HOLCOMBE, James Philemon, author, born in Lynchburg, Virginia, 25 September, 1820; died in Capon Springs, Virginia, 26 August, 1873. He was educated at Yale and at the University of Virginia, and was professor of law in the latter institution from 1852 till 1860. He was a secession member of the Virginia convention of 1861, served in the Confederate congress in 1861-'3, and was Confederate commissioner to Canada in 1863-'5. From 1868 until his death he was principal of the Bellevue high school, Nelson county, Virginia Besides constant contributions to periodicals and to the publications of the Virginia historical society, of which he was a member, he published "Leading Cases on Commercial Law " (New York, 1847); "Digests of the Decisions of the United States Supreme Court" (1848); "Merchants' Book of Reference" (1848) 7 and " Literature and Letters" (1868).--His brother, William Henry, physician, born in Lynchburg, Virginia, 25 May, 1825, was graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1847, and has practised his profession in Lynchburg, Virginia, Cincinnati, Ohio, and New Orleans, Louisiana, where he now (1887)resides. In 1874-'5 he was president of the American institute of homoeopathy. He has published, besides numerous contributions to homoeopathic and Swedenborgian literature, "Scientific Basis of Homoeopathy" (Cincinnati, 1852); "Poems" (New York, 1860);" Our Children in Heaven" (Philadelphia, 1868); "The Sexes Here and Hereafter" (1869); " In Both Worlds" (1870); " The Other Life" (1871); "Southern Voices " (1872); " The Lost Truths of Christianity " (1879);" The End of the World" (1881)7 "The New Life" (1884); and "" Letters on Spiritual Subjects" (1885).