the future state of happiness; personal and relative duties; the duties men owe to God; the admonitions and consolations afforded by the Christian religion." The principles of the work are thoroughly scriptural and evangelical; its style is elegant, chaste, and grave; its spirit earnest and solemnizing. It is the utterance of a heart much exercised in affliction, and intimately conversant with the sources of true and permanent consolation. It gives expression to remarkably elevating yet sober conceptions of the heavenly felicity, and dwells with touching interest on the prospect of the re-union of the ties of affection severed on earth. "The Christian Philosophy" is at once meditative, devotional, and practical, and to many "mourners in Zion" the author must often have proved himself "a son of consolation."
Dr. Burns also published another religious book, entitled, "Christian Fragments." Although brought up in the Church of Scotland, of which he was an elder, he became a member of the Episcopalian Church, and died in its communion. His end was sudden and melancholy. He perished in the wreck of the Orion steam-boat, on her passage from Liverpool to Glasgow, on the 18th of June, 1860. Having finished his course and kept the faith, he was removed from the world in the attitude and exercise of prayer. He had reached the mature age of seventy-five.
Dr. John Burns was F.R.S., and a member of the Institute of France, and of several other scientific institutions in various countries. In politics, he was a staunch Conservative. He was of a cheerful disposition, was a great favourite with his patients, and towards his professional brethren he behaved on all occasions in the most honourable manner. In person he was under the middle height, with grey flowing locks, and his dress was scrupulously neat and antique. Few individuals in Glasgow were unacquainted with his exterior, and thousands who knew little of his professional attainments were yet familiar with his appearance as a venerable medical gentleman of the old school. His eldest and only surviving son, Lieutenant-Colonel Burns, of the second Queen's Regiment, died at the Cape of Good Hope towards the close of 1853.
C
CALDER, Sir Robert, Bart.—It has been truly remarked by Hallam, that the state trials of England exhibit the most appalling accumulation of judicial iniquity that can be found in any age or country. And why? Because, as he adds, the monarch cannot wreak his vengeance, or the nobles vent the bitterness of their feuds, except in a law court, and by a legal process. The trials connected with the history of the British navy, and the iniquitous sentences passed upon some of our most heroic and deserving admirals, attest too fully the truth of Hallam's observation. Byng, Matthews, Cochrane—the first shot, the second cashiered, and the third imprisoned, from no adequate cause, or without cause whatever, are cases that seem to carry us back, not to the dark ages, when heroism at least was fairly appreciated, but to the old Carthaginian periods, when the bravest generals were crucified as often as their rivals entered into place and power. A fourth British admiral, who was the victim of an unjust trial and most undeserved punishment, was Sir Robert Calder, the subject of the present notice. And we judge it the more necessary to introduce him with the preced-
