LORD BEACONSFIELD AT THE GUILDHALL BANQUET.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3121, 18 February 1879, Page 1

LORD BEACONSFIELD AT THE GUILDHALL BANQUET.

TheTion^on corresiwndent of the New Tork Tribune contributes the following fair picture of Lord Beaconsfield at the Guildhall banquet:—" The great man moved so slowly towards the platform that everybody had a good look at him and could judge for himself whether he looked well or ill. Lord Beaconsfield's friends hare taken great pains lately to spread tlife belief that he is unusually well. They have taken so much pains that I could not bqt recollect the remark Iliad heard from a lady of much wit, that she wvis growing old when her friends

told her bow -young she appeared. In truth, Lord Beaconsfield has a right to the gentle consideration we offer to great age and many infirmities. If I speak of his appearance with brutal frankness, it is because his health is part of the public demain. It ia a matter with which the welfare of England is bound up. While his strength and rigor last, his malign influence lasts. A man who wishes well to bis country must be excused if he notes respectfully, but with particularity, the signs of decaying power in her evil genius. He walked as a man might walk whose propelling power was due to some machinery inside of him. There was a gingerly stiffness of movement about him, as if he were not quite sure the clockwork might not run down before he had got to his appointed place. He leaned on Montague Corry's arm, and leaned heavily. His face was what his face always is, an impenetrable screen for the restless brain behind it.. A few minutes later I had still better chance to study this mysterious countenance. ■ In bis place in the procession which marched from tlie library into the banqueting-hall, Lord Beaconsfield made the circuit of that great room, and it chanced that the proceision came to a momentary halt as he was near tbe end of the table at which I stood. I had no more scruple in staring at him than I had in staring at the grotesque figures of Gog and Magog which haunt the corners of the gallery. For was he any more conscious than they of the attention bestowed on him ; at any rate, he gave no more'sign of it. Not a muscle of bis face moved; they hardly looked as if they could move. He had the Lady Mayoress on his arm. Once he beqt to speak to her, and whatever tbe observation he confided to her may have been, it was delivered without a change of expression, or a gleam of life in his 1 sunken eyes. - I never saw a human •visage so scarred and scored with strange lines. Not the least strange thing about them is that they are as full of power as they are of fantastic meaning. The parchment which hides his skull is strained tight as a drum-head over the protruding bones beneath the eyes^ and hangs in angular wrinkles ~ just below. Beyond doubt it is a.thoughtful face, and bej'ond doubt also contemptuous of other people's thoughts. There is strength in tbe jaw, and genius in the forehead, with a mocking glitter in the glass eye, which belies both, which also suggests that he despises the race whom he governs. With all that, the face has an immense fascinatioß for the beholder. Lowell said that the Venus of Milo made all other Venuses seem ignoble. This man, with his.incomprehensible mixture of great qualities and incredible flippancy, makes the greatest of bis rivals seem common* place. Even Lord Salisbury, who is not unworthy", with his sallow, unfathomable visage, to be the descendant of Burleigh, looks as if his chief bad found him out.