POOR OLD LORD BROUGHAM!
THE Lord Chancellor, on presenting a petition from the Dissenters of Edinburgh the other day, took occasion to allude to his decli-
ning years, in a manner so touching that it strongly reminded us
of the pathetic bail which old Lord ELDON used so often to indulge in. " I am now drawing towards the close of my days," quoth Lord BROUGHAM. The image of the venerable Chancellor riies before us ; his tall, gaunt figure, bent beneath the load of years, not merely doubled, but, as it were, coiled up on the wool- sack ; his long bony fingers studded with chalkstones ; his nose, no longer the lively gnomon of his visage—which now, attenuated by age, exhibits the deep-drawn furrows of thought and care— reposing on the ledge formed by the projection of the under jaw, the upper being toothless: and as with Idea r and lack-lustre eye the aged dignitary of the law peers around, his feeble Yoke " in childish treble,' tremulously gives birth to the devout wish—"I hope to live long enough to see,- &c. Lord Buounnaat is ant so very, t ory old, as that he should naturally entertain so grace a prospect the elmie of his days : unless he estimates the time that Ile has lived by tiv.s multitudi- nous employments that have occupied his at tentioa ; t hen, indeed, lie would be a modern Methusalelt. No man 1):•1 ter kmAys the value of tune than Lord BarauGn Am,— as to be edvertkal by the announcement of his rapid transas from the Court of Chancery to Brongham Hall, and back to the House of Lords; and no man has made better use of it, in one sense at least. lIns the Chancellor been inadvertently confounding- his lease of life with his tenure of oilier? Or is there a tendeney in the atmosphere of the judgment-seat to make men prematurely elder:4? Do tiuv feel old as well as wise beyond their fellows ? bo the long flaps of the Chancellor's wig make dull his hearing? the perpetual glitter of the seals and the mace enfeeble his eyesight? liesilte passion- less mood of the judge colour with the calm and sad tone of even- ing the placid mirror of his mind? or do his sedentary habits- " sedet, infelix Theseus r—notwithstanding the elastieitv of the woolsack, tend to make him think of his hater end We know not: all that is revealed, and revealed in order that our benevo- lent sympathies may be touched, is the melancholy fact that Lord BROUGHAM is "drawing towards the close of his days."
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