When we consider the various chances and vicissitudes which await the
citizens of our little commonwealth in their progress through life; when
we recollect that some of them will enter into political life, in order
to be turned out of their places; others will enjoy the titular
distinction of M.P., that they may be turned out of their seats the next
election; while others again, by an attachment to Chancery expedition,
will endeavour to get turned out of their estates;--it is surely worth
while to bestow a little attention upon the most proper mode of behaving
under these unfortunate circumstances.
Mr. Monxton receives a turn out better than any political man of our
acquaintance. It was of him that Sir Andrew Freeman, a Hertfordshire
Independent, who, to do him justice, would be witty if he could,
broached the celebrated remark--“He has turned out so often, that I
should think he’s turned wrong side out by this time.” Mr. Monxton is
indeed a phenomenon in his way. The smile he wears on coming into office
differs in no respect from that which he assumes on resigning all his
employments. He departs from the enjoyment of place and power, not with
the gravity of a disappointed Minister, but with the self-satisfied air
of a successful courtier. The tact with which he conceals the inward
vexation of spirit beneath an outward serenity of countenance is to us a
matter of astonishment. When we have heard him discussing his
resignation with a simper on his face, and a jest on his lip, we have
often fancied that Mr. Kemble would appear to us in the same light were
he to deliver Wolsey’s soliloquy with the attitudes and the gestures of
a harlequin in a pantomime. Juvenile politicians cannot propose to
themselves, in this line of their profession, a better model than Mr.
Monxton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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