 jotting down facts, he left an idea of the results of
the measurement of his family and friends at home. He was an adept in the irony
of incongruously grouping. The nature of the Equality under the stars and
stripes was presented in this manner. Equality! Reflections came occasionally: -
»These cousins of ours are highly amusing. I am among the descendants of the
Roundheads. Now and then an allusion to old domestic differences, in perfect
good temper. We go on in our way; they theirs, in the apparent belief that
Republicanism operates remarkable changes in human nature. Vernon tries hard to
think it does. The upper ten of our cousins are the Infernal of Paris. The rest
of them is Radical England, as far as I am acquainted with that section of my
country.« - Where we compared, they were absurd; where we contrasted, they, were
monstrous. The contrast of Vernon's letters with Willoughby's was just as
extreme. You could hardly have taken them for relatives travelling together, or
Vernon Whitford for a born and bred Englishman. The same scenes furnished by
these two pens might have been sketched in different hemispheres. Vernon had no
irony. He had nothing of Willoughby's epistolary creative power, which, causing
his family and friends to exclaim, »How like him that is!« conjured them across
the broad Atlantic to behold and clap hands at his lordliness.
    They saw him distinctly, as with the naked eye: a word, a turn of the pen,
or a word unsaid, offered the picture of him in America, Japan, China,
Australia, nay, the Continent of Europe, holding an English review of his
Maker's grotesques. Vernon seemed a sheepish fellow, without stature abroad,
glad of a compliment, grateful for a dinner, endeavouring sadly to digest all he
saw and heard. But one was a Patterne; the other a Whitford. One had genius; the
other pottered after him with the title of student. One was the English
gentleman wherever he went; the other was a new kind of thing, nondescript,
produced in England of late, and not likely to come to much good himself, or do
much good to the country.
    Vernon's dancing in America was capitally described by Willoughby. »Adieu to
our cousins!« the latter wrote on his voyage to Japan. »I may possibly have had
some vogue in their ball-rooms, and in showing them an English seat on
horseback: I must resign myself if I have not been popular among them. I could
not sing
