Torbay in Devonshire, the English fleet all the while | lying wind-bound at Harwich. On the landing of the troops, Mr. Carstairs performed divine service at their head, after which the whole army drawn up along the beach sang the 118th psalm before going into camp. From this time till the settlement of the crown upon William and Mary, Carstairs continued about the person of the prince, being consulted and employed in negotiating affairs of peculiar delicacy, and disposing of sums of money with which he was intrusted, in various quarters. "It was during this interval," says his biographer, and the editor of his state papers, the Rev. Joseph M'Cormick, "that he had it in his power to be of the greatest service to the Prince of Orange, nothing being carried on relative to the settlement of Scot-king, representing the difficulty, and requesting further land which the prince did not communicate to him, and permit him to give his sentiments of in private.' He was highly instrumental in procuring the settlement of the Church of Scotland in its present Presbyterian form; which was found to be a matter of no small difficulty, as the king was anxious that the same system should continue in both parts of the island. Carstairs has been often blamed for having acceded to the king's wishes for maintaining patronage, and also for recommending that some of the worst instruments of the late monarch should be continued in office, which he did upon the plea that most of them were possessed of influence and qualifications, which, if properly directed, might be useful under the new régime.. It must be recollected, that, at such a critical time, a man of Carstairs' political sagacity was apt to be guided rather by what was practically expedient than what was abstractly proper. It is probable that Carstairs, who was unquestionably a sincere man, was anxious to render the settlement of the church and of the government as liberal as he thought consistent with their stability, or as the circumstances he had to contend against would permit. King William now took an opportunity of atoning to his counsellor for all his former sufferings; he appointed Mr. Carstairs his chaplain for Scotland, with the whole revenue of the chapel royal. He also required the constant presence of Mr. Carstairs about his person, assigning him apartments in the palace when at home, and when abroad with the army allowing him £500 a year for camp equipage. He was of course with his majesty at all times, and by being thus always at hand, was enabled on some occasions to do signal service both to his king and his country. Of this we have a remarkable instance which happened in the year 1694. In 1693 the Scottish parliament had passed an act obliging all who were in office to take the oath of allegiance to their majesties, and at the same time to sign the assurance, as it was called, whereby they declared William to be king de jure as well as de facto. This was one of the first of a long series of oppressive acts| intended secretly to ruin the Scottish church by bringing her into collision with the civil authorities, and in the end depriving her of that protection and countenance which she now enjoyed from them. This act had been artfully carried through the parliament by allowing a dispensing power to the privy-council in cases where no known enmity to the king's prerogative existed. No honest Presbyterian at that time had any objection to King William's title to the crown; but they had insuperable objections to the taking of a civil oath as a qualification for a sacred office. Numerous applications were of course made to the privy-council for dispensations; but that court, which had still in it a number of the old persecutors, so far from complying with the demand, re commended to his majesty to allow no one to sit down in the ensuing General Assembly till he had taken the oath and signed the assurance. Orders were accordingly transmitted to Lord Carmichael, the commissioner to the Assembly, to that effect. When his lordship arrived in Edinburgh, however, he found the clergy obstinately determined to refuse compliance with his demand, and they assured him it would kindle a flame over the nation which those who had given his majesty this pernicious counsel would be unable to extinguish. Lord Carmichael, firmly attached to his majesty, and aware that the dissolution of this Assembly might not only be fatal to the Church of Scotland, but to the interests of his majesty in that country, sent a flying packet to the instructions. Some of the ministers at the same time wrote a statement of the case to Carstairs, requesting his best offices in the matter. Lord Carmichael's packet arrived at Kensington on a forenoon in the absence of Mr. Carstairs, and William, who, when he could do it with safety, was as fond of stretching the prerogative as any of his predecessors, peremptorily renewed his instructions to the commissioner, and despatched them for Scotland without a moment's delay. Scarcely was this done when Carstairs arrived; and, learning