There was, indeed, something shocking to the sense--shocking in being so surprising--that this should be the figure around which one of the fiercest and most tragic political struggles of our time should have surged.

He is a man slightly above the middle height, thin in face and in figure.

Somehow or other, there is a general air about him that I can only describe by the word shabby--I had almost ventured on the term ragged.

The clothes hang somewhat loosely--are of a pattern that recalls a half century ago--and have all the air of having been worn until they are positively threadbare.

Altogether, there is about this inheritor of a great name--of vast estates--of a title that in its days was almost kingly--an air that suggests a combination between the recluse and the poor man of letters, who makes his home in the reading-room of the British Museum.
It was also a peculiarity of the position that he seemed an almost unwelcome visitant, even to those who had to defend him.