250 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



ural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy, 

 and burning fire of genius ; like comet fire, glaring 

 fulginous through murkiest confusions." 



On first meeting with John Stuart Mill he de- 

 scribes him to his wife as " a slender, rather tall, and 

 elegant youth, with small, clear, Roman-nosed face, 

 two small, earnestly smiling eyes ; modest, remark- 

 ably gifted with precision of utterance ; enthusiastic, 

 yet lucid, calm ; not a great, yet distinctly a gifted, 

 and amiable youth." 



A London editor, whom he met about the same 

 time, he describes as "a tall, loose, lank -haired, 

 wrinkly, wintry, vehement - looking flail of a man." 

 He goes into the House of Commons on one of his 

 early visits to London : " Althorp spoke, a thick, 

 large, broad-whiskered, farmer-looking man ; Hume 

 also, a powdered, clean, burly fellow ; and Wetherell, 

 a beetle-browed, sagacious, quizzical old gentleman ; 

 then Davies, a Roman-nosed dandy," etc. He must 

 touch off the portrait of every man he sees. De 

 Quincey "is one of the smallest men you ever in 

 your life beheld ; but with a most gentle arid sensible 

 face, only that the teeth are destroyed by opium, and 

 the little bit of an under lip projects like a shelf." 

 Leigh Hunt : " Dark complexion (a trace of the Afri- 

 can, I believe) ; copious, clean, strong black hair, 

 beautifully shaped head, fine, beaming, serious hazel 

 eyes ; seriousness and intellect the main expression 

 of the face (to our surprise at first)." 



Here is his sketch of Tennyson : " A fine, large 



