291 
of Edinburgh, Session 1873 - 74 . 
confined to a paper on the Evidences of Christianity, and a few 
verses of the G-reek Testament, to which he was subjected, and 
the more thorough and searching ordeal through which aspirants 
to the clerical office are now required to pass. He continued at 
Rodden for seven years, perhaps in some respects the happiest 
in his life. Although his rector was non-resident, he was allowed 
to conjoin the care of the neighbouring parish of Buckland with 
that of Rodden, and to discharge also for a time the duties of 
evening lecturer in the parish church of Frome. This afforded 
to him another contrast in his own remembrance with the present 
requirements as to residence, experience, and work on the part 
of the clergy. While at Rodden, he employed his leisure time 
and annual holiday in the study of botany, making more than 
one expedition into Wales and elsewhere with this object. He 
also gave some time to the cultivation of music, for which he had 
considerable talent. And he seems also to have turned his atten- 
tion to mathematics and astronomy, incited thereto by his brother, 
the late Admiral Sir William Ramsay, who gave him a box of 
instruments and a telescope, which he used in the instruction of 
a class of young friends and parishioners. 
After declining the offer of an appointment to a chapel in his 
native city, Aberdeen, Mr Ramsay came to Edinburgh, at the 
end of 1823, as curate to Mr Shannon, the incumbent of St 
George’s Episcopal Chapel in York Place. This change of resi- 
dence introduced him to Edinburgh at a time when not only agita- 
tion for political and municipal reform, but also the awakening 
of religious thought and feeling to which the Clapham School had 
given rise in England, and which was soon to merge in the remark- 
able Oxford movement of 1833, were intermingling with its intel- 
lectual culture and social life. The refined, cultivated, and earnest- 
minded young clergyman, possessing hereditary claims to be 
received among the highest circle of its inhabitants, soon estab- 
lished also close and intimate relations with manjr of those who 
then made our city so distinguished. He became popular in the 
best sense of the word. His ministrations and preaching were 
highly appreciated. His kindly pleasing manners and unaffected 
genuine character won for him an influence which was soon felt 
for good in many quarters. After serving the curacy of St George’s 
2 p 
VOL. VIII. 
