in this I may be uncharitable. I should, however, think
more highly of his sincerity as a patriot, if his stake in the country
were greater; and yet I doubt, if his stake were greater, if he is that
sort of man who would have cultivated popularity in Westminster. He
seems to me to have qualified himself for Parliament as others do for the
bar, and that he will probably be considered in the House for some time
merely as a political adventurer. But if he has the talent and prudence
requisite to ensure distinction in the line of his profession, the
mediocrity of his original condition will reflect honour on his success,
should he hereafter acquire influence and consideration as a statesman.
Of his literary talents I know you do not think very highly, nor am I
inclined to rank the powers of his mind much beyond those of any common
well-educated English gentleman. But it will soon be ascertained whether
his pretensions to represent Westminster be justified by a sense of
conscious superiority, or only prompted by that ambition which overleaps
itself.

Of Wood, who was twice Lord Mayor, I know not what to say. There is a
queer and wily cast in his pale countenance, that puzzles me exceedingly.
In common parlance I would call him an empty vain creature; but when I
look at that indescribable spirit, which indicates a strange and
out-of-the-way manner of thinking, I humbly confess that he is no common
man. He is evidently a person of no intellectual accomplishments; he has
neither the language nor the deportment of a gentleman, in the usual
understanding of the term; and yet there is something that I would almost
call genius about him. It is not cunning, it is not wisdom, it is far
from being prudence, and yet it is something as wary as prudence, as
effectual as wisdom, and not less sinister than cunning. I would call it
intuitive skill, a sort of instinct, by which he is enabled to attain his
ends in defiance of a capacity naturally narrow, a judgment that topples
with vanity, and an address at once mean and repulsive. To call him a
great man, in any possible approximation of the word, would be
ridiculous; that he is a good one, will be denied by those who envy his
success, or hate his politics; but nothing, save the blindness of
fanaticism, can call in question his possession of a rare and singular
species of ability, let it be exerted in what cause it may. But my paper
is full, and I have only room to subscribe myself