Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/189

Rh humble competency, in the enjoyment of good health, till October 8th, 1809, when he suddenly expired, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. He was buried at Kensington, where, upon the east wall of the church, there is a marble slab, with an inscription setting forth his virtues.

Though, as a follower of literature, Elphinstone did little to secure the approbation of mankind, he was, nevertheless, a man of considerable mental abilities; and it is even said that he possessed the power of writing with force and simplicity, if it had not been obscured by his eccentricities. "After all," says Mr. Dallas, "it is as a man and a Christian that he excelled; as a son, a brother, a husband, and a father to many, though he never had any children of his own, as a friend, an enlightened patriot, and a loyal subject. His manners were simple, his rectitude undeviating. His piety, though exemplary, was devoid of show; the sincerity of it was self-evident; but, though unobtrusive, it became impatient on the least attempt at profaneness; and an oath he could not endure. On such occasions he never failed boldly to correct the vice, whencesoever it proceeded. Mr Elphinstone was middle-sized, and slender in his person; he had a peculiar countenance, which, perhaps, would have been considered an ordinary one, but for the spirit and intellectual emanation which it possessed. He never complied with fashion in the alteration of his clothes. In a letter to a friend in 1782, be says: 'time has no more changed my heart than my dress;' and he might have said it again in 1809. The colour of his suit of clothes was invariably, except when in mourning, what is called a drab; his coat was made in the fashion that reigned when he returned from France, in the beginning of the last century, with flaps and buttons to the pockets and sleeves, and without a cape: he always wore a powdered bag-wig, with a high toupee, and walked with a cocked-hat and an amber-headed cane; his shoe-buckles had seldom been changed, and were always of the same size; and he never put on boots. It must be observed, that he latterly, more than once, offered to make any change Mrs Elphinstone might deem proper; but in her eyes his virtues and worth had so sanctified his appearance, that she would have thought the alteration a sacrilege."

ELPHINSTON,, a celebrated Scottish prelate, and founder of the university of Aberdeen, was born in the city of Glasgow in the year 1431. His father, William Elphinston, was a younger brother of the noble family of Elphinston, who took up his residence in Glasgow during the reign of James I., and was the first of its citizens who became eminent and acquired a fortune as a general merchant. His mother was Margaret Douglas, a daughter of the laird of Drumlanrick. His earliest youth was marked by a decided turn for the exercises of devotion, and he seems to have been by his parents, at a very early period of his life, devoted to the church, which was in these days the only road to preferment. In the seventh year of his age he was sent to the grammar school, and having gone through the prescribed course, afterwards studied philosophy in the university of his native city, then newly founded by bishop Turnbull, and obtained the degree of Artium magister in the twenty-fifth year of his age. He then entered into holy orders, and was appointed priest of the church of St Michael's, situated in St Enoch's gate, now the Trongate, where he officiated for the space of four years. Being strongly attached to the study both of the civil and canon law, he was advised by his uncle, Lawrence Elphinston, to repair to the continent, where these branches of knowledge were taught in perfection. Accordingly, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, he went over to France, where he applied himself to the study of law for the space of three years, at the end of which he was called to fill a professional chair in the university of Paris, and afterwards at Orleans, in both of which