lost two of its brightest ornaments, I should hardly be excused
if I omitted to devote a few words to the names of Wollaston and of
Davy. Until the warm feelings of surviving kindred and admiring friends
shall be cold as the grave from which remembrance vainly recalls
their cherished forms, invested with all the life and energy of
recent existence, the volumes of their biography must be sealed. Their
contemporaries can expect only to read their eloge.

In habits of intercourse with both those distinguished individuals,
sufficiently frequent to mark the curiously different structure of their
minds, I was yet not on such terms even with him I most esteemed, as to
view his great qualities through that medium which is rarely penetrated
by the eyes of long and very intimate friendship.

Caution and precision were the predominant features of the character
of Wollaston, and those who are disposed to reduce the number of
principles, would perhaps justly trace the precision which adorned
his philosophical, to the extreme caution which pervaded his moral
character. It may indeed be questioned whether the latter quality will
not in all persons of great abilities produce the former.

Ambition constituted a far larger ingredient in the character of
Davy, and with the daring hand of genius he grasped even the remotest
conclusions to which a theory led him. He seemed to think invention a
more common attribute than it really is, and hastened, as soon as he was
in possession of a new fact or a new principle, to communicate it to the
world, doubtful perhaps lest he might not be anticipated; but, confident
in his own powers, he was content to give to others a chance of reaping
some part of that harvest, the largest portion of which he knew must
still fall to his own share.

Dr. Wollaston, on the other hand, appreciated more truly the rarity of
the inventive faculty; and, undeterred by the fear of being anticipated,
when he had contrived a new instrument, or detected a new principle, he
brought all the information that he could collect from others, or which
arose from his own reflection, to bear upon it for years, before he
delivered it to the world.

The most singular characteristic of Wollaston's mind was the plain and
distinct line which separated what he knew from what he did not know;
and this again, arising from his precision, might be traced to caution.

It would, however, have been visible to such an extent in few except
him