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Proceedings of the Boyal Society 
nent place in public estimation. Born, as we are told by one of 
bis biographers, who evidently knew him and his history well, of 
parents respectable, but not fortunate in life, he had to struggle 
in his early years with difficulties. Nevertheless he was not pre¬ 
vented from reaping the inestimable advantages which in Edin¬ 
burgh a parent of even moderate means could always command, 
for a son of promising parts, from an education at the High 
School. 
Like other prolific writers, Mr Chambers began the career of 
authorship at a very early age. He must have been not above 
eighteen, when, having not long before chosen for his occupation 
in life that of bookseller, he determined to be publisher and author 
too, projecting and conducting a periodical called the “Kaleido¬ 
scope,” to which he himself also contributed articles from his own 
pen. Soon afterwards he published “ Illustrations of the Author of 
Waverley;” and in 1823, when only twenty years old, he added 
the work by which he has been longest and most familiarly known 
as a writer, his “ Traditions of Edinburgh.” Work upon work 
then followed in quick succession on all sorts of literary subjects, 
but chiefly historical and antiquarian—works which it would be 
out of place even to enumerate in so short a sketch as that to which 
this brief notice must be confined. 
At last, in conjunction with his elder brother, Mr William 
Chambers, was begun in 1832 the now famous “ Chambers’ Edin¬ 
burgh Journal,”—the first idea, and as such a great invention, of 
a weekly periodical devoted to short productions, original, as well 
as critical, on nearly all literary and also some scientific subjects, 
suited for the information, as well as for the purse, not alone of 
the educated classes ordinarily so called, but likewise for the edu¬ 
cated in the humbler walks of life. This undertaking met soon 
with extraordinary success—in so much, indeed, that it became 
the parent of many others identical or similar in their aims, and 
not a few of them not less prosperous than that of the two brothers 
Chambers. 
While adhering steadily to his literary tastes, and giving forth 
in various works the results of his literary labours, Mr K. Chambers’ 
attention was turned to a totally different object of study, which 
in all probability he first followed as a diversion, or distraction 
