The American Cyclopaedia; A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge Volume 8 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ...and left England for France, where she died in want and misery. Her daughter Horatia married a poor clergyman, and some funds were raised by subscription for the benefit of their children. HAMILTON, Sir William, a Scottish philosopher, born in Glasgow, March 8, 1788, died in Edinburgh, May 6, 1856. At the university of Glasgow he took a high position in the classes, and carried off the first prizes in philosophy. From Glasgow he went to Balliol college, Oxford, where candidates for honors were required to profess a certain number of books in history, poetry, and science. In going up for his degree, he not only took with him into the schools far more than the usual average of books in poetry and history, but in science he professed all the works extant in Greek and Roman philosophy, including the whole of Ari9totle and all tho works of his earlier commentators, all of Plato, the NeoPlatonists, Proclus, and Plotinus, and the fragments of the earlier and later philosophical doctrines preserved by Laertius, Stobaus, and the other collectors. His examination in philosophy occupied two days, running through six hours each day. In 14 of his books on Greek philosophy he was not questioned, the greater part of these being declared by the masters to be too abstrusely metaphysical for examination. At this time also he had studied the earlier modern philosophers and become interested in the speculations of contemporary metaphysicians on the continent. He was admitted to the bar at Edinburgh in 1813, and began to practise as on advocate; but his time was given more to philosophical studies than to his profession. In 1810 he established his claim to a dormant baronetcy. In 1820 he was a candidate for the chair of moral philosophy in the university of...