lasted for a generation. Brougham was always a debater from his boy-days- and not a little of a bully and outlaw; precocious too-a capital Latinist writing a paper on Optics at eighteen, which found publishment in the Philosophical Transactions; member of the Speculative Society where Jeffrey and Mackintosh, and Alison were wont to go, and where his disputatious spirit ran riot. He didn't love to agree with anybody; one of those men it would seem who hardly wished his dinner to agree with him.

Yet Brougham was one of the master spirits in this new enterprise, and became a great historic personage. His reputation was indeed rather political and forensic, than literary, and in his writings he inclined to scientific discussion. He had, however, a streak of purely literary ambition, and wrote a novel at one period of his life-after he had reached maturity-which he called a philosophic Romance. Indeed this bantling was so

* Henry Brougham (Lord Brougham and Vaux), b. 1778; d. 1868. Collected Speeches, 1838. Historic Sketches, etc., 1839-43. Autobiography (edited by a brother), published in 1871.

† Albert Lunel; or The Château of Languedoc. Lowndes

LORD BROUGHAM.

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swaddled in philosophic wrappings that it could have made no noise. Very few knew of it; fewer still ever read it. He said, "It had not enough of indecency and blasphemy in it to make it popular" (it was written when Byron was in high repute). But the few who did read it thought there were other reasons for its want of success.

He drifted quickly away from Edinboro', though long keeping up his connection with the Review; became famous as an advocate-notably in connection with Queen Caroline's trial; went into Parliament; was eventually Lord High Chancellor, and won a place in the Peerage. He was associated intimately, too, with great beneficent schemes-such as the suppression of the slave trade, the establishment of the London University, the founding of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and the urgence of the great Reform measures of 1832. Yet in all these, he arrogated more than his share of the

(Bohn) says "3 vols. post 8vo, 1844. This novel was suppressed on the eve of publication, and it is said not above five copies of the original edition are extant." The Maclise Portrait Gallery speaks of an issue in 1872.

honor, wearying his associates by incessant bickering and scolding, picking flaws in everything not entirely his own; jealous, suspicious, conceited to the last degree; never generous in praise of one living beside him; an enormous worker, with sinews of iron, and on occasions (which are of record) speaking and wrangling in the House of Commons until two of the morning, and then going home - not to sleep-but to write a thirtypage article for the Edinburgh Review. Such men make a place for themselves, and keep it. He was an acrid debater, but a most thorough oneholding all aspects of a case in view; never getting muddled; ready with facts; ready with fallacies (if needed); ready for all and any interruptions; setting them on fire by the stress of his argumentation-like carbons in an electric circuit; ready with storms of irony and running into rough-edged sarcasm with singular ease and sharpest appetite.

On a May evening of 1845 the present writer had the pleasure of watching him for an hour or more in the House of Lords. He was lank, as I have said; awkward, nervous, restless; twisting the

BROUGHAM IN HOUSE OF LORDS. 91

great seals at his watch-chain; intent upon everything; now and then sniffing the air, like a terrier that has lost the scent; presenting a petition, in the course of the session, in favor of some Newfoundland clients who were anxious for more direct postal communication - who objected that their mails were sent in a roundabout way via Halifax. Whereupon Lord Stanley (afterward Earl Derby), then Secretary for the Colonies, rose in explanation, "regretting that his Lordship had not communicated with the Colonial Office, which had considered the question raised; there was no communication by land; the harbor was often closed by ice; therefore present methods were followed," etc. All of which was set forth with most charming grace and suavity; but Lord Stanley was no sooner ended than the irascible Scotch peer, nettled, as would seem, by the very graciousness of the explanation, was upon his feet in an instant, with a sharp "M' Lards," that promised fun; and thereafter came a fusillade of keenest, ironical speech thanking the honorable Secretary for "the vera impartant information, that as St. John's was upon an island, there could be no com

munication by land; and perhaps his learned Lardship supposes, with an acumen commensurate with his great geographic knowledge, that the sending of the mails by the way of Halifax will have a tendency to thaw the ice in the Harbor of St. John's," and so on, for a ten minute's storm of satiric and witty banter. And then- an awkward plunge backward into his seat a new, nervous twirling of his watch-seals, a curious smile of self-approval, followed by a lapse into the old nervous unrest.

There was no serenity in Brougham-no repose -scarce any dignity. His petulance and angry sarcasm and frequent ill-nature made him a much hated man in his latter days, and involved him in abusive tirades, which people were slow to forgive.

Francis Jeffrey.

As for Mr. Jeffrey, his associate on the Review, and for many years its responsible editor, he was a very different man

of easy address, courteous, gentlemanly-quite a master of deportment. Yet it was he who ripped open with his critical knife Southey's Thalaba and the early