Lord John Russell has arrived at Paris, and sat with me a considerable time to-day. How very agreeable he can be when his reserve wears off, and what a pity it is he should ever allow it to veil the many fine qualities he possesses! Few men have a finer taste in literature, or a more highly cultivated mind. It seizes with rapidity whatever is brought before it; and being wholly free from passion or egotism, the views he takes on all subjects are just and unprejudiced. He has a quick perception of the ridiculous, and possesses a fund of dry caustic humour that might render him a very dangerous opponent in a debate, were it not governed by a good breeding and a calmness that never forsake him.
Lord John Russell is precisely the person calculated to fill a high official situation. Well informed on all subjects, with an ardent love of his country, and an anxious desire to serve it, he has a sobriety of judgment and a strictness of principle that will for ever place him beyond the reach of suspicion, even to the most prejudiced of his political adversaries. The reserve complained of by those who are only superficially acquainted with him, would be highly advantageous to a minister; for it would not only preserve him from the approaches to familiarity, so injurious to men in power, but would discourage the hopes founded on the facility of manner of those whose very smiles and simple acts of politeness are by the many looked on as an encouragement to form the most unreasonable ones, and as an excuse for the indulgence of angry feelings when those unreasonable hopes are frustrated.
Lord John Russell, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Luttrell, Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur Mignet, and Mr. Poulett Thomson, dined here yesterday. The party was an agreeable one, and the guests seemed mutually pleased with each other.
Monsieur Thiers is a very remarkable person—quick, animated, and observant: nothing escapes him, and his remarks are indicative of a mind of great power. I enjoy listening to his conversation, which is at once full of originality, yet free from the slightest shade of eccentricity.
Monsieur Mignet, who is the inseparable friend of Monsieur Thiers, reminds me every time I see him of Byron, for there is a striking likeness in the countenance. With great abilities, Monsieur Mignet gives me the notion of being more fitted to a life of philosophical research and contemplation than of action, while Monsieur Thiers impresses me with the conviction of his being formed to fill a busy and conspicuous part in the drama of life.
He is a sort of modern Prometheus, capable of creating and of vivifying with the electric spark of mind; but, whether he would steal the fire from Heaven, or a less elevated region, I am not prepared to say. He has called into life a body—and a vast one—by his vigorous writings, and has infused into it a spirit that will not be soon or easily quelled. Whether that spirit will tend to the advancement of his country or not, time will prove; but, en attendant, its ebullitions may occasion as much trouble to the powers that be as did the spirit engendered by Mirabeau in a former reign.
The countenance of Monsieur Thiers is remarkable. The eyes, even through his spectacles, flash with intelligence, and the expression of his face varies with every sentiment he utters. Thiers is a man to effect a revolution, and Mignet would be the historian to narrate it.
There is something very interesting in the unbroken friendship of these two men of genius, and its constancy elevates both in my estimation. They are not more unlike than are their respective works, both of which, though so dissimilar, are admirable in their way. The mobility and extreme excitability of the French, render such men as Monsieur Thiers extremely dangerous to monarchical power. His genius, his eloquence, and his boldness, furnish him with the means of exciting the enthusiasm of his countrymen as surely as a torch applied to gunpowder produces an explosion. In England these qualities, however elevated, would fail to produce similar results; for enthusiasm is there little known, and, when it comes forth, satisfies itself with a brief manifestation, and swiftly resigns itself to the prudent jurisdiction of reason. Napoleon himself, with all the glory associated with his name—a glory that intoxicated the French—would have failed to inebriate the sober-minded English.
Through my acquaintance with the Baron de Cailleux, who is at the head of the Musée, I obtained permission to take Lord John Russell, Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Luttrell, to the galleries of the Louvre yesterday, it being a day on which the public are excluded. The Baron received us, did the honours of the Musée with all the intelligence and urbanity that distinguish him, and made as favourable an impression on my countrymen as they seemed to have produced on him.
Rogers has a pure taste in the fine arts, and has cultivated it con amore; Luttrell brings to the study a practised eye and a matured judgment; but Lord John, nurtured from infancy in dwellings, the walls of which glow with the chefs-d'oeuvre of the old masters and the best works of the modern ones, possesses an exquisite tact in recognizing at a glance the finest points in a picture, and reasons on them with all the savoir of a connoisseur and the feeling of an amateur.