Mr Fischer's Memoir of the Life of Klaproth. 8SS 
as well as his relations, feel severely his loss ; for every person 
to whom he had once given his confidence, might depend upon 
the unchangeableness of it. His friendship was never the result, 
like that of so many other persons, of any selfish calculation, but 
was always founded on a favourable opinion of the personal 
worth of the man. Amidst all the unpleasant accidents of his 
life, and of these there was no want, he shewed an invincible 
placidity, founded, not on any want of lively feeling, but in the 
firmness of his resolution. In his common behaviour he was 
always pleasant and composed, and very far from being disinclined 
to a joke. To all these virtues, the chief ornament was added 
by his true religious feeling ; and I believe I am not saying too 
much, when I aver that he was a model of the true meaning of 
that epithet, which is so frequently misunderstood. His religion 
consisted not in words and forms,-— in devotion to the system 
of any partv, — in a general assent to any thing external, or to any 
thing artificially constructed, — not in positive doctrines, nor in 
any ecclesiastical observances, which, however, he considered to 
be necessary and honourable, but in a zealous and conscientious 
discharge of all his duties, —not only of those which are imposed 
by the laws of men, but of those holy duties of love and charity, 
which no law of man, but only that of God, can command, and 
without which the most enlightened of men is but 64 sounding 
brass and a tinkling cymbal.” He early shewed this religious 
feeling, by the before-mentioned great and honourable care which 
he bestowed in educating the children of those to whom he was 
bound by no external interest, and by no human law. Nor did 
he shew less care, at an after period, towards the assistants and 
apprentices of his office, to whom he refused no instruction, and 
in whose success he took the most active concern. He shewed 
his religious feeling still farther by the very strict conscientious- 
ness with which, as the possessor of an office, he laboured for 
the best condition even of such tilings as did not fall under views 
of policy. He shewed it, in the last place, by the pleasure 
which he took in every thing that was good and excellent, and 
by the ready interest which he felt in every undertaking which 
he believed to be of general utility. In fine, he was a man 
equally removed from the superstition and infidelity of his age, 
VOL. V. NO. 10 . OCTOBER 1821 . 
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