nounced on Sir Joseph before the French Academy, assert that whenever a worthy disciple, or man of letters, fell in his way, he opened to them his treasures of nature with the greatest liberality." Herschel experienced from him the full benefit of this generous, ungrudging nature.
Following the example of his predecessor in office as President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph, possessed of an ample fortune which enabled him to indulge the generosity of his heart, gave receptions to learned men and travellers on Sunday evenings. The stranger thus describes what he then saw. "I found the veteran in the middle library, in full dress, with the broad ribbon of the order of the Bath over his shoulder and breast;[1] just as he used to appear when presiding at the meetings of the Royal Society. Being infirm in the feet. Sir Joseph sat in an arm-chair on rollers, his left arm resting on a table near him.[2] He was, it is true, scarcely more than the outward shell of a mind formerly so animated; both his apprehension and recollection being weak; but his features bore a most engaging expression. Every stranger was at least announced to him, and if he had anything to shew or communicate, he immediately laid it before him."
This generous, noble-hearted man did much to soften the horrors of war in the long and bloody strife between this country and France. "During the voyage of La Perouse, the French circumnavigator, he induced
- ↑ As he is represented in the portrait of him painted by Phillips, in the possession of the Royal Society.
- ↑ For fourteen or fifteen years previous to his death, he lost the use of his lower limbs so completely from gout as to oblige him to be carried or wheeled by his servants in a chair: in this way he was conveyed to the more dignified chair of the Royal Society.
