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sions. The gay good-humour of a constitutionally happy man, whose temperament concentrates all his powers upon the present, and whose constant occupations admit little leisure for fretful retrospects, or for feverish anxieties for the future, illumines all he writes: and though his reflections are far from being uniformly just, his remarks accurate, or his conclusions logical, when he leaves his own peculiar sphere of inquiry to embark in moral or political speculations, yet these excursions are far from frequent or obtrusive; and his observations are for the most part those of a man who sees clearly, and has his heart in all he examines and all he describes.
Dr. Clarke was descended from a line of churchmen and literati. William Wotton was his great grandfather. His grandfather, a fellow of St. John's, was distinguished and dignified by the appellation of mild William Clarke, from his preeminent possession of that quality, at all times too little appreciated, but doubly valuable in a churchman. His father likewise followed the clerical career; and it is not very reputable to the spirit which governs our church and state establishments, that three generations of men, no less gifted with intellectual endowments than remarkable for their virtues, and who were likewise not wholly unbacked by powerful friends, should have had so small a share of church dignities, and should have been unable to accumulate a permanent income for their descendant. At the death of his father, Dr. Clarke was left an undergraduate of Cambridge, with the smallest possible means of pursuing his academic studies; and he was indebted to the friendship of Dr. Beadon, the master of his college, and to the forbearance of the tutors in pecuniary matters, for the means of obtaining a degree. So strongly, however, had nature implanted in him those propensities which have marked his course through life, and laid the basis of his reputation, that under all this pressure, with warm affections to those dear and near relations, who, in some degree, were dependent upon his exertions, and a conscientious regard for his duties, he was unable to tie himself down to the dull and unprofitable routine of collegiate studies; and we find him occupied in amusing the university with a balloon, at the precise moment when, in common prudence, he ought to have been qualifying himself for "an honour." From his earliest youth he had exhibited strong and striking traits of a taste for experimental science: but with a mind restless and incessantly active, he acquired at school the reputation of a dull boy, and passed through college unnoticed, save for his gentle and kindly affections: so unfavourably do bygone institutions, and studies no longer in harmony with the wants of the age, operate on the best dispositions and the brightest intellects. The remarks of the biographer on this topic merit quotation.
"In this irregular and careless manner, undistinguished as an academic in his own College, and altogether unknown as such to the University at large, was formed and educated almost to the age of twenty-one, a man, who in his maturer years was numbered both at home and abroad amongst the most celebrated of its members; who in various ways contributed not to its embellishment, than to its reputation; who was honoured and distinguished by it while living, and followed by its regrets when dead. *****
"It was his misfortune that his education was almost entirely his own, the result of accident rather than of system, and only begun in earnest at that