229 
of preparation which he constantly endeavoured to maintain against 
the approach of death, may have led him to fear that event less, 
and to despise precautions for his own safety which his friends 
would have wished him to adopt. I need not say that his talents 
and merits, as a man of science and literature, were equalled by 
the amiableness of his disposition, and by his moral and religious 
excellencies. He won, and he preserved, the friendship of some of 
the most eminent men of his time ; and no one who came within the 
sphere of his influence could resist its attraction. The honours that 
he attained, and the success that attended him in life, were not 
considered by others to be more than he well deserved : but he him- 
self was humble and unassuming ; thankful for the mercies that he 
considered he had received, and, in the midst of much bodily suffer- 
ing and distress, not merely patient and submissive, but cheerful and 
happy. His last illness was only a severer form of many previous 
attacks : but he had continued to labour to the last; and in particular 
his duties at the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen, in 
the autumn of this year, were discharged by him under great 
debility, such as probably tended to unfit him for the severity of the 
winter that was at hand. The disease of the lungs having assumed 
a serious aspect, made rapid progress, and his death ensued on the 
22d of November 1859. His end was calm and peaceful, such as 
became the pious, innocent, and useful life which he had led, and 
left his friends no cause to mourn, except for the loss which they 
themselves sustained. 
The unusual number of deceased members in the past year, as 
well as the eminence in their various departments of those whom I 
have now specially noticed, must furnish my apology, first, for the 
imperfect nature of the preceding sketches, and, next, for my for- 
bearing to attempt any similar account of the other members of 
whom we have been deprived. Some of these need no eulogy from 
any one, while there are others on whose worth and value it would 
have been a pleasing task to expatiate, if time and the pressure of 
other claims had permitted it. I must therefore content myself 
with the simple enumeration of their names. 
No. of Fellows for 1858, .... 262 
Do. do. 1859, . ^56 
