speak is almost peculiar to himself.  There is a ripeness, a fruitfulness, in his mind, that places him above the fetters of ordinary speakers.  Such men, from the difficulty of clearing their heads for the contest, too often present a mere fleshless skeleton, as it were, very convincing to the judgment, but powerless over the feelings; so that no lasting impression is produced.  But Lord Brougham, from being a master in argument, is free to pursue his bent in illustration, and thus conjures up a whole picture that dwells on the mind, and is remembered for its effect on the feelings or the imagination, even by men whose levity or dullness precluded their being fixed by the argument.  The very structure of his sentences is more adapted for this kind of speaking than any other.  They sometimes appear involved, to an ordinary mind, from their length, and the abundance of illustration and explanation which they embrace; but the extraordinary vigor with which the delivery is kept up, and the liveliness of fancy or of humor that flashes at every turn of the thought, soon dispel the temporary cloud.

In irony and in sarcasm, Lord Brougham is unrivaled among the public men of the day.  That his exuberant power of ridicule led him while Lord Chancellor, into some excess of its use, cannot be denied, although a ready excuse can be found in the circumstances of his situation.  He might be held to be the representative of liberal principles in a place where almost the name of Liberal had, till then, been proscribed; and the animosity toward the new Chancellor, evinced by many peers, was calculated to induce reprisals.  The eccentricities, too, of men of genius are of such value that they may well be said to atone for themselves.

A quality of Lord Brougham’s mind, that is almost as extraordinary as his extent of information, is its singular activity.  His energies never seem to flag—­even for an instant; he does not seem to know what it is to be fatigued, or jaded.  Some such quality as this, indeed, the vastness and universality of his acquirements called for, in order to make the weight endurable to himself, and to bear him up during his long career of political excitement.  Take the routine of a day for instance.  In his early life he has been known to attend, in his place in court, on circuit, at an early hour in the morning.  After having successfully pleaded the cause of his client, he drives off to the hustings; and delivers, at different places, eloquent speeches to the electors.  He then sits in the retirement of his closet to pen an address to the Glasgow students, perhaps, or an elaborate article in the Edinburgh Review.  The active labors of the day are closed with preparation for the court business of the following morning; and then instead of retiring to rest, as ordinary men would, after such exertions, he spends the night in abstruse study, or in social intercourse.  Yet he would be seen as early as eight next morning, actively engaged in the Court, in defense of some unfortunate object of government persecution; astonishing the auditory, and his fellow lawyers no less, with the freshness and power of his eloquence.