Considering the subjects, his talk was passable.

The subjects treated of politics, pictures, Continental travel, our manufactures, our wealth and the reasons for it--excellent reasons well-weighed.

He was handsome, as men go; rather tall, not too stout, precise in the modern fashion of his dress, and the pair of whiskers encasing a colourless depression up to a long, thin, straight nose, and closed lips indicating an aperture.

The contraction of his mouth expressed an intelligence in the attitude of the firmly negative.
The lips opened to smile, the teeth were faultless; an effect was produced, if a cold one--the colder for the unparticipating northern eyes; eyes of that half cloud and blue, which make a kind of hueless grey, and are chiefly striking in an authoritative stage.

Without contradicting, for he was exactly polite, his look signified a person conscious of being born to command: in fine, an aristocrat among the 'aristocracy of Europeans.' His differences of opinion were prefaced by a 'Pardon me,' and pausing smile of the teeth; then a succinctly worded sentence or two, a perfect settlement of the dispute.