He isolated himself voluntarily from men, in order that their too close contact might not interfere with his thoughts.
At eighty years of age, feeble, and feeling his death nearly approaching, he several times made his preparations hastily, in order to go and struggle still, and die at a distance from the roof of his old age.

The unwearied activity of his mind was never checked for a moment.
He carried his gaiety even to genius, and under that pleasantry of his whole life we may perceive a grave power of perseverance and conviction.

Such was the character of this great man.

The enlightened serenity of his mind concealed the depth of its workings: under the joke and laugh his constancy of purpose was hardly sufficiently recognised.
He suffered all with a laugh, and was willing to endure all, even in absence from his native land, in his lost friendships, in his refused fame, in his blighted name, in his memory accursed.

He took all--bore all--for the sake of the triumph of the independence of human reason.
Devotion does not change its worth in changing its cause, and this was his virtue in the eyes of posterity.