LEYDEN, a circle of Holland, divided into three cantons, viz. Leyden, Noordwyk, and Woubrugge, and containing about 60,000 inhabitants. The city of Leyden, which gives its name to the circle, is situated on both sides of a branch of the river Rhine, which, though diminished by other branches that take their course to the sea before it arrives at this city, still retains its original name. It receives here the water of the smaller streams of the Does, the Bliet, the Mare, and the Zyl, and is, besides, intersected by several canals, thus dividing the city into numerous islands, which are connected together by nearly 100 bridges. The streets are broad, clean, and well paved; ιnd the high street, which runs through the whole city, is perhaps one of the finest in Europe. The walks in and wound the city are distinguished by their pleasing neatness. The most striking building is the stadthouse, in which is the fine picture of the last judgment by Lucas. St Peter’s church is remarkable for the sarcophagus to the memory of Boerhaave, and monuments to three of the most distinguished citizens who lost their lives by the explosion of a vessel laden with gunpowder in 1807. There are, besides, sixteen other churches, and two fine hospitals, one of the finest of which is that which belonged to the Catholics a few years ago. The university, founded in 1575, has long maintained a high rank amongst the best institutions for education in Europe, and has produced the nost distinguished men in every branch of knowledge. It now contains about twenty professors in the four detriments of law, theology, medicine, and philosophy, and from 300 to 400 students. Attached to the university is library, containing 60,000 volumes of books, and 14,000 ιanuscripts, some of them of the most valuable and curious kinds. It has also an observatory, an anatomical icatre, a botanic garden, a chemical laboratory, and several collections of natural and physical curiosities. The trade and manufactures of Leyden were once very extensive, but have much declined of late years. It has still, however, some considerable manufactures of woollen and linen cloths, and the black and scarlet cloths are much admired for their beautiful and permanent colours. The printing of books, especially of classical books, was once a great branch of industry, though now it is much diminished. Leyden has been the birth-place or residence of some of the most distinguished individuals, especially of Rembrandt and Lucas, painters; of Muschenbroeck and Boerhaave, naturalists; and of Scaliger, Salmasius, Heinsius, and others, critical and classical scholars. In 1816, the population was 28,600, but since that time it has increased, and, by the census of 1830, appears to be 34,564, viz. 16,131 males, and 18,433 females. It is situated in latitude 52. 8. 25. north, and longitude 4. 22. east. The environs of the city are ornamented with many seats of the inhabitants. The soil is rich, but, from its moisture, more appropriate for pasture than for grain. The dairies are numerous, and afford butter excellent for its flavour; and, from being capable of being kept a long time, it, along with cheese, forms an important part of the exportable commodities of Holland.

Leyden Isle, an island situated off the north-west coast of Ceylon, about thirteen miles in length by two and a half in breadth. It contains excellent pasture for cattle and horses.

Leyden, John, a celebrated linguist, antiquary, and poet, was born on the 8th of September 1775, at Denholm, a village on the banks of the Teviot, nearly opposite to Minto House, in the parish of Cavers and county of Roxburgh. His father was able to trace back his pedigree through a line of shepherds and husbandmen who had long occupied small farms on the estate of Douglas of Cavers, one of whom, Adam Ledan, in Little Cavers, a stern Presbyterian, had been denounced as a rebel, in a royal proclamation, in 1684. From his second to his sixteenth year, young Leyden lived with his parents in a retired cottage near the bottom of the “stormy Ruberslaw,” where he was taught to read by his father’s mother, and where he had no companions except the inmates of that rustic dwelling, and no books except the Bible, and such other volumes as are commonly possessed by the Scottish peasantry. His chief delight in the years of childhood was to listen to the tales of martial adventure and supernatural agency, recited by a blind uncle of his mother, and to read such works as the Metrical Histories of Bruce and Wallace, the Poems of Sir David Lindsay, and the Arabian Nights Entertainments. In his tenth year, he went first to school at Kirktown, a distance of two miles from his father’s house, and there, under three successive schoolmasters, he learned writing, arithmetic, and the elements of Latin grammar. After having spent three years in this manner, he was placed under the charge of Mr Duncan, a Cameronian minister at Denholm; and at the end of two years, not unprofitably employed in this small seminary, he entered the university of Edinburgh in November 1790. Mr Dalzel, then professor of Greek, has repeatedly stated to the writer of this article, that he had seldom known any young man who at first appeared worse prepared for college, and who so speedily surmounted the disadvantages of imperfect tuition. He had accumulated a great stock of knowledge by a process of study peculiar to himself; but he had not thought it necessary to make himself master of grammatical rules; and, with all his strength and acuteness of mind, he at this time expressed his meaning in terms exceedingly awkward, and in a tone of voice so dissonant and loud as to set his fellow-students in a roar. He attended three winter sessions at the classes for languages [7:13:266]and philosophy, applying with extraordinary ardour to every branch of inquiry connected with his academical studies, and to many other pursuits in which none of his instructors could have guided him. The vacations were generally passed in his native wilds amongst bis own relations, with the exception of the summer 1792, when he acted as assistant in a village school at Whitebanklee, or Clovenfords, on Cadon Water, a mountain stream which falls into the Tweed below Ashiesteel, on the skirts of Ettrick Forest. The charge of the school was left almost entirely to him; but the management of thirty boys and girls, from six to twelve years of age, appeared to be a task for which be possessed no manner of aptitude. Two of his pupils, who were learning Latin, looked up to him with deference and admiration; one of whom did not long survive him, and the other has held various appointments in the church and the universities; but the children in general were in a state of insubordination and tumult, which he endured with a degree of calmness, of which those who knew him in maturer life would have conceived him to be incapable. At this time his appearance was very prepossessing. He was ruddy and fair, with a frame rather delicate than robust, and an expression of great good-nature and gentleness in his features.

