church, and the rest of his life was devoted to teaching in the colleges of his denomination or to literary pursuits. He published "The Mosaic Account of the Creation" (1852); "Geology an InterEreter of Scripture"; and pamphlets on "Human Depravity" (1874) and "Our Fall in Adam" (1876).
THORBURN, Grant, merchant, b. in Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, Scotland, 18 Feb., 1773; d. in New Haven, Conn., 21 Jan., 1863. He early entered his father's business of nail-making, and became so expert that he is said to have made with his own hands in a single day. between 6 a. m. and 9 p. m., 3,221 nails. In 1792 he became involved in a political movement concerning parliamentary reforms, and was charged with treason, but he was released on bail and soon afterward emigrated to New York, where he arrived on 16 June, 1794. At first he continued his old trade of nail-making, but in 1801 he engaged in the grocery trade, and he finally established himself in the seed business in Newark, N. J. This proved unsuccessful, but, on removing his business to New York city, he acquired a handsome fortune. In 1854 he retired from active trade and settled at first in Astoria, N. Y., and then in Winsted, Conn. The house he founded is continued under the style of James M. Thorburn and Co. He was noted for his charity, and during the epidemic of yellow fever in 1798 he and his wife remained in the city, devoting themselves to the care of the victims. Under the pen-name of Lawrie Todd he contributed to the " Knickerbocker Magazine," the "New York Mirror," and more than twenty other papers, principally concerning his reminiscences of New York city at the beginning of the present century. His publications in book-form included "Forty Years' Residence in America " (Boston, 1834); "Men and Manners in Great Britain" (New York, 1834); "Fifty Years' Reminiscences of New York " (1845); "Lawrie Todd's Hints to Merchants, Married Men, and Bachelors" (1847); "Lawrie Todd's Notes on Virginia, with a Chapter on Puritans, Witches, and Friends" (1848); "Life and Writings of Grant Thorburn " (1852); and "Supplement to the Life of Grant Thorburn " (1853). His experiences furnished the novelist John Gait with the incidents described in his "Lawrie Todd, or Settlers in the New World" (London, 1830). See "A Bone to Gnaw for Grant Thorburn," by William Carver (New York, 1836).
THORBURN, James, Canadian physician, b. in Queenston, Ont., 21 Nov., 1830. His father was for many years a member of the Dominion
parliament. The son was educated at Toronto university and at Edinburgh university, where he was graduated as a physician in 1855. He has
practised in Toronto, where he is surgeon-major of the Queen's own rifles, and professor of pharmacology and therapeutics in Toronto university.
He is also consulting surgeon of Toronto general hospital, physician of the boys' hospital, and connected with other institutions, both charitable and
financial, in his capacity as a physician. He has contributed articles on medical and other subjects to journals, and published "Manual of Life Insurance Examination " (Toronto, 1887).
THORBURN, John, educator, b. near Biggar, Lanarkshire, Scotland, 10 Oct., 1830. He was educated at Edinburgh university in 1855, became
classical master in the Western institution in that city, and came to Canada in 1856. In 1860 he was appointed principal of St. Francis college, Rich-
mond, and its professor of classics, and in 1862 he became head master of the grammar-school (now the collegiate institution) at Ottawa, which post he
held for about twenty years. In 1882 he was appointed librarian to the geological and natural history survey of Canada, and the same year he
was appointed by the government a member of the board of civil-service examiners. He was president of the Ottawa literary and scientific society, prepared for the department of militia a scheme for entrance examination into the military college at Kingston, and has been active in other respects as
an educator. He received the degree of M. A. from McGill university in 1860, and that of LL. D. from Queen's university, Kingston, in 1880.
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THOREAU, Henry David, author, b. in Concord, Mass., 12 July, 1817; d. there, 6 May, 1862. His grandfather, John Thoreau, came from St. Helier, a parish in the island of Jersey, about 1773, and moved from Boston to Concord in 1800. Henry, the third of four children, went to school in Boston for a little more than a year, then attended the schools in Concord, fitted for college at a private school, entered Harvard in 1833, and was graduated in 1837, a fair scholar but not eminent. The family being in humble circumstances, the father was assisted in paying his small expenses by the boy's aunts, his elder sister, who was then teaching, the beneficiary fund of the college, and Henry's own exertions at school-keeping. Thoreau afterward led a literary life, writing, lecturing, reading, and meeting his modest physical needs by surveying, pencil-making, engineering, and carpentering. He was never married, and never left Concord except for a lecturing-tour, or a pedestrian excursion. Cities he disliked; civilization he did not believe in. Nature was his passion, and the wilder it was the more he loved it. He was a fine scholar, especially in Greek, translated two of the tragedies of Æschylus, was intimate with the Greek anthology, and knew Pindar, Simonides, and all the great lyric poets. In English poetry he preferred Milton to Shakespeare, and was more familiar with the writers of the 17th century than with modern men. He was no mean poet himself; in fact, he possessed the essential quality of the poet — a soaring imagination. He possessed an eye and an ear for beauty, and had he been gifted with the power of musical expression, would have been distinguished. No complete collection of his pieces has ever been made or could be, but fragments are exquisite. Emerson said that his poem on “Smoke” surpassed any by Simonides. That Thoreau was a man of aspiration, a pure idealist, reverent, spiritual, is plain from his intimacy with Bronson Alcot and Emerson, the latter of whom spoke these words at his funeral: “His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.” His religion was that of the transcendentalists. The element of negation in it was large, and in his case conspicuous and acrid. Horace Greeley found fault with his “defiant pantheism,” and an editor struck out the
