April 12th.--The Earl of ------, whom I saw the other day at St. George's
Hall, has a somewhat elderly look,--a pale and rather thin face, which
strikes one as remarkably short, or compressed from top to bottom.
Nevertheless, it has great intelligence, and sensitiveness too, I should
think, but a cold, disagreeable expression. I should take him to be a
man of not very pleasant temper,--not genial. He has no physical
presence nor dignity, yet one sees him to be a person of rank and
consequence. But, after all, there is nothing about him which it need
have taken centuries of illustrious nobility to produce, especially in a
man of remarkable ability, as Lord ------ certainly is. S-----, who
attended court all through the Hapgood trial, and saw Lord ------ for
hours together every day, has come to conclusions quite different from
mine. She thinks him a perfectly natural person, without any assumption,
any self-consciousness, any scorn of the lower world. She was delighted
with his ready appreciation and feeling of what was passing around him,--
his quick enjoyment of a joke,--the simplicity and unaffectedness of his
emotion at whatever incidents excited his interest,--the genial
acknowledgment of sympathy, causing him to look round and exchange
glances with those near him, who were not his individual friends, but
barristers and other casual persons. He seemed to her all that a
nobleman ought to be, entirely simple and free from pretence and
self-assertion, which persons of lower rank can hardly help bedevilling
themselves with.
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