Crawford and Balcarres, ALEXANDER WILLIAM CRAWFORD LINDSAY, EARL OF

Crawford and Balcarres, ALEXANDER WILLIAM CRAWFORD LINDSAY, EARL OF, born in 1812, was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and succeeded his father in 1869. He gained a high reputation for his works on religion, philosophy, and art; and his researches into the annals of his own house enabled him in 1848 to prepare the case for his father's (Lord Balcarres) claims to the premier earldom of Scotland, as 24th Earl (cre. 1398). Besides Lives of the Lindsays (1849), and the Earldom of Mar (1882), he wrote Letters from the Holy Land (1838), Progression by Antagonism (1846), and Sketches of the History of Christian Art (1847), by which he is best remembered. His dominant idea, however, was the formation of a perfect library, to which for nearly half a century he devoted great industry and learning; and the library at Haigh Hall, near Wigan, is probably unrivalled among private collections. He died in Florence, 13th December 1880; his body, which for over seven months had been missing from the mausoleum at Dunecht, near Aberdeen, was found in a wood close by in July 1882.—His son and successor, JAMES LUDOVIC LINDSAY, born in 1847, was elected president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1878-80, and F.R.S. in 1878, and received the degree of LL.D from Edinburgh University in 1882. In 1888 he presented to the nation the admirably equipped observatory at his seat of Dunecht, 12 miles W. of Aberdeen; and the apparatus, with the magnificent astronomical library, have been transferred to a new observatory (1895) on Blackford Hill, near Edinburgh.