Despair's Last Journey by David Christie Murray

Ralston was on the scene -- Ralston in ripe middle age, massive and short of stature, with a square head and a billowy, sable-silvered head of hair; full lips, richly shadowed by his beard; an eye which twinkled like some bland star of humour at one minute and pierced like a gimlet at the next; a manner suavely dogged, jovially wilful, calmly hectoring, winning as the wiles of a child; a voice of husky sweetness, like a fog-bound clarion at times; a learning which, if it embraced nothing wholly, had squeezed some spot of vital juice out of well-nigh everything; wise, loquacious, masterful, _bon-vivant_; the most perfect talker of his day in England; half parson and half journalist; loyal to the bone; courageous to the bone; not an originating man, but original; a receiver, and, through his own personality, a transmitter of great thoughts to the masses; a fighting theologian; a fighting politician; a howling scoff to orthodoxy;

a flying flag and peal of trumpet and tuck of drum to freedom everywhere.