HIS HABITS OF STUDY—HIS INFLUENCE.
"In the midst of the cares and distractions," says his biographer, "to which the active duties of the ministry subjected O'Leary, he still indulged his usual habits of study. No unexpected visitor ever found him unoccupied: his reading was extensive, profound, and incessant; and his hours of silence and retreat as many as he could abstract from the necessary and inevitable claim of his flock, or could deny to the kind importunity of his numerous and respectable acquaintance. Few men ever possessed the power of enjoying an extensive influence over public opinion more than O'Leary. Every thing he said or wrote was by every one admired. The wise and learned were delighted with the original and correct views which he took of every subject that employed his mind; whilst the amiable simplicity of his manners, the endearing kindness of his disposition, and the worth, purity, and uprightness of his life and conduct, were claims to regard that could neither be denied nor unattended to. It is, therefore, to be lamented that such transcendent faculties should have remained suspended or inactive, or been, for a moment, diverted in their application from their appropriate object or natural sphere—the moral correction of the age."