remarkable for robust
health and activity; but, from about his fortieth year, he suffered
severely from attacks of gout, which increased so much, that for his
last fourteen years he was scarcely able to walk. His robust mind,
however, enabled him to encounter his disease by increased and extreme
temperance. He gave up all fermented liquors and animal food. He seems
to have derived considerable benefit from D'Huisson's medicine. But his
hour was come; and on the 19th of June 1820, in the seventy-eighth year
of his age, he died--just one year after his honoured and royal friend,
George III.

Thus passed through the world one of those men who are among the most
useful in their generation. It would be idle to pronounce him a genius,
a discoverer, or a profound philosopher. But he served an important
purpose in society; he suggested philosophical enterprise, he protected
the honourable ambition of men whose career, without that protection,
might have closed in obscure suffering: he gave the philosophy and
literature of his time a leader, and formed it into a substantial shape.
In this spirit he employed his life; and he accomplished his purpose
with the constancy and determination of a sagacious and systematic mind.
He might not be a pillar of the philosophical temple of his country, nor
its architrave; but he performed the office of the clamp--he bound
together the materials of both pillar and architrave, and sustained the
edifice alike in its stateliness and in its security.

Lord Brougham's biography of D'Alembert commences with a brief
dissertation on the interest which the mind takes in the study of
mathematics. This study he regards as superior in gratification to every
other, from its independence of external circumstances. In all other
studies, he observes truly, that a large portion of the researches must
depend upon facts imperfectly ascertained from the reports of others,
and upon knowledge impeded by the capricious chances of things; while in
pure science, the principles, the premises, and the conclusions, are
wholly within our own power.

In a passage exhibiting the affluence of the noble lord's language, he
says, "The life of a geometrician may well be supposed an uninterrupted
calm, and the gratification which is derived from its researches, is of
a pure and also of a lively kind--whether he contemplates the truths
discovered by others, with the demonstrative evidence on which they
rest, or carries the sci