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the office of Advocate- General in the King's Court at Ceylon, then 

 about to be established under the government of Lord Guildford. 

 He had pre^dously married Miss Campbell, the only daughter of Lord 

 William Campbell, second son of John fifth Duke of Argyle. From 

 this period Mr. Johnston bent all the powers of his mind to the one 

 favourite object of his life, the introduction of such measures as 

 should be the means of raising the moral and political character of 

 the natives, first of the island of Ceylon, and afterwards of the con- 

 tinent of India. His appointment to the office of Chief Justice, which 

 took place in 1805, and afterwards, in 1810, to the additional office 

 of President of H.]\L Council in Ceylon, gave him the power to carry 

 out his great object with energy and effect. Of the manner in which 

 his arduous and philanthropic duties and objects were fulfilled, the 

 best attestation is to be found in the words of two distinguished 

 statesmen who have respectively borne their testimony to his great 

 merits ; the late Marquis of Londonderiy said, that he had the 

 great glory of ha\dng given freedom of conscience, of establishing 

 trial by jury, and of abolishing the slave-trade throughout the island 

 of Ceylon :" and Lord Grey obsen-ed in the House of Lords, that " no 

 person had ever before had the honour of inti'oducing three such mea- 

 sures into any country, and that his conduct in the island of Ceylon 

 had immortalized his name." Sir Alexander returned to England 

 in 1819, and in 1832 he was sworn of the Privy Council. He was 

 one of the original founders of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which 

 he was for some time a Vice-President. He was elected a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society in 1810. He latterly resided principally on his 

 family estate in Scotland, where he continued to exercise in private 

 life that benevolence which had been the leading characteristic of 

 his public labours. 



Geokge Fownes, Ph.D., late Professor of Practical Chemistry in 

 University College, who died of consumption on the 31st of January 

 last, before completing his thirt^^-fourth year, was the eldest son of 

 Mr. John Fownes of Coventry- street. Dr. Fownes's original desti- 

 nation was for trade, but he early evinced a taste for science, and 

 when about seventeen or eighteen years of age he became a member 

 of the Western Literary Institution in Leicester-square, and with the 

 late Mr. Everett, Dr. Henry Watts and others, established a philo- 

 sophical class, in which they contributed to their mutual improve- 

 ment by lecturing and making experiments. After 1837, when he 

 entered the laboratory of Mr. Everett, an accomplished analyst, who 

 was then chemical lecturer at the Middlesex Hospital, Dr. Fownes 

 devoted himself entirely to the pursuit of chemistry, spending a por- 

 tion of 1839 under Professor Liebig at Giessen, and afterwards en- 

 gaging as assistant for a 3^ear in the laboratory of University College. 

 He afterwards lectured successively at the Charing Cross and Mid- 

 dlesex Hospital Medical Schools, and in the school of the Pharma- 

 ceutical Society; and on the establishment in 1845 of the Birkbeck 

 Laboratory of Chemistry in University College, he was nominated to 

 its direction, upon the recommendation of his friend Professor Gra- 



