will setting others in motion and prepared
to anticipate the results; that its sagacity is activity delighting in
meeting difficulties and adventures more than half-way, and its wisdom
courage not to shrink from danger, but to redouble its efforts with
opposition. Its humanity, if it has much, is magnanimity to spare the
vanquished, exulting in power but not prone to mischief, with good sense
enough to be aware of the instability of fortune, and with some regard
to reputation. What may serve as a criterion to try this question by
is the following consideration, that we sometimes find as remarkable
a deficiency of the speculative faculty coupled with great strength of
will and consequent success in active life as we do a want of voluntary
power and total incapacity for business frequently joined to the highest
mental qualifications. In some cases it will happen that 'to be wise
is to be obstinate.' If you are deaf to reason but stick to your own
purposes, you will tire others out, and bring them over to your way of
thinking. Self-will and blind prejudice are the best defence of actual
power and exclusive advantages. The forehead of the late king was not
remarkable for the character of intellect, but the lower part of his
face was expressive of strong passions and fixed resolution. Charles Fox
had an animated, intelligent eye, and brilliant, elastic forehead
(with a nose indicating fine taste), but the lower features were weak,
unsettled, fluctuating, and without _purchase_--it was in them the Whigs
were defeated. What a fine iron binding Buonaparte had round his face,
as if it bad been cased in steel! What sensibility about the mouth! What
watchful penetration in the eye! What a smooth, unruffled forehead! Mr.
Pitt, with little sunken eyes, had a high, retreating forehead, and a
nose expressing pride and aspiring self-opinion: it was on that (with
submission) that he suspended the decisions of the House of Commons and
dangled the Opposition as he pleased. Lord Castlereagh is a man rather
deficient than redundant in words and topics. He is not (any more than
St. Augustine was, in the opinion of La Fontaine) so great a wit as
Rabelais, nor is he so great a philosopher as Aristotle; but he has that
in him which is not to be trifled with. He has a noble mask of a face
(not well filled up in the expression, which is relaxed and dormant)
with a fine person and manner. On the strength of these he hazards his
speeches in the House