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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
he attributed to his temperate habits of living, being an early riser 
and remarkably abstemious. At eighty, when on a geological ex- 
cursion with his friend Mr Milne Home, he once walked eighteen 
miles in a day. He continued to give and receive hospitalities as 
late as to his ninety-second year. In private life he was upright 
and honourable, kindly and sociable. He was married in 1812 to 
Miss Waldie of Hendersyde Park, Kelso, with whom he celebrated 
a golden wedding in 1862. His long and useful life was brought 
to a close on the 2 2d September 1878. 
Mr Milne Home, who knew him well, has kindly communicated to 
me some of Sir Richard’s letters to members of his family. They 
breathe a tone of simple and unaffected piety, which gilds the other 
virtues of this excellent man. 
In the death of Sir William Stirling Maxwell, Scotland has 
lost (to use the words of Lord Houghton) her first man of letters. 
Sir William’s name is familiar to literary men on both sides of the 
Tweed, not as the Baronet, but as simply William Stirling of Keir. 
With that name he commenced his career, with that name he 
obtained his earliest and brightest laurels, and with that name he 
will descend to posterity. 
He was bom at Kenmure, near Glasgow, on the 8th March 1818. 
On his father’s side he was descended from the Stirlings of Keir, 
retainers of the house of Stuart, and famous in history. On his 
mother’s side he traced his pedigree up to the battle of Otterburn, 
where had been shed the blood of a Maxwell of Pollock. His after 
career was tinged with his ancestral associations, which operated to 
throw his mind with affection back on the past. 
Mr Stirling completed his early education by taking the degree of 
B.A. in Cambridge in 1839. He was Fellow Commoner of Trinity 
College during my residence in the University, but, so far as I 
know, did not distinguish himself as a student. He devoted him- 
self rather to art and history than to those early studies which 
constitute the framework of the training of a University. His love 
for travel was early developed, and the ample means at his disposal 
enabled him to indulge in it in a manner and to an extent not in 
the power of ordinary students. It was during his residence at 
Cambridge as an undergraduate that he made the tour in Palestine, 
