c terms of the new sovereign, praising him for
allowing the Speaker to take the oaths at an unusually early hour in
order to suit the convenience of members, a graceful act, which Mr.
Brougham declared he hailed as a happy omen of the commencement of an
auspicious reign. The astute K. C.'s object did not escape the
penetrating eye of HB, who forthwith represented him as _The Gheber
Worshipping the Rising Sun_, in whose smiling face we recognise the
unmistakable lineaments of William the Fourth. The sun proved not
unmindful of the attention; for, on the formation of Earl Grey's
ministry in 1830, Mr. Brougham was made Lord Chancellor, with the title
of Baron Brougham and Vaux. The appointment took the nation by surprise;
for although a consistent upholder of Whig principles, he had always
maintained a peculiar and independent position with his party, and was
expected to prove rather an embarrassment than otherwise. These
expectations were fully realized, and there can be no doubt that the
sentiments which Lord Brougham's bearing as Chancellor excited among his
colleagues and contemporaries, excluded him for the remainder of his
life from all official life and employment.

With all his wonderful powers, however, Lord Brougham could make, as
O'Connell asserted of him, as inconsiderate a speech as any man. One of
these speeches, which was delivered on the 14th of August, 1833, in a
debate on the bill for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies,
suggested to HB a happy subject. His lordship is reported to have said
that, "the object of the clause [then under discussion] was to make the
black, from the moment that he arrived on the shores of this country, a
free man in all respects: to make him eligible to sit in Parliament,
either in the House of Lords, if it should be his Majesty's pleasure to
give him a title to a seat, or in the other House if he should be
elected." HB, with his usual facility for seizing an idea, took his
lordship at his word, and forthwith elevated the emancipated "nigger" to
the woolsack, clothing him in the wig and gown of Lord Chancellor
Brougham, and giving him the features of the noble and learned lord
himself: this sketch bears the title of _A Select Specimen of the Black
Style_.

The House of Lords was a lively place whilst my Lord Chancellor Brougham
was in office, and in the "scenes" in which he figured, and which drew
down upon him the hatred and resentment of his contemporaries, he not
u