Ill PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



sea soundings so long ago as 1831 ; and the object was never lost 

 sight of, though he was baffled in the pursuit of it. "Whatever de- 

 pended on his own energy was done, throughout his whole term of 

 office ; but he had to endure the affliction, often experienced by highly 

 qualified servants of the Government, of not being able to excite a 

 sympathy in his views amongst those in power, or amongst those 

 who, keeping watch over the public purse, sometimes arrest the pro- 

 gress of what would conduce to the public interest. It is indeed no 

 small mortification to compare our Hydrographies*! Establishment 

 with that at Paris, where the Depot de la Marine might be taken for 

 the office of the greatest maritime power in Europe ; or with those 

 at St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, and Washington; but the annual 

 amount of shipwrecks, and the number of lives lost through want of 

 that knowledge which Beaufort would have established a quarter of a 

 century ago, gave rise to a severer grief, which weighed heavily on his 

 heart, and was probably the most painful experience of his life. The 

 universal spread of education, and the more scientific tone which it 

 has assumed, will, it is hoped, rectify this evil, by satisfying the 

 Members of Government, as well as our Legislators, that expenditure 

 on such objects can never be money thrown away ; and we trust 

 therefore that the able successor of Beaufort, Captain Washington, 

 to whom I am indebted for most of the materials of this memoir, will 

 be secured from the anxieties and mortifications which his predecessor 

 experienced. 



Captain Beaufort was so restricted in his office that he had no 

 subordinate who could be a comrade in his labours ; and all that he 

 had at heart was done by his own hand. Disappointed in some of 

 his hopes, and pinched in his official expenditure, he applied the full 

 forces of his strong will to make the best of the hard circumstances 

 of the case. His industry, of constitutional origin, and sustained by 

 principle, appeared something miraculous under this stress. Day by 

 day for a quarter of a century he might be seen entering the Admi- 

 ralty as the clock struck ; and for eight hours he worked in a way 

 which few men even understand : for many years he rose at five, and 

 worked for three hours before his official day began. The anecdote 

 of his connexion with the maps of the Society for the Diffusion of 

 Useful Knowledge has recently gone the round of the newspapers ; 

 and all the world knows that, in order to get these maps sold at 

 sixpence instead of a shilling, he offered to superintend their pre- 

 paration. As if he had not enough to do in his own function, he 

 gave the world that set of maps, so valuable that no ship in the 

 United States navy is allowed to sail without them ; and it is his 

 doing, that they are in a thousand houses which they would never 

 have entered but for their cheapness. 



This is one of his innumerable charities. There was no sort of 

 charity in which he was not just as liberal and as wise. There was 

 no pedantry in his industry, any more than in his knowledge. He 

 never seemed in a hurry. While too seriously engaged for gossip, he 

 had minutes or hours to bestow where they could really do good ; he 

 had conscientious thought to spare for other people's affairs, and 



