stretching back to a period long before the time of Wycliffe and Huss, and probably even to the earliest beginning of christianity. The solution of this problem, the task of tracking this undercurrent of belief throughout Europe, became thenceforth the work of his life, and since his retirement from ministerial work in 1874, when settled at Forest Gate in Essex, received his undivided attention. But the problem was really too vast for one worker. The ‘Annals of Reformers before the Reformation’ were never completed, and a number of historical articles and reviews (the most important of which were the numerous notices of obscure heretics in Smith's ‘Dictionary of Christian Biography,’ and a paper on ‘Evangelical Nonconformity under the first of the Plantagenets’ in the ‘British Quarterly’ for September 1870) are the only published results of years of constant labour. He employed the last year of his life in carefully indexing the notes he had collected, in the hope that they might be useful to some younger student. He died at Forest Gate of heart disease on Good Friday, 11 April 1884, leaving six children by his first wife, who died in 1853. He had married a second time, on 28 April 1859, Mary, daughter of William Spelman of Norwich, by whom he left no issue.
[Personal knowledge and family papers.]
DAVIDSON. [See also Davison.]
DAVIDSON, ALEXANDER DYCE, D.D. (1807–1872), divine, was born in Aberdeen in 1807, and spent his life there. After a course of study in the university he was ordained minister of the South church in 1832, and was transferred to the West church in 1836. He married Elizabeth Blaikie 11 Aug. 1840. His popularity as a preacher was very great, and his influence among the students of the university and the more cultured classes was paramount. To him more than to any other was due the transformation of religious opinion in Aberdeen from ‘moderatism’ to ‘evangelicalism,’ which led to the exodus of the city ministers and congregations at the disruption of 1843. Davidson led the most influential congregation of the city into the Free church, and continued to minister to it with undiminished success, first in Belmont Street, then in a new church in Union Street, till his death in 1872. He devoted himself wholly to pulpit work, taking no part in public affairs. He left some two thousand sermons fully written out, a selection from which, with a preface by Dr. F. Edmond, was published after his death. A course of sermons on the Book of Esther was published in 1859. Davidson had the degree of doctor of divinity from his own university in 1854.
[Funeral Sermons by Drs. Smeaton and Lumsden; Disruption Worthies; Edmond's Preface to Lectures and Sermons; Hew Scott's Fasti, iii. 465, 479.]
DAVIDSON, HARRIET MILLER (1839–1883), authoress, was born at Cromarty in Scotland on 25 Nov. 1839. She was the second but eldest surviving child of Hugh Miller [q. v.], the distinguished geologist, and his wife Lydia Fraser, a lady of high culture and considerable literary power. She was a very beautiful and highly gifted child, with a remarkable gift of improvisation in verse and song, reminding some of her friends of Scott's ‘Pet Marjory.’ Educated at Edinburgh and London, she was barely seventeen at the time of her father's death in 1856, which caused a shock from which she never completely recovered. In 1863 she married the Rev. John Davidson, minister of the Free church of Scotland at Langholm in Dumfriesshire. In 1869, her husband having been appointed minister of Chalmers's Church in Adelaide, South Australia, she removed thither, and very soon made a strong impression by her bright social qualities among Adelaide friends. When Mr. Davidson was appointed to the chair of English literature and mental philosophy, the new sphere seemed not less appropriate for Mrs. Davidson than it was for him. But even before his death, which took place in 1881, his wife had been in a precarious state of health, and from 1880 she was a confirmed invalid. She died on 20 Dec. 1883.
Mrs. Davidson's literary work began with several fugitive poems published in local journals. Her first book was ‘Isobel Jardine's History,’ a temperance tale, published under the auspices of the Scottish Temperance League. This story has been very popular, and has run through several editions. ‘Christian Osborne's Friends’ followed, a story suggesting several references to her own hardy seafaring ancestors. In Adelaide she became a contributor to the local newspapers, and her articles, poems, and stories were looked for and read with admiration by a large class of readers up to a short time before her death. Among these stories one entitled ‘A Man of Genius’ was considered by her the best of her prose writings. ‘Sir Gilbert's Children,’ the last of her stories, was left unfinished, but completed from her instructions to a friend. She was also a contributor to ‘Chambers's Journal,’ where ‘Daisy's Choice’ appeared in 1870, and ‘The Hamiltons,’ a story of Australian life, in
