well informed)--that I feel as if I had had the pleasure of being
acquainted with you for some time. I am very much obliged by this visit; I
should have done myself the honour to wait upon you, but I returned only
yesterday from the country, and my necessary engagements do not leave as
much time for my pleasures as I could wish."

I perceived by the tone of his address, that, though he was a Hebrew
teacher, he was proud of showing himself to be a man of the world. I found
him in the midst of his Hebrew scholars, and moreover with some of the best
mathematicians, and some of the first literary men in Cambridge. I was
awe-struck, and should have been utterly at a loss, had it not been for a
print of Mendelssohn over the chimney-piece, which recalled to my mind the
life of this great man; by the help of that I had happily some ideas in
common with the learned Jew, and we; entered immediately into conversation,
much to our mutual relief and delight. Dr. Johnson, in one of his letters,
speaking of a first visit from a young gentleman who had been recommended
to his acquaintance, says, that "the initiatory conversation of two
strangers is seldom pleasing or instructive;" but I am sure that I was both
pleased and instructed during this initiatory conversation, and Mr. Lyons
did not appear to be oppressed or encumbered by my visit. I found by his
conversation, that though he was the son of a great Hebrew grammarian, and
himself a great Hebrew scholar, and though he had written a treatise on
fluxions, and a work on botany, yet he was not a mere mathematician, a mere
grammarian, or a mere botanist, nor yet a dull pedant. In despite of the
assertion, that

"----Hebrew roots are always found
To flourish best on barren ground,"

this Hebrew scholar was a man of a remarkably fertile genius. This visit