6 he had been walking to an unusually late hour, and had stood engaged long in conversation in an unwholesome atmosphere. He then called upon his old tried friend, and future biographer, Sir J. More, and after complaining of agueish feelings, jocularly remarked in the words of an old proverb, that an ague in the spring is medicine for a king.' Alas! a more fatal enemy than ague had attacked him. Inflammation of the liver, a common complaint in Bengal, had come on. Medical advice was called in, but too late ere another week had flown, the distinguished linguist and lawyer, the upright judge, and most amiable man, had breathed his last. He died on the 27th April 1794, in the forty-seventh year of his age, away from a much-loved wife and far from his native land. God called him to a world unknown. But he did not die unmourned. The honours due, not only to his public station, but also to his many private virtues and attaching qualities, were not paid grudgingly to his memory. The genius of Flaxman was employed to make a fitting monument to him, by the East India Company. We will not withdraw the veil from the sacred grief of her who had been bound to him by the closest ties of affection. True to his memory, and as chary of his reputation after his death as she had been during his life, she remembered his words, 'that the best monument that can be erected to a man of literary talent, is a good edition of his works;' and she had the whole of them published in six quarto volumes. We will conclude this imperfect sketch of a good and great example of the use of doing one's best in every relation of life, with an epitaph, written by himself, and found among his papers. Here was deposited The mortal part of a man, Who feared God, but not death, None below him, but the base and unjust; His parents, kindred, friend, country, Which was the chief source of all his pleasures, and all Giving glory to his Creator, wishing peace on earth, In the year of our blessed Redeemer THE STORY OF BERNARD PALISSY, THE POTTER. ON Na bright spring morning, in the year 1528, when nature had donned her freshest green, and the air was sweet with the scent of many flowers, a young man humbly clad, and bearing a scanty wallet on his shoulder, wended his way through the chesnut forests which skirted the little hamlet of Chapelle Biron, in Perigord. His step was firm and elastic, and his well-knit limbs and ruddy cheek, betokened a healthy, vigorous nature. His face was remarkable, more from its straightforward, earnest gaze, than from any particular beauty of feature; while the smile which played around his mouth, spoke of a light heart and hopeful spirit. He seemed as if eagerly, yet fearlessly, pressing forward for the attainment of some great object, determined to overcome all difficulties, and surmount all the rough barriers that might encounter the path, which would lead him to the goal. It was thus, that Bernard Palissy quitted his native village, to seek his fortunes in the world. D He might have been about eighteen at this time. The years of his boyhood had not been spent in idleness or pleasure. Of humble birth, he had received such an education only as his father, a glass-painter by trade, could give him. He had learned to read, to write, and to draw. His father had taught him how to mix and use the minerals employed in staining glass; and this had been his only lesson in chemistry. All that he knew of geometry, consisted in his being able to manage a rule and compass; but nature, that ever fresh book to an observant mind, had been studied by him unremittingly, diligently, and lovingly; and it was from her that he had gathered those varied subjects for his pencil, which had already acquired for him a certain reputation in his native place. He bade farewell to it now, to make his own way in the world; and perhaps obtain better means of support than the honourable trade of Verrerie, or glasspainting, afforded at that time. Nor, as Bernard trudged onwards, could he feel lonely or sad on that bright spring morning. To his observant eye and enquiring mind, every little pebble, every tiny flower, that reared its head by the roadside, had its interest and its tale to tell. He could not foresee, then, how the recollection of these simple sources of pleasure and instruction were, at some future day, not only to serve him in his labours to obtain a subsistence, but also to afford cheering consolation in many solitary hours passed, at the decline of life, in prison. Writing, many years later, of the wonders of nature, he says: 'All these things made me such a lover of the fields, that it seems to me, that there are no |