the Tweed. He has been so attentive, moreover, as to send me letters for Mr M-—— the Man of Feeling, Mr J, Mr P, and several other men of note, on both sides of the question; so that I shall now see as much as I please of all the Dons. I shall take the opportunity of W's absence, to call upon all these gentlemen; for, excepting Mr S― and Mr M, he has no acquaintance with any of them. I believe, indeed, there is little love lost between him and them--and I wish to see things with my own eyes.

Of all the celebrated characters of this place, I rather understand that J- is the one whom travellers are commonly most in a hurry to seenot surely, that the world, in general, has any such deep and abiding feeling of admiration for him, or any such longing to satisfy their eyes with gazing on his features, as they have with regard to such a man as S, or even St-t; but I think the interest felt with respect to him is of a more vivacious and eager kind, and they rush with all speed to gratify it-exactly as men give immediate vent to their petty passions, who have no difficulty, or rather, indeed, who have a sort of pleasure, in nursing silently, and concealing long, those of a more serious and grave im

portance. A few years ago, I should perhaps have been more inclined to be a sharer in this violent sort of impatience; but even now I approached the residence of J with any feelings assuredly rather than those of indiffer

ence.

He was within when I called, and in a second I found myself in the presence of this bugbear of authors. He received me so kindly, (although, from the appearance of his room, he seemed to be immersed in occupation,) and asked so many questions, and said and looked so much, in so short a time, that I had some difficulty in collecting my inquisitorial powers to examine the person of the man. of the man. I know not how, there is a kind of atmosphere of activity about him; and my eyes caught so much of the prevailing spirit, that they darted for some minutes from object to object, and refused, for the first time, to settle themselves even upon the features of a man of genius-to them, of all human things, the most potent attractions.

I find that the common prints give a very inadequate notion of his appearance. The artists of this day are such a set of cowardly fellows, that they never dare to give the truth as it is in

nature; and the consequence is, after all, that they rather take from, than add to, the impressiveness of the faces they would flatter. What a small matter is smoothness of skin, or even regularity of feature, in the countenance that Nature has formed to be the index of a powerful intellect? Perhaps I am too much of a connoisseur to be a fair judge of such matters; but I am very sure, that the mere handsomeness of a great man is one of the last things about him that fixes my attention. I do not wish, neither, to deny, that, when I first saw Goethe, the sublime simplicity of his Homeric beauty-the awful pile of forehead-the large deep eyes, with their melancholy lightnings-the whole countenance, so radiant with divinity, would have lost much of its power, had it not been, at the same time, the finest specimen of humanity I had ever beheld; neither would I conceal the immeasureable softness of delight which mingled with my reverence, when I detected, as if by intuition, in the midst of the whole artists of St Luke's, the Hyperion curls, and calm majestic lineaments, which could be nobody's but Canova's. But although beauty never exists in vain, there is nothing more cer

tain than that its absence is scarcely perceived by those who are capable of discovering and enjoying the marks of things more precious than beauty. Could all our countrymen of the present time, of very great reputation for talents or genius, be brought together into a single room, their physiognomies would, I doubt not, form as impressive a groupe as can well be imagined; but, among the whole, there would scarcely be more than one face which any sculptor might be ambitious of imitating on marble. J's countenance could not stand such a test. To catch the minutest elements of its eloquent power, would, I think, be a hard enough task for any painter, and indeed, as I have already told you, it has proved too hard a task for such as have yet attempted it.

It is a face which any man, would pass without observation in a crowd, because it is small and swarthy, and entirely devoid of lofty or commanding outlines-and besides, his stature is so low, that he might walk close under your chin or mine without ever catching the eye even for a moment. However, he is scarcely shorter than Campbell; and some inches taller than Tom Moore, or the late Monk Lewis. I remember Lord Clarendon somewhere takes no

tice, that in his age, (the prime manhood of English intellect, as Coleridge calls it,) a very large proportion of the remarkable men were very short in stature. Such, if my memory: serves me, were Hales, and Chillingworth, and Sidney Godolphin, and Lord Falkland himself, who used, I think, to say, that it was a great ingredient into his friendship for Mr Godolphin, that he was pleased to be in his company, where he was the properer man. In our own time, we have more than one striking instance of the "Mens magna in corpore parvo ;"-Buonaparte himself for one; and by the way, he is the only little man I ever saw, who seemed to bé unconscious, or careless, or disdainful of the circumstance. Almost all other persons of that description appear to labour under a continual and distressing feeling that nature has done them injustice, and not a few of them strive to make up for her defects, by holding their heads as high as possible, and even giving an uncomfort able elevation or projection to the chin, all which has a very mean effect upon their air and atti tude, and is particularly hurtful to the features of the face, moreover,-because it tends to reverse the arrangement of Nature, and to throw all those parts into light which she has meant to