'If the devil,' he said, 'had sought out an agent
expressly for the purpose of embroiling this miserable country, I do not
think he could find a better than such a fellow as this, whose temper
seems equally active, supple, and mischievous, and who is followed, and
implicitly obeyed, by a gang of such cut-throats as those whom you are
pleased to admire so much.'
The ladies of the party did not escape his censure. He allowed that Flora
Mac-Ivor was a fine woman, and Rose Bradwardine a pretty girl. But he
alleged that the former destroyed the effect of her beauty by an
affectation of the grand airs which she had probably seen practised in
the mock court of St. Germains. As for Rose Bradwardine, he said it was
impossible for any mortal to admire such a little uninformed thing, whose
small portion of education was as ill adapted to her sex or youth as if
she had appeared with one of her father's old campaign-coats upon her
person for her sole garment. Now much of this was mere spleen and
prejudice in the excellent Colonel, with whom the white cockade on the
breast, the white rose in the hair, and the Mac at the beginning of a
name would have made a devil out of an angel; and indeed he himself
jocularly allowed that he could not have endured Venus herself if she had
been announced in a drawing-room by the name of Miss Mac-Jupiter.
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