Above
all things, it is difficult to take the itinerant lecturer seriously,
with his smoking meal at home as a reward for his philanthropic efforts.
The whole thing produces on the mind the impression of a clap-trap
performance, with no heart or soul underneath all its ravings,
bellowings, and dervish-like contortions.
Mr. Russell has ceased to be a teetotal lecturer, and has become a stump
orator for the Unionist party, but the scent of the teetotal platform
hangs round him still. He yells, bellows, and twists himself about, puts
all his statements with ridiculous exaggeration--altogether, so overdoes
the part that it is only the wildest and emptiest Tory who is taken in
by him. What spoils the whole thing to my mind is that it is all so
evidently artificial--so palpably pumped up. Clapping his hand on his
breast, lifting his shaky fingers to Heaven, Mr. Russell is always in a
frenzied protestation of honesty, of rugged and unassailable virtue, of
bitter vaticination against the wickedness of the rest of mankind. No
man could be as honest as he professes to be, and live. The whole thing
would be exquisite acting if, underneath all this conscious
exaggeration, you did not see the mere political bravo.
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