Mr. Sands had qualities of the heart no less admirable than those of the intellect. He possessed an uncommon and wholly unaffected humanity of disposition; he loved his friends with a strong and unwavering attachment, and few men ever succeeded in attaching their friends so strongly. He was particularly kind to those whom fortune had placed in an inferior station, and seemed to study to make up by the gentleness and generosity of his conduct, for the inequalities of accident. He reverenced religion, and all good and moral influences, wherever they were found to exist.
His intellectual character has already been drawn in the course of this narrative. With great activity and versatility of mind, he possessed a large share of what is commonly called talent, or the power of vigorously directing the faculties of the mind to any given purpose. His fancy was surprisingly fruitful of new and varied combinations of ideas; and if his vein of humor, peculiar and original as it was, had any fault, it was only that of excessive and unrestrained exuberance. His conversation was full of wit and knowledge, and the quaint combinations of language, and grotesque associations of ideas, that seemed to suggest themselves to his mind unsought, made him an amusing, as his learning and originality of reflection rendered him, an instructive companion. Delighting as he did in the work of composition, he was disposed to make it a social and not a solitary enjoyment; he loved to write in conjunction with his friends; and he had this peculiarity, that the presence of others, which most authors feel to be a restraint on the free course of their thoughts and fancies, was actually to him a source of excitement and inspiration.
A collection of his writings to be published by subscription, consisting of such as he himself might have thought worthy of preservation, has been spoken of, and it is hoped that the plan may be carried into effect.
Subjoined is the fragment of the article begun by him for this magazine. In this unfinished state it derives its principal interest from the fearful catastrophe by which it was interrupted. The little poem, on page twenty-nine, by another hand, was originally written to form a conclusion for the article which follows. The first of the poetic passages seems to have been intended as the introduction to an heroic poem, on the ancient settlement of Greenland by the Esquimaux. Two or three notes have been added from Crantz's book, by the writer of this memoir. The second is the beginning of an Ana-
