vileged companion and favoured protegé of the most illustrious men in power, by whose interest and support he had unstinted facilities given him in his special and peculiar pursuits. Logan, the son of a gentleman, had none of this. What he attained was due solely to his own labour and indomitable perserverance; these being exercised at the same time under the distracting influences of a laborious profession by which he honourably maintained himself.
Under these circumstances, probably Leyden would have accomplished more; indeed he must have done so, but an early death overtook him, as we all know, caused by exposure to the malaria of Batavia.
What Leyden accomplished, therefore, was small as compared with Logan. In the science of races and languages, Logan's grasp was almost universal, enabling him to collate the lexicons, vocabularies and grammars of nations and tribes in the most distant parts of the globe, and clncidate their systems and constructions. Of this vast enquiry, Leyden may be said to have had time only to approach the portal.
But, as I have suggested before, Logan's work was also incomplete. Ten years of learned leisure in his native country would have enabled him to work wonders. But this was not vouchsafed to him. Borne down by weak health, far from his native land, he was taken from us at the age when man's intellect is in its full vigour. And we live to lament unfulfilled hopes, disappointed aspirations, and useful labour ceased, to be no more.
Invercargill, New Zealand,
20th May, 1881.
