Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/294

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
COMPTON—CONANT.
277

led a division of seamen in the attack on the Taku Forts. For this service he was highly praised in despatches, and promoted to H.M.S. Magicienne, in which he served during the subsequent operations in China. In 1866 he was in command of H.M.S. Terrible, and rendered active service in laying the Atlantic cable. He commanded H.M.S. Monarch on particular service in 1868–69, and in 1872–73 he served as Commodore of the second class, and senior officer in command of the Cape of Good Hope and West Coast of Africa. In Aug., 1873, whilst reconnoitring up the river Prah to discover the position of the Ashantees, the boats were fired upon from the banks, and Commodore Commerell was so dangerously wounded as to necessitate his relinquishment of the command of the station. After going to Cape Town for the cure of his wounds, he returned to England, when he was nominated a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, and appointed a Groom-in-Waiting to the Queen. Sir J. E. Commerell was second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet from July, 1877. to Oct., 1878, and was a Lord of the Admiralty from Oct., 1879, to May, 1880. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief, North American and West Indies, in 1882. He married, in 1853, Matilda Maria, fourth daughter of Mr. Joseph Bushby, of St. Croix, West Indies, and Halkin Street, London.

COMPTON, The Very Rev. Lord Alwyne Spencer, D.D., Dean of Worcester, is a younger son of the second Marquis of Northampton, by the eldest daughter of the late Major-General Douglas Maclean Clephane, of Torloisk, N.B. He was born in 1825, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.A., coming out as a wrangler in 1848. He was appointed rector of Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire, in 1852, and nominated to a honorary canonry in Peterborough Cathedral in 1856. He was made rural dean of Preston Deanery in 1874, and in 1875 was appointed to the Archdeaconry of Oakham, which he held till Oct. 1879, when he was nominated by Lord Beaconsfield to the Deanery of Worcester, in succession to the late Dr. Yorke. Lord Alwyne Compton was for some years an active and zealous member of the Convocation of the Clergy, both as Proctor for the diocese of Peterborough and also as Archdeacon. His lordship is married to a daughter of the late Rev. Robert Anderson, of Brighton.

CONANT, Thomas Jefferson, D.D., LL.D., born at Brandon, Vermont, Dec. 13, 1802. He graduated at Middlebury College in 1823, and after a brief tutorship in Columbian College, Washington, accepted an appointment as professor of languages in Waterville College (now Colby University), Maine. In 1833 he resigned his professorship and removed to the vicinity of Boston. In 1835 he became professor of Biblical Literature and Criticism in the Baptist Theological Seminary, at Hamilton, New York, and while connected with it spent two years in the study of oriental languages and literature at the universities of Halle and Berlin, and published a translation of the Hebrew grammar of Gesenius, with the additions of Rödiger, which is a standard textbook in America and England. In 1850 he accepted the professorship of Biblical Literature and Criticism in the Theological Seminary at Rochester, New York, but in 1858 resigned, and removed to Brooklyn, New York, to devote himself to the production of a revised translation of the Holy Scriptures. His work in this department consists of revised versions, with notes, of "The Book of Job" (1857); "The Gospel of Matthew" (1860); "The Book of Genesis" (1858); "The Book of Psalms" (1868); also, with some