Volume 3 > Half-Volume 5

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eastern side of its southern entrance, where is still
to be seen a stone-tablet, exposed to the street, and
bearing the following inscription:�"Sep. familise
Naperoru. interius hic situm est."
Napier was twice married; first, in 1571, to Eliza-
beth, daughter of Sir James Stirling of Keir, by
whom he had a son and a daughter; secondly, to
Agnes, daughter of James Chisholm of Cromlix, by
whom he had ten children. His eldest son, Archi-
bald, who succeeded him, was raised to the rank of
a baron by Charles I., in 1627, under the title of
Lord Napier, which is still borne by his descendants.
A very elaborate life of him was published in 1835
(Blackwood, Edinburgh).
NAPIER, MACVEY. This learned lawyer, pro-
fessor, and encyclopedist, was born in 1777, and was
the son of John Macvey of Kirkintilloch, by a
natural daughter of Napier of Craigannet. He was
educated for the profession of the law, and passed
as a writer to the signet in 1799. As his training
had been of no ordinary kind, while his talents and
attainments were of a very high order, a career of
profit and reputation was anticipated for him by his
friends, which, however, was not fulfilled, as he was
not only of too sensitive a disposition for the prac-
tical department of his profession, but too exclusively
devoted to the abstract philosophy of legislation,
and the charms of general literature. These re-
searches, however, were such as to win him distinc-
tion in the path he had chosen. His first production
as an author appeared in 1818, when he published,
but for private circulation, Remarks illustrative of
the Scope and Influence of the Philosophical Writings
of Lord Bacon. In 1825 he was appointed professor
of conveyancing in the university of Edinburgh, having
been the first who held that chair of the law faculty;
and his lectures, while he officiated in this capacity,
evinced the vigorous and thoughtful attention he
had bestowed upon the subject. In 1837 he was
finally raised to one of the clerkships of the Court
of Session, an office of sufficient honour, as well as
emolument, to satisfy the ambition of the most
thriving legal practitioner.
The elevation of Mr. (afterwards Lord) Jeffrey to
the deanship of the faculty of advocates in 1829, was
the cause of bringing the literary talents of Macvey
Napier into full exercise. On becoming dean of
faculty the great Aristarchus of criticism was obliged
to abandon the editorship of the Edinburgh Review,
and this responsible charge was forthwith devolved
upon Mr. Napier. To have been summoned to
such an office, and to succeed such a man, shows the
high estimate that had been formed of his talents.
Afterwards a still more important claim was made
upon his labours: this was to undertake the editorship
of the Encyclopedia Britannica, of which a seventh
edition was about to be published, with many addi-
tions and improvements. Such, indeed, had been
the progress of art and science in the course of a few
years, that not only a new edition of the work, but
also a nearly new work itself, was deemed necessary,
so that such an editorship was in the highest degree
a most complex and laborious task. Of the manner
in which this was discharged by Mr. Napier there
can be but one opinion. He not only wrote able
articles for the work, but secured the co-operation of
the most talented writers of the day; and the result
was, that the Encyclopedia, on being completed, took
the highest place in that important class of publica-
tions to which it belongs. Years, which are now
accomplishing the work of centuries, sufficed to
make this edition obsolete, so that an eighth had to
be produced under the editorship of Professor Trail.
Such renovations must now be the fate of colleges
and encyclopedias alike: modern knowledge in its
manifold changes and additions will not submit to
the imprisonment of stereotype.
From the foregoing account it will be seen that
the literary life of Macvey Napier was of that kind
in which the individuality of the author is lost in the
association of which he forms a part. In this way
it would be difficult to particularize his writings,
which are scattered over such extensive fields as
those of the Encyclopedia and Edinburgh Review.
But such is now the fate of many of the most talented
of our day, whose anonymous productions melt away
into the mass of journalism, and are forgot with the
occasion that called them forth. Such men, how-
ever, do not live idly nor in vain, and their history
is to be read in the progress of society, which con-
tinues to go onward with an always accelerating
step. This was eminently the case of Macvey Napier
during a life of literary exertion that continued over
a course of thirty years. He died at Edinburgh on
the nth of February, 1847, in the seventieth year
of his age.
NASMYTH, ALEXANDER. This excellent artist,
the father of the Scottish school of landscape-painting,
was born in Edinburgh, in the year 1758. Having
finished his early education in his native city, he
went, while still a youth, to London, where he be-
came the apprenticed pupil of Allan Ramsay, the
portrait-painter, son of the author of the Gentle Shep-
herd. Under this distinguished artist Nasmyth
must have been a diligent scholar, as his subsequent
excellence in portrait-painting sufficiently attested.
Italy, however, was the land to which he turned his
desires; and in that beautiful country, where nature
and art equally unfold their rich stores for the study
of the painter, he became a resident for several years.
During this period he ardently devoted himself to the
study of historical and portrait painting. But the at-
tractive beauty of nature, over its wide range of varied
scenery, led him at his leisure hours among the rich
Italian landscapes, which he studied with the fondness
of an enthusiast, and in this way, while he was daily em -
ployed in copying the best productions of the Italian
schools, and endeavouring to penetrate the hidden
secrets of their excellences, he was also a diligent stu-
dent of natural scenery, and qualifying himself to be
a landscape-painter, in which department afterwards
his distinction principally consisted. To these were
added the noble productions of ancient and modern
architecture, that breathe the breath of life through
inanimate scenes; the mouldering walls and monu-
ments of past generations and mighty deeds, alternated
with those stately palaces and picturesque dwellings
that form the homes of a living generation. It was
not enough for Nasmyth to delineate these attractive
vistas and noble fabrics, and store them in his port-
folio, as a mere stock in trade upon which to draw in
future professional emergencies. He, on the contrary,
so completely identified himself with their existence,
that they became part and parcel of his being. This
he evinced some fifty years after, when Wilkie, then
fresh from Italy, visited the venerable father-artist,
and conversed with him upon the objects of his recent
studies. On that occasion Nasmyth astonished and
delighted him by his Italian reminiscences, which
were as fresh and as life-like as if he had but yester-
day left the country of Raffaele and Michael Angelo.
On returning from Italy, Nasmyth commenced in
earnest the practice of portrait-painting in his native
city. In those days personal vanity was to the full
as strong in Edinburgh as it is at present, while
portrait-painters, at least artists worthy of the name,