tins, and Frank Place, the great radical tailor, used to call him.

If so, have the goodness to follow me step by step for a few minutes,
forgetting all the long years that have interposed, and you shall see
him, with your eyes shut, as I saw him first, and as I continued to see
him almost every day for eighteen months or so, face to face.

Picture to yourself a man "fourscore and upwards," like Lear, and like
Lear, too, "mightily abused," about five feet seven, a little stooping,
but still vigorous and alert; with a pleasant, fresh countenance, and
the complexion of a middle-aged, plump, healthy woman, such as Rubens or
Gilbert Stuart would gloat over in portraiture, and love to paint for a
wager; with a low, cheerful, trembling voice in conversation, though
loud and ringing in the open air; large, clear, bluish-gray eyes,--I
think I cannot be mistaken about the color, though Hazlitt, who was a
tenant of Bentham's at one time, and got snubbed for some little
impertinence, which of course he never forgave, calls them "lack-lustre
eyes"; very soft, plentiful white hair, slightly tinged with gold, like
flossed silk in the sunshine,--pushed back from a broad, but rather low
forehead, and flowing down to the shoulders. This white hair, when the
wind blows it about his face in the open air, or he is talking earnestly
at his own table,--and he never goes to any other,--he has a strange
habit of throwing off with a sudden crook and spring of the left elbow,
and a sort of impatient jerk of the left forefinger, which has come to
be so characteristic of the man himself, that, if Mathews (Charles
Mathews) were to do that, and that only, before you, after you had been
with Bentham for five minutes, you would have, not, perhaps, a
photograph or a portrait, but a "charcoal sketch" of the philosopher,
which you would instantly acknowledge. And, by the way, this reminds me
that I wanted to call these "Charcoal Sketches,"--that title being mine
long before the late Joseph C. Neal borrowed it of me without leave, and
used it for his "Loafer" and a variety of capital sketches, which have
been attributed to me, and still are, notwithstanding my denials. I
wrote one number only,--the first. It was a Yankee sketch; while his
were street sketches, and among the best in our language.

But let us return to the living Bentham. The stoop, you see, is not so
much on account of his great age as from a long habit of bending over
his abominable manu