Note * — A PEEP INTO A PICTURE BOOK

Hector Mirabeau Montmorency, Esq.! These features are somewhat stern to gaze on after such a continuation of the beautiful. They are far, however, from being harsh and disagreeable. A great deal of stuff was written some years ago about the exaggerated and grotesque character of this gentleman’s physiognomy. I remember several libellous assertions to that effect in the long since exploded catch-penny of Captain Tree’s denominated: ‘The Foundling.’* But, indeed, where all the rest was a compound of the grossest falsehood, where Lord and Lady Ellrington, Mr. Sydney, the Duke of Wellington, the whole concern of the Philosopher’s Island,—tutors, masters of colleges, students and all,—were hashed up into one wild farrago of bombast, fustian and lies, why should the Lord of Derrinane escape more than others? It is not to be wondered at that this same work, which gave a detailed account of Zenobia Percy’s declaring in solemn soliloquy that she hated her husband—abhorred, loathed, detested her own Alexander—which afterwards showed her daring him in the most insolent language to his fate, glorifying the young Marquis of Douro, and anathematizing him; and which, to crown all, made Percy offer to commit an act that certainly was more than excusable—almost justifiable after such provocation,—namely, the final settling of so shrewish and shameless a wife, introduced a third person to prevent the deed, and made his interference successful. The volume which contained all this, I say, should excite but small accession of wonder by the few lines that describe Montmorency as a broad, low man, bandy-legged, squinting, his head covered with a shock of shaggy black hair, and his eyes of the consistency of boiled gooseberries: green, glassy, and ghost-like. The fact is Hector is a tall, well-proportioned, robust figure, with red hair, a florid complexion, an expression of eye which indicates good humour, powerful talent, and no small degree of ferocity. His countenance is certainly not so femininely elegant as that of Northangerland, nor so fierily magnificent as that of Zamorna, but it is the countenance of a gentleman and a Glass-towner, not of a brownie and a bear.