M’COSH, JAMES (1811-1894).—­Philosophical writer, s. of an Ayrshire farmer, was a minister first of the Church of Scotland, and afterwards of the Free Church.  From 1851-68 he was Prof. of Logic at Queen’s Coll., Belfast, and thereafter Pres. of Princeton Coll., New Jersey.  He wrote several works on philosophy, including Method of the Divine Government (1850), Intuitions of the Mind inductively investigated (1860), Laws of Discursive Thought (1870), Scottish Philosophy (1874), and Psychology (1886).

M’CRIE, THOMAS (1772-1835).—­Biographer and ecclesiastical historian, b. at Duns, and ed. at the Univ. of Edin., became the leading minister of one of the Dissenting churches of Scotland.  His Life of Knox (1813) ranks high among biographies for the ability and learning which it displays, and was the means of vindicating the great Reformer from a cloud of prejudice and misunderstanding in which he had been enveloped.  It was followed by a Life of Andrew Melville (1819), Knox’s successor as the leader of the Reformers in Scotland, also a work of great merit.  M’C. also pub. histories of the Reformation in Italy and Spain.  He received the degree of D.D. in 1813.

MACDONALD, GEORGE (1824-1905).—­Poet and novelist, s. of a farmer, was b. at Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and ed. at the Univ. of Aberdeen, and at the Independent Coll., Highbury.  He became minister of a congregation at Arundel, but after a few years retired, on account partly of theological considerations, partly of a threatened, breakdown of health.  He then took to literature, and pub. his first book, Within and Without (1856), a dramatic poem, Poems followed in 1857, and Phantasies, a Faerie Romance, in 1858.  He then turned to fiction, and produced numerous novels, of which David Elginbrod (1862), Alec Forbes (1865), Robert Falconer (1868), The Marquis of Lossie (1877), and Sir Gibbie (1879), are perhaps the best.  He also wrote stories for children of great charm and originality, including The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, and Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood.  As a novelist he had considerable narrative and dramatic power, humour, tenderness, a genial view of life and character, tinged with mysticism, and within his limits was a true poet.  On retiring from the ministry he attached himself to the Church of England, but frequently preached as a layman, never accepting any remuneration for his sermons.