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+The Project Gutenberg EBook My Novel, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Vol. 2
+#130 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: My Novel, Volume 2.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7703]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 29, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY NOVEL, BY LYTTON, V2 ***
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND.
+
+INITIAL CHAPTER.
+
+INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE INITIAL CHAPTERS.
+
+
+"There can't be a doubt," said my father, "that to each of the main
+divisions of your work--whether you call them Books or Parts--you should
+prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter."
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"Can't be a doubt, sir?  Why so?"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"Fielding lays it down as an indispensable rule, which he
+supports by his example; and Fielding was an artistical writer, and knew
+what he was about."
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"Do you remember any of his reasons, sir?"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"Why, indeed, Fielding says, very justly, that he is not
+bound to assign any reason; but he does assign a good many, here and
+there,--to find which I refer you to 'Tom Jones.'  I will only observe,
+that one of his reasons, which is unanswerable, runs to the effect that
+thus, in every Part or Book, the reader has the advantage of beginning at
+the fourth or fifth page instead of the first,--'a matter by no means of
+trivial consequence,' saith Fielding, 'to persons who read books with no
+other view than to say they have read them,--a more general motive to
+reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only law books and
+good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, Swift and Cervantes, have
+been often turned Over.'  There," cried my father, triumphantly, "I will
+lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words."
+
+MRS. CANTON.--"Dear me, that only means skipping; I don't see any great
+advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people to skip it."
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"Neither do I!"
+
+MR. CANTON (dogmatically).--"It is the repose in the picture,--Fielding
+calls it 'contrast.'--(Still more dogmatically.)--I say there can't be a
+doubt about it.  Besides" added my father after a pause,--"besides, this
+usage gives you opportunities to explain what has gone before, or to
+prepare for what's coming; or, since Fielding contends, with great truth,
+that some learning is necessary for this kind of historical composition,
+it allows you, naturally and easily, the introduction of light and
+pleasant ornaments of that nature.  At each flight in the terrace you may
+give the eye the relief of an urn or a statue.  Moreover, when so
+inclined, you create proper pausing-places for reflection; and complete
+by a separate, yet harmonious ethical department, the design of a work,
+which is but a mere Mother Goose's tale if it does not embrace a general
+view of the thoughts and actions of mankind."
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"But then, in these initial chapters, the author thrusts
+himself forward; and just when you want to get on with the /dramatis
+personae/, you find yourself face to face with the poet himself."
+
+MR. CANTON.--"Pooh!  you can contrive to prevent that!  Imitate the
+chorus of the Greek stage, who fill up the intervals between the action
+by saying what the author would otherwise say in his own person."
+
+PISISTRATUS (slyly).--"That's a good idea, sir,--and I have a chorus, and
+a choregus too, already in my eye."
+
+MR. CANTON (unsuspectingly).--"Aha!  you are not so dull a fellow as you
+would make yourself out to be; and, even if an author did thrust himself
+forward, what objection is there to that?  It is a mere affectation to
+suppose that a book can come into the world without an author.  Every
+child has a father,--one father at least,--as the great Conde says very
+well in his poem."
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"The great Conde a poet!  I never heard that before."
+
+MR. CANTON.--"I don't say he was a poet, but he sent a poem to Madame de
+Montansier.  Envious critics think that he must have paid somebody else
+to write it; but there is no reason why a great captain should not write
+a poem,--I don't say a good poem, but a poem.  I wonder, Roland, if the
+duke ever tried his hand at 'Stanzas to Mary,' or 'Lines to a Sleeping
+Babe.'"
+
+CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"Austin, I'm ashamed of you.  Of course the duke could
+write poetry if he pleased,--something, I dare say, in the way of the
+great Conde; that is, something warlike and heroic, I'll be bound.  Let's
+hear!"
+
+MR. CAXTON (reciting).--
+
+                   "Telle est du Ciel la loi severe
+                    Qu'il faut qu'un enfant ait un pere;
+                    On dit meme quelquefois
+                    Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois."
+
+                    ["That each child has a father
+                    Is Nature's decree;
+                    But, to judge by a rumour,
+                    Some children have three."]
+
+
+CAPTAIN ROLAND (greatly disgusted).--"Conde write such stuff!--I don't
+believe it."
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"I do, and accept the quotations; you and Roland shall be
+joint fathers to my child as well as myself.
+
+                   "'Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois.'"
+
+MR. CAXTON (solemnly).--"I refuse the proffered paternity; but so far as
+administering a little wholesome castigation now and then, I have no
+objection to join in the discharge of a father's duty."
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"Agreed.  Have you anything to say against the infant
+hitherto?"
+
+MR. CAXTON.--"He is in long clothes at present; let us wait till he can
+walk."
+
+BLANCHE.--"But pray whom do you mean for a hero?  And is Miss Jemima your
+heroine?"
+
+CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"There is some mystery about the--"
+
+PISISTRATUS (hastily).-"Hush, Uncle: no letting the cat out of the bag
+yet.  Listen, all of you!  I left Frank Hazeldean on his way to the
+Casino."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+"It is a sweet pretty place," thought Frank, as he opened the gate which
+led across the fields to the Casino, that smiled down upon him with its
+plaster pilasters.  "I wonder, though, that my father, who is so
+particular in general, suffers the carriage-road to be so full of holes
+and weeds.  Mounseer does not receive many visits, I take it."
+
+But when Frank got into the ground immediately before the house, he saw
+no cause of complaint as to want of order and repair.  Nothing could be
+kept more neatly.  Frank was ashamed of the dint made by the pony's hoofs
+on the smooth gravel: he dismounted, tied the animal to the wicket, and
+went on foot towards the glass door in front.
+
+He rang the bell once, twice, but nobody came, for the old woman-servant,
+who was hard of hearing, was far away in the yard, searching for any eggs
+which the hen might have scandalously hidden for culinary purposes; and
+Jackeymo was fishing for the sticklebacks and minnows which were, when
+caught, to assist the eggs, when found, in keeping together the bodies
+and souls of himself and his master.  The old woman had been lately put
+upon board wages.  Lucky old woman!  Frank rang a third time, and with
+the impetuosity of his age.  A face peeped from the belvidere on the
+terrace.  "Diavolo!" said Dr. Riccabocca to himself.  "Young cocks crow
+hard on their own dunghill; it must be a cock of a high race to crow so
+loud at another's."
+
+Therewith he shambled out of the summer-house, and appeared suddenly
+before Frank, in a very wizard-like dressing-robe of black serge, a red
+cap on his head, and a cloud of smoke coming rapidly from his lips, as a
+final consolatory whiff, before he removed the pipe from them.  Frank had
+indeed seen the doctor before, but never in so scholastic a costume, and
+he was a little startled by the apparition at his elbow, as he turned
+round.
+
+"Signorino," said the Italian, taking off his cap with his usual
+urbanity, "pardon the negligence of my people; I am too happy to receive
+your commands in person."
+
+"Dr. Rickeybockey?" stammered Frank, much confused by this polite
+address, and the low, yet stately, bow with which it was accompanied.
+"I--I have a note from the Hall.  Mamma--that is, my mother--and aunt
+Jemima beg their best compliments, and hope you will come, sir."
+
+The doctor took the note with another bow, and, opening the glass door,
+invited Frank to enter.
+
+The young gentleman, with a schoolboy's usual bluntness, was about to say
+that he was in a hurry, and had rather not; but Dr. Riccabocca's grand
+manner awed him, while a glimpse of the hall excited his curiosity, so he
+silently obeyed the invitation.
+
+The hall, which was of an octagon shape, had been originally panelled off
+into compartments, and in these the Italian had painted landscapes, rich
+with the warm sunny light of his native climate.  Frank was no judge of
+the art displayed; but he was greatly struck with the scenes depicted:
+they were all views of some lake, real or imaginary; in all, dark-blue
+shining waters reflected dark-blue placid skies.  In one, a flight of
+steps ascended to the lake, and a gay group was seen feasting on the
+margin; in another, sunset threw its rose-hues over a vast villa or
+palace, backed by Alpine hills, and flanked by long arcades of vines,
+while pleasure-boats skimmed over the waves below.  In short, throughout
+all the eight compartments, the scene, though it differed in details,
+preserved the same general character, as if illustrating some favourite
+locality.  The Italian did not, however, evince any desire to do the
+honours of his own art, but, preceding Frank across the hall, opened the
+door of his usual sitting-room, and requested him to enter.  Frank did so
+rather reluctantly, and seated himself with unwonted bashfulness on the
+edge of a chair.  But here new specimens of the doctor's handicraft soon
+riveted attention.  The room had been originally papered, but Riccabocca
+had stretched canvas over the walls, and painted thereon sundry satirical
+devices, each separated from the other by scroll-works of fantastic
+arabesques.  Here a Cupid was trundling a wheelbarrow full of hearts,
+which he appeared to be selling to an ugly old fellow, with a money-bag
+in his hand--probably Plutus.  There Diogenes might be seen walking
+through a market-place, with his lantern in his hand, in search of an
+honest man, whilst the children jeered at him, and the curs snapped at
+his heels.  In another place a lion was seen half dressed in a fox's
+hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very amicably with
+a young lamb.  Here again might be seen the geese stretching out their
+necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders
+were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could.
+In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was
+symbolically conveyed; only over the mantel piece was the design graver
+and more touching.  It was the figure of a man in a pilgrim's garb,
+chained to the earth by small but innumerable ligaments, while a phantom
+likeness of himself, his shadow, was seen hastening down what seemed an
+interminable vista; and underneath were written the pathetic words of
+Horace--
+
+                         "Patriae quis exul
+                         Se quoque fugit?"
