Blanco White, " the rationalist A'Kempis," who had dared to appear as " a religious sceptic in God's presence," had found a biographer and interpreter in Martineau's friend and colleague, John Hamilton Thom.
Not far distant, on a conspicuous position close by the banks of the Doon, stands the Grecian monument to Burns, in the grounds of which is the grotto containing Thom's figures of Tam o' Shanter and Souter Johnnie.
In 1701 he resigned his living to become deputy at Cambridge to Sir Isaac Newton, `Thom two years later he succeeded as Lucasian professor of mathematics.
At home the teaching of James Martineau (1805-1900), resisted at first, was at length powerfully felt, seconded as it was by the influence of John James Tayler (1797-1869) and John Hamilton Thom (1808-1894).
Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century (London, 1905); Filson Young, Ireland at the Cross-Roads (London, 1904); Thom's Almanac, published annually in Dublin, gives a very useful summary of statistics and other information.