of his brother, and, though certainly not so important, more generally read and enjoyed. The year of Sir William's birth was that in which Dr. Thomas Reid published his Essays on the Active Powers. The old man, now in his seventy-eighth year, but still fresh and hale, inhabited an official residence in the College, and for a few years longer went out and in there, while the future corrector and editor of his Philosophy grew up under his eyes, a bright-eyed and playful child. After attending the Glasgow Grammar School for some years, William, at the early age of twelve, entered the junior Latin and Greek classes of the University, then taught by Richardson and Young. Both were men of fiue scholarship, and Young, in particular, so invested his subject with the fascination of genius, that his teaching became memorable to his pupils in after life. In 1801 Hamilton was sent to school in England, first, for a short time, to Dr. Horne of Chiswick, afterwards to Dr. Dean of Bromley. Already he expresses himself with Hamiltonian emphasis: he "hates and execrates" speaking at "public nights" in the school; he even hates England generally, and earnestly desires to know where he is to spend the Christmas holidays. His mother sternly rebukes his impatience, and hopes to have the satisfaction of hearing that he will attend to what she has lately said, that he will weigh its importance, and strive more than ever to do his duty and submit cheerfully to what she requires, in which case she will perhaps think of seeing him soon in the spring. In 1803 he was recalled home, to re-enter the University. The intervening months were spent by him and Thomas in the manse of Mid-Calder, under the kind and careful superintendence of the Rev. Dr. Sommers. William, though already marked by sedateness and power of application, as contrasted with his more dashing and volatile brother, was as fond of sport as a manly boy should be, and the acknowledged leader of his companions in all feats of strength and dexterity. As a vaulter and swimmer he was particularly distinguished, both there, and afterwards at Oxford. In after years he generally spent part of the long vacation at Mid-Calder, where his presence was always hailed with enthusiasm by the boys. As a specimen of the prodigies of strength with which he was wont to delight them, one of them has recorded that Hamilton allowed him to stand on his outstretched palm, and so held him in the air. Writing to his mother from Mid-Calder for the first time, he informs her, "Mother, you have lost your wager, for I asked Mr. Sommers and Mr. Cruickshanks

both, who both were astonished at me asking such a question, as any child of ten years old knows that the sun is nearer us in winter than in summer." These authorities he fortifies, as was his manner afterwards in graver discussions, by an additional "testimony" in the shape of an extract from a French geography.

In the winter of 1803 he attended the senior Latin and Greek classes, and also those of Logic and Moral Philosophy, taught respectively by Jardine and Mylne. In both of the latter he carried off the first prize. During the ensuing vacation, Dr. Sommers writes to his mother: "William, I see, is very anxious to become his own master, which has rendered it necessary for me to be excessively pointed and strict in everything I require of them all. He, in particular, is very much inclined to be idle, although more studious than at first." The inclination to idleness in vacation time may be forgiven, when it is known that the youths were daily occupied from seven in the morning to one, and from six to eight in the evening. Another youthful weakness the good Doctor finds in need of frequent correction,

"their extravagance in clothes, and needless absurd expenses." The two following winters were spent in Glasgow, where, besides the usual literary classes, Hamilton attended Chemistry, Botany, and Anatomy, with a view to the study of Medicine, which naturally had attractions for him. The winter of 1806 was spent in Edinburgh, and seems to have been devoted exclusively to medical studies. The extravagance of which Dr. Sommers complained was now getting concentrated on one luxury,-books, of which the young philosopher had already begun to be a "hunter," in Mr. Burton's best sense of the term. Apologizing to his mother on this head, he assures her that the bank-notes have only changed their shape, and suffered "the glorious metamorphosis of being converted into historians, and philosophers, and poets, and orators, and, though last not least, into physicians.'

In 1807 Hamilton entered Balliol College, Oxford, as an Exhibitioner on that Snell Foundation which has sent so many distinguished Scotchmen from Glasgow to Oxford. Here he prosecuted his studies with extraordinary vigour, and at the final examination for his degree acquitted himself with unparalleled distinction. The course of instruction then pursued there was little calculated to call forth independent thought or effort, "the tutors," to use words of his own, "whistling to their pupils the old tune, which, as pupils, had been piped to them." Hamilton was in fact his own tutor, and pre