+
+          ["What exile from his country can also fly from himself?"]
+
+The furniture of the room was extremely simple, and somewhat scanty; yet
+it was arranged so as to impart an air of taste and elegance to the room.
+Even a few plaster busts and statues, though bought but of some humble
+itinerant, had their classical effect, glistening from out stands of
+flowers that were grouped around them, or backed by graceful screen-works
+formed from twisted osiers, which, by the simple contrivance of trays at
+the bottom filled with earth, served for living parasitical plants, with
+gay flowers contrasting thick ivy leaves, and gave to the whole room the
+aspect of a bower.  "May I ask your permission?" said the Italian, with
+his finger on the seal of the letter.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Frank, with naivete.
+
+Riccabocca broke the seal, and a slight smile stole over his countenance.
+Then he turned a little aside from Frank, shaded his face with his hand,
+and seemed to muse.  "Mrs. Hazeldean," said he, at last, "does me very
+great honour.  I hardly recognize her handwriting, or I should have been
+more impatient to open the letter."  The dark eyes were lifted over the
+spectacles and went right into Frank's unprotected and undiplomatic
+heart.  The doctor raised the note, and pointed to the characters with
+his forefinger.
+
+"Cousin Jemima's hand," said Frank, as directly as if the question had
+been put to him.
+
+The Italian smiled.  "Mr. Hazeldean has company staying with him?"
+
+"No; that is, only Barney,--the captain.  There's seldom much company
+before the shooting season," added Frank, with a slight sigh; "and then,
+you know, the holidays are over.  For my part, I think we ought to break
+up a month later."
+
+The doctor seemed reassured by the first sentence in Frank's reply, and,
+seating himself at the table, wrote his answer,--not hastily, as we
+English write, but with care and precision, like one accustomed to weigh
+the nature of words,--in that stiff Italian hand, which allows the writer
+so much time to think while he forms his letters.  He did not, therefore,
+reply at once to Frank's remark about the holidays, but was silent till
+he had concluded his note, read it three times over, sealed it by the
+taper he slowly lighted, and then, giving it to Frank, he said,
+
+"For your sake, young gentleman, I regret that your holidays are so
+early; for mine, I must rejoice, since I accept the kind invitation you
+have rendered doubly gratifying by bringing it yourself."
+
+"Deuce take the fellow and his fine speeches!  One don't know which way
+to look," thought English Frank.
+
+The Italian smiled again, as if this time he had read the boy's heart,
+without need of those piercing black eyes, and said, less ceremoniously
+than before, "You don't care much for compliments, young gentleman?"
+
+"No, I don't indeed," said Frank, heartily.
+
+"So much the better for you, since your way in the world is made: it
+would be so much the worse if you had to make it!"
+
+Frank looked puzzled: the thought was too deep for him, so he turned to
+the pictures.
+
+"Those are very funny," said he; "they seem capitally done.  Who did
+'em?"
+
+"Signoriuo Hazeldean, you are giving me what you refused yourself."
+
+"Eh?" said Frank, inquiringly.
+
+"Compliments!"
+
+"Oh--I--no;  but  they are well  done:  are n't  they, sir?"--
+
+"Not particularly: you speak to the artist."
+
+"What! you painted them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And the pictures in the hall?"
+
+"Those too."
+
+"Taken from nature, eh?"
+
+"Nature," said the Italian, sententiously, perhaps evasively, "lets
+nothing be taken from her."
+
+"Oh!" said Frank, puzzled again.  "Well, I must wish you good morning,
+sir; I am very glad you are coming."
+
+"Without compliment?"
+
+"Without compliment."
+
+"A rivedersi--good-by for the present, my young signorino.  This way,"
+observing Frank make a bolt towards the wrong door.  "Can I offer you a
+glass of wine?--it is pure, of our own making."
+
+"No, thank you, indeed, sir," cried Frank, suddenly recollecting his
+father's admonition.  "Good-by, don't trouble yourself, sir; I know any
+way now."
+
+But the bland Italian followed his guest to the wicket, where Frank had
+left the pony.  The young gentleman, afraid lest so courteous a host
+should hold the stirrup for him, twitched off the bridle, and mounted in
+haste, not even staying to ask if the Italian could put him in the way to
+Rood Hall, of which way he was profoundly ignorant.  The Italian's eye
+followed the boy as he rode up the ascent in the lane, and the doctor
+sighed heavily.  "The wiser we grow," said he to himself, "the more we
+regret the age of our follies: it is better to gallop with a light heart
+up the stony hill than sit in the summer-house and cry 'How true!' to the
+stony truths of Machiavelli!"
+
+With that he turned back into the belvidere; but he could not resume his
+studies.  He remained some minutes gazing on the prospect, till the
+prospect reminded him of the fields which Jackeymo was bent on his
+hiring, and the fields reminded him of Lenny Fairfield.  He returned to
+the house, and in a few moments re-emerged in his out-of-door trim, with
+cloak and umbrella, re-lighted his pipe, and strolled towards Hazeldean
+village.
+
+Meanwhile Frank, after cantering on for some distance, stopped at a
+cottage, and there learned that there was a short cut across the fields
+to Rood Hall, by which he could save nearly three miles.  Frank, however,
+missed the short cut, and came out into the high road; a turnpike-keeper,
+after first taking his toll, put him back again into the short cut; and
+finally, he got into some green lanes, where a dilapidated finger-post
+directed him to Rood.  Late at noon, having ridden fifteen miles in the
+desire to reduce ten to seven, he came suddenly upon a wild and primitive
+piece of ground, that seemed half chase, half common, with crazy
+tumbledown cottages of villanous aspect scattered about in odd nooks and
+corners.  Idle, dirty children were making mud-pies on the road;
+slovenly-looking women were plaiting straw at the threshold; a large but
+forlorn and decayed church, that seemed to say that the generation which
+saw it built was more pious than the generation which now resorted to it,
+stood boldly and nakedly out by the roadside.
+
+"Is this the village of Rood?" asked Frank of a stout young man breaking
+stones on the road--sad sign that no better labour could be found for
+him!
+
+The man sullenly nodded, and continued his work.  "And where's the Hall--
+Mr. Leslie's?"
+
+The man looked up in stolid surprise, and this time touched his hat.
+
+"Be you going there?"
+
+"Yes, if I can find out where it is."
+
+"I'll show your honour," said the boor, alertly.
+
+Frank reined in the pony, and the man walked by his side.  Frank was much
+of his father's son, despite the difference of age, and that more
+fastidious change of manner which characterizes each succeeding race in
+the progress of civilization.  Despite all his Eton finery, he was
+familiar with peasants, and had the quick eye of one country-born as to
+country matters.
+
+"You don't seem very well off in this village, my man?" said he,
+knowingly.
+
+"Noa; there be a deal of distress here in the winter time, and summer
+too, for that matter; and the parish ben't much help to a single man."
+
+"But surely the farmers want work here as well as elsewhere?"
+
+"'Deed, and there ben't much farming work here,--most o' the parish be
+all wild ground loike."
+
+"The poor have a right of common, I suppose," said Frank, surveying a
+large assortment of vagabond birds and quadrupeds.
+
+"Yes; neighbour Timmins keeps his geese on the common, and some has a
+cow, and them be neighbour Jowlas's pigs.  I don't know if there's a
+right, loike; but the folks at the Hall does all they can to help us, and
+that ben't much: they ben't as rich as some folks; but," added the
+peasant, proudly, "they be as good blood as any in the shire."
+
+"I 'm glad to see you like them, at all events."
+
+"Oh, yes, I likes them well eno'; mayhap you are at school with the young
+gentleman?"
+
+"Yes," said Frank.
+
+"Ah, I heard the clergyman say as how Master Randal was a mighty clever
+lad, and would get rich some day.  I 'se sure I wish he would, for a poor
+squire makes a poor parish.  There's the Hall, sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Frank looked right ahead, and saw a square house that, in spite of modern
+sash windows, was evidently of remote antiquity.  A high conical roof; a
+stack of tall quaint chimney-pots of red-baked clay (like those at Sutton
+Place in Surrey) dominating over isolated vulgar smoke-conductors, of the
+ignoble fashion of present times; a dilapidated groin-work, encasing
+within a Tudor arch a door of the comfortable date of George III., and
+the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance of the small finely-
+finished bricks, of which the habitation was built,--all showed the abode
+of former generations adapted with tasteless irreverence to the habits of
+descendants unenlightened by Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the
+past.  The house had emerged suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste
+land, for it was placed in a hollow, and sheltered from sight by a
+disorderly group of ragged, dismal, valetudinarian fir-trees, until an
+abrupt turn of the road cleared that screen, and left the desolate abode
+bare to the discontented eye.  Frank dismounted; the man held his pony;
+and after smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the
+door, and startled the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the
+modern brass knocker,--a knock which instantly brought forth an
+astonished starling who had built under the eaves of the gable roof, and
+called up a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, who had been
+regaling themselves amongst the litter of a slovenly farmyard that lay in
+full sight to the right of the house, fenced off by a primitive paintless
+wooden rail.  In process of time a sow, accompanied by a thriving and
+inquisitive family, strolled up to the gate of the fence, and, leaning
+her nose on the lower bar of the gate, contemplated the visitor with much
+curiosity and some suspicion.
