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XXXIV. — A Biographical Notice of the late Thomas Chalmers, D.D. ^ LL.D. 

 By the Very Reverend E. B. Ramsay, M.A., F.R.S.E. 



(Read 4th March 1849.) 



Mr President, — It has been a practice from the foundation of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh, to commemorate its deceased distinguished members by me- 

 moirs or biographical notices, read at the ordinary meetings of the Society. Some 

 of these have been printed in the Transactions ; and our published volumes are 

 enriched by papers of Dugald Stevs'art, Professor Playfair, Sir John Macneil, 

 and Dr Traill, on the characters and writings of Adam Smith, Dr Hdtton, Pro- 

 fessor RoBisoN, Sir Charles Bell, and Dr Hope. A biographical notice is now 

 due to the memory of a distinguished countryman, late Vice-President of the 

 Royal Society ; and the following remarks will, in attempting that object, make a 

 deviation from those more severe discussions with which the time of the Society 

 is usually occupied, in connection either Avith pure mathematics, natural philoso- 

 phy, or natural history. 



I consider it scarcely becoming for the reader of a paper to occupy the time 

 of the Society, by details or explanations which are merely personal. I would, 

 however, ask permission to state, that I did not enter upon this office till I knew 

 that it had been declined by one far better qualified for its performance ; one who, 

 if named, would, I am confident, be recognised as the individual of our body best 

 calculated to do justice to the subject. 



I feel assured, however, that, from those whom I have the honour to address, I 

 shall receive every sympathy and indulgence in the few observations which I pro- 

 pose to offer in attempting to delineate those literary characteristics — those efforts 

 of practical benevolence — by which the subject of this brief notice was distinguished 

 during the many years which, as a public man, he came before his contemporaries. 



Thomas Chalmers was born at Anstruther, 17th March 1780, and at its paro- 

 chial school received his early education. He studied at the University of St An- 

 drews the usual course of eight years, from 1791 to 1799. He received licence from 

 the Presbytery of St Andrews, 31st July 1799. During the sessions 1799-1800, 

 1800-1 801, he studied at Edinburgh under Professors Robison, Stewart, and Hope. 

 He commenced his clerical life as assistant at Cavers, December 1801 — was in- 

 stituted to the Parish of Kilmany, Fife, 12th May 1803 — removed to Glasgow, 1816 

 — ^to St Andrews, as Professor of Moral Philosophy, 1823. He came to Edinburgh 

 as Professor of Divinity, 1828, and filled that chair till the Disruption in 1843. In 

 February 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, Edinburgh— in 1835 

 a Vice-President. In January 1834, he was elected a corresponding member of the 

 Institute of France, before which distinguished body he read, in 1838, a paper, in 



VOL. XVI. part v. 6 M 



