Between young Bruce and two of these--Ramsay and Canning--an uncommonly
warm intimacy prevailed; and it is a somewhat curious coincidence that they
lived to be the three successive rulers of India during the transition
period of British Government there. Ramsay, then Lord Dalhousie, was the
last Governor before the breaking out of the Mutiny; Canning was the
over-ruler of the Mutiny; and Bruce, as Lord Elgin, was the first who went
out as Viceroy after the Indian Empire was brought under the government of
the Crown.
Among the brilliant young men who were his friends and compeers at college,
James Bruce is said to have been as conspicuous as any for the brilliancy
and originality of his speeches at the Union. Mr. Gladstone himself has
said of him, "I well remember placing him, as to the natural gift of
eloquence, at the head of all those I knew, either at Eton or at the
University." But he was not less distinguished by maturity of judgment, by
a love of abstract thought, and by those philosophical studies which lay
the foundation of true reasoning in the mind.
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