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with very broad shoulders, a capacious chest, and very strongly limbed. His bodily strength is extremely great, and, as he possesses the most intrepid courage, it has not unfrequently been exerted in the course of his perambulations through London. He has repulsed attempted robbery,, seized pickpockets, overawed bullies, and severely beaten street-disturbers of the public peace. Thomson's countenance is extremely expressive of intelligence, boldness, sensibility, and benevolence. When he is earnestly engaged in conversation, his eyes have astonishing brilliancy and force.

Having said a good deal about Dr. Thomson's propensity to pleasure, it may be proper before we conclude, to observe, that his pleasures are by no means confined to sensual gratifications. He is passionately fond of music, has a lively relish for poetry, if exquisite, and for books of travels, history, natural and civil, and on other subjects. In one of his excursions through the Highlands of Perthshire with Mr. Fowler of the Treasury, above-mentioned, the travellers stopt at the house of a miller in Glen Cooaigh, near StrathBrandt. When they went in, they heard the most affecting notes in the inner part of the house, though, for want of windows in that part, nobody was to be seen. It was a young widow whose husband had been dead but a fortnight, singing her child to sleep. A servant girl, on the entrance of the strangers, would have hastened to call her mistress, but both Mr. Thomson and Mr. Fowler agreed not by any means to interrupt her song. It was an original lul

laby,

laby, consisting of a few plaintive words, but a greater variety of plaintive notes; the whole expressive of love for her departed husband, tenderness to her babe, and anxiety about the future destiny or fate of both. When the child fell asleep and the song was over, the young widow appeared, and, by her great beauty and extreme modesty, heightened the impressions before made in her favour in the breasts of Mr. Fowler and Mr. Thomson. She was so modest and diffident, that she could not be persuaded to give any other specimen of her vocal, musical, and almost poetical powers; nor, indeed, in such circumstances of sorrow, did the travellers urge it. Dr. Thomson, on their return to Duplin, set the notes of the Highland shepherdess to music, with some improvements. It is one of the most plaintive, tender, and affecting melodies that ever was composed.

As we have thus given some account of what Dr. Thomson has done, so it may be expected that we should mention what he intends to do. We have seen a vast collection of notes and memorandums he has made for a work, to be entitled, History of Metaphysics, with an Estimateof the Results of Metaphysical Enquiries: To which is subjoined a brief Treatise on the Process of the Mind in the Act of Reminiscence ; but whether his leisure will ever enable him to finish; or his fortune to publish, such a work, is a question.

Dr. Thomson is married to a lady, who still retains a considerable share of beauty, which has been. very great. Mrs. Thomson possesses very respectable literary talents, as she has shown in various no

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vels,

vels, but especially the Labyrinths of Life, a very interesting story, with nice delineation, and strong exhibition of passion, and character. His children are two sons and two daughters, on whom he has been careful to bestow all the advantages of education, particularly those arising from early impressions of religion and virtue, and who are all of them either settled, or in a way of being genteelly settled in life.

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The following, which forms a link to the narrative, was, through accident, omitted in its proper place, page 432, line 1.

"It was chiefly by what were called college-exercises that "Thomson was first distinguished. Mr. Morton, Professor of "Humanity, called on the students to give an account of authors, "viva voce, by way of analysis, with their observations. Here "Thomson made a capital figure. Dr. Watson, in the class for "logic, rhetoric, and universal grammar, prescribed subjects for

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criticism, and others for original composition. Here also "Thomson excelled. Professor Watson said, that he shewed a genius truly metaphysical."

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R. B.

SIR WILLIAM OUSELEY.

PROFICIENCY in the literature of the East is still so rare in England, is attained with such difficulty, and bears a relation so direct and strong to the utilities of our trade and imperial policy, that whoever is eminently distinguished by this merit, cannot but deserve to be respectfully pointed out to the esteem and imitation of his fellow-countrymen. We have, therefore, peculiar satisfaction in offering the tribute of the following short memoir to the worth and erudition of Sir William Ouseley.

This gentleman has his descent from a family of ancient distinction in Shropshire and Northamptonshire. Hh

1802-3.

He

He was born in the year 1771. His earlier edu cation was under several domestic tutors: the last of these, a gentleman of the University of Glasgow, possessing uncommon skill in the literature of Greece and Rome, and qualified to kindle in his pupil's inind, a passion for the learning in which he himself excelled, was the director of his studies, for several years.›

In the year 1787, Mr. Ouseley made an excursion, in finishing of his education, to visit Paris, and perfect himself in the knowledge and familiar use of the French language. After a residence of some months in that capital, be returned, through Nor mandy, to England.

In the year following, he entered the army, by purchasing a cornetcy in the 8th regiment of dragoons. He joined his regiment while it was quartered in Ireland; and, soon after, purchased a lieutenancy in the same corps.

The military profession, to a man of a truly inge nuous mind improved by early culture, affords advantages the most eligible for that study, observation, and practice in the varieties of social intercourse, which are to endow the intellect with its truest wealth, are to bestow the last maturity upon judgment, and the highest polish of sentiment.

Mr.Ouseley having entered the army with a fit turn of mind and character, naturally sought in literature a resource for amusement in the leisure of countryquarters. The study of antiquities, which presents so many images of grandeur and tenderness to interest the imagination and the heart, was that for which he first conceived a passionate curiosity. It led him insensibly

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sensibly into the kindred study of the ancient languages of the East; the Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian.

What, indeed, can be more natural, than to proceed, by such a gradation, from enquiries concerning the monuments of the history of the ancients, and the remains of their arts, to the study of their languages? The power to trace the relations of etymology, is one of the master-keys which open to the knowledge of antiquity. The history of the origin, the descents, the filiations, and the cognations of words, if philosophically written, might involve the whole history of human arts and institutions. We cannot examine the ancient and modern languages of Europe, without tracing them all to the three grand sources of the Celtic, the Gothic, and the Sclavonic; and among these, again, we easily discern so many things to be in common, that they must be considered as radically one and the same: while, in the Persian, the Hebrew, and the Arabic, we can discover an agreement, in primary words, with the Celtic, Gothic, and Sclavonic, that may seem almost to conduct us up to the knowledge of one original, universal language, on which all others are variously engrafted, without the destruction of the stem. Erudition is, amid such investigations, exalted into philosophy: and, the study of languages expands and elevates the mind by filling it with the noblest conceptions, and by teaching it to embrace, as it were at once, the history of all ages and of all nations.

In the retirement in which Mr. Ouseley began the study of the Eastern tongues, he had no helps in this study, but those of books. But the famous Clenard

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