Henry Dundas, a lawyer, orator, and author, was born in Edinburgh, October 26, 1779. His father was Archibald Cockburn, a baron of the court of exchequer in Scotland. His mother, a daughter of Captain Rannie, was a sister of the wife of Henry Dundas, Lord Melville. It was from this connection that he was christened with the names Henry Dundas, and it was naturally expected that he would devote his brilliant powers to that triumphant party in which the statesman whose name he bore was, according to the political notions of the day, bound by the strongest obligations to advance him. Making his own selection, however, on his own principles, the young lawyer, who entered the faculty of advocates in the year 1800, attached himself to the Whig or Liberal party, at a time when it held out few inducements to men ambitious of vulgar success in life; and he adhered to his political choice with a single-hearted steadiness of purpose rivalled only by the constancy of his personal friendships. He possessed many remarkable faculties, through which he might have acquired distinction in several departments of intellectual exertion. His forensic eloquence, peculiar for its clearness, earnest pathos, and striking simplicity, was the qualification which the world first perceived, and was chiefly accustomed to associate with his name. His conversational powers were unrivalled among his contemporaries for fertility of fancy, corrected by soundness of taste. The extent of his literary ability became known after he had passed his seventieth year, by his beautiful biography of his beloved friend Jeffrey, published in 1852. It is understood that he has left behind him manuscripts which, when they are published, may have some chance of conveying to future generations a notion of the brilliant intellectual resources by which he delighted the contemporary circle privileged by the enjoyment of his familiar society. On the accession of Earl Grey's ministry in 1830, he became solicitor-general for Scotland. In 1834 he was raised to the bench, and (after the usual custom in Scotland) he took the title of Lord Cockburn. He died on the 26th of April 1854, in his mansion of Bonsay on the slope of the Pentland Hills, where he had long derived the purest enjoyment from improvements calculated to aid the natural beauty of the scenery.