the nature of the despatch, hastened to find the messenger before his final departure, and having found him, demanded back the packet in his majesty's name. It was now late in the evening, but no time was to be lost; so he ran straight to his majesty's apartment, where he was told by the lord in waiting that his majesty was in bed. Carstairs, however, insisted on seeing him; and, being intro. duced to his chamber, found him fast asleep. He turned aside the curtain and gently awakened him; the king, astonished to see him at so late an hour, and on his knees by his bedside, asked, with some emotion, what was the matter. "I am come," said Carstairs, "to beg my life!" "Is it possible," said the king, with still higher emotion, "that you can have been guilty of a crime that deserves death?" "I have, sire," he replied, showing the packet he had just brought back from the messenger. "And have you, indeed," said the king, with a severe frown, 'presumed to countermand my orders?" "Let me be heard but for a few moments," said Carstairs, “and I am ready to submit to any punishment your majesty shall think proper to inflict." He then pointed out very briefly the danger of the advice he had acted upon, and the consequences that would necessarily follow if it was persisted in, to which his majesty listened with great attention. When he had done, the king gave him the despatches to read, after which he ordered him to throw them into the fire, and draw out others to please himself, which he would sign. This was done accordingly; but so many hours' delay prevented the messenger from reaching Edinburgh till the very morning when the Assembly was to meet, and when nothing but confusion was expected, the commissioner finding himself under the necessity of dissolving the Assembly, and the ministers being determined to assert their own authority independent of the civil magistrate. Both parties were apprehensive of the consequences, and both were happily relieved by the arrival of the mes senger with his majesty's letter, signifying that it was his pleasure that the oaths should be dispensed with. With the exception of the act establishing Presbytery, this was the most popular act of his majesty's government in Scotland. It also gained Mr. Carstairs, when his part of it came to be known, more credit with his brethren and with Presbyterians in general than perhaps any other part of his public procedure. 66 Principal Carstairs was, it may be supposed, a zealous promoter of the succession of the house of Hanover. Of so much importance were his services deemed, that George I., two years before his accession, signified his acknowledgments by a letter, and immediately after arriving in England, renewed his appointment as chaplain for Scotland. The last considerable duty upon which the principal was engaged was a mission from the Scottish church to upon his accession. He did not long survive this period. In August, 1715, he was seized with an apoplectic fit, which carried him off about the end of the December following, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. His body lies interred in the Greyfriars' churchyard, where a monument is erected to his memory, with a suitable inscription in Latin. The university, the clergy, and the nation at large, united in lamenting the loss of one of their brightest ornaments and most distinguished benefactors. From this period down to the death of the king | to prevent the discontents occasioned by the patron. there is nothing to be told concerning Carstairs but age bill from breaking out into open insurrection. that he continued still in favour, and was assiduously It may be remarked that, although patronage is a courted by all parties, and was supposed to have so privilege which, if harshly exercised, acts as a severe much influence, particularly in what related to the oppression upon the people; yet, while justified so church, that he was called CARDINAL CARSTAIRS. far in abstract right by the support which the patron Having only the letters that were addressed to is always understood to give to the clergyman, it him, without any of his replies, we can only conjec- was, to say the least of it, more expedient to be enture what these may have been. The presumption forced at the commencement of last century than is, that they were prudent and discreet. Though he perhaps at present, as it tended to reconcile to the was so great a favourite with William, there was no church many of the nobility and gentry of the country, provision made for him at his death. Anne, how- who were, in general, votaries of Episcopacy, and ever, though she gave him no political employment, therefore disaffected to the state and to the general continued him in the chaplainship for Scotland, with interests." the same revenues he had enjoyed under her predecessor. In the year 1704 he was elected principal of the college of Edinburgh, for which he drew up a new and very minute set of rules; and, as he was wanted to manage affairs in the church courts, he was, at the same time (at least in