THE political world of Britain, in the course of a few years, had sensibly changed its aspect. Without any pro minent agitation or breaking up of its elements, there had been effected an insensible shifting both of the actors and the scenery on that great theatre. Death had been busy in the foremost ranks; and even of those who remain ed, some were insensibly withdrawing from the front of the political arena, into which others, fresh in youthful energy, had pushed eagerly forward. It does not always happen, in the great parliamentary theatre, that the new competitor for distinction is inferior to those by whom he is for a time overshadowed. There is much prescription in the favour of these august assemblies; their eyes are opened to the merit of new candidates slowly, and indeed scarcely at all, till the disappearance of their established leaders obliges them to look for, and recognize,

the merits of those who had stood immediately behind. In order that we may follow with effect the train of the political drama, it may be necessary that we make a rapid sketch of those new features, which had insensibly given to its scenery so changed an aspect.

Of all parties, the Whig Opposition had, within the period alluded to, sustained the most extensive losses. Of that close compacted body, which could at one time boast, with any plausibility, of its comprising all the talents" in the kingdom, only a few scattered fragments now floated above the stream. Even of these, the Commons, always regarded as the main theatre, had been thinned by their translation to the Upper House. There remained to the former, of that original band, Mr Tierney only, whose efforts, age, infirmity, and fast expiring hopes of ever attaining to office, had greatly slackened. Besides, though

his speeches manifest clear conceptions of business, and a lively, easy, agree ble gossip; they display not those energetic and commanding powers, which would be necessary to muster the various and undisciplined troops of his party to the parliamentary conflict. Although, therefore, he had, in right of seniority, become the acknowledged leader, the attention of the House has of late been chiefly commanded by a class of orators, either new, or least newly admitted to occupy so prominent a place. Among these seem worthy of particular commemoration, Brougham, Mackintosh, Ricardo, and Hume.

Henry Brougham, though the heir of a property in the north of England, yet studying at Edinburgh under the eye of Principal Robertson, his maternal uncle, was, in every intellectual sense, an Edinburgh man. At college, he bore the reputation of powers almost superhuman. Every branch of knowledge came within his grasp. At the age of fifteen, if we are not misinformed, he performed a series of optical experiments which, being communicated to the Royal Society, were considered an ornament to the Transactions of that learned body. A daring, determined, uncompromising character early accompanied the display of his talents, and heightened the public attention which they excited. Having entered into an association, called the Speculative Society, formed among the students for the discussion of political and literary questions, he received there the stamp which decided the future character of his pursuits. Europe, then agitated by convulsions, which shock the civilized world to its centre, and out of which new forms of society seemed about to issue, presented an object, which, to active and aspiring minds, absorbed every other interest. The talents attracted into this sphere, and formed in it, were of

the first order. Brougham here met with Jeffrey, Horner, Brown, Smith, and others, destined to be the lights of the next generation. The tone of speculation was bold, and, at that era of innovation, excited alarm. It was rumoured, that these unfledged statesmen had employed their minds in framing systems, under which all the old land-marks of authority and society were to be removed, and talent alone to govern the world. Either this charge was much exaggerated, or experience and reflection soon cooled their ardour; for, when they came forth to the world, their politics were found to be only moderately Whig; though their habits were certainly marked by a spirit of very fearless investigation into matters and questions of every description.

This phalanx of rising talent had scarcely burst the academical barriers, burning with the desire to act and to display itself, when it was concentrated in an undertaking new to Scotland, and which it made very new to any part of the world. Under their hands rose that celebrated, controverted, decried, but finally triumphant journal, which gave new lustre to the name of Edinburgh, and a new character to periodical writing. Even amid the utmost vehemence of censure, and the fiercest retort, it has been generally allowed to display a degree of talent hitherto unparalleled by any thing similar. Among the writers engaged, Brougham was, perhaps, instrumental above any other in giving to it that daring, energetic, and terrible character, which rendered it the scourge and delight of the world of letters. If Jeffrey displayed a more refined taste, a more elegant and lively satire, Hor

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more of patient and accurate thought, Brougham took a wider and bolder sweep: his articles made always the greatest noise; they burst on the public like peals of thunder.

That wide-spread peculiar fame, which Mr Brougham acquired by these bold effusions, did not at first avail to open for him the keys of fortune and professional success. Like his two reviewing coadjutors, he destined himself to the Scottish bar, and seemed entitled to expect, that in a profession where talent is the prime requisite, a talent so unequivocally recognized as his could not fail of success. But the Scots, a grave, cautious, wary people, did not think a reputation of this kind sufficient for one, in whose hands their fate and fortune was to be entrusted. Among the established and aristocratic classes, who had then still more weight in Scotland than now, considerable alarm, as already observed, had been spread by his juvenile exercises; and though the Review, in fact, did not, in its outset, display even any very violent whiggism, there was nothing in it to make its authors be considered as peculiarly sedate and considerate persons. Brougham, amid all his pre-eminence, was supposed to have the least of those qualities which are valued by the cool and steady man of business; there was about him something measureless and regardless, which inspired a species of terror into all who came within the range of his intellect. None of the three, therefore, were at first successful; though Jeffrey, who alone stood to his post, was not very long of finding his talents fully owned, and of rising to great, and ultimately to the very first professional eminence. Brougham retired in indignant despondence, not unmingled, perhaps, with secret aspirings after a loftier field than his original seat could ever have afforded.

