I hasten to confess my entire incapacity to describe the uniform personal bearing of a Chesterton in or out of the House of Lords.  It is strictly sui generis.  It has neither the quiet, unassuming dignity of the Derbys, the Shaftesburys, or the Warwicks, nor the vulgar vanity of the untravelled Cockney.  It simply defies accurate delineation.  Dickens has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in “Bleak House”; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great artist, is not a success,—­merely because, in the case of the Baronet, selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face.  A genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own theaters in the person of “Lord Dundreary,” as the John Bull of the French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and exclaiming, “G——­ d——!  I will sell my wife at Smithfield,” is unlike the Englishman of real life.  Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with “Aw! weally now.”  He does not stare you out of countenance in a cafe, nor wonder “what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence.”  So much by way of negative description.  To appreciate him positively, one must see him and hear him.  No matter when or where you encounter him, you will find him ever the same; and you will at last conclude that his manners are not unnatural to a very weak man inheriting the traditions of an ancient and titled family, and educated from childhood to believe that he belongs to a superior order of beings.

Of course the strong point of a Chesterton is what he calls his “conservatism.”  He values everything in proportion to its antiquity, and prefers a time-honored abuse to a modern blessing.  With a former Duke of Somerset, he would pity Adam, “because he had no ancestors.”  His sympathies, so far as he has any sentiments which deserve to be dignified by that name, are ever on the side of tyranny.  He condescends to give his valuable sanction to the liberal institutions of England, not because they are liberal, but because they are English.  Next after the Established Church, the reigning sovereign and the royal family, his own order and his precious self, his warmest admiration is bestowed on some good old-fashioned, thorough-going, grinding despotism.  He defends the Emperor of Austria, and considers the King of Naples a much-abused monarch.

If his lordship has ever been in diplomatic life,—­an event highly probable,—­he becomes the most intolerable nuisance that ever belied the noblest sentiments of civilized society or blocked the wheels of public debate.  Flattered by the interested attention of despotic courts, his poor weak head has been completely turned.  He has seen everything en couleur de rose.  He assures their lordships