Mildmay's Cabinets nobody
ever knew. As Chancellor of the Duchy he has nothing to do,--and were
there anything, he would not do it. He rarely speaks in the House,
and then does not speak well. He is a handsome man, or would be but
for an assumption of grandeur in the carriage of his eyes, giving to
his face a character of pomposity which he himself well deserves. He
was in the Guards when young, and has been in Parliament since he
ceased to be young. It must be supposed that Mr. Mildmay has found
something in him, for he has been included in three successive
liberal Cabinets. He has probably the virtue of being true to Mr.
Mildmay, and of being duly submissive to one whom he recognises as
his superior.
Within two minutes afterwards the Duke followed, with Plantagenet
Palliser. The Duke, as all the world knows, was the Duke of St.
Bungay, the very front and head of the aristocratic old Whigs of the
country,--a man who has been thrice spoken of as Prime Minister, and
who really might have filled the office had he not known himself to
be unfit for it. The Duke has been consulted as to the making of
Cabinets for the last five-and-thirty years, and is even now not an
old man in appearance;--a fussy, popular, clever, conscientious man,
whose digestion has been too good to make politics a burden to him,
but who has thought seriously about his country, and is one who will
be sure to leave memoirs behind him.
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