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confess it is a passage I never read without envying his feelings, 

 and distantly participating in his pleasure. 



" "When I was at sea last August," says our great Orientalist, 

 i£ on my voyage to this country, which I had long and ardently 

 desired to visit, I found one evening, on inspecting the observa- 

 tions of the day, that India lay before us, and Persia on our left; 

 whilst a breeze from Arabia, blew nearly on our stern. A situa- 

 tion so pleasing in itself, and to me so new, could not fail to 

 awaken a train of reflections in a mind, which had early been ac- 

 customed to contemplate with delight, the eventful histories and 

 agreeable fictions of the eastern world. It gave me inexpressible 

 pleasure to find myself in the midst of so noble an amphitheatre, 

 almost encircled by the vast regions of Asia, which has ever been 

 esteemed the nurse of sciences, the inventress of delightful and 

 useful arts, the scene of glorious actions, fertile in the productions 

 of human genius, abounding in natural wonders, and infinitely 

 diversified in the forms of religion and government, in the laws, 

 manners, customs, and languages, as well as in the features and 

 complexions of men!" 



Justly does Lord Teignmouth, his worthy successor, as presi- 

 dent of the Asiatic Society, thus speak of his departed friend. 

 " The faculties of his mind, by nature vigorous, were improved by 

 constant exercise; and his memory, by habitual practice, had ac- 

 quired a capacity of retaining whatever had once been impressed 

 upon it. To an unextinguished ardour for universal knowledge, 

 he joined a perseverance in the pursuit of it, which subdued all 

 obstacles; his studies began with the dawn, and during the inter- 



