death. His disease was an inflammation of the brain, whicit first discovered itself in slight aberrations of mind, and terminated in delirium. This awful eclipse of reason continued to the last, so that his friends were denied the satisfaction of reeeiving from his dying lips assurances of his Christian hope. Some of them however recollect with pleasure, that at the beginning of his disease, when his intellect was rather exalted than deranged, his expressions of religious feeling and joy were unusually strong; and he has left them higher consolation than a dying testimony, even the memory of a blameless and well-spent life. Having given this brief record of a life too peaceful and prosperous to furnish matter for biography, we proceed to give our views of the character of Mr. Gallison. His chief distinction was not talent, although he had fine powers of intellect, and a capacity of attention, which, in usefulness if not in splendour, generally surpasses genius. His primary characteristic, and that which gave him his peculiar weight in the community, was the force of moral and religious principle; a force, which operated with the steadiness of a law of nature, a paramount energy which suffered no portion of life or intellect to be wasted, which concentrated all his faculties and feelings on worthy objects. His powers did not astonish, but none of them were lost to himself or society. His great distinction was the singleness of his mind, the sway which duty had gained over him, his habit of submitting to this as to an inviolable ordinance of the universe. Conscience was consulted reverently as an oracle of God. The moral power seemed always at work in his breast, and its control reached to his whole life.

We sometimes witness a strong regard to duty, which confers little grace or interest on the character, because partial and exclusive views are taken of duty, and God is thought to require a narrow service, which chains and contracts instead of unfolding the mind. In Mr. Gallison the sense of duty was as enlightened and enlarged, at it was strong. To live religiously, he did not think himself called to give up the proper pursuits and gratifications of human nature. He believed, that religion was in harmony with intellectual improvement, with the pleasures of imagination and society, and especially with the kind affections. His views of the true excellence of a human being were large and generous; and hence instead of that contracted and repulsive character, which has often been identified with piety, his virtue, though of adamantine firmness, was attractive. cheerful, lovely. This union of strength and light in his sense of duty, gave a singular harmony to his character. All his faculties and sensibilities seemed to unfold together, just as the whole body grows

at once; and all were preserved by a wise presiding moral sentiment in their just proportions. He was remarkably free from excess, even in the virtues and pursuits to which he was most prone. His well balanced mind was the admiration of his friends. He had strong feeling, yet a calm judgment; and unwearied activity without restlessness or precipitancy. He had vigour and freedom of thought, but not the slightest propensity to rash and wild speculation. He had professional ardour, but did not sacrifice to his profession the general improvement of his intellect and heart. He loved study, and equally loved society. He had religious sensibility, but a sensibility which never rested, until it had found its true perfection and manifestation in practice. His mind was singularly harmonious, a well adjusted whole; and this was the secret of the signal confidence which he inspired; for confidence, or the repose of our minds on another, depends on nothing so much as on the proportion which we observe in his character. Even a good feeling, when carried to excess, though viewed with indulgence and affection, always shakes in a measure our trust.

From this general survey, we pass to some particulars of the character of Mr. Gallison. His religion was a trait which claims our first consideration. He believed in God, and in the revelation of his will by Jesus Christ; and he was not a man in whom such a belief could lie dead. That great and almost overwhelming doctrine of a GoD, the Maker of all things, in Whom he lived, and from Whom all his blessings came, wrought in him powerfully. He was not satisfied with a superficial religion, but was particularly interested in those instructions from the pulpit which enjoined a deep, living, all-pervading sense of God's presence and authority, and an intimate union of the mind with its Creator. A friend, who knew him intimately, observes: " In our frequent walks, his conversation so naturally and cheerfully turned on the attributes and dispensations of God, as convinced me that his religion was no less the delight of his heart, than the guide of his life. Though habitually temperate in his feelings, I have sometimes known him kindle into rapture while conversing on these holy themes."

But his religion, though strong and earnest, was in unison with his whole character, calm, inquisitive, rational. Uninfected by bigotry or fanaticism, unseduced by the fair promises of the spirit of innovation, he formed his views of the Christian system with caution, and held them without asperity. In regard to that important doctrine which has lately agitated the community, he was a Unitarian, believing in the pre-existence of the Saviour, and as firmly believing that he was a distinct being from the Supreme God, derived from and dependent on him; and he considered the

Gospel of John, which is often esteemed as the strong hold of opposite sentiments, as giving peculiar support to these views. We mention this, not because the conclusions of so wise and good a man were necessarily true, but because reproach is often thrown on the opinions which he adopted, as wanting power to purify and save. He may have erred, for he was a man; but who that knew him can doubt that, whatever were his errours, he held the most important and efficacious doctrines of Christianity? His religious friends, and they were not a few, can testify to the seriousness and reverence with which he approacned the scriptures, and to the fidelity with which he availed himself of the means of a right interpretation.

