I defended Stephen.

The truth is that he asked my permission to draw a portrait of my father for the Edinburgh Review.

I told him that I had only to beg that he would not give it the air of a puff; a thing which, for myself and for my friends, I dread far more than any attack.

My influence over the Review is so well known that a mere eulogy of my father appearing in that work would only call forth derision.

I therefore am really glad that Stephen has introduced into his sketch some little characteristic traits which, in themselves, were not beauties."] With their May meetings, and African Institutions, and Anti-slavery Reporters, and their subscriptions of tens of thousands of pounds, and their petitions bristling with hundreds of thousands of signatures, and all the machinery for informing opinion and bringing it to bear on ministers and legislators which they did so much to perfect and even to invent, they can be regarded as nothing short of the pioneers and fuglemen of that system of popular agitation which forms a leading feature in our internal history during the past half-century.