GEORGE, afterwards Bishop of Brechin, was born 12th May 1753, at Bog-Hall, in Kincardineshire. He received the rudiments of his education in the school of Arburghot, and passed from thence, at the age of thirteen, to King's College, Aberdeen, where his career was one of the most brilliant on record. His scholarship was of a high order; and in mathematics and the moral and physical sciences he carried off the first prizes. He won for himself also an exhibition or bursary before the close of the first session, and was selected, while yet an undergraduate, to assist Professor Skene in the instruction of his class. For, at the period of which we are writing, each professor in King's College, Aberdeen, carried his pupils through the entire academical course, and was therefore glad to avail himself of the co-operation of the ablest of his scholars, in order to bring up such as could not keep pace with their fellow-students except by extra care and labour bestowed upon them.

There is reason to believe that Mr Gleig, after taking his degree, might have aspired (in good hope) to the office of assistant-professor, with the certainty of succeeding to the first chair which should fall vacant. In this case, however, it would have been necessary for him to subscribe to the Confession of Faith of the Established Church of Scotland, and to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration; but he was one of a family of Scotch Episcopalians which had adhered to the house of Stuart, and suffered for it; and the time had not yet come when Jacobites could, with a safe conscience, accept a descendant of the Elector of Hanover as legitimate sovereign of these realms. Mr Gleig, therefore, declined the tempting proposals that were made to him; and having resolved to take orders in the Episcopal Church, gave himself up for a while to the careful study of theology and a severe course of patristic reading. It is due to the subject of our memoir to add, that he never gave to the arguments of Ireneus or Chrysostom the respect which was due only to the statements of inspiration. His opinion of the degree of deference which ought to be paid to the fathers was this, that on matters of fact with which they were conversant their evidence deserved to be accepted as conclusive; that in the discussion of doctrinal questions their authority was not greater than that of any correct and learned modern who takes Holy Scripture for his guide.

Mr Gleig had barely attained his twenty-first year when he was ordained to the pastoral charge of a congregation in Pittenweem, in Fife. The condition of the Scottish Episcopal Church, though less perilous than it had been a few years previously, was then critical enough. The penal laws remained on the statute-book in all their ferocity; and it was still in the power of any common informer to force the magistrate into the execution of them. Mr Gleig, therefore, like his brethren in general, officiated, so to speak, by stealth, to a few faithful families who met in a room to worship God according to the manner of their fathers. Not that there prevailed among those in authority the slightest inclination to persecute either Episcopalians or Jacobites, as such. All fear of a renewed struggle for the throne had subsided, and with it was passing away the disposition to treat Episcopalians as necessarily disaffected persons, and the use of the Liturgy in Scotland as high treason. Still, the law, while it excluded from office under the crown all laymen who attended the ministrations of the Episcopal clergy, exposed the clergy themselves to imprisonment, and even to transportation, should it be proved against them that they had read the Liturgy to more than four persons over and above the members of their own families. The consequence was, that by little and little the lay members of the Scottish Episcopal Church fell away; and that such as could not bring themselves to conform to the Presbyterian ritual, brought down clergymen from England to officiate to them, under license from the civil government. This procedure, which at the outset might have been defended on the score of necessity, led by degrees to a habit of thinking at least as fatal to the Episcopalian principle as direct conformity to the Established Church. And Mr Gleig, with others brought up in a sterner school, uniformly protested against it.

The death of Prince Charles Edward and the peculiar position of his brother Cardinal York, removed at length the only obstacle which stood between the Scottish Episcopalians and the enjoyment of their full rights as citizens. In anticipation of this event, Mr Gleig had for some years previously laboured to soften down the prejudices of the body to which he belonged. A correspondence was opened with Moor, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, and other leading statesmen, which gave good hope that a little yielding on the part of the Jacobites would ensure the repeal of the penal laws, and the restoration of the Episcopal Church to the condition in which it stood during the latter part of Queen Anne's reign. Mr Gleig, indeed, made a journey to London, in 1786, with a view to bring this important negotiation to an issue. Unfortunately, however, there were those among his brethren who could not be persuaded to accept free toleration except on their own terms; and an arrangement, eminently advantageous to the little church was in consequence set aside. By and by a second treaty was set on foot, which relieved the Episcopal Church from the pressure of the law; but placed it, towards the sister Church of England, on a footing somewhat disadvantageous for both. For this defect in the bill, which gave to his church her status, Mr Gleig was not responsible; and he lived to see the most obnoxious clause in it so modified as to amount to a virtual repeal.

All this while the subject of our memoir was pursuing an honourable and useful career as a man of letters. He contributed to several of the leading magazines of the day; he was in correspondence with almost all the distinguished authors of the age; elected into the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he read at the meetings of that body several able papers on literary and scientific subjects. It is, however, because of his connection with the *Encyclopedia Britannica* that we are chiefly bound to make a record of his merits. Having contributed some able articles (especially that upon Instinct) to the third edition of that miscellany, he was chosen, on the death of Mr Ferguson, the original editor, to bring the work to a conclusion—a task which he accomplished with consummate ability, no slight portion of the matter being supplied by his own pen. The two supplemental volumes which appeared soon afterwards, he wrote almost entirely without any assistance whatever.

Mr Gleig removed from Pittenweem to Stirling in 1790; and married, soon afterwards, Janet, the youngest daughter of Robert Hamilton, Esq., of Kilbrachmont, and widow of Dr Fulton. By her he had four children, of whom one only (the present chaplain-general to the forces) survives.

Mr Gleig was consecrated Bishop of Brechin in 1808, and died at Stirling in February 1839, in the eighty-sixth year of his age.

He was a man of rare piety, unostentatious, charitable, and generous. As a metaphysician, he deserves to take rank with Dr Reid and Dugald Stewart. His learning was profound, his reading extensive, and his memory—till growing years and infirmities affected it—singularly tenacious. His conversational powers were, moreover, of a very high order, and his wit and humour remarkable. He has left behind him few separate writings—only a volume of sermons, and *Letters on the Study of Theology*—a very valuable treatise. But his edition of Stackhouse's *History of the Bible* contains much original matter, which deserves a better place than amid the pages of that heavy compilation.

He was a regular contributor, for many of their best years, to the *Anti-Jacobin* and *British Critic*, and embellished an edition of Dr Robertson's works with one of the most agreeable lives of that eminent historian which have appeared.

(G. R. G.)