Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/421

Rh music, etc., and he left behind him several MSS., which were unfortunately lost during the revolution. He died in 1777.  BROUGHAM,, first Lord Brougham and Vaux, man of letters, man of science, advocate, orator, statesman, and Lord High Chancellor of England, was born at Edinburgh on the 19th September 1778, and died at Cannes in France on the 7th May 18G8. During a great portion of a life extended to the unwonted term of ninety years, but espe cially in the third and fourth decades of the present century, from 1820 to 1840, no Englishman in any civil career played so conspicuous a part in public affairs or enjoyed so wide a fame as Henry Brougham. His indomitable energy, his vehement eloquence, his enthusiastic attachment to the cause of freedom, progress, and humanity, to which he rendered so many signal services, caused him to be j ustly regarded as one of the most extraordinary and illustrious men of his age and of his country. He brought to all he undertook a vigour and variety of intellect almost un paralleled ; for his ambition was to excel in all things, and he seemed to aspire to universal fame. &quot; There go,&quot; said Mr Rogers, as he drove off one morning from Panshanger, &quot; Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Archimedes, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many more in one post-chaise.&quot; No man ever commanded with more effect the applause of listening senates, or could better rouse the depths of popular enthusiasm. His boundless command of language, his audacity, his memory stored with every sort of knowledge, his animal spirits and social powers, gave him the lead everywhere, and he was not slow to take advantage of his splendid talents and acquirements in every mode of life. His striking and almost grotesque personal appearance added to the effect of his voice and manner ; a tall disjointed frame, with strong bony limbs and hands, that seemed to interpret the power of his address ; strange angular motions of his arms ; the incessant jerk of his harsh but expressive features ; the exquisite modulations of his voice, now thundering in the loudest tones of indig nation, and now subdued to a whisper which penetrated to the very walls of the House of Commons and riveted the attention of the audience ; a power of mingling tenderness and scorn, argument and invective, in sentences which rose in accumulated involutions, but righted themselves at last, all contributed to give him the magical influence which a great actor exerts over a crowded theatre. Yet in the midst of all his triumphs, the companions of his early life and those who were best acquainted with his cha racter, knew that his extraordinary gifts and powers did not include all the elements of true greatness. He wanted that moral elevation which inspires confidence and respect, and which is even more essential than genius to the highest achievements and the most lasting fame. At times his eccentricity rose to the verge of insanity, as if the reins by which he guided his fiery temper had slipped from his hand. At the bar there were greater and better advocates ; on the bench there were more sure and learned judges ; in science he made no real discoveries ; in letters, notwithstanding the prodigious activity of his pen, he has left no work of lasting celebrity ; and although as an orator he was in his best days unequalled, he himself outlived the evanescent glories of his eloquence. Hence it has come to pass, that within fifty years of his most brilliant period, and within ten years of his death, the figure of Lord Brougham has already become somewhat indistinct. The generation which was fascinated by his eloquence and amused by the endless coruscations and evolutions of his character is passing away, and it has become a task of difficult) to preserve a faithful record of so strange and wonderful a phenomenon. That, however, which remains, and must ever remain as the noblest memorial of his life, is his unvarying devotion to the pro gress of liberal opinions, to the reform of the law, to popular education, to the emancipation of the negro race from slavery, and to the maintenance of peace. In this sense, he was, as he was once portrayed by an accomplished caricaturist of the day, a citizen of the world. Of every human right, Brougham was a champion ; of every human wrong, an avenger. We shall not attempt in this notice of his life to follow the innumerable incidents of his long and varied career, or to enumerate the speeches and writings which he threw off like sparks on every imaginable occasion. Our object is rather to convey to the reader a just impression of the man, as he appeared to those who knew him as he was, and who still recall the transcendent effects of his energy. Lord Brougham has been unfortunate in his biographers. The memoir of him prepared by Lord Campbell, and published after the death of the author and of the subject of it, is written in a carping and derisive tone, unworthy of a distinguished rival. Lord Brougham s autobiography, which also appeared after his death, was begun when he had passed his eightieth year ; his faculties were impaired, his memory was failing, and the work is full of inaccuracies, which his successors were not authorized to correct. Yet we are indebted to it for some interesting particulars of his early life, which no one but himself could have preserved.

In his later years, after Lord Brougham had taken his seat in the House of Peers, he was wont to trace his paternal descent to Udardus de Broham, in the reign of Henry II. , and some memorials of that doughty crusader still decorate the baronial hall at Brougham. He claimed, besides, an infusion of pure Norman blood from Harold, Lord of Vaux in Normandy, whose title he added to his own. But these were the delusions of an enthusiastic mind. No real connection has been established between the ancient lords of Brougham Castle, whose inheritance passed by marriage from the Viponts into the family of the De Cliffords, and the Broughams of Scales Hall, from whom the chancellor was really descended. Brougham Hall was purchased from one James Bird by Brougham s great-grand- uncle, who, left it to his grandfather, an active attorney and agent to the duke of Norfolk for his grace s Cumberland property. His father, Henry Brougham, was sent to Eton, and afterwards travelled on the Continent. The sudden death of a young lady to whom this gentleman was about to be married, deeply affected him : he started in 1777 for a short tour in Scotland, but as fate would have it he never recrossed the border or revisited Brougham. In Edinburgh he took lodgings at the house of Mrs Syme, the widow of a clergyman, and a sister of Principal Robertson, the historian. This lady had a daughter of singular beauty and merit. Mr Brougham fell in love with her and agreed to settle in Edinburgh as a condition of obtaining her hand. They were married by Dr Robertson, and in the following year the eldest son, the illustrious subject of this notice, was born at No. 19 St Andrew Square. No feeling in life was more deeply rooted in the heart of Lord Brougham than his intense affection and veneration for his admirable mother. He repaid her early care and judicious guidance by the most ardent and unvarying demotion. He will ingly laid all the triumphs of his career at her feet ; and she lived to see him attain the proudest heights of fame and power. Nor was he less attached to the memory of his great uncle, the principal. To his dying day he would retrace with affectionate emotion the influence that accom plished scholar and excellent man had upon his own education. He well remembered his person and his precepts, for Dr Robertson only died in 1793, and nearly seventy years afterwards Lord Brougham, presiding over the Social Science meeting at Glasgow, was touched by 