Perhaps the first thing about him which impresses an American,
accustomed at home to dyspeptic politicians and statesmen prematurely
old, is his physical activity. Fancy a man of seventy-six, who has been
in most incessant political life for more than fifty years, sitting out
a debate of ten hours without flinching, and then walking to his house
in Piccadilly, not less than two miles. And his body is not more active
than his mind. He does something more than sit out a debate. Not a word
escapes him when a prominent man is on his legs. Do not be deceived by
his lazy attitude, or his sleepy expression. Not a man in the House
has his wits more thoroughly about him. Ever ready to extricate
his colleagues from an awkward difficulty, to evade a dangerous
question,--making, with an air of transparent candor, a reply in
which nothing is answered,--to disarm an angry opponent with a few
conciliatory or complimentary words, or to demolish him with a little
good-humored raillery which sets the House in a roar; equally skilful
in attack and retreat: such, in a word, is the bearing of this gay and
gallant veteran, from the beginning to the end of each debate, during
the entire session of Parliament. He seems absolutely insensible to
fatigue. "I happened," said a member of the House, writing to a friend,
last summer, "to follow Lord Palmerston, as he left the cloak-room, the
other morning, after a late sitting, and, as I was going his way, I
thought I might as well see how he got over the ground. At first he
seemed a little stiff in the legs; but when he warmed to his work he
began to pull out, and before he got a third of the way he bowled along
splendidly, so that he put me to it to keep him in view. Perhaps in a
few hours after that long sitting and that walk home, and the brief
sleep that followed, the Premier might have been seen standing bolt
upright at one end of a great table in Cambridge House, receiving a
deputation from the country, listening with patient and courteous
attention to some tedious spokesman, or astonishing his hearers by