APPENDIX. 55 



Mr CLERK had an excellent tafte for the fine arts, and was 

 felicitous to encourage them. As one inftance of this, he had 

 the principal concern in eftablifhing and procuring an endow- 

 ment for the drawing- fchool in the Univerfity of Edinburgh, 

 where twenty pupils are inftructed gratis in the art of defigning. 

 Thefe are felected from among fuch young people, of either 

 fex, as give figns of genius, who are deflined to apply to thofe 

 profeflions in which a {kill in that art is requifite. This infti- 

 tution has contributed more than any other circumftancc, to 

 the great improvement of ornamental manufactory, which this 

 country has made during the laft twenty years. And whoever 

 recollects the old patterns of carpet, damafk, gauze, and other 

 manufactures of that fort, and compares them with thofe of 

 the prefent day, muft allow the fuperior elegance of defign 

 now exhibited in thofe productions, and which may reafonably 

 be afcribed, in a great meafure, to the happy effects produced by 

 the inftitution we have mentioned. 



HE married, at a very early period of life, his coufin-german 

 DOROTHY CLERK-MAXWELL, heirefs of Middlebie in Dum- 

 fries-ftiire, by whom he had fix fons and feven daughters, of 

 whom only two fons and two daughters furvived him. He 

 fucceeded to his elder brother Sir JAMES CLERK, in the title of 

 Knight Baronet, in the year 1783. 



DURING the latter years of his life, his conftitution and fpi- 

 rits fuffered many fevere fhocks from family misfortunes. He 

 loft, within a mort time, three fons, a daughter, and a grandfon, 

 all of whom had arrived at years of maturity, and promifed to 

 be the comfort of his old age. Of thefe, his third fon GEORGE, 

 who had been fome years at the Bar, died in 1776. WILLIAM, 

 his fifth, a Lieutenant in the ift regiment of foot ; ROBERT, 

 his fixth, a Lieutenant in the 56th, and GEORGE CRAIGIE 

 younger of Glendoick, his grandfon, a Captain in the 4oth regi- 

 ment, all perifhed in the fervice of their country, within the 

 period of a few months. The laft mentioned of thefe, in the 



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