Nightingale if Lady Byron were
warm-hearted. With some hesitation, or mental reservation,--at all
events, not quite outspokenly,--she answered that she was.
I was too much engaged with these personal talks to attend much to what
was going on elsewhere; but all through breakfast I had been more and
more impressed by the aspect of one of the guests, sitting next to
Milnes. He was a man of large presence,--a portly personage,
gray-haired, but scarcely as yet aged; and his face had a remarkable
intelligence, not vivid nor sparkling, but conjoined with great
quietude,--and if it gleamed or brightened at one time more than another,
it was like the sheen over a broad surface of sea. There was a somewhat
careless self-possession, large and broad enough to be called dignity;
and the more I looked at him, the more I knew that he was a distinguished
person, and wondered who. He might have been a minister of state; only
there is not one of them who has any right to such a face and presence.
At last,--I do not know how the conviction came,--but I became aware that
it was Macaulay, and began to see some slight resemblance to his
portraits. But I have never seen any that is not wretchedly unworthy of
the original.
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