the same year), presented to the church of Greyfriars; and, in consequence of uniting this with his office in the university, he was allowed a salary of 2200 merks a year. Three years after this he was translated to the High-congratulate the first prince of the house of Brunswick church. Though so deeply immersed in politics, literature had always engaged much of Carstairs' attention; and he had, so early as 1693, obtained a gift from the crown to each of the Scottish universities of £300 sterling per annum out of the bishops' rents in Scotland. Now that he was more closely connected with these learned bodies, he exerted all his influence with the government to extend its encouragement and protection towards them, and thus essentially promoted the cause of learning. It has indeed been said that from the donations he at various Carstairs was one of the most remarkable men ever times procured for the Scottish colleges he was the produced by this country. He appears to have been greatest benefactor, under the rank of royalty, to born with a genius for managing great political unthose institutions that his country ever produced. dertakings; his father, in one of his letters, expresses The first General Assembly that met after he became a fear lest his "boy Willie" should become too much a minister of the Church of Scotland made choice of of a public political man, and get himself into scrapes. him for moderator; and in the space of eleven years His first move in public life was for the emancipahe was four times called to fill that office. From tion of his country from tyrannical misrule; and his personal influence and the manner in which he nothing could well equal the sagacity with which was supported he may be truly said to have had the he conducted some of the most delicate and hazardentire management of the Church of Scotland. In ous enterprises for that purpose. In consequence of leading the church he displayed great ability and the triumph of the principles which he then advocomprehensiveness of mind, with uncommon judg-cated, he became possessed of more real influence in ment. "He moderated the keenness of party zeal, and infused a spirit of cautious mildness into the deliberations of the General Assembly. As the great body of the more zealous clergy were hostile to the union of the kingdoms, it required all his influence to reconcile them to a measure which he, as a whole, approved of as of mutual benefit to the two countries; and although after this era the Church of Scotland lost much of her weight in the councils of the kingdom, she still retained her respectability, and perhaps was all the better of a disconnection with political affairs. When Queen Anne, among the last acts of her reign, restored the system of patronage, he vigorously opposed it; and, though unsuccessful, his visit to London at that time was of essential service in securing on a stable basis the endangered liberty of the church. The ultra-Tory ministry, hostile to the Protestant interests of these realms, had devised certain strong measures for curtailing the power of the Church of Scotland, by discontinuing her assemblies, or at least by subjecting them wholly to the nod of the court. Mr. Carstairs prevailed on the administration to abandon the attempt; and he, on his part, promised to use all his influence We here quote from a memoir of Principal Carstairs, which appeared in the Christian Instructor, for March, 1827. What the state than has fallen to the lot of many respon- In the midst of all his greatness, Carstairs never forgot the charities of domestic life. His sister, who had been married to a clergyman in Fife, lost her husband a few days before her brother arrived from London on matters of great importance to the nation. Hearing of his arrival, she came to Edinburgh to see him. Upon calling at his lodgings in the forenoon, she was told he was not at leisure, as several of the nobility and officers of state were gone in to see him. She then bid the servant only whisper to him, that she desired to know when it would be convenient for him to see her. He returned for answer -immediately; and, leaving the company, ran to her and embraced her in the most affectionate manner. Upon her attempting to make some apology for her unseasonable interruption to business, "Make yourself easy," said he, "these gentlemen are come hither, not on my account, but their own. They will wait with patience till I return. You know I never pray long,"-and, after a short, but fervent prayer, adapted to her melancholy circumstances, he fixed the time when he could see her more at leisure, and returned in tears to his company. The close attention which he must have paid to politics does not appear to have injured his literature any more than his religion, though it perhaps prevented him from committing any work of either kind to the press. We are told that his first oration in the public hall of the university, after his installation as principal, exhibited so much profound erudition, so much acquaintance with classical