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for his ready and hearty sympathy with all who needed it, for his 
consolatory tenderness to the sick, and his great liberality to the 
poor. Nor were these qualities of the heart extinguished or im- 
paired by the long life of labour and study which he afterwards led; 
on the contrary, they continued to the end. He was ever ready to 
relax into a playful cheerfulness and pleasantry in society ; while 
his attention to such of his friends as from sorrow or suffering had 
more serious claims upon him was unremitting and invaluable. 
In consequence, perhaps, of some defect of manner, Dr Lee was 
not sought after as an attractive preacher. But his sermons were 
excellent, both in matter and in style, and some of his earlier ones, 
when read in manuscript, had reached and obtained the approbation 
of Royalty itself. In other respects he was all that a minister of 
the gospel ought to be. Orthodox in doctrine, evangelical in senti- 
ment, and blameless in conduct, he had a frankness and freedom 
from professional pedantry or clerical rigour which are rarely met 
with in men of his learning and condition. We shall not soon see 
his like again, if we ever do so in our day. Piety, zeal, eloquence, 
and assiduity will not be wanting to the Church ; but the combina- 
tion of these with the learning, the wide range of information and 
sympathy, and the knowledge of the world which he possessed, will 
not readily be found again. 
The next name I have to record among those who have been 
taken from us, is that of William Pulteney Alison, who was also, at 
his death, a Vice-President of the Society. Dr Alison was the 
eldest son of a most amiable and excellent man, the Rev. Archibald 
Alison, long an Episcopal minister in this city, well known for his 
elegant published sermons, and for his Essay on Taste, in which he 
explained with much success his views of the influence of association 
in producing or heightening the sense of beauty, a theory which, 
within moderate limits, is founded on truth, but which has been 
brought into discredit by the extravagant length to which it was 
unfortunately carried in Lord Jeffrey’s dissertations on the same 
subject. 
Dr Alison in early life had the advantage of the best society 
which Edinburgh could boast of, and of which his father was a 
cherished and distinguished ornament. His education and connec- 
tions led him to bestow much attention upon the subject of mental 
