4 EARLY LIFE. 



thirteenth year, he was considered too young to be 

 sent to college ; and therefore we left Edinburgh and 

 went to Brougham, taking with us the three eldest 

 boys, and Mr, afterwards Dr, Mitchell, as their tutor. 

 We did not return to Edinburgh till the winter of 

 1792; and Henry was then entered at the class which 

 is called the Humanity class. Next year he attended 

 the Greek class, taught by Professor Dalzell. In ad- 

 dition to these classical studies he attended the classes 

 of natural philosophy and chemistry, and of mathe- 

 matics under Professor Playfair, a great and good 

 man, who bore ample testimony to the large amount 

 of knowledge Henry had acquired when he was only 

 sixteen. When he was about this age, he wrote a 

 very able paper on ' The Eefraction of Light/ which 

 gained the prize adjudged to that subject by a Ger- 

 man university. By some mistake, he never got the 

 prize, but he did get the honour. At a very early 

 age he showed considerable talent for speaking in 

 public : really, in infancy, I may say, he showed this 

 tendency ; for he used to get up a make-believe court 

 of justice for the trial of a supposed prisoner he 

 himself acting as counsel, prosecuting the prisoner, 

 examining the witnesses, summing up the case, and 

 ending by passing sentence. Before he was seventeen, 

 he became a member of the Speculative Society, a 

 debating club which met weekly from six to ten in 

 the evening, or even later. There he distinguished 

 himself both for close reasoning and even for speak- 

 ing that almost amounted to eloquence. But he was 



