high metaphysical reputation, and formed an intimacy with Dugald Stewart, which continued to the end of his life. Having been so fortunate as to obtain one of those exhibitions to Baliol College of which the university of Glasgow possesses the patronage, Archibald Alison removed to Oxford, where he completed his course of study, and took the degree of A.M., and afterwards of LL.B. In 1784, he also took orders, and married the eldest daughter of the celebrated Dr. John Gregory of Edinburgh. His first appointment in the church was to the curacy of Brancepath, in the county of Durham. After this, he was appointed to the chapelry of Kenley in Shropshire in 1790, and to the vicarage of Ercall in the same county in 1794, by the Earl of Darlington, to whom the patronage of both livings belonged; and in 1797 he was presented to Roddington by the Lord Chancellor. In 1791 also, the small prebend of Yatminster Secunda, in the cathedral of Salisbury, was conferred upon him by Bishop Douglas. So many pluralities have an imposing appearance; but their aggregate revenue amounted to nothing more than eight hundred per annum. Circumstances soon led to Alison's removal to his native city, having been invited by Sir William Forbes and the vestry of the Episcopal Chapel in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, to become senior minister of that charge. He removed to Edinburgh in 1800, and continued to preach in the Cowgate, until the congregation removed from that murky locality to the handsome chapel of St. Paul's, in York Place. In 1831, Alison, now an old man, and subject to severe attacks of pectoral disease, was obliged to desist from his public labours, and confine himself to the private society of his friends, in which the evening of his days was tranquil and happy. The high reputation which he had attained both as a preacher and writer, and his amiable personal qualities, endeared him to the most distinguished literary characters for which Edinburgh was now at the height of its fame; and he was in constant intercourse, among others, with Dugald Stewart, Dr. Gregory, Lord Woodhouselee, Professor Playfair, Dr. Thomas Brown, Sir James Hall, and Thomas Campbell. Besides these, he had been in familar acquaintanceship with the illustrious of the end of the last century, such as Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Adam Ferguson, Dr. Robertson, and Dr. Blair. He was indeed the literary Nestor of the day, who chronicled the remembrances of the great and good of a past generation for the instruction of their successors. Another congenial spirit, though in a different walk of intellect, whose society he especially valued, was Mr. Telford, the celebrated engineer; and it was pleasing to witness the zeal of the venerable pair, while Telford unfolded his scientific plans for the improvement of their native Scotland and its fair capital. The death of Archibald Alison occurred in 1839, at the age of eighty-two. By his wife, who died in 1830, he had six children, of whom three survived him, and one of them, Sir Archibald Alison, is known to most of our readers as the author of the "History of Europe from the French Revolution."
Of the Rev. Archibald Alison's life as an author it is now necessary to speak. His "Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste," the work by which he is best known, was published so early as 1790, but attracted little notice—the state of society being probably far from favourable at that time to metaphysical investigation. Not discouraged by the cold reception of a subject which had evidently formed the chief study of his life, Alison, after he had been for some years settled in Edinburgh, republished his "Essays" with considerable additions in 1811. He had now established for himself a more favourable class of readers;
