the option at last came down to him; and having already determined to enter into holy orders, he was ordained by his old friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, in December, 1805, and immediately instituted to the living. But this was only a part of his good fortune. Not more than three years after his marriage, the rectory of Yeldham, in Essex, in the gift of Sir William Rush, and tenable with Harlton, unexpectedly became vacant, and was presented to him. Thus he became possessed of a considerable income from church preferment, not any part of which he had calculated upon when he determined upon his marriage." As to the living of Yeldham," he says, " I never knew of its existence until it came. "I was like a man gaping in a hailstorm, and a pearl of great price' fell into my mouth, to my utter astonishment." In all other respects, the consequences of this union proved directly the reverse of what the calmer heads of his friends had anticipated from it. Before many months had elapsed, it was obvious that the character and disposition of Mrs. Clarke were precisely such as those who loved him best would have chosen for him, and that the habits of life she was forming were in perfect conformity with his own wishes, and suitable to the new fortunes and circumstances in which her marriage had placed her. So far from being desirous of public admiration, she was more at tached to domestic privacy than himself; all her employments and all her pleasures were sought for and found at home; nor did she seem to have an expectation, or even a wish of any kind, beyond the sphere of her husband's fortune, or the circle of his employments, while the taste which was gradually dis played by her, first in the comforts and ornaments of his house, then in the embellishments of his work, and finally through the whole range of his intellectual pleasures, gave a

charm to her character in his eyes, which was perpetually varied and renewing, and appeared perhaps more delightful to him, because it was discovered and elicited by himself. Nor did the benignant influence of this union rest here; he was indebted to it for a better frame of mind, and a greater steadiness and consistency in his pursuits. In the whole character of the lady, there was a quietness and repose admirably calculated to soften that turbulence of spirit, which was at once the charm and the danger of his own, and which literary fame often stimulates, but rarely satisfies; while the suggestions of her plain and unaffected sense, openly but seasonably delivered, often called him back to calmer and juster views of things, and made him question the results to which his own sensibility was leading him. On the other hand, in the desire he felt of adding to the comfort and of providing for the necessities of his family, he had a strong and unfailing motive for his literary labours, which now began to bear a new and an additional value in his eyes; and there is the strongest reason to believe, that without this stimulus, his great work, the Travels, the fruit of so much painful labour, would never have been finished, and scarcely perhaps have been begun; not that his literary ardour would have been less, but it would have been more excursive and more ambitious of new paths, and, at all events, more philosophical and experimental. But, after all, the great beauty of the union was, that to the quiet habits of domestic life it induced, so favourable to the reception of Christian truth, and to the formation of Christian virtue, concurrent with the serious nature of the office he had undertaken, he was indebted for a more earnest application of the Scriptures to his own mind than he had hitherto bestowed. Many proofs of this may be drawn from various parts of his works and life; but the most

striking will be found under the pressure of the afflictions which clouded his latter days.

The report of his marriage was hailed by a distinguished classical friend, with the following complimentary verses:

Immediately after this event, he went to reside in Cambridge, where he hired a small house, in St. Andrew's Street, and as his living of Harlton was only seven miles from the University, he constantly performed the duties himself.

Abbatissa Monast. Jes. + Episcopus Alcock fundator Jes. Coll. Cant.

CHAPTER VIII.

His Lectures on Mineralogy-Sale of Manuscripts-Of Medals -Removal to Trumpington-Publication of the first volume of his Travels-Other Engagements-Plan for the farther prosecution of his Travels—Return to residence at Cambridge.

THE Course of Dr. Clarke's life now turns from this happy union to a department of his labours, which was always uppermost in his own thoughts, and, next to his Travels, obtained for him his highest distinctions, as a literary man: viz. his Lectures on Mineralogy. The history of these Lectures belongs properly to this period of his life, for they commenced not long after his marriage, and were, in truth, one of the resources upon which he relied, when the difficulties of a family were pressed upon him by his friends; but as they had been a favourite object of his speculations for many years, and were now only accidentally connected with this event, it will be necessary to trace them somewhat nearer to their source. It is well known to his friends, that whatever temporary interest his works already published had excited in his mind, they were only the result of so much time and labour reluctantly withdrawn from mineralogy. During the whole course of his journey, this science, and the objects connected with it, obtained every where the greatest share of his attention, and had been cultivated by him with the greatest success; to which several circumstances had contributed. Low at that time, as was

this branch of literature in our Universities, it had risen under a variety of encouragement and patronage-the result of policy as well as taste-to a high degree of importance in every public establishment of education on the Continent; and, as Mr. Clarke brought letters of recommendation to the most eminent professors wherever he went (an advantage which his own spirit always contributed to improve), he was in all places cheerfully admitted to a participation of all the local discoveries or improvements, and supplied with specimens of all such minerals as they respectively produced. But this was not all; the course of his travels often led him to remote districts, particularly in the eastern and southern parts of Russia, not accessible to the ordinary mineralogist; and as he spared neither pains nor money in his researches, besides a very ample store of minerals 'more or less known, he brought to England several rare and valuable specimens, which were for some time almost peculiar to his collection: and it may be affirmed generally, that of all the fruits of his travels, his acquisitions in this department were infinitely the most precious in his eyes. To bring forward, therefore, this collection before the public eye, and with more advantage than his own limited apartments would permit, to communicate to others the lights which he himself had obtained, and to disseminate throughout the University a portion of that flame which burnt within himself, were, from the first, wants infinitely more pressing in his mind, than the hope of reputation or advantage from any other quarter ; and as the only obvious means of embracing at once these objects was the delivery of Lectures under the patronage of the University, it was to the attainment of this, that his best efforts, from a very early period after his return, were uniformly directed. But the task was by no means an easy one.