Bulwer Lytton, as he then was, was candidate for one of the divisions of Hertfordshire, and speeches were being delivered from the hustings by supporters of local influence--among others by Lord Cowper. Lord Cowper was still speaking when something appeared at his elbow in the likeness of the candidate's wife. "Now, Billy Cowper," she said, "we've listened to you long enough. Sit down, and let _me_ speak. You propose, gentlemen, to send my husband to Parliament. I am here to tell you that Parliament is not the proper place for him. His proper place," she said, pointing to the ground, "is below; and when you have sent him there, he will learn something of what he at present knows nothing. That something is Justice." On another occasion, speaking in more moderate tones, she observed to a circle of acquaintances: "My husband is a man who has been born out of his due time. He ought to have been born nineteen hundred years ago. Had he been born then, he would have been Judas Iscariot. He would have betrayed his Master; he would have taken the thirty pieces of silver; but then he would not have hanged himself--far from it. He would have sat down and written the Epistle to the Ephesians." On another occasion she told the following story of him. He was, so she said, in London, and she, having been left in the country, had written to propose joining him. He had at once replied begging her not to do so, but to leave him a little longer in the enjoyment of philosophic solitude. "When I heard that"--so she confided to a friend--"I set off for London instantly; and there I found him with Philosophic Solitude, in white muslin, on his knee." "Perhaps," added the narrator, "even less agreeable to the delinquent would have been, had he heard it, her description of his physical appearance. Alluding to the fact that his head was undoubtedly too large for his body, she said, 'My husband has the head of a goat, and he has the body of a grasshopper.'"