425
from business pursuits. During this time he gave an
hour or two daily to attendance at the bank, and the
winding up of his own private concerns occupied an
equal share of his attention; but at no period of his
life were his public and private acts of benevolence,
or his duties in the pastoral office, more attended to
than at this time. For some months before Febru-
ary, 1806, it was seen that his health and strength
were failing. About the 1st of March of that year
he was confined to bed, and died in peace on the
17th day of the same month, in the sixty-eighth year
of his age, in his house, Charlotte Street, Glasgow.
In his last illness he frequently expressed his confi-
dence as resting on the fulness, freeness, and sim-
plicity of the gospel truth which he had for so long
a period preached to others. His remains were in-
terred in St. David's Church burying-ground. No
sculptured marble marks the place where all that is
mortal of this good man reposes. The spot is indi-
cated by a hewn stone built into the east boundary-
wall, inclosed by an iron railing, about midway
betwixt the south and north corner of the ground,
having on it the following plain inscription:—"The
burying-ground of David Dale, merchant, Glasgow,
1780." The establishment of the branch of the
Royal Bank in Glasgow in 1783 proved to be of
great service in promoting the trade of the city,
especially in the manufacture of cotton goods, which
made rapid progress from that date. Mr. Dale's
management of the bank business was never objected
to; he was discriminating and liberal in granting
loans to the industrious prudent trader, while he had
the firmness to resist the advances of the mere specu-
lator. An anecdote has been preserved illustrative
of his feelings and humanity towards an unfortunate
individual who had committed forgery. A young
man presented a draft for discount, which Mr. Dale
considered to be a forged document; he sent for the
young man, and in private informed him of his suspi-
cions; the fact was acknowledged. Mr. Dale then
pointed out to him the risk he put his life in by such
an act, destroyed the bill, that no proof of his guilt
should remain, and finding that he had been led to it
by pecuniary difficulties, gave him some money, and
dismissed him with a suitable admonition. In regard
to his usefulness as a preacher of the gospel, the
late Dr. Wardlaw used to say of Mr. Dale, that he
was a most scriptural and instructive teacher of a
Christian church. He had not acquired in early life
a knowledge of the languages in which the Scriptures
were originally written, but this lack was amply sup-
plied by application in after-life. He could read
with understanding the Hebrew and Greek; the Old
and New Testaments were frequently, perhaps daily,
studied by him in these languages. His public dis-
courses were sententious. For several years before
his death his pulpit services were listened to by many
who came on purpose to hear his preaching.
Various estimates of the fortune which Mr. Dale
had realized were made about the period of his death;
the probability is, that one and all were far wide of
the truth. A vast amount of his effects consisted in
mill buildings and machinery, which are of a very
fluctuating value. A considerable part too was
locked up in business concerns in operation, of which
he was copartner, some of which were not closed for
many years; and some of these proved to be very
unprofitable. The exact, or even estimated amount,
was never made known to the public; but it must,
at the period referred to, have been very considerable.
From the losses sustained in winding up, however,
it is generally understood that a large portion was
swept away, and that but a comparatively small part
came ultimately to his family.
DALGARNO, GEORGE, l an almost forgotten, but
most meritorious and original writer, was born in
Old Aberdeen about the year 1626. He appears to
have studied at Marischal College, New Aberdeen,
but for what length of time, or with what objects, is
wholly unknown. In 1657 he went to Oxford, where,
according to Anthony Wood, he taught a private
grammar-school with good success for about thirty
years. He died of a fever on the 28th of August,
1687, and was buried, says the same author, "in the
north body of the church of St. Mary Magdalen."
Such is the scanty biography that has been preserved
of a man who lived in friendship with the most
eminent philosophers of his day, and who, besides
other original speculations, had the singular merit of
anticipating, more than a hundred and thirty years
ago, some of the most profound conclusions of the
present age respecting the education of the deaf and
dumb. His work upon this subject is entitled Didas-
calocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor, and
was printed in a very small volume at Oxford in
1680. He states the design of it to be to bring the
way of teaching a deaf man to read and write, as near
as possible to that of teaching young ones to speak
and understand their mother tongue. "In prosecu-
tion of this general idea," says an eminent philosopher
of the present day, who has, on more than one occa-
sion, done his endeavour to rescue the name of Dal-
garno from oblivion, "he has treated in one short
chapter of a deaf man's dictionary; and, in another,
of a grammar for deaf persons; both of them con-
taining a variety of precious hints, from which useful
practical lights might be derived by all who have
any concern in the tuition of children during the
first stage of their education" (Mr. Dugald Stewart's
Account of a Boy Born Blind and Deaf). Twenty
years before the publication of his Didascalocophus,
Dalgarno had given to the world a very ingenious
piece, entitled Ars Signorum, from which, says Mr.
Stewart, it appears indisputable that he was the
precursor of Bishop Wilkins in his speculations
respecting "a real character and a philosophical
language." Leibnitz has on various occasions alluded
to the Ars Signorum in commendatory terms. The
collected works of Dalgarno were republished in one
volume, 4to, by the Maitland Club, in 1834.
DALHOUSIE, JAMES ANDREW BROWN-RAM-
SAY, first MARQUIS OF. This eminent statesman was
born at Dalhousie Castle, county of Edinburgh, on
the 22d of April, 1812. In point of antiquity, the
family of Ramsay was conspicuous so early as the
reign of David I., when Sir Alexander Ramsay, the
knight of Dalwolsie, having signalized himself in the
liberation of his country from England, was appointed
warden of the middle marches of Scotland, and
sheriff of Teviotdale. The envy of his great rival,
Sir William Douglas, at this last appointment, and
his attack upon the knight of Dalwolsie, while holding
open court, and consigning him to a dungeon, where
he died of hunger, is one of those terrible tales of
ancient Scottish revenge with which our national
history is only too abundant. Another distinguished
member of the family was Sir John Ramsay, who
saved the life of James VI., by stabbing the Earl of
Gowrie, when the latter rushed into the king's apart-
ment with a drawn sword, and at the head of his
armed attendants, during the confused affray of what
is called the Gowrie conspiracy. For this deed he
was ennobled by the titles of Lord Barns and Vis-
1 I am indebted for this article to the Supplement to the
Sixth Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; the only
source from which I am aware that the information contained
in it could have been derived.