pany's bank. He was an intelligent, sober, industrious man, and addicted, it is said, to the making of verses. He died while his family, consisting of two sons and two daughters, were still young. The record of the life of Robert, the younger son, is a sad story enough. He received his preliminary education partly at the high school of his native city, and partly at Dundee. At the age of thirteen he removed to the university of St. Andrews, where he obtained a bursary and resided during four years. His parents designed him for the church, but his father having died two years before he had finished his academical course, Robert gave up all thoughts of pursuing the clerical profession, and returned to his mother's house in Edinburgh without any definite plan of life or prospect of occupation. About half a year after, however, he obtained employment as an assistant in the office of the commissary-clerk of Edinburgh, where he continued, with the exception of a few months, during the remainder of his life, Ferguson's career as a poet was very short and very miserable, owing to his own desperate folly. From the time of his leaving college he had occasionally employed his leisure hours in writing verses, and became, ere long, a constant contributor to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, a popular and respectable miscellany of the day. The success which attended his literary efforts, unfortunately gave him a strong dislike to the drudgery of the commissary-clerk's office. He fell among loose companions, who preyed upon his happy convivial qualities, and allured him into unlawful courses. His riotous living injured his bodily health, and induced a constant feverishness of mind bordering on insanity. Fits of melancholy filled him with remorse and horror, and he gradually lost strength of resolution to resist temptation. When a child, it is said, his chief pleasure had been to read in the Bible, but now the memory of that golden time served only to deepen the gloom that overshadowed his thoughts, and pointed but too certainly to the end. That end was not far distant. One night, when about to return home from his revels, he fell from a staircase, and received a violent contusion on the head. Madness, which indeed had been long imminent, ensued; and his widowed mother being unable to maintain him at home, the wretched youth was removed to a lunatic asylum. There, after two months of confinement, he died, in the darkness of the night, alone, on a bed of straw. The interest that attaches to the name of Robert Ferguson arises partly from the unhappiness and melancholy close of his short life, and partly also from his having been in some sense the forerunner of Burns. His poems, which made no deep impression on the mind of his country at the time of their publication, are now all but forgotten. Not that they are devoid of merit. On the contrary, they abound in happy pictures of local manners, in a certain kind of quaint humour, and in a hearty sympathy with the genial and joyous in human life. And when it is remembered that they were written in hours snatched from drudgery and dissipation, by a youth who died at twenty-three, they will perhaps appear not altogether contemptible; though we may still affirm that the poetic gift of Ferguson showed itself as a longing and striving rather than a well-defined faculty or power. We have called Ferguson the forerunner of Burns. It is true that Ramsay had already opened a genuine vein of national poetry, and claims by his lyrical genius a closer affinity than Ferguson with the great Scottish poet. But it seems to have been the younger bard who had the honour of showing Burns, if indeed he did not instinctively perceive, how fertile a field for the exercise of his peculiar powers lay in the manners and customs and simple feelings of the Scottish people. Ferguson, besides, had been dead only nine years when Burns paid his memorable visit to Edinburgh, so that we may regard him as having received that harp of Caledonia over which he possessed such a perfect mastery, immediately from the hands of the poor maniac to whose memory he generously raised a humble monument at a time when his scanty resources were barely equal to his own demands.—R. M., A.
* FERGUSSON, James, was born in 1808 at Ayr in Scotland. Upon leaving the High School, Edinburgh, he was placed for a while in a counting-house in Holland, and then in one in London. In 1829 he went to India, where he remained ten years, first in an indigo factory at Bengal, afterwards as partner in a mercantile establishment. It was during these years that he laid the foundation of his future celebrity. He has himself told us that his leisure hours were now devoted to the study of art and archæology, but especially of these in connection with architecture; and the depth and extent of his studies were shown in the works he, at no distant period, put forth in rapid succession. But his researches were not confined to books. He travelled much in India, and, we believe, visited China; and wherever he went he carefully examined and drew the ancient buildings. Quitting India and commercial life in 1839, he spent some time in visiting and studying the principal remains of antiquity in Europe. Mr. Fergusson's first work, published in 1845, was entitled "Illustrations of the Rock-cut Temples of India," an 8vo volume of text, with eighteen lithographs in folio from his own drawings. What may be called a second part—"Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan"—appeared in 1847. In the same year he published "An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem," in which sites differing from those generally received were proposed for some of the most important of the sacred localities, especially of that of the "holy sepulchre." Mr. Fergusson's opinions have been opposed by other travellers and students, but in his latest work he has taken occasion to declare his continued conviction of their accuracy. His next publication was a venture in a new field, and one in which, as a civilian, he was certain to find many opponents. "An Essay on a New System of Fortification," was, in fact, an attempt to show that, whilst the received systems were incapable of withstanding the attacks of modern artillery, a fortress might be constructed nearly impregnable on a "new system," in which the works, instead of elaborate revetements of stone, should consist of parallel ramparts of earth, executed in a manner explained at length by him, and which had been suggested by some earthen fortifications he had seen in India. Nothing daunted by the professional attacks made on his theories, Mr. Fergusson prepared elaborate models of his proposed fortifications, which he placed before the public in the Great Exhibition of 1851; and followed this by a pamphlet entitled "The Peril of Portsmouth: French Fleets and English Forts," of which a third edition was published in 1853. The success of the new earthworks thrown up before Sebastopol, and the failure of the works constructed on the old system, recalled attention to Mr. Fergusson's theory. It has been denied, indeed, that the Russian works in any way resembled his; but one important point, at least, in his system seemed to obtain confirmation from them, and the value of his labours have received authoritative and official recognition in the fact of his appointment, in 1859, as one of a royal commission for examining into the state of our national defences. In the same year with the work on fortification, Mr. Fergusson published the first volume of "A Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, more especially with reference to Architecture." This was an attempt to deduce, by an elaborate examination of the great architectural works of every age and country, those great æsthetic principles, or artistic ideas, which he at the base of all successful construction, and so to arrive at an understanding of what is required for the creation of a true national style of architecture for the future. The work was perhaps planned on too large a scale to admit of an entirely satisfactory working out; and required too much knowledge as well as too close attention on the part of the reader to find wide circulation; a second volume was not published, and its continuance is understood to be abandoned, the materials collected for that purpose being embodied in the more popular "Illustrated Hand-book of Architecture" published in 1855. This hand-book is probably the work by which Mr. Fergusson will continue to be most widely known. It supplied a great want in our literature, and in an entirely satisfactory manner. As far as it goes it is the most comprehensive manual of the history of ancient and mediæval architecture, not only in the English language, but in any language; and it is not likely to be surpassed. To render it complete it requires to be continued through the renaissance and modern periods, and some few omissions to be supplied. Such a continuation it is to be hoped Mr. Fergusson will not be long in furnishing. To this list of his published writings we have only to add his pamphlet on the British Museum, National Gallery &c., 1849; and his suggestive essay on Assyrian architecture, "The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored," 1851. His views on this last subject he had an opportunity of exhibiting more palpably in the Assyrian court at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, which was constructed under his superintendence. For a while Mr. Fergusson held the office of general manager of the Crystal Palace, but retired when it was resolved to convert the building essentially into a place of amusement.—J. T—e.
