arise. See, Lord,' he cried in an agony of prayer, 'what evil Penda is doing.' His prayer was heard. The wind changed, and the smoke and flames were blown back on the besiegers. Their plan failed, and Bamborough was saved.

In these years of trouble in Bernicia, Aidan found more scope for his missionary activity in the Deiran kingdom, where he exercised over King Oswini the same spell as had charmed Oswald. Oswini gave Aidan a valuable horse to aid him in his journeys. Soon afterwards Aidan met a poor man who asked for alms; having nothing else to give him, he gave him the horse. Oswini, when next they met, gently chid him for his unthinking charity. Is the foal of a mare,' said Aidan, more valuable in your eyes than the Son of God?' Oswini stood by the fire and reflected; presently he fell at Aidan's feet and asked pardon for his thoughtless speech. Aidan raised him, but sat in deep sorrow. When asked the cause, he answered, 'I grieve because I know that so humble a king is too good to live long.' Aidan's prediction was soon verified. Oswiu had regained the Bernician kingdom, and longed to unite again under himself the dominions of Oswald. He marched against Oswini, who was murdered by a treacherous thegn. Aidan's heart was broken when he heard of his friend's death. He only survived him twelve days, and died on 31 Aug. 651. When he felt that death was approaching, he had a hut built against the west wall of the church of Bamborough. There he died, leaning against a post which had been erected to buttress the wooden wall. On the night on which he died, a shepherd lad, Cuthbert, as he watched his sheep on the Lammermoor hills, saw stars falling from the sky. When he heard the news of Aidan's death, he recognised them as angels bearing heavenward Aidan's soul. Moved by the marvel, he entered Boisil's monastery of Melrose.

The body of Aidan was buried at Lindisfarne, and was afterwards translated to the right side of the high altar. When, after the synod of Whitby in 664, the Columban Church was defeated by the Church of Rome, Bishop Colman departed to Iona. He carried with him part of the bones of Aidan, and left only a portion for the ungrateful land which had forsaken Aidan's ritual (BEDE, H. E. iii. c. 26).

[The authority for Aidan is Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, book iii, chaps. 5 17; but see also Vita Cuthberti, iv. Subsequent writers have merely amplified Bede. Of modern writers see Bright, Early English Church History; and Green, The Making of England.] M. C.

AIKENHEAD, MARY (1787-1858), foundress of the Irish sisters of charity, was born on 19 Jan. 1787. She was the eldest daughter of Dr. David Aikenhead, of Cork, and was brought up a protestant, like her father; but on his deathbed he was received into the church of Rome, to which his wife belonged, and soon afterwards Mary, when in her sixteenth year, became a catholic. After the death of her mother some years later, Archbishop Murray proposed that she should join him in founding a congregation of sisters of charity, the first of the kind in Ireland. Having consented, she went, with one other lady, by Dr. Murray's desire, to a convent at York, where they spent three years as novices. Returning to Dublin, they made their profession, and opened the first convent of sisters of charity in North William Street, Dublin, Mary Aikenhead being appointed superior-general of the new foundation. The congregation was canonically erected' in 1816.

Miss Aikenhead, who was a woman of remarkable energy and generosity of character, although for many years almost entirely confined to her couch, lived to superintend the foundation of ten houses belonging to her order, viz. eight convents, an asylum for penitents, and the hospital of St. Vincent, in Dublin, the first hospital in Ireland served by nuns. She died 22 July 1858.

[Mary Aikenhead, her Life, her Work, and her Friends; giving a history of the Foundation of the Congregation of the Irish Sisters of Charity. By S. A. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Sons. 1882.]

C. E. S.

AIKENHEAD, THOMAS (1678?1696-7), executed for blasphemy, was the son of an apothecary at Edinburgh. He is described as not vicious and extremely studious.' His religious opinions became unsettled by the perusal of some atheistical writers,' put into his hands, as he asserted, by a fellow student who afterwards informed against him. He was accused of ridiculing the Scriptures, and of declaring that Ezra had invented the Old Testament, that Moses and Christ were impostors, that the doctrine of the Trinity was self-contradictory, and all theology a rhapsody of ill-contrived nonsense. Persistent assertion of such opinions was punishable under one statute with death upon a third conviction. Aikenhead made a full recantation before his trial, in which no counsel was assigned to him. His case was brought, by a strained interpretation, under another statute, which made the cursing God or any persons of the Blessed Trinity a capital offence. He was accordingly sen

tenced to death, and hanged 8 Jan. 1696-7, declaring, in his dying speech, his full acceptance of the christian faith. Whilst he was in prison, one of the witnesses, Mungo Craig, published a 'Satyr against Atheistical Deism... to which is prefixed an account of Mr. Aikenhead's notions, &c.' A letter published in the State Trials' from the King MSS. shows that Locke was shocked by this perversion of justice.

