FOTHERGILL. 193 find so difficult to imitate, and which, in most minds, is a flower the slowest to blossom, and the earliest to decay. Few names on the record of biography will bear comparison with him in this respect. We do not know whether this noble cha- racteristic was in him the result more of an ori- ginal tenderness of disposition, or of self-discipline and principle ; it seems probable that the study of our Divine Revelation had opened this plenteous fountain of beneficence in a mind not naturally of an enthusiastic temperament. When, during the summer, he retired to Lea-Hall, in Cheshire, he devoted one day in every week to attendance at Middlewich, the nearest market-town, and gave his gratuitous advice to the poor. He assisted the clergy, not merely with his advice, but on nu- merous occasions with his purse : on one occasion he was reproved by a friend for his refusal of a fee from a person who had attained a high rank in the church : — "I had rather" (replied the doctor) return the fee of a gentleman with whose rank I am not perfectly acquainted, than run the risk of taking it from a man who ought, perhaps, to be the object of my bounty." When he paid his last visit to patients in decayed circumstances, it was not unusual with him, under the appearance of feeling the pulse, to slip into their hand a sum of money, or a bank-note; in one instance, this mode of do- nation is said to have conveyed one hundred anc iifty pounds. To the modest or proud poverty which shuns the light of observation, he was the delicate and zealous visitor ; in order to preclude the necessity of acknowledgment, which is often painful in such minds, he would endeavour to in- VOL. I. o
