The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-04 00:00:00

SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF LORD

BROUGHAM.

(FOR THE SUN.)
The elevation of Lord Brougham to the

Woolsack, and the distinguished talents which
have characterised his labours in the Upper House,

have given the deepest interest to every thing

which relates to the intellectual history of this
remarkable man. His career at the Bar, his la-

hours in the Senate, his efforts for the diffusion of
knowledge and education, are well known in
every cottage which the school. master has visited.
We regret, however, to find that Lord Broupham
is less known than he ought to be, in his scien-
tific character. While studying at Edinburgh,
under Professor Robison and Mr. Playfair, he

was known to be an ardent cultivator of the ma-

thernatical and physical sciences. The optics of
Newton had particularly attracted his attention,

and he began his philosophical career by the in-
vestigation of some of the most recondite pro-
perties of light. These enquiries he pursued

with the most romantic ardour, and the results

of them were published in the transactions of the
Royal Society of London for 1796 and 1797.

The first of these papers is entitled " Experi-

ments and Observations on the IVexion and
Reflexion, and the Colours of Light;" and
the second " Further Experiments and Obser-
vat ions on the Affections and Properties of
Light, by Henry Brougham, jun. Esq."
These papers contain some fine experiments,
several new and interesting results, and many in-
genious and original views. In 1798 Mr.
Brougham communicated to the Royal Society,
General Theorems, chiefly Porisms, in the
Higher Geometry, and he was elected a Fellow
of that learned body, when he could scarcely
have reached his twenty-third or twenty-fourth
year, an age at which few, if any individuals, had
received that honour.

After the establishment of the Edinburgh
Review he contributed to that work various
scientific articles of extraordinary merit. Cha•
racterized by elegant and powerful writing, and
a profound knowledge of every subject to which
they related, these articles too appeared to his
scientific contemporaries more like the produc-
tions of some able and learned Professor, than

of a young man who had so recently devoted
himself to the study of nature. In discharging
the duties of a laborious profession, Air.
Brougham was obliged to moderate his love of

science, and to direct his powers into new chan-
nels, but we know that he continued to pursue
mathematical and physical studies in those lei-
sure hours which he contrived to create out of
the momentary interval that separated his multi-
farious occupations. Since his elevation to the
woolsack, and amid the political storms which

agitate every one but himself, he has found it
possible to pursue the calm researches of phy-

sical science; and we have no doubt that those
who have been admitted into his study may have

seen the Lord High Chancellor of England with
a Prism on one hand, and the Great Seal on
the other.

It has been said by those who know nothing
of the matter, that Lord Brougham has be-
come averse to science. This erroneous con-
clusion has, we suspect, been drawn from a mis-
interpretation of his Lordship's speech at the
dinner of the Literary Fund, in which he stated
that public patronage was the only one for litera-

ture. This is no doubt true of all those branches
of literature and even of science which have a
commercial value, and are therefore capable of
being well remunerated by the public. But his
Lordship never said that the higher departments
of literary research and profound enquiries of a
mathematical and physical nature, should be left
to the patronage of a public which can neither
understand nor appreciate them. The highest

interests of mankind, as well as the national
honour, have long and loudly demanded of Eng-
land some royal establishment for fostering those
higher efforts of the mind which all other na-
tions have taken under their protection.
When he is relieved from the pressure

of his more immediate duties, we have no
doubt that Lord Brougham will occupy
himself with this great object, and that he
will crown his services to the sciences and
the arts of his country by the establishment of a
Board of Commissioners for Patents, and a
Board for executing the great purposes of na-
tional instruction. That he is able to effect
these objects nobody can doubt, and that he is
willing, may be inferred from the acts of public
kindness which he has recently shewn several
scientific men, and especially from the honours
which have lately been conferred by the King
upon certain literary and scientific individuals, a
measure which it may be presumed was recom-
mended by the Lord Chancellor. If any further
proof were wanting of his Lordship's love of
science, it might be drawn from IVlrs. soincr-
ville's newly published volume on " The Me-
chanism of the Heavens." This admirable
work, which no other woman, and not many
men in Europe could have written, is dedicated
to Lord Brougham, and is stated to have been
undertaken at his express request.
Such a man as this ought surely to be prized
by his country—not by his friends and partisans
only, but even by those rival Gladiators with
whom he has had to grapple in the arena of
public strife. Nursed as his political infancy
has been amid the breakers of faction, and
triumphing as he has done in every great mea-
sure which he has advocated, the public eye is
already fixed upon him as the only pilot who
can conduct the vessel of the State into its
haven of still waters. Lord Brougham has been
charged by his enemies with being an ambitious
man. His friends and even himself will admit
' the accusation—his ambition is to destroy the
hydra of ignorance and corruption—to embalm
his memory within the heart of the nation,—
and to inscribe an immortal name on the pedi-
ment of its renovated institutions.

A report was circulated yesterday that several
cases of cholera bad occurred in this city ; but, on inquiry,
we find that there is not the smallest foundation for such
statements..—Edinburgh Evening Courant.