SECRETARIES. 521 



Directors present had contributed in no inconsiderable 

 degree to the extension of the numbers and usefulness of 

 the Society. 



III. Sir Charles Gordon (i8i 5-1845). — Mr Charles 

 Gordon succeeded Mr David Watson in the duties of re- 

 corder and clerk in 181 5, and was at the same time elected 

 to the office of assistant depute-secretary. He had been 

 regularly bred to business, having at the time of his ap- 

 pointment been first clerk in the office of Messrs Campbell 

 & Clason, W.S. In 1819 he was nominated joint depute 

 secretary, along with his uncle, Mr Lewis Gordon ; and in 

 1835 succeeded to the post of Secretary, the Charter of 

 1834 having created the new office of honorary secretary. 

 Mr Charles Gordon was a Solicitor before the Supreme 

 Courts, for which he passed in 1818. He purchased the 

 estate of Drimnin, in Argyllshire, about 1835, in which 

 year he joined the Society as a member. In 1837 he was 

 knighted by King William IV. The only meeting of the 

 Society he was unable to be present at during his secre- 

 taryship was in July 1845. With that anxiety in the 

 discharge of his duties which characterised Sir Charles, he 

 was desirous to attend, but Mr Hall Maxwell, at the re- 

 quest of the Board, performed the duties of secretary in his 

 stead. He died at Edinburgh 27th September 1845, and 

 at the first meeting of Directors resolutions were passed 

 recording the sincere regret with which the Directors heard 

 of the death of their Secretary, ' bearing testimony to the 

 very able and upright manner in which his multifarious and 

 often oppressively laborious duties were discharged during 

 a period of above thirty years ; to the extraordinary zeal, 

 energy, patience, judgment, and discrimination which he 

 displayed, not only in conducting the routine business of 

 the Society, but on various occasions when difficult and 

 delicate negotiations with Government were involved ; and 

 to the combination of those gifts and qualities, which will 

 render it difficult fully to supply his place.' The Society, 

 also, at its General Meeting on 13th January 1846, recorded 

 their deep sense of the severe loss occasioned by the 

 premature demise of so valuable a servant, and expressed 



