round Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, already become the fairest ornament of the fairest of European cities.
Such was the life of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder to the close a twofold life of diligent study and active exertion, in each of which he was a benefactor to society, and a distinguished ornament of his country; while several of his writings, translated into the French and German languages, acquired for him a European reputation. His private worth and amenity of character, had endeared him also to the learned and talented, so that scholars, authors, and artists, sought his society, and were benefited by his counsel and conversation. Even strangers were arrested as he passed along the streets of Edinburgh, by the sight of his noble, stately form, long white locks, and remarkably handsome expressive countenance, and felt convinced at once that this man must be some one as much distinguished above his fellows by intellectual as by personal superiority. This round of activity was only interrupted by his last illness, which was occasioned by a tumour on the spine, that for fifteen months incapacitated him for attendance at the Board of Trustees for Manufactures, &c, and finally obliged him to lay aside a work descriptive of the rivers of Scotland, of which part had already appeared in a serial form in "Tait's Magazine." He died at his residence called the Grange, near Edinburgh, on the 29th May, 1848, at the age of sixty-four.
Independently of the offices we have mentioned, Sir Thomas held that of Deputy-Lieutenant of the county of Haddington ; he was also a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was survived by two sons and six daughters, and succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, Captain Dick, who, a short time previously, had retired from the army after fourteen years of military service, as an officer in the East India Company.
LISTON, Robert, F.R.S.—This great medical teacher and practitioner was born on the 28th of October, 1794, and was son of the Rev. Henry Liston, minister of Ecclesmachen, Linlithgowshire. After having finished his course of classical and professional education, he, at the termination of the latter, practised as ordinary house-surgeon in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. It speaks
much for his professional attainments at this period for he was only at the age of twenty-one—that he perceived the defects that prevailed in the management of that institution; and not a little for his courage as well as disinterestedness, that he set himself in earnest to reform them. Like most of those daring young geniuses, however, who look too exclusively to the good end in view, and are satisfied with the rectitude of their own motives, he pursued his plan of
reform with such ardour as to waken the wrath of the directors, who were little disposed to be taught that they were in the wrong by such a juvenile instructor. Liston, however, persevered, while his growing reputation coming to his aid, at length gave his representations such weight, that, when his connection with the Infirmary terminated, a full acknowledgment of the important services he had rendered was entered upon its records. In 1817, Mr. Liston became a graduate of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and London, and commenced practice in the former city, where his reputation as a surgical operator
grew yearly, until he attained that pre-eminence which left him without a rival. For this department, indeed, he was admirably fitted by nature; for independently of his acquired skill, he possessed a decision of will, firmness of nerve, strength of muscle, and quickness of eye, which qualified him for successful operations, where many of his gentler or less prompt and active brethren would
