Sir Samuel, one of the most enlightened and virtuous public men whom England has ever possessed, was, as his family-name indicates, the descendant of a French family. He was the son of a jeweller in London, and was born there on the 1st of March 1757. The education of this child, destined in time to occupy so distinguished a place, was conducted for some time with even less care than might have been expected from the station held by his family. But heartily disliking his father's business, he was at length allowed to change it for professional employments, though as yet in an inferior department. At the age of sixteen he was articled to one of the six clerks in Chancery; and in the easy mechanical duties of his master's chambers, relieved by the zealous prosecution of his studies both in English and Latin, passed several years of his life. He then resolved on coming to the bar, a step which, he informs us, all his friends, with one exception, considered as highly imprudent. One circumstance which helped to determine Romilly was very interesting; the purchase of a seat in the office in which he had been articled would have cost a sum which he knew it would be inconvenient for his father to advance. He had completed his twenty-first year when he entered himself at Gray's Inn, becoming at the same time a pupil of an able equity-drafterman. General reading both in English and Latin, translation habitually practised from the latter language into the former, the composition of a few political essays for newspapers, and occasional attendance on the houses of Parliament, now alternated with a closeness of application to legal study which, after a time, injured his health, and compelled him to retire, first to Bath, and afterwards to the Continent. At Geneva he became acquainted with some of the men who were then beginning to attract notice in that city; and among acquaintances thus made the most valuable was that of Dumont. After visiting some of the nearest scenery of the Leman Lake, and of Savoy, Romilly proceeded to Paris, where he met D'Alembert, Diderot, and other eminent men. On the last day of Easter term 1783 he was called to the bar. For some years afterwards he obtained an increasing employment in the drawing of chancery pleadings; but during this time, as he says himself, he had hardly once occasion to open his lips in court. In the spring of 1784 he went upon the midland circuit, which he continued to frequent until, even as admitted in his own modest Memoir, he was decidedly its leader. Long before he left the circuit, he had attained a distinguished position in the eyes of those who were qualified to appreciate him, not merely as a lawyer, but as a statesman. In 1784 he became acquainted with Mirabeau, who was then in London, and of whose character he appears to have formed an exceedingly just estimate. Mirabeau was the medium through which Romilly became known to Lord Lansdowne, and thus to the leaders of that political party of which he had throughout been an honest and warm Romilly, adherent. To that nobleman he was recommended both by the hearty praises of Mirabeau and by a pamphlet he had written, called *A Fragment on the Constitutional Power and Duties of Juries*. Lord Lansdowne, directing Romilly's attention to a recent sanguinary tract on Criminal Punishments, induced him to write an answer, which was published anonymously under the title of *Observations on a late Publication entitled 'Thoughts on Executive Justice'*. In the meantime he continued vigorously to prosecute in private the inquiries into the reform of the laws, especially the criminal laws, of which he had thus begun to announce publicly the parts.

In the vacation of 1788 he paid a third visit to Paris. Introductions from England, and other circumstances, brought Romilly and his fellow-traveller Dumont into intercourse, upon this occasion, with many men distinguished then, and with others still more celebrated in the bloody struggle that was about to ensue. Mirabeau at this time translated into French, and published, observations made by Romilly on the hospital and prison of Bicêtre. This pamphlet had the honour to be suppressed by the police of Paris, but in the original English was afterwards printed by the author himself in an obscure London periodical. In July 1789 Romilly wrote a pamphlet which was afterwards published, *Thoughts on the Probable Influence of the French Revolution on Great Britain*. But the lively interest he took in the events which emerged in Paris, while he was engaged in composing these remarks, led him back to that city in August of that year; and he now saw, both in public and private, many of the persons who had become most distinguished in the National Assembly. Dumont's observations upon the eventful summer of 1789 in France were translated into English by Romilly, and, with the addition of some observations by himself on England, were published in 1792, receiving the title of *Groenewalt's Letters*. Many of Romilly's opinions on the progress of the French revolution are contained in his published correspondence with Dumont, Madame Gautier, Dugald Stewart, and others, and in a diary which he kept during a journey to Paris in the autumn of 1802. While Romilly was thus advancing to the highest rank in his profession, and had gained the confidence and admiration of some of the best statesmen in England, his domestic position underwent a most beneficial change, the immediate cause of which was a visit paid to Lord Lansdowne. His marriage with the eldest daughter of Mr Garbett of Knill Court in Herefordshire took place in January 1798, when he had nearly completed his forty-first year.

He continued to be chiefly occupied in the discharge of his duties as a leader of the Chancery bar for several years, after which he united with these the other avocations that have given to his name so distinguished a place in the list of British statesmen. In the autumn of 1805 he had received from the Prince of Wales the offer of a seat in Parliament, which he declined upon grounds strongly marking his sturdy independence of character.

In February 1806 he was appointed solicitor-general under the government of Mr Fox and Lord Grenville, with neither of whom had he previously any connection. He was obliged, much against his will, to accept the honour of knighthood, and was elected to represent the borough of Queenborough, accepting this seat, without scruple, from the government. In March 1807 the Whigs were overthrown, and Parliament was dissolved. In the new Parliament he was returned for Horsham, on the Duke of Norfolk's interest, and he subsequently purchased the representation of Wareham. Defeated in an attempt to represent Bristol in 1812, he was returned for the borough of Arundel by the Duke of Norfolk. This seat Romilly held till the dissolution in 1818, when he accepted a requisition from the electors of Westminster, upon which he had the satisfaction of a triumph after a severe contest. The results to which this great victory was expected to have led were unfortunately never realized. Lady Romilly, to whom he was very greatly attached, died on the 29th October 1818, and the shock occasioned by that event so preyed upon his health that he put an end to his life on the 2d of November 1818, in his sixty-second year.

The public character of Sir Samuel Romilly would be best drawn by a few warm and vigorous strokes, all of which, with no exception worth noticing, would convey images of distinguished excellence. These traits would exhibit his manly and ratiocinative oratory, lighted up into eloquence by the fervour of his moral sense, that antique spirit of mental independence which bowed to the demands of no man and of no party, not even his own, unless his conscience told him that those demands were just. And these virtues of the statesman and the jurisconsult, which, by their stern majesty, commanded from those that viewed them at a distance an awe not altogether unmingled with fear, were tempered in private life by the warmest and kindest feeling, by the most felicitous union of public labours with personal accomplishments. His second son, the Right Hon. Sir John Romilly, was made Master of the Rolls, in March 1831. (See *Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly*, written by himself, 3 vols., London, 1840.)