[State Trials, xiii. 917-939; Macaulay's History, iv. 781; Arnot's Celebrated Scotch Trials, p. 326.] L. S. AIKIN, ANNA LETITIA. [See BARBAULD.]

AIKIN, ARTHUR (1773-1854), chemist and scientific writer, was the eldest son of John Aikin, M.D., and was thus the brother of Lucy Aikin and nephew of Mrs. Barbauld. He was born at Warrington on 19 May 1773, and went at an early age to the free school there, and afterwards to Mr. Barbauld's school at Palgrave in Suffolk. His father took an active part in his education, and prepared for his special use several of his books for youthful readers, including among others his 'Letters from a Father to his Son.' Aikin was trained for the unitarian ministry, and in 1786, on the removal of his family to London, he attended the unitarian college at Hackney; but on conscientious grounds he soon changed his plans, and devoted himself exclusively to scientific pursuits. An early acquaintance with Dr. Priestley, his father's friend, had already given him a predilection for chemistry, and under Priestley's guidance he made the study of that science and of mineralogy and botany the chief occupation of his life. In 1797 he published, with Observations in Mineralogy and other branches of Natural History, an account of a tour that he took with his brother, Charles Rochemont Aikin (q. v., and another friend in North Wales and Shropshire. In the next year appeared his Natural History of the Year, and in 1799 he delivered a series of lectures in London on chemistry and chemical manufactures, the syllabus of which he published separately.

6

the more important post of secretary to the
Society of Arts, a post which he retained for
twenty-three years. In 1818 Aikin was
elected a fellow of the Linnean Society, but
his only contribution to its 'Transactions' was
A List of Indian Woods collected by Dr.
Wallich,' which appeared in 1817. On his re-
signation of the secretaryship of the Society
of Arts in 1840 he was appointed chairman
of its committee of chemistry, and he was
nominated the first treasurer of the Chemical
Society, founded in 1841 (Gent. Mag. (new
series), xv. 526). In his later years he was
chosen a member of the Academy of Dijon
in recognition of his lifelong application to
chemistry and mineralogy.
He died un-
married at his brother's house in Bloomsbury
Square, London, on 15 April 1854.

His works, besides those already enumerated, were: 1. A Translation of Denon's Travels in Egypt' (1801). 2. Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy' (1807-14), prepared in conjunction with his brother, C. R. Aikin. 3. Manual of Mineralogy' (1814). 4. Account of the most recent Discoveries in Chemistry and Mineralogy' (1814). Aikin also edited from 1803 till 1808 a literary periodical entitled the Annual Review,' to which his sister Lucy, his aunt Mrs. Barbauld, his father Dr. Aikin, Robert Southey, and William Taylor all occasionally contributed. The periodical ceased a few years after Aikin resigned the editorship.

[Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (1855), p. xli; Annual Register, 1854; Lucy Aikin's Memoir of John Aikin, M.D.; P. H. le Breton's Memoir of Lucy Aikin; Index to Monthly Review, 1790-1816.]

AIKIN, CHARLES ROCHEMONT (1775-1847), doctor and chemist, was the second son of John Aikin, M.D., and was born at Warrington in 1775. He was adopted, as a child, by his aunt, Mrs. Barbauld, and educated by her husband at his school at Palgrave in Suffolk. He is the little Charles' of Mrs. Barbauld's Early Lessons. From an early age he devoted himself to science, and aided his eldest brother, Arthur see AIKIN, ARTHUR], in his first In 1807 Aikin, who had acquired the repu- published works and public lectures. Subtation of an enthusiastic scientific worker, sequently he applied himself to medicine, took a foremost part in founding the Geo- became a member of the Royal College of Surlogical Society. To its early Transactions' geons, and was chosen secretary of the London he contributed several papers, embodying Medical and Chirurgical Society. He married observations made by him in the west of Anne, daughter of the Rev. Gilbert WakeEngland, and dealing almost entirely with field, and died at his house in Bloomsbury mineralogy, and about 1811 he became its Square on 20 March 1847. His works Secretary. He retired from that office, al- were: 1. Concise View of all the most imthough he remained for many years a member portant Facts that have hitherto appeared of the council, on his acceptance in 1817 of respecting the Cow Pox,' 1800. 2. 'Die

tionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy,' 18071814, which he wrote in conjunction with

his eldest brother.

