on-hole; a well-turned boot; hat a little too hidalgoish,
but quite new. There was something respectable and substantial about
him, notwithstanding his moustaches and a carriage too debonair for his
years." The description, for whomsoever intended, is a lifelike portrait
of Sir Robert Peel. His most salient feature as a talker was his lovely
voice--deep, flexible, melodious. Mr. Gladstone--no mean judge of such
matters--pronounced it the finest organ he ever heard in Parliament; but
with all due submission to so high an authority, I should have said that
it was a voice better adapted to the drawing-room than to the House of
Commons. In a large space a higher note and a clearer tone tell better,
but in the close quarters of social intercourse one appreciates the
sympathetic qualities of a rich baritone. And Sir Robert's voice,
admirable in itself, was the vehicle of conversation quite worthy of it.
He could talk of art and sport, and politics and books; he had a great
memory, varied information, lively interest in the world and its doings,
and a full-bodied humour which recalled the social tone of the
Eighteenth century.

His vein of personal raillery was rather robust than refined. Nothing
has been heard in our time quite like his criticism of Sir Edgar Boehm
in the House of Commons, or his joke about Mr. Justice Chitty at the
election for Oxford in 1880. But his humour (to quote his own words)
"had an English ring," and much must be pardoned to a man who, in this
portentous age of reticence and pose, was wholly free from solemnity,
and when he heard or saw what was ludicrous was not afraid to laugh at
it. Sir Robert Peel was an excellent hand at what our fathers called
banter and we call chaff. A prig or a pedant was his favourite butt, and
the performance was rendered all the more effective by his elaborate
assumption of the _grand seigneur's_ manner. The victim was dimly
conscious that he was being laughed at, but comically uncertain about
the best means of reprisal. Sydney Smith described Sir James Mackintosh
as "abating and dissolving pompous gentlemen with the most successful
ridicule." Whoever performs that process is a social benefactor, and the
greatest master of it whom I have ever known was Sir Robert Peel.

The Judges live so entirely in their own narrow and rather technical
circle that their social abilities are lost to the world. It is a pity,
for several of them are men well fitted by their talents and
a