Hall, Sir James, 4th Bt
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- Hall, Sir James, 4th Bt
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(1761 - 1832), geologist and chemist, of Dunglass, co. Haddington, e. s. of Sir John Hall; suc. fa. 1776 as 4th Bt.; Christ's Camb. 1777; m. 1786 Ldy. Helen Douglas, dau. of 4th E. of Selkirk [S]; v.-pres. SA 1798; FRS; MP 1807 - 12; pub. Essay on Gothic Architecture [1797].
1784 - 5 [dep. Edinburgh 9 May 1783; dep. Vienna, 30 Apr. 1784] Venice (15 May), Padua (27 May), Verona (29 May), Mantua (30 May), Milan (1 Jun.), Turin (3 Jun.) [Geneva 13 Jun.] Genoa (3 Oct.), Turin (10 - 20 Oct.), Pavia, Piacenza, Parma, Bologna ( - 8 Nov.), Florence (8 - 15 Nov.), Rome (18 Nov. 1784 - 25 Feb. 1785), Naples (27 Feb. - 9 Apr.), Paestum (11 Apr.), Stromboli (15 Apr.), Sicily (Apr. - Jul.), Rome (by 2 Aug.), Florence
Sir James spent a year in Germany and eastern Europe before coming to Italy. He kept a travel journal (Hall jnl.MSS) which provides his itinerary and detailed notes on techniques of mining, archaeological sites and vulcanology, without altogether ignoring the fine arts.1 He left Vienna on 30 April 1784, and arrived in Venice on 15 May. The next day he was joined by Sir James Graham and Thomas Brand ('an old friend'). Together they went to Padua on 27 May and made a tour of northern Italy before settling for the summer in Switzerland (Hall reached Geneva on 13 June). On 3 October he came by sea from Nice to Genoa, whose 'grandeur & beauty' impressed him, and he then spent ten days in Turin, where the envoy John Trevor proved a kind host and introduced him to William Hamilton (14 Oct.), then on his way back to Naples from England. Hall saw Hamilton again at Bologna, where he also met 'Canonico' ('a pleasant little fellow').2 In Florence he spent much time in the Uffizi, remarking how Reynolds's self-portrait was both 'unlike & faded to pieces' (10 Nov.); he met Robert Merry and observed the Young Pretender 'a handsome old man, very infirm & led between two servants' (11 Nov.). He called on the painter H.D. Hamilton and saw in his studio 'several portraits very like', including one of Robert Merry and another of James Graham (14 Nov.).
He reached Rome on 18 November (but his account of his stay is missing from the journals). He witnessed an assembly of the Arcadians, the somewhat eccentric literary society, but decided he preferred 'the material lands of Dunglass without grasping at the Arcadian plains'.2 He sat to Angelica Kauffman in January/February 1785 (SNPG), and followed one of James Byres's strenuous antiquarian courses: for six weeks he was 'busy every morning for long hours going round with Byres & every night writing my journal', although during the next six weeks the 'amazement wore off'2 (Sir William Forbes saw Hall's journal in 1793, mentioning the description of Byres's discovery of the Circus of Caracalla).3
Hall left Rome on 25 February on hearing a [false] report that Vesuvius was erupting. Lord Grey de Wilton met him on the summit of Vesuvius on 6 March4 and his own journal described an ascent on 13 March. He was still in Naples on 4 April, experiencing 'nothing but the commonplace round'. He had met the Abb?s Galieni and Raynal, and for the last six months, he told Robert Wharton, whenever he was 'sleepy or out of humour', he had been reading Boccaccio, who 'never fails of setting all to rights'.5 On 9 April he set out for Sicily with a Dr Home, 'two young gentlemen of great worth, remarkably well informed and indefatigable in their researches', commented Byres.6 They travelled down the coast by boat, visiting Paestum on 11 April. In Sicily their interests continued to be largely geological, and Byres subsequently recounted that they had been regarded with suspicion and were 'twice taken up for thieves - once on Etna & once on Vesuvius - as [they] went about the country like vagabonds carrying great hammers, breaking stones & hunting for treasures'.7 Hall's investigations were later the basis of a series of papers on mineralogy given to the Royal Society in Edinburgh. He was back in Rome by 2 August, and was then going on to Florence.7 He was in Paris in February 1786.8 His companion Dr Home may have been the 'Monsu Ome' living in the parish of S.Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome at Easter 1786.9
1. Notes by H.G. Belsey. 2. Wharton letters MSS (to Wharton, 2 Mar. 1785). 3. Forbes jnl.MSS (RBF note). 4. Grey jnl.MSS 1. 5. Wharton letters MSS (4 Apr. 1785). 6. Byres letters
MSS c (10 Aug. 1785). 7. Ibid. (2 Aug. 1785). 8. Brand Letters MSS c (Paris, 12 Feb. 1786). 9. AVR sa.