constitutional cheerfulness of temperament, such as the most fortunate might have envied, was to close his eventful career. Much as he had written, the wonder had continued to the last that one so educated and circumstanced could write so well. His closing days, which at first gave no premonition of their result, found him employed in compiling a small volume of sacred poetry, while his walks in the moors, amidst the fresh heather-hells and the bleating of flocks, made him feel as if the season of decay were still distant. But his complaint, which was an affection of the liver, so rapidly increased, that after an illness of four weeks he died at his cottage of Altrive Lake, on the Yarrow, on the 21st of November, 1835, leaving a widow and five children, dependent upon the gratitude of a country whose scenes he has described, and whose worth he has eulogized so eloquently.[1] His works, of which we have not enumerated the full amount in poetry and prose, have since been published at Glasgow, entire in eleven volumes. Thus passed away a man whose name will continue to be coeval with that of Ettrick or the Yarrow, and whom Scotland at large, as long as she cherishes the remembrance of her past national genius, will never willingly forget.
HORSBURGH, JAMES, F.R.S. This eminent hydrographer, whose charts
have conferred such inestimable benefits upon our merchant princes and the
welfare of our Eastern empire, was a native of Fife, that county so prolific of
illustrious Scotchmen from the earliest periods of our national history. James
Horsburgh was born at Elie, on the 23d September, 1762. As his parents were
of humble rank, his education in early life at the village school was alternated
with field-labour. Being intended, like many of those living on the coast of
Fife, for a sea-faring life, his education was directed towards this destination;
and at the age of sixteen, having acquired a competent knowledge of the elements
of mathematics, navigation, and book-keeping, he entered his profession in the
humble capacity of cabin-boy, to which he was bound apprentice for three
years. During this time the different vessels in which he served were chiefly
employed in the coal trade, and made short trips to Ostend, Holland, and Ham-
burg. These were at length interrupted, in May, 1780, in consequence of the
vessel in which he sailed being captured by a French ship off Walcheren, and
himself, with his shipmates, sent to prison at Dunkirk. When his captivity,
which was a brief one, had ended, he made a voyage to the West Indies, and
another to Calcutta; and at this last place he found an influential friend in
Mr. D. Briggs, the ship-builder, by whose recommendation he was made third
mate of the Nancy. For two years he continued to be employed in the trade
upon the coasts of India and the neighbouring islands, and might thus have continued to the end, with nothing more than the character of a skilful, hardy, enterprising sailor, when an event occurred by which his ambition was awakened,
and his latent talents brought into full exercise. In May, 1786, he was sailing
from Batavia to Ceylon, as first mate of the Atlas, and was regulating the ship's
course by the charts used in the navigation of that sea, when the vessel was
unexpectedly run down and wrecked upon the island of Diego Garcia. According to the map he was in an open sea, and the island was elsewhere, until
the sudden crash of the timbers showed too certainly that he had followed a
lying guide. The loss of this vessel was repaid a thousand-fold by the effects
- ↑ After a lapse of nearly twenty years, the widow of the Ettrick Shepherd has been pensioned by government.