In November 1793, he entered on the study of divinity, church history, and Hebrew, and passed through the usual course of four years’ attendance, before he was proposed for trials as a licentiate or probationer of the church of Scotland. Much of his attention was in the mean time devoted to historical research, to philology, to metaphysical speculations, and to natural history and medicine. He was a member of various debating societies, in all of which he distinguished himself by the fluency and copiousness of his unpremeditated harangues, rather than by any graceful or polished eloquence. In one of these institutions, he contracted an intimacy with Mr Henry Brougham, and with the late Dr Thomas Brown and Mr Francis Horner, as well as with several other individuals, who subsequently attained no inconsiderable distinction. About the same time he formed an acquaintance with some literary men farther advanced in life, as Mr Thomson, author of Whist, a poem, and Dr Robert Anderson, editor of the British Poets, and then supposed to be connected with the Edinburgh Magazine, to which both Leyden and Mr Thomas Campbell, one of his youthful friends, contributed some of their earliest poetical essays.

When be had completed his theological education, he accompanied one or two pupils to St Andrews in 1797, where he eagerly embraced the opportunity of attending the lectures of Dr Hunter, professor of humanity, and of Principal Hill, one of the divinity professors. He became also a member of the Theological Society, in which he delivered a number of discourses, one On the Argument a priori for the Existence of God; another On Thanksgiving ; and two On Regeneration. He also engaged at almost every meeting in the discussion of some controverted point in divinity or philosophy; and it cannot be doubted that these discussions must often have been highly interesting, when such persons engaged in them as Dr Chalmers, whose speeches differed from most of the others in being generally read. Amongst the members at that period were, Mr Duncan, now professor of mathematics at St Andrews, and Sir John Campbell, now attorney-general of England. In one respect Leyden felt and acknowledged his inferiority to the students at St Andrews, namely, in having paid scarcely any attention to mathematics; a study for which he had so little turn, that, by his own account, he could never comprehend the definition of a straight line, owing to some metaphysical difficulty, which nobody could solve to his satisfaction. He appears to have disliked the style of society in St Andrews, where, however, he acquired more than one of his most valued friends, particularly Dr Hunter, and another gentleman of high intellectual capacity and scientific attainments. From the presbytery of St Andrews be received license to preach, in May 1798- and on this occasion he was much disgusted by a vulgar piece of waggery, attempted to be practised, at his expense, by one of the members, who told him, that, as he would be called upon to return thanks after dinner, it was expected that, according to established custom, he should give a specimen of his gifts in prayer, by using a form of words comprehending all the leading doctrines of the Christian faith. When the expected signal was given, Leyden stood up and began to pronounce such a prayer as might have been very suitable for the church; but after having proceeded at some length, and in a very sonorous voice, to enumerate the Divine attributes, he perceived that the company was astonished by this unusual exhibition, and sitting down abruptly in no very placid humour, he was more than half disposed to inflict personal chastisement on the offending individual, with whom he felt enraged, not merely on account of the indignity offered to himself, but for the indecent mockery of one of the solemnities of religion. About this time he returned to Edinburgh, where he frequently preached, not indeed so as to attract popular admiration, but in a manner which satisfied his numerous friends that he possessed a serious, as well as a philosophical mind. His memory was retentive; but, in conducting the devotions of a religious assembly, he was apt to be disconcerted by circumstances which would have given him no uneasiness if he had been addressing a learned society.

