Mr. JAMES SANSON was the son of James Sanson, tacksman of Birkhillside Mill, situate in the parish of Legerwood, in Berwickshire. After getting the rudiments of his education at a country-school, he went to the University of Edinburgh, and, at a subsequent period, completed his probationary studies at that of Glasgow. At these colleges he made great proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and became deeply immersed in the depths of philosophy and theology, of which, as with Dominie Sampson, the more abstruse and neglected branches were his favourite subjects of application. He was a close, incessant student; and, in the families where he afterwards resided as a tutor, all his leisure moments were devoted to the pursuits of literature. Even his hours of relaxation and walking were not exempted, in the exceeding earnestness of his solicitude. Then he was seldom seen without a book, upon which he would be so intent, that a friend might have passed, and even spoken to him, without Sanson’s being conscious of the circumstance. After going through his probationary trials before the presbytery, he became an acceptable, even an admired preacher, and was frequently employed in assisting the clergymen of the neighbourhood. From the narrow circumstances of his father, he was obliged early in life to become a tutor. Into whose family he first entered is unknown. However, in this humble situation, owing probably to the parsimonious economy to which he had been accustomed in his father’s house, he in a short time saved the sum of twenty-five pounds—a little fortune in those days to a youth of Mr. Sanson’s habits. With this money he determined upon a pedestrian excursion into England, for which he was excellently qualified, from his uncommon strength and undaunted resolution. After journeying over a great part of the sister kingdom, he came to Harwich, where a sight of the passage-boats to Holland, and the cheapness of the fare, induced him to take a trip to the continent. How he was supported during his peregrinations was never certainly discovered; but he actually travelled over the greater part of the Netherlands, besides a considerable portion of Germany, and spent only about the third part of his twenty-five pounds. He always kept a profound silence upon the subject himself; but it is conjectured, with great probability, that in the Low Countries he had recourse to convents, were the monks were ever ready to do acts of kindness to men of such learning as Sanson would appear to them to be. Perhaps he procured the means of subsistence by the expedients which the celebrated Goldsmith is said to have practised in his continental wanderings, and made the disputation of the morning supply the dinner of the day.