Rhine.  Mr. Brougham is, in fact, a striking instance of the versatility and strength of the human mind, and also in one sense of the length of human life, if we make a good use of our time.  There is room enough to crowd almost every art and science into it.  If we pass “no day without a line,” visit no place without the company of a book, we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents.  Those who complain of the shortness of life, let it slide by them without wishing to seize and make the most of its golden minutes.  The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.  If any one possesses any advantage in a considerable degree, he may make himself master of nearly as many more as he pleases, by employing his spare time and cultivating the waste faculties of his mind.  While one person is determining on the choice of a profession or study, another shall have made a fortune or gained a merited reputation.  While one person is dreaming over the meaning of a word, another will have learnt several languages.  It is not incapacity, but indolence, indecision, want of imagination, and a proneness to a sort of mental tautology, to repeat the same images and tread the same circle, that leaves us so poor, so dull, and inert as we are, so naked of acquirement, so barren of resources!  While we are walking backwards and forwards between Charing-Cross and Temple-Bar, and sitting in the same coffee-house every day, we might make the grand tour of Europe, and visit the Vatican and the Louvre.  Mr. Brougham, among other means of strengthening and enlarging his views, has visited, we believe, most of the courts, and turned his attention to most of the Constitutions of the continent.  He is, no doubt, a very accomplished, active-minded, and admirable person.

Sir Francis Burdett, in many respects, affords a contrast to the foregoing character.  He is a plain, unaffected, unsophisticated English gentleman.  He is a person of great reading too and considerable information, but he makes very little display of these, unless it be to quote Shakespear, which he does often with extreme aptness and felicity.  Sir Francis is one of the most pleasing speakers in the House, and is a prodigious favourite of the English people.  So he ought to be:  for he is one of the few remaining examples of the old English understanding and old English character.  All that he pretends to is common sense and common honesty; and a greater compliment cannot be paid to these than the attention with which he is listened to in the House of Commons.  We cannot conceive a higher proof of courage than the saying things which he has been known to say there; and we have seen him blush and appear ashamed of the truths he has been obliged to utter, like a bashful novice.  He could not have uttered what he often did there, if, besides his general respectability, he had not been a very honest, a very good-tempered, and a very good-looking man.  But there was evidently no wish to shine,