ARE REMARKABLE PEOPLE REMARKABLE LOOKING.

Otago Witness, Issue 2652, 11 January 1905, Page 15

ARE REM ARKA BLE PEOPLE REMARKABLE LOOKING.

In the Nineteenth Century Lady Currie puts the question, " Are Remarkable People .Remarkable-looking?" and iis disposed to give an answer in the affirmativer She throws her experiences into the form of "an extravaganza" — that is, she supposes the men whom she mentions to have entered the same omnibus as one in which she is travelling, dressed in ordinary street attire. Remarkable' men are not handsome necessarily, or even pleasing to the eye; but there is something generally unusual or distinguished about them, so that you turn round to look at them a second time, or ask whom they are. She endeavours to realise how the distinguished men she has met would stand the omnibus test. Would ' one glance a second time? Garibaldi is first j mentioned, with his splendid leonine head, the calm, unflinching -gaze of fatalistic eyes. His was the earnest, benevolent face of a great thinker, whose massive brain, haying once conceived the notion of a glorious ! ideal, is determined to embody it at all hazards. There was nothing of the fierce pugnacity of the born soldier about him. He might be a professor of languages, or even a confidential family physician. Carlyle enters the omnibus " slightly stooping, but with an air of determination, his wistful eyes looking out like those of a Skye terrier from between his thick grey hair and shaggy brows." Lady Currie relates how she was present at a conversation , when a School Board inspector denied the degeneration of England, which the sage had gloomily pronounced to be final and irremediable. The inspector, after ©numerating each- modern blessing, exclaimed, " Now what do you think, Mr Carlyle?" "I think," said Carlyle at last, " that ye're aboot -the most meeserable creature that ever craawled upon the face of the airth!" Chax-les Kingsley, we are told, belied his character, for, though-j " remarkable," he did not look amiable. His overhanging brows w.ere knitted to a frown over small, restless grey eyes, his appearance suggesting a bird of prey. Of all men he should have been the last to possess a narrow, receding brow. His once great adversary, Cardinal Newman, is " wan and spare, with a death's-head face." Apropos of Kingsley and his love of talking at random an amusing anecdote is told. When 'he was romancing about the planet Mars, someone called out, "Are you i quite sure, Mr Kingsley, that you are accurate?" — on which he burst into a relation of his first acquaintance with the famoiis clock of Strasbourg. An old woman explained to him what the wonderful clock could do. But he said to her: "Your wonderful clock is an impostor. The tame is half -past 11, not 12; this is the 15 th day of the month, and not the 16th; the moon is in the second quarter, and not the third." The old woman answered quite angrily, "Now, how can you expect that a clock that tries to do so many things can. do all quite correctly?" And no doubt this explanation covers the Kmgstey case, and! that of many other discursive talkers and writers. Gladstone, Disraeli, and Salisbury are introduced with anecdotes rather than description. Tennyson figures as " got up like a conspirator," and Cecil Rhodes is "pale, stern, indomitable, his brow requiring only the laur&l wreath of a Caesar to look •the self-made mCnarch that lie waa." A

contrast between the present and the late Pope is suggestive, ©specially in view of Lady Curries Roman experience. Of the present occupant of the Papal chair we read that his " fine square brow and frank, fearless gaze seem to betokfcn a nature uncorrupted and untrammelled by the paralysing influences which are generally brought to bear ixpon those who have elected to merge their manhood in the priest." Lady Curries sketches are scarcely improved by the " extravaganza " setting in which she places them, and from which they have to be disentangled.