slowest, and most benignant of men,--milder than
Byron's Ali Pacha, wiser than Lord Bacon himself; and, if not altogether
worthy of being called "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," like
his prototype, yet great enough as a lawyer to set people wondering what
he would say next. He was quite capable of arguing a question on both
sides, and then of deciding against himself; and so patient, withal,
that he had just then finished a sitting of three whole days to Sir
Thomas Lawrence, for a portrait of his hand,--a beautiful hand, it must
be acknowledged, though undecided and womanish, as if he had never quite
made up his mind whether to keep it open or shut.

And the next thing I took notice of, after a hurried glance at the
carved ceiling and painted windows, and over the array of bewigged and
powdered solicitors and masters,--a magnificent bed of cauliflowers, in
appearance, with some of the finest heads I ever saw in my life--out of
a cabbage-garden,--was a large, dark, heavy picture of Paul before
Felix, by Hogarth, representing these great personages at the moment
when Felix, that earliest of Lord Chancellors, having heard Paul
through, says: "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient
season, I will call for thee." Lord Eldon was larger than I supposed
from the portrait above mentioned. And this is the more extraordinary,
because the heads of Lawrence, like those of ancient statuary, are
always smaller than life, to give them an aristocratic, high-bred air,
and the bodies are larger. The expression of countenance, too, was
benignity itself,--just such as Titian would have been delighted
with,--calm, clear, passionless, without a prevailing characteristic of
any strength. "Felix trembled," they say. Whatever Felix may have done,
I do not believe that Lord Eldon would have trembled till he had put on
his night-cap and weighed the whole question by himself at his chambers.

* * * * *

_Kean._--Wishing to see how this grotesque but wonderful actor--a
mountebank sometimes and sometimes a living truth--would play at home
after driving us all mad in America, I went to see him in Sir Giles
Overreach. He played with more spirit, more of settled purpose, than
with us, being more in earnest, I think, and better supported. There is
one absurdity in the play, which was made particularly offensive by
Oxberry's exaggeration. The dinner is kept waiting, and the whole
business of the pla