tion or noble thought ennobles the sons of peasants. If I had been told that the habits of trade made men niggardly and selfish, I should have pointed to the hospitals, to the charities, to the educational institutions which cover the land, and which have been mainly founded or largely endowed by the munificence of traders; if I had been told that there was something in trade which stinted the higher or more poetical faculty, I should have pointed to the long list of philosophers, divines, and poets that have sprung from the ranks of trade, and, not to cite minor names, I should have said, 'It is we who share with agriculture the glory of producing the woolstapler's son who rules over the intellectual universe under the name of Shakspeare.' This pride of class I should have felt, let me only be born an Englishman, whether as peasant, mechanic, manufacturer, or tradesman; but being born and reared amongst those who derive their subsistence from the land, I am not less proud that I belong to that great section of our countrymen from whom have proceeded so large a proportion of those who have helped to found that union of liberty and intellect which binds together the audience I survey. From whom came the great poets, Chaucer and Gower, Spenser and Dryden, and Byron and Scott; from whom came the great pioneers of science, Worcester and Cavendish, Boyle and Bacon-from whom came so large a number of the heroes and patriots who in all the grand epochs of constitutional progress-from the first charter wrung from Norman tyrants, from the first resistance made to the Roman pontiffs, down to the law by which Camden (the son of a country squire) achieved the liberty of the press; down to the Reform Bill, by which Russel, Grey, and Stanley, and Lambton connected Leeds for ever with the genius of Macaulay-have furnished liberty with illustrious chiefs and not less with beloved martyrs? Out of that class of country gentlemen came the Hampden who died upon the field, and Sydney who perished on the scaffold."

terests; but in proportion as we instruct all, each will in time acquire its due share of influence, and far from that hypocritical cowardice which often makes a man throw over in one assembly the class which he is bound to advocate in another, I own to you, wherever I look I see so much merit in every division of our people, that whatever class I had been born and reared in, of that class I should have been justly proud. There is not a class of which I should not have said, I belong to those who made England great.' If I had been born a peasant-let me be but self-taught and self-risen, and I would not have changed my brotherhood with Burns for the pedigree of a Howard. If I had been born a mechanic or manufacturer for allow me to class together the employer and employed-they fulfil the same mission, and their interests ought to be the same; I say if I had been born one of these, I should have said, 'Mine is the class which puts nations themselves into the great factory of civilization. Mine is the class which has never yet been established in any land but what it has made the poor state rich, and the small state mighty.' If I had been born a trader, the very humblest of that order, I should have boasted proudly of the solid foundation of public opinion, and of national virtues, which rest upon the spirit and energy, upon the integrity and fair dealing, by which that great section of our middle class have given a tone and character to our whole people. Why, we have been called a nation of shopkeepers, and shopkeepers we are whenever we keep a debtor and creditor account with other nations: scrupulously paying our debts to the last farthing, and keeping our national engagements with punctuality and good faith. But it is owing much to the high spirit and to the sense of honor which characterizes the British trader, that the word gentleman' has become a title peculiar to us, not, as in other countries, resting only upon pedigrees and coats of arms, but embracing all who unite gentleness with manhood. And nation of shopkeepers though we be, yet we all, from the duke in his robes to the workman in his blouse, become a nation of gentlemen whenever some haughty foreigner touches our common honor; whenever some paltry sentiment in the lips of princes rouses our generous scorn; or whenever some chivalrous ac

This is a noble and truly eloquent passage, going right to the heart of every Englishman; and delivered as it was, with fire and energy, in the Music Hall at Leeds, it left an impression on the minds of his audience, of Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's power as a true orator which will never be effaced.

me.

It was in the summer of 1811 that I first saw and heard Henry Brougham, "on his legs" in the House. Forty-three years ago, save the mark! That makes an old man of And yet, when I give memory play for forty-three years past, and see again as fresh as of yesterday what I saw then, and hear again as though their very echo had not ceased the voices and sounds I heard then, -it seems preposterous to think myself stricken in years. Well-nigh a half-century of summers between then and now? beshrew thee, old Time, never try to hoax me so far as that. I tell thee, with the septuagenarian,

I am not old-I cannot be old,

Though threescore years and ten

Have wasted away, like a tale that is told, The lives of other men.

I am not old-I cannot be old,

Though tottering, wrinkled, and gray;

Misquoted from Pore.

will come in equally sudden, illogical, and irrelevant fashion. My very title and motto ut suprà might prepare you, reader, for this; and should suffice to warn off every hater of the immethodical, every scorner of the desultory, every foe to the circumbendibus. About my Lord B. and about him is what I essay to scribble; whether I shall ever get at him is quite another matter. One must allow for the wind in an old fellow, who hasn't much of it left.

