Edward Irving, already mistrusted as a crazy heretic, records of his reception in Edinburgh soon after the outcry began against him, that " unbounded was the wonder of men to find that I had not a rough tiger's skin, with tusks and horns and other savage instruments."

Colonel Montgomery Maxwell's narrative of his first inspection of Napoleon, in 1814, involves the "frank confession" that he felt much disappointed, and that for the moment the film seemed to fall from his eyes, when the man who had been the idol of his imagination for years, stood before him, a round ungraceful figure, with a most unpoetically protuberant stomach." "I mentally exclaimed, as I peeped at his round, thick, short thighs, and potbelly, 'Is this the great Napoleon?'"

Mr. Tytler, the historian of Scotland, expresses the astonishment he felt when he first met Lord Hill (it was in 1830, at dinner with Lord Teignmouth.) "Instead of the bold-looking soldier, there slipped into the room a short, pot-bellied body, with a sweet round face, and a remarkably mild expression, who seemed afraid of the sound of his own voice; speaking in a lisp, and creeping about the chairs and tables, as if he had a great inclination to hide himself under them. I almost laughed outright when I was told this was the famous Lord Hill."

Thomas Moore once told Washington Irving of his hearing an eager exclamation from a carriage as he was passing, "There's Moore! there's Moore !" and that looking round, he saw a lady with upraised

hands and an expression of sad disappointment, as much as to say, Impossible! that can never be Moore! -Southey used to say, after he had once seen Jeffrey, and taken his measure in the matter of physical inches, that it would be impossible ever again to feel angry with anything so small.

Little (Thomas, Esq.), alias Moore, often jots down in his Diary the surprises he experienced on meeting this, that, or the other "celebrity," and finding them so different from his à priori impressions. For example, he meets Mr. Roebuck in 1839, at Colonel Napier's, and declares himself vastly "surprised," as nothing could be less like a firebrand than he is, his manner and look being particularly gentle. But this is frequently the case; my poor friend Robert Emmet was as mild and gentle in his manner as any girl."

Mr. Dickens good-humouredly pictures his presentation across the Atlantic to a Dr. Crocus, who "looks as if I didn't by any means realise his expectations, which, in a linen blouse, and a great strawhat with a green ribbon, and no gloves, and my face and nose profusely ornamented with the stings of mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it is very likely I did not." Boz in a blouse,-Boz bug-bitten all over his face,-alas for the illusion of idealising Doctor Crocus.

Dr. Croly, in his memoirs of Marston, soldier and statesman, takes or makes repeated occasion to illustrate the discrepancy between one's preconception of distinguished men and their actual presence. As

where the autobiographer sees La Fayette for the first time, and reports: "I saw a quiet visage, and a figure of moderate size, rather embonpoint, and altogether the reverse of that fire-eyed and leancountenanced Cassius which I had pictured in my imagination." Marston adds that the General's manners perplexed him as much as his features, being calm, easy, and almost frank; so that it was impossible to recognise the Frenchman in him except by his language; and he was the last man in whom could be detected that toy of the theatre,

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the French marquis." At another time Mr. Carlyle's Sea-green Incorruptible is Marston's subject. He pictures himself awaiting in a small room the approach of the terror of France and horror of Europe, during half an hour which seemed to him interminable. The door at last opened, a valet came in, and the name of " Robespierre," writes our soldierstatesman, “thrilled through every fibre ; but instead of the frowning giant to which my fancy had involuntarily attached the name, I saw following him a slight figure, highly dressed, and even with the air of a fop on the stage." Shifting the scene to England, we have, among others, Edmund Burke-of whom, in his political career, by-the-by, Dr. Croly became the enthusiastic biographer-thus referred to the same category of illusory preconceptions: “Like most men who have made themselves familiar with the works of a great writer, I had formed a portraiture of him by anticipation. I never was more disappointed. Instead of the expressive counte

nance and commanding figure which I had imagined to enshrine the soul of the most splendid of all orators, I saw a form of the middle size and of a homely appearance, a heavy physiognomy, and the whole finished by two appurtenances which would have been fatal to the divinity of the Apollo Belvedere spectacles and a wig." His voice and manner, it is added, were scarcely more (Dr. Croly writes, or at least prints, it "scarcely less") prepossessing; the one being as abrupt and clamorous as the other was rustic and ungraceful: altogether, he had the general look of a farmer of the better order, and seemed, at best, made to figure on a grand jury. John Philpot Curran, again, another of the author of" Salathiel's" brilliant fellow-countrymen: "Curran was the last man to be judged of by appearances. Nature had been singularly unkind to his exterior, as if the more to astonish us by the powers of the man within." His figure, we are told, was undersized, his visage brown, hard, and peasant-like; his gesture a gesticulation, and his voice alternately feeble and shrill; so that the whole effect of his oratory was to be derived from means with which that little meagre frame and sharp treble had nothing to do-unless, perhaps, in the negative way of let and hindrance.

For once, however, the limner of these disappointing portraits has to declare his preconception realised; and that is in the instance of Charles James Fox. The great Whig is thus introduced by our Tory divine: I now saw Fox for the first time, and I was instantly

struck with the singular similitude of all that I saw of him to all that I had conceived from his character and style. In the broad bold forehead it could not be difficult to discover the strong sense-in the relaxed mouth, the self-indulgent and reckless enjoyment-in the quick, small eye under those magnificent black brows, the man of sagacity, of sarcasm, and of humour." This is the one noteworthy exception to the rule of Dr. Croly's disappointed anticipations, and the exception proves the rule.

Mr. Thackeray, under one of his aliases, is amusingly suggestive in his sketch of a Dinner in the City, where he is awed by the vision of a veteran officer in scarlet, with silver epaulets, and a profuse quantity of bullion and silver lace, &c. &c. "Who is the general?" he asks his neighbour at table; "is it the Marquis of Anglesea, or the Rajah of Sarawak ?" That! pooh!" says Pilkington; "that is Mr. Champignon, M.P., of Whitehall Gardens and Fungus Abbey, Citizen and Bellows-mender. His uniform is that of a Colonel in the Diddlesex Militia." There is no end to similar mistakes that day. The innocent guest mistakes for a Foreign Ambassador at the very least a venerable man in a blue and gold uniform, and a large crimson sword-belt and brassscabbard sabre, who turns out to be only a Billingsgate Commissioner; while "a little fellow in a blue livery, which fitted him so badly that I thought he must be one of the hired waiters of the Company, who had been put into a coat that didn't belong to