In the winter of 1798, he attended some of the medical classes, and at this period nearly lost his life, in consequence of his rash and unskilful treatment of a complaint which he believed to be an attack of colic. He swallowed a glass of spirits, in the expectation of receiving immediate relief; but the disorder proved to be enteritis, or inflammation of the intestines, and his constitution was so much weakened by venesection, blistering, and evacuations, that he never afterwards recovered the bloom of health. In addition to his duties as a tutor in a family, by which much of his time was engrossed, he had been engaged as a writer in the New London Review, and, amongst other articles, contributed those on Horne Tooke’s Diversions of Parley, on Dr Thomas Brown’s Observations on Zoonomia, and on Vallancey’s Sanscrit History of Ireland.

In the summer of 1799, he published a volume, entitled A Historical and Philosophical Sketch of the Discoveries and Settlements of the Europeans in Northern and Western Africa, at the Close of the Eighteenth Century. This interesting piece (an octavo of 442 pages) was written in about six weeks, whilst the author was in bad health, and at a distance from books; but it exhibits proofs of extensive information, as well as of sound reflection. In the course of the autumn he engaged to publish The Complaynt of Scotland, a very rare anonymous work in the Scottish language, written early in the sixteenth century. It did not appear for nearly two years; but the preliminary dissertation, extending to nearly 300 pages, as well as the notes and glossary, indicated a compass of antiquarian lore, and a depth of research in various other unfrequented walks of erudition, which could not easily be rivalled. He also displayed great acuteness and ingenuity in attempting to prove, from internal evidence, that The C° m ' playnt was the production of Sir David Lindsay.

Through Mr Richard Heber, to whom he was introduced by Mr Constable, he became acquainted with the most distinguished literary characters in Edinburgh, and, [7:13:267]amongst others, with Sir Walter Scott, who at this time was engaged in collecting the ancient traditionary rhymes published in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ; a collection which Leyden contributed largely to enrich, both by recovering unedited fragments of antiquity, and by communicating imitations, written in the spirit and manner of the age of chivalry, as well as by furnishing materials for many of the notes, and particularly for the introduction to the tale of Tamlane, containing a learned dissertation on the Fairies of popular superstition.

In the year 1800, a plan was formed to establish him as assistant and successor to the minister of his native parish'; but it failed, in consequence of the reluctance of the incumbent to agree to an arrangement on which the heritors and parishioners had set their hearts. Soon afterwards, he was anxious to obtain the professorship of rhetoric and belles lettres in Edinburgh; but here also he was doomed to experience a disappointment.

About this time he made two successive tours through the Highlands, and collected much curious information, which was once intended for publication. He wrote several poems, founded on the remains of Celtic story, two of which have been inserted in the Border Minstrelsy. In 1801, he also contributed to Lewis’s Tales of Wonder.

The year 1802, the last which he spent in Scotland, was one of the busiest of his life. About the beginning of the year, he had carried through the press nearly half a volume of an enlarged Account of the Progress of Discovery in Africa. At the same time he engaged to conduct the Scots Magazine, on an improved plan; and the volume for that year contains many articles furnished by him, and by another eminent orientalist, the late Dr Alexander Murray. He was also employed in correcting the papers of the Highland Society for publication; and he edited a volume entitled Scottish Descriptive Poems, with some Illustrations of Scottish Literary Antiquities, containing Clyde, by John Wilson, schoolmaster of Greenock; Albania, addressed to the Genius of Scotland; The Day Estival, by Alexander Hume; and Poems, by William Fowler. Early in this year, he offered to the African Society to explore the interior of those obscure and inhospitable regions in which so many Europeans have perished. His friends, alarmed at this apparently fatal resolution, became eager to obtain for him an Indian appointment, that might give him access to the treasures of eastern learning, which his past attainments peculiarly qualified him to appreciate. Through the interest of Mr William Dundas, he was nominated assistant surgeon; and though it was privately stipulated, that, on his arrival in India, he was to devote himself chiefly to literary inquiries, he could not be permitted to go out as a passenger in that capacity, without producing a surgeon’s diploma, and undergoing an examination before the Medical Board. He had attended many of the medical classes, but he had hitherto paid little attention to the practice of surgery, and it was therefore necessary to prepare himself for passing through the strict trials prescribed by the college of surgeons. It reflects no slight credit on his capacity and application, that he accomplished this task within six months. He was not equally successful in procuring the degree of doctor of physic from the university of Edinburgh; but having gone to St Andrews with certificates of his character and regular education, and having satisfied the Senatus Academicus at a*private examination, as well as by reading several exercises prescribed to him in the Latin language, that degree was conferred on him there, on the 7th of August 1802. Whilst he was occupied in these ’ ∙inpoetical avocations, he continued at every interval of leisure to court the inspiration of the muses, and he gave the finishing hand to the Scenes of Infancy, descriptive of Te-νiotdale, a poem which had been partly written before, but which was now enlivened by some of its most touching passages, and left for publication in the hands of Dr Thomas Brown, who, in the revision of the sheets, suppressed a number of verses which the author conceived ought to have been retained.

