In his private capacity, Sir James is genial, accessible, and full of dry, pawky humour. He is in his proper element when entertaining a company of his friends, either at his town residence in Bath Street, or at his more delightful country mansion of Stracathro, near Brechin. Although upwards of eighty years of age, he is in the full possession of all his faculties, his sight alone excepted, and even his sense of vision is sufficiently retained to enable him to find his way in the most crowded thoroughfares of the city. MR. JAMES YOUNG OF KELLY. The whole range of industrial biography does not present a more signally successful career than that of Mr. James Young; nor can we find, in all the annals of aspiring genius, a more wonderful example of the ultimate triumph of mind over matter. The origin of the inventor of paraffin oil was comparatively obscure. He was born in the Drygate of Glasgow--a street on which the operations of the City Improvement Trust have effected a wonderful transformation--where his father was a working cabinetmaker. After receiving what little schooling his parents were able to afford, Mr. Young commenced to assist his father--who had by this time established himself as his own master in the Calton--and while so employed he took to the study of Chemistry. For some time he attended the lectures of Professor Graham, the late Master of the Mint (to whom a monument has been erected by his illustrious pupil in George Square) at the Andersonian University, and he showed such aptitude for science, that in a remarkably short time he became Mr. Graham's class assistant. In this capacity Mr. Young continued for seven years, and, as his subsequent career amply showed, he did not fail to improve his opportunities. After leaving the Andersonian, he followed Mr. Graham to London, when the latter was appointed to the Professorship of Chemistry in London University, and he continued to be associated with his old friend and master until he accepted the position of manager of Muspratt's Chemical Works at Newton, near Liverpool. Here he continued for four-and-a-half years, improving, of course, his acquaintance with the practical bearings of his favourite science, especially in regard to the manufacture of alkali and bleaching powder, the staple products of Muspratt's works. Mr. Young afterwards removed to Manchester, where he undertook a responsible position in Tennant's Chemical Works--a branch of Tennant's of Glasgow. This would be in the year 1843. While employed in Manchester he received from Dr. Lyon Playfair, whose acquaintance he had made while in the Andersonian University, a communication with reference to the existence of a petroleum spring in Derbyshire. This may almost be said to have been the turning point in Mr. Young's career. Dr. Playfair stated that in his brother-in-law's coal mine in Derbyshire there was a large quantity of petroleum, and he proposed that Mr. Young