astronomy, in which he early achieved distinction. In 1870 he went to Cadiz to observe the eclipse of the sun, and, in 1874, to Mauritius to observe the transit of Venus. In the interval, with the assistance of his father, he had built an observatory at Dunecht, Aberdeenshire, which in 1888 he presented, together with his unique library of astronomical and mathematical works, to the New Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, where they were installed in 1895. His services to science were recognized by his election to the presidentship of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1878 and 1879 in succession to Sir William Huggins, and to the fellowship of the Royal Society in 1878. He also received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh University in 1882, and in the following year was nominated honorary associate of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. An enthusiastic bibliophile, he became a trustee of the British Museum, and acted for a term as president of the Library Association. To the free library of Wigan, Lancashire, he gave a series of oriental and English MSS. of the 9th to the 19th centuries in illustration of the progress of handwriting, while for the use of specialists and students he issued the invaluable Bibliotheca Lindesiana. He represented Wigan in the House of Commons from 1874 till his succession to the title in 1880.
Another title held by the Lindsays was that of Spynie, Sir Alexander Lindsay (c. 1555–1607), created Baron Spynie in 1590, being a younger son of the 10th earl of Crawford. The 2nd Lord Spynie was Alexander’s son, Alexander (d. 1646), who served in Germany under Gustavus Adolphus and assisted Charles I. in Scotland during the Civil War; and the 3rd lord was the latter’s son, George. When George, a royalist who was taken prisoner at the battle of Worcester, died in 1671 this title became extinct.
The dukedom of Montrose, which had lapsed on the death of the 5th earl of Crawford in 1495 and had been revived in 1707 in the Graham family, was claimed in 1848 by the 24th earl of Crawford, but in 1853 the House of Lords gave judgment against the earl.
The Lindsays have furnished the Scottish church with several prelates. John Lindsay (d. 1335) was bishop of Glasgow; Alexander Lindsay (d. 1639) was bishop of Dunkeld until he was deposed in 1638; David Lindsay (d. c. 1641) was bishop of Brechin and then of Edinburgh until he, too, was deposed in 1638; and a similar fate attended Patrick Lindsay (1566–1644), bishop of Ross from 1613 to 1633 and archbishop of Glasgow from 1633 to 1638. Perhaps the most famous of the Lindsay prelates was David Lindsay (c. 1531–1613), a nephew of the 9th earl of Crawford. David, who married James VI. to Anne of Denmark at Upsala, was one of the leaders of the Kirk party; he became bishop of Ross under the new scheme for establishing episcopacy in 1600.
See Lord Lindsay (25th earl of Crawford), Lives of the Lindsays (1849); A. Jervise, History and Traditions of the Land of the Lindsays (1882); G. E. C(okayne), Complete Peerage (1887–1898); H. T. Folkard, A Lindsay Record (1899); and Sir J. B. Paul’s edition of the Scots Peerage of Sir R. Douglas, vol. iii. (1906).
CRAWFORD, FRANCIS MARION (1854–1909), American
author, was born at Bagni di Lucca, Italy, on the 2nd of August
1854, being the son of the American sculptor Thomas Crawford
(q.v.), and the nephew of Julia Ward Howe, the American poet.
He studied successively at St Paul’s school, Concord, New
Hampshire; Cambridge University; Heidelberg; and Rome.
In 1879 he went to India, where he studied Sanskrit and edited
the Allahabad Indian Herald. Returning to America he continued
to study Sanskrit at Harvard University for a year,
contributed to various periodicals, and in 1882 produced his first
novel, Mr Isaacs, a brilliant sketch of modern Anglo-Indian life
mingled with a touch of Oriental mystery. This book had an
immediate success, and its author’s promise was confirmed by the
publication of Dr Claudius (1883). After a brief residence in
New York and Boston, in 1883 he returned to Italy, where he
made his permanent home. This accounts perhaps for the fact
that, in spite of his nationality, Marion Crawford’s books stand
apart from any distinctively American current in literature.