learning, and such an accurate knowledge of the Latin tongue, that his hearers were delighted, and the celebrated Dr. Pitcairn declared, that when Mr. Carstairs began his address, he could not help fancying himself in the forum of ancient Rome. In the strange mixed character which he bore through life, he must have corresponded with men of all orders; but, unfortunately, there is no collection of his letters known to exist. A great number of letters addressed to him by the most eminent men of his time were preserved by his widow, and conveyed through her executor to his descendant, Principal M'Cormick, of St. Andrews, by whom they were published in the year 1774. CHALMERS, ALEXANDER, M. A., F.S. A. The life of this laborious literary workman is more remarkable for untiring industry, and its immense amount of produce, than for greatness or originality of genius. He was born at Aberdeen on the 29th of March, 1759, and was the youngest son of James Chalmers, printer in Aberdeen, an accomplished scholar, who established the first newspaper that existed in that town. Alexander, after completing a classical education, continued his studies for the medical profession; and, on finally being appointed to practise as surgeon in the West Indies, he left Aberdeen in 1777, to join the ship which was to carry him to his destination. But on reaching Portsmouth, instead of stepping on board, he suddenly flew off to London. He had either lost heart at the thought of a residence in the West Indies, at that time one of the worst of exiles, or had suddenly become enamoured with the charms of a literary life in the metropolis. At all events, thither he went, and although his line of existence was stretched out nearly sixty years beyond this period, his native city saw him no more. On entering London, Mr. Chalmers commenced as a contributor to the periodical press, and became editor of the Public Ledger and London Packet. It was a stirring and prolific period for journalists, in consequence of the American war; and so ably did he exert himself, that he soon became noted as a vigorous political writer. Besides his own, he exercised his talents in other established journals of the day, the chief of which was the St. James' Chronicle, where he wrote many essays, most of them under the signature of Senex. He was also a valuable assistant for some years to his fellow-townsman, Mr. James Perry, editor and proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, who had come to London at the same time as himself, and to whose newspaper Chalmers contributed racy paragraphs, epigrams, and satirical poems. He was likewise a contributor to the Analytical Review, published by Mr. Johnson, and to the Critical Review. As the last-named magazine was published by Mr. George Robinson of Paternoster Row, a close connection was established between Mr. Chalmers and that eminent publisher, which continued till the death of the latter, and was of important service to both parties. Chalmers, who lived almost wholly with his friend, assisted him in the examination of manuscripts offered for publication, and also revised, and occasionally altered and improved, those that were passed through the press. With most, indeed, of the principal publishers and printers in London during fifty years Chalmers maintained a friendly intercourse, and of many of them he has left interesting biographies in the obituary of the Gentleman's Magazine, a favourite periodical to which he frequently contributed. These literary exertions, however, numerous though they were, and extended over a long course of years, were as nothing compared with his permanent labours as editor of many of the most important works of British author. ship; and it is by these, of which we can only give a very brief notice, that his merits are chiefly to be estimated. In 1793 he published a continuation of the History of England in Letters, two volumes. This work was so well appreciated, that four editions successively appeared, the last being in 1821. In 1797 he compiled a Glossary to Shakspeare-a task peculiarly agreeable to a Scotsman, who finds in the copious admixture of unpolluted Saxon existing in his own native dialect, a key to much that is now obsolete in the English of the Elizabethan period. In 1798 he published a Sketch of the Isle of Wight, and in the same year an edition of The Rev. James Barclay's Complete and Universal English Dutionary. In 1803 he published a complete edition of the British Essayists, beginning with the Tatler, and ending with the Observer, in forty-five volumes. The papers of this long series he carefully compared with the originals, and enriched the work with biogra phical and historical prefaces, and a general index. During the same year he produced a new edition of Shakspeare, in nine volumes, with a life of the author, and abridgment of the notes of Stevens, accompanied with illustrations from the pencil of Fuseli. In 1805 he wrote lives of Robert Burns, and Dr. Beattie, author of the Minstrel, which were prefixed to their respective