he would not, one fancies,
have been so stingless. Our England exposes a sorry figure in his
Reminiscences. He struck heavily, round and about him, wherever he
moved; he had by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discolouration. His
unadorned harsh substantive statements, excluding the adjectives,
give his Memoirs the appearance of a body of facts, attractive to the
historic Muse, which has learnt to esteem those brawny sturdy giants
marching club on shoulder, independent of henchman, in preference to
your panoplied knights with their puffy squires, once her favourites,
and wind-filling to her columns, ultimately found indigestible.

His exhibition of his enemy Lord Dannisburgh, is of the class of noble
portraits we see swinging over inn-portals, grossly unlike in likeness.
The possibility of the man's doing or saying this and that adumbrates
the improbability: he had something of the character capable of it, too
much good sense for the performance. We would think so, and still the
shadow is round our thoughts. Lord Dannisburgh was a man of ministerial
tact, official ability, Pagan morality; an excellent general manager,
if no genius in statecraft. But he was careless of social opinion,
unbuttoned, and a laugher. We know that he could be chivalrous toward
women, notwithstanding the perplexities he brought on them, and this the
Dorset-Diary does not show.

His chronicle is less mischievous as regards Mrs. Warwick than the
paragraphs of Perry Wilkinson, a gossip presenting an image of perpetual
chatter, like the waxen-faced street advertizements of light and easy
dentistry. He has no belief, no disbelief; names the pro-party and the
con; recites the case, and discreetly, over-discreetly; and pictures
the trial, tells the list of witnesses, records the verdict: so the
case went, and some thought one thing, some another thing: only it is
reported for positive that a miniature of the incriminated lady was
cleverly smuggled over to the jury, and juries sitting upon these eases,
ever since their bedazzlement by Phryne, as you know.... And then he
relates an anecdote of the husband, said to have been not a bad fellow
before he married his Diana; and the naming of the Goddess reminds him
that the second person in the indictment is now everywhere called 'The
elderly shepherd';--but immediately after the bridal bells this husband
became sour and insupportable, and either she had the trick of putting
him publicly in the wrong, or h