X 
PREFACE. 
ardour and enthusiasm which formed pro- 
minent features in his character. " Africa/' 
says a biographer who intimately knew 
him, " had pecuhar charms for Leyden. 
" He dehghted to read of hosts, whose 
" arrows intercepted the sunbeams ; of kings, 
who judged of the number of their sol- 
" diers, by marching them over the trunk 
" of a cedar ; of the royal halls of Dahomy, 
built of skulls and cross bones ; all, in short, 
" that presented strange, wild, and romantic 
" views of what have been quaintly entitled 
the ultimities and summities of human 
^' nature, and which furnished new and un- 
" heard of facts in the history of man, had 
" great fascination for his ardent imagina- 
tion."'* So completely were his views 
predating, and when appreciated, of honouring alive, 
and deploring in the grave, an example of excellence 
intellectual and moral, so rare and eminent. I must 
restrain, however, even the justifiable effusion of public 
c« regret, heightened, as it is, by private sorrow on this 
mournful theme; not for the poverty of the subject, 
or the coldness of affection, but for their abundance 
and excess." 
* Edinburgh Annual Register, 1811. 