+
+While Frank is still without, impatiently swingeing his white trousers
+with his whip, we will steal a hurried glance towards the respective
+members of the family within.  Mr. Leslie, the paterfamilias, is in a
+little room called his "study," to which he regularly retires every
+morning after breakfast, rarely reappearing till one o'clock, which is
+his unfashionable hour for dinner.  In what mysterious occupations Mr.
+Leslie passes those hours no one ever formed a conjecture.  At the
+present moment he is seated before a little rickety bureau, one leg of
+which being shorter than the other is propped up by sundry old letters
+and scraps of newspapers; and the bureau is open, and reveals a great
+number of pigeonholes and divisions, filled with various odds and ends,
+the collection of many years.  In some of these compartments are bundles
+of letters, very yellow, and tied in packets with faded tape; in another,
+all by itself, is a fragment of plum-pudding stone, which Mr. Leslie has
+picked up in his walks, and considered a rare mineral.  It is neatly
+labelled, "Found in Hollow Lane, May 21st, 1804, by Maunder Slugge
+Leslie, Esq."  The next division holds several bits of iron in the shape
+of nails, fragments of horse-shoes, etc., which Mr. Leslie has also met
+with in his rambles, and, according to a harmless popular superstition,
+deemed it highly unlucky not to pick up, and, once picked up, no less
+unlucky to throw away.  Item, in the adjoining pigeon-hole, a goodly
+collection of pebbles with holes in them, preserved for the same reason,
+in company with a crooked sixpence; item, neatly arranged in fanciful
+mosaics, several periwinkles, Blackamoor's teeth (I mean the shell so
+called), and other specimens of the conchiferous ingenuity of Nature,
+partly inherited from some ancestral spinster, partly amassed by Mr.
+Leslie himself in a youthful excursion to the seaside.  There were the
+farm-bailiff's accounts, several files of bills, an old stirrup, three
+sets of knee and shoe buckles which had belonged to Mr. Leslie's father,
+a few seals tied together by a shoe-string, a shagreen toothpick case, a
+tortoise shell magnifying-glass to read with, his eldest son's first
+copybooks, his second son's ditto, his daughter's ditto, and a lock of
+his wife's hair arranged in a true lover's knot, framed and glazed.
+There were also a small mousetrap; a, patent corkscrew too good to be
+used in common; fragments of a silver teaspoon, that had, by natural
+decay, arrived at a dissolution of its parts; a small brown holland bag,
+containing halfpence of various dates, as far back as Queen Anne,
+accompanied by two French /sous/ and a German /silber gros/,--the which
+miscellany Mr. Leslie magniloquently called "his coins," and had left in
+his will as a family heirloom.  There were many other curiosities of
+congenial nature and equal value--/quae nunc describere longum est/.
+Mr. Leslie was engaged at this time in what is termed "putting things to
+rights,"--an occupation he performed with exemplary care once a week.
+This was his day; and he had just counted his coins, and was slowly tying
+them up again in the brown holland bag, when Frank's knock reached his
+ears.
+
+Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie paused, shook his head as if incredulously, and
+was about to resume his occupation, when he was seized with a fit of
+yawning which prevented the bag being tied for full two minutes.
+
+While such the employment of the study, let us turn to the recreations in
+the drawing-room, or rather parlour.  A drawing-room there was on the
+first floor, with a charming look-out, not on the dreary fir-trees, but
+on the romantic undulating forest-land; but the drawing-room had not been
+used since the death of the last Mrs. Leslie.  It was deemed too good to
+sit in, except when there was company: there never being company, it was
+never sat in.  Indeed, now the paper was falling off the walls with the
+damp, and the rats, mice, and moths--those /"edaces rerum"/--had eaten,
+between them, most of the chair-bottoms and a considerable part of the
+floor.  Therefore, the parlour was the sole general sitting-room; and
+being breakfasted in, dined, and supped in, and, after supper, smoked in
+by Mr. Leslie to the accompaniment of rum-and-water, it is impossible to
+deny that it had what is called "a smell,"--a comfortable, wholesome
+family smell, speaking of numbers, meals, and miscellaneous social
+habitation.  There were two windows: one looked full on the fir-trees;
+the other on the farmyard, with the pigsty closing the view.  Near the
+fir-tree window sat Mrs. Leslie; before her, on a high stool, was a
+basket of the children's clothes that wanted mending.  A work-table of
+rosewood inlaid with brass, which had been a wedding-present, and was a
+costly thing originally, but in that peculiar taste which is vulgarly
+called "Brummagem," stood at hand: the brass had started in several
+places, and occasionally made great havoc in the children's fingers and
+in Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact it was the liveliest piece of furniture in
+the house, thanks to the petulant brasswork, and could not have been more
+mischievous if it had been a monkey.  Upon the work-table lay a housewife
+and thimble, and scissors, and skeins of worsted and thread, and little
+scraps of linen and cloth for patches.  But Mrs. Leslie was not actually
+working,--she was preparing to work; she had been preparing to work for
+the last hour and a half.  Upon her lap she supported a novel, by a lady
+who wrote much for a former generation, under the name of "Mrs. Bridget
+Blue Mantle."  She had a small needle in her left hand, and a very thick
+piece of thread in her right; occasionally she applied the end of the
+said thread to her lips, and then--her eyes fixed on the novel--made a
+blind, vacillating attack at the eye of the needle.  But a camel would
+have gone through it with quite as much ease.  Nor did the novel alone
+engage Mrs. Leslie's attention, for ever and anon she interrupted herself
+to scold the children, to inquire "what o'clock it was;" to observe that
+"Sarah would never suit;" and to wonder "why Mr. Leslie would not see
+that the work-table was mended."  Mrs. Leslie has been rather a pretty
+woman.  In spite of a dress at once slatternly and economical, she has
+still the air of a lady,--rather too much so, the hard duties of her
+situation considered.  She is proud of the antiquity of her family on
+both sides; her mother was of the venerable stock of the Daudlers of
+Daudle Place, a race that existed before the Conquest.  Indeed, one has
+only to read our earliest chronicles, and to glance over some of those
+long-winded moralizing poems which delighted the thanes and ealdermen of
+old, in order to see that the Daudles must have been a very influential
+family before William the First turned the country topsy-turvy.  While
+the mother's race was thus indubitably Saxon, the father's had not only
+the name but the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the Normans, and went far to
+establish that crotchet of the brilliant author of "Sybil; or, The Two
+Nations," as to the continued distinction between the conquering and
+conquered populations.  Mrs. Leslie's father boasted the name of
+Montfichet,--doubtless of the same kith and kin as those great barons of
+Alontfichet, who once owned such broad lands and such turbulent castles.
+A high-nosed, thin, nervous, excitable progeny, those same Montfydgets,
+as the most troublesome Norman could pretend to be.  This fusion of race
+was notable to the most ordinary physiognomist in the physique and in the
+morale of Mrs. Leslie.  She had the speculative blue eye of the Saxon,
+and the passionate high nose of the Norman; she had the musing do-
+nothingness of the Daudlers, and the reckless have-at-every-thingness of
+the  Montfydgets.  At Mrs. Leslie's feet, a little girl with her hair
+about her ears (and beautiful hair it was too) was amusing herself with a
+broken-nosed doll.  At the far end of the room, before a high desk, sat
+Frank's Eton schoolfellow, the eldest son.  A minute or two before
+Frank's alarum had disturbed the tranquillity of the household, he had
+raised his eyes from the books on the desk to glance at a very tattered
+copy of the Greek Testament, in which his brother Oliver had found a
+difficulty that he came to Randal to solve.  As the young Etonian's face
+was turned to the light, your first impression on seeing it would have
+been melancholy, but respectful, interest,--for the face had already lost
+the joyous character of youth; there was a wrinkle between the brows; and
+the lines that speak of fatigue were already visible under the eyes and
+about the mouth; the complexion was sallow, the lips were pale.  Years of
+study had already sown in the delicate organization the seeds of many an
+infirmity and many a pain; but if your look had rested longer on that
+countenance, gradually your compassion might have given place to some
+feeling uneasy and sinister,--a feeling akin to fear.  There was in the
+whole expression so much of cold calm force, that it belied the debility
+of the frame.  You saw there the evidence of a mind that was cultivated,
+and you felt that in that cultivation there was something formidable.
+A notable contrast to this countenance, prematurely worn and eminently
+intelligent, was the round healthy face of Oliver, with slow blue eyes
+fixed hard on the penetrating orbs of his brother, as if trying with
+might and main to catch from them a gleam of that knowledge with which
+they shone clear and frigid as a star.
+
+At Frank's knock, Oliver's slow blue eyes sparkled into animation, and he
+sprang from his brother's side.  The little girl flung back the hair from
+her face, and stared at her mother with a look which spoke wonder and
+fright.
+
+The young student knit his brows, and then turned wearily back to the
+books on his desk.
+
+"Dear me," cried Mrs. Leslie, "who can that possibly be?  Oliver, come
+from the window, sir, this instant: you will be seen!  Juliet, run, ring
+the bell; no, go to the head of the kitchen stairs, and call out to Jenny
+'Not at home.'  Not at home, on any account," repeated Mrs. Leslie,
+nervously, for the Montfydget blood was now in full flow.
+
+In another minute or so, Frank's loud boyish voice was distinctly heard
+at the outer door.
+
+Randal slightly started.
+
+"Frank Hazeldean's voice," said he; "I should like to see him, Mother."
+
+"See him," repeated Mrs. Leslie, in amaze; "see him! and the room in this
+state!"
+
+Randal might have replied that the room was in no worse state than usual;
+but he said nothing.  A slight flush came and went over his pale face;
+and then he leaned his check on his hand, and compressed his lips firmly.
