Sir William Chambers. BORN A. D. 1726.-DIED A. D. 1796. THIS architect was descended of the ancient Scottish family of Chalmers, barons of Tartas in France. His grandfather, a Scottish merchant, suffered considerably in his fortune by supplying Charles XII. of Sweden with military stores and money, which that monarch repaid in the adulterated coin his necessities compelled him to issue, Sir William's father went over to Sweden to endeavour to recover a portion of the family property; his family accompanied him, and the subject of this article was born at Stockholm, about the year 1726. 66 His father returned to England in 1728, and at a proper age sent him to school at Rippon, in Yorkshire, At the age of sixteen he was sent as a supercargo to Canton, in a ship belonging to the Swedish East India company. "These," says Allan Cunningham, were certainly tender years for situations of mercantile trust and adventure, and the fact implies the appearance of early talents and prudence. It seems too that the boy-for such we must at these years regard him-ex tended his views beyond merchandise: on reaching Canton he saw and admired the picturesque buildings and gardens of the Chinese, and having acquired some skill in drawing at school, made as many sketches as sufficed for a little publication on his return home. These engravings, though recommended by the skilful hands of Grignion and Rooker, were sharply censured by the critics, and the taste of Chambers was questioned and assailed; there was more zeal than discretion in all this; for surely whoever widens the sphere of knowledge, and makes us acquainted with the taste or the scientific skill of a distant nation, is, more or less, our benefactor. At the age of eighteen, and after he had made one voyage to the east, says one of his biographers, he abandoned all commercial pursuits: another, with more probability, gives him the advantage of two visits to China, and continues his connection with the sea till his twenty-second year; but neither of them says any thing of his early architectural studies; and we are left to imagine that he acquired his knowledge in his own way. It is curious to observe the blossoms of the tree transforming into fruit; and it is still more curious and instructive to watch the human mind rough-shaping its own purposes; the stripling, who built houses of snow and fortifications of sand, rising into an architect, and working in more stable materials." Abandoning, however, commercial pursuits, he followed, says Hardwicke, "the natural bent of his genius, and travelled into Italy-for the purpose of studying the science of architecture, not only by measuring and drawing the invaluable remains of antiquity, but likewise those admirable productions of the revivors of the arts which distinguished the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He carefully examined and studied, with unwearied application, the works of Michael Angelo, Sangallo, Palladio, Scamozzi, Vignola, Peruzzi, Sanmichele, Bernini, and other Italian architects, whose designs were in general guided by the rules of the ancients, but whose extraordinary talents, exalting them above the character of mere imitators, produced an originality in their composi tions that fully established their fame, and pointed them out as the fittest models for succeeding artists. Mr Chambers knew how to distinguish and to combine all the excellencies of those great men, and his intuitive good taste and sound judgment led him also to examine into the merits of those French architects, whose productions have since been so much esteemed and applauded, among whom Claude Perrault and Jules Mansard held the most distinguished rank. At Paris he studied under the celebrated Clerisseau, and acquired from him a freedom of pencil in which few excelled him." On his return to England, he was fortunate enough to obtain the patronage of Lord Bute, who introduced him as architectural drawing. master to the heir-apparent. His first work was a villa for Lord Besborough at Rochampton in Surrey, the portico in particular of which was greatly admired. In 1759, he published a treatise on civil architecture. Such a work was eminently a desideratum in English literature, and, being ably executed, was received with great favour. In 1765, he published an account of his improvements on the Royal gardens at Kew, which did less for his reputation than the preceding work. These improvements were in the Chinese style, and consequently little adapted to English tastes and gardening. The king of Sweden, however, was graciously pleased to confer on him the order of the Polar star in return for a present of the finished drawings of the gardens. In 1772, Sir William published a 'Dissertation,' the object of which was to recommend the oriental style of gardening to the taste of the British public. In his introduction Sir William was pleased to handle Capability Brown, as he was called-a man of infinitely greater taste in landscape-gardening-very rudely. Brown did not retaliate himself; but was amply revenged by the appearance of an 'Heroic Epistle' addressed to his rival, and now known to have been the conjunct work of Horace Walpole, and Mason the poet. It commences thus: "Knight of the Polar Star, by fortune placed To shine the cynosure of British taste; The scatter'd glories of Chinese vertù; And spreads their lustre in so