subject of this memoir, which he is finally forced to regard as entirely sui generis, and requiring a class for itself alone. After speaking of the various orders in which noses may be arranged, and the significance of these as to the character of their possessors, he says:—
"It now only remains to treat of some obstinate noses which will not come within our classification.
"One of these is that curious formation, a compound of Roman, Greek, Cogitative, and Celestial, with the addition of a button at the end, prefixed to the front of my Lord Brougham. We are bound from its situation, to admit that it is a nose, and we must therefore treat of it; but it's a queer one. 'Sure, such a nose was never seen.'
"It is a most eccentric nose; it comes within no possible category; it is like no other man's; it has good points, and bad points, and no points at all. When you think it is going right on for a Roman, it suddenly becomes a Greek; when you have written it down Cogitative, it becomes as sharp as a knife. At first view it seems a Celestial; but Celestial it is not; its celestiality is not heavenward, but right out into illimitable space, pointing—we know not where. It is a regular Proteus; when you have caught it in one shape, it instantly becomes another. Turn it, and twist it, and view it, how, when, or where you will, it is never to be seen twice in the same shape, and all you can say of it is, that it's a queer one. And such exactly is my Lord Brougham; verily my Lord Brougham, and my Lord Brougham's nose, have not their likeness in heaven or earth—and the button at the end is the cause of all!
"Thus Lord Brougham's nose is an exception to our classification; it is not, as has been asserted, an exception to our system. On the contrary, it is manifestly a strong corroboration of it. The only exceptions are those when the character does not correspond luith the nose, and of those we have yet to hear."
I fancy all this might be summed up in a few lines:—
Your nose of all noses the nose is,
- Tremendous Lord Brougham and V.;
To you all the way down from Moses,
- Such an organ who ever did see?
In character truly Protean,
- 'Tis a snorter—a snout,—a proboscis,—
Now African, now European,
- The classificator it poses.
But to be serious. Decade after decade rolled away; allies and opponents alike vanished from the scene; it was hardly that here and there a veteran of the old battle-fields lagged now superfluous on the stage. Still, Time, edax rerum, seemed to pass oblivious by the granite form of Henry Brougham:—
"Strange that a harp of thousand strings
- Should keep in tune so long!"
He was already an octogenarian when, in a dedication which has been pronounced by no mean authority, a model of propriety and grace, he presented his treatise upon the Constitution of England to that Queen under whose reign that constitution has been observed alike in letter and in spirit. In the same year that he thus inscribed a political work to the Queen of England, he dedicated a scientific work to the University of
