of
political excitement. Take the routine of a day for instance. In his
early life he has been known to attend, in his place in court, on
circuit, at an early hour in the morning. After having successfully
pleaded the cause of his client, he drives off to the hustings; and
delivers, at different places, eloquent speeches to the electors. He then
sits in the retirement of his closet to pen an address to the Glasgow
students, perhaps, or an elaborate article in the Edinburgh Review. The
active labors of the day are closed with preparation for the court
business of the following morning; and then instead of retiring to rest,
as ordinary men would, after such exertions, he spends the night in
abstruse study, or in social intercourse. Yet he would be seen as early
as eight next morning, actively engaged in the Court, in defense of some
unfortunate object of government persecution; astonishing the auditory,
and his fellow lawyers no less, with the freshness and power of his
eloquence.

A fair contrast with this history of a day, in early life, would be that
of one at a more advanced period; say in 1832. A watchful observer might
see the Lord Chancellor in the Court over which he presided, from an
early hour in the morning until the afternoon, listening to the arguments
of counsel, and mastering the points of cases with a grasp that enabled
him to give those speedy and unembarrassed judgments that have so injured
him with the profession. If he followed his course, he would see him,
soon after the opening of the House of Lords, addressing their Lordships
on some intricate question of Law, with an acuteness that drew
approbation even from his opponents, or, on some all-engrossing political
topic, casting firebrands into the camp of the enemy, and awakening them
from the complacent repose of conviction to the hot contest with more
active and inquiring intellects. Then, in an hour or so, he might follow
him to the Mechanics' Institution, and hear an able and stimulating
discourse on education, admirably adapted to the peculiar capacity of
his auditors; and, toward ten perhaps, at a Literary and Scientific
Institution in Marylebone, the same Proteus-like intellect might be found
expounding the intricacies of physical science with a never tiring and
elastic power. Yet, during all these multitudinous exertions, time would
be found for the composition of a discourse on Natural Theology,
that bears no marks of haste or excitement of m