Year by year he published a number of successful novels: A
Roman Singer (1884), An American Politician (1884), To Leeward
(1884), Zoroaster (1885), A Tale of a Lonely Parish (1886),
Marzio’s Crucifix (1887), Saracinesca (1887), Paul Patoff (1887),
With the Immortals (1888), Greifenstein (1889), Sant’ Ilario (1889),
A Cigarette-maker’s Romance (1890), Khaled (1891), The Witch of
Prague (1891), The Three Fates (1892), The Children of the King
(1892), Don Orsino (1892), Marion Darche (1893), Pietro Ghisleri
(1893), Katharine Lauderdale (1894), Love in Idleness (1894), The
Ralstons, (1894), Casa Braccio (1895), Adam Johnston’s Son
(1895), Taquisara (1896), A Rose of Yesterday (1897), Corleone
(1897), Via Crucis (1899), In the Palace of the King (1900),
Marietta (1901), Cecilia (1902), Whosoever Shall Offend (1904),
Soprano (1905), A Lady of Rome (1906). He also published the
historical works, Ave Roma Immortalis (1898), Rulers of the
South (1900)—renamed Sicily, Calabria and Malta in 1904,—and
Gleanings from Venetian History (1905). In these his intimate
knowledge of local Italian history combines with the romancist’s
imaginative faculty to excellent effect. But his place in contemporary
literature depends on his novels. He was a gifted
narrator, and his books of fiction, full of historic vitality and
dramatic characterization, became widely popular among
readers to whom the realism of “problems” or the eccentricities
of subjective analysis were repellent, for he could unfold a romantic story in an attractive way, setting his plot amid picturesque surroundings, and gratifying the reader’s intelligence by a style at once straightforward and accomplished. The Saracinesca series shows him perhaps at his best. A Cigarette-maker’s Romance was dramatized, and had considerable popularity on the stage as well as in its novel form; and in 1902 an original play from his pen, Francesca da Rimini, was produced in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt. He died at Sorrento on the 9th of April 1909.
CRAWFORD, THOMAS (1814–1857), American sculptor, was
born of Irish parents in New York on the 22nd of March 1814.
He showed at an early age great taste for art, and learnt to draw
and to carve in wood. In his nineteenth year he entered the
studio of a firm of monumental sculptors in his native city; and
in the summer of 1835 he went to Rome and became a pupil of
Thorwaldsen. The first work which made him generally known
as a man of genius was his group of “Orpheus entering Hades
in Search of Eurydice,” executed in 1839. This was followed by
other poetical sculptures, among which were the “Babes in the
Wood,” “Flora,” “Hebe and Ganymede,” “Sappho,” “Vesta,”
the “Dancers,” and the “Hunter.” Among his statues and busts
are especially noteworthy the bust of Josiah Quincy, executed
for Harvard University (now in the Boston Athenaeum), the
equestrian statue of Washington at Richmond, Virginia, the
statue of Beethoven in the Boston music hall, statues of Channing
and Henry Clay, and the colossal figure of “Armed Liberty” for
the Capitol at Washington. For this building he executed also
the figures for the pediment and began the bas-reliefs for the
bronze doors, which were afterwards completed by W. H.
Rinehart. The groups of the pediment symbolize the progress
of civilization in America. Crawford’s works include a large
number of bas-reliefs of Scriptural subjects taken from both the
Old and the New Testaments. He made Rome his home, but he
visited several times his native land—first in 1844 (in which year
he married Louisa Ward), next in 1849, and lastly in 1856. He
died in London on the 10th of October 1857.
See Das Lincoln Monument, eine Rede des Senator Charles Sumner, to which are appended the biographies of several sculptors, including that of Thomas Crawford (Frankfort a. M., 1868); Thomas Hicks, Eulogy on Thomas Crawford (New York, 1865).
CRAWFORD, WILLIAM HARRIS (1772–1834), American statesman, was born in Amherst county, Virginia, on the 24th of February 1772. When he was seven his parents moved into Edgefield district, South Carolina, and four years later into Columbus county, Georgia. The death of his father in 1788 left the family in reduced circumstances, and William made what he could by teaching school for six years. He then studied at Carmel Academy for two years, was principal, for a time, of one of the largest schools in Augusta, and in 1798 was admitted to the
