Rev. Archibald, author of essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, was born at Edinburgh on the 13th November 1757. His father was the second son of Alexander Alison, Esq. of Newhall, an ancient family near Cupar in Fife, and who having come to reside in Edinburgh, was for two years Lord Provost. Alison Square, near Nicolson Street, was called after him. The future essayist on taste, who was his third son, evinced an early and decided turn for literary pursuits, which led to his being sent at the early age of twelve to Glasgow College, where his talents procured for him a presentation to one of the bursaries from that university to Balliol College, Oxford, which determined his choice of the Church of England as a profession. There also he formed a friendship with Dugald Stewart, who afterwards became so celebrated as a metaphysician, which continued unbroken through the whole of life.

At Oxford he soon distinguished himself, and gained high honours. He there formed an intimacy with several men who afterwards became remarkable, particularly Mr. afterwards Sir William Jones, and Dr Matthew Baillie. There also he became acquainted with Mr William Gregory, son of Dr John Gregory, professor of the theory of medicine in the university of Edinburgh, who was also studying for the English Church; and this induced a friendship with his family, which led to the most important event in Mr Alison's life—his marriage in 1780 to Dorothea, youngest daughter of Dr Gregory, professor of the theory of physic in the university of Edinburgh, and sister of the Dr James Gregory whose talents afterwards rendered him so celebrated in that university.

Mr Alison's first ecclesiastical preferment was the curacy of Brancepeth near Durham, which he held from 1778 to 1780. His marriage with Miss Gregory, however, introduced him to Sir William Pulteney, of whose only daughter and heiress, Lady Bath, she was an intimate friend; and Sir William in consequence bestowed on him first the curacy of Sudbury in Northamptonshire, and afterwards the livings of High Ercall, Roddington, and Kenley, in Shropshire; at the last of which he lived in tranquillity and happiness, in the enjoyment of the highest domestic felicity, till 1800, when he removed for the education of his family to Edinburgh. In 1798 he was made a dignitary of the Church as one of the prebendaries of Sarum. The first edition of his Essays on Taste was published in 1784; but though admired in the highest degree by a limited circle of men of taste and refinement, it did not, from being printed in quarto, in an expensive form, obtain, in the first instance, the general circulation which it ultimately attained.

In May 1800 he moved from Shropshire to the vicinity of Edinburgh, and obtained the situation of senior incumbent of St Paul's Chapel, Cowgate, there. There his great talents and eloquence as a preacher soon attracted universal attention, and caused that chapel, which held 1500 persons, speedily to overflow in every quarter with a congregation of the very highest caste which the metropolis could boast. On the days of national fast and thanksgiving, in particular, which occurred annually, and often more frequently at that period, the chapel was always crowded to suffocation with the elite of rank and talent in the city who flocked to listen to the highest specimens of pulpit oratory which the country could boast.

In 1809 a new edition of the *Essays on Taste*, in octavo, was published with considerable additions, which elicited a very able and flattering review from the pen of Lord Jeffrey, one of the ablest he ever wrote, in the Edinburgh Review, which at once brought it into general notice. Since that period it has gone through five editions, and the copyright having expired, it has received the most unequivocal proof of general popularity in having been published in a cheap form, at the moderate price of 2s. 6d., which has brought it within the reach of all classes of readers. Whatever opinions philosophers may entertain on the abstract principles this work contains, whether beauty is to be resolved, as Mr Alison thinks, into the expression by material objects of the qualities of mind, or is itself an inherent quality of certain combinations of matter, as others suppose; all must agree in the beauty of its ideas, and the eloquence with which it is written, and join in the wish of its gifted author, with which it concludes, "that the world we inhabit is to be regarded, not as the abode merely of human passions or human joys, but as the temples of the living God, in which praise is due, and where service is to be performed."

Mr Alison's celebrity as a preacher led his friends, in 1814, to join in an earnest request that he would give some of his discourses in a durable form to the world; and to this he at length, with much reluctance, consented. They appeared, and at first met with eminent success. The first edition of 6000 copies was sold in a few weeks, and four subsequent editions of them, nearly of equal magnitude, speedily followed. The author, ere long, had the gratification of receiving the most decisive proof of the wide spread of their popularity, by receiving copies of two editions of them printed beyond the Alleghany Mountains. Their subsequent reputation, however, has not kept pace with this early celebrity, chiefly from their relating to matters of transient and historical interest, and speaking more to the feelings and the heart rather than the intellect or the conscience. The most competent judges, however, among whom may be named Lord Brougham, have pronounced several of them, especially the one on autumn, as among the most finished models of composition in the English language; and Lord Jeffrey concluded his eloquent review of them with the words, "We cannot help envying Mr Alison the power of uniting so much wisdom to so much eloquence, and giving us in this same work the highest gratifications of taste, and the noblest lessons of virtue."

The success of Mr Alison in the pulpit enabled the directors of St Paul's chapel to pay off nearly the whole debt with which that building was charged, and to erect the new and beautiful structure in York Place, to the completion of which Mr Alison's numerous friends and admirers largely contributed. There he continued to do duty regularly till increasing years compelled him, in 1834, to retire from active life. In 1830 he was severed by death from Mrs Alison, with whom he had lived in happiness for eight and forty years; but he continued in the full enjoyment of his faculties; and his powers of imagination increased rather than the reverse till his death, which happened on May 17, 1839, at the advanced age of eighty-two. His latter years were chiefly spent at a beautiful villa he had purchased near Colinton, where he enjoyed, in the very highest degree, the society of his family and friends, and the beauties of nature, to which through life he had been passionately attached.

Mr Alison transmitted his literary tastes and habits to his sons. The eldest, who, after the example of a long line of ancestors by the mother's side, embraced the medical profession, rose to its very highest grade. He was successively made professor of medical jurisprudence and of the theory and practice of physic in the university of Edinburgh, Alisonia once held by his uncle and grandfather; and in 1845, on the death of the lamented Dr Abercrombie, was appointed first physician to the queen in Scotland. He rose to the highest eminence as a consulting physician, and published a most valuable work on medical science. But he is more generally known as an unwearied and active philanthropist, and as having mainly contributed, by his strenuous exertions, and the startling facts he revealed in his pamphlets on the subject, to the great reformation in the management of the poor in Scotland, which was effected by the Act of 1845. His youngest son, Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., was bred to the bar, at which he rapidly rose, and was successively appointed advocate-depute in 1823, and sheriff of Lanarkshire, the highest judicial situation in Scotland next to the bench, in 1835, which office he still holds. He is the author of the History of Europe during the French Revolution, its continuation to 1852, the Principles of Population, the Life of Marlborough, a voluminous treatise on Criminal Law, and a variety of essays, chiefly in Blackwood's Magazine, a selection of which have been published in a collected form. In November 1850, he was, by a singular coincidence, elected Lord Rector of Glasgow College, where his father had commenced his career eighty years before; and in June 1852, under the administration of Lord Derby, he was created a baronet; but this dignity has not lessened his literary tastes, which still continue to be exerted in historic literature.