Alexander Nicolson

Alexander Nicolson (1827–1893) was a Scottish lawyer and man of letters, known as a Gaelic scholar and sheriff-substitute of Kirkcudbright and Greenock, and as a pioneer of mountain climbing in Scotland.

The son of Malcolm Nicolson, he was born at Usabost in Skye on 27 September 1827. With an early education from tutors, he entered Edinburgh University after the death of his father, intending to study for the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland. He graduated B.A. in 1850, and later in 1859 received an honorary degree of M.A.: in the absence through illness of Sir William Hamilton, Nicolson as his assistant lectured for his class on logic, and for two years he performed a similar service for Patrick Campbell Macdougall in the class of moral philosophy.

Giving up theology while at the Free Church College, Nicholson for some time worked as one of the sub-editors of the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He moved on, to the staff of the Edinburgh Guardian, a short-lived literary paper of high literary quality. For a year he edited an advanced Liberal paper, the Daily Express, which later was merged into the Caledonian Mercury.

Nicolson was called in 1860 to the Scottish bar. With little practice, for ten years he reported law cases for the Scottish Jurist, of which he became editor. He acted as examiner in philosophy in the university, and examiner of births, etc., in Edinburgh and the neighbouring counties.

In 1865 Nicolson was appointed assistant commissioner by the Scottish education commission, in which capacity he visited widely in the Western Isles, inspected their schools, and reported in a detailed blue-book. In 1872 he accepted the office of sheriff-substitute of Kirkcudbright, declining the offer of the Celtic chair in Edinburgh University, set up largely by his own efforts and those of John Stuart Blackie. In 1880 he received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh University.

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