From 1790 to 1820 Edinburgh richly deserved the honourable title of “Modern Athens.” Her University and her High School, directed by men pre-eminently fitted for their duties, capable of firing their pupils’ minds with a noble purpose, endowed with a lofty ideal of a master’s responsibilities--in fact, possessed of all the qualities that Dr. Arnold afterwards displayed elsewhere--attracted and educated a set of young men, unrivalled, perhaps, in modern times for genius and energy, for wit and learning. Nothing, then, was wanting to their due encouragement but a liberal patron, and this position was speedily occupied by a publisher, who, in his munificence and venturous spirit, soon outstripped his boldest English rival--whose one fault was, in fact, that of always being a Mæcenas, never a tradesman. Archibald Constable was born on the 24th of February, 1776, at Kellie, in the parish of Carnbee in Fifeshire. He was the son of Thomas Constable, who, through his sagacity in rural matters, had risen to the position of land steward or baillie to the Earl of Kellie. The first thirteen or fourteen years of Archibald’s life were passed beneath his father’s roof, and his education, such as the parish school of Carnbee then afforded, consisted of a course of reading in the vernacular tongue, writing, arithmetic, and some elementary lessons in trigonometry, and beyond this humble curriculum, we believe his subsequent acquisitions did not much extend. Still, though he never attained any proficiency in academical studies, his native talents and address generally enabled him to both surmount and conceal it.