me, labour and money to help forward the education of the poorer
classes; he established the first infant school in Edinburgh; and he
originated a series of evening lectures on chemistry, physiology,
history and moral philosophy. He studied the criminal classes, and tried
to solve the problem how to reform as well as to punish them; and he
strove to introduce into lunatic asylums a humane system of treatment.
In 1836 he offered himself as a candidate for the chair of logic at
Edinburgh, but was rejected in favour of Sir William Hamilton. In 1838
he visited America and spent about two years lecturing on phrenology,
education and the treatment of the criminal classes. On his return in
1840 he published his _Moral Philosophy_, and in the following year his
_Notes on the United States of North America_. In 1842 he delivered, in
German, a course of twenty-two lectures on phrenology in the university
of Heidelberg, and he travelled much in Europe, inquiring into the
management of schools, prisons and asylums. The commercial crisis of
1855 elicited his remarkable pamphlet on _The Currency Question_ (1858).
The culmination of the religious thought and experience of his life is
contained in his work _On the Relation between Science and Religion_,
first publicly issued in 1857. He was engaged in revising the ninth
edition of the _Constitution of Man_ when he died at Moor Park, Farnham,
on the 14th of August 1858. He married in 1833 Cecilia Siddons, a
daughter of the great actress.

COMBE, WILLIAM (1741-1823), English writer, the creator of "Dr Syntax,"
was born at Bristol in 1741. The circumstances of his birth and
parentage are somewhat doubtful, and it is questioned whether his father
was a rich Bristol merchant, or a certain William Alexander, a London
alderman, who died in 1762. He was educated at Eton, where he was
contemporary with Charles James Fox, the 2nd Baron Lyttelton and William
Beckford. Alexander bequeathed him some L2000--a little fortune that
soon disappeared in a course of splendid extravagance, which gained him
the nickname of Count Combe; and after a chequered career as private
soldier, cook and waiter, he finally settled in London (about 1771), as
a law student and bookseller's hack. In 1776 he made his first success
in London with _The Diaboliad_, a satire full of bitter personalities.
Four years afterwards (1780) his debts brought him into the King's
Bench; and much of his subsequent life was spent in