works. In 1806 he edited Fielding's works, in ten volumes octavo; Dr. Johnson's works, in twelve volumes octavo; Warton's essays; the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, in fourteen volumes octavo; and assisted the Rev. W. L. Bowles in his edition of the works of Alexander Pope. In 1807 he edited Gibbon's Decline and Fall, in twelve volumes octavo, to which he prefixed a Life of the Author. In 1808, and part of the following year, he selected and edited, in forty-five volumes, the popular work known as Walker's Classics. ALEXANDER CHALMERS In 1809 he edited Bolingbroke's works, in eight volumes octavo. During this year, and the intervals of several that followed, he contributed many of the lives contained in that splendid work, the British Gallery of Contemporary Portraits. In 1810 he revised an enlarged edition of The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, and prefixed to it several biographical notices omitted in the first collection. During the same year he published A History of the Colleges, Halls, and Public Buildings attached to the University of Oxford. This work he intended to continue, but did not complete it. In 1811 he revised Bishop Hurd's edition of Addison's works, in six volumes octavo, and an edition of Pope's works, in eight volumes octavo. During the same year he published, with many alterations, The Projector, in three volumes octavo, a collection of original articles which he had con. tributed to the Gentleman's Magazine from the year 1802 to 1809. In 1812 he prefixed a "Life of Alexander Cruden" to a new edition of Cruden's Concordance. During the last-mentioned year, also, Chalmers commenced the largest and most voluminous of all his literary labours, and the work upon which his reputation chiefly rests. This was 66 The General Biographical Dictionary, containing an historical and critical account of the lives and writings of the most eminent men in every nation, particularly the British and Irish; from the earliest accounts to the present times." The original work, published in 1798, had consisted of fifteen volumes. Large though it was, Chalmers found it incomplete, and resolved to expand it into a full and perfect work. He therefore commenced this gigantic labour in May, 1812, and continued to publish a volume every alternate month for four years and ten months, until thirty-two volumes were successively laid before the public. The amount of toil undergone during this period may be surmised from the fact, that of the nine thousand and odd articles which the Dictionary contains, 3934 were entirely his own production, 2176 were re-written by him, and the rest revised and corrected. After these toils, it might have been supposed that the veteran editor and author would have left the field to younger men. He had now reached the age of fifty-seven, and had crowded that period with an amount of literary exertion such as might well indicate the full occupation of every day, and every hour of the day. But no sooner was the last volume of the Biographical Dictionary ended, than he was again at work, as if he had entered freshly into action; and from 1816 to 1823 a series of publications was issued from the press that had passed under his editorial pen, chiefly consisting of biographies. But at last the "pitcher was broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern." During the latter years of his life, he had been employed by the booksellers to revise and enlarge his Biographical Dictionary, and upon this he had continued to employ himself until about a third of the work was finished, when the breaking up of his constitution obliged him to lay aside his well-worn pen. His last years were years of suffering, arising chiefly from diseases incident to such a sedentary life, until he sank under an attack of bronchial inflammation. His death occurred in Throgmorton Street, London, on the 10th of December, 1834, in his seventy-sixth year. His wife had died eighteen years previous, and his remains were interred in the same vault with hers, in the church of St. Bartholomew, near the Royal Exchange. In the foregoing summary we have omitted the | mention of not a few of Chalmers' less essential literary performances, conceiving the list to be already long enough to give an idea of his character and well-spent life. We can only add, that his character was such as to endear him to the literary society with whom he largely mingled, and by whom his acquaintance was eagerly sought. He was what Dr. Johnson would have termed "a good clubbable man," and was a member of many learned societies during half a century, as well as the affectionate biographer of many of his companions who had been wont to assemble there. He was charitable almost to a fault-a rare excess with those in whom a continued life of toil is too often accompanied with an undue love of money, and unwillingness to part with it. He was also in his private life an illustration of that Christian faith and those Christian virtues which his literary exertions had never failed