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174 BOYLE are divided into sects; and which has since produced so many volumes of excellent discourses. He was at the expense of 700 for printing the Irish bible, which he caused to be distributed in that country, as well as large sums towards the Welch bible, and that in the Irish lan- guage for Scotland, besides many other gifts of a similar nature. In other respects, the bishop informs as, so great were his charities, that they amounted to upwards of 1000, per annum He then proceeds te enlarge upon Mr. Boyle's astonish- ing abilities. After stating and extolling his knowledge of the Hebrew, of the fathers, and of the controversies on the Scriptüres, his acquirements in the mathematics, par- ticularly in geometry, his accurate and intimate acquaint- ance with geography and history, and his skill in physic, he says, "but for the history of nature, ancient and modern, of the productions of all countries, of the virtues and im provements of plants, of ores and minerals, and all the varieties that are in them in different climates, he was by very much the readiest and the perfectest I ever knew in the greatest compass, and with the nicest exactness. This put him in the way of making all that vast variety of ex- periments, beyond any man, as far as we know, that ever lived. And in these as he made a great progress in new discoveries, so he used so nice a strictness, and delivered them with so scrupulous a truth, that all who have ex- anined them, have found how safely the world may depend upon them. But his peculiar and favourite study was chemistry, in which he was engaged with none of those ravenous and ambitious designs, which draw many into it. As he made chemistry much the better for bis dealing in it, so he never made himself either the worse or the poorer for it. It was a charity to others as well as an entertainment to himself; for the produce of it was dis- tributed by his sister and others into whose hands he pat it." Such is the character of Boyle, as delivered to us by