The chivalrous spirit that shines through him, the air of gallantry in his personal as well as rhetorical appeals to the House, glances a partial lustre on the Woolsack as he addresses it; and makes Lord Erskine raise his sunken head from a dream of transient popularity. His heedless vanity throws itself unblushingly on the unsuspecting candour of his hearers, and ravishes mute admiration. You would almost guess of this nobleman beforehand that he was a Marquis--something higher than an earl, and less important than a duke. Nature has just fitted him for the niche he fills in the scale of rank or title. He is a finished miniature-picture set in brilliants: Lord C▬▬ might be compared to a loose sketch in oil, not properly hung. The character of the one is ease, of the other, elegance. Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling effect, spirited yet delicate, which is perfectly exemplified in Lord Wellesley's face and figure.

The greatest contrast to this little lively nobleman was the late Lord Stanhope. Tall above his peers, he presented an appearance something between a Patagonian chief and one of the Long Parliament. With his long black hair,

"unkempt and wild"-his black clothes, lank features, strange antics, and screaming voice, he was the Orson of debate.

A Satyr that comes staring from the woods,
Cannot at first speak like an orator.

Yet he was both an orator and a wit in his way. His harangues were an odd jumble of logic and mechanics, of the Statutes at large and Joe Miller jests, of stern principle and sly humour, of shrewdness and absurdity, of method and madness. What is more extraordinary, he was an honest man. He was out of his place in the House of Lords. He particularly delighted in his eccentric onsets, to make havoc of the bench of bishops. "I like," said he, " to argue with one of my lords the bishops; and the reason why I do so is, that I generally have the best of the argument." He was altogether a different man from Lord Eldon; yet his lordship “gave him good œillades," as he broke a jest, or argued a moot-point, and, while he spoke, smiles, roguish twinkles, glittered in the Chancellor's eyes.

The look of the gentleman, "the noblemanlook," is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world. We smile at those who smile upon us: we are gracious to those who pay their court to us: we naturally acquire con

fidence and ease when all goes well with us, when we are encouraged by the blandishments of fortune, and the good opinion of mankind. A whole street bowing regularly to a man every time he rides out, may teach him how to pull off his hat in return, without supposing a particular genius for bowing (more than for governing, or any thing else) born in the family. It has been observed that persons who sit for their pictures improve the character of their countenances, from the desire they have to procure the most favourable representation of themselves. "Tell me, pray good Mr. Carmine, when you come to the eyes, that I may call up a look," says the Alderman's wife, in Foote's Farce of Taste. Ladies grow handsome by looking at themselves in the glass, and heightening the agreeable airs and expression of features they so much admire there. So the favourites of fortune adjust themselves in the glass of fashion, and the flattering illusions of public opinion. Again, the expression of face in the gentleman, or thorough-bred man of the world is not that of refinement so much as of flexibility; of sensibility or enthusiasm, so much as of indifference:it argues presence of mind, rather than enlargement of ideas. In this it differs from the heroic and philosophical look. Instead of an intense

unity of purpose, wound up to some great occasion, it is dissipated and frittered down into a number of evanescent expressions, fitted for every variety of unimportant occurrences: instead of the expansion of general thought or intellect, you trace chiefly the little, trite, cautious, moveable lines of conscious, but concealed self-complacency. If Raphael had painted St. Paul as a gentleman, what a figure he would have made of the great Apostle of the Gentiles-occupied with himself, not carried away, raised, inspired with his subject—insinuating his doctrines into his audience, not launching them from him with the tongues of the Holy Spirit, and with looks of fiery scorching zeal! Gentlemen luckily can afford to sit for their own portraits painters do not trouble them to sit as studies for history. What a difference is there in this respect between a Madonna of Raphael, and a lady of fashion, even by Vandyke the former refined and elevated, the latter light and trifling, with no emanation of soul, no depth of feeling,-each arch expression playing on the surface, and passing into any other at pleasure, -no one thought having its full scope, but checked by some other,-soft, careless, insincere, pleased, affected, amiable! The French physiognomy is more cut up and subdivided

into petty lines and sharp angles than any other it does not want for subtlety, or an air of gentility, which last it often has in a remarkable degree, but it is the most unpoetical and the least picturesque of all others. I cannot explain what I mean by this variable telegraphic machinery of polite expression better than by an obvious allusion. Every one by walking the streets of London (or any other populous city) acquires a walk which is easily distinguished from that of strangers; a quick flexibility of movement, a smart jerk, an aspiring and confident tread, and an air, as if on the alert to keep the line of march; but for all that, there is not much grace or grandeur in this local strut: you see the person is not a country bumpkin, but you would not say, he is a hero or a sage-because he is a cockney. So it is in passing through the artificial and thickly peopled scenes of life. You get the look of a man of the world: you rub off the pedant and the clown; but you do not make much progress in wisdom or virtue, or in the characteristic expression of either.

The character of a gentleman (I take it) may be explained nearly thus:-A blackguard (un vaurien) is a fellow who does not care whom he offends-a clown is a blockhead who does not know when he offends :-a gentleman is one who understands and shews every mark of deference to