STIRLING 



STIRLINGSHIRE 



733 



high. Stirling has manufactures of tartans, tweeds, 

 carpets, agricultural implements, &c. A royal 

 burgh as early as 1119, it unites with Dunfermline, 

 Cnlross, Inverkeitliing, and Queensferry to return 

 one member to parliament. Pop. ( 1851 ) 12,837 ; 

 (1881) 16,013; (1891) 16,781. Stirling (formerly 

 Stryvelyne or Estrivelin, and also Snowdoun ) has 

 a wealth of historic memories the death of Alex- 

 ander I. and "\Villiam the Lion ; Wallace's victory 

 of Stirling Bridge ( 1297 ) ; the great siege of the 

 castle by Edward I. (1304); the birth of James 

 III. ; the coronation of Queen Mary ; the baptism 

 and coronation of James VI. ; the slaughter of the 

 Regent Lennox (1571 ) ; the birth of Prince Henry 

 ( 1594) ; the capture of the castle by Monk ( 1651 ) ; 

 and its unsuccessful siege by the Jacobites (1746). 



See History of the Chapel Royal of Stirling (Grampian 

 Club, 1882), 'and Charter! of Stirling (Glasgow, 1884). 



Stirling. JAMES HUTCHISON, the most eminent 

 of later Scottish philosophers, was born at Glasgow, 

 June 22, 1 X20, took the course in l>oth arts and medi- 

 cine at Glasgow University, and practised a short 

 time as a physician in South Wales. He next went 

 to Germany, and gave himself devotedly for some 

 years to the study of philosophy. The publication 

 of his masterly and epoch -making work, The Secret 

 of Hegel: being the Hegelian by stem in Origin, 

 Principle, Form, and Matter (2 vols. 1865), opened 

 up an unknown world to English readers, and gave 

 a powerful impulse to the study of philosophy 

 generally. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, 

 to find in the entire range of the literature of 

 philosophy a higher masterpiece of exposition than 

 this combination of erudition, analytic genius, and 

 perspicuity. To this work, as full of individuality 

 as learning, there followed in 1881 a complete 

 Text-book to Kant, comprising a translation and 

 reproduction of the Critique of Pure Reason, with 

 a commentary and biographical sketch. These 

 two works stand together in the most intimate 

 relation, for, according to Stirling, from Kant's 

 antecedent system Hegel's philosophy itself was 

 but 'a development into full and hnal shape.' 

 At the same time Dr Stirling brought Kantian 

 speculation into line with English thought by 

 demonstrating that the central problem of the 

 critical philosophy was a question that had been 

 already propounded, if not answered, by Hume. 

 Stirling received the degree of LL.D. from Edin- 

 burgh in 1867, and was elected a foreign member 

 of the Philosophical Society of Berlin in 1871. He 

 delivered the first course of Gifford Lectures at 

 Edinburgh, and these were published in 1890, 

 the whole forming a vigorous if somewhat dis- 

 cursive work, in which natural theology is con- 

 sidered in its relation to the history of philosophy, 

 and investigated mainly from the point of view of 

 reason and the principles involved in the Theistic 

 inference. Of the famous three proofs the Teleo- 

 loincal the Cosmologieal, and the Ontological he 

 deals mainly with the first. 'Begin with which 

 we may, and let them be separated from each other 

 as they' may be in time, the three, after all, do 

 constitute together but the three undulations of a 

 single wave, which wave is but a natural rise and 

 ascent to (iod, on the part of man's own thought, 

 with man's own experience and consciousness as 

 the object before him.' Other works of Dr Stir- 

 ling's are Sir William Hamilton : being the Philo- 

 sophy of Perception (1865), an assault on Hamil- 

 ton's doctrine of perception more serious still than 

 Mill's- an excellent translation of Schweglers 

 History of Philosophy (1867; llth ed. 1891); 

 Jerrold Tennyson, and Macaulay, &c. (1868) ; As 

 Regards Protoplasm (1869; complete ed. 1872), 

 convincing answer to Huxley's Essay on 

 the Physical Basis of Life ; Lectures on the Philo- 

 tophy of Law (1873), together with an incisive 



attack on Whewell and Robertson Smith for their 

 statements anent Hegel's relations to Newton and 

 the calculus ; Burns in Drama ( 1878 ) ; Darwinian- 

 ism: Workmen and Work (a criticism of the three 

 Darwins, 1894) ; besides weighty lectures on such 

 subjects as Materialism, Philosophy in the Poets, 

 ,he Community of Property, Nationalisation of 

 L,and, &c. He contributed the article on Kant to 

 .he present work. 



