[1868.—It has been remarked elsewhere that, for a great number of
years after the general desertion of the Old Town by persons of
condition, there were many denizens of the New who had occasion to
look back to the Canongate and Cowgate as the place of their birth.
The nativity of one person who achieved extraordinary greatness and
distinction, and whose death was an occurrence of yesterday, Henry,
Lord Brougham, undoubtedly was connected with the lowly place last
mentioned.
The Edinburgh tradition on the subject was that Henry Brougham,
younger, of Brougham Hall, in the county of Cumberland, in consequence
of a disappointment in love, came to Edinburgh for the diversion of his
mind. Principal Robertson, to whom he bore a letter of introduction,
recommended the young man to the care of his sister—Mrs Syme, widow
of the minister of Alloa—who occupied what was then considered as a
good and spacious house at the head of the Cowgate—strictly the third
floor of the house now marked No. 8—a house desirable from its having
an extraordinary space in front. Here, it would appear, Mr Brougham
speedily consoled himself for his former disappointment by falling in
love with Eleonora, the daughter of Mrs Syme; and a marriage, probably
a hurried one, soon united the young pair. They set up for themselves
(Whitsunday 1778) in an upper floor of a house in the then newly built
St Andrew Square, where, in the ensuing September, their eldest son,
charged with so illustrious a destiny, first saw the light.[61]
Mr Brougham conclusively settled in Edinburgh; he subsequently occupied
a handsome house in George Street. He was never supposed to be a man
of more than ordinary faculties; but any deficiency in this respect
was amply made up for by his wife, who is represented by all who
remember her as a person of uncommon mental gifts. The contrast of the
pair drew the attention of society, and was the subject of a gently
satiric sketch in Henry Mackenzie’s _Lounger_, No. 45, published on the
10th December 1785, which, however, would vainly be looked for in the
reprinted copies, as it was immediately suppressed.]
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