funct. This was his
last great failure, before abdicating all his early liberal principles.
He has of late years endeavored to solace himself for the now
irretrievable blunders of his career by an exaggerated indulgence in his
idiosyncratic waywardness, paradox, and eccentricity. He is proud of
being considered the acquaintance of the Emperor of Austria, and rather
pleased than otherwise at being assailed on this account. He affects the
society and friendship of conservative members of the House of Commons.
He has become tolerant of lords. He may be seen sitting next to Lord
Robert Cecil, indulging in ill-natured jocosities, from which his
Lordship probably borrows when he indites ill-natured articles for the
misguided "Saturday Review."[A] He hates the Manchester school of
politicians, because their liberality and their sympathy with the cause
of freedom and civilization in this country remind Roebuck of his own
deflection from the right path.

[Footnote A: This journal is now owned by Mr. Alexander James Beresford
Beresford-Hope, (we dare not omit any portion of this august name,) who
has ample means to enlist the talents of reckless, "smart" young men in
search of employment for any work he may require, no matter how
unprincipled the job in hand.]

His private undertakings have not been more fortunate than his public
acts. He was chairman of a bank, which was unsuccessful, to say the
least of it. He has been connected with other enterprises, which soon
courted and obtained failure.

What he has recently said and done in reference to this country is too
fresh in our memories to require that we should recite or recapitulate
it here. His past career, as we have reviewed it, may account for the
now intolerable acerbity of temper and the ludicrous vanity which
disgrace him. Never was a Nemesis more just than that which has for the
present consigned him to a melancholy obscurity. The political
extinguisher has certainly dropped upon his head, and this burning and
shining light has gone out with an unpleasant odor into utter darkness.

In summing up his character, it is evident that excessive vanity is his
besetting sin. He is not too clever or too honest to act in union with
other people, but he is too _vain_. He is by no means too good for the
rest of the world; but he is too conceited and self-opinionated to
condescend to cooeperate with them. As, at some of the minor theatres, a
single actor may play an army, so, in