FRANCIS BEAUFORT, Esq.
Fellow of the Royal Society; Vice President of the Astronomical Society, &c. &c.
[Post-Captain of 1810.]
This officer is a son of the late venerable Dr. Daniel Augustus Beaufort, Rector of Navan, co. Meath, and Vicar of Collon, co. Louth, whose name “is well known to the British public as the author of our best map of Ireland, and most valuable memoir on the Topography, and Civil and Ecclesiastical State of that country; an excellent clergyman, of a liberal spirit and conciliating manners, and a man of taste and literature[1].”
“Dr. Beaufort, in his latter years, rebuilt the churches in both his parishes, which edifices remain monuments of his zeal and of his architectural taste. The church of Collon is built on the model of King’s College, Cambridge. It surprises and delights the English traveller, and may well gratify, as it does, the national pride of the sister country. Dr. Beaufort was one of those who first proposed the Royal Irish Academy, and actively assisted in the formation, and in the regulation of that institution, of which he was one of the earliest members. To the establishment and improvement of the Sunday Schools in Dublin he contributed essentially by his personal exertions and constant attendance; and he was one of the original founders of the admirable “Association for the encouragement of Virtue.” He possessed an extraordinary variety of information, which has never suffered to be idle, nor produced for parade: it was circulated in the most liberal and agreeable manner by his conversation, and ever ready and ever useful to his friends and country on all public or private occasions. During the course of his long life he did little for himself, much for others; nothing for money, scarcely any thing for fame; much for hiscountry, more for virtue and religion. Many have said, and more have felt,
- ↑ See “Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq.” M.P. for St. John’s Town, co. Longford (who married Dr. Beaufort’s daughter), Vol. II. p. 193.