+
+The outer door closed with a sullen, inhospitable jar, and a slip-shod
+female servant entered with a card between her finger and thumb.
+
+"Who is that for?--give it to me.  Jenny," cried Mrs. Leslie.
+
+But Jenny shook her head, laid the card on the desk beside Randal, and
+vanished without saying a word.
+
+"Oh, look, Randal, look up," cried Oliver, who had again rushed to the
+window; "such a pretty gray pony!"
+
+Randal did look up; nay, he went deliberately to the window, and gazed a
+moment on the high-mettled pony and the well-dressed, spirited rider.  In
+that moment changes passed over Randal's countenance more rapidly than
+clouds over the sky in a gusty day.  Now envy and discontent, with the
+curled lip and the gloomy scowl; now hope and proud self-esteem, with the
+clearing brow and the lofty smile; and then again all became cold, firm,
+and close, as he walked back to his books, seated himself resolutely, and
+said, half aloud,--"Well, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Mrs. Leslie came up in fidget and in fuss; she leaned over Randal's
+shoulder and read the card.  Written in pen and ink, with an attempt at
+imitation of printed Roman character, there appeared first "MR. FRANK
+HAZELDEAN;" but just over these letters, and scribbled hastily and less
+legibly in pencil, was,--
+
+"DEAR LESLIE,--Sorry you were out; come and see us,--do!"
+
+"You will go, Randal?" said Mrs. Leslie, after a pause.
+
+"I am not sure."
+
+"Yes, you can go; you have clothes like a gentleman; you can go anywhere,
+not like those children;" and Mrs. Leslie glanced almost spitefully at
+poor Oliver's coarse threadbare jacket, and little Juliet's torn frock.
+
+"What I have I owe at present to Mr. Egerton, and I should consult his
+wishes; he is not on good terms with these Hazeldeans."  Then turning
+towards his brother, who looked mortified, he added, with a strange sort
+of haughty kindness, "What I may have hereafter, Oliver, I shall owe to
+myself; and then if I rise, I will raise my family."
+
+"Dear Randal," said Mrs. Leslie, fondly kissing him on the forehead,
+"what a good heart you have!"
+
+"No, Mother; my books don't tell me that it is a good heart that gets on
+in the world: it is a hard head," replied Randal, with a rude and
+scornful candour.  "But I can read no more just now: come out, Oliver."
+
+So saying, he slid from his mother's hand and left the room.  When Oliver
+joined him, Randal was already on the common; and, without seeming to
+notice his brother, he continued to walk quickly, and with long strides,
+in profound silence.  At length he paused under the shade of an old oak,
+that, too old to be of value save for firewood, had escaped the axe.  The
+tree stood on a knoll, and the spot commanded a view of the decayed
+house, the dilapidated church, the dreary village.
+
+"Oliver," said Randal, between his teeth, so that his voice had the sound
+of a hiss, "it was under this tree that I first resolved to--"
+
+He paused.
+
+"What, Randal?"
+
+"Read hard: knowledge is power!"
+
+"But you are so fond of reading."
+
+"I!" cried Randal.  "Do you think, when Wolsey and Thomas-a-Becket became
+priests, they were fond of telling their beads and pattering Aves?  I
+fond of reading!"
+
+Oliver stared; the historical allusions were beyond his comprehension.
+
+"You know," continued Randal, "that we Leslies were not always the
+beggarly poor gentlemen we are now.  You know that there is a man who
+lives in Grosvenor Square, and is very rich,--very.  His riches come to
+him from a Leslie; that man is my patron, Oliver, and he--is very good to
+me."
+
+Randal's smile was withering as he spoke.  "Come on," he said, after a
+pause,--"come on."  Again the walk was quick, and the brothers were
+silent.
+
+They came at length to a little shallow brook, across which some large
+stones had been placed at short intervals, so that the boys walked over
+the ford dryshod.  "Will you pull down that bough, Oliver?" said Randal,
+abruptly, pointing to a tree.  Oliver obeyed mechanically; and Randal,
+stripping the leaves and snapping off the twigs, left a fork at the end;
+with this he began to remove the stepping-stones.
+
+"What are you about, Randal?" asked Oliver, wonderingly.
+
+"We are on the other side of the brook now, and we shall not come back
+this way.  We don't want the stepping-stones any more!---away with them!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The morning after this visit of Frank Hazeldean's to Rood Hall, the Right
+Honourable Audley Egerton, member of parliament, privy councillor, and
+minister of a high department in the State,--just below the rank of the
+cabinet,--was seated in his library, awaiting the delivery of the post,
+before he walked down to his office.  In the mean while he sipped his
+tea, and glanced over the newspapers with that quick and half-disdainful
+eye with which your practical man in public life is wont to regard the
+abuse or the eulogium of the Fourth Estate.
+
+There is very little likeness between Mr. Egerton and his half-brother;
+none, indeed, except that they are both of tall stature, and strong,
+sinewy, English build.  But even in this last they do not resemble each
+other; for the squire's athletic shape is already beginning to expand
+into that portly embonpoint which seems the natural development of
+contented men as they approach middle life.  Audley, on the contrary, is
+inclined to be spare; and his figure, though the muscles are as firm as
+iron, has enough of the slender to satisfy metropolitan ideas of
+elegance.  His dress, his look, his /tout ensemble/, are those of the
+London man.  In the first, there is more attention to fashion than is
+usual amongst the busy members of the House of Commons; but then Audley
+Egerton has always been something more than a mere busy member of the
+House of Commons.  He has always been a person of mark in the best
+society; and one secret of his success in life has been his high
+reputation as "a gentleman."
+
+As he now bends over the journals, there is an air of distinction in the
+turn of the well-shaped head, with the dark brown hair,--dark in spite of
+a reddish tinge,--cut close behind, and worn away a little towards the
+crown, so as to give an additional height to a commanding forehead.  His
+profile is very handsome, and of that kind of beauty which imposes on men
+if it pleases women; and is, therefore, unlike that of your mere pretty
+fellows, a positive advantage in public life.  It is a profile with large
+features clearly cut, masculine, and somewhat severe.  The expression of
+his face is not open, like the squire's, nor has it the cold closeness
+which accompanies the intellectual character of young Leslie's; but it is
+reserved and dignified, and significant of self-control, as should be the
+physiognomy of a man accustomed to think before he speaks.  When you look
+at him, you are not surprised to learn that he is not a florid orator nor
+a smart debater,--he is a, "weighty speaker."  He is fairly read,
+but without any great range either of ornamental scholarship or
+constitutional lore.  He has not much humour; but he has that kind
+of wit which is essential to grave and serious irony.  He has not much
+imagination, nor remarkable subtlety in reasoning; but if he does not
+dazzle he does not bore,--he is too much of the man of the world for
+that.  He is considered to have sound sense and accurate judgment.
+Withal, as he now lays aside the journals, and his face relaxes its
+austerer lines, you will not be astonished to hear that he is a man who
+is said to have been greatly beloved by women, and still to exercise much
+influence in drawing-rooms and boudoirs.  At least, no one was surprised
+when the great heiress, Clementina Leslie, kinswoman and ward to Lord
+Lansmere,--a young lady who had refused three earls and the heir apparent
+to a dukedom,--was declared by her dearest friends to be dying of love
+for Audley Egerton.  It had been the natural wish of the Lansmeres that
+this lady should marry their son, Lord L'Estrange.  But that young
+gentleman, whose opinions on matrimony partook of the eccentricity of his
+general character, could never be induced to propose, and had, according
+to the /on-dits/ of town, been the principal party to make up the match
+between Clementina and his friend Audley; for the match required making-
+up, despite the predilections of the young heiress.  Mr. Egerton had had
+scruples of delicacy.  He avowed, for the first time, that his fortune
+was much less than had been generally supposed, and he did not like the
+idea of owing all to a wife, however highly be might esteem and admire
+her.  Now, Lord L'Estrange (not long after the election at Lansmere,
+which had given to Audley his first seat in parliament) had suddenly
+exchanged from the battalion of the Guards to which be belonged, and
+which was detained at home, into a cavalry regiment on active service in
+the Peninsula.  Nevertheless, even abroad, and amidst the distractions of
+war, his interest in all that could forward Egerton's career was
+unabated; and by letters to his father and to his cousin Clementina, he
+assisted in the negotiations for the marriage between Miss Leslie and his
+friend; and before the year in which Audley was returned for Lansmere had
+expired, the young senator received the hand of the great heiress.  The
+settlement of her fortune, which was chiefly in the Funds, had been
+unusually advantageous to the husband; for though the capital was tied up
+so long as both survived, for the benefit of any children they might
+have, yet in the event of one of the parties dying without issue by the
+marriage, the whole passed without limitation to the survivor.  Miss
+Leslie, in spite of all remonstrance from her own legal adviser, had
+settled this clause with Egerton's confidential solicitor, one Mr. Levy,
+of whom we shall see more hereafter; and Egerton was to be kept in
+ignorance of it till after the marriage.  If in this Miss Leslie showed a
+generous trust in Mr. Egerton, she still inflicted no positive wrong on
+her relations, for she had none sufficiently near to her to warrant their
+claim to the succession.  Her nearest kinsman, and therefore her natural
+heir, was Harley L'Estrange; and if he was contented, no one had a right
+to complain.  The tie of blood between herself and the Leslies of Rood
+Hall was, as we shall see presently, extremely distant.
