oice, and
his ever-ready quibble and laugh at himself, was for some time taken for
a lawyer, with which folk the Buildings were then, as now, much
infested. But on careful inquiry he turned out to be a patent-medicine
seller, who at leisure moments had studied Blackstone and the statutes
at large from mere sympathy with the neighbourhood. E. came next, a rich
tradesman, Tory in grain, and an everlasting babbler on the strong side
of politics; querulous, dictatorial, and with a peevish whine in his
voice like a beaten schoolboy. He was a stout advocate for the Bourbons
and the National Debt, and was duly disliked by Hazlitt, we may feel
assured. The Bourbons he affirmed to be the choice of the French people,
the Debt necessary to the salvation of these kingdoms. To a little
inoffensive man, 'of a saturnine aspect but simple conceptions,' Hazlitt
once heard him say grandly, 'I will tell you, sir. I will make my
proposition so clear that you will be convinced of the truth of my
observation in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades that would
be thrown out of employ if the Debt were done away with. What would
become of the porcelain manufacture without it?' He would then show the
company a flower, the production of his own garden, calling it a unique
and curious exotic, and hold forth on his carnations, his country-house,
and his old English hospitality, though he never invited a friend to
come down to a Sunday's dinner. Mean and ostentatious, insolent and
servile, he did not know whether to treat those he conversed with as if
they were his porters or his customers. The 'prentice boy was not yet
ground out of him, and his imagination hovered between his grand new
country mansion and the workhouse. Opposed to him and every one else was
K., a Radical reformer and tedious logician, who wanted to make short
work of the taxes and National Debt, reconstruct the Government from
first principles, and shatter the Holy Alliance at a blow. He was for
crushing out the future prospects of society as with a machine, and for
starting where the French Revolution had begun five-and-twenty years
before. He was a born disturber, and never agreed to more than half a
proposition at a time. Being very stingy, he generally brought a bunch
of radishes with him for economy, and would give a penny to a band of
musicians at the door, observing that he liked their performance better
than all the opera-squalling. His objections to the National Deb