es were finely formed, and would have been strikingly handsome,
were the expression not spoiled by a look of astuteness,--a something
that implied a tendency to overreach,--which marred their repose
and injured their uniformity. Not that his manner ever betrayed this
weakness; far from it,--his was a most polished courtesy. It was
impossible to conceive an address more bland or more conciliating. His
very gestures, his voice, languid by a slight habit of indisposition,
seemed as though exerted above their strength in the desire to please,
and making the object of his attentions to feel himself the mark of
peculiar honor. There ran through all his nature, through everything he
did or said or thought, a certain haughty humility, which served, while
it assigned an humble place to himself, to mark out one still more
humble for those about him. There were not many things he could not
do; indeed, he had actually done most of those which win honor and
distinction in life. He had achieved a very gallant but brief military
career in India, made a most brilliant opening in Parliament, where his
abilities at once marked him out for office, was suspected to be the
writer of the cleverest political satire, and more than suspected to be
the author of "the novel" of the day. With all this, he had great social
success. He was deep enough for a ministerial dinner, and "fast" enough
for a party of young Guardsmen at Greenwich. With women, too, he was
especially a favorite; there was a Machiavelian subtlety which he could
throw into small things, a mode of making the veriest trifles little
Chinese puzzles of ingenuity, that flattered and amused them. In a word,
he had great adaptiveness, and it was a quality he indulged less for the
gratification of others than for the pleasure it afforded himself.

He had mixed largely in society, not only of his own, but of every
country of Europe. He knew every chord of that complex instrument which
people call the world, like a master; and although a certain jaded and
wearied look, a tone of exhaustion and fatigue, seemed to say that he
was tired of it all, that he had found it barren and worthless, the real
truth was, he enjoyed life to the full as much as on the first day in
which he entered it; and for this simple reason,--that he had started
with an humble opinion of mankind, their hopes, fears, and ambitions,
and so he continued, not disappointed, to the end.

The most governing notion of his own