498 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE LATE REV. DR CHALMERS. 
English, on the distinction between legal charity for the relief of indigence, and 
legal charity for the relief of disease. At the annual commemoration of Oxford, 
Ist July 1835, he received the honorary degree of LL.D. In that ancient and 
Episcopal seat of learning this degree was conferred upon the Presbyterian Pro- 
fessor amidst enthusiastic acclamations, without one dissenting voice. His death 
took place, 31st May 1847, at the age of 67: He was buried, 4th June 1847. 
Of a life solong extended, and embracing so many subjects of active exertion, 
it is evident such a paper as the present can include only a very abridged and 
limited notice. It is not intended to embrace those points which belong to mere 
personal and private biography, or to details of questions on which there existed 
special and peculiar relation to his own religious communion. There is, I believe, 
in preparation a full Life of Dr CuauMers, which will include a publication of his 
private memoirs, of his correspondence, and other personal biographical expositions. 
We have now to consider Dr CHALMERS as he came before the world, as he occu- 
pied a distinguished place in the observation of mankind ; for his reputation was 
not merely Scottish, or merely British,—it was European. In this view, then, I 
think we may at once, for the sake of preserving something like method and order 
in our remarks, consider his public character under three heads: 
1. Asan Author. 
2. As a Political Economist. 
3. As a Speaker. 
First, One thing strikes us at first approaching the subject of Dr CHALMERS’ 
writings, and that is, the great industry which must have marked his literary la- 
bours. When we look at the array of volumes published during his lifetime; when 
we consider the manuscripts which he left behind ; and, in addition to all this, take 
into account that these volumes were not written in the retired cloisters of a college, 
or the quiet of a country parsonage, but that he wrote in the bustle of numerous en- 
gagements, of meetings to be attended, of lectures and examinations for his classes, 
of correspondence to be maintained, and perhaps, above all, amidst lavish encroach- 
ments made upon his time by strangers; we must be struck with his economy of 
time, and with the perseverance of his mental efforts. How many might say of 
him, as the Younger Puiny wrote of his uncle, the Elder Puiny, “ Erat incredibile 
studium summa vigilantia. Itaque soleo ridere, cum me quidam studiosum vocant ; 
qui si comparer illi sum desidiosissimus.”* Dr CHALMERs was far from being, in the 
classical or scholastic sense of the term, a /earned man, or a great scholar. His early 
education, his habits, and pursuits through life, prevented it.; But itis a pleasing 
* Plin. Epist. mi. 5. 
+ In his Lectures on the Romans, he makes no reference to an exegetical or critical view of the 
passages, though in that Epistle there is a great temptation to do so. He takes the statements of 
the Apostle in their broadest and most general acceptation. His mind did not rest on the niceties of 
philological distinctions. 

