His hurts do not seem to have permanently harmed him, for he lived forty years longer. XXI In the lowlands beneath Clifton stands Brougham Hall, and near it Brougham Castle, both beside the Eamont river. A good deal of the Hall is ancient, but most of the exterior, recased in a baronial way, looks like (what it is) an academic attempt at recovering the architectural style of the fourteenth century. When it is said that the work was done in the early part of the nineteenth century, it will be supposed, with a good deal of truth, that the result is dull and lifeless. Anciently the seat of the Broughams, it came at length to the Bird family, from whom the property was purchased in 1727 by the grandfather of the Lord Brougham who was Lord Chancellor and a great political figure in the days of George the Fourth, William the Fourth, and Queen Victoria. Dr. Granville, travelling hereabouts in the middle of the nineteenth century, sampling medicinal spas, looked upon the Hall with awe, as the residence of that statesman. The Doctor cherished a remarkable veneration for that able, but eccentric personage, and was perhaps the only person to do so. Says he, “Like the Château de Vernet, Brougham Hall, when the grave shall have swept away prejudices and political animosities, will be visited by thousands, eager to behold the _château_ of the English Voltaire; he who, to the encyclopædic knowledge and pungent wit of the French philosopher, joined the impassioned and fiery eloquence of Mirabeau.” Thus the enthusiastic Granville. [Sidenote: _LORD BROUGHAM_] Eloquence? Brougham could tear a passion to tatters with any one, but he ranted. It is true that the post-boys used to drive the chaises of travellers in these regions somewhat out of the direct road, in order to glimpse the residence of Lord Brougham; but those travellers viewed the place, and Brougham himself, with curiosity, just as one might an Icelandic geyser, to which, indeed, he is not inaptly to be compared. His spoutings were as plentiful and as hot.