arose the Edinburgh School of Arts. Mr. Homer laboured hard for the 

 success of this scheme, and he lived to see it completely successful. He 

 acted as Secretary of the School for the first six years ; and during all the 

 rest of his life, even though no longer resident in Edinburgh, he continued 

 to take an active interest in the institution and in its prominent students. 

 He several times gave donations of books to the library, and in 1858 in- 

 vested a sum of money for an annual prize of three guineas. The useful- 

 ness of this school has been great. About seven hundred young men are 

 entered annually as students in mathematics, chemistry, or natural philo- 

 sophy, and receive at small cost instruction which would otherwise lie be- 

 yond their reach. Several of the foremost engineers of the present day 

 have been students there. It was in remembrance of this and similar kinds 

 of philanthropic activity, that Lord Cockburn styled Mr. Horner " one of 

 the most useful citizens Edinburgh ever possessed." 



Mr. Horner left Edinburgh in the year 1827 to assume the office of 

 Warden in the University of London, a post at which he laboured for four 

 years, until his failing health led him to seek a retreat with his family on 

 the banks of the Rhine. At Bonn he had leisure to renew his old love for 

 mineralogical and physical geology ; and in making himself acquainted with 

 the geological structure of the district, he at the same time formed a life- 

 long friendship with some of the most eminent men of science and learning 

 there. On his return to England in 1833 he was appointed one of a 

 Commission to inquire into the employment of children in the factories of 

 Great Britain. The Report of this Commission gave rise to the Factory Act, 

 under which Mr. Horner was made one of the Inspectors of Factories, an 

 office which, through good and ill report, he laboriously and conscien- 

 tiously filled for nearly thirty years. His zeal for the interests of the 

 women and children in the factories often placed him in conditions of great 

 delicacy, yet, notwithstanding opposition and disparagement, he continued 

 his exertions, and earned the gratitude of the workers, while he was at the 

 same time rewarded by finding an ever-increasing number of millowners 

 who acknowledged the benefits of the Act which it was his duty to enforce. 



During these busy years, however, he never lost or relinquished his 

 interest in the progress of science, and more especially of Geology. No face 

 was more constantly seen at the Meetings of the Royal and Geological 

 Societies than that of Mr. Horner. He had become a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society in 1813, and in various years served on the Council. In 1845 he 

 took an active part in the reform of the Society, whereby the mode of 

 Election of new Members was modified. In the year 1857 he was nomi- 

 nated Yice-President. In the Geological Society he took a still more 

 prominent part. Besides reading papers at its Meetings, he became 

 in 1846 its President, an office which he again filled in 1860. He was 

 unremitting in his attention to all that might in any way further the 

 interests or usefulness of the Society. He worked with his own hands in 

 the Museum, arranging and cataloguing its stores of specimens ; and he 