[Kendrick's Profiles of Warrington Worthies (1854), p. 4; Christian Reformer for 1847, p. 312; Biog. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816.]

AIKIN, EDMUND (1780-1820), architect, the youngest son of John Aikin, M.D., was born at Warrington on 2 Oct. He was assistant to General Sir Samuel Bentham, the architect of the Millbank Penitentiary, and published some designs in concert with him. About 1814 his business took him to Liverpool. He settled there, and furnished designs for various buildings in that city. He wrote articles upon architecture in Rees's Encyclopædia,' an account of St. Paul's Cathedral, and other treatises. Between 1804 and 1814 he exhibited some designs at the Royal Academy. He died at Stoke Newington on 11 March 1820, whilst on a visit to his father.

[Architectural Publication Society's Dictionary, 1853.]

E. R.

AIKIN, JOHN (1713-1780), scholar and theological tutor, was born in 1713, in Lon-, don, where his father, a native of Scotland, had been for some years settled in business. He was placed for a short time as French clerk in a mercantile house, but, an ardent love of study rendering commercial pursuits distasteful to him, he entered the Kibworth Academy, a school of which the celebrated Dr. Doddridge had become the head, but so recently that young Aikin was his first pupil. Hence he proceeded to Aberdeen University, where the anti-Calvinist opinions of the tutors in divinity gradually led him to that system of Low Arianism, as it was then called, which afterwards became the distinguishing feature of the Warrington Academy. That the university was proud of its alumnus is shown by the fact that it subsequently conferred upon him, without solicitation and without notice, the degree of D.D., an honour which was actually distressing to his retiring disposition. Returning from Aberdeen, he was ordained, and after a short period of work as Doddridge's assistant, he accepted the cure of a dissenting congregation at Market Harborough. An affection of the chest, however, made him a valetudinarian for life, and left him no resource but tuition. It is mainly as a tutor of Warrington Academy that John Aikin is noticeable. This institution, which may be regarded as the cradle of Unitarianism, was but short-lived, and yet formed during the twenty-nine years of its existence the centre of the liberal politics and the

literary taste of the county of Lancashire. It was originally projected in 1753, in consequence of the decay of several of the training schools belonging to the English Presbyterian body, but was not formally constituted till June 1757, when, thanks to the exertions of Mr. John Seddon of Warrington, the subscription list amounted to 4691. 58., and the benefactions to 1487. 118. The building, which consisted of a large and staid red brick house, is said to have possessed a respectable collegiate appearance;' while the Mersey, according to Aikin's daughter, Mrs. Barbauld,

Reflects the ascending seats with conscious pride.

Three tutors at 1007. a year each were at first chosen. Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, taught divinity; Mr. Holt, of Kirkdale, natural philosophy; and Aikin was classical tutor. Lord Willoughby, of Parham, was the first president of the academy. Early in the history of the academy a fourth tutor was appointed. On the death of Dr. Taylor, in 1761, Aikin became tutor in divinity, which post he held almost to the year of his death, and was succeeded in his old duties by Dr. Priestley. Priestley says of the tutors: We were all Arians, and the only subject of much consequence on which we differed respected the doctrine of Atonement, concerning which Dr. Aikin held some obscure notions. Among the other tutors who from time to time joined the staff of the academy, were Mr. Reinhold Forster, Mr. Enfield, the Rev. G. Walker, Dr. Nicholas Clayton, and Gilbert Wakefield. When the academy was dissolved in 1786, 393 pupils, many of whom won distinction in the legal and medical professions, had been from first to last on the books. Aikin's health began to fail in 1778; soon afterwards he resigned his tutorship, and died in 1750. He was, says Wakefield, • a gentleman whose endowments as a man and as a scholar it is not easy to exaggerate by panegyric. Every path of polite literature had been traversed by him, and traversed with success. His two children were John, physician and author, and Anna Letitia, better known as Mrs. Barbauld.

[Unpublished Letters and Memoirs; An Historical Sketch of Warrington Academy, by Henry A. Bright, B.A.] A. A. B.

