Or 
1883. ] 257 { Robinson, 
ary notice does, the feeling of reverence and affection 
which dictated this direction ; but his mother had died 
in his earliest infancy, eighty-one years ago, and his 
father fifty-eight years ago, and he, himself, was an aged 
man, 
He could, therefore, not reasonably have been sup- 
posed wanting in respect and reverence for his parents 
in letting the endowments bear zs own name instead 
of theirs, but the memories of his youth and the //¢h 
commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother 
that thy days may be long upon the land which the 
Lord thy God giveth thee,’ seem to have been always 
primary and paramount considerations with him. 
Madame de Stael in one of her works, but which of 
them I cannot at the moment recall, expresses herself as 
having no veneration for any being in the universe but 
God and her father. Mr. Seybert has been for many 
years a sincere believer in the Christian religion, and 
of course could have used no language as little rev- 
erential to the Almighty, as that of Madame de Stael, 
but he has appeared to me to have had, ever since I 
have known him, a sincere veneration (which he would 
have been unnatural not to have had) for his father ; 
for though that father was what the world would now 
perhaps call a hard father, Mr. Adam Seybert was so 
in consequence of his profound affection for his son, 
whom he desired to make at least his equal and if prac- 
ticable his superior in the sciences of chemistry and 
mineralogy, to his knowledge of which he was mainly 
PROG. AMER. PHILOS. 800. xxt. 114. 24. PRINTED NOVEMBER 14, 1883. 
