Edward William Lane, third son of the Rev. Theophilus Lane, a Prebendary of Hereford Cathedral, and of Sophia Gardiner, a niece of Gainsborough the painter, was born at Hereford, on Sept. 17th, 1801, and largely educated by his parents, especially his mother, to whom he owed much of his intellectual and moral training. Having shown equal mastery of classics and mathematics, he intended entering at Cambridge with a view to taking holy orders, but abandoned this intention after a short visit to Cambridge. Immediately afterwards he found himself able to solve all the problems in the mathematical tripos of the year except one, the solution to which came to him while asleep, and was at once written down on waking in the middle of the night. Joining his elder brother Richard, an able lithographer, in London, he made great progress in engraving and other branches of art, which were afterwards of much value to him in Egypt. Through overwork and want of exercise, he injured his constitution, and nearly succumbed to an attack of fever. His subsequent ill-health led him to contemplate a residence in the East, to which his now rapidly progressing studies in Arabic had already attracted him. In July, 1825, he left England in a brig bound for Alexandria. On Sept. 2nd the vessel nearly foundered in a gale off Tunis; the master proved incompetent, and begged Lane, who knew something of navigation, to take the helm; and, lashed to the wheel, he succeeded in taking the brig safely into Malta.