Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/684

676 espoused by Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Benjamin Disraeli. The philippics of the latter against Sir Robert were among the most scathing and torturing of anything in their line to which I ever listened. His invectives were all the more burning and blistering because delivered with the utmost coolness and studied deliberation. But he too was gone when I looked into the House of Commons this time. The grand form and powerful presence of Daniel O'Connell was no longer there. The diminutive but dignified figure of Lord John Russell, that great Whig leader, was absent. In the House of Lords, where, five and forty years before, I saw and heard Lord Brougham, all were gone, and he with the rest. He was the most remarkable speaker I ever heard. Such a flow of language; such a wealth of knowledge; such an aptitude of repartee; such quickness in reply to difficult questions suddenly sprung upon him, I think I never saw equaled in any other speaker. In his attitudes and gestures he was in all respects original, and just the opposite of Daniel Webster. As he spoke, his tall frame reeled to and fro like a reed in a gale, and his arms were everywhere, down by his sides, extended in front and over his head; always in action and never at rest. He was discussing when I heard him the postal relations of England, and he seemed to know the postal arrangements of every civilized people in the world. He was often interrupted by "the noble Lords," but he very simply disposed of them with a word or two that made them objects of pity and sometimes of ridicule. I wondered how they dared to expose their lordly heads to the heels of such a perfect race-horse in debate as he seemed to be. He simply played with them. When they came too near he gave them a kick and scampered away over the field of his subject without looking back to see if his victims were living, wounded, or dead. But