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    tber with the legislators and patriots of South America , speak of him as a tutelary spirit , and declare the practical application of his principles to be the object and end of their labours . 4 While he availed himself of every means in his power of forming and cherishing a friendship with whoever in any country indicated remarkable benevolence ; while Howard was his intimate friend—a friend delighted alike to find and to acknowledge in him a superior

    beneficent genius ; while Romilly was not only the advocate of his opinions in the senate , but the affectionate and beloved disciple in private ; while for the youth Lafayette , his junior contemporary , he cpnceived an affection which in the old age of both was beautiful for the freshness and ardour with which it continued to glpw ; while there was no name in any country known and dear to liberty and humanity which was not known and dear to him , and no person bearing such name that ever visited England who was not found at his social board , he would

    hold intercourse with none of any rank or fame whose distinction was unconnected with the promotion of human improvement , and much less whose distinction arose from the zeal and success with which they laboured to keep back improvement . That the current of his own benevolence might experience no interruption or disturbance , he uniformly avoided engaging in any personal controversy ; he

    contended against principles and measures , not men ; and for the like reason he abstained from reading the attacks made upon himself , so that the ridicule and scoffing ' , the invective and malignity , with which he was sometimes assailed , proved as harmless to him as to his cause . By the society he shunned , as well as by that which he sought , he endeavoured to render his social intercourse subservient to the

    cultivation , to the perpetual growth and activity , of his benevolent sympathies . * With such care over his intellectual faculties and his moral affections , and with the exalted direction which he gave to both , his own happiness could not but be sure . Few human beings have enjoyed a greater portion of felicity ; and such was the cheerfulness which this internal happiness pave to the expression of his countenance and the

    turn of his conversation , that few persons ever spent an evening in his society , however themselves favoured by fortune , who did not depart with the feeling of satisfaction at having beheld such an object of emulation . Even in his writings , in the midst of profound and comprehensive views , there oftentimes break forth a sportiveness and humour no less indieative of gaiety of heart , than the most elaborate and original of his investigations are of a master-mind * : but this

    * * The following passage is n . ofc the best illustration of this which plight be g ireji , but it is one which happens to be at hand . In his '' Deontology ' ( private ) , in speaking of the manner in which philosophers and moralists have allowed themselves to be deceived by the cheat of words , and have endeavoured to impose the same cheat upon others , he adverts to the Summum Bonumy that ancient cheat of the first magnitude , in these words : — ' " In what does the aumipum bonum consist ? The question was debated by multitudes , debated from generation to generation , by men calling themselves lovers of wisdom—called by others wise .

    + " The gvmmum bonum , in what does it consist ? What does the term signify ?—• ^ ousense , antf nothing more . * " The tummun * bonum—the sovereign good—what fa it ? The philosopher's , stone , that converts all metals into gold—the elixir of life , that cures all manner

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    710 Critical Notices , —A Lecture 4 * c .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 710, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/60/