99 
Sir A. Grant. 
By the death of Sir A. Grant on the 30th November 1884 the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh lost one of its Vice-Presidents, who 
took a constant interest in its proceedings ; the University lost a 
Principal who for sixteen years administered its affairs with remark- 
able ability and success, and who has left a more enduring mark on 
its history than any Principal during the present century; and the 
cause of liberal education in Scotland lost one of its most enlightened 
and consistent supporters. Although of Scottish extraction, he was, 
unlike all previous Principals of the University, neither born nor 
educated in Scotland; and when invited at the age of forty-two to 
assume his position in Edinburgh, he had already gained distinction, 
in two widely separate spheres of usefulness, as a scholar and writer 
on philosophy, as a teacher and lecturer, and as an administrator 
of education. Erom the time when his own University course w T as 
finished, his whole life was devoted to the practical work or to the 
organisation and administration of education : first, during ten years, 
from 1849 to 1859, in the University of Oxford; next, for nine 
years, from 1859 to 1868, in the Presidencies of Madras and 
Bombay; and finally, for sixteen years, from 1868 to 1884, in the 
University of Edinburgh. In Oxford and in India, as well as in 
Edinburgh, his influence is still felt and his loss regretted by many 
friends. 
By birth he belonged, on the father’s side, to an old Scottish 
family, the Grants of Dalvey on Spey side. His mother was of mixed 
French and Scottish extraction, and was the daughter of a planter 
in the Danish West Indian Island of Santa Cruz. The family 
estate in Morayshire had been sold by his grandfather, and the 
whole fortune, which had been invested in West India property, 
had been lost before Sir Alexander succeeded his father as 8th 
Baronet in 1858. He was born in New York on the 13th 
September 1826, and passed two or three years of his childhood in 
the West Indies. The principal part of his school education was 
received at Harrow, which he entered in 1839, and left as head of 
the school in 1845. In November 1844 he had been elected to a 
Balliol scholarship, and he entered on residence at Oxford in the 
