he did so much to serve and improve. When we read these reflections on him, we cannot forget that they refer to one who for many years did more to raise the intellectual level of his countrymen than all our other public men united. Earnestness and enthusiasm are not qualities so common that we can afford to slight or sneer at them when developed in so large and brilliant a manner as they were in the career of Henry Brougham. He had his littlenesses, and we may lament them; but who in some degree has them not, and where again shall we find them combined with such unmatched power, versatility, and energy?

With Scott, Cockburn lived on terms of the greatest friendship. He knew him well, and has some pleasant recollections of him. Speaking of Lockhart's biography, he says that it is Scott to the life:

'Whether the publication of this portrait will do any good to his memory is a different matter. It has greatly dispelled the fascination connected with his name in the minds of those who only knew him through his works and his fame. They thought him a purely literary man. They have now been taught how much he was a tradesman, even in the exercise of his genius; and to what extent his taste for those feudal times, which form the charm of some of his finest works, was united with the practical obeisance of a vassal to his superior, and how very narrow and shallow were all his public views; and how much less he valued fame and literature than those results of them which enabled him to exercise an intellectual and splendid hospitality.' And on page 177 he continues:

'Dear Scott! When he was among us we thought we worshipped him, at least as much as his modesty would permit. And now that he is gone we feel as if we had not enjoyed or cherished him half enough. How would we cling to him were he to reappear! It is a pleasure which the next generation may envy, that I still hear his voice and see his form. I see him in the court, and on the street, in company, and by the Tweed. The plain dress, the guttural burred voice, the lame walk, the thoughtful heavy face with its mantling smile, the honest hearty manner, the joyous laugh, the sing-song feeling recitation, the graphic story-they are all before me a hundred times a day.'

Of Macaulay he did not know much; he says:

'He is strong in all valuable points; a great talker, a deep original thinker, a striking writer, an eloquent speaker, a good scholar, with vast knowledge, which his industry is regularly increasing, the utmost purity, and steadfastness of principle and of public objects, and with a taste for fame and usefulness so just and lofty that, though qualified to captivate and enlighten any audience or to advise any cabinet, he holds this perishable power as insignificant when compared with the perma

nent glory of literature or philosophy. He is not intellectual in his outward appearance. In manner his defect is that he is heavy and lumbering, though not big, and has an air of vulgarity. His conversation, of which however I have yet heard very little, is good, but, with the usual defect of professed talkers, it is a great deal too abundant, and is not easy. He utters with great rapidity, and with a panting anxiety. Though the matter of his conversation, therefore, is always admirable, the style is not pleasing. Sydney Smith, an enormous talker, complains of Macaulay never letting him get in a word. Smith once said to him, "Now, Macaulay, when I am gone you'll be "sorry that you never heard me speak."

The volume contains many interesting sketches of less noted For instance, this sketch of old Lord Lynedoch:

men.

At the age of about eighty-eight his mind and body are both perfectly entire. He is still a great horseman, drives to London night and day in an open carriage, eats and drinks like an ordinary person, hears as well as others, sees well enough, after being operated upon, for all practical purposes, reading included, has the gallantry and politeness of an old soldier, enjoys and enlivens every company, especially where there are ladies, by a plain, manly, sensible, well-bred manner, and a conversation rich in his strong judgment, and with a memory full of the most interesting scenes and people of the last seventy years. Large in bone and feature, his head is finer than Jupiter's. It is like a grey, solid, war-worn castle. He did not enter the army, I believe, till he was past forty, and then, beginning as a sort of sagacious, brave, voluntary adviser at the siege of Toulon, early in the Revolution, and proceeding in the same capacity, but recognised by the British Government at Napoleon's siege of Mantua, he was afterwards in Egypt, and then had a command under his friend Moore, at whose dying request his full rank was conceded; after which he shone in every transaction in the Peninsula, and his assault on Antwerp (gallantly conducted, but unsuccessful,) was, if I recollect right, the last military event in the war which ended in 1814. Nor has it only been in the affairs of war that his manly chivalrous spirit has made him be admired and loved. He has always taken a decided part in politics, on the popular side, and is one of the old Whigs who find nothing good prevailing now but what he fought for and anticipated long ago. He is one of the men who make old age lovely.'

Here is a paragraph concerning a person of some celebrity, whose name is still green in every book catalogue which is published at the present day :

'Dr. Dibdin, the bibliomaniac, was here for a few days last year and saw very little, on the strength of which little he has published what he calls a "Northern Tour; a mass of nonsense, for which, however, he has had the sense to make his foolish subscribers pay several guineas each. He did not see, or try to see, the libraries at New Hailes, or Barskimming, or Aberdeen, or Arniston, or Minto, or at many other places where they are far better than many Scotch ones which he praises. His

time was wasted in courting and receiving low flattery. His account of the Edinburgh bookworms is ludicrous, and affords a fair test of his other expensive and splendid tours. He says that Macvey Napier's tablecloth was so beautiful that it might justly be "the boast of the "British Linen Company!" My name stands "high in the annals "of humanity" for my generosity to the family of Burns! to no part of which family had I ever an opportunity of doing any, even the very slightest good; not even by a kind word. And my brother-in-law, Thomas Maitland, is the author, it seems, of a work upon Pawnbroking! But every paragraph is equally asinine. He says that it is difficult to find any horse in Edinburgh except a grey one.'

