The picturesque pocket companion, and visitor's guide, through Mount Auburn

[91] Spurzheim, is well known to all who enjoyed his acquaintance. A warm and wide-embracing benevolence was at the foundation of all his philosophy. His views were intended at least to be practically useful. Nor was it in sentiment alone that this spirit appeared. Spurzheim was not one of those philanthropists whose goodness evaporates in lectures,--who satisfy their consciences and their hearts by talking and writing, and gaining some reputation, and giving an impulse perhaps to other men. His was a character full of energy and execution. He was restless to do the good he thought of and talked of. He was anxious for actual reform wherever it was needed, and willing to lead himself in the work, cost what it might. No appeal, indeed, of any description, where the heart was concerned, was ever made to him in vain. “He always,” continues his biographer, “chose for himself, in preference, the performance of that duty which required the greater effort and self-denial. It is certainly not going too far if we say that his anxious desire to fulfil his engagements in Boston and in Cambridge, was the chief cause of his death. Though oppressed by indisposition, and contrary to the entreaties of his medical friends, he continued to lecture; and once in his last sickness, he started up with the intention to dress himself, to go to Cambridge. All who have attended his course remember the unwearied kindness with which he was wont to hear and answer any question that was put to him at the close of his lecture by any one of his hearers, even when he was quite exhausted.” It is an interesting trait, added in another connection to this account of him, that he never would allow any one