The chivalrous spirit that shines through him, the air of gallantry in his personal as well as rhetorical appeals to the House, glances a partial lustre on the Woolsack as he addresses it; and makes Lord Erskine raise his sunken head from a dream of transient popularity. His heedless vanity throws itself unblushingly on the unsuspecting candour of his hearers, and ravishes mute admiration. You would almost guess of this nobleman beforehand that he was a Marquis—something higher than an earl, and less important than a duke. Nature has just fitted him for the niche he fills in the scale of rank or tide. He is a finished miniature-picture set in brilliants: Lord C—— might be compared to a loose sketch in oil, not properly hung. The character of the one is ease, of the other, elegance. Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling effect, spirited yet delicate, which is perfectly exemplified in Lord Wellesley’s face and figure. The greatest contrast to this little lively nobleman was the late Lord Stanhope. Tall above his peers, he presented an appearance something between a Patagonian chief and one of the Long Parliament. With his long black hair, ‘unkempt and wild’—his black clothes, lank features, strange antics, and screaming voice, he was the Orson of debate. A Satyr that comes staring from the woods, Cannot at first speak like an orator. Yet he was both an orator and a wit in his way. His harangues were an odd jumble of logic and mechanics, of the Statutes at large and Joe Miller jests, of stern principle and sly humour, of shrewdness and absurdity, of method and madness. What is more extraordinary, he was an honest man. He was out of his place in the House of Lords. He particularly delighted in his eccentric onsets, to make havoc of the bench of bishops. ‘I like,’ said he, ‘to argue with one of my lords the bishops; and the reason why I do so is, that I generally have the best of the argument.’ He was altogether a different man from Lord Eldon; yet his lordship ‘gave him good œillades,’ as he broke a jest, or argued a moot-point, and while he spoke, smiles, roguish twinkles, glittered in the Chancellor’s eyes.