sed, and exchanged repartees under the rich
peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies, whose lips,
more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster
election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess
of Devonshire.

The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar and bent
his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence.
He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and
treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes.
And in his high place he had so borne himself that all had feared him,
that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no
title to glory except virtue. He looked like a great man and not like
a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a
carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated
also habitual self-possession and self-respect; a high and
intellectual forehead; a brow pensive, but not gloomy; a mouth of
inflexible decision; a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was
written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at
Calcutta, _Mens aequa in arduis_; such was the aspect with which the
great Proconsul presented himself to his judges.

His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were afterwards raised by
their talents and learning to the highest posts in their
profession--the bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards Chief-Justice
of the King's Bench; the more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards,
Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas; and Plomer, who, near twenty years
later, successfully conducted in the same high court the defence of
Lord Melville, and subsequently became Vice-chancellor and Master of
the Rolls.

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much notice as
the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had
been fitted up with green benches and tables for the Commons. The
managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. The
collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally
so regardless of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal
the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one
of the conductors of the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and
sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various
talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a
public prosecutor; and