His religion was not ostentatiously thrust on notice; but he thought as little of hiding it, as of concealing his social feelings, or his love of knowledge. It was the light by which he walked, and his daily path shewed whence the light came. Of his decision in asserting the principles of that religion, which he received as from God, he gave a striking proof in his address to the Peace Society of this Commonwealth, which breathes the very morality of Christ, and is throughout a mild but firm remonstrance against great practical errours, which have cor. rupted the church almost as deeply as the world. It was so natural to him to act on the convictions of his mind, that he seemed on this occasion utterly unconscious, that there was a degree of heroism in a young man of a secular calling, and who mixed occasionally in fashionable life, enlisting so earnestly in the service of the most neglected, yet most distinguishing virtues of Christianity,

That a man, to whom Christianity was so authoritative, should be characterized by its chief grace, benevolence, we cannot wonder. Nature formed him for the kind affections, and religious principle added tenderness, steadiness, dignity to the impulses of nature. That great maxim of Christianity, "No man liveth to himself," was engraven on his mind. Without profession, or show, or any striking discoveries of emotion, he felt the claim of every thing human on his sympathy and service. His youth and professional engagements did not absolve him to his own conscience from labouring in the cause of mankind; and his steady zeal redeemed from business sufficient time for doing extensive good. In the institutions with which he connected himself, for useful objects, he gave more than his property; he contributed his mind, his judgment, his well directed zeal; and the object which he was found to favour, derived advantage from his sanction, no less than from his labours,

He felt strongly, what a just view of human nature always teaches, that society is served by nothing so essentially, as by the infusion of a moral and religious spirit into all its classes; and this principle, like every other, when once recognized, became to him a law. We cannot but mention with great pleasure the earnestness with which he entered into a plan for collecting the poor children in the neighbourhood of the church where he worshipped, into a school for religious instruction on the Lord's day. He visited many poor families on this errand of charity, offering at once Christian instruction and the pecuniary means by which the children might be clothed decently to receive it; and he gave a part of every Sunday to this office. The friend, whom we formerly quoted, observes, "I was much delighted to see him one Sunday, leading one of his little flock, (who being lately arrived had not become familiarized to his home) through our dirtiest lanes, and inquiring at the humblest sheds for his dwelling." To a man, crowded with business, and accustomed to the most refined society, this lowly and unostentatious mode of charity could only have been recommended by a supreme sense of religious and social obligation. He was one of the few among us, who saw, that the initiation of the poor into moral and religious truth, was an office worthy of the most cultivated understanding, and that to leave it, as it is sometimes left, to those whose zeal outstrips their knowledge, was to expose to hazard and reproach one of the most powerful means of benefitting society.

Another cause to which he devoted himself was the Peace Society of this commonwealth, and to this institution his mind was drawn and bound by perceiving its accordance with the spirit of christianity. Accustomed as he was to believe that every principle which a man adopts is to be carried into life, he was shocked with the repugnance between the christian code and the practice of its professed followers on the subject of war; and he believed, that christianity, seconded as it is by the progress of society, was a power adequate to the production of a great revolution of opinion on this point, if its plain principles and the plain interests of men were earnestly unfolded. There was one part of this extensive topic, to which his mind particularly turned. He believed, that society had made sufficient advances to warrant the attempt to expunge from the usages of war, the right of capturing private property at sea. He believed that the evils of war would be greatly abridged, and its recurrence checked, were the ocean to be made a safe, privileged, unmolested pathway for all nations, whether in war or peace; and that the minds of men had become prepared for this change, by

the respect now paid by belligerents to private property on shore, a mitigation of war to be wholly ascribed to the progress of the principles and spirit of christianity. His interest in this subject led him to study the history of maritime warfare, and probably no man among us had acquired a more extensive acquaintance with it. Some of the results he gave in an article in the North American Review on Privateering, and in a Memorial to Congress against this remnant of barbarism, which will probably be offered during this session. To this field of labour he certainly was not drawn by the hope of popularity; and though he outstripped the feelings of the community, his efforts will not be vain. He was a pioneer in a path, in which society, if it continue to advance, will certainly follow him, and will at length do justice to the wisdom as well as purity of his design.

Other institutions shared his zeal and countenance, but we pass from these to observe, that his benevolence was not husbanded for public works or great occasions. It entered into the very frame and structure of his mind, so that, wherever he acted, he left its evidences and fruits. Even in those employments, where a man is expected to propose distinctly his own interest, he looked beyond himself; and those who paid him for his services, felt that another debt was due, and personal attachment often sprung from the intercourse of business. In his social and domestic connections, how he felt and lived, and what spirit he breathed, we learn from the countenances and tones of his friends, when they speak of his loss. The kind of praise which a man receives after death corresponds generally with precision to his character. We can often see on the decease of a distinguished individual, that whilst all praise, few feel; that the heart has no burden, no oppression. In the case of Mr. Gallison, there was a general, spontaneous conviction that society had been bereaved; and at the same time, a feeling of personal bereavement, as if a void which no other could fill, were made in every circle in which he familiarly moved; and this can only be explained by the genuine benevolence, the sympathy with every human interest, which formed his character. His benevolence indeed was singularly unalloyed. Those feelings of unkindness which sometimes obscure, for a moment, the goodness of excellent men, seldom or never passed over him. Those who best knew him cannot by an effort of imagination put an acrimonious speech into his lips, any more than they can think of him under an entirely different countenance. The voice ceases to be his, its tones do not belong to him, when they would make it the vehicle of unkindness. We have understood, what we should not doubt,