, the 23d of February, 
1770. By his ministerial functions of thirty.four years and his nu- 
merous writings, Wilmser has rendered great services to the cause 
of education. ‘Throughout his career, he displayed a remarkable 
degree of mildness and perseverance. He has been styled the Ber- 
quin of Germany. His Friend of Youth has passed through more 
than a hundred editions of fifty thousand copies, and certainly next 
to the sacred scriptures, has been the most numerously printed work 
of our age. His other works comprehend most of the branches of 
education. His literary ardor accompanied him to his bed of suffer- 
ing, and on the very day of his death appeared the last sheet of his 
“ Natural History.”—Rev. Encyc. Nov. 1831. 
2. Epwarp Tuomas, of Cayuga county, New York.—We regret 
to learn that this interesting young man, who gave proofs of much 
promise in the practical sciences, and from whose pen there are two 
articles in our Journal, on the construction of optical instruments, has 
paid the last debt of nature. He died on the 20th of May, of pul- 
monary disease, after an illness of five months. 
‘The sublime views of astronomy (observes one of his intimate 
acquaintances) first gave him a partiality for that science; and a 
strong desire to explore the depths of ether, made him a scientific 
and practical optician, and perhaps without a superior in the Uni- 
ted States.. The grand features of geology were very attractive to 
him, and in consequence he became a mineralogist. Several years of 
debility induced him to read the latest and best medical authors with 
great attention, and when his last illness supervened, he was preparing 
for the American Journal, a paper on some diseases of the eye which 
had been but little noticed by former writers, and which his great opti- 
cal skill enabled him most particularly to examine.” 