Mr Brougham, now established as an English pleader, did not for a long time meet with much better success. The same causes here too operated in some degree against him; over and

above which it is customary, in the English metropolis, to exact, with superstitious care, from every professional man, an exclusive devotion to that profession; such as could not be imagined to exist in one of such various and excursive pursuits. In the senate, to which the influence of Mr Fox with some difficulty introduced him, Mr Brougham also spoke long, without attaining the place to which his talents entitled him, and without being able to command the wavering and wayward attention of the British Commons. There is a peculiar course marked out to the young candidate for parliamentary distinction; every thing he says must be cautious and guarded; he must begin by insinuating a few sound original facts, or neat correct observations, into intervals left by the senior orators. Nothing of all this suited Mr Brougham; it behoved him. to be all, or nothing; he could stand in none but the first rank. His opponents were, of course, anxious, as long as pos sible, to hold him as of little account; and his own party were afraid to push very far forward one, who, without being able to render first-rate services, was in the hourly danger of committing himself and them. It was not, therefore, till this speaker fell in with a subject, of which he was allowed to take the full command, and to wield at will, that he forced upon the House a conviction of the vastness of his pow ers. Such a subject was afforded by the inquiry into the effect of the or ders in council, where his well-known acquaintance with commercial subjects enabled him to take a decided lead. Then, his indefatigable industry in pursuing this research; his luminous views, and powerful statements, fixed him as one who must be rated high, both by friends and foes. His lauda. ble exertions in the cause of national education, displayed similar and equal

powers; and notwithstanding some eccentric and irregular movements into which they hurried him, shewed also a power of sober and judicious planning, of which his impetuous and often indiscreet words had made the existence be doubted. But the occasion which raised him to his height of glory, was that too celebrated process, which, unfortunate and discreditable to every other individual concerned, was productive of splendid benefit to Mr Brougham alone. Him it raised indisputably, and by universal consent, to the first eminence, as an orator, a pleader, and a manager. It raised him even to good reputation as a statesman. In a cause so delicate, and so beset with evil advisers, not to have committed any palpable imprudence, was a sufficient token that he had mastered, to a great extent, the infirmities of his nature. If we make some not very weighty exceptions, the cause was not only magnificently pleaded, but cleverly managed. His merits, sounded by all that loud and numerous party which supported the cause, and not denied by his antagonists, stood thus on all sides admitted. This lustre, attained at a moment when all the earlier lights were either extinct, or becoming dim, enabled Mr Brougham to take that foremost place, which his powers certainly authorized; and he seems recognized, this session, as the leading orator on his own side of the House. Mr Brougham's manner, both of speaking and writing, is very peculiar. Though in an extraordinary degree bold and animated, it cannot, per haps, be called strictly eloquent; for eloquence supposes something poetical, something airy and imaginative, of which he has nothing. It is intensely real, and business-like; it rushes at once to the heart and core of the subject. It sweeps forward in a dense irresistible torrent, which does not leave standing

a single barrier or bulwark of his adversary. By arguments keen and closely following each other, by overpowering assertion, and by utter derision of whatever may or can be said against, he lays flat before him every opponent. His direct vituperation, and his deep and solemn irony, are alike terrible. In a prepared speech, Mr Brougham appears to us to open with a somewhat laboured gravity, to put a bridle, as it were, upon his own mouth, and raise himself, as by an effort, to the pitch of parliamentary steadiness and decorum. În proceeding, he warms, becomes more rapid and energetic, without losing self-command; and it is then that he displays all the tempest and thunder of his oratory. In replying, or speak. ing extempore, his exuberant ideas take too full possession of him; and he drives onward like a ship without a rudder, and of which it is impossible to predict on what coast it may strike.

Mackintosh, whom we have enumerated next among the accessions to this party, though not entirely contrasted to Brougham, is yet a very different person. Without possessing those intense energies, that close tone of business, which render the latter so mighty in the theatre of political contest, he is, on the whole, a more accomplished man. He possesses more varied literature, views more philosophic and comprehensive; in general, a loftier character of thought. There is something great in whatever he says or does. Brougham, notwithstanding the ardour of his early scientific pursuits, has devoted his mature life entirely to business and politics. But Mackintosh always united the philosopher and the man of letters in equal degree with the statesman. His reputation, founded by the answers to Burke, was raised to its height by the oration for Peltier, pronounced under a somewhat differ ent political phrase. Obliged by the