Instead of entering one of the universities, he became a clerk in his
father's banking-house. Early imbued with a taste for Greek literature, he
continued his studies with great zeal; and was for many years collecting
the material for a history of Greece. The subject was quietly and
thoroughly digested in his mind before he began to write. A member of
Parliament from 1832 to 1841, he was always a strong Whig, and was
specially noted for his championship of the vote by ballot. There was no
department of wholesome reform which he did not sustain. He opposed the
corn laws, which had become oppressive; he favored the political rights of
the Jews, and denounced prescriptive evils of every kind.
HISTORY OF GREECE.--In 1846 he published the first volume of his _History
of Greece from the Earliest Period to the Death of Alexander the Great_:
the remaining volumes appeared between that time and 1856. The work was
well received by critics of all political opinions; and the world was
astonished that such a labor should have been performed by any writer who
was not a university man.
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