“He agreed to the absurdity; and then, looking still at the _spectacle_, which indeed is the most splendid I ever saw, arrested his eyes upon the Chancellor. ‘He looks very well from hence,’ cried he; ‘and how well he acquits himself on these solemn occasions! With what dignity, what loftiness, what high propriety, he comports himself!’... “Suddenly, his eye dropped down upon poor Mr. Hastings: the expression of his face instantly lost the gaiety and ease with which it had addressed me; he stopped short in his remarks; he fixed his eyes steadfastly on this new, and but too interesting object, and after viewing him some time in a sort of earnest silence, he suddenly exclaimed, as if speaking to himself, and from an impulse irresistible—‘What a sight is that! to see that man, that small portion of human clay, that poor feeble machine of earth, enclosed now in that little space, brought to that Bar, a prisoner in a spot six foot square—and to reflect on his late power! Nations at his command! Princes prostrate at his feet!—What a change! how must he feel it!——’ “He stopped, and I said not a word. I was glad to see him thus impressed; I hoped it might soften his enmity. I found, by his manner, that he had never, from the Committee Box, looked at him.... “Recovering, now, from the strong emotion with which the sight of Mr. Hastings had filled him, he looked again around the Court, and pointed out several of the principal characters present, with arch and striking remarks upon each of them, all uttered with high spirit, but none with ill-nature. “‘Pitt,’ cried he, ‘is not here!—a noble stroke that for the annals of his administration! A trial is brought on by the whole House of Commons in a body, and he is absent at the very opening! However,’ added he, with a very meaning laugh, ‘I’m glad of it, for ’tis to his eternal disgrace!’ “Mercy! thought I, what a friend to kindness is party! “‘Do you see Scott?’ cried he. “‘No, I never saw him; pray show him me.’ “‘There he is, in green; just now by the Speaker, now moved by the Committee; in two minutes more he will be somewhere else, skipping backwards and forwards; what a grasshopper it is!’ “‘I cannot look at him,’ cried I, ‘without recollecting a very extraordinary letter from him, that I read last summer in the newspaper, where he answers some attack that he says has been made upon him, because the term is used of “a very insignificant fellow;” and he printed two or three letters in the Public Advertiser, in following days, to prove, with great care and pains, that he knew it was all meant as an abuse of himself, from those words!’ “‘And what,’ cried he, laughing, ‘do you say to that notion now you see him?’ “‘That no one,’ cried I, examining him with my glass, ‘can possibly dispute his claim!’