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many years senior clergyman of the Episcopal Chapel in the 
Cowgate, Edinburgh. His son Archibald was born at Kenley, in 
Shropshire, in December 1792. In 1800, his father removed to 
Edinburgh, where his two sons received their education, and studied 
at the University, when its more important chairs were filled by 
Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and Leslie. Having chosen the law 
as his profession, he was called to the Bar in 1814. In the same 
year he made a tour on the Continent, and in conjunction with his 
i'riend Patrick Fraser Tytler, who accompanied him, he published 
an interesting account of it, entitled “ Travels in France during 
the years 1814-15, comprising a residence at Paris during the stay 
of the Allied Sovereigns, and at Aix at the period of the landing 
of Bonaparte.” In 1822 he was made an advocate-depute, an 
office which he filled with great credit till the downfall of the 
Wellington Administration in 1830; and, as the result of his 
experience in that office, in 1831 he published his work, in 
two vols., “ On the Principles and Practice of the Criminal Law 
of Scotland.” On the return of the Duke to power in 1834, Mr 
Alison was appointed to the Sheriffdom of Lanarkshire, an office 
which he held to the end of his life. Although his special duties 
as Sheriff occupied much of his time, he yet found leisure to 
prosecute his literary studies. During his visit to the Continent, 
when indignant Europe had sent the first Napoleon into exile, 
Sir Archibald conceived the idea of writing “ The History of 
Europe, from the commencement of the French Revolution to 
the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815.” Before he quitted 
Edinburgh he had published the first two volumes of this able 
and popular work, and the third and fourth were nearly ready for 
the press when he removed to Glasgow, where he completed 
the work in fourteen volumes. In 1852 he began to publish a 
continuation of it in six volumes, under the title of the “ The 
History of Europe, from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the 
Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852.” In 1848 he published his 
“ Military Life of the Duke of Marlborough,” and in 1859 his 
“ Lives of Lord Castlereagh an 1 Lord Londonderry.” Sir Archibald 
is also the author of a “ Treatise on the Principles of Population,” 
which appeared in 1840, and of a great number of interesting 
articles on various literary and political subjects in Blackwood's 
