Life
Born on 24 July 1798, he was descended from the Napiers of Merchiston. His great-grandfather Francis Napier, 6th Lord Napier had five sons, of whom the youngest, Mark, a major-general in the army, was the grandfather of the biographer. His father was Francis Napier, a writer to the signet in Edinburgh, and his mother was Mary Elizabeth Jane Douglas, eldest daughter of Colonel Archibald Hamilton of Innerwick, Haddingtonshire. He was educated at Edinburgh High School and the university of Edinburgh, and passed advocate at the Scottish bar in 1820.
In 1844 Napier was appointed sheriff-depute of Dumfriesshire, to which Galloway was subsequently added, and he held office for the rest his life. He died at his residence at Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, on 23 November 1879, as the oldest member of the Faculty of Advocates then discharging legal duties.
Read more about this topic: Mark Napier (historian)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Consider his life which was valueless
In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files.
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask. Was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”
—Stephen Spender (19091995)
“I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)