Let us stop before this person in a gray hat, and dark brown riding-coat, carelessly supporting himself on his cane. The heat of the weather is extreme. To be more at his ease, he has, rather unceremoniously, taken off his cravat. If you were to meet him in St. James' Park, his favorite promenade, cantering on horseback, or walking on foot, his large nostrils snuffing the breeze, his head thrown back, his eyes sparkling and full of disdain, with his tall figure, and robust and soldierly appearance, you would take him for some old colonel on half pay, certainly not for the first Lord of the Treasury. Nevertheless this person is Lord Melbourne, the leader of the government.
But examine a little closer and more attentively this physiognomy; the expression of it is complex; it is a mixture of pride, indolence, and irritability. In this you have the whole secret of the talent and the fortune of this minister. It is almost a miracle that his natural indolence should have allowed him the ambition to aspire to the first office of the state; at least, I do not believe that he would have had the energy to have maintained himself long in that position, if it had not been disputed. It is because he had been once thrown out, that he is in office now. In throwing him down, they struck the mainspring of his strength; so he has rebounded, and in consequence has again raised himself to power, and re-established himself more solidly and more obstinately than ever. Such are those natures whose dormant energies require to be awakened by the lash of insult. In 1834, Lord Melbourne was but an inert and powerless whig; in 1835 he is a radical whig; he has made the throne capitulate, he has wounded the church, he threatens the peerage—why is this? Because you have offended him, because you have chased him from office. You alone can diminish his power. His eloquence has no other moving power than that which he derives from obstacles thrown in his way. Suffer him to go on, to speak as he pleases—his words will grow feeble, and his speech drag itself laboriously along; cross his path, throw any thing in his way, he rebels, he is hurried along, he grows heated, he drags you with him, he is eloquent! His whole person, his whole soul is wrapped in his discourse. There is nothing studied, nothing solemn; all is sudden, involuntary. He, who but a moment since, was so grave, so subdued, now clinches his hands, now throws his arms out with violence, now leaps almost from the very floor; his angry declamation, his accents of indignant contempt proceed from the bottom of his entrails. Now his passion suffocates him: he no longer breathes; his discourse is interrupted; a profound silence ensues. At this moment he exhibits the trembling and magnificently impassioned air of Casimir Perier.
Lord Melbourne is the most original speaker, and the most peculiar in either house of parliament; perhaps the most impassioned, if not the greatest and the most perfect. As a statesman I have great respect for his moderate character; he is a progressive, bold, and thorough whig; but he is not a whig—an improvident aristocrat, who never inquires to what extremities the principles which he has inscribed on his banner may lead.
The member on the left of Lord Melbourne, of smaller stature than the noble premier, fat, all his limbs well rounded, yet not over large, with a frank and open countenance, is the Marquis of Lansdowne, the president of the council. You know that in England this office does not entitle the person who fills it to any pre-eminence over his colleagues; he is their speaker, and only presides over their deliberations. Their true leader and chief is the first lord of the treasury. The Marquis of Lansdowne plays his part with honor to himself in the House of Lords, and usefully in the cabinet. In a discussion he generally follows Lord Melbourne; his language is masculine and studied, his voice firm and sonorous, but his utterance is heavy and monotonous; he has evidently more words than ideas; he says trifling things, les riens, with too much solemnity; this regular and invariable emphasis destroys the effect of his best efforts. I could wish that he would spare a few of those thundering gesticulations, during which be strikes the clerks' table with such furious violence. It is a vulgar practice that should be left to Lord Londonderry, who sits before him across the table. This style of argument is much more becoming in a pugilist than an orator. I have been present, occasionally, when the noble Marquisses replied to each other with the air of two people trying the strength of their arms, or hammering together on an anvil.
Those who recollect Mr. Pitt, observe a good deal of resemblance between the argument of that great statesman and the style of Lord Lansdowne's speeches. It is from Mr. Pitt that the President of the Council has acquired the habit of embodying a whole argument in one immense period, cut up into a thousand parts; but the supreme tact of Mr. Pitt always enabled him to lead his hearers, with infallible certainty, to the point he had in view, by cross and apparently opposite ways. The Marquis of Lansdowne is but too happy if he can extricate himself in safety from the labyrinths of his own parentheses.
That other angular figure, hipped, with a long stiff neck buried in a thick white cravat, not unlike a French provincial notary, is Lord Duncannon, the first Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and of the Privy Seal. He sits on the right of Lord Melbourne, and is one of the most useful members of the cabinet. Stammerer as he is, he speaks often, and always willingly; he wants words more than thoughts; his sang froid often serves him in the stead of wit, though he occasionally strikes an adversary very happily, and gives double effect to his hits by the air—the most innocent and candid in the world—with which he administers them.
The other Ministers in the House of Lords hardly deserve any particular notice; if of any service in council, they certainly are not on the floor of the House. The long, dark, impassible figure of Lord Auckland is rarely drawn from its retreat; it is only when some question touches the affairs of the admiralty, of which he is the first Lord, that a few bashful words escape him. Lord Glenelg, recently elevated to the Peerage, as rarely suffers himself to be drawn into a debate, if the colonies have nothing at stake. Lord Glenelg has had his days of eloquence, and was much more distinguished in the Commons when simple Mr. Grant. Assuredly he is no longer a young man, for his head is covered with gray hairs, though he looks to be older than he really is. He is completely worn out, both in soul and body, and is one of those mystic sensualists who sacrifice real existence to the mysterious dreams of an opium-eater.
An enormous, round, pale bald head, with great black eyes, and huge white whiskers, resting on broad shoulders, is every thing that remains of Lord Holland, the nephew of Fox, and once an accomplished orator of his uncle's school, and a tolerable writer. Of the rest of his body nothing can be said; the gout has eat him up by little and little, and he ends, absolutely, like a fish. It is only after much time and exertion that his two crutches transport him to the end of the bench on which he sits, opposite Lord Melbourne. Moreover, his chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster is not such a sinecure as people have said; he supports his colleagues at least with all the vigor of his lungs, if with no great strength of argument. He assumes the responsibility of applauding their speeches, and acquits himself conscientiously of the duty, for he makes more noise with his cheers and ‘hears’ alone, than all the rest of the Whig party put together. It is quite an amusing spectacle to see this stump of a man, bawling out his applauses, looking for all the world like one of those Chinese toys representing a great fat buffoon, which, loaded at the bottom, and without legs, constantly resumes its upright position, however often it may be thrown to one side or the other.
Literary history will remember Lord Holland, on account of his biography of Lope de Vega. I am reminded by this work of an anecdote of the noble lord, which does much more honor to his politeness than to his generosity. In 1832, a poor refugee Spaniard, whose only property in the world consisted of three unpublished manuscript comedies of the celebrated Castillian poet, determined to go to London for the purpose of selling them to the illustrious whig commentator, whom he thought would naturally give more for them than any other person. However, in the presence of so great a nobleman, the timid emigrant did not dare to speak of any price for them; he simply offered him his three valuable manuscripts. The visit and the present were very graciously received, and in exchange for the one and the other, the stranger received the next morning Lord Holland's card and a copy of the life of Lope de Vega. There are some occasions on which the English are magnificent; but their liberality never exercises itself to any great extent but in public. For example, they would glory in throwing a set of diamonds to an Italian chanteur in a crowded theatre.
Clearing the table of the ushers, at one leap, we find ourselves in the very head quarters of the tory opposition. Here are the ministers, belonging to the House of Lords, of the late conservative administration. All of them are past middle age, and (like the present whig ministers) are between fifty and seventy, the greater part being over sixty.