eyebrows, well-developed brow, and head, superstructured with a
profusion of light Saxon hair, that hung soft and smooth down his
neck, an even cut mouth, with thin lips, slightly turned, and
disclosing teeth of great regularity and pearly whiteness,--a nose
high, sharp, and strictly Grecian, gave him a personel of more than
ordinary attractions. Smooth apprehends the reader will not charge him
with a diversion when he says that any lady of taste might have become
enamored of this gentleman without for a moment subjecting herself to
the charge of stupidity. Queen Victoria might, indeed, claim for
herself the merit of having done a pretty thing for Cousin Jonathan;
for the two pretty gentlemen she had chosen to represent her in the
mixed commission bespoke how much she had regarded the value of
personal beauty in the settlement of those claims, so long
outstanding, and so beset with grave difficulties. Notwithstanding all
this, the last gentleman was said to be young, but a clever lawyer.
Now a play of the humorous invaded his face; and while from his eye
there came out a strong love of the ludicrous, a curl of sarcasm now
and then ruffled his lip. They called him the British agent--in other
words, the Counsel for Her Most Gracious Majesty. Smooth had no
stronger evidence of this fact than that the gentleman seemed very
contented with the way time went, amusing himself with making paper
spy-glasses,[*] with which he quizzed objects on the floor, then took
lunar observations through it, the broad disc of the Umpire's red face
affording the medium of a planet. To General F----, who was then in the
full pressure of his speech, making his, to him, crushing arguments a
legal treadmill for his handsome brother, he seemed a perfect pest,
inasmuch as whenever the General had got a real stunner of an argument
on the crook of his mind, and just where he would be sure to lose it
if the course were not left clear, he was sure to interrupt him with
some annoying question, which in most cases amounted to nothing less
than disputing the premises assumed. The General had not received
these interruptions with so much perturbation but that they were
always coupled with a sarcastic leer, the significance of which had
not been well directed, nor should ever be indulged in by legal
brethren engaged in the settlement of grave international
questions. The reader may say:--'who so cruel as to begrudge the legal
gentry their little innocent spo