PUBLICOLA. 249 



office in the state, and now leads the oppo- 

 sition in the House of Commons. I sat 

 tete-a-tete here with him, conversing on 

 various topics, political and literary, when, 

 from his highly-polished manner, and what 

 I thought to be a cultivated taste, un- 

 marked, as his conversation was, by any 

 assumed condescension, he seemed to me to 

 develop gifts and attainments of the highest 

 order ; and we parted, as I flattered myself, 

 at a late or rather at an early hour, well 

 pleased with each other's company. 



But he was not the only great public 

 man I met there. Another, who gloried in 

 the name of " Publicola," I frequently en- 

 countered. His manners and his conversa- 

 tion were as unrefined and as brutally* 

 pointed as were his celebrated articles in 

 the " Weekly Dispatch," and his habits ap- 

 peared to be as loose in their nature as his 

 political creed was false and malignant. 



* A word of frequent recurrence in his would-be inflam- 

 matory letters. 



