ALINGTON, Robert, a doctor and professor of theology at Oxford, chancellor of the university, and about 1400 wrote a variety of Latin tracts.
ALIPIUS, bishop of Tagaste, the pupil and friend of St. Augustine. He was a lawyer by profession, and rose to the highest judicial eminence. Like St. Augustine, he had at one time led a careless life, and been deceived by Manichæism. He followed his friend in his last great change, and was baptized with him at Milan by St. Ambrose a.d. 387. He afterwards accompanied St. Augustine to Hippo, and became bishop of Tagaste. He probably died about a.d. 429. He is commemorated by the Roman catholic church on August 15.—J. B., O.
ALIPRANDI, Bonamente, an Italian poet of the 14th and 15th centuries, who wrote a chronicle of Mantua in verse.
ALIPRANDO, Michel Angelo, a painter of Verona in the sixteenth century, pupil of Paul Veronese.
ALIS-IBN-ISA, one of the astronomers of Almamoun. This illustrious caliph, amidst his other efforts in promotion of knowledge, proposed to obtain a more accurate determination of the magnitude of the earth. The best mathematicians were thereupon commanded to measure a degree of the meridian on Singiar, a vast plain of Mesopotamia. They arranged themselves in two divisions, the one under Chalid ben Abdomelic, the other under Alis-Ibn-Isa. One division went northward—the other southward. The degree thus measured cannot boast of remarkable accuracy; but there is considerable doubt as to the value of the unit employed by the observers. The expedition or experiment, however, deserves to be recorded, as the first modern anticipation of our recent grand enterprises.—J. P. N.
ALISON, Archibald, an episcopal clergyman, was born at Edinburgh—of which city his father was a magistrate—in the year 1757. His education was begun at Glasgow university, whence he went up as an exhibitioner to Baliol college, Oxford. In 1784 he took orders in the English church, marrying in the same year the daughter of Dr. John Gregory of Edinburgh. He obtained rapid preferment in the church, being appointed a prebendary of Salisbury, and nominated to several benefices in different parts of England. In 1797 he received an invitation to become the senior minister of the episcopal chapel in the Cowgate, Edinburgh. He accepted the offer, and continued to act as the pastor of the congregation up to the year 1831, when ill health compelled him to retire from the active duties of the ministry. He died in the year 1839, at the advanced age of 82.
His reputation as a writer mainly rests on his "Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste," published in 1790. This work was favourably reviewed by Jeffrey in the "Edinburgh Review" for 1811. It is written in a lively and pleasant style, much resembling that of his more distinguished son, the author of the "History of Europe during the French Revolution," but erring too often on the side of diffuseness. It may decidedly be called pleasant reading, though the subject is at first sight a dry one. The theory, to the proof and illustration of which the whole book is devoted, may be briefly stated thus. The contemplation of certain external objects exists in the mind, the emotion of the sublime, or of the beautiful, or the terrific, or the pleasing, &c. &c. Now, what is the real moving cause of the emotion in each case? "Not," says Alison, "any physical quality inherent in the object itself; it is not that a mountain is in itself beautiful, or a brick-wall in itself ugly." His explanation is, that by the law of the association of ideas, the contemplation of such objects awakens in the mind the ideas of other objects, which naturally excite in us the feelings of love, pity, fear, veneration, or any other common and lively sensation of the mind. Hence, for example, he explains the delight we feel in contemplating the aspects of nature in the season of spring, by saying that those aspects call up the idea of infancy, and by consequence suggest the long train of ideas, of fearful tenderness, frailty, growth, freshness, hope, and apprehension, which are naturally associated with the primary idea of infancy. He denies that natural beauty can be perceived at all by children. "The beauties of nature," he says, "have no existence for those who have as yet but little general sympathy with mankind; they are usually first recommended to our notice by the strains of the poets, whom we read in the course of our education, and who in a manner create them for us by the association which they enable us to form with the visible external phenomena." Exactly the opposite doctrine to this is taught by Wordsworth, in his "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality:"—
" Heaven lies about as in our infancy;
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy; The youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;—
At length the man perceives it die away.
And fade into the light of common day."
Neither theory seems to give an adequate explanation or analysis of the facts of our consciousness; but this defect is more excusable in a poem than in a philosophical treatise. (Knight's English Cyclopædia.)—T. A.
ALISON, Sir Archibald, Bart., son of the preceding, was born in 1792 at Kenley, in Shropshire, where his father was then vicar. He was, however, educated in Edinburgh, his father having removed to that city. He studied for the Scottish bar, and was admitted as an advocate in 1814. He was appointed sheriff of Lanarkshire in 1834, in 1852 was created a baronet by Lord Derby's government, and in 1853 the degree of D.C.L. was conferred on him by the University of Oxford. In 1845 he was chosen lord rector of Marischal college, Aberdeen, and of Glasgow university in 1851. His chief work is the elaborate and voluminous "History of Europe, from the French Revolution of 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815." A continuation, to the accession of Louis Napoleon, was published in 1859. He also wrote on the criminal law of Scotland; on the "Principles of Population;" a "Life of Marlborough;" and "Essays, Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous," which first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. Sir Archibald's writings, especially his "History of Europe," have attained a very extensive circulation and great popularity. He died on the 23rd of May, 1867.—J. B.
ALISON, William Pulteney, M.D., Edinburgh; D.C.L., Oxon., 1850; F.R.C.P., Edinburgh; Hon. F.R.C.P., Dublin; First Physician to Her Majesty for Scotland; Emeritus Professor of Practice of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh; formerly President, Royal College of Physicians, and Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Physiology, Edinburgh; F.R.S.E., and Vice-President, R.S.; Fellow and formerly President of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, Edinburgh; Hon. Member of Royal Medical Society, Edinburgh, &c. Dr. Alison was born at Edinburgh in 1790, and died there in 1859. His father, the Rev. A. Alison, was the author of an "Essay on Taste," and several other works. The subject of this sketch, after going through the usual course of classical studies, became a student of medicine in Edinburgh university in 1806, and obtained his degree in 1811. During this time he acted as occasional secretary and assistant to his uncle. Dr. Gregory, professor of practice of medicine, in which duties he continued till the death of Gregory in 1821. In 1819 he began to lecture on physiology, and in 1820 he obtained the professorship of medical jurisprudence and police. In 1822 he was associated with Dr. Duncan, jun., as professor of institutes of medicine, and also became one of the clinical lecturers in the infirmary. In 1828 he was appointed sole professor of institutes of medicine, in connection with which he published the "First Lines of Physiology "in 1830, and the "Outlines of Physiology and Pathology "in 1833. In 1832 he succeeded to the professorship of practice of medicine, and from that time gave regular lectures till 1855, when declining health obliged him to resign his more arduous duties.
In lecturing on the different branches of medical science, first in a general course of institutes of medicine, including the elements of physiology, pathology, and therapeutics, and afterwards in the application of the two last branches to practice, it appeared to him that the present state of our knowledge admitted of their being taught in connection, not merely as linked together by the details of anatomical structure, but as forming a grand and important department of natural science—that indeed to which many other parts of natural science may be regarded as subordinate and subsidiary—the study of the living body as existing in health, as affected by disease, and as influenced by medicines; and that in accordance with the well understood object in all the sciences, of tracing the phenomena included under each head up to certain ultimate facts or laws of nature, in this department of her works a more systematic form might be safely given to these sciences, than had yet been done by any author or teacher in this country. This accordingly was his