+
+It was not till after his marriage that Mr. Egerton took an active part
+in the business of the House of Commons.  He was then at the most
+advantageous starting-point for the career of ambition.  His words on the
+state of the country took importance from his stake in it.  His talents
+found accessories in the opulence of Grosvenor Square, the dignity of a
+princely establishment, the respectability of one firmly settled in life,
+the reputation of a fortune in reality very large, and which was
+magnified by popular report into the revenues of a Croesus.  Audley
+Egerton succeeded in parliament beyond the early expectations formed of
+him.  He took, from the first, that station in the House which it
+requires tact to establish, and great knowledge of the world to free from
+the charge of impracticability and crotchet, but which, once established,
+is peculiarly imposing from the rarity of its independence; that is to
+say, the station of the moderate man who belongs sufficiently to a party
+to obtain its support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged from a party to
+make his vote and word, on certain questions, matter of anxiety and
+speculation.
+
+Professing Toryism (the word Conservative, which would have suited him
+better, was not then known), he separated himself from the country party,
+and always avowed great respect for the opinions of the large towns.  The
+epithet given to the views of Audley Egerton was "enlightened."  Never
+too much in advance of the passion of the day, yet never behind its
+movement, he had that shrewd calculation of odds which a consummate
+mastery of the world sometimes bestows upon politicians,--perceived the
+chances for and against a certain question being carried within a certain
+time, and nicked the question between wind and water.  He was so good a
+barometer of that changeful weather called Public Opinion, that he might
+have had a hand in the "Times" newspaper.  He soon quarrelled, and
+purposely, with his Lansmere constituents; nor had he ever revisited that
+borough,--perhaps because it was associated with unpleasant reminiscences
+in the shape of the squire's epistolary trimmer, and in that of his own
+effigies which his agricultural constituents had burned in the corn-
+market.  But the speeches that produced such indignation at Lansmere had
+delighted one of the greatest of our commercial towns, which at the next
+general election honoured him with its representation.  In those days,
+before the Reform Bill, great commercial towns chose men of high mark for
+their member; and a proud station it was for him who was delegated to
+speak the voice of the princely merchants of England.
+
+Mrs. Egerton survived her marriage but a few years.  She left no
+children; two had been born, but died in their first infancy.  The
+property of the wife, therefore, passed without control or limit to the
+husband.
+
+Whatever might have been the grief of the widower, he disdained to betray
+it to the world.  Indeed, Audley Egerton was a man who had early taught
+himself to conceal emotion.  He buried himself in the country, none knew
+where, for some months.  When he returned, there was a deep wrinkle on
+his brow,--but no change in his habits and avocations, except that,
+shortly afterwards, he accepted office, and thus became more busy than
+ever.
+
+Mr. Egerton had always been lavish and magnificent in money spatters.
+A rich man in public life has many claims on his fortune, and no one
+yielded to those claims with in air so regal as Audley Egerton.  But
+amongst his many liberal actions, there was none which seemed more worthy
+of panegyric than the generous favour he extended to the son of his
+wife's poor and distant kinsfolk, the Leslies of Rood Hall.
+
+Some four generations back, there had lived a certain Squire Leslie, a
+man of large acres and active mind.  He had cause to be displeased with
+his elder son, and though he did not disinherit him, he left half his
+property to a younger.
+
+The younger had capacity and spirit, which justified the parental
+provision.  He increased his fortune; lifted himself into notice and
+consideration by public services and a noble alliance.  His descendants
+followed his example, and took rank among the first commoners in England,
+till the last male, dying, left his sole heiress and representative in
+one daughter, Clementina, afterwards married to Mr. Egerton.
+
+Meanwhile the elder son of the fore-mentioned squire had muddled and
+sotted away much of his share in the Leslie property; and, by low habits
+and mean society, lowered in repute his representation of the name.
+
+His successors imitated him, till nothing was left to Randal's father,
+Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the decayed house, which was what the
+Germans call the /stamm schloss/, or "stem hall," of the race, and the
+wretched lands immediately around it.
+
+Still, though all intercourse between the two branches of the family had
+ceased, the younger had always felt a respect for the elder, as the head
+of the House.  And it was supposed that, on her death-bed, Mrs. Egerton
+had recommended her impoverished namesakes and kindred to the care of her
+husband; for when he returned to town, after Mrs. Egerton's death, Audley
+had sent to Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie the sum of L5000, which he said his
+wife, leaving no written will, had orally bequeathed as a legacy to that
+gentleman; and he requested permission to charge himself with the
+education of the eldest son.
+
+Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie might have done great things for his little
+property with those L5000, or even kept in the three-per-cents the
+interest would have afforded a material addition to his comforts.  But a
+neighbouring solicitor, having caught scent of the legacy, hunted it down
+into his own hands, on pretence of having found a capital investment in a
+canal; and when the solicitor had got possession of the L5000, he went
+off with them to America.
+
+Meanwhile Randal, placed by Mr. Egerton at an excellent preparatory
+school, at first gave no signs of industry or talent; but just before he
+left it, there came to the school, as classical tutor, an ambitious young
+Oxford man; and his zeal--for he was a capital teacher--produced a great
+effect generally on the pupils, and especially on Randal Leslie.  He
+talked to them much in private on the advantages of learning, and shortly
+afterwards he exhibited those advantages in his own person; for, having
+edited a Greek play with much subtle scholarship, his college, which some
+slight irregularities of his had displeased, recalled him to its
+venerable bosom by the presentation of a fellowship.  After this he took
+orders, became a college tutor, distinguished himself yet more by a
+treatise on the Greek accent, got a capital living, and was considered
+on the high road to a bishopric.  This young man, then, communicated to
+Randal the thirst for knowledge; and when the boy went afterwards to
+Eton, he applied with such earnestness and resolve that his fame soon
+reached the ears of Audley; and that person, who had the sympathy for
+talent, and yet more for purpose, which often characterizes ambitious
+men, went to Eton to see him.  From that time Audley evinced great and
+almost fatherly interest in the brilliant Etonian; and Randal always
+spent with him some days in each vacation.
+
+I have said that Egerton's conduct with respect to this boy was more
+praiseworthy than most of those generous actions for which he was
+renowned, since to this the world gave no applause.  What a man does
+within the range of his family connections does not carry with it that
+eclat which invests a munificence exhibited on public occasions.  Either
+people care nothing about it, or tacitly suppose it to be but his duty.
+It was true, too, as the squire had observed, that Randal Leslie was even
+less distantly related to the Hazeldeans than to Mrs. Egerton, since
+Randal's grandfather had actually married a Miss Hazeldean (the highest
+worldly connection that branch of the family had formed since the great
+split I have commemorated).  But Audley Egerton never appeared aware of
+that fact.  As he was not himself descended from the Hazeldeans, he did
+not trouble himself about their genealogy; and he took care to impress it
+upon the Leslies that his generosity on their behalf was solely to be
+ascribed to his respect for his wife's memory and kindred.  Still the
+squire had felt as if his "distant brother" implied a rebuke on his own
+neglect of these poor Leslies, by the liberality Audley evinced towards
+them; and this had made him doubly sore when the name of Randal Leslie
+was mentioned.  But the fact really was, that the Leslies of Rood had so
+shrunk out of all notice that the squire had actually forgotten their
+existence, until Randal became thus indebted to his brother; and then he
+felt a pang of remorse that any one save himself, the head of the
+Hazeldeans, should lend a helping hand to the grandson of a Hazeldean.
+
+But having thus, somewhat too tediously, explained the position of Audley
+Egerton, whether in the world or in relation to his young protege, I may
+now permit him to receive and to read his letters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Mr. Egerton glanced over the pile of letters placed beside him, and first
+he tore up some, scarcely read, and threw them into the waste-basket.
+Public men have such odd, out-of-the-way letters, that their waste-
+baskets are never empty,--letters from amateur financiers proposing new
+ways to pay off the National Debt; letters from America (never free!)
+asking for autographs; letters from fond mothers in country villages,
+recommending some miracle of a son for a place in the king's service;
+letters from free-thinkers in reproof of bigotry; letters from bigots in
+reproof of free-thinking; letters signed Brutus Redivivus, containing the
+agreeable information that the writer has a dagger for tyrants, if the
+Danish claims are not forthwith adjusted; letters signed Matilda or
+Caroline, stating that Caroline or Matilda has seen the public man's
+portrait at the Exhibition, and that a heart sensible to its attractions
+may be found at No. -- Piccadilly; letters from beggars, impostors,
+monomaniacs, speculators, jobbers,--all food for the waste-basket.
+
+From the correspondence thus winnowed, Mr. Egerton first selected those
+on business, which he put methodically together in one division of his
+pocket-book; and secondly, those of a private nature, which he as
+carefully put into another.  Of these last there were but three,--one
+from his steward, one from Harley L'Estrange, one from Randal Leslie.
+It was his custom to answer his correspondence at his office; and to his
+office, a few minutes afterwards, he slowly took his way.  Many a
+passenger turned back to look again at the firm figure, which, despite
+the hot summer day, was buttoned up to the throat; and the black frock-
+coat thus worn well became the erect air and the deep, full chest of the
+handsome senator.  When he entered Parliament Street, Audley Egerton was
+joined by one of his colleagues, also on his way to the cares of office.
+
+After a few observations on the last debate this gentleman said,--
+
+"By the way, can you dine with me next Saturday, to meet Lansmere?  He
+comes up to town to vote for us on Monday."
+
+"I had asked some people to dine with me," answered Egerton, "but I will
+put them off.  I see Lord Lansmere too seldom to miss any occasion to
+meet a man whom I respect so much."
