Obituary Notices. 
in 
the present memoir was the elder, and several daughters. I remem- 
ber, as a schoolboy of nine or ten years of age, seeing his mother, 
Mrs Swinton, in my father’s house in Northumberland Street, in 
Edinburgh, and being singularly impressed with her sweetness and 
charm of manner. She was a grand-daughter of Mure of Caldwell, 
and thus the two families, the Mures and the Swintons, were closely 
connected. Mrs Swinton had come to spend the evening with my 
mother, and the tidings of her death a few days thereafter gave my 
susceptibilities a shock which I long remembered. 
Archibald Swinton, afterwards Archibald Campbell Swinton, the 
eldest son, was born on 15th July 1812, and at the age of eight was 
sent to a preparatory school in Yorkshire, near Doncaster, of which 
the headmaster was a Dr Sharp, a scholar of some eminence. He 
was vicar of Doncaster, and the school over which he presided had 
high reputation. Along with other pupils were the present Lord 
Grimthorpe and his two brothers, Christopher and William Beckett 
Denison. Among the papers at Kimmerghame is a letter, dated 
15th January 1827, from Dr Sharp to John Swinton. He writes as 
follows : — 
“ No pupils I ever had gave me more cordial satisfaction during the time 
they were under my care than your sons, and it delighted me extremely to 
receive so favourable an account of their present prospects. So far as assiduity 
and applied industry can prevail, James, I know, will never be found deficient; 
but Archie, if in abilities and quickness of apprehension so much his superior, 
requires a little more management to bring into full employment those excel- 
lent powers of memory and understanding with which fate has endowed him — 
aut Ccesar aut nullus used to be his maxim here; and of this I feel sure, that 
no boy of his own age can cope with him if Archie be not wanting to him- 
self.” 
Swinton remembered with gratitude and affection his life at 
Doncaster; and he was wont to describe the appearance of the 
Archbishop of York on his way to Doncaster races, which it 
seems the archbishops were formerly sometimes in the habit of 
frequenting. He afterwards went for a short time to reside with a 
gentleman near Hitchin, but he does not appear to have remained 
long there. The well-known school called the Edinburgh Academy 
was opened in 1824, and Swinton was sent to it in, I think, 1825. 
He ever afterwards took the warmest interest in its welfare, and 
was one of the Directors down to the day of his death. From 
