John Barrow, born in a lowly cottage at Dragley Beck, in Lancashire, rose, by his own earnest industry, to the responsible post of a Secretary to the Admiralty, for forty years, under thirteen administrations. When sixteen years old, he made a voyage in a whaler to Greenland; he next taught mathematics in a school at Greenwich. He attended Lord Macartney in his celebrated embassy to China, and took charge of the philosophical instruments carried out as presents to the Emperor of China; of this journey Barrow subsequently published an account in a quarto volume. He was next appointed Secretary to Lord Macartney, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope; and during his leisure Mr. Barrow, in various journeys, collected materials for a volume of _Travels in South Africa_, which he published on his return to England. Throughout his Admiralty secretaryship he was indefatigable in promoting the progress of geographical or scientific knowledge, especially in recommending to the governments under which he served various voyages to the Arctic Regions. He was a man of untiring industry, and devoted his leisure to literature and scientific pursuits: he published various works; contributed 195 articles to the _Quarterly Review_; and at the age of eighty-three (one year before his death) wrote his Autobiography. His public services had been rewarded by a baronetcy in 1835; and shortly after his death, in 1848, upon the lofty Hill of Hoad, near to the humble cottage in which Sir John Barrow was born, there was erected, by public subscription, to his memory, a sea-mark tower, as a record of what noble distinction may be earned in this happy country by well-directed energy and strictly moral worth. --------------------- Footnote 93: Sir E. L. Bulwer Lytton’s _Zanoni_. Footnote 94: Family reputation is generally considered but an insecure stock to begin the world with: nevertheless there is much truth in the experience of Lord Mahon (now Earl Stanhope), who says: “In public life I have seen full as many men promoted for their father’s talents as for their own.” Footnote 95: This letter is quoted in Mr. Smiles’s _Self-Help_. Footnote 96: _Notes and Queries._ ---------------------------- OFFICIAL QUALIFICATIONS.