+
+"So seldom!  True, he is very little in town; but why don't you go and
+see him in the country?  Good shooting,--pleasant, old-fashioned house."
+
+"My dear Westbourne, his house is 'nimium vicina Cremonae,' close to a
+borough in which I have been burned in effigy."
+
+"Ha!  ha!  yes, I remember you first came into parliament for that snug
+little place; but Lansmere himself never found fault with your votes, did
+he?"
+
+"He behaved very handsomely, and said he had not presumed to consider me
+his mouthpiece; and then, too, I am so intimate with L'Estrange."
+
+"Is that queer fellow ever coming back to England?"
+
+"He comes, generally, every year, for a few days, just to see his father
+and mother, and then returns to the Continent."
+
+"I never meet him."
+
+"He comes in September or October, when you, of course, are not in town,
+and it is in town that the Lansmeres meet him."
+
+"Why does he not go to them?"
+
+"A man in England but once a year, and for a few days, has so much to do
+in London, I suppose."
+
+"Is he as amusing as ever?" Egerton nodded.
+
+"So  distinguished as he  might be!"  remarked Lord Westbourne.
+
+"So distinguished as he is!" said Egerton, formally; "an officer selected
+for praise, even in such fields as Quatre Bras and Waterloo; a scholar,
+too, of the finest taste; and as an accomplished gentleman matchless!"
+
+"I like to hear one man praise another so warmly in these ill-natured
+days," answered Lord Westbourne.  "But still, though L'Estrange is
+doubtless all you say, don't you think he rather wastes his life living
+abroad?"
+
+"And trying to be happy, Westbourne?  Are you sure it is not we who waste
+our lives?  But I can't stay to hear your answer.  Here we are at the
+door of my prison."
+
+"On Saturday, then?"
+
+"On Saturday.  Good day."
+
+For the next hour or more, Mr. Egerton was engaged on the affairs of the
+State.  He then snatched an interval of leisure (while awaiting a report,
+which he had instructed a clerk to make him), in order to reply to his
+letters.  Those on public business were soon despatched; and throwing his
+replies aside to be sealed by a subordinate hand, he drew out the letters
+which he had put apart as private.
+
+He attended first to that of his steward: the steward's letter was long,
+the reply was contained in three lines.  Pitt himself was scarcely more
+negligent of his private interests and concerns than Audley Egerton; yet,
+withal, Audley Egerton was said by his enemies to be an egotist.
+
+The next letter he wrote was to Randal, and that, though longer, was far
+from prolix: it ran thus:--
+
+     DEAR MR. LESLIE,--I appreciate your delicacy in consulting me
+     whether you should accept Frank Hazeldean's invitation to call at
+     the Hall.  Since you are asked, I can see no objection to it.  I
+     should be sorry if you appeared to force yourself there; and for the
+     rest, as a general rule, I think a young man who has his own way to
+     make in life had better avoid all intimacy with those of his own age
+     who have no kindred objects nor congenial pursuits.
+
+     As soon as this visit is paid, I wish you to come to London.  The
+     report I receive of your progress at Eton renders it unnecessary, in
+     my judgment, that you should return there.  If your father has no
+     objection, I propose that you should go to Oxford at the ensuing
+     term.  Meanwhile, I have engaged a gentleman, who is a fellow of
+     Balliol, to read with you.  He is of opinion, judging only by your
+     high repute at Eton, that you may at once obtain a scholarship in
+     that college.  If you do so, I shall look upon your career in life
+     as assured.
+
+     Your affectionate friend, and sincere well-wisher,  A.  E.
+
+
+The reader will remark that in this letter there is a certain tone of
+formality.  Mr. Egerton does not call his protege "Dear Randal," as would
+seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, "Dear Mr. Leslie."  He hints, also,
+that the boy has his own way to make in life.  Is this meant to guard
+against too sanguine notions of inheritance, which his generosity may
+have excited?  The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind
+from the others.  It was long, and full of such little scraps of news and
+gossip as may interest friends in a foreign land; it was written gayly,
+and as with a wish to cheer his friend; you could see that it was a reply
+to a melancholy letter; and in the whole tone and spirit there was an
+affection, even to tenderness, of which those who most liked Audley
+Egerton would have scarcely supposed him capable.  Yet, notwithstanding,
+there was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the fine
+tact of a woman would detect.  It had not that abandon, that hearty self-
+outpouring, which you might expect would characterize the letters of two
+such friends, who had been boys at school together, and which did breathe
+indeed in all the abrupt rambling sentences of his correspondent.  But
+where was the evidence of the constraint?  Egerton is off-hand enough
+where his pen runs glibly through paragraphs that relate to others; it is
+simply that he says nothing about himself,--that he avoids all reference
+to the inner world of sentiment and feeling!  But perhaps, after all, the
+man has no sentiment and feeling!  How can you expect that a steady
+personage in practical life, whose mornings are spent in Downing Street,
+and whose nights are consumed in watching Government bills through a
+committee, can write in the same style as an idle dreamer amidst the
+pines of Ravenna, or on the banks of Como?
+
+Audley had just finished this epistle, such as it was, when the attendant
+in waiting announced the arrival of a deputation from a provincial
+trading town, the members of which deputation he had appointed to meet at
+two o'clock.  There was no office in London at which deputations were
+kept waiting less than at that over which Mr. Egerton presided.
+
+The deputation entered,--some score or so of middle-aged, comfortable-
+looking persons, who, nevertheless, had their grievance, and considered
+their own interest, and those of the country, menaced by a certain clause
+in a bill brought in by Mr. Egerton.
+
+The mayor of the town was the chief spokesman, and he spoke well,--but in
+a style to which the dignified official was not accustomed.  It was a
+slap-dash style,--unceremonious, free and easy,--an American style.  And,
+indeed, there was something altogether in the appearance and bearing of
+the mayor which savoured of residence in the Great Republic.  He was a
+very handsome man, but with a look sharp and domineering,--the look of a
+man who did not care a straw for president or monarch, and who enjoyed
+the liberty to speak his mind and "wallop his own nigger!"
+
+His fellow-burghers evidently regarded him with great respect; and Mr.
+Egerton had penetration enough to perceive that Mr. Mayor must be a rich
+man, as well as an eloquent one, to have overcome those impressions of
+soreness or jealousy which his tone was calculated to create in the self-
+love of his equals.
+
+Mr. Egerton was far too wise to be easily offended by mere manner; and
+though he stared somewhat haughtily when he found his observations
+actually pooh-poohed, he was not above being convinced.  There was much
+sense and much justice in Mr. Mayor's arguments, and the statesman
+civilly promised to take them into full consideration.
+
+He then bowed out the deputation; but scarcely had the door closed before
+it opened again, and Mr. Mayor presented himself alone, saying aloud to
+his companions in the passage, "I forgot something I had to say to Mr.
+Egerton; wait below for me."
+
+"Well, Mr. Mayor," said Audley, pointing to a seat, "what else would you
+suggest?"
+
+The mayor looked round to see that the door was closed; and then, drawing
+his chair close to Mr. Egerton's, laid his forefinger on that gentleman's
+arm, and said, "I think I speak to a man of the world, sir?"
+
+Mr. Egerton bowed, and made no reply by word, but he gently removed his
+arm from the touch of the forefinger.
+
+MR. MAYOR.---"You observe, sir, that I did not ask the members whom we
+return to parliament to accompany us.  Do better without 'em.  You know
+they are both in Opposition,--out-and-outers."
+
+MR. EGERTON.--"It is a misfortune which the Government cannot remember
+when the question is whether the trade of the town itself is to be served
+or injured."
+
+MR. MAYOR.---"Well, I guess you speak handsome, sir.  But you'd be glad
+to have two members to support ministers after the next election."
+
+MR. EGERTON (smiling).--"Unquestionably, Mr. Mayor."
+
+MR. MAYOR.--"And I can do it, Mr. Egerton.  I may say I have the town in
+my pocket; so I ought,--I spend a great deal of money in it.  Now, you
+see, Mr. Egerton, I have passed a part of my life in a land of liberty--
+the United States--and I come to the point when I speak to a man of the
+world.  I'm a man of the world myself, sir.  And so, if the Government
+will do something for me, why, I'll do something for the Government.  Two
+votes for a free and independent town like ours,--that's something, isn't
+it?"
+
+MR. EGERTON (taken by surprise).--"Really, I--"
+
+MR. MAYOR (advancing his chair still nearer, and interrupting the
+official).--"No nonsense, you see, on one side or the other.  The fact
+is, that I've taken it into my head that I should like to be knighted.
+You may well look surprised, Mr. Egerton,--trumpery thing enough, I dare
+say; still, every man has his weakness, and I should like to be Sir
+Richard.  Well, if you can get me made Sir Richard, you may just name
+your two members for the next election,--that is, if they belong to your
+own set, enlightened men, up to the times.  That's speaking fair and
+manful, is n't it?"
+
+MR. EGERTON (drawing himself up).--"I am at a loss to guess why you
+should select me, sir, for this very extraordinary proposition."
+
+MR. MAYOR (nodding good-humouredly).--"Why, you see, I don't go along
+with the Government; you're the best of the bunch.  And may be you'd like
+to strengthen your own party.  This is quite between you and me, you
+understand; honour's a jewel!"
+
+MR. EGERTON (with great gravity).--"Sir, I am obliged by your good
+opinion; but I agree with my colleagues in all the great questions that
+affect the government of the country, and--"
+
+MR. MAYOR (interrupting him).--"Ah, of course, you must say so; very
+right.  But I guess things would go differently if you were Prime
+Minister.  However, I have another reason for speaking to you about my
+little job.  You see you were member for Lansmere once, and I think you
+only came in by a majority of two, eh?"
