The name of Colonel Sibthorpe lingers in the Parliamentary gallery of notabilities of the Unreformed Parliament. Q describes him as woefully deficient in judgment. ‘If there be a right and a wrong side to any subject he is sure to adopt the wrong one. He never makes a very long speech because he cannot. But he speaks on every subject, and in Committee it is no unusual thing for him to make fifteen or twenty speeches in one night.’ Like the maid in the pastoral poem, Colonel Sibthorpe’s face was his fortune, at least the early making of it. ‘Two or three Senators rejoice in tufts,’ Q writes, ‘and a few more in whiskers of decent proportions. Compared with the moustache and whiskers of the gallant Colonel one feels indignant that they should be dignified by the name. The lower section of his face, drawing a straight line from ear to ear immediately under his nose, is one great forest of hair. You hardly know whether he has a mouth or not, so completely is it buried amidst the surrounding crop of hair.’ This personal peculiarity elicited from O’Connell a fair example of the sort of humour that in these past times appealed to an assembly grateful for temporary deliverance from a state of boredom. Sibthorpe, making one of his incoherent attacks upon the Liberal majority, said: ‘I am no party man. I have never acted from party feelings, but I must say I do not like the countenances of hon. gentlemen opposite.’ O’Connell, following, retorted amid what Q describes as peals of laughter: ‘We who sit on this side certainly have not such remarkable countenances as that of the gallant Colonel. I would not abate him a single hair’—here resounded a peal of laughter—‘in good humour on this or any other ordinary occasion.’ Macaulay, seated in the Commons as Member for Leeds, a connection broken when he went out to India as a Member of Council, did not escape Q’s searching and shrewd observation. He gives a description of his personal appearance founded on the style of the ‘Police News’ circulating particulars respecting an absconded criminal: ‘His personal appearance is prepossessing. In stature he is about middle size and well formed. His eyes are of a deep blue and have a very intelligent expression. His complexion is dark, his hair of a beautiful jet black. His face is rather inclined to the oval form. His features are small and regular. He is now in the thirty-eighth year of his age.’ Passing through the stately hall of the Reform Club, I often stop to look at a portrait of Macaulay hung on the wall at the foot of the stairway. One would not recognise it from this minute description of the Member for Leeds who sat in the Parliament in the early ’thirties of the last century. But between the printed letter and the painted canvas a period of thirty years stretched.