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BLACKBURN—BLACKIE

edited the Examiner, at a time when that periodical was dale, and Lord Cranworth came forward to defend the already moribund. After his first success in fiction, he appointment. Blackburn himself is said to have thought gave up journalism, and devoted himself entirely to the that a county court judgeship was about to be offered him, production of novels. For nearly thirty years he was which he had resolved to decline. He soon proved industriously successful in retaining the popular favour. himself one of the soundest lawyers on the bench, and He died at Brighton, 10th December 1898, without having when he was promoted to the Court of Appeal was experienced any of that reaction of the public taste which considered the highest authority on common law. In so often follows upon conspicuous successes in fiction. 1876 he was made a Lord of Appeal and a life peer. Black’s first novel, James Merle, published in 1864, was a Both in this capacity and as judge of the Queen’s Bench complete failure; his second, Love and Marriage (1868), he delivered many judgments of the highest importance, attracted but very slight attention. But in 1871 A and no decisions have been received with greater respect. Daughter of Heth suddenly raised him to the height of In 1886 he was appointed a member of the commission popularity, and he followed up this success by a string of charged to prepare a digest of the criminal law, but retired favourites. Among the best of his books are The Strange on account of indisposition in the following year. He Adventures of a Phaeton, 1872; A Princess of Thule, died on 8th January 1896. He was the author of a 1873; Madcap Violet, 1876; Macleod of Dare, 1878; valuable work on the Law of Sales. White Wings, 1880 ; Sunrise, 1880; Shandon Bells, 1883; Black Hills, an isolated group of mountains in the White Heather, 1885; Donald Boss of Heimra, 1891; western part of South Dakota and Eastern Wyoming, Highland Cousins, 1894; and Wild Eelin, 1898. Black U.S.A., rising three to four thousand feet above their was a thoroughgoing sportsman, particularly fond of fishing base, the highest peak, Harney, having an altitude above and yachting, and his best stories are those which are laid the sea of 7216 feet. The mass has an elliptical shape, amid the breezy mountains of his native land, or upon the its longer axis trending nearly north-west and south-east. deck of a yacht at sea off its wild coast. His descriptions of The hills are structural in their origin, being formed by a such scenery are simple and picturesque. He was a word- short, broad, anticlinal fold, which is flat or nearly so on painter rather than a student of human nature. His its summit. From this fold the stratified beds have ia women are stronger than his men, and among them are large part been removed, the more recent having been many wayward and lovable creatures; but subtlety of entirely eroded from the elevated mass. The edges of intuition plays no part in his characterization. Black these are now found encircling the mountains, and formalso contributed a life of Oliver Goldsmith to the English ing a series of fairly continuous rims of hogbacks. The Men of Letters series. (a. Wa.) Carboniferous and older stratified beds still cover the west Blackburn, a municipal (extended 1879), county half of the hills, while from the eastern half they have (1888), and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, been removed, exposing the granite. The hills were on the Brook, 24 miles N.N.W. of Manchester, 210 miles formerly within the range of the Sioux Indians, but rich by rail KKW. of London. In 1877 the municipal and gold placers were discovered, and in 1875 the Indians parliamentary boroughs became co-extensive, and in 1892 were removed. Subsequently low-grade quartz mines their area was constituted the township of Blackburn, and were found and developed, and at present furnish a distributed into 14 wards, under a mayor, 14 aldermen, notable part of the gold supply of the country. and 42 councillors. Besides the parish church, there are Blackie, John Stuart (1809-1895), Scottish 70 churches and chapels. Of recent institution are a scholar and man of letters, was born in Glasgow, 28 th fish market (1874) ; municipal offices (1880); a chamber July 1809. He was educated at the New Academy, of commerce (1887) ; a free library (1873, extended 1893) ; and afterwards at the Marischal College, in Aberdeen, additions to the infirmary in 1884, 1896, and 1897 ; a where his father had established himself as banking agent. municipal technical school, opened in 1891 and extended After attending classes at Edinburgh University, Blackie in 1894, attended (1901) by 18,000 students; new and spent two years at Aberdeen University as a student of enlarged buildings for the grammar school (1884); a theology; but the two succeeding years, which he spent theatre rebuilt in 1886; and the Queen’s Park (1887). abroad, extinguished his wish to enter the Church, and The cotton industry employs thousands of operatives, he somewhat unwillingly gave himself up, at his father’s the iron trade is also very considerable, and many are desire, to the study of law. By the time he was admitted engaged in the making of machines; but the woollen a member of the Faculty of Advocates he had acquired manufacture has become practically extinct. There a strong love of the classics and a taste for letters ia are two daily newspapers. Its area covers 6974 acres. general.- A translation of Faust, which he published in Population (1881), 104,014; (1891), 120,064; (1901), 1834, met with considerable success. After a year or two 127,527. of desultory literary work he was (in May 1839) appointed Blackburn, Colin, Baron (1813-1896), to the newly-instituted Latin chair in the Marischal College, British judge, was born in Selkirkshire in 1813, and Aberdeen. Difficulties arose in the way of his installation, educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, owing to the action of the Presbytery on his refusing to where he took very high mathematical honours in 1835. sign unreservedly the Confession of Faith; but these were He was called to the bar in 1838, and went the northern eventually overcome, and he took up his duties as professor circuit. His progress was at first slow, and he employed in November 1841. In the following year he married. himself in reporting and editing along with Mr Ellis From the first his professorial lectures were conspicuous eight volumes of the highly-esteemed Ellis and Blackburn for the unconventional enthusiasm with which he enreports. His deficiency in all the more brilliant qualities deavoured to revivify the study of the classics; and his of the advocate almost confined his practice to commercial growing reputation, added to the attention excited by a cases, in which he obtained considerable employment in translation of vEschylus which he published in 1850, led his circuit; but he continued to belong to the outside bar, to his appointment in 1852 to the professorship of Greek and was so little known to the legal world that his promo- at Edinburgh University, a post which he continued to tion to a puisne judgeship in the Court of Queen’s Bench hold for thirty years. He was somewhat too erratic in in 1859 was at first ascribed to Lord Campbell’s partiality his methods to be a great teacher, but his lectures were a for his countrymen, but Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Wensley- triumph of personality. “Greek as a living language