ngings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips,
more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster
election against palace and treasury shone round Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire.

The Sergeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent
his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He
had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and
treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes.
And in his high place he had so borne himself that all had feared him,
that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title
to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad
man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage
which, while it indicated deference to the Court, indicated also
habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual
forehead, a brow pensive but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision,
a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as
under the picture in the council chamber at Calcutta, _Mens aequa in
arduis_; such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented
himself to his judges.

His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were afterwards raised by
their talents and learning to the highest posts in their profession, the
bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards Chief Justice of the King's
Bench; the more humane and eloquent Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas: and Plomer who, near twenty years later, successfully
conducted in the same high court the defence of Lord Melville, and
subsequently became Vice-Chancellor and Master of the Rolls.

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much notice as
the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space had been
fitted up with green benches and tables for the Commons. The managers,
with Burke at their head, appeared in full dress. The collectors of
gossip did not fail to remark that even Fox, generally so regardless of
his appearance, had paid to the illustrious tribunal the compliment of
wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of
the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was
wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had
unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and his
friends were left without the help of his excellent s