Then let there be full pardon for the wealthy old lawyer; let his faults be forgotten, since he recalls his honorable youth, and once more volunteers in the service of the holy cause. The assistance of such an intellect as that of Plunket is not to be despised; age has not obscured in the least the matchless clearness of his powerful reason; there is not a dark corner in the most obscure question that he does not exhibit as clear as noonday; and it is not only by this power of lucid argument that he is distinguished. Weak and good natured, and crippled by the gout, as he appears, forced, whenever he rises to speak, to support himself with one hand on his cane, he has that fierce and sturdy determination which enables him to throw in the face of toryism all its humiliating truths, and is never disconcerted by even the most violent interruptions: his irony wounds and overwhelms the more that it is always concealed under an air of the most country-like simplicity. At the extremity of this bench, which touches that of the ministers, you have recognized Lord Brougham; he is the very living caricature of whom the printshops in the Strand have shown you so many portraits. Observe his long face, his long legs, his long arms, the whole incoherent mass of his person. The expression of his countenance has something ferocious about it; there is certainly in this brain a small grain of madness; his small piercing eyes sparkle from the bottom of their sockets; a convulsive motion opens and shuts incessantly his enormous mouth; you would be alarmed did not the good nature of that thick, cocked-up nose, reassure you. Do not be alarmed that the learned lord starts and appears so violently agitated—he is on a gridiron; he is tortured, because others are speaking, and he is constrained to be silent. To speak is to do an injury to Lord Brougham.