Note 298 — Chapter XIX

One of the many repetitions of the same opinion in his letters may be given. "Lord John's note" (September 1853) "confirms me in an old impression that he is worth a score of official men; and has more generosity in his little finger than a Government usually has in its whole corporation." In another of his public allusions, Dickens described him as a statesman of whom opponents and friends alike felt sure that he would rise to the level of every occasion, however exalted; and compared him to the seal of Solomon in the old Arabian story inclosing in a not very large casket the soul of a giant.