es--those scholastic
giants who are great on small questions of quantity and etymology,--who
buckle on the ponderous armor of the commentators in the contest with
more subtle wits, on the interesting doubt of a wrong reading; such men,
in the spirit of pedantry, have refused to Lord Brougham the merit of
profundity, while they allow that he possesses a sort of superficial
knowledge of the classics; they say that he can gracefully skim the
surface of the stream, but that its depths would overwhelm him. Now,
while this may be true as regards the fact, we dissent from it as regards
the inference. It is a question to be decided between the learned drones
of a by-gone school and the quicker intellects of a ripening age, which
is the better thing,--criticism on words--on accidental peculiarities of
style--or a just and sympathizing conception of the feelings of the poet
or the wisdom of the philosopher. Men are beginning to disregard the
former, while they set a high value upon the latter: so much
laboriously-earned learning is at a discount, and allowance should be
made for the petty spite, the depreciating superciliousness, of
disappointment. Lord Brougham's classical knowledge partakes more of that
intimate regard and appreciation which we accord to the great writers,
than of this pedantry of the schools. Hence the cry of want of depth,
that has been raised against him. Like many other great men of his age,
he has read the authors of Greece and Rome in a spirit that has
identified him with their thoughts and feelings, by taking into account
the circumstances of their times; and the result has been, that he has
exchanged the formalities and critical sharp-sightedness of acquaintance
for the intimacy of friendship.

In point of general political knowledge, and particularly of that branch
called political economy, Lord Brougham stands prominently among his
contemporaries. In his speeches and writings will be found the first
principles of every new view of these subjects that has been taken by the
moderns. Of not a few he has himself been the originator. In the party
history of the last century he is well versed, as many of his speeches
show; and no public man of the present day is so well acquainted with the
theory and practice of the constitution, whether as regards the broad
principles of liberty on which it is based, or its gradual formation
during the different periods of our history. It may not be amiss here to
observe,