The custom adopted by several learned Societies or Acadedemies abroad, which requires, that a professed panegyric on every one of the Members, after his death, should first be read before the Academy, and then printed in the history of their transactions, has not met with a general approbation, either in England or in this country. For although characters have frequently appeared in the republic of Letters, whose shining talents have, with sufficient propriety, employed the power of eloquence in their praise, every Member of an Academy cannot be deemed the proper subject of a laboured encomium. The British character, naturally shy and reserved, is apt to look with an eye of suspicion, upon any discourse that comes decorated with the pompous title of Eloge.

Sir George Clerk-Maxwell of Pennycuik, Baronet, one of the Presidents of the Physical Class of this Society, was born at Edinburgh, on the last day of October 1715. He was the fourth son of Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik, one of the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland: His mother was a daughter of Sir James Inglis of Cramond.

His more early studies were carried on at the University of Edinburgh, under the eye of his father, who was himself a man of letters, and from whom he appears very early to have caught a strong taste for Natural History, Antiquities and the Theory of Commerce, particularly in so far as these branches of knowledge related to his own country. He afterwards went to Leyden, where he finished his studies under the immediate inspection of the celebrated Boerhaave, who had been the friend of his father; and, before his return home, he visited several parts of France and Germany.

The Reverend Dr Matthew Stewart, late Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, was the son of the Reverend Mr Dugald Stewart, Minister of Rothsay in the Isle of Bute, and was born at that place in the year 1717. After having finished his course at the grammar-school, being intended by his father for the Church, he was sent to the University of Glasgow, and was entered there as a student in 1734. His academical studies were prosecuted with diligence and success; and he was so happy as to be particularly distinguished by the friendship of Dr Hutcheson and Dr Simson. With the latter, indeed, he soon became very intimately connected; for though it is said, that his predilection for the Mathematics did not instantly appear on his application to the study of that science, yet the particular direction of his talents was probably observed by his master before it was perceived by himself.