Leyden spent the winter in London, having narrowly escaped the misfortune of sailing in the Hindostan, which was wrecked in its passage down the Thames. He sailed from Portsmouth in the Hugh Inglis, on the 7th of April 1803, and soon after his arrival at Madras, was attached as surgeon and naturalist to the commission for surveying the districts of the Mysore, in which capacity he was expected to turn his attention, not only to the natural history of the country, but to the manners, institutions, and language of the inhabitants. His constitution had nearly sunk under the labours to which he subjected himself, and he was under the necessity of removing to Prince of Wales’s Island. Here he was befriended by the governor, Mr Dundas, and here too he procured the chief materials of the Essay on the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations, contained in the tenth volume of the Asiatic Researches.

He removed in 1806 from Prince of Wales’s Island to Calcutta, where, through the favour of the governor-general, Lord Minto, he was appointed one of the professors in the Bengal College, from which station he was soon transferred to the office of judge of the Twenty-four Pergunnahs of Calcutta. The income attached to this charge was applied chiefly in purchasing manuscripts, and rewarding the native teachers whose instructions he solicited; and all his leisure hours were spent in the eager investigation of the languages, the laws, and history of the East. In 1809 he was appointed a commissioner of the court of requests in Calcutta, and, in the end of the following year, having resigned this office, he obtained the office of assaymaster of the mint. Soon afterwards, he was required to attend Lord Minto upon the expedition to Java, that he might be employed in collecting information with respect to the learning and institutions of the native tribes, and that the governor-general might enjoy the benefit of his services in negotiating with the local authorities, and in adjusting the future government of the country. After the British troops took possession of the city of Batavia, he ventured rashly into an ill-aired library, supposed to contain many Indian manuscripts, and, on leaving it, was immediately seized with a fever, which proved fatal three days after its accession, and a few days before the conquest of the island was completed. He died on the 21st of August 1811.

A very high tribute to his memory was paid by Lord Minto, on occasion of a visitation of the College of FortWilliam, after his lordship’s return from the conquest of Java. “To speak of all that Dr Leyden had already performed, especially in the prosecution of Asiatic learning—. to compute the treasures which his incomparable genius, urging and sustaining his invincible powers of mental labour, presented the fair promise of acquiring and accumulating—would be to relate a history of the short Ιbut memorable life he was allowed to live, and to expatiate into the yet more ample fields of inquiry of which he had projected the survey. I need not remind those who hear me, of the zeal he had long nourished for exploring the philology of the more eastern regions of Asia; of the first steps he had already made in the prosecution of that purpose, by the construction of vocabularies, but, above all, by methodising and reducing into system the classification of the various languages spoken on the continent intermediate between India and China; the various kingdoms and districts of which, as they recede from each of these extreme points, appear, with some relation to their local approximation, or to historical affinities, gradually to have blended and assi [7:13:268]milated their respective languages into compound dialects, partaking of both the distinct and primitive tongues. To this just and authorized tribute to the literary merits of Dr Leyden, I must yet add a personal testimony, prompted by personal experience, to virtues of a higher class, neither connected with the talents and toils of a student, nor so uniformly the companions of learned reputation, as it would be natural perhaps to wish and to expect. But I speak it in the presence of many who can attest it with myself, that, founder as he was of his own fortunes and reputation, and climbing, by many laborious steps, from the lowest stage of social life, to an eminence which many cannot even maintain, though placed yet higher by their birth; no man, whatever his condition might be, ever possessed a mind so entirely exempt from every sordid passion, so negligent of fortune and all its grovelling pursuits, in a word, so entirely disinterested, nor ever owned a spirit more firmly and nobly independent. I speak of these things with some knowledge, and wish to record a competent testimony to the facts, that, within my experience, Dr Leyden never, in any instance, solicited an object of personal interest, nor, as I believe, ever interrupted his higher pursuits, to waste a moment’s thought on those minor cares. To this exemption from cupidity was allied every generous virtue worthy of those smiles of fortune which he disdained to court; and amongst many estimable features of his character, an ardent love of justice, and a vehement abhorrence of oppression, were not less prominent than the other higher qualities I have already described.”

Sir John Malcolm bears testimony, in terms equally strong, to the purity, disinterestedness, and independence of his character, as well as to the indefatigable perseverance and ardour with which he devoted himself to literary and scientific acquirements; and, after adverting to some rather unpleasing oddities of manner, “How trivial,” he adds, “do these appear, at a moment when we are lamenting the loss of such a rare combination of virtues, learning, and genius, as were concentrated in the late Dr Leyden.”

(See Edinburgh Annual Register for ]811; and The Poetical Remains of the late Dr John Leyden, with Memoirs of his Life, by the Rev. James Morton, 8vo, London, 1819.) (p. p. p.)