Volume 2 > Half-Volume 4

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the presbytery was pronounced, and his connection
with the church dissolved.
The subsequent history of an individual so good
and talented, but whose course withal was so erratic,
may be briefly told. Immediately after his deposi-
tion, he commenced a tour of open-air preaching in
Annan, Dumfries, and other places, and then re-
turned to London. On his ejection from the Cale-
donian Church in Regent Square, he had settled,
with a great portion of his congregation, who followed
him, in a building in Newman Street, formerly the
picture-gallery of Benjamin West, which was fitted
up for a place of worship; and here, completely
removed beyond the control of church-courts, Mr.
Irving gave himself up to his prophets and prophet-
esses, whose exhibitions became wilder and revela-
tions more abundant than ever. A new creed, a
new church, and new office-bearers and rites were
soon established; itinerant preachers were sent forth
to proclaim the advent of a better world at hand,
while miracles, effected upon the weak-minded and
hypochondriacal, were announced as incontestable
proofs of the divine authority of the new system.
At length 50,000 worshippers, and numerous chapels
erected throughout England, proclaimed that a dis-
tinct sect had been fully established, let its per-
manency be what it might. And now Mr. Irving had
attained that monstrari digito which, with all his
heroic and disinterested labours, he never appears
to have lost sight of since his arrival in London.
But as the honoured and worshipped mystagogue,
with a church of his own creation, was he happy,
or even at peace with himself? His immeasurably
long sermons, his frequent preachings and writings,
his incredible toils both of mind and body, were
possibly aggravated and embittered by the apostasy
of some of the most gifted of his flock, and the
moral inconsistencies of others; while the difficulties
of managing a cause, and ruling a people subject to
so many inspirations, and exhorted in so many un-
known tongues, would have baffled Sir Harry Vane,
or even Cromwell himself. His raven locks were
already frosted, and his iron frame attenuated, by
premature old age; and in the autumn of 1834 he
was compelled to return to his native country for
the recovery of his health; but it was too late. His
disease was consumption, against which he struggled
to the last, with the hope of returning to his flock;
but on arriving at Glasgow, his power of journeying
was ended by the rapid increase of his malady; and
he was received under the hospitable roof of Mr.
Taylor, a stranger, where, in much pain and suffer-
ing, he lay down to die. In his last hours he was
visited by his aged mother, and his sister, Mrs.
Dickson, to the first of whom he said, "Mother,
I hope you are happy." Much of the time during
which he was sensible was employed by him in
fervent prayer. A short time before he expired, the
Rev. Mr. Martin, his father-in-law, who stood at his
bed-side, overheard him faintly uttering what appeared
a portion of the twenty-third psalm in the original;
and on repeating to him the first verse in Hebrew,
Mr. Irving immediately followed with the two suc-
ceeding verses in the same tongue. Soon after he
expired. This event occurred on the 6th of Decem-
ber, 1834, when he was only forty-two years old.
His death occasioned a deep and universal sensation
in Glasgow, where his ministry as a preacher had com-
menced, and where he was still beloved by many.
He left a widow and three young children, one of
them an infant only six months old at his decease.
IVORY, JAMES, LL.D.�This excellent mathe-
matician was born at Dundee in 1765.    After he
had attended the public schools of his native town,
until the usual course of an English education was
finished, his father, who was a watchmaker in
Dundee, being anxious that his son should be a
minister, sent him to the university of St. Andrews,
to prosecute those studies which the church has
appointed. He entered the college at the age of
fourteen, and continued there six years; but of the
various departments of study comprised within this
course, mathematics attracted his chief attention;
and in this he made such proficiency as to attract
the notice of his fellow-students, as well as of the
Rev. John West, one of the professors, who en-
couraged and aided him in his scientific pursuits.
After these college terms had been finished, Ivory
spent two years at St. Andrews in the study of
theology, and a third in Edinburgh, where he had
Sir John Leslie for his class-fellow. But on com-
pleting his theological course, and leaving the
university, in 1786, instead of becoming a licentiate
of the church, as his father had proposed, he became
assistant teacher in a newly established academy in
Dundee, where he continued three years, and after-
wards engaged with some other persons in a factory
for spinning flax, which was erected at Douglastown,
Forfarshire. How this last occupation, of which he
was chief superintendent, coincided either with his
previous studies as a theologian, or his predilections
as a mathematician, does not distinctly appear; but
the result was a failure; for, after fifteen years of
trial, the company was dissolved in 1804, and the
factory closed. During all this period Ivory had
probably employed his leisure in the study both of
English and foreign works upon his favourite science
�pursuits not of a favourable nature certainly for
the mechanical operations of flax-spinning. He had
done enough, however, at all events, to show that
his leanings were not towards the office of the
ministry.
The next change that Mr. Ivory underwent was
of a more congenial character, for it was to a pro-
fessorship of mathematics in the Royal Military
College, instituted a few years previous at Marlow,
in Buckinghamshire. Here he laboured with great
assiduity in his new charge, and afterwards at Sand-
hurst, Berkshire, when the college was removed to
that quarter. The manner in which he discharged
the duties of his important professorship not only
met with the high approval of the governor of the
institution, but also the cordial esteem of the students,
whom he was never weary of instructing in a science
so essential to the military profession. He en-
deavoured, in his lessons, to simplify those demon-
strations that had hitherto been of too complex a
character; and for the more effectual accomplishment
of this purpose he also published, but without his
name, an edition of Euclid's Elements, in which the
difficult problems were brought more within the
reach of ordinary understandings. So earnestly and
indefatigably, indeed, were these duties discharged,
that in 1819 his health unfitted him for further pub-
lic exertion, and he resigned his chair in Sandhurst
College before the time had elapsed that entitled him
to a retiring pension. But the value of his services
was so justly estimated, that the full pension was
allowed him, with which he retired into private life,
in or near London, where he prosecuted his favourite
studies till the period of his death, which occurred
on the 21st September, 1842, in the seventy-seventh
year of his age.
Such were the few events of a public nature that
characterized the life of Professor Ivory; but his
actions are chiefly to be found in his scientific
writings, which were highly estimated by the mathe.