astronomer and mathematician, held the office of Treasurer of War
at Turin; but having ruined himself by speculations, his family
were reduced to comparative poverty. To this circumstance Lagrange
was in after life accustomed partly to attribute his own fame and
happiness. "Had I been rich," said he, "I should probably not have
become a mathematician."

The sons of clergymen and ministers of religion generally, have
particularly distinguished themselves in our country's history.
Amongst them we find the names of Drake and Nelson, celebrated in
naval heroism; of Wollaston, Young, Playfair, and Bell, in science;
of Wren, Reynolds, Wilson, and Wilkie, in art; of Thurlow and
Campbell, in law; and of Addison, Thomson, Goldsmith, Coleridge,
and Tennyson, in literature. Lord Hardinge, Colonel Edwardes, and
Major Hodson, so honourably known in Indian warfare, were also the
sons of clergymen. Indeed, the empire of England in India was won
and held chiefly by men of the middle class--such as Clive, Warren
Hastings, and their successors--men for the most part bred in
factories and trained to habits of business.

Among the sons of attorneys we find Edmund Burke, Smeaton the
engineer, Scott and Wordsworth, and Lords Somers, Hardwick, and
Dunning. Sir William Blackstone was the posthumous son of a silk-
mercer. Lord Gifford's father was a grocer at Dover; Lord Denman's
a physician; judge Talfourd's a country brewer; and Lord Chief
Baron Pollock's a celebrated saddler at Charing Cross. Layard, the
discoverer of the monuments of Nineveh, was an articled clerk in a
London solicitor's office; and Sir William Armstrong, the inventor
of hydraulic machinery and of the Armstrong ordnance, was also
trained to the law and practised for some time as an attorney.