Atifiiversary Address of the President. 151 



thirty years of his life with studies and pursuits connected with the 

 advancement of astronomy. 



Sir John Sinclair devoted nearly the whole of a very long and 

 laborious life to pursuits and inquiries connected with the improve- 

 ment of agriculture and the general benefit of his countrymen. He 

 was a very voluminous author ; and though different opinions may 

 be entertained of the merit and usefulness of some of his later pro- 

 ductions, the Statistical Account of Scotland which he originated, 

 and arranged, will be a durable monument to his memory, pre- 

 senting as it does a more complete and comprehensive record of the 

 state of that kingdom at the period when it was compiled, than is 

 to be found in the literature of any other country. 



Dr. John Gillies, venerable alike for his great age and his amiable 

 character, was the successor of Dr. Robertson, as the king's histo- 

 riographer for Scotland: he was the author of a History of Greece 

 and of the World from the conquests of Alexander to the age of 

 Augustus, and he translated some of the Greek orators, the ethical, 

 political and rhetorical treatises of Aristotle, upon whose specu- 

 lative works generally he wrote a very enlarged commentary. He 

 was a pleasing and popular writer, though not very profoundly ac- 

 quainted with the great advances which have been made of late 

 years in Germany and elsewhere in our knowledge of archaeology 

 and historical criticism. 



Sir William Gell was well known as a topographical antiquary, 

 and published works of great interest and research, some of them 

 very splendidly embellished, on Pompeii, and on the modern, as 

 illustrating the ancient topography of Troy, Ithaca, the Pelopon- 

 nesus, Attica and Rome. He was a very accomplished artist and a 

 man of great liveliness of conversation, and of very attractive man- 

 ners. Sir William Gell was formerly Fellow of Emanuel College, 

 Cambridge, and was attached, for some time, in the quality of Vice- 

 chamberlain, to the late Queen Caroline. He spent the later years 

 of his life, a victim to the gout and other infirmities, at Naples, in 

 the neighbourhood of those remarkable ruins which he had so care- 

 fully and so beautifully illustrated, and which continued to supply 

 him, from day to day, with fresh objects of interesting inquiry. 



Dr. Warren, though one of the most distinguished physicians in 

 this metropolis, contributed very little, by his writings, to medical or 

 general literature : he was considered to be an accomplished classical 

 scholar, and a man of very extensive acquirements : he was a 

 strenuous vindicator of the character and independence of his pro- 

 fession, and though his manners were somewhat abrupt, and some- 

 times apparently uncourteous, yet he was a man of very warm 

 affections, and greatly beloved and respected by a large body of 

 friends. 



Those to whom Dr. William Elford Leach was known in his happier 

 days, when in the full enjoyment of health and reason, can best ap- 

 preciate the great loss which the natural sciences and our national 

 museum sustained by that melancholy visitation, which, like the 

 hand of death, terminated his scientific labours. His enthusiastic 