broad a blaze, That kings themselves are dazzled while they gaze ! O let the muse attend thy march sublime, And with thy prose caparison her rhyme; Teach her, like thee, to gild her splendid song With scenes of Yuen-Ming, and sayings of Li-Tsong." It must be acknowledged, says Mr Cunningham, that the lofty and cumbrous language of Sir William's Dissertation is imitated with much skill in the Epistle, and that the poet has aptly caparisoned his rhyme from the turgid sentences of the architect. "In their lofty woods," says Chambers, "serpents and lizards, of many beautiful sorts, crawl upon the ground, and innumerable monkeys, cats, and parrots clamber upon the trees. In their lakes are many islands, some small, some large,―amongst which are seen stalking along, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the dromedary, the ostrich, and the giant baboon. They keep in these enchanted scenes a surprising variety of monstrous birds, reptiles, and animals, which are tamed by art, and guarded by enormous 2 T * IV. dogs of Tibet, and African giants in the habits of magicians. Sometimes in this romantic excursion the passenger finds himself in extensive recesses, surrounded with harbours of jessamine, vines, and roses; where beauteous Tartarean damsels, in loose transparent robes that flutter in the air, present him with rich wines, and invite him to taste the sweets of retirement on Persian carpets and beds of Camusakin down." This passage is thus imitated by the authors of the Heroic Epistle :' "Nor rest we here, but at our magic call Monkeys shall climb our trees, and lizards crawl; Huge dogs of Tibet bark in yonder grove, Here parrots prate, there cats make cruel love; In some fair island will we turn to grass, With the queen's leave, her elephant and ass; Where hiss our snakes, and sport our Tartar maids; Un Sir William had much of the fashionable business of the day. der Burke's reform, he was appointed surveyor-general. His chef d'œuvres are his stair-cases, particularly those at Lord Besborough's, Lord Gower's, and the Royal and Antiquarian societies. His designs for interior arrangements are also excellent. The terrace behind Som erset house is a very bold and successful conception. He died on the 8th of March, 1796. Thomas Reid. BORN A. D. 1710.-DIED A. D. 1796. THIS eminent metaphysician was the son of a clergyman in the north of Scotland. He received the rudiments of education at the parish school of Kincardine, and at the early age of twelve was sent to the Marischal college of Aberdeen. At college he particularly distinguished himself in mathematics. Having attended the divinity hall he received license to preach; but being nominated to the office of librarian, he did not enter the church immediately. While holding this office he occasionally taught the mathematical classes for his friend Mr John Stew art. In 1737 he was presented to the living of New Machar in the neighbourhood of Aberdeen, where he at first experienced the most violent opposition from his parishioners, although he ultimately succeeded in completely possessing himself of their esteem and affections. "We fought against Mr Reid when he came," said some of them to his successor, "and we would have fought for him when he went away." 6 He resigned his pastoral charge on being appointed, in 1752, professor of philosophy in King's college, Aberdeen. Previous to his appointment he had published a very acute paper in the Philosophical Transactions' for 1748, entitled, An Essay on Quantity, occasioned by reading a Treatise in which simple and compound ratios are applied to Virtue and Merit.' The treatise alluded to was Hutcheson's Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of Beauty and Virtue,' in which that philoso pher had absurdly attempted to subject the degrees of merit to mathematical laws. In 1764 Mr Reid gave to the world his celebrated Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense.' It excited a great deal of opposition from the disciples of the old school of metaphysics; but procured for him the moral philosophy chair in the university of Glasgow, on the resignation of Smith, in 1765. In the active discharge of the duties of this chair, Dr Reid employed himself till the year 1781, when he withdrew from the labour of public teaching, and devoted his attention to the preparing his manuscript for the press. In 1785 he published his Essays on the Intellectual Powers;' and in 1788, completed his system of philosophy by the publication of his Essays on the Active Powers.' After this period Dr Reid occasionally amused himself with the composition of an essay for a philosophical society of which he was a member. His last effort of this kind was entitled Physiological Reflections on Muscular Matter.' This paper was written in his 86th year, and betrays no indications of senility. Dr Reid died on the 7th of October, 1796. ་ Dr Reid's great achievement as a mental philosopher, is his subversion of the ideal system, or that hypothesis which represents the immediate objects of perception to be certain images or pictures of external objects conveyed by the senses to the sensorium. The process of reasoning by which he was led to call in question this long-established theory is very fully delineated by his able biographer Mr Stewart, from which we extract the following passage: "In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers,' he