myself than any of the characteristics I have noticed. . . . I have never known a heart so open to the claims of distress, and with him misery was a sufficient claim when his help was asked. The turn he gave the matter was that he was the party obliged, not the asker of the favour. If any one was depressed by fortune below those who would have otherwise been his equal, Hamilton was sure, by the most deliate means, to make him as far as pos-ible forget what was painful in his position. Hamilton, as far as I can recollect, was not wanting in the performance of any of the duties which society expects from all its members, but he did not rest there. On many occasions he seemed to me to love his neighbour better than himself." Mr. Traill's reminiscences contain some interesting additional particulars. He says:— "At the period of my entrance at Balliol, Hamilton was in the second year of his residence. His habits of study were then confirmed, though somewhat irregular. His manner of reading was characteristic. He had his table, chairs, and generally his floor, strewed with books; and you might find him in the midst of this confusion studying with his foot on a chair, pising one great folio on his knee, with another open in his hand. His mode of 'tearing out the entrails' of a book, as he termed it, was remarkable. A perusal of the preface, table of contents, and index, and a glance at those parts which were new to him (which were few), were all that was necessary. It was by this facility in acquiring knowledge, and his great faculty in retaining it, that he was able, in the short period of his undergraduateship, to become the most learned Aristotelian in Oxford. In addition to the usual Oxford course of the Ethics, Rhetoric, and Poetics, and the Politics and Economics, he had studied the analytical, physical, and metaphysical treatises; and the History of Animals, and had consulted all the principal commentators. His reputation as an Aristotelian collected a large audience in the schools at his examination. Few of them were capable of estimating the amount of his learning; and, to judge from their style of examination, the examining masters themselves seemed to feel his superiority. Still his examination, in the Oxford sense of the word, was not a brilliant one. Though a sound and even learned scholar, his was not the kind of scholarship that told in an Oxford examination. His early education in Scotland had not been fashioned after the model of an English public school. He wrote Latin prose with ease and correctness, but he was not in the practice of verse-writing-not that he was without a thorough knowledge of metres and of the niceties of the languages. Taken altogether, his examination, both for scholarship and science, has never been surpassed. His reading was not confined to the ordinary College course; it embraced also the learning of the period of the Reformation, and of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His attention was at this period turned to medicine as a profession, and the early writers on this branch of science formed part of his study. We may well be surprised when we

| consider this amount of labour, and remember that it was the spontaneous and unassisted effort of his own mind.... It was a dangerous affair accompanying Hamilton to an old book-shop. He was sure to persuade you to buy some favourite folio, and as soon as you had got it he would comfort you with the assurance that you would not understand a word of it. His own collection was of the most miscellaneous nature. In addition to every commentator upon Aristotle, it included the learned squabbles of the Scaligers, Scioppius, and the authors of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum. He was fond of controversial writings, and enjoyed the learned railings of the Scioppian style.

"Any account of Hamilton's Oxford life would be defective that did not notice him in his hours of relaxation, which were equally characteristic of the inan. Whatever he did, whether work or play, was done with his whole heart and soul. He had no turn for hunting, shooting, or boating, the usual outdoor studies of Oxford; nor would they have furnished the sort of relaxation he required. Gymnastics, as now scientifically practised, would have been exactly the thing for him, and he wou'd have excelled as a gymnast. We were obliged to content ourselves with the simple feats of leaping, vaulting, and the use of the pole. In these our proficiency was by no means contemptible. When tired with work, we started off, pole in hand, to Port Meadow or Bagley Wood, or took a round of the fields and lanes (our home preserves), clearing the gates and fences as we went. On these occasions, to relieve the severity of his study, Hamilton was in the habit of reciting, in his ore rotundo manner, passages from favourite authors. The last lines of the Prometheus of Eschylus, the beginning of the second book of Lucretius, and the concluding sentences of Tacitus's Life of Agricola, were amongst his favourites. Sometimes he would repeat the same line over and over again, when it was sonorous and filled the ear. One of these lines I remember, and mention it as now so applicable to himself. It was from Cowley's lines to Hobbes, in which he addresses him

as

Thou great Columbus of the golden lands of new philoso phies.'"

