by severe discipline, he added a depth of learning, a breadth of view, a sobriety of judgment, and an inexhaustible patience, which made his decisions as nearly as possible infallible. Few causes célèbres came before him during his seventeen years' tenure of office as judge of first instance; but the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at the trial (28 Oct. 1867) of the Manchester Fenians were worthy of a more august occasion; and his charge to the grand jury of Middlesex (2 June 1868) on the bill of indictment against the late governor of Jamaica, Mr. John Edward Eyre, though not perhaps altogether unexceptionable, is, on the whole, a sound, weighty, and vigorous exposition of the principles applicable to the determination of a question of great delicacy and the gravest imperial consequence. The consolidation of the courts effected by the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875 gave Blackburn the status of justice of the high court, which numbered among its members no judge of more tried ability when the Appellate Jurisdiction Act of 1876 authorised the reinforcement of the House of Lords by the creation of two judicial life peers, designated 'lords of appeal in ordinary.' Blackburn's investiture with the new dignity met accordingly with universal approbation. He was raised to the peerage on 10 Oct. 1876, by the title of Baron Blackburn of Killearn, Stirlingshire, and took his seat in the House of Lords and was sworn of the privy council in the following month (21, 28 Nov.) In the part which he thenceforth took in the administration of our imperial jurisprudence, Blackburn acquitted himself with an ability so consummate as to cause his retirement in December 1886 to be felt as an almost irreparable loss. The regret was intensified by the discovery of a curious flaw in the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, by which his resignation of office carried with it his exclusion from the House of Lords. This anomaly was, however, removed by an amending act. He died, unmarried, at his country seat, Doonholm, Ayrshire, on 8 Jan. 1896.
Blackburn was a member of the royal commissions on the courts of law (1867) and the stock exchange (1877), and presided over the royal commission on the draft criminal code (1878). He was author of a masterly 'Treatise on the Effect of the Contract of Sale on the Legal Rights of Property and Possession in Goods. Wares, and Merchandise,' London, 1845, 8vo, which held its own as the standard text-book on the subject until displaced by the more comprehensive work of Benjamin. A new edition, revised by J. C. Graham, appeared in 1885. As a reporter Blackburn collaborated with Thomas Flower Ellis [q. v.]
[Eton School Lists; Foster's Men at the Bar, and Peerage, 1880; Burke's Peerage, 1896; Grad. Cant.; Cal. Univ. Cambr.; Times, 10 Jan. 1896; Ann. Reg. 1863-8, 1896, ii. 127; Law Times, 2. 9, 16 July 1859, 13 June 1868, 16 Dec. 1886, 15 Jan, 1887, 18 Jan. 1896; Law Mag. and Law Rev. XXV. 256; Law Journ. 18 Jan. 1896; Campbell's Life, ed. Hardcastle, ii. 372; Pollock's Personal Remembrances, ii. 86; Stephen's Life of James FitzJames Stephen; Finlason's Report of the Case of the Queen v. Eyre, 1868, p. 53; Lords' Journ. cviii. 424; Pari. Papers (H. C), 1868-9 C. 4130, 1878 C. 2157. 1878-9 C. 2345; Ballantine's Experiences, 1890, pp. 248 et seq., 333.]
BLACKIE, JOHN STUART (1809–1895), Scottish professor and man of letters, eldest son of Alexander Blackie (d. 1856) by his first wife, Helen Stodart (d. 1819), was born in Charlotte Street, Glasgow, on 28 July 1809. His father soon removed to Aberdeen, as manager of the Commercial Bank. Blackie had his early education at the burgh grammar school and Marischal College (1821-4). In 1824 he was placed in a lawyer's office, but as his mind turned towards the ministry, after six months he went up to Edinburgh for two more years in arts (1825-6). He gained the notice of 'Christopher North,' but was prevented by 'a morbid religiosity' from doing himself justice. He then took the three years' theological course at Aberdeen. The divinity professors, William Laurence Brown [q. v.] and Duncan Mearns [q. v.], seem to have influenced him less than Patrick Forbes, professor of humanity and chemistry at King's College, who turned him from systems of divinity to the Greek testament. It was on the advice of Forbes, whose sons were going to Göttingen, that Blackie was sent with them in April 1829. At Göttingen he came under the influence of Heeren, Ottfried Müller, and Saalfeld. The following session (after a walking tour) he spent in Berlin, hearing the lectures of Schleiermacher and Neander, Boeckh and Raumer. From Berlin he travelled to Italy, having an introduction from Neander to Bunsen, then in Rome. Bunsen met one of his theological difficulties by telling him that 'the duration of other people's damnation was not his business.' After a few months he was able to compose an archaeological essay in good Italian ('Intorno un Sarcofago,' Rome, 1831, 8vo). From a Greek student at Rome he learned to speak modern Greek, and grasped the idea that Greek is 'not a dead but a living