to recommend. CHALMERS, GEORGE, an eminent antiquary and general writer, was born in the latter part of the year 1742, at Fochabers, in Banffshire, being a younger son of the family of Pittensear, in that county. He was educated, first at the grammarschool of Fochabers, and afterwards at King's College, Aberdeen, where he had for his preceptor the celebrated Dr. Reid, author of the Inquiry into the Human Mind. Having studied law at Edinburgh, Mr. Chalmers removed, in his twenty-first year (1763) to America, as companion to his uncle, who was proceeding thither for the purpose of recovering some property in Maryland. Being induced to settle as a lawyer in Baltimore, he soon acquired considerable practice, and, when the celebrated question arose respecting the payment of tithes to the church, he appeared on behalf of the clergy, and argued their cause with great ability against Mr. Patrick Hendry, who subsequently became so conspicuous in the war of independence. He was not only defeated in this cause, but was obliged, as a marked royalist, to withdraw from the country. In England, to which he repaired in 1775, his sufferings as a loyalist at last recommended him to the government, and he was in 1786 appointed to the respectable situation of clerk to the Board of Trade. The duties of this office he continued to execute with diligence and ability for the remainder of his life, a period of thirty-nine years. Before and after his appointment, he distinguished himself by the composition of various elaborate and useful works, of which, as well as of all his subsequent writings, the following is a correct chronological list:-1. The Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, from their Settlement to the Peace of 1763, of which the first volume appeared in quarto, in 1780: the second was never published. 2. Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, during the present and four preceding reigns, 1782. 3. Opinions on interesting subjects of Public Law and Commercial Policy; arising from American Independence, 1784, 8vo. 4. Life of Daniel Defoe, prefixed to an edition of the History of the Union, London, 1786; and of Robinson Crusoe, 1790. 5. Life of Sir John Davies, prefixed to his Historical Tracts regarding Ireland, 1786, 8vo. 6. Collection of Treaties between Great Britain and other powers, 1790, 2 vols. 8vo. 7. Life of Thomas Paine, 1793, 8vo. 8. Life of Thomas Ruddiman, A.M., 1794, Svo. 9. Prefatory Introduction to Dr. Johnson's Debates in Parliament, 1794, 8vo. 10. Vindication of the Privilege of the People in respect to the constitutional right of free discussion; with a retrospect of various proceedings relative to the Violation of that right, 1796, 8vo. (An Anonymous Pamphlet.) concerned, when death stepped in and arrested the busy pen of the antiquary, May 31, 1825. As a writer, George Chalmers does not rank high in point of elegance of style; but the solid value of his matter is far more than sufficient to counterbalance both that defect, and a certain number of prejudices by which his labours are otherwise a little deformed. Besides the works which we have mentioned, he was the author of some of inferior note, including various political pamphlets on the Tory side of the question. This emi CHALMERS, REV. THOMAS, D.D. 11. Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare | Papers, which were exhibited in Norfolk Street, 1797, 8vo. 12. A Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers, being a reply to Mr. Malone's Answer, &c., 1799, 8vo. 13. Appendix to the Supplemental Apology; being the documents for the opinion that Hugh Boyd wrote Junius' Letters, 1800, 8vo. 14. Life of Allan Ramsay, prefixed to an edition of his Poems, 1800, 2 vols. 8vo. 15. Life of Gregory King, prefixed to his Observations on the State of England in 1696, 1804, 8vo. 16. The Poetical Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, with a Life of the Author, prefatory Dissertations, and an appropriate Glossary, 1806, 3 vols. 8vo. 17. Caledonia, &c., vol. i. 1807, 4to; vol. ii. 1810; vol. iii. 1824. 18. A Chronological Account of Commerce and Coinage in Great Britain, from the Restoration till 1810; 1810, 8vo. 19. Considerations on Commerce, Bullion and Coin, Circulation and Exchanges; with a view to our present circumstances, 1811, 8vo. 20. An Historical View of the Domestic Economy of Great Britain and Ireland, from the earliest to the Present Times (a new and extended edition of the Comparate Estimate), Edinburgh, 1812, 8vo. 21. Opinions of Eminent Lawyers on various points of English Jurisprudence, chiefly concerning the Colonies, Fisheries, and Commerce of Great Britain, 1814, 2 vols. 8vo. 22. A Tract (privately printed) in answer to Malone's Account of Shakspeare's Tempest, 1815, 8vo. 23. Comparative Views of the State of Great Britain before and since the war, 1817, 8vo. 24. The Author of Junius ascertained, from a concatenation of circumstances amounting to moral demonstration, 1817, Svo. 25. Churchyard's Chips concerning Scotland; being a Collection of his Pieces regarding that Country, with notes and a Life of the Author, 1817, 8vo. 26. Life of Queen Mary, drawn from the State Papers, with six subsidiary memoirs, 1818, 2 vols. 4to; reprinted in 3 vols. 8vo. 27. The Poetical Reviews of some of the Scottish Kings, now first collected, 1824, 8vo. 28. Robene and Makyne, and the Testament of Cresseid, by Robert Henryson, edited as a contribution to the Bannatyne Club, of which Mr. Chalmers was a member; Edinburgh, 1824. 