Too Long; Didn't Read

In a work on the Decline of Science, at a period when England has so recently 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.

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