y noble that it was some time before you recovered
the general effect of his person sufficiently to examine its peculiar
claims to admiration. However, he lost nothing by a further survey:
he possessed not only an eminently handsome but a very extraordinary
countenance. Through an air of _nonchalance_, and even something of
lassitude; through an ease of manners sometimes sinking into effeminate
softness, sometimes bordering upon licentious effrontery,--his eye
thoughtful, yet wandering, seemed to announce that the mind partook but
little of the whim of the moment, or of those levities of ordinary life
over which the grace of his manner threw so peculiar a charm. His
brow was, perhaps, rather too large and prominent for the exactness of
perfect symmetry, but it had an expression of great mental power and
determination. His features were high, yet delicate, and his mouth,
which, when closed, assumed a firm and rather severe expression,
softened, when speaking, into a smile of almost magical enchantment.
Richly but not extravagantly dressed, he appeared to cultivate rather
than disdain the ornaments of outward appearance; and whatever can
fascinate or attract was so inherent in this singular man that all which
in others would have been most artificial was in him most natural: so
that it is no exaggeration to add that to be well dressed seemed to the
elegance of his person not so much the result of art as of a property
innate and peculiar to himself.

Such was the outward appearance of Henry St. John; one well suited to
the qualities of a mind at once more vigorous and more accomplished than
that of any other person with whom the vicissitudes of my life have ever
brought me into contact.

I kept my eye on the new guest throughout the whole day: I observed the
mingled liveliness and softness which pervaded his attentions to
women, the intellectual yet unpedantic superiority he possessed in his
conversations with men; his respectful demeanour to age; his careless,
yet not over-familiar, ease with the young; and, what interested me
more than all, the occasional cloud which passed over his countenance
at moments when he seemed sunk into a revery that had for its objects
nothing in common with those around him.

Just before dinner St. John was talking to a little group, among whom
curiosity seemed to have drawn the Whig parson whom I have before
mentioned. He stood at a little distance, shy and uneasy; one of the
company took