I saw and heard him, then; but I allow, not to advantage. Knowing his reputation at the bar, and among the Edinburgh Reviewers, I watched with vigilant eye his gaunt, restless form, as he, with manifest impatience, bided his time for jumping up to move for some papers relating to a Court-Martial case in the other hemisphere. A Captain Richards, I think, had been tried for causing the death of a man in his sloop, by excessive use of the cat, and was dismissed from the

Call me not old to-day.

For, early memories round me throng,
Old times and manners and men,
As I look behind on my journey so long
Of threescore years and ten.

Nevertheless, if it must be so,-if, as he did the Elsinore gravedigger, Age, with his stealing steps, hath clawed me in his clutch, -let me at least make sure of one compensatory privilege, due and dear to old men; and that is the right to be garrulous. Let me be a chartered libertine to rove to and fro, and to digress, and prose, and platitudinise, as much as I like (or, between you and me, as much as I can't help). From Henry Brougham to myself and my tale of years there's one lapse to begin with; and others

tion for the production of the Minutes of the Court-Martial led to some discussion-op

ponents insisting that no man could be

tried more than once for the same offence --though the motion was ultimately agreed to. The earlier part of the night, by-thebye, had been spent in an animated but angry debate, occasioned by the unfortunate Lord Cochrane, who went through the history of his imprisonment by the Vice-Admiralty Court at Malta, on a charge (which be denied) of taking down a table of fees, for which he was seized and literally carried to prison-an odious prison, said the noble tar, with a grated window, an iron door, and for furniture one broken chair: he now moved for a committee of inquiry into the abuses of that court-but for some time

could get no one to second him-till up rose the adventurous Peter Moore, who declared he knew nothing at all about the matter, but would second the motion rather than see possible injustice caused by a piece of formality -a piece of chivalric kindness which called forth sarcasms by the score from Mr. Stephen, who thought the Malta court had served Lord Cochrane perfectly right, while Mr. Yorke protested against this affair as the flimsiest case the House had ever been bored with, and after a quantum suff. (with a balance) of sparring, the motion was negatived without a division. Coming in the wake of this tirade of personalities and high words, Mr. Brougham's motion was tranquil and dull enough; and though in his manner of supporting it I could not but observe tokens of a strong, energetic, ready, and determined nature, there was little to foreshow the foremost man of the Opposition-the observed of all observers, though certainly not, at any time, the glass of fashion, or the mould of form. But he had only entered parliament year before.

the

Henry Brougham's has verily been a surprising career. The interval of years between 1811 and 1854 has seen him uplifted to an idolatrous place in the people's esteem, and anon hurled down to the abysm of their "Sovereign" contempt-to become a byeword, a stereotyped caricature, only good for a weekly baiting in Punch, or an occasional joke in spouting clubs. So much for popular attachments. The re-action has been, if anything, more unreasonable than what it followed-and surely more discreditable to the re-actionists. To affect contempt, too! Hated, maligned, denounced, the ex-Chancellor has been; and this, in a world like ours, is intelligible but despised he hardly can have been, or can be, by any one endowed with a right to despise-intellectually, I

mean.

Often will the story be repeated in after days, how Henry Brougham fought his way to the highest honors of the land;-his abrupt flitting from Auld Reekie to the metropolis whither Murray and Wedderburn had hurried, with such cheering results, before him; his rapidly-established prestige at the bar; his speedy début in Parliament, and recognition there as the Man of the People; his dizzy-making ovations at the hands of his national clients; and that sudden vault into the Chancellor's seat, which so agitated the profession, and shocked the prejudices of the peers. A wild whirl of thoughts must have

Is there a bar sinister in the armorial bearings he thus secured-a discreditable course in the means of securing them? Was it simply by faction and browbeating, as some allege; or by glozing and dissembling, as others? Hear his always eager assailant, Walter Landor: "There is an incessant chatterer," says he, by the mouth of his imaginary Southey, "who has risen to the first dignities of the State, by the same means as nearly all men rise now by; namely, opposition to whatever is done or projected by those invested with authority"-" this ridiculous man, to whom the Lords have given the run of the House . . . a man pushed off his chair by every party he joins, and enjoying all the disgraces he incurs"--a man "superficial in all things, without a glimmer of genius, or a grain of judgment." Such a verdict as this, vaulting so as to overleap itself, may go to illustrate Hesiod's apophthegm, that the half is more than the whole. Coleridge, on the other hand, seems to have assumed that Brougham made his fortune by insincerity and smooth dissimulation-describing him, in his "Table-talk," as a man whose heart was placed in what should have been his head-contrasting him with Francis Horner, his political contemporary and literary ally, with this invidious result, that Horner bore in his conversation and demeanor evidence of that straightforward and generous frankness which characterized him through life--" you saw," quoth the Old Man of the Mountain (Cockaigne's pride), "or rather you felt, that you could rely upon his [Horner's] integrity:" whereas, in Brougham's case, "you were never sure of