AIKIN, JOHN (1747 1822), physician and author, son of the preceding, was born at Kibworth in 1747, and removed thence with his father to Warrington, where he received the earlier part of his education. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and surgery in London, and, in the course of a flying

visit to Holland, received the degree of M.D. at the university of Leyden. After residing for a few years at Chester and at Warrington, he settled in medical practice at Great Yarmouth in the year 1784. The society of Yarmouth was at this time exceedingly hostile to dissenters, and the agitation in 1790 for the repeal of the Corporation and Tests Acts embittered differences that would otherwise have been unimportant. On this subject, Aikin, whose political and religious opinions were those of the dissenters, published two warmly written pamphlets, and thereby lost the support of most of his more orthodox friends and patients. The pamphlets were published anonymously, but Aikin was soon known to be their author, and his professional prospects in Yarmouth were virtually ruined. In a letter to a friend he says that he has no idea of becoming the hero of a cause,' but at his age it would be trifling not to have a character, and cowardly not to avow and stick to it.' His position at Yarmouth becoming more and more intolerable, in 1792 he moved to Broad Street Buildings, in London, and found within easy reach of Hackney, then the stronghold of the dissenters, a more agreeable field for his medical and literary work. Lucy Aikin, his daughter, describes this migration as a blessed change from Yarmouth.' In London the warm welcome of his friends, and his own high character, brought him a fair measure of success. He practised as a physician only, and devoted his whole leisure to literature. His career, however, as a physician was cut short a few years later by a stroke of paralysis, in consequence of which he gave up his house and practice to his son, and retired to Stoke Newington. There he spent the last twenty-four years of his life in his favourite studies and occupations. He died in 1822, and left several children. Aikin is

better known as a man of letters than as a

physician. His elegant scholarship gave a natural polish to all that he wrote, and his varied attainments, as well as his moral uprightness, earned him many friends, among whom were Dr. Priestley; Pennant, the naturalist: Dr. Darwin: James Montgomery; John Howard, the philanthropist; and, for a time, the poet, Southey. He was John Howard's literary executor, and was often em-, ployed by him to write reports on prisons, and other documents. His life of Howard has been adopted without acknowledgment by a modern writer. Hardly a year of his life passed without some contribution to literature, but his best known works are Essays on Song Writing; ' • Translation of the Germania and the Agricola of Tacitus: Biographical Me

moirs of Medicine in Great Britain;' 'Eng-
land delineated;' 'General Biography' (10
vols. 4to; the articles marked
A' are
more than half of the work); "The Arts of
Life;' The Woodland Companion;' 'Lives
of John Selden and Archbishop Usher:' cri-
tical and biographical prefaces to an edition
of the British Poets; and Evenings at
Home,' which last work was written in con-
junction with his sister, Mrs. Barbauld, but
Aikin contributed far the greater number of
the pieces. He also began a translation
of Pliny's Natural History,' but was so dis-
gusted by his errors and old women's fables'
that he abandoned the project. It may be
added that Aikin was greatly interested in
chemistry and natural philosophy, branches
of science in which, however, his sons, Arthur
and Charles Rochemont, were subsequently
more distinguished than himself.

[Unpublished Letters and Memoirs; Lucy Aikin's Memoir of John Aikin.]

A. A. B.

AIKIN, LUCY (1781–1864), daughter of the preceding, was born at Warrington in the year 1781. She resided with her parents at Yarmouth and Stoke Newington till the death of her father in 1822, when she removed to Hampstead, where, with the exception of a short interval at Wimbledon, she spent the remainder of her life. She died in 1864. Miss Aikin was in early life a diligent student of French, Italian, and Latin, and at the youthful age of seventeen began to contribute articles to magazines and reviews. In 1810 appeared her first considerable work, Epistles on Women,' a poem in spirited but conventional heroics; and in 1814 she wrote her only work of fiction, entitled Lorimer, a Tale.' These were her earlier efforts, but her reputation was gained entirely by her historical works published between the years 1818 and 1843; namely, Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth' (1818); Memoirs of the Court of James L.' (1822); · Memoirs of the Court of Charles I.' (1833); and the Life of Addison' (1843). The last of these books, which contains many letters of Addison never before published, is the subject of an essay by Macaulay, who, while praising Miss Aikin's other works, and especially her Memoirs of the Court of James I,' observes that she was far more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobalds than among the steenkirks and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne's tea table at Hampton. Of her other memoirs she herself writes, on the completion of her Charles I:' 'I am resolved against proceeding farther with English sovereigns. Charles II is no theme for me: it

