Mirror; and who afterwards gave to the world another work of a similar kind, the Lounger, published in 1785 and 1780. To these papers he was a very valuable contributor, being the author of ten papers in the Mirror,[1] and nine in the Lounger.[2] His papers are distinguished by an ease and gentlemanlike turn of expression, by a delicate and polished irony, by a strain of manly, honourable, and virtuous sentiment." Mackenzie states that they are also characterized by an unaffected tenderness, which he had displayed even in his speeches as a barrister, and adduces the following specimen: "There is one circumstance," says Mr Abercromby, in debating whether long or short life be most desirable, "which with me is alone sufficient to decide the question. If there be anything that can compensate the unavoidable evils with which this life is attended, and the numberless calamities to which mankind are subject, it is the pleasure arising from the society of those we love and esteem. Friendship is the cordial of life. Without it, who would wish to exist an hour? But every one who arrives at extreme old age, must make his account with surviving the greater part, perhaps the whole, of his friends. He must see them fall from him by degrees, while he is left alone, single and unsupported, like a leafless trunk, exposed to every storm, and shrinking from every blast." Such was not destined to be the fate of Lord Abercromby, who, after exemplifying almost every virtue, and acting for some years in a public situation with the undivided applause of the world, was cut off by a pulmonary complaint, at Falmouth, whither he had gone for the sake of his health, on the 17th of November, 1795.
ABERCROMBY, John, the author of several esteemed works on gardening, was the son of a respectable gardener near Edinburgh, where he was born about the year 1726. Having been bred by his father to his own profession, he removed to London at the early age of eighteen, and became a workman in the gardens attached to the royal palaces. Here he distinguished himself so much by his taste in laying out grounds, that he was encouraged to write upon the subject. His first work, however, in order to give it greater weight, was published under the name of a then more eminent horticulturist, Mr Mawe, gardener to the Duke of Leeds, under the title of Mawe's Gardeners' Calendar. It soon rose into notice, and still maintains its place. The editor of a recent edition of this work says, "The general principles of gardening seem to be as correctly ascertained and clearly described by this author, as by any that have succeeded him." And further, "The style of Abercromby, though somewhat inelegant, and in some instances prolix, yet appears, upon the whole, to be fully as concise, and at least as correct and intelligible, as that of some of the more modern, and less original, of his successors." Abercromby afterwards published, under his own name, The Universal Dictionary of Gardening and Botany, in 4to.; which was followed, in succession, by the Gardeners' Dictionary, the Gardeners' Daily Assistant, the Gardeners' Vade Mecum, the Kitchen Gardener and Hot-bed Forcer, the Hot-house Gardener, and numerous other works, most of which attained to popularity. Abercromby, after a useful and virtuous life, died at London in 1806, aged about eighty years.
ABERCROMBY, Patrick, historian, was the third son of Alexander Abercromby of Fetterneir, in Aberdeenshire, a branch of the house of Birkenbog in Banffshire, which again derived its descent from Abercromby of Abercromby
