chanical principles. A spirit of piety and benevolence, and an ardent zeal for the interests of virtue, run through all his writings. It was commonly said, that most of the physicians of his own day were secretly or openly tainted with irreligion; but from this charge Dr Cheyne rendered himself an illustrious exception. He was as much the enemy of irreligion in general society, as of intemperance in his professional character. Some of the metaphysical notions which he has introduced in his writings, may be thought fanciful and ill-grounded; but there is an agreeable vivacity in his productions, together with much candour and frankness, and, in general, great perspicuity. Of his relatives, his half-brother, the Rev. William Cheyne, vicar of Weston, near Bath, died September 6, 1767, and his son, the Rev. John Cheyne, vicar of Brigstock, Northamptonshire, died August 11, 1768.
CLAPPERTON, Hugh, the distinguished African traveller, was born at Annan, in Dumfriesshire, in the year 1788. His father, Mr George Clapperton, was a respectable surgeon in that town. His paternal grandfather, who was a physician of considerable ability, was a native of the north of Scotland, and married to a cousin of colonel Archibald Campbell of Glenlyon: this person settled in practice at Lochmaben, another town in Dumfriesshire, and enjoyed some local fame as a collector of mineralogical and antiquarian curiosities, as well as of old Border ballads and genealogies, some of which were used by Sir Walter Scott in his 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." Mr George Clapperton, the father of the traveller, was married twice ; by the first marriage, he had ten or eleven sons and a daughter, by the second, three sons and three daughters. The subject of this memoir was the youngest son by the first marriage. Owing partly to the number of his family, and partly to an improvident disposition, Mr Clapperton was unable to give his son Hugh that classical education which is so generally bestowed by people of the middle ranks in Scotland upon their children. When able to do little more than read and write indifferently, Hugh was placed under the care of Mr Bryce Downie, eminent as a mathematical teacher, through whom he acquired a knowledge of practical mathematics, including navigation and trigonometry. Mr Downie ever after spoke in terms of warm affection respecting his pupil, whom he described both as an apt scholar, and a most obliging boy, and able to bear with indifference the extremes of heat and cold.
It is frequently the fate of a large family of the middle order in Scotland, that at least one half of the sons leave their father's house, at an early age, with little more than the sailor's inheritance of a light heart and a thin pair of breeches, to push their way in search of fortune over every quarter of the globe, and in every kind of employment. The family of Mr George Clapperton appears to have been one of this order, for, while Hugh found distinction and a grave in the plains of Africa, no fewer than five of his brothers had also adopted an adventurous career, in the course of which some rose to a considerable rank in the navy and marine service, while others perished in their bloom. At the age of seventeen, the subject of this memoir was bound apprentice to Mr Smith, of the Postlethwaite of Maryport, a large vessel trading between Liverpool and North America. In this situation he continued for some years, already distinguished for coolness, dexterity, and intrepidity, when his course of life was suddenly changed by what appeared to be a most unhappy incident. On one occasion the ship, when at Liverpool, was partly laden with rock-salt, and as that commodity was then dear, the mistress of a house which the crew frequented very improperly enticed Clapperton to bring her ashore a few pounds in his handkerchief. After some intreaty the youth complied, probably from his ignorance of the revenue laws; was caught in the act by a custom-house officer, and
