Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/95

Rh Charles Bell was painted by B. Mantyne, of which an engraving by Thomson will be found in the third volume of Pettigrew's "Medical Portrait Gallery."

.—This indefatigable geographer was born in 1769, in Jedburgh. His father, the Rev. Thomas Bell, minister of a Relief congregation in that town, and afterwards of Dovehill chapel, in Glasgow, was a man of great worth and considerable learning, and the author of a "Treatise on the Covenants," and several other pieces of a theological kind. In his childhood and youth the subject of our memoir suffered much sickness, and gave little promise either of bodily or mental vigour; but, as he grew up, his constitution improved, and he began to evince that irresistible propensity to reading, or rather devouring all books that came in his way, which ever afterwards marked his character. It was fortunate for him that he was not bereft of his natural guardian until he was considerably advanced in life, for he was quite unfit to push his own way in the world, the uncommon simplicity of his character rendering him the easy dupe of the designing and knavish. He indeed entered into business for a short time as a manufacturer with his characteristic ardour, but finding himself unsuccessful, he betook himself to another and more laborious mode of making a livelihood, but one for which he was far better qualified, namely, the private teaching of Greek and Latin to advanced students. But as his father, with parental prudence, had settled a small annuity upon him, he was enabled to devote a considerable portion of his time to those studies and researches to which his natural inclination early led him, and which he only ceased to prosecnte [sic] with his life. Mr. Bell used to advert with feelings of peculiar satisfaction to the meetings of a little weekly society which, during this period of his history, were held at his house and under his auspices, and at which the members read essays and debated questions for their mutual entertainment and improvement. On all these occasions, Mr. Bell never failed to contribute his full share to the evening's proceedings, and, when fairly excited, would astonish and delight his associates, particularly the younger part of them, with the extent and variety of his learning, and the astonishing volubility with which he poured forth the treasures of his capacious and well-furnished mind on almost every possible topic of speculation or debate.

Mr. Bell's first appearance as an author was made about the year 1815, when he contributed several valuable chapters to the "Glasgow Geography"—a work which had an extensive circulation, published in five volumes 8vo, by the house of Khull, Blackie, & Co., and which became the foundation of Mr. Bell's "System of Popular and Scientific Geography." In 1824 he published—in conjunction with a young Glasgow linguist of great promise, named John Bell, who died January 1, 1826, but no relative of the subject of this memoir—a thin 8vo volume, entitled, "Critical Researches in Philology and Geography." The philologist contributed two articles to the volume, the one a "Review of Jones's Persian Grammar," and the other a "Review of an Arabic Vocabulary and Index to Richardson's Arabic Grammar, by James Noble, Teacher of Languages, in Edinburgh," both of which are characterized by a minute acquaintance with the subjects under discussion. The geographer's contribution consisted of a very elaborate "Examination of the Various Opinions that in Modern Times have been held respecting the Sources of the Ganges, and the Correctness of the Lamas' Map of Thibet," which elicited high encomiums from some of the leading periodicals of the day.

Geography was the science around which as a nucleus all his sympathies