Mr. Traill gives some amusing illustrations of Hamilton's love of fun, and adds, to his honour, that he never knew him to be troubled by a dun, or to have been intoxicated, all the time he was at Oxford,—in those days a rare exhibition of virtue. He concludes by saying that he never knew a man who had "less of the dross of mere human nature." There was probably some exaggera tion, in the course of tradition, of the number of books "professed" by Hamilton at his final examination for his degree, but the evidence of Mr. Villers of Balliol, who was present on the occasion, may be regarded as unexIn his testimonial ceptionably authentic. to Sir William, when a candidate for the Moral Philosophy Chair, he stated :—

"In the department of science, his examination stood, and, I believe, still stands, alone; and it certainly argued no common enthusiasm and ability for philosophical pursuits, that in a university like Oxford, where the ancient philosophers are the peculiar objects of study and admiration, and the surest passports to academical distinction, his examination should not only remain unequalled for the number, but likewise for the difficulty, of the authors. Besides other subjects less iminediately connected with a professorship of morals, it contained every original work of antiquity, difficult or important, on logic, on the philosophy of the human mind, on ethics, politics, and other branches of practical philosophy, on rhetoric and poetical criticism; and after a trial of many hours, besides the honours of the University, he received the thanks and the public acknowledgment of the examiners, that he had never been surpassed either in the minute or the comprehensive knowledge of the systems on which he had been examined."

Mr. Villers added, that in fourteen of his books on the abstruser subjects of Greek philosophy he was not examined, "the greater part of these being declared by the masters to be too purely metaphysical for public examination." Hamilton was at this time in his twenty-second year. How he felt himself on the occasion we gather from a letter of Lockhart's to his father, in which he says, "Hamilton is going up for his examination to-morrow. I daresay he will make a fine figure; but in the meantime he is sadly 'funcked' as they all call it." The examination extended over two days, occupying twelve hours, and at the close Hamilton wrote to his mother, "This morning I received your pleasing letter, which gave me the happiness to hear that Tom was well. I was just going to the schools when I received it, and am not plucked."

It now became necessary for him to determine his future career. His thoughts had apparently been gradually diverted from Medicine to Law. He had found anatomy sufficiently interesting as a scientific pursuit, but so far as the practice of medicine was concerned, he had probably already come to the conclusion, which he expressed with a freedom so offensive to the profession, in one of his Edinburgh Review papers (1832), that it had not made "a single step since Hippocrates," and that the precept of Hoffmann embodied true wisdom, "Fuge medicos, et eorum medicamenta, si vis esse salvus." The advice of Mr. Scott of Benholme, whose son Alexander was his dearest friend, appears to have had considerable influence in deciding him to study for the Scottish Bar. Having speedily fixed his choice, he returned to Scotland, and in July 1813 passed as advocate.

His time for the first three years after

passing was occupied to a large extent in researches connected with his family history, in which he had the assistance of the learned antiquarian Mr. John Riddell. The result was that in 1816 he was duly adjudged heirmale in general to Sir Robert Hamilton of Preston, the head of that house, who died in 1701, and declared entitled henceforth to bear the name and style of "Baronet of Preston and Fingalton." Of these nominal possessions the only fragment that came into his hands was acquired by purchase in 1819. It consists of a small plot of ground, now occupied as an orchard, in the midst of which, visible to the traveller as he passes the village of Prestonpans, there rises, with some dignity, in spite of decay, a square and massy tower, whose roofless walls and ruined battlements are redeemed from austerity by a kindly growth of long grass, clasping shrubs, and fragrant wallflower. This is all that remains of territorial estate to the house of Preston, the eldest of the junior branches of the line of Hamilton. Mr. Veitch gives an interesting sketch of the family history and its more eminent representatives, from the time of Robert the Bruce to that of Sir Robert aforesaid. They were a stout race, and played no unworthy part in the history of Scotland. In the cause of civil and religious liberty, and equally in devotion to the Crown, they distinguished themselves, in successive generations, by indomitable firmness and generous self-sacrifice, ending in the total waste of their once wide possessions. One, Sir David, a leader of the Scottish Reformation, suffered attainder for his loyalty to Queen Mary, whose banner he followed at Langside. Another, Sir John, one of the Lords of the Articles, maintained an uncompromising opposition to the aggressions of the Crown in the reigns of the first James and Charles. His son, Sir Thomas, at once a Covenanter and a Cavalier, fought against Cromwell at Dunbar and Worcester. With his son, Sir Robert, the title and the historical fame of the house passed away together, till both were revived in the person of Sir William. As the recognised and trusted head of the Covenanters, Sir Robert led them to victory at Drumelog and defeat at Bothwell Bridge. He appears to have embodied in excess the unyielding firmness of his race and the intense religious convictions and fervour of his party. His intolerant zeal and want of wisdom may, however, be now forgiven, in remembrance of the sufferings which drove him and his followers into revolt against a wicked government, of his unflinching valour, and his stern though unenlightened honesty.