the Literary an 1 Statistical Magazine ; these were collected and published in 1819 in book form as Essays on Phrenology. His friends became alarmed by his public advocacy of a cause which was the langhing-stock of all men of reputation, and warned him that it would be the ruin of his professional prospects. He was not diverted from his course, and he had the satisfaction of finding his business increase ; for the many who laughed at his hobby or regretted it still recognized his assiduity in attending to the affairs of his clients. The Essays gave an extraordinary impetus to the new science ; friends and foes became numerous ; a phrenological society was founded ; the Phrenological Journal was established, and was published quarterly for twenty years ; a volume of Phrenological Transactions was issued ; and Combe s first work developed into A System of Phrenology in two large volumes, of which five editions have been published. By his lectures and writings he attracted public attention to the subject on the Continent and in America, as well as at home; and a long discussion with Sir William Hamilton in 1827-28
excited general interest.The publication of his most popular work, The Constitu tion of Man, was determined upon after serious deliberation. He had circulated private copies amongst his friends, several of whom regarded the principles of the essay as dangerous to society and urged him to suppress it. The principle on which he based his argument was that all the laws of nature were in harmony with each other, and that man would best fulfil God s will, and attain the greatest happiness for himself, by discovering those laws and obeying them. He saw nothing irreligious in this principle ; he believed that on the contrary it supplied a philosophic basis to religion. When the book was published in 1828, he was charged by the church party with being a materialist and an atheist ; but, on the other hand, he received from near and distant quarters grateful thanks for the new light his work had shed upon religion, and for the satisfaction it afforded to doubting minds. As one indication of the estimation which the work obtained, it is notable that amongst many editions in America there was one for the blind. From this date the current of Combe s public life broadened ; he became strong in his own con victions of the truth, and consequently more resolute in carrying them to practical issues. He might hesitate at first,, doubting himself; but once satisfied that he was right, he never faltered. He saw everything by the light of phrenology, and the light rendered him patient of the opposition of others, and guided him to the most earnest efforts to benefit his fellow-creatures, morally and socially. He gave time, labour, and money to help forward the education of the poorer classes ; he established the first infant school in Edinburgh under the direction of Mr Wilderspin ; and he originated a series of evening lectures on chemistry, physiology, history, and moral philosophy the lectures on the latter subject being delivered by himself. He studied the criminal classes, arid tried to solve the problem how to reform as well as to punish them ; and he strove to introduce into lunatic asylums a humane system of treatment. In 1836 he offered himself as a candidate for the chair of logic in the Edinburgh University, and the testimonials submitted on his behalf on that occasion show that he was held in high esteem by men of very opposite opinions. As he had expected, he was rejected by the town council in favour of Sir William Hamilton.
Having received numerous invitations to visit America, he proceeded thither in 1838, and about two years were occupied in lecturing in the principal States on phrenology, education, and the treatment of the criminal classes. On his return in 1840 he published his Moral Philosophy, and iu the following year his Notes on the United States of North America. In 1842 he delivered, in German, a course of twenty-two lectures in the university of Heidelberg being the first Englishman who had ventured to lecture there in the national language. But the effort resulted in an illness which prostrated him for some time. He continued to travel much on the Continent inquiring into the manage ment of schools, prisons, and asylums. The commercial crisis of 1855 elicited his remarkable pamphlet on The Currency Question. The culmination of the religious thought and experience of his life is contained in his work On the Relation between Science and Religion, first publicly issued in 1857, and now in its fifth edition. Writing pamphlets, contributing to periodicals, lecturing, and correcting the new editions of his works rendered his days busy to the last. He was engaged in revising the ninth edition of the Constitution of Man when he died at Moor Park, Farnham, 14th August 1858. He had married in 1833 Cecilia Sid- dons, a daughter of the great actress. She had been the companion of all his travels, and she was with him at the end. Apart from his position as a phrenologist he earned distinction by his efforts on behalf of education, and by his courage in promulgating certain philosophic truths, which at the time were regarded as subversive of every thing good, but are now accepted so entirely as matters of course that his share in obtaining recognition for them is apt to be forgotten.
writer of great fertility and of some merit, was born at Bristol in 1751. The circumstances of his birth and parent age are somewhat doubtful, and it is questioned whether his father was a rich Bristol merchant, or a certain William Alexander, a London alderman, who died in 1763. Be this as it may, it is certain that Combe was educated at Eton, with Fox, Lyttelton, and William Beckford ; that Alexander bequeathed him some 2000 a little fortune that soon disappeared in a course of splendid extravagance, which gained him the nickname of Count Combe ; and that he finally fixed his residence in London (about 1771), as a law student and bookseller s hack. In 1775 he pub lished The Philosopher in Bristol, a series of essays of merely local interest; and in 1776 he made his first success in London with The Diaboliad, a satire full of bitter person alities. Four years afterwards (1780) he became an inmate of the King s Bench ; and much of his subsequent life was spent in prison. He appears to have written a correspon dence between Sterne and Eliza Draper, and also the Letters of the Late Lord Lyttelton (1780). Periodical literature of all sorts- pamphlets, satires, burlesques, "two thousand columns for the papers," " two hundred biographies," The Origin of Commerce filled up the next years, and about 1789 Combe was receiving 200 yearly from Pitt. Six volumes of a Devil on Tico Sticks in England caused him to be saluted as "the English Le Sage;" in 1794-96 he wrote the text for Boydell s History of the River Thames ; in 1803, he was placed on The Times. In 1807 All the Talents, a satire, appeared ; it ran through twenty editions and is generally attributed to Combe. In 1809-11 he wrote for Ackermann s Political Magazine the famous Three Tours of Dr Syntax, which, owing greatly to Eowlandson s designs, had an immense success. Then came poems in illustration of drawings by Princess Elizabeth, The Military Adventures of Johnny Neu come (1815), The English Dance of Death (1815-16), The Dance of Life (1816-17), The Adventures of Johnny Quce Genus (1822) all written for Rowlandson s caricatures ; together with Histories of Oxford and Cambridge, Picturesque Tours along the Ehine and other rivers, Histories of Madeira, Antiquities of York, texts for Turner s Southern Coast Views, and contributions innumerable to the Literary Repository. In his later years,
notwithstanding a by no means unsullied character, Combe
