215 
the parish of Canongate, Edinburgh ; and thereafter, he succes- 
sively held the other charges of Lady Yester’s Church, and the 
Old Church Parish, in this city. 
In 1824 he was named one of the Royal Commissioners for visit- 
ing the Scotch Universities. In 1827 lie became Principal Clerk of 
the General Assembly. In 1837 he was appointed Principal of 
the United College of St Andrews, but did not long retain the 
appointment. In 1838 he was offered, but declined, the appoint- 
ment of Secretary to the Bible Board, then newly constituted. 
In 1840 he was elected Principal, and in 1843 he was appointed 
Professor of Divinity, in the University of Edinburgh. Previously, 
during the session of 1827—28, he had taught gratuitously the 
Divinity class, and afterwards, during the session of 1851—52, he 
taught gratuitously, again, the Moral Philosophy class, and in 
1853-54, the Church History class, in the College of Edinburgh, 
during vacancies in those chairs occasioned by the death or the illness 
of their Professors. 
He held the appointments of Chaplain to the Queen, of Dean of 
the Chapel Royal, of Chaplain to the Royal Academy, and to the 
Convention of Royal Boroughs, and he was at his death one of the 
Vice-Presidents of this Society. 
I have ventured to say that he was one of the most learned men 
of his time, and in some departments of National and Church His- 
tory, particularly in all that concerns the civil and ecclesiastical 
affairs, as well as the manners and habits of the people of Scot- 
land, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, his knowledge 
was most minute and accurate. He was also at home in the cog- 
nate subject of the History of the Puritans during the same period. 
We have lately witnessed in this city the exposure to sale of a por- 
tion of his library, consisting of upwards of 20,000 volumes, some 
of them of the most rare and curious description ; and I believe 
that there was not one of his books with which he was not familiar, 
and of which he did not know, as well as it could be known, the 
authorship, the occasion, the object, and the import. The subject 
of Bibliography had been from his early years a favourite study ; 
and his habits of assiduity and perseverance, as well as his capacious 
and retentive memory, enabled him to prosecute it with singular 
success. Nor was his intellectual power overlaid or paralysed by 
the immense mass of his acquired knowledge. His opinions on all 