+
+MR. EGERTON.--"I know nothing of the particulars of that election; I was
+not present."
+
+MR. MAYOR.--"No; but luckily for you, two relations of mine were, and
+they voted for you.  Two votes, and you came in by two.  Since then, you
+have got into very snug quarters here, and I think we have a claim on
+you--"
+
+MR. EGERTON.--"Sir, I acknowledge no such claim; I was and am a stranger
+to Lansmere; and if the electors did me the honour to return me to
+parliament, it was in compliment rather to--"
+
+MR. MAYOR (again interrupting the official).--"Rather to Lord Lansmere,
+you were going to say; unconstitutional doctrine that, I fancy.  Peer of
+the realm.  But never mind, I know the world; and I'd ask Lord Lansmere
+to do my affair for me, only he is a pompous sort of man; might be
+qualmish: antiquated notions.  Not up to snuff like you and me."
+
+MR. EGERTON (in great disgust, and settling his papers before him).--
+"Sir, it is not in my department to recommend to his Majesty candidates
+for the honour of knighthood, and it is still less in my department to
+make bargains for seats in parliament."
+
+MR. MAYOR.--"Oh, if that's the case, you'll excuse me; I don't know much
+of the etiquette in these matters.  But I thought that if I put two seats
+in your hands for your own friends, you might contrive to take the affair
+into your department, whatever it was.  But since you say you agree with
+your colleagues, perhaps it comes to the same thing.  Now, you must not
+suppose I want to sell the town, and that I can change and chop my
+politics for my own purpose.  No such thing!  I don't like the sitting
+members; I'm all for progressing, but they go too much ahead for me; and
+since the Government is disposed to move a little, why, I'd as lief
+support them as not.  But, in common gratitude, you see," added the
+mayor, coaxingly, "I ought to be knighted!  I can keep up the dignity,
+and do credit to his Majesty."
+
+MR. EGERTON (without looking up from his papers).--"I can only refer you,
+sir, to the proper quarter."
+
+MR. MAYOR (impatiently).--"Proper quarter!  Well, since there is so much
+humbug in this old country of ours, that one must go through all the
+forms and get at the job regularly, just tell me whom I ought to go to."
+
+MR. EGERTON (beginning to be amused as well as indignant).--"If you want
+a knighthood, Mr. Mayor, you must ask the Prime Minister; if you want to
+give the Government information relative to seats in parliament, you must
+introduce yourself to Mr. ------, the Secretary of the Treasury."
+
+MR. MAYOR.--"And if I go to the last chap, what do you think he'll say?"
+
+MR. EGERTON (the amusement preponderating over the indignation).--"He
+will say, I suppose, that you must not put the thing in the light in
+which you have put it to me; that the Government will be very proud to
+have the confidence of yourself and your brother electors; and that a
+gentleman like you, in the proud position of mayor, may well hope to be
+knighted on some fitting occasion; but that you must not talk about the
+knighthood just at present, and must confine yourself to converting the
+unfortunate political opinions of the town."
+
+MR. MAYOR.--"Well, I guess that chap there would want to do me!  Not
+quite so green, Mr. Egerton.  Perhaps I'd better go at once to the
+fountain-head.  How d' ye think the Premier would take it?"
+
+MR. EGERTON (the indignation preponderating over the amusement).--
+"Probably just as I am about to do."
+
+Mr. Egerton rang the bell; the attendant appeared.  "Show Mr. Mayor the
+way out," said the minister.
+
+The mayor turned round sharply, and his face was purple.  He walked
+straight to the door; but suffering the attendant to precede him along
+the corridor, he came back with a rapid stride, and clenching his hands,
+and with a voice thick with passion, cried, "Some day or other I will
+make you smart for this, as sure as my name's Dick Avenel!"
+
+"Avenel!" repeated Egerton, recoiling,--"Avenel!" But the mayor was gone.
+
+Audley fell into a deep and musing revery, which seemed gloomy, and
+lasted till the attendant announced that the horses were at the door.
+
+He then looked up, still abstractedly, and saw his letter to Harley
+L'Estrange open on the table.  He drew it towards him, and wrote, "A man
+has just left me, who calls himself Aven--"  In the middle of the name
+his pen stopped.  "No, no," muttered the writer, "what folly to reopen
+the old wounds there!" and he carefully erased the words.
+
+Audley Egerton did not ride in the Park that day, as was his wont, but
+dismissed his groom; and, turning his horse's head towards Westminster
+Bridge, took his solitary way into the country.  He rode at first slowly,
+as if in thought; then fast, as if trying to escape from thought.  He was
+later than usual at the House that evening, and he looked pale and
+fatigued.  But he had to speak, and he spoke well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+In spite of all his Machiavellian wisdom, Dr. Riccabocca had been foiled
+in his attempt to seduce Leonard Fairfield into his service, even though
+he succeeded in partially winning over the widow to his views.  For to
+her he represented the worldly advantages of the thing.  Lenny would
+learn to be fit for more than a day-labourer; he would learn gardening,
+in all its branches,--rise some day to be a head gardener.  "And," said
+Riccabocca, "I will take care of his book-learning, and teach him
+whatever he has a head for."
+
+"He has a head for everything," said the widow.
+
+"Then," said the wise man, "everything shall go into it."  The widow was
+certainly dazzled; for, as we have seen, she highly prized scholarly
+distinction, and she knew that the parson looked upon Riccabocca as a
+wondrous learned man.  But still Riccabocca was said to be a Papist, and
+suspected to be a conjuror.  Her scruples on both these points, the
+Italian, who was an adept in the art of talking over the fair sex, would
+no doubt have dissipated, if there had been any use in it; but Lenny put
+a dead stop to all negotiations.  He had taken a mortal dislike to
+Riccabocca: he was very much frightened by him,--and the spectacles, the
+pipe, the cloak, the long hair, and the red umbrella; and said so
+sturdily, in reply to every overture, "Please, sir, I'd rather not; I'd
+rather stay along with Mother," that Riccabocca was forced to suspend all
+further experiments in his Machiavellian diplomacy.  He was not at all
+cast down, however, by his first failure; on the contrary, he was one of
+those men whom opposition stimulates; and what before had been but a
+suggestion of prudence, became an object of desire.  Plenty of other lads
+might no doubt be had on as reasonable terms as Lenny Fairfield; but the
+moment Lenny presumed to baffle the Italian's designs upon him, the
+special acquisition, of Lenny became of paramount importance in the
+eyes of Signor Riccabocca.
+
+Jackeymo, however, lost all his interest in the traps, snares, and gins
+which his master proposed to lay for Leonard Fairfield, in the more
+immediate surprise that awaited him on learning that Dr. Riccabocca had
+accepted an invitation to pass a few days at the Hall.
+
+"There will be no one there but the family," said Riccabocca.  "Poor
+Giacomo, a little chat in the servants' hall will do you good; and the
+squire's beef is more nourishing, after all, than the sticklebacks and
+minnows.  It will lengthen your life."
+
+"The padrone jests," said Jackeymo, statelily; "as if any one could
+starve in his service."
+
+"Um," said Riccabocca.  "At least, faithful friend, you have tried that
+experiment as far as human nature will permit;" and he extended his hand
+to his fellow-exile with that familiarity which exists between servant
+and master in the usages of the Continent.  Jackeymo bent low, and a tear
+fell upon the hand he kissed.
+
+"Cospetto!" said Dr. Riccabocca, "a thousand mock pearls do not make up
+the cost of a single true one!  The tears of women--we know their worth;
+but the tears of an honest man---Fie, Giacomo!--at least I can never
+repay you this!  Go and see to our wardrobe."
+
+So far as his master's wardrobe was concerned, that order was pleasing to
+Jackeymo; for the doctor had in his drawers suits which Jackeymo
+pronounced to be as good as new, though many a long year had passed since
+they left the tailor's hands.  But when Jackeymo came to examine the
+state of his own clothing department, his face grew considerably longer.
+It was not that he was without other clothes than those on his back,--
+quantity was there, but the quality!  Mournfully he gazed on two suits,
+complete in three separate members of which man's raiments are composed:
+the one suit extended at length upon his bed, like a veteran stretched by
+pious hands after death; the other brought piecemeal to the invidious
+light,--the torso placed upon a chair, the limbs dangling down from
+Jackeymo's melancholy arm.  No bodies long exposed at the Morgue could
+evince less sign of resuscitation than those respectable defuncts!  For,
+indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his apparel, more /profusus
+sui/, than his master.  In the earliest days of their exile, he preserved
+the decorous habit of dressing for dinner,--it was a respect due to the
+padrone,--and that habit had lasted till the two habits on which it
+necessarily depended had evinced the first symptoms of decay; then the
+evening clothes had been taken into morning wear, in which hard service
+they had breathed their last.
+
+The doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from
+such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to
+Jackeymo than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of the
+servant reflects on the dignity of the master, "Giacomo, thou wantest
+clothes; fit thyself out of mine!"