29. A Detection of the Love-letters lately attributed in Hugh Campbell's work to Mary Queen of Scots, 1825, 8vo. All these works, unless in the few instances mentioned, were published in London. The author's Caledonia astonished the world with the vast extent of its erudition and research. It professes to be an account, historical and topographical, of North Britain, from the most ancient to the present times; and the original intention of the author was, that it should be completed in four volumes quarto, each containing nearly 1000 pages. Former historians had not presumed to inquire any further back into Scottish history than the reign of Canmore, describing all before that time as obscurity and fable, as Strabo, in his maps, represents the inhabitants of every place which he did not know as Ichthyophagi. But George Chalmers was not contented to start from this point. He plunged fear-cessfully studied the principles of composition, and lessly into the dark ages, and was able, by dint of incredible research, to give a pretty clear account of the inhabitants of the northern part of the island since the Roman conquest. The pains which he must have taken in compiling information for this work, are almost beyond belief-although he tells us in his preface that it had only been the amusement of his evenings. The remaining three volumes were destined to contain a topographical and historical account of each county, and the second of these completed his task so far as the Lowlands were nent orator, philosopher, and divine, by whom the highest interests of his country during the present century have been so materially influenced, was born in the once important, but now unnoticed town of Anstruther, on the south-east coast of Fife, on the 17th March, 1780. He was the son of Mr. John Chalmers, a prosperous dyer, ship-owner, and general merchant in Easter Anstruther, and Elizabeth Hall, the daughter of a wine merchant of Crail, who, in the course of twenty-two years, were the parents of nine sons and five daughters, of which numerous family, Thomas, the subject of this memoir, was the sixth. After enduring the tyranny of a severe nurse, he passed in his third year into the hands of an equally severe schoolmaster, a worn-out parish teacher, whose only remaining capacity for the instruction of the young consisted in an incessant application of the rod. Thus early was Thomas Chalmers taught the evils of injustice and oppression; but who can tell the number of young minds that may have been crushed under a process by which his was only invigorated! After having learned to read, and acquired as much Latin as he could glean under such unpromising tuition, he was sent, at the age of twelve, to the United College of St. Andrews. Even long before this period he had studied with keen relish Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and resolved to be a minister. It appears that, like too many youths at their entrance into our Scottish universities, he had scarcely any classical learning, and was unable to write even his own language according to the rules of orthography and grammar. All these obstacles, however, only called forth that indomitable perseverance by which his whole career in life was distinguished; and in his third year's course at college, when he had reached the age of fifteen, he devoted himself with such ardour to the study of mathematics, that he soon became distinguished by his proficiency in the science, even among such class-fellows as Leslie, Ivory, and Duncan. These abstract studies required some relief, and in the case of Chalmers they were alternated with ethics, politics, and political economy. After the usual curriculum of four years he enrolled as a student of theology, but with a heart so devoted to the abstractions of geometry, that divinity occupied little of his thoughts; even when it was afterwards admitted, it was more in the form of sentimental musings, than of patient laborious inquiry for the purposes of public instruction. But he had so suc acquired such a mastery of language, that even at the age of sixteen, many of his college productions exhibited that rich and glowing eloquence which was to form his distinguished characteristic in afteryears. He had also acquired that occasional dreami. ness of look and absence of manner which so often characterizes deep thinkers, and especially mathematicians; and of this he gave a curious illustration, when he had finished his seventh year at college, and was about to enter a family as private tutor. His father's household had repaired to the door, to |