Stirling, WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF, 

 minor Scottish poet, a contemporary and dear 

 iriend of Drummond of Hawthornden, was born 

 at Menstrie House near Alloa, most probably 

 about 1567 hardly so late as 1580, the usual 

 date formerly given. He studied at Glasgow and 

 Leyden, travelled through France, Spain, and 

 Italy with Archibald, seventh earl of Argyll, and 

 began his career as a poet by publishing at Edin- 

 burgh, in 1603, his tragedy of Darius, quickly 

 followed by Aurora, a collection of sonnets (Lond. 

 1604), Croesus (together with Darius, 1604), the 

 Alexandrian Tragedy (1605), and Julius Caesar 

 (1607). These were collected as The Monarehicke 

 Tragedies in 1607. He was knighted by 1609 ; in 

 July 1613 was attached to the household of Prince 

 Charles, as before he had been to Prince Henry's ; 

 in 1614 was made Master of Requests for Scotland, 

 publishing the same year the first part of his great 

 poem of Doomesday (second part, 1637), which 

 extends to 11,000 verses, and which himself even 

 allows in the dedication to be of ' too melancholic 

 a nature for young minds.' He received in 1621 

 the grant of ' Nova Scotia ' a vast tract of Canada 

 and the northern part of the modern United 

 States his charter being renewed in 1625 ; and 

 in 1631 he received the patent of sole printer for 

 thirty-one years of King James's version of the 

 Psalms, a work to which he had contributed 

 greatly, but which proved an utter failure. In 



1626 he was made Secretary of State for Scotland, 

 which office he held till his death, despite his un- 

 popularity. Baillie writes of him as 'extreamly 

 hated of all the country, for his alleged briberie, 

 urgeing of his psalms, and the books for them.' In 



1627 he was made Keeper of the Signet, a Com- 

 missioner of Exchequer in 1628, and one of the 

 Extraordinary Judges of the Court of Session in 

 1631. The French pushed their conquests in 

 America, and Alexander's grant of lands thereby 

 became useless. He was promised 10,000 com- 

 pensation, but the money was never paid. In 1630 

 he wax created Lord Alexander of Tullibody and 

 Viscount Stirling. In 1633, at the crowning of 

 Charles in Holyrood, he was made Earl of Stirling 

 and Viscount Canada, in 1639 also Earl of Dovan, 

 but he sank into insolvency, and died in London, 

 12th September 1640. His body was embalmed and 

 buried at Stirling a few months later. The title 

 died out with the fifth earl in 1739. His tragedies 

 are not dramatic, but their quatrains are grace- 

 fully written, albeit the quantities are monstrous 

 witness Ixlon, Nicanor, Orion, and Eumenes. 

 The Partenesis to Prince Henry is perhaps his 

 finest work ; the songs, sonnets, elegies, and 

 madrigals forming the Aurora are sadly marred 

 by conceits, yet show rich fancy and ingenuity, 

 though scarce even a Scotchman can claim for 

 them that they sparkle still the right Promethean 

 fire. These amatory poems the author did not 

 include in his collected Recreations with the Muses 

 (folio, 1637). A complete edition of his poems 

 appeared at Glasgow, in 3 vols., in 1870. 



See the Rev. Charles Rogers, Memorials of the Earl of 

 Stirling and the Bouse of Alexander (2 vola. 1877). 



Stirling-Maxwell. See MAXWELL. 

 Stirlingshire, a midland county of Scotland, 

 forming the border-land between Highlands and 



