HBSET, LOED BROUGHAM. 9 



other almost innumerable claims to such a distinction disregarded." The late 

 Dean of Ely (Dr. Peacock) has also nobly vindicated the tame of Dr. Young; 

 and the undulatory theory is now generally received in place of the molecular or 

 emanatory theory.* 



However, retribution came : the noble reviewer himself has, in his turn, 

 been treated " very martyrly," as all must remember who read many years ago 

 in Blackwood' s Edinburgh Magazine, a most severe and lengthy attack upon one 

 of the law reforms of that day, entitled " Lords Brougham, Lyndhurst, and Local 

 Courts." Throughout the volumes of Maga we do not remember a more stinging 

 or fierce assault than this paper, which was strongly overcharged with profes- 

 sional jealousy. 



A better estimate has recently appeared. In the Saturday Review, Nov. 5, 1800, 

 it is justly said : — " The mass of the legislative reforms which we owe to Lord 

 Brougham, more especially in the various departments of the law, is so surprising, 

 that one can scarcely credit the extent to which the present system of jurispru- 

 dence bears the impress of his hand. From the day when Henry Brougham passed 

 his lirst memorable bill through Parliament, by which the slave trade was de- 

 clared to be felony, down to the last movement for legal reform, his assiduity^ 

 has never flagged. Professional demands upon his energies, and excursions ot 

 greater or less depth into every department of science and literature, have 

 always seemed to leave him ample time for pursuing the great work of his liie 

 — the improvement of the principles and practice of the administration of jus- 

 tice. Of all the important changes which have been made in our legal system 

 during the last half century, there are very few in which the name of Lord 

 Brougham is not in some measure associated ; and the number of reforms which 

 he may justly call his own form a progeny such as no other statesman can 

 boast." .... " There is scarcely a branch of law reform to which Lord 

 Brougham has not contributed something of actual legislation ; but his great 

 glory is to have been a law reformer when almost all lawyers were obsti- 

 nately conservative, and to have done more than any one else, by his exertions 

 in and out of Parliament, to set the stone rolling which has crushed a multitude 

 of abuses, and promises to dispose of all that remain." 



Lord Brougham has been for several years a member of the National Insti- 

 tute of France; and among the papers which he has read there is one "On 

 certain Paradoxes, real or supposed, in the Integral Calculus," June, 1857;* 

 also, an elaborate memoir, the " Architecture of Cells of Bees," read -May, 

 1858 ; a tract of " Inquiries, Analytical and Experimental, on Light," in the 

 memoirs of the Institute, 1854. These papers have been reprinted in a volume 

 of Tracts, Mathematical and Physical,^ published last autumn. The first tract, 

 and two others on Light, were written in 1791, 5, 6, and 7, when the author wa3 

 a student at the University under Professors Playfair and Kobinson. In the 

 preface to this volume, Lord Brougham relates an interesting reminiscence of 

 the University, showing how Professor Playfair's expression of an opinion of 

 his pupil's good fortune in hitting upon the Binomial Theorem, at once fixed his 

 inclination for mathematical studies. 



Lord Brougham is Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, to whom the 

 above tracts, " begun while its pupil, finished when its head, are inscribed by 

 the author, in grateful remembrance of benefits conferred of old, and honour 

 of late bestowed." 



Our next record is that of the very interesting inauguration of a statue to Sir 

 Isaac Newton, at his native town, Grantham, in Lincolnshire, Sept. 21, 1858, 

 at which Lord Brougham delivered an eloquent address. His Lordship, after 

 some preliminary observations, said : — The remark is common and is obvious 

 that the genius of Newton did not manifest itself at a very early age. His 

 faculties were not, like those of some great and many ordinary individuals, pre- 

 cociously developed. Among the former, Clairaut stands pre-eminent, who, at 



* We refrain from dwelling upon this error in judgment; at the same time 

 we feel it to be too important a fact in the history of scientific discovery to be 

 omitted even in the present brief sketch. 



f This volume, together with Lord Brougham's Historical and Miscellaneous 

 Works, 10 vols.; Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, 3 vols.; and Paley's 

 Hatural Philosophy, 3 vols., have lately been published, in handsome but eco- 

 nomical forms, by Griffin, Bohn, and Co. 



