XXXYll 



By observation it wag ascertained that the daily difference at the clearing- 

 house, the money actually wanted to balance the demands of those who 

 are to receive and those who are to pay, is only, one day with another, 

 i€29,000. To meet daily contingencies, the banks keep in the Bank of 

 England balances which amount to from 2^ to 3 millions. Sir J. Lubbock 

 recommends that the clearing balance should be paid out of a common 

 fund, which would put the banks so far in the position of being one con- 

 cern, and would enable them to employ a large part of the sums they 

 must now leave idle. The goodness of the advice is manifest. This 

 paper, the last we believe of Sir J. Lubbock's writings, begins with 

 Atque equidem, extremo ni jam sub fine laborum 

 Yela traham, et terris festinem advertere proram, &c. &c., 



and ends with a similar prediction in English. For some years he had 

 begun to feel that his end was approaching ; and though it turned out 

 that his life was to be preserved to his family and his friends for a few 

 years longer, the prophecy was but too well founded as to his scientific 

 career. 



John Richardson was born on the 5thof November, 1787, in Dumfries, 

 of which town his father, Gabriel Bichardson, was an influential and highly 

 respected inhabitant. This gentleman was a Magistrate of the county and 

 several times Provost of Dumfries. 



A great philosophical poet has said, 



" The child is father of the man." 



The sentiment, judging from what is recorded of young Richardson, is 

 peculiarly appropriate to him. 



The influences by which he was surrounded in infancy were all of a 

 happy kind, and well adapted to the development of those qualities for 

 which in his varied and adventurous life he was distinguished. Some of 

 these may be briefly adverted to. 



The rough sports and exercises of schoolboys tending to invigorate the 

 frame, and in which he was preeminent for activity and enterprise, may 

 have conduced to that bodily strength and power of endurance which served 

 him so well in manhood, — so well, indeed, that even beyond the middle 

 term of life he had been known to say he scarcely knew fatigue. 



Of the higher influences, those affecting the mind, the moral character, 

 the chief, no doubt, were such as were exercised over him by his nearest 

 relations : of these, his mother and maternal grandmother, women of 

 notable worth and ability, may deserve the first mention, they being his 

 earliest instructors. The latter lived at a charming spot, Rosebank, in 

 the neighbourhood of the town. There as a schoolboy he was always glad 

 to go on a holiday ; and there his love of the beautiful in nature appears 

 to have been formed. Early he had been heard to express a hope that 

 there, where he had so much enjoyment, he might, if spared, be able to 

 retire and end his days. 