would make me contemn my species.'
also wrote a life of her father, and of her aunt,
Mrs. Barbauld, and many minor pieces. Miss
Aikin's conversational powers were remark-
able, and she was a graceful and graphic
letter writer. Her letters to her relatives
and intimate friends show her relish for so-
ciety, and are full of mother wit and lively
anecdotes of distinguished literary persons.
She maintained for almost sixteen years
(1826 to 1842) a graver correspondence with
the Rev. Dr. Channing, of Boston, on reli-
gion, philosophy, politics, and literature.
Strong opinions freely expressed characterise
these shrewd and vigorous letters. In reli-
gion, Miss Aikin was, like the other mem-
bers of her family, a unitarian-a circum-
stance which, added to a keen recollection of
hardships, one might almost say persecutions,
endured by herself as a child, and by her
father, at Yarmouth, gave her a liberal, but
by no means a tolerant, political creed. Writ-
ing to Dr. Channing on the progress of trac-
tarianism in England, she pronounces our
Church Establishment the most systemati-
cally servile in Christendom. In discussing
the first Reform Bill, she defines radicalism
as 'the supremacy of the rude and selfish and
ignorant many.' Miss Aikin was, in fact, a
whig, with a generous love of liberty wher-
ever she found it under any conditions, but
with cultivated tastes that precluded sym-
pathy with democracy. In her letters to Dr.
Channing she warmly praises the whig
aristocracy, and defends with a certain de
gree of conservatism English manners and
customs from the criticism of her corre-
spondent. These letters, which were not pub-
lished till after Miss Aikin's death, are not
among her best known writings; but they
record in an interesting manner both her own
opinions and those of the unitarian body of
her time.

6

She, He practised in Edinburgh with much suc-
cess till 1723, when he was persuaded by
John, Duke of Argyll, to come to London,
where he resided till his death, well em-
ployed and the friend of many of the most
distinguished men of his time. He was fond
of poetry and poets. At college he formed
the acquaintance of Allan Ramsay, who
wrote an eclogue to his memory. He inte-
rested himself much in favour of Thomson,
introducing that poet to Sir Richard Wal-
pole, Arbuthnot, Swift, Pope, and Gray.
Thomson wrote verses bewailing his loss,
Somervile addressed to him an epistle in
rhyme, David Mallet wrote the epitaph on
him and his son, Smollett also praised him
in verse, and Samuel Boyse composed some
lines eulogising his art.
He painted a por-
trait of Allan Ramsay, engraved by G.
White; one of Thomson as a young man,
now at Hagley, engraved for Andrew Mil-
lar's edition of Thomson; one of Gay, en-
graved by T. Kyte; and one of Somervile.
Amongst others whose portraits he is known
to have painted were John, Duke of Argyll,
the Countess of Burlington, and Lady Grissell
Baillie. A number of full-length portraits
by Aikman were painted for the Earl of
Buckinghamshire, of Blickling Hall, Norfolk.
He painted some portraits of himself, one of
which is in the Uffizzi at Florence, and two
others belonged in 1793 to his daughter,
Mrs. Forbes of Edinburgh, one of which was
engraved by R. Scott for James Anderson's
Bee.' In the National Portrait Gallery is
a portrait of Duncan Forbes ascribed to Aik-
man, and the Duke of Devonshire possesses
a large unfinished picture by him of the
royal family in three compartments. He
was acquainted with Sir Godfrey Kneller,
whose manner he imitated. Two portrait
etchings by his hand are known, and there
is an etching by him in the print room of
the British Museum of several slightly exe-
cuted heads, one of them after Van Dyck.
His death took place at his house in Leicester
Fields on 7 June 1731, and is said to have
been caused by grief at the death of his only
son at the age of 17. Both were buried in
one grave in the Grey Friars Church, Edin-
burgh. Two daughters survived him.

[Lucy Aikin, Memoirs, Miscellanies, and Letters, edited by P. H. Le Breton; unpublished Letters and Reminiscences.]

A. A. B.

AIKMAN, WILLIAM (1682-1731), a portrait painter, who attained celebrity in his day, was born at Caerney, Forfarshire, on 24 Oct. 1682. He was the only son of William Aikman, advocate, sheriff of Forfarshire, and a man of eminence at the Scot-versal Biography: Walpole's Anecdotes of tish bar. Designed by his father for the law, Aikman preferred art and studied for three years under Sir John Medina at Edinburgh. In 1707 he went to Rome, after selling his paternal estate near Arbroath. Here he remained three years, and then visited Constantinople and Smyrna. Returning by Rome and Florence, he reached Scotland in 1712.

[Stark's Biographia Scotica; Lempriere's UniPainters: Anderson's Bee, vol. xviii.; Notes and Queries (2nd series), xi. 415; Heineken's Diet. des Artistes dont nous avons des Estampes; Cat. of National Portrait Gallery: Redgrave's Diet, of Artists; Nagler's Künstler-Lexikon (edited by Meyer, 1872).] C. M.

AILESBURY, EARLS OF. See BRUCE.]