THB 



EDINBURGH NEW 



PHILOSOPHICAL JOUENAL. 



Biographical Sketch of the late Robert Stevenson, Esq., F.R.S.E.^ 

 Member of the Wernerian Natural History Society, Fellon> 

 of the Geological Society, ^c. Civil Engineer. By his Son 

 Alan Stevenson, LL.B., F.R.S.E., Civil Engineer. Com- 

 municated by the Author.* 



Robert Stevenson was born at Glasgow on the 8th June 

 1772, and died at Edinburgh on the 12th July 1850, in the 

 seventy-ninth year of his age. His father Alan Stevenson 

 was a partner in a West India House in Glasgow, and died 

 in the Island of St Christopher, while on a visit to his brother, 

 who managed the business abroad. His only son Robert, 

 the subject of this memoir, was then an infant ; and, with 

 his mother, was ultimately left in circumstances of the 

 greatest difficulty, for the same epidemic fever which de- 

 prived him of his father carried off his uncle also, at a time 

 when his loss operated most disadvantageously on the in- 

 terests of the business which he had superintended. In this 

 manner my father's early education was conducted, although, 

 as the sequel shews, with tolerable success, yet under circum- 

 stances which could not by any means be called favourable. 

 This success was chiefly due to the energy of his mother, 

 Jane Lillie, who was a woman of great prudence and 

 remarkable fortitude, based on deep convictions of religion. 

 It appears from some memoranda left by my father, 

 for the information of his family, that his mother had in- 

 tended him for the sacred ministry, with a view to which he 

 had been sent to the school of a famous linguist of his day, 



* Read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on 17th February 1851. 

 VOL. L, NO. C. — APRIL 1861. S 



