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JAMES FREDERICK FERRIER.
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prolonged, the more their love and regard were deepened by his tender thoughtfulness for others, and the kindliness which annihilated all absorbing concern for himself. In many little characteristic touches of humour, frankness, beneficence, beautiful gratitude for any slight help or attention, his truest and best nature seemed to come out all the more freely; he grew as it were more and more entirely himself indeed. If ever a man was true to philosophy, or a man's philosophy true to him, it was so with Ferrier during all the time when he looked death in the face and possessed his soul in patience.' And, as so often happens when the things of this world are regarded sub specie æternitatis, the old animosities, such as they were, faded away. It is told how a former opponent on philosophical questions whose criticisms he had resented, called to inquire for him, and when the card was given to him, Ferrier exclaimed, 'That must be a good fellow!' Principal Tulloch, his friend and for ten years his colleague, was with him constantly, and talked often to him about his work—the work on Plato and his philosophy, that he would have liked to accomplish in order to complete his lectures. The summer before his death they read together some of Plato's dialogues which he had carefully pencilled with his notes. He also took to reading Virgil, in which occupation his friend frequently joined with him, and this seemed to relieve the languor from which he suffered. As to religion, which was a subject on which he thought much, although he did not frequently express an opinion, Tulloch says: 'He was unable to feel much interest in any of its popular forms, but he had a most intense interest in its great mysteries, and a thorough reverence for its truths when these were not disfigured by superstition and formalism.'