or queen in Europe, and enveighing bitterly against
the English aristocracy, and against the Duke of Wellington in
particular, whom, he said, if he himself was ever president of an English
republic--an event which he seemed to think by no means improbable--he
would hang for certain infamous acts of profligacy and bloodshed which he
had perpetrated in Spain. Being informed that the writer was something
of a philologist, to which character the individual in question laid
great pretensions, he came and sat down by him, and talked about
languages and literature. The writer, who was only a boy, was a little
frightened at first, but, not wishing to appear a child of absolute
ignorance, he summoned what little learning he had, and began to blunder
out something about the Celtic languages and their literature, and asked
the Lion who he conceived Finn Ma Coul to be? and whether he did not
consider the "Ode to the Fox," by Red Rhys of Eryry, to be a masterpiece
of pleasantry? Receiving no answer to these questions from the Lion,
who, singular enough, would frequently, when the writer put a question to
him, look across the table, and flatly contradict some one who was
talking to some other person, the writer dropped the Celtic languages and
literature, and asked him whether he did not think it a funny thing that
Temugin, generally called Genghis Khan, should have married the daughter
of Prester John? {356} The Lion, after giving a side-glance at the
writer through his left spectacle glass, seemed about to reply, but was
unfortunately prevented, being seized with an irresistible impulse to
contradict a respectable doctor of medicine, who was engaged in
conversation with the master of the house at the upper and farther end of
the table, the writer, being a poor ignorant lad, sitting of course at
the bottom. The doctor, who had served in the Peninsula, having observed
that Ferdinand the Seventh was not quite so bad as had been represented,
the Lion vociferated that he was ten times worse, and that he hoped to
see him and the Duke of Wellington hanged together. The doctor, who,
being a Welshman, was somewhat of a warm temper, growing rather red, said
that at any rate he had been informed that Ferdinand the Seventh knew
sometimes how to behave himself like a gentleman--this brought on a long
dispute, which terminated rather abruptly. The Lion having observed that
the doctor must not talk about Spanish matters with one who had visit