HAMILTON, JAMES (1769-1831), English educationist, and author of the Hamiltonian system of teaching languages, was born in 1769. He went in 1814 to America, intending to become a farmer and manufacturer of potash; but, changing his plan before he reached his "location," he started as a teacher in New York. There, and in other cities, he was very successful, using a method of teaching languages which he had learned in Hamburg from a French émigré, General d'Angelis. He returned to England in 1823, and taught in various centres. The two master prin ciples of his method were that the language should be presented to the scholar as a living organism, and that its laws should be learned from observation and not by rules. As textbooks for his pupils Hamilton printed interlinear translations of the Gospel of John, of an Epitome historiae sacrae, of Aesop's Fables, Eu tropius, Aurelius Victor, Phaedrus, etc., and many books were issued as Hamiltonian with which he had nothing personally to do. He died on Oct. 31, 1831.