+
+And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been
+accepted; but the fact was that that same fitting out was easier said
+than done.  For though-thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks
+and minnows--both Jackeymo and Riccabocca had arrived at that state which
+the longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the human frame,--
+namely, skin and bone,--yet the bones contained in the skin of Riccabocca
+all took longitudinal directions; while those in the skin of Jackeymo
+spread out latitudinally.  And you might as well have made the bark of a
+Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and pollarded oak--in
+whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at their ease--as
+have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca.  Moreover, if the
+skill of the tailor could have accomplished that undertaking, the
+faithful Jackeymo would never have had the heart to avail himself of the
+generosity of his master.  He had a sort of religious sentiment, too,
+about those vestments of the padrone.  The ancients, we know, when
+escaping from shipwreck, suspended in the votive temple the garments in
+which they had struggled through the wave.  Jackeymo looked on those
+relics of the past with a kindred superstition.  "This coat the padrone
+wore on such an occasion.  I remember the very evening the padrone last
+put on those pantaloons!"  And coat and pantaloons were tenderly dusted,
+and carefully restored to their sacred rest.
+
+But now, after all, what was to be done?  Jackeymo was much too proud to
+exhibit his person to the eyes of the squire's butler in habiliments
+discreditable to himself and the padrone.  In the midst of his perplexity
+the bell rang, and he went down into the parlour.
+
+Riccabocca was standing on the hearth under his symbolical representation
+of the "Patriae Exul."
+
+"Giacomo," quoth he, "I have been thinking that thou hast never done what
+I told thee, and fitted thyself out from my superfluities.  But we are
+going now into the great world: visiting once begun, Heaven knows where
+it may stop.  Go to the nearest town and get thyself clothes.  Things are
+dear in England.  Will this suffice?"  And Riccabocca extended a five-
+pound note.
+
+Jackeymo, we have seen, was more familiar with his master than we formal
+English permit our domestics to be with us; but in his familiarity he was
+usually respectful.  This time, however, respect deserted him.
+
+"The padrone is mad!" he exclaimed; "he would fling away his whole
+fortune if I would let him.  Five pounds English, or a hundred and
+twenty-six pounds Milanese!  Santa Maria! unnatural father!  And what is
+to become of the poor signorina?  Is this the way you are to marry her in
+the foreign land?"
+
+"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, bowing his head to the storm, "the signorina
+to-morrow; to-day the honour of the House.  Thy small-clothes, Giacomo,--
+miserable man, thy small-clothes!"
+
+"It is just," said Jackeymo, recovering himself, and with humility; "and
+the padrone does right to blame me, but not in so cruel a way.  It is
+just,--the padrone lodges and boards me, and gives me handsome wages, and
+he has a right to expect that I should not go in this figure."
+
+"For the board and the lodgment, good," said Riccabocca.  For the
+handsome wages, they are the visions of thy fancy!"
+
+"They are no such thing," said Jackeymo, "they are only in arrear.  As if
+the padrone could not pay them some day or other; as if I was demeaning
+myself by serving a master who did not intend to pay his servants!  And
+can't I wait?  Have I not my savings too?  But be cheered, be cheered;
+you shall be contented with me.  I have two beautiful suits still.  I was
+arranging them when you rang for me.  You shall see, you shall see."
+
+And Jackeymo hurried from the room, hurried back into his own chamber,
+unlocked a little trunk which he kept at his bed-head, tossed out a
+variety of small articles, and from the deepest depth extracted a
+leathern purse.  He emptied the contents on the bed.  They were chiefly
+Italian coins, some five-franc pieces, a silver medallion inclosing a
+little image of his patron saint,--San Giacomo,--one solid English
+guinea, and somewhat more than a pound's worth in English silver.
+Jackeymo put back the foreign coins, saying prudently, "One will lose on
+them here;" he seized the English coins, and counted them out.  "But are
+you enough, you rascals?" quoth he, angrily, giving them a good shake.
+His eye caught sight of the medallion,--he paused; and after eying the
+tiny representation of the saint with great deliberation, he added, in a
+sentence which he must have picked up from the proverbial aphorisms of
+his master,--
+
+"What's the difference between the enemy who does not hurt me, and the
+friend who does not serve me?  Monsignore San Giacomo, my patron saint,
+you are of very little use to me in the leathern bag; but if you help me
+to get into a new pair of small-clothes on this important occasion, you
+will be a friend indeed. /Alla bisogna, Monsignore./"  Then, gravely
+kissing the medallion, he thrust it into one pocket, the coins into the
+other, made up a bundle of the two defunct suits, and muttering to
+himself, "Beast, miser, that I am, to disgrace the padrone with all these
+savings in his service!" ran downstairs into his pantry, caught up his
+hat and stick, and in a few moments more was seen trudging off to the
+neighbouring town of L--------.
+
+Apparently the poor Italian succeeded, for he came back that evening in
+time to prepare the thin gruel which made his master's supper, with a
+suit of black,--a little threadbare, but still highly respectable,--two
+shirt fronts, and two white cravats.  But out of all this finery,
+Jackeymo held the small-clothes in especial veneration; for as they had
+cost exactly what the medallion had sold for, so it seemed to him that
+San Giacomo had heard his prayer in that quarter to which he had more
+exclusively directed the saint's direction.  The other habiliments came
+to him in the merely human process of sale and barter; the small-clothes
+were the personal gratuity of San Giacomo!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Life has been subjected to many ingenious comparisons; and if we do not
+understand it any better, it is not for want of what is called "reasoning
+by illustration."  Amongst other resemblances, there are moments when, to
+a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one of those rotatory
+entertainments commonly seen in fairs, and known by the name of
+"whirligigs," or "roundabouts," in which each participator of the
+pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of pursuing
+some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind.  Man, and
+woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still find
+something to follow, and there is no one too humble not to be an object
+of prey to another.  Thus, confining our view to the village of
+Hazeldean, we behold in this whirligig Dr. Riccabocca spurring his hobby
+after Lenny Fairfield; and Miss Jemima, on her decorous side-saddle,
+whipping after Dr. Riccabocca.  Why, with so long and intimate a
+conviction of the villany of our sex, Miss Jemima should resolve upon
+giving the male animal one more chance of redeeming itself in her eyes,
+I leave to the explanation of those gentlemen who profess to find "their
+only books in woman's looks."  Perhaps it might be from the over-
+tenderness and clemency of Miss Jemima's nature; perhaps it might be that
+as yet she had only experienced the villany of man born and reared in
+these cold northern climates, and in the land of Petrarch and Romeo, of
+the citron and myrtle, there was reason to expect that the native monster
+would be more amenable to gentle influences, less obstinately hardened in
+his iniquities.  Without entering further into these hypotheses, it is
+sufficient to say that, on Signor Riccabocca's appearance in the drawing-
+room at Hazeldean, Miss Jemima felt more than ever rejoiced that she had
+relaxed in his favour her general hostility to men.  In truth, though
+Frank saw something quizzical in the old-fashioned and outlandish cut of
+the Italian's sober dress; in his long hair, and the /chapeau bras/, over
+which he bowed so gracefully, and then pressed it, as if to his heart,
+before tucking it under his arm, after the fashion in which the gizzard
+reposes under the wing of a roasted pullet,--yet it was impossible that
+even Frank could deny to Riccabocca that praise which is due to the air
+and manner of an unmistakable gentleman.  And certainly as, after dinner,
+conversation grew more familiar, and the parson and Mrs. Dale, who had
+been invited to meet their friend, did their best to draw him out, his
+talk, though sometimes a little too wise for his listeners, became
+eminently animated and agreeable.  It was the conversation of a man who,
+besides the knowledge which is acquired from books and life, had studied
+the art which becomes a gentleman,--that of pleasing in polite society.
+
+The result was that all were charmed with him; and that even Captain
+Barnabas postponed the whist-table for a full hour after the usual time.
+The doctor did not play; he thus became the property of the two ladies,
+Miss Jemima and Mrs. Dale.
+
+Seated between the two, in the place rightfully appertaining to Flimsey,
+who this time was fairly dislodged, to her great wonder and discontent,
+the doctor was the emblem of true Domestic Felicity, placed between
+Friendship and Love.
+
+Friendship, as became her, worked quietly at the embroidered pocket-
+handkerchief and left Love to more animated operations.
+
+"You must be very lonely at the Casino," said Love, in a sympathizing
+tone.
+
+"Madam," replied Riccabocca, gallantly, "I shall think so when I leave
+you."
+
+Friendship cast a sly glance at Love; Love blushed, or looked down on the
+carpet,--which comes to the same thing.  "Yet," began Love again,--"yet
+solitude to a feeling heart--"
+
+Riccabocca thought of the note of invitation, and involuntarily buttoned
+his coat, as if to protect the individual organ thus alarmingly referred
+to.
+
+"Solitude to a feeling heart has its charms.  It is so hard even for us
+poor ignorant women to find a congenial companion--but for YOU!"  Love
+stopped short, as if it had said too much, and smelt confusedly at its
+bouquet.
+
+Dr. Riccabocca cautiously lowered his spectacles, and darted one glance
+which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of lightning, seemed to
+envelop and take in, as it were, the whole inventory of Miss Jemima's
+personal attractions.  Now Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a
+mild and pensive expression of countenance; and she would have been
+positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the
+pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical.  In fact, though Miss Jemima was
+constitutionally mild, she was not /de natura/ pensive; she had too much
+of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen and viscid humour
+called melancholy, and therefore this assumption of pensiveness really
+spoiled her character of features, which only wanted to be lighted up by
+a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing.  The same remark might
+apply to the figure, which--thanks to the same pensiveness--lost all the
+undulating grace which movement and animation bestow on the fluent curves
+of the feminine form.  The figure was a good figure, examined in detail,
+--a little thin, perhaps, but by no means emaciated, with just and
+elegant proportions, and naturally light and flexible.  But the same
+unfortunate pensiveness gave to the whole a character