ciple induced in General Colby an indisposition to publish the details of the Survey, and a morbid apprehension of criticism; for, though no one was more prompt and energetic in action, no one more assiduous and skilful in observing, no one more confident in his own personal resources, he yet, after the death of General Mudge, gave the public no account of the Survey, and allowed the published maps to continue the only records of its progress and excellence. It is impossible not to regret this fatal error, as it has materially tended to alienate the Ordnance Survey from the good feelings of the scientific public, and has thrown over a work, with which not merely every scientific, but also every practical man, should be familiar, an air of official mystery and seclusion. If, however, General Colby neglected the means of ensuring his own personal fame, he was nobly disinterested in respect to the services, merits, and rewards of those acting under him; and whoever has studied human nature, and observed how many a man of great talents has laboured all his life in the shade, whilst a superior in rank has been lifted up, as it were, upon his shoulders, to eminence, will appreciate the highminded manner in which General Colby bore testimony to the merits of his officers, and permitted them on several occasions to publish portions of the work rather as principals in it, than as assistants: a generous line of conduct to which must be ascribed the first successful steps in public life of Drummond, Larcom, Dawson, and others; the first opportunities

of exhibiting those talents which have subsequently placed them in important public stations.

Some portion, indeed, of the delay in publication which it has been necessary to notice, was the result of the early distinction which several of General Colby's officers thus acquired, the preparation of part of the work for publication having been relinquished by Captain Drummond on his appointment to an important political office; and, subsequently, by Lieutenant Murphy, on his becoming an associate in the scientific and arduous Euphrates expedition of Colonel Chesney. In respect to temper, General Lewis and his other contemporaries have spoken favourably of General Colby, who had the great merit of having conquered himself, and reduced a naturally warm disposition to such discipline and order, that few could say they had ever seen him lose his self-command: and if he ever did so, his usual equanimity was disturbed but for a moment, as may be judged from the following characteristic anecdote:

"The writer of this memoir had prepared the great instrument for observation on Slieve Donard early in a morning of August, 1826, and had watched for some time the light as it slowly broke behind the dark mountains of Cumberland, when observing the outline of Sca Fell gradually assuming a distinct shape, he called up Colonel Colby, who instantly came to the Observatory and directed the telescope on the mountains. The distance was 111 miles, and the difficulty therefore of accurately bisecting the object very great. Alternately, however, Colonel

Colby and the present writer attempted to achieve the task, and at length Colonel Colby was on the point of successfully finishing his observation, which would have been a geodesical triumph, as including the longest side of a triangle ever attempted, when an officer on entering the Observatory accidentally struck his elbow, and threw the telescope off the object. A momentary ejaculation of anger escaped his lips, but though he could not again succeed, and the object was, therefore, lost, he never afterwards alluded to the subject." In manners and habits, he was singularly simple and temperate, being as much at home and as satisfied on the mountain top with the most ordinary fare, as in comfortable winter quarters with corresponding good cheer. In London, when a bachelor, he dined very often at the clubs of scientific and literary societies, being a member of almost every one then established; but all who served under him at that time will remember to have, on some occasion, met him running rather than walking (for such was his custom) along the street on his return from the Ordnance-office to the Tower, and to have been greeted by the hearty invitation, "Come back, my boy, and take a beefsteak with me" (which steak often expanded into excellent fish and a good fat turkey), or "Come to the lecture at the London Institution, and let us take a chop by the way;" simple festivities, unostentatious hospitalities, which will never be banished from the recollection of those who shared them. When married, his hospitality was equally hearty

and equally unostentatious; and those who were privileged to become occasionally inmates of his house, must warmly remember how completely at home and how happy they were made in that wellordered and peaceful family.

In person General Colby was rather short, and possessed of a singularly nervous and elastic frame, which no fatigue could overcome. Exposed almost bare-breasted to the storm, he appeared unaffected by the bitter blasts of winter, and day after day he persevered in walks over mountain districts which no ordinary strength could have mastered. His personal deportment was not perhaps dignified, but there was about him an air of will and determination which secured for him the obedience and respect of his subordinates; and when called upon to submit to a painful inquiry into the state of the Irish Survey, he exhibited that higher dignity of the mind which is manifested by a calm self-possession and a maintenance of self-respect under very irritating circumstances; or, in other words, by the possession and display of that steady firmness which makes a man superior to the world. To his character as a husband and father, his bereaved widow and children, who prized so highly his affection whilst living, and who now so bitterly deplore his loss, can alone bear fitting testimony, though many have witnessed with gratification the playful cheerfulness and the unruffled calm which pervaded his domestic establishment, and told, in language low but deep, that discord was there no welcome guest. His intercourse with men at

large was more open to observation, and in it, as in the conduct of most erring mortals, there was much to admire and something to blame. His tastes led him to prefer the company and friendship of men of science; but, in judging of their relative excellence, he was sometimes led to under-estimate it by overstrained prejudice, or to over-estimate it by overheated enthusiasm. His judgment, however, was often very sound in such matters, and at all times there was an honest independence in the expression of his opinions, so that he acquired and enjoyed through life the friendship of some of the most scientific men of the day. In respect to his officers, Major Dawson, who was for some time intimately associated with him in the Scotch Trigonometrical Survey, observes-"That in the winter months he was pleased to have his officers with him, and was always most hospitable and kind to them; and that the trigonometrical survey under him, though certainly a wild and most arduous service, was nevertheless, for a young man, a life pleasant enough.' And the same witness has thus spoken of his conduct towards the men :- "He would lend his own hand to the raising of stones and building objects for observation, or to make houses to shelter the soldiers in camp; he would occasionally join with the men in a game of quoits, or in putting the stone or crowbar, and was a warm promoter of their feast at the close of each trigonometrical season." It cannot be a matter of surprise that, under such a heart-warming system, privations and fatigues seemed as nothing;