Page:Father's memoirs of his child.djvu/208

 and a little before twelve o'clock, he sunk in the arms of his mother without a struggle or a groan. There was no expression of agony upon his features. His frame was neither agitated by convulsion, nor his faculties stupified by the drowsy tendency of his dropsical affection. It may indeed be affirmed, without danger of a paradoxical deviation from the sobriety of truth, that he excited more admiration under circumstances, from which human nature is apt to revolt, than had fallen to his share in the full career of mental and bodily improvement. He displayed the faculty of acquiring knowledge in health, and that of using it in sickness. It is much to be lamented, that powers like his, resembling so nearly in their early promise, whatever has delighted and improved mankind in the works of mature genius, could never be rendered available to the general purposes of society. The argument from such a dispensation, for a future state of existence, has been already touched upon. Yet the ways of Providence,