Unlike many business men, he had both taste and talent for literature. He wrote a tour in South Wales, and he has given us a very instructive work on Buenos Ayres, in the colonisation of which he was interested. The pamphlets he published are principally on social subjects, and time has confirmed the opinions he expressed. The people and their requirements seemed his special care, and he appears to have borne in mind the Divine commission “the poor always ye have with you.” Besides a close attention to their physical wants, he originated a literary institution; for he had received too much solace from art, science, and literature himself, not to spread its moral and mental advantages among those in whose cause he laboured. Nothing could exceed the ardour he evinced, or the fatigue he underwent, in carrying out his plan. “He was on the spot at all times, and in all weathers. His attention was indefatigable and his vigilance excessive. He paid little regard to meat, or drink, or sleep; and the consciousness that he was about to effect a great and lasting good inspired him with augmented energy in the midst of waning health and a decaying frame.” At length the sword wore out the scabbard. For thirty years he had been subject to an incurable asthmatic malady, and for the last ten years of his life he had never been free from daily and nightly paroxysms of pain. A long time prior to his death he, in a somewhat eccentric spirit, ordered a coffin of beautiful oak to be made, and to undergo the process which would save it from dry rot; this was kept at the undertaker’s, where he often philosophically went to contemplate the future depository of his remains. Not satisfied with the good he had effected in his life, he left at his death 13,000_l._ to maintain the institution which he had founded. He was buried in his own cemetery; and there are many wealthy men who may take a lesson from Barber Beaumont in the employment of their riches, and many poor men who may copy his unceasing industry, prudence, and perseverance.