colonel on 20 June 1854, and regimental major on 29 Dec. 1854.
His regiment having been ordered to the Crimea, Alexander rejoined it there in May, and remained in the Crimea till June. He received the medal with clasp, the Sardinian and Turkish medals, and the Medjidie (5th class). On his return to England he was appointed to a depot battalion, but on 30 March 1858 he returned to the 14th to raise and command its second battalion. He took that battalion to New Zealand in 1860, and commanded the troops at Auckland during the Maori war till 1862, receiving the medal. He had become colonel in the army on 26 Oct. 1858, and was granted a pension for distinguished service in February 1864. He was promoted major-general on 6 March 1868, and was made C.B. on 24 May 1873. On 1 Oct. 1877 he became lieutenant-general and was placed on the retired list, and on 1 July 1881 he was given the honorary rank of general. He inherited the estate of Westerton, near Bridge of Allan, was a magistrate, and deputy-lieutenant for Stirlingshire, and a fellow of the geographical and other societies. He saved Cleopatra's needle from destruction, and had much to do with its transfer to England in 1877. He died at Ryde, Isle of Wight, on 2 April 1885, In 1837 he married Eveline Marie, third daughter of Lieutenant-colonel Charles Cornwallis Michell. They had four sons and one daughter.
His singularly varied service furnished him with materials for a large number of volumes of a rather desultory kind. He wrote:
- 'Travels from India to England, by way of Burmah, Persia, Turkey, &c.,' 1827, 4to.
- 'Travels to the Seat of War in the East, through Russia and the Crimea, in 1829,' 1830, 2 vols. 8vo.
- 'Transatlantic Sketches,' 1833, 2 vols. 8vo.
- 'Sketches in Portugal during the Civil War of 1834,' 1835, 8vo.
- 'Narrative of a Voyage of Observation among the Colonies of West Africa, and of a Campaign in Kaffirland in 1835,' 1837, 2 vols. 8vo.
- 'An Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa, through the Countries of the Great Namaquas, Boschmans, and Hill Damaras,' 1838, 2 vols. 8vo.
- 'Life of Field-marshal the Duke of Wellington,' 1840, 2 vols. 8vo (translated into German by F.Bauer).
- 'L'Aeadie, or Seven Years' Exploration in British America,' 1849, 2 vols. 8vo.
- 'Passages in the Life of a Soldier,' 1857, 2 vols. 8vo.
- 'Incidents of the Maori War, New Zealand, in 1860-61,' 1863, 8vo.
- 'Bush-fighting. Illustrated by remarkable Actions and Incidents of the Maori War in New Zealand,' 1873, 8vo.
- 'Cleopatra's Needle, the Obelisk of Alexandria, its Acquisition and Removal to England described,' 1879, 8vo.
[Times, 7 April 1885; O'Donnell's Historical Records of the 14th Regiment, p. 321 (with portrait); Burke's Landed Gentry; Alexander's works above mentioned.]
ALEXANDER, WILLIAM LINDSAY (1808–1884), congregational divine, eldest son of William Alexander (1781-1866), wine merchant, by his wife, Elizabeth Lindsay (d. 1848), was born at Leith on 24 Aug. 1808. Having attended Leith High School and a boarding-school at East Linton, he entered Edinburgh University in October 1822, and left in 1825. He was a good Latin scholar. The repute of Thomas Chalmers [q. v.] led him to finish his literary course at St. Andrews (1825-27), where he improved his Greek. He often accompanied Chalmers on his rounds of village preaching. His parents were baptists, but on 29 Oct. 1826 he became a member of the congregational church at Leith. In September 1827 he became a student for the ministry at the Glasgow Theological Academy, under Ralph Wardlaw [q. v.] and Greville Ewing [q. v.]; by the end of the year he was appointed classical tutor in the Blackburn Theological Academy, a post which he filled, teaching also Hebrew and all other subjects except theology, till December 1831, when he began the study of medicine at Edinburgh. This not proving to his taste, after some preliminary trials he became minister (October 1832) of Newington independent church, Liverpool. Here he remained till May 1834, but was never formally inducted to the pastorate. After a short visit to Germany, followed by some literary work in London, he was called (1 Nov. 1834) to the pastorate of North College Street congregational church, Edinburgh, and ordained there on 5 Feb. 1835. He was soon recognised as a preacher of power. Rejecting frequent calls to other posts, professorial as well as pastoral, he remained in this charge for over forty years, with undiminished reputation. He was made D.D. of St. Andrews in January 1846. In 1852, on the resignation of John Wilson (1785-1854) [q. v.], he was an unsuccessful candidate for the moral philosophy chair in Edinburgh University. His meeting-house, improved in 1840, when the name was changed to Argyle Square chapel, was bought by the government in 1855. For six years the congregation met in Queen Street Hall. On 8 Nov. 1861 a new building, named Augustine Church, was opened on George IV Bridge, with a sermon by Thomas Guthrie
