I am quoting from memory, but I believe my words are pretty correct.  When Lord Brougham had delivered this emphatic utterance, he proceeded with his address, which was a dull affair and did not inspire the least enthusiasm.  It was, indeed, a somewhat somnolent discourse, and his audience hardly seemed to wake up till he reached his peroration, which closed with a telling quotation from Oliver Goldsmith.

If I recollect rightly there were many notabilities present on this occasion.  I remember the interest I felt in seeing Lord John Russell for the first and only time in my life.  There was not much of him to look at, but what there was looked pleasant.  I saw, indeed, a small man, with a big head, and a large smile.  There was, of course, a good deal of eloquence on the evening to which I refer, and at this distance of time I remember that one distinguished visitor made a rather amusing bull.  Speaking of some obvious fact and carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, he said, “Gentlemen, the matter is as clear as the rising sun at noon-day.”

I remember seeing Thackeray in Birmingham, and heard him deliver his lecture on George III. at the Music Hall, Broad Street, now the Prince of Wales Theatre.  I was, of course, interested to see the great novelist, but I thought his lecture a prosaic performance.  In a literary sense the address was characteristic and interesting—­as can be seen in its printed form—­but it gained nothing by its author’s delivery.  It was a well-composed piece of work, and it had a composing effect upon those who heard it.  At least I know I found it dull, and half dozed during its monotonous delivery.  Indeed, it was not till Thackeray reached his concluding words—­which, by the way, were Shakspeare’s, being an effective quotation from “King Lear”—­that I was roused from my dreamy reverie.

I recollect seeing Charles Kingsley when he was President of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, and noticed that though in speaking he stammered perceptibly, when he delivered his presidential address he adopted a sort of sing-song tone which more or less concealed his impediment of speech.  In fact he half intoned his discourse.  I remember, too, meeting Professor Tyndall at Mr. Chamberlain’s table, and was struck by the simple modesty of the eminent savant.  I sat next to Mrs. Tyndall, who was very unaffected, pleasant, and conversational.  I have often thought of this occasion, and did so especially when the sad and tragic mistake occurred which ended in Professor Tyndall’s premature death.  Mrs. Tyndall, it may be remembered, gave her husband a wrong dose of medicine, which brought his illness to a sudden and fatal termination.  What an awful mistake.  To live after this was pathetic.