The Earle family : Ralph Earle and his descendants

Gen.] genealogy. 213
of his time was devoted to literary pursuits, he began "A Grammatical
Dictionary of the French and the English Language," based upon
a plan which he believed would greatly facilitate the acquisition of a
knowledge of the French. The intensity of his labor upon this,
together with his professional practice and the work in other enter-
prises in which he was interested—one of which was the translation
into English of Sismondi's "Italian Republics"—undoubtedly con-
tributed to the undermining of his constitution, and the hastening of
the disease which terminated in death.
We have before us many appreciative obituary notices published
soon after his decease. The extract given below is from one which
appeared on the 26th of July, 1849, in the editorial columns of the
Pioneer and Herald of Freedom, which was published in Lynn,
Massachusetts :
—
11 We knew Thomas Earle well ; and therefore we feel how difficult,
how impossible it would be to tell others how well we loved,
how greatly we respected, and wherefore we so well loved and so
greatly respected, that remarkable man. We were honored by his
acquaintance and blessed by his friendship. We were instructed by
his wisdom, and encouraged by the nobleness of the life he lived.
We have read, and have found a melancholy pleasure in reading,
numerous obituary notices of him which have been published by our
editorial contemporaries,—as well those belonging to different political
and different religious parties, as those connected with no party
in politics nor with any sect in religion. Those notices abound in
well-deserved eulogium. They speak of the departed as 'a philanthropist,'
'a man of powerful intellect,' 'of acute discrimination; an
intense thinker, a careful observer of men and things, a close and
severe student, a man of enlarged views,' 'of warm and generous
impulses,' ' an ardent advocate of whatever he deemed calculated to
ameliorate the condition or advance the progress of his race,' ' an
able public debater,' who ' carried great energy and zeal into every
cause to which he was devoted,' ' a philanthropist whom oppression
;
could not swerve ; a politician whom politics could not corrupt
and ' a Christian whom sect could not circumscribe.'
But all this, strong and eulogistic as it is, must needs, as it seems
to us, fail of giving, to any one not acquainted with Thomas Earle,
an adequate conception of the man. Such a conception of our friend
we, of course, as we have already intimated, shall not attempt to
convey. Only they who were favored with an intimate communion
with him could appreciate his worth. Were we to endeavor an indication
of that phasis of his character which ever most forcibly impressed
us, we should say it was his intense honesty, which seemed
to control and direct all the activities of his noble and energetic
'