Foms StRet.1 THOMAS CHALMERS. 205
of high entranced enthusiasm. But the shape of
the forehead is perhaps the most singular part of
the whole visage ; and indeed it presents a mixture
so very singular, that I should have required some
little time to comprehend the meaning of it. . . .
In the forehead of Dr. Chalmers there is an arch
of imagination, carrying out the summit boldly and
roundly, in a style to which the heads of very few
poets present acything comparable-while over
this again there is a grand apex of veneration and
love, such as might have graced the bust of Plato
himself, and such as in living men I had never
beheld equalled in any but the majestic head of
Canova. The whole is edged with a few crisp
locks, which stand boldly forth and afford a fine
relief to the death-like paleness of those massive
temples.?
He died on the 3rst May, 1847, since when
his Memoirs have been given to the world by Dr.
William Hanna, with his life and labours in
long before he took the great part he did in the
storm of the Disruption :-
?At first sight his face is a coarse one-but a
mysterious kind of meaning breathes from every
part of it, that such as have eyes cannot be long
without discovering. It is very pale, and the
large halfclosed eyelids have a certain drooping
melancholy about them, which interested me very
much, I understood not why. The lips, too, are
singularly pensive in their mode of falling down
at the sides, although there is no want of richness
and vigour in their central fulness of curve. The
upper lip from the nose downwards, is separated by
a very deep line, which
travels in North America followed; but the work
by which he is best known-his pleasant ? I Fragments
of Voyages and Travels, including Anec
dotes of Naval Life,?in three volumes, he published
at Edinburgh in 1831, during his residence in St.
Colme Street where some of his children were
born. I? Patchwork,? a work in three volumes, he
published in England in 1841. He married Margaret,
daughter of Sir John Hunter, Consul-general
in Spain, and died at Portsmouth in 1844, leaving
behind him the reputation of having been a brave
and intelligent officer, a good and benevolent man,
and a faithful friend.
Ainslie Place is an expansion of Great Stuart
Street, midway between Moray Place and Randolph
Crescent. It forms an elegant, spacious. and
symmetrical double crescent, with an ornamental
garden in the centre, and is notable for containing
the houses in which Dugald Stewart and Dean
Ramsay lived and died, namely, Nos. 5 and 23.
Glasgow, his residence in St. Andrews, and his final
removal to Edinburgh, his Visits to England, and
the lively journal he kept of what he saw and did
while in that country.
St. Colme Street, the adjacent continuation of
Albyn Place, is so named from one of the titles of
the Moray family, a member of which was commendator
of Inchcolm in the middle of the 16th
century.
Here No. 8 was the residence of Captain Bad
Hall, R.N., the popular writer on several subjects.
He was the second son of Sir James Hall of Dunglass,
Sart., and Lady Helena Douglas, daughter
af Dunbar, third Earl of
