' He is considered rather a
well-informed man.
He lives in Belgravia, of course; in a drab-coloured genteel house,
and has everything about him that is properly grave, dismal, and
comfortable. His dinners are in the MORNING HERALD, among the parties
for the week; and his wife and daughters make a very handsome appearance
at the Drawing-Room, once a year, when he comes down to the Club in his
Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform.
He is fond of beginning a speech to you by saying, 'When I was in the
House, I &c.'--in fact he sat for Skittlebury for three weeks in the
first Reformed Parliament, and was unseated for bribery; since which he
has three times unsuccessfully contested that honourable borough.
Another sort of Political Snob I have seen at most Clubs and that is
the man who does not care so much for home politics, but is great upon
foreign affairs. I think this sort of man is scarcely found anywhere BUT
in Clubs. It is for him the papers provide their foreign articles,
at the expense of some ten thousand a-year each. He is the man who is
really seriously uncomfortable about the designs of Russia, and the
atrocious treachery of Louis Philippe. He it is who expects a French
fleet in the Thames, and has a constant eye upon the American President,
every word of whose speech (goodness help him!) he reads. He knows the
names of the contending leaders in Portugal, and what they are fighting
about: and it is he who says that Lord Aberdeen ought to be impeached,
and Lord Palmerston hanged, or VICE VERSA.
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