But the speaker is now seated; Lord Brougham has leapt from his seat; he is on his feet; he has regained the floor; he retains it, and will not easily part with it; he has declared that he has but two words to say; if you have any business to attend to, go about it; at the end of two hours you may return, you will find him in the midst of his argument. It is much to be regretted that long experience of the bar and the parliament have not moderated a mind of this temper. He has just uttered a most cutting sarcasm—observe how he dulls its effect by reiterating and expanding it. He has perfectly established the impregnable strength of an argument; he proceeds to overthrow it himself, that he may build up others upon its ruins; it is thus his indiscretion injures the best cause and deforms his ablest discourses. Like an imprudent æronaut, he bursts his balloon and falls with it to the earth, in consequence of having filled it too full. We who are hearers, like well enough to be convinced by an argument, or to smile at a piece of irony; but we can comprehend an allusion. We are mortified at having every thing explained so elaborately. The more you persist in it, the more weary we become. Your obstinacy in doubting our intelligence—wounds and vexes us. This excess of pedantry is the principal defect in the oratory of Lord Brougham. He has been well called the school-master. I do not deny his extraordinary gifts as a learned debater, always caustic and indefatigable; but these extravagant discourses are out of all proportion, above all in the House of Lords, which treats all questions in a summary way, and in some degree after the fashion of the drawing room. It is a great want of tact not to suit oneself to one's audience. The manner of Henry Brougham was much more suitable to the House of Commons, where discussions are more full, and where one is less prepared to come to an early conclusion; he still retains the lawyer. He has never been able to throw off the violent and comic gestures of the gown, storming and thundering, in reciting a date or a section of a law. Without doubt his harangues fatigue him as much as they do those who listen to him; he does not spare himself, bawling and gesticulating without any regard to his own person; he bends and twists himself like a posture master; he dances and leaps with his words; he perspires and grows heated, but he leaves the hearer cold; his is not the eloquence which inflames the blood.