One more quotation descriptive of as genial and honourable a man, and as pleasant and accomplished a companion, as ever lived-Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, of Fountainhall, who, inthose days of Reform meetings and party processions, was an intense favourite of the mob in all its ranks:

'The very sight of his blue carriage makes their soles itch to become the horses. He is one of the persons whose Whiggism is so liberal that it enables him to keep the Radicals in some order. The chief part of his influence, indeed, is owing to his being very much one of themselves; but besides there is something even in the outward air of this representative of old Fountainhall very captivating to any populace. A flow of rambling natural talk; ready jokes; the twinkle of a mild laughing eye; a profusion of grey grizzly hair tossed over head, face, and throat; a bludgeon ludicrously huge for civil life, especially in his powerful though gentle hand; raiment half fashionable, half agrestic; a tall, gentleman-like, Quixotic figure; and a general picturesqueness of appearance. But these things, though it is these by which he is. commonly best known, are insignificant. He is in more substantial matters a very accomplished gentleman. His published works, particularly his account of the "Floods in Morayshire," and of the "Parallel Roads of Glen Roy," attest his science and his skill in composition; and he has a general accomplishment in several difficult things. Lauder could make his way in the world as a player, or a ballad-singer, or a street-fiddler, or a geologist, or a civil engineer, or a surveyor, and easily and eminently as an artist or a layer out of ground.'

This genial spirit once made his way across the border to one of the elections at Cockermouth, where, in a couple of days, he enthralled the Cumberland mob, who shouted for Sir Thomas Lowther as stoutly as their northern brethren.

Cockburn seldom went to London, and indeed, excepting at the time at which he was Solicitor-General, there is little in these volumes of London politicians or society. He at that time came in contact with most of the great men of his party, and speaks with great respect of their power and devotion to business. Lord Althorp was the minister of whom he saw

6

most, and he was greatly struck with his ability. The oratory of the House of Commons did not impress him with respect. He said he heard a very great deal of excellent conversational speaking, and very little good speaking of a higher class-certainly not three hours out of the whole twenty-seven. Macaulay's was by far the best, chiefly from 'its deep thought and extensive views; but there was nothing, 'not even from him, which gave me any idea of noble eloquence-nothing which realised or tended to realise the sublimity of minds overpowered by words. Chalmers would 'be a thunderbolt among them.' Cockburn was a great orator, and a great judge of oratory. In his own line he had few equals. Nevertheless, eloquence must be judged by its audience. Chalmers in his own way was unquestionably a very great orator, and a great debater also, and had a power and fire and enthusiasm which enchained and captivated the audiences whom he was wont to address. But the conversational style, or the absence of the ecstatic or excited style, which Cockburn here laments, truly arises from the fact that the former is the style best adapted to the atmosphere of Parliament. It is true that few men of modern times have been able within those walls to make the pulse beat faster, or the audience hang entranced on the accents of the speaker. Bright in his greatest mood, and Gladstone occasionally, may have risen to this height. But oratory, after all, is nothing but the art of swaying the minds of men by spoken words, and those who best accomplish the end are the greatest masters of the art. Cockburn heard Chalmers make a great oration in 1833, in proposing what was called the Veto Law in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He thus describes his style of oratory:

'Chalmers, in proposing the veto, raised himself above most modern orators by a great speech. It was longer than his usually are, and more argumentative, and all his views and statements blazed with the fire of his volcanic imagination. Yet his, after all, is chiefly the triumph of intensity of manner; for this speech, like many others of his, might be read and even studied without emotion. It is only when his feelings are brought out in his emphasis, in his views, in his curious sentences, in his lofty objects, and in the general look and air of the speaking man, that his oratory can be understood. How he burns! I shed more tears of pure admiration than I have done since they were forced from me by the magnificence of Mrs. Siddons. And every syllable written in his condensed shorthand. I was sitting next him, and stole the adjoining page of his notes from which he spoke with intense eloquence for about twenty minutes. When he was done, and began to collect his material, he missed this page, and upset all the hats and

made all the pockets near him be emptied in search of it. I was obliged to confess the theft, when he allowed me to keep the trophy.'

tance.

This leads us to take notice of a subject which occupies the largest proportion of these volumes, and which will probably give to them their greatest historical permanency and imporThe controversies in the Church of Scotland on the subject of Patronage, and the disruption of the Church in which they terminated, excited great interest in Cockburn's mind. He was far from being an ardent theologian; and the Evangelical party in the Church, with whom his sympathies went in the struggle, receive, under the denomination of The 'Wild,' many lashes from his caustic pen. He writes as a bystander; but his opinions as a constitutional lawyer, and his sympathies as a Scotchman, led him strongly to the side which, in one sense, was worsted in the struggle.

The controversy between the courts of the Church and the civil tribunals, which led to results so singular and important, commenced in 1838, and terminated by the disruption of the Church in 1843. Its stages are marked in Cockburn's Journal as they occurred, from first to last; and as the Bill for the Abolition of Patronage in Scotland has directed the attention of the public to this subject in a more than usual degree, our readers may find it interesting to have placed before them concisely the true causes and nature of these remarkable events, as they are told by our author, and which in England, and even in Scotland, are but little understood. The apathy with which they were regarded at the time, and the ignorance which prevails on the subject now, in English society is the more remarkable, that the questions which were agitated during the contest, and the principles which they involved, bear most directly on some of the important and, indeed, momentous issues which are rapidly ripening in the Church of England. There is probably not a well-educated man in any Protestant community on the Continent of Europe who would not be ashamed to profess himself unacquainted with the general outline of these memorable events.

As Lord Cockburn says, the nature of the topics involved, and of the events which happened, insensibly pointed back to the seventeenth century, and revived old controversies and produced the collision of opinions which one had thought long adjusted, if not buried. It is out of the question for us, within the limits of the present article, to give anything like a comprehensive view of these really interesting events, but they are given in this work with considerable dramatic vivacity and power. Extending, as the struggle did, over nearly ten years,

VOL. CXL. NO. CCLXXXV.

T