HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, LL.D., F.R.S., &c. 



(With a Portrait.) 



Thisti years have rolled away since the hand which sketches this outline of 

 the scientific and literary labours of Lord Brougham was devoted to a similarly 

 pleasurable and not unserviceable pnrpose. The " man of the people" had just 

 then received from his Sovereign the Great Seal ; and Henry Brougham, who 

 had never before been in office, took his seat as Lord High Chancellor of Great 

 Britain. Jubilant were the liberal organs of that day upon this signal elevation 

 of their illustrious leader. "We have had," says the foremost of these writers, 

 " learned Chancellors and political, or, we would rather say, politic Chancellors, 

 but never before Lord Brougham (with, perhaps, the exception of Lord Erskine) 



have we had what maybe justly called a popular Chancellor We speak 



the plain and simple truth when we say, that at no period of our history since 

 the era of the Commonwealth, has any one Englishman contrived to fix so many 

 eyes upon him as Lord Brougham has for the last few years." This was, indeed, 

 a proud moment for the son of the Cumberland gentleman, who, however, is of 

 noble blood, for his lordship is heir general and representative of the ancient and 

 noble house of Vaux. 



His tenure of office was short: he retired with his party in 1831; and has 

 since — more than a quarter of a century — principally devoted his great mind to 

 the reform of our Laws, and to the diffusion of Science and Literature, more espe- 

 cially as they relate to the welfare of the masses — 



Oblectamento non sui solum, sed populorum. 



It is to these peaceful phases of the long 1 and honourable career of Lord 

 Brougham — before and since his elevation to the peerage — as a man of science, 

 a critic, and man of letters, that' we shall devote these few pages; the leading 

 events of his Lordship's public life being merely glanced at, in order to preserve 

 the continuity of the biographical narrative. 



Henry, Lord Brougham, was born in St. Andrew's-square, Edinburgh, on the 

 19th of September, 1779. His father, Henry Brougham, Esq., of Scales Hall, 

 Cumberland, and Brougham Hall, Westmoreland, was descended from the ancient 

 family of Brougham, or l)e Burghanis. He married Eleanor Syme, eldest daughter 

 of the Kev. Dr. James Syme, niece, through her mother, of Robertson, the his- 

 torian. Of six children by this marriage — five sons and one daughter — Henry 

 is the eldest. (Two of the other sons, James and William, were members of 

 Parliament, and took some part in pubhc life during '.he brilliant career of their 

 brother.) The family seems to have resided for '.he most part in Edinburgh, 

 though sometimes at Brougham Hall, where Dr. Eobertson visited them occa- 

 sionally, and used to walk about with his grandnephew. The elder Brougham 

 was no extraordinary man, bvit the mother is described as a woman of talent, and 

 delightful character. 



Henry Brougham was educated in Edinburgh, which, in 1857, he declared 

 in public he looked upon as a very great benefit conferred on him by Provi- 

 dence. It was at the famous High School that he received his earliest classical tui- 

 tion, under Mr. Luke Fraser, one of the under-masters, mentioned by Lord Cock- 

 burn in his Life of Jeffrey, as having had the distinguished honour of sending 

 forth from three successive classes, three pupils no less celebrated than Scott, 

 Jeffrey, and Brougham ; and next under tbe^head master or rector, Dr. Adam, the 

 learned author of the Roman Antiquities, and a man of much weight and im- 

 pressiveness of character, whose memory is not yet locally extinct. From the 

 High School, Brougham passed, at the age of fifteen, to the University of Edin- 

 burgh, then so illustrious by having such men as Dugald Stewart, Robison, and 

 Black among its professors, that English youths and youths from the colonies 

 were sent to it to complete their education. 



At the opening of the Session of the University of Edinburgh, in 1857, 

 Principal Lee, in his introductory address, gave the following interesting account 

 of the school-days of Lord Brougham : — 



" Though descended (he said) from an ancient English family, he was born in 

 Edinburgh, and his mother was a niece of Principal Robertson. In 1786, when 

 seven years old, he entered the High School, in a class of 164 boys ; and he had 

 the advantage of being instructed by Mr. Luke Fraser, who was forty years a 

 favourite teacher, under whom Sir Walter Scott commenced his classical studies 



