of the succeeding volumes is redundant, the scholarship is often defective, and hastily-drawn conclusions are asserted with the utmost confidence in their accuracy ; yet, notwith standing all these drawbacks, such were the industry and perseverance of Chalmers that his Caledonia contains a mass of information on all subjects connected with early Scottish history and topography that has been of the highest value to subsequent writers. The second volume, published in 1810, gives an account of the seven south eastern counties of Scotland Roxburgh, Berwick, Had- dington, Edinburgh, Linlithgow, Peebles, and Selkirk, each of them being treated of as regards name, situa tion and extent, natural objects, antiquities, establish ment as shires, civil history, agriculture, manufactures and trade, and ecclesiastical history. In 1824, after an interval of fourteen years, the third volume appeared, giving, under the same headings, a description of the seven south western counties Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Wigtown, Ayr, Lanark, Renfrew, and Dumbarton. In the preface to this volume the author states that the materials for the history of tho central and northern counties were collected, and that he expected the work would be completed in two years. This expectation, however, was not destined to be realized. It is much to be regretted that, instead of all but wasting his time on profitless and acrimonious controversies about Shakespearian forgeries and the character of Queen Mary, Chalmers did not direct his whole energies to his magnum opus, and give to the world the matured fruits of all the labour he had bestowed on it ; for it is on Caledonia
that his fame must chiefly rest.While thus fully occupied, Chalmers had for many years been engaged in laying the foundation for other works of a not less important and laborious nature. One of these is said to have been a history of Scottish poetry, another, a history of printing in Scotland. Each of them he thought likely to extend to two large quarto volumes, find on both he expended an unusual amount of enthusiasm and energy. lie had also prepared for the press an elaborate history of the life and reign of David I. In his later researches he was assisted by his nephew James, son of Alexander Chalmers, writer in Elgin.
George Chalmers died at his house, James Street, Buckingham Gate, London, May 31, 1825, after a few days illness, in the eighty-third year of his age. His valuable and extensive library he bequeathed to his nephew, at whose death in 1 841 it was sold and dispersed. Chalmers was a member of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies of London, an honorary member of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, and a member of other learned societies. In private life he was undoubtedly an amiable man, although the dogmatic tone that disfigures portions of his writings procured him many opponents. He is besides chargeable with a want of taste, which appears too prominently in his keen attempts to silence, at all hazards, those whom he considered the detractors of Mary. Among his avowed antagonists in literary warfare the most distin guished were Malone and Steevens, the Shakspeare editors; Mathias, the author of the Pursuits of Literature; Dr Jamie- son, the Scottish lexicographer ; Pinkerton, the historian ; Dr Irving, the biographer of the Scottish poets; and Dr Currie of Liverpool. But with all his failings in judgment, Chal mers was a valuable writer. He uniformly had recourse to original sources of information; and he is entitled to great praise for his patriotic and self-sacrificing endeavours to illustrate the history, literature, and antiquities of his native country.
CHALMERS, Dr Thomas (1780-1847), a distinguished Scottish divine, was born at Anstruther in Fifeshire, on the 1 7th March 1 780. He was early destined to the church, and while only eleven years old was enrolled as a student in the university of St Andrews. Having completed his collegiate course, in which he devoted himself almost exclusively to the study of mathematics, in January 1799 he was licensed as a preacher of the gospel by the presbytery of St Andrews. Instead of entering at once on the duties of his profession, he spent the two following winters in Edinburgh, attending the lectures of Professors Stewart, Playfair, Robison, and Hope. In May 1803 he was ordained as minister of Kilmany, a small parish in Fife- shire, about nine miles from St Andrews. During tho preceding winter he had acted as assistant to Mr Vilant, professor of mathematics in the university of that city, who for many years had been laid aside by ill health. The novelty, however, of his method, and the singular enthusiasm that he exhibited and excited were distasteful to those attached to the old routine of university education ; and at the close of the session he was informed that his further services would not be required. Indignant at the fancied injustice thus done him, he adopted the singular expedient of opening mathematical classes of his own during the succeeding winter, which, though discountenanced in every way by the university authorities, many of the students were attracted to attend. The winter of 1 803-4 was a very busy and exciting one. During the week he taught three classes in St Andrews, and prepared and delivered there a course of lectures on chemistry, largely illustrated by experiments, appearing at the same time in the pulpit of Kilmany every Sunday. Having sufficiently redeemed his reputation by the great success which attended them, his mathematical classes were not resumed. The lectures on chemistry were frequently redelivered in his own and in many adjoining parishes, to the surprise and delight of many rural audiences. In 1805 the chair of mathematics in Edinburgh became vacant, and he appeared, but unsuccessfully, as a candidate. In 1808 he published an Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of National Resources, a treatise originated by the alarm which Bonaparte s com mercial policy had created in Britain, and intended to elucidate some of those questions in political economy which the existing state of affairs had raised, He was preparing a new edition of this w r ork when a series of domestic bereavements, and a severe illness that brought him to the brink of the grave, and laid him aside from all duty for upwards of a year, turned his thoughts and life into a new channel. Dr Brewster had invited him to become a contributor to the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia ; at his own request the article Christianity had been assigned to him, and he was now engaged in preparing it. In studying the credentials of Christianity, he received a new impression of its contents. A sustained but abortive effort to attain that pure and heavenly morality which the Gospel of Christ requires led on to that great spiritual revolution the nature and progress of which his journal and letters enable us to trace with such distinctness. When he resumed his duties, an entire change in the character of his ministry was visible to all. The report of discourses so earnest and eloquent as those now delivered, and of house hold visitations conducted with such ardent zeal, soon spread beyond the limits of his own neighbourhood. His reputation as an author received at the same time a large accession by the publication in a separate form of his article on Christianity, as well as by several valuable con tributions to the Edinburgh Christian Instructor and the Eclectic Review. So strong, however, at that time was the public bias against those evangelical doctrines which he had embraced, that when a vacancy occurred in Glasgow, and his friends brought him forward as a candidate, it was only after extraordinary efforts, and by a narrow majority, that his election was carried in the town-council.
In July 1815 he was formally admitted as minister of
