herself to the charge of stupidity.  Queen Victoria might, indeed, claim for herself the merit of having done a pretty thing for Cousin Jonathan; for the two pretty gentlemen she had chosen to represent her in the mixed commission bespoke how much she had regarded the value of personal beauty in the settlement of those claims, so long outstanding, and so beset with grave difficulties.  Notwithstanding all this, the last gentleman was said to be young, but a clever lawyer.  Now a play of the humorous invaded his face; and while from his eye there came out a strong love of the ludicrous, a curl of sarcasm now and then ruffled his lip.  They called him the British agent—­in other words, the Counsel for Her Most Gracious Majesty.  Smooth had no stronger evidence of this fact than that the gentleman seemed very contented with the way time went, amusing himself with making paper spy-glasses,[*] with which he quizzed objects on the floor, then took lunar observations through it, the broad disc of the Umpire’s red face affording the medium of a planet.  To General F——­, who was then in the full pressure of his speech, making his, to him, crushing arguments a legal treadmill for his handsome brother, he seemed a perfect pest, inasmuch as whenever the General had got a real stunner of an argument on the crook of his mind, and just where he would be sure to lose it if the course were not left clear, he was sure to interrupt him with some annoying question, which in most cases amounted to nothing less than disputing the premises assumed.  The General had not received these interruptions with so much perturbation but that they were always coupled with a sarcastic leer, the significance of which had not been well directed, nor should ever be indulged in by legal brethren engaged in the settlement of grave international questions.  The reader may say:—­’who so cruel as to begrudge the legal gentry their little innocent sport!’ As the British Cabinet is at times a sort of toy, with which the facetious House of Commons loves to play the game of knockdown (just for the fun of seeing how much trouble it costs the nation to build it up) so the good-natured gentlemen of this mixed commission seemed to view the gravest international questions.

[Footnote:  The writer here describes what he saw, without any attempt at ridicule.]

“‘I reiterate!’ continued General Flum, for it was no less a personage than he who poured out his eloquence to the Convention:  ’If the gentleman for t’other side of this question was only to read Kent’s Commentaries, or take a peep into one Story’s pleadings, ’twould do him more good nor all (we quote verbatim) the stale law he’s larned in the Inner Temple—­’twould!’ Here Flum paused, and majestically turned round, as if to see how his antagonist felt.  His legal brother was very quietly pursuing his lunars with the paper tube, expecting soon to work up all the curious angles of the Umpire’s face.  To properly intersperse