RAMSAY. 689 RAMSAY. humorously. Consult: Smeaton, Life (Edin- burgh, 1890) ; Poems, edited with a Life, by Chalmers, 1800; reissued and revised. Paisley, 1877: and Poems, selected, bv Robertson (Lon- don, 1887). KAMSAY, ArxAX (1713-84). A Scotch por- trait painter, the son of Allan Ranisay of Gentle t^hepherd fame. He was born in Edin- burgh, and studied there and in London and in Rome. In 1767 he was made Court painter to George III. His brush could not begin to keep up with the demands made upon it. and he em- ployed several assistants. Besides the King and Queen, whom he painted repeatedly, some of his famous sitters were Lord Bute, Gibbon, Chester- field, Hume, Rousseau, and his wife. The three last-named canvases are in the Edinburgh Na- tional Gallery. The portrait of his wife is his masterpiece, and for beauty and workmanship rivals Reynolds. His works are said to have been excellent likenesses, and are natural and unaffected. RAMSAY, Sir Axdrew Cbombie (1814-91). A .Scotch geologist, born in Glasgow. His educa- tion at the grammar school in that city was interrupted in 1827 by the death of his father, a manufacturing chemist, who had made several important discoveries, but had patented none of them. The family was left almost without pro- vision, and Andrew entered a counting house, and in 1837 attempted business as a dealer in calico and linen. By 1840 this project had proved a failure, but in the following year, at 9d. a day, he was appointed assistant to the Geological Survey, with which he was connected imtil 1881, becoming local director for Great Britain in 1845, senior director for England and Wales in 1862, and director-general in 1871. Upon retiring from active service in 1881 he was knighted. In 1847 he had been appointed to the chair of geology in L'niversity College, Lon- don, and in 18.51 received a like position in the Royal School of Mines. He was president of the Geological Society in 1862-64; became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1862: received the Xeill Prize from the Edinburgh Royal Society in 1866, the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society in 1870, and in 1880 a Royal Society medal. He was a good lecturer, something of an improvisator, and an ardent lover of English poetry. His rather typical Celtic nature made him over hasty in judgment at times, and as a geologist he was a stratigrapher at the expense of paleontology or petrography. His most valu- able work on glacial formations. Old Glaciers of North Wales and Siritzei-land (1860), was followed by a series of popular lectures. Phijsical Geology and Geography of Great Britain (1864; 6th ed. 1894) ; and Rudiments of Mineralogy (3d ed. 1885). The theors' with which he was most closely identified, but which has not received gen- eral assent, is that many lake basins have been formed as the result of glacial excavations. Consult Geikie, Memoir (London, 1895). RAMSAY, Andrew MicH.EL (1686-1743). A Scotchman who became a Roman Catholic in France, where he was known as the Chevalier de Ramsay. He was born at Ayr. the son of a baker, studied at the University of Edinburgh, and became a tutor in a nobleman's family. Being preoccupied with religious questions, he sought the leading theologians of his own coun- try and also those of Holland, whither he went attached to the English army during the War of the Spanish .Succession. He became acquainted with the mystic Poiret, and visited Fenelon in France in 1710, and by them was led to adopt the Roman Catholic faith. He remained with Fenelon until the latters death in 1715, inherited the papers of his distinguished mentor, and be- came his biographer. After Fenelon's death Ramsay became tutor to the Due de Chateau- Thierry, and later went to Rome to act as tutor to the two sons of the Pretender, .lames Francis Edward. In 1730 he visited England and w,a3 made a member of the Royal Society. After his return to Paris he became tutor to the Vicomte de Turenne. His works, composed in good French, won him considerable popularity, but are now al- most wholly forgotten. Among them are: Discours de la poesie cpiqiic. originally printed as preface of Telemaque (1717); Essai philosophique sur le goureniement ciril (1721); Yie de Fenelon (1723), translated into English by X. Hooke; Le psychomitre, ou reflexions sur les differenta caracteres de I'esprit. par un milord anglais, an essay dealing with Lord Shaftesburj-'s Charac- teristics: Les voyages de Cyrus, arec un discours sur la mythologie dcs paiens (1727); Poems (1728) ; Plan of Education for a Young Prince (1732); L'histoire du Yicomte de Turenne (1735). RAMSAY, D.viD (1740-1815). An Ameri- can physician and author. He was born in Pennsylvania and settled in practice in Charles- ton, .S. C. in 1773. He served as field-surgeon in the Continental Army during the Revolution. He became member of the State Legislature. 1776: was a member of the Council of Safety at Charleston, and was a prisoner of the British at Saint Augustine. Fla., 1780-81: from 1782 to 1786 he was a member of the Continental Congress, and its president. 1785-86. He was again a member of the South Carolina Legislature, 1801- 15, and the president of the Senate of the State. He was shot by a lunatic. Among his works are: History of the Rerolution of South Carolina (1785); History of the American Revolution (1789) ; Life of Washington (1807) : History of South Carolina (1809); and History of the United States, 160~-1S0S (1816-17). RAMSAY, Edward Baxxekmax Burxett (1793-1872). A Scotch clergyman. He was born at Aberdeen and educated at the Cathedral Gram- mar School at Durham and at Saint John's Col- lege, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1816. The same year he became curate of Rodden, in Somerset, and shortly added to his care the curacy of Buckland Denham. in the same county, In 1824 he assumed the curacy of Saint George's, York Place, Edinburgh, and two years later went to Saint Paul's. Carrubbers Close. The follow- ing year he became assistant of Bishop Sandford at Saint John's Church, succeeded him in 1830, and continued in the pastorate of that church imtil his death. In 1846 he was appointed by Bishop Terrot Dean of Edinburgh, ami though three bishoprics were offered him. he de- clined them. His best known work was Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character (1858; 22d ed. with memoir by Cosmo-Innes, 1874). Among his other works are: Dirersities of Christian Character (1858): The Christian Life (1862); Lectures on Handel (1862); and Pulpit TaUe-Talk (1868).
