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52 merit in the medical department of the British naval service, he founded in 1829, with the sanction of the Lords of the Admiralty, a prize medal for the best journal kept by the surgeons of his Majesty's navy. This medal is awarded every second year, the commissioners selecting four of the best journals for competition. On the accession of William IV. to the throne in 1830, the sovereign was not forgetful of his old shipmate, and Sir Gilbert was appointed first physician to the king. Fully rewarded with wealth and honours, and laden with years, Sir Gilbert Blane could now retire gracefully from the scene of public life, and leave his place to be filled by younger men; and this he did in a manner that was consistent with his previous career. The whole island was filled with consternation at the coming of the cholera, and the havoc which it wrought wherever it appeared, upon which he published a pamphlet in 1831, entitled, "Warning to the British Public against the Alarming Approach of the Indian Cholera." After this he retreated, at the age of eighty-two, into peaceful retirement, where he solaced his leisure hours in revising and preparing for publication the second edition of his "Select Dissertations," which issued from the press before he died. His death occurred on the 26th of June, 1834, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

.—This distinguished officer, whose varied talents were so available to the administration of the British government in India, and whose premature and violent death was so deeply deplored, was born in the town of Montrose, on the 16th of May, 1805. His father, a magistrate of Forfarshire, was highly esteemed in that county, and had held the chief official situations of the borough of Montrose, while his grandfather was brother to William Burnes, the parent of our illustrious national poet. It is well known to the readers of the life of Robert Burns, that the family name had always been spelled Burnes, and that his father was the first who dropped the letter e in its signature. Alexander was educated at Montrose Academy, and there his proficiency gave full promise of his future excellence. Having obtained a cadetship when he left school at the age of sixteen, he set sail for India, and arrived at Bombay on October 31, 1821. So earnest and successful had been his studies for his new sphere of active duty, that at the close of the year after that of his arrival in India, Alexander Burnes was appointed interpreter in Hindostanee to the first extra battalion at Surat. His proficiency in the Persian tongue had also been so rapid as to secure the confidence of the judges of the Sudder Adawlut, so that he was appointed translator of the Persian documents of that court, without any solicitation of his own. His talents for civil occupation were soon so conspicuous as to secure him rapid promotion in that Indo-British government, whose very existence depends upon the superiority of intellect alone, and where the encouragement of merit, independently of birth or fortune, is a matter of absolute necessity. Accordingly, Alexander Burnes, after having filled the offices of ensign and quarter-master of brigade, was confirmed in the office of deputy-assistant quarter-master general at the age of twenty-one, at which period, also, he drew up an elaborate report on the statistics of Wagur, a paper for which he received the thanks of the governor and members of the council of Bombay. In 1828, he was honoured by a similar testimony for a memoir on the eastern mouth of the Indus; and in September, 1829, he was appointed assistant to the political agent in Cutch, for the purpose of effecting a survey of the north-west border of that province. Burnes, who had been there four years previous, as ensign of the 21st Bombay Native Infantry, during the disturbances of that