acknowledges that in his youth he had, without examination, admitted the established opinions on which Mr Hume's system of scepticism was raised; and that it was the consequences which these opinions seemed to involve, which roused his suspicions concerning their truth. If I may presume,' says he, to speak my own sentiments, I once believed the doctrine of ideas so firmly, as to embrace the whole of Berkeley's system along with it; till finding other consequences to follow from it, which gave me more uneasiness than the want of a material world, it came into my mind, more than forty years ago, to put the question, What evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind? From that time to the present, I have been candidly and impartially, as I think, seeking for the evidence of this principle; but can find none, excepting the authority of philosophers.' In following the train of Dr Reid's researches, this last extract merits attention; as it contains an explicit avowal, on his own part, that at one period of his life, he had been led, by Berkeley's reasonings, to abandon the belief of the existence of matter. The avowal does honour to his candour, and the fact reflects no discredit on his sagacity. The truth is, that this article of the Berkleian system, however contrary to the conclusions of a sounder philosophy, was the error of no common mind. Considered in contrast with that theory of materialism, which the excellent author was anxious to supplant, it possessed important advantages, not only in its tendency, but in its scientific consistency, and it afforded a proof, wherever it met with a favourable reception, of an understanding superior to those casual associations which, in the apprehensions of most men, blend indissolubly the phenomena of thought with the objects of external perception. It is recorded as a saying of Mr Turgot, (whose philosophical opinions in some important points approached very nearly to those of Dr Reid,) that he who had never doubted of the existence of matter, might be assured he had no turn for metaphysical disquisitions.'" The importance which he assigned to this part of his speculations, and the singular modesty and candour with which he continued to speak of his own achievements, after he had in a great measure effected a complete revolution in this branch of philosophy, may be discovered in the following passage of a letter to Dr Gregory, in 1790. "It would be want of candour not to own, that I think there is some merit in what you are pleased to call my philosophy; but I think it lies chiefly in having called in question the common theory of ideas or images of things in the mind being the only objects of thought; a theory founded on natural prejudices, and so universally received as to be interwoven with the structure of language. Yet were I to give you a detail of what led me to call in question this theory, after I had long held it as self-evident and unquestionable, you would think, as I do, that there was much of chance in the matter. The discovery was the birth of time, not of genius; and Berkeley and Hume did more to bring it to light than the man that hit upon it. I think there is hardly any thing that can be called mine in the philosophy of the mind, which does not follow with ease from the detection of this prejudice. I must therefore beg of you, most earnestly, to make no contrast in my favour to the disparagement of my predecessors in the same pursuit. I can truly say of them, and shall always avow, what you are pleased to say of me, that but for the assistance I have received from their writings, I never could have wrote or thought what I have done." The most prominent features of Dr Reid's character, says his biographer, "were, intrepid and inflexible rectitude; a pure and devoted attachment to truth;—and an entire command (acquired by the unwearied exertions of a long life) over all his passions. Hence, in those parts of his writings where his subject forces him to dispute the conclusions of others, a scrupulous rejection of every expression calculated to irritate those whom he was anxious to convince, and a spirit of liberality and good-humour towards his opponents, from which no asperity on their part could provoke him, for a moment, to deviate. In private life no man ever maintained more eminently or more uniformly, the dignity of philosophy, combining with the most amiable modesty and gentleness, the noblest spirit of independence. The only preferments which he ever enjoyed, he owed to the unsolicited favour of the two learned bodies who successively adopted him into their number; and the respectable rank which he supported in society, was the well-earned reward of his own academical labours. The studies in which he delighted, were little calculated to draw on him the patronage of the great; and he was unskilled in the art of courting advancement, by fashioning his doctrines to the varying hour.' As a philosopher, nis genius was more peculiarly characterized by a sound, cautious, distinguishing judgment; by a singular patience and perseverance of thought; and by habits of the most fixed and concentrated attention to his own mental operations;-endowments which, although not the most splendid in the estimation of the multitude, would seem entitled, from the history of science, to rank among the rarest gifts of the mind |