extraordinary abilities,
Lord Oxford advised him to go to college and read for the law, which
offered greater prizes than the medical profession. Accordingly,
he entered at Cambridge, and in 1808 graduated as senior wrangler.
Twenty-seven years later, in 1835, he married the daughter and heiress
of his friend and patron, and the year following was created a peer.

His brother Edward was the celebrated evangelical leader in the Church
of England. Bred to the law, he abandoned that profession for holy
orders. Their nephew, son of their brother John, is the present bishop
of Ripon.

The Harleys have been seated for six or seven centuries in
Herefordshire, at Brampton-Bryan and Egwood, properties which in part
remained in Lady Langdale's possession. By marriage! with the heiress
of the Vaughans in the fifteenth century, they became possessed of
Wigmore Castle, the ancient heritage of the extinct earls of Mortimer,
and great estates which added to their consequence.

When Charles II. made a batch of peers on his restoration, the
Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a
viscounty, but he declined the honor, "lest his zeal and services
for the restoration of the ancient government should be reproached as
proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;" and so scrupulous was
he that his being made a knight of the Bath even was done without his
knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles inserting with his
own hand his name in the list. But his son was destined for a higher
dignity, for he it was who became in the tenth year of the reign of
Charles II.'s niece, Queen Anne, earl of Oxford and Mortimer, being
the famous Harley of that reign, linked in our memories with St. John
Lord Bolingbroke, the Mashams, Marlboroughs, Swift, Addison, Pope, and
the host of brilliant men which makes the reign of one of the feeblest
women who ever sat on a throne a period of almost pre-eminent interest
in English annals to men of cultivated mind subject to the influence
of association. By Elizabeth Foley, daughter of the first Lord Foley,
of Witley Court (sold, about thirty-five years ago, with the bulk
of the Foley estates, for L990,000 to Lord Dudley, who married Lady
Mordaunt's sister), the famous lord treasurer, Oxford, had one
son, the second earl. He was the friend of Swift, to whom the dean
addressed so many letters. A man of literary tastes, he spent a
portion of his immense fortune in forming the finest