212 
Monday , 5tii December 1859. 
1. At the request of the Council, Lord Neaves, V.P., deli- 
vered the following Opening Address 
It has been customary for those who have opened the business 
of the Session in the Koyal Society, from the seat which I now oc- 
cupy, to give some notice of those members who may have been 
taken from us by death during the preceding year. The rolls of 
the Society still exhibit many names illustrious both in science and 
in literature, but seldom has a year occurred in which we have been 
deprived of so great a number of eminent members. The first whom 
I shall mention is Principal Lee : — 
John Lee, late Principal of the University of Edinburgh, was one 
of the most remarkable and estimable men of his time. His intel- 
lectual qualities were of a high order ; his attainments and acqui- 
sitions of knowledge were of the most varied and extensive kind. 
On almost all subjects he was admirably well informed, and in some 
departments he was unquestionably the most learned man of his age 
and country. He was more than all this : he was a most pious 
Christian minister, and he was one of the most friendly and affec- 
tionate of men. 
Dr Lee was born at Torwood-lee-Mains, in the parish of 
Stowe, on the 22d of November 1779. He received his early edu- 
cation from the care of his mother, whom he was accustomed to 
speak of as a woman of remarkable intellectual powers and mental 
cultivation, as well as of distinguished moral excellence. The debt 
of gratitude which he owed to his parents must indeed have been 
great, if it bore any proportion to the filial reverence and devotion 
which he showed them in every form in after life. 
He was sent, when a boy of ten years old, to Cadon Lee School, 
at Clovenford, then taught by Mr James Paris, and in which, during 
Dr Lee’s attendance, Doctor Leyden was an assistant. From that 
school he went to the University of Edinburgh in 1794, being then 
in his fifteenth year. In his opening address to the University, as 
Principal, in 1842, he refers to its state when he became a student, 
and recurs with pride and pleasure to the eminent men who then gave 
and received instruction within its walls. He continued at the 
