employed in this honourable diplomacy, and executing it with the correctness of a butler. The Duke of Leinster, in his turn, took the same duty. With regard to Brougham, at first sight you would not set him down as having a natural and prompt alacrity for the style of humour that prevails amongst us. But Brougham is an excellent member, and it is a remarkable instance of the peculiar influences of this peculiar Society on the human character. We took him just as the schools of philosophy, the bar, the senate had made him. Literary, forensic, and parliamentary habits are most intractable materials, you will say, to make a member of the Beef-Steaks. no man has imbibed more of its spirit, and he enters into its occasional gladiatorship with the greatest glee.

Yet

I believe him to be a most sincere, benevolent being. As a public man, he is sometimes betrayed into acrimony; but it is when he is thwarted by mean impediments, or teazed with petty grovelling exceptions. But who would fetter by precise rules the generous impulses of our nature? or bind over a noble enthusiasm to its

good behaviour? Brougham is unquestionably a great man. How sublime was his attitude the other night, how lofty and commanding his elevation, when he rebuked Hume for putting his -pounds, shillings, and pence, into the scale against the honour and faith of a nation, whose honour and faith have ever been the bulwarks of her greatness and well did that rebuke illustrate the immeasurable distance between the moral proportions of an enlarged policy, and the paltry calculations of vulgar arithmetic. Nor shall I ever forget (it is now many years since) the manly reply that he made to Lord Ellenborough, who had animadverted coarsely upon his zeal in behalf of a defendant convicted of having published a book reflecting on Christianity. My lord," said Brougham, "why am I thus identified with the opinions of my client? I appear here as an English advocate, with the privileges and the responsibility of that office; and no man shall call in question either my principles, or my conduct, in the discharge of it. It is not, assuredly, to those only who clamour out their faith from high places, that credit will be given for the sincerity

of their professions." From this time, the tone of that overbearing judge was considerably moderated towards Brougham, and the bar in general.

I.

Brougham, as Johnson said of Dr. John Campbell, has grazed over the whole common of literature. Is it not strange, that the busy pursuits of his busy profession, should allow him time for the cultivation of studies, some of which are not germane, but many quite adverse to it? In a letter written by Sir Thomas Bodley to Lord Bacon,* when at the bar, there is a passage, which has often struck me as being applicable to Brougham. cannot choose but wonder, that, your expence of time considered in your public profession, which hath, in a manner, no acquaintance with scholarship or learning, you should have culled out the quintessence, and sucked up the sap of the chiefest kinds of learning." AZoïlus, perhaps, would point out a peculiar fault in Brougham's eloquence; namely, that he does not always know where to stop-that he overlooks the precise point, where a step too much is worse than falling off—that

*Bacon's Letters-Cabala.

delicate shadowy line at which degeneracy begins. He certainly is too redundant, not to say tedious; but he never enters into a debate without well knowing what it is about. He is not what they call a party man ;-nor is it possible to make a party man of him. He is too ethereal a spirit to do the biddings of a party; too high-minded to adopt their animosities, or to follow their idolatries.

But the Beef-Steaks.-Whose is that pleasing. self-pleased countenance, on which there sleeps a serenity like that of the foremost of the crowd, who are listening to St. Paul in one of the fine cartoons of Raphael? In spite, however, of a dead calm of feature, the tongue of that worthy individual never knows repose. It has been going on at the same untired pace for more than an hour. It is Jack Richards, a well known presbyter of the Club; and unless at those seasons when the "fell serjeant," the gout, has arrested him, he has never absented himself from its board. He is our recorder, and there is nothing in comedy equal to his passing sentence on those who have offended against the rules and observances of the Society. Having put on Garrick's

hat, he proceeds to inflict a long wordy harangue upon the culprit, who endeavours most unavail

Nor is it possible to see when

ingly to stop him.

he means to stop.

His admonition

"Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on."

But it is the imperturbable gravity with which Jack performs his office, and the fruitless writhings of the luckless being on whom the shower of his rhetoric is discharged, that constitutes the amusement of the scene.

There is no subject upon which Jack's exuberance of talk fails him. Nor do I think that he requires a subject at all.

It is like a stage-coach,

that rattles on empty or full. Yet, Jack is far from being a nuisance. When you grow accustomed to his garrulity, it becomes like one of those noises in your vicinage, that of a mill for instance, to which you become reconciled, beknow that you cannot stop it. Nor is it a necessary condition on your part, that you should attend to him. Allow him to talk, and nothing more is implied in the contract.

cause you

But, as to mere quantity, I never before wit