I am now to describe the last scene of his life, which deserves the reader’s most serious consideration, as it shews the powerful effect of his religious principles. They made him, not resigned to quit a world in which he no longer had any delight, and in which no hope of future enjoyment presented itself, but chearful in the certainty of approaching dissolution, and under circumstances that would by the world in general have been considered as highly enviable. They led him to consider death as the labourer does sleep at night as being necessary to renew his mental and corporeal powers, and fit him for a future state of activity and happiness. For though since his illness in Philadelphia in 1801 he had never recovered his former good state of health, yet he had never been confined to his bed a whole day by sickness in America until within two days of his death, and was never incapacitated for any pursuit that he had been accustomed to. He took great delight in his garden, and in viewing the little improvements going forward in and about the town. The rapidly increasing prosperity of the country, whether as it regarded its agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, or the increasing taste for science and literature, were all of them to him a source of the purest pleasure. For the last four years of his life he lived under an administration, the principles and practice of which he perfectly approved, and with Mr. Jefferson, the head of that administration, he frequently corresponded, and they had for each other a mutual regard and esteem. He enjoyed the esteem of the wisest and best men in the country, particularly at Philadelphia, where his religion and his politics did not prevent his being kindly and cheerfully received by great numbers of opposite opinions in both, who thus paid homage to his knowledge and virtue. At home he was beloved; and besides the advantages of an excellent library, to which he was continually making additions, and of a laboratory that was amply provided with every thing necessary for an experimental chemist, he was perfectly freed, as he had happily been through life, in consequence of my mother’s ability and attention, from any attention to worldly concerns; considering himself, as he used to express himself, merely as a lodger, having all his time to devote to his theological and philosophical pursuits. He had the satisfaction of witnessing the gradual spread of his religious opinions, and the fullest conviction that he should prevail over his opponents in chemistry. He looked forward with the greatest pleasure to future exertions in both these fields, and had within the last month or six weeks been projecting many improvements in his apparatus, which he meant to make use of upon the return of warm weather in the spring. Notwithstanding, therefore, the many trials he underwent in this country, he had still great sources of happiness left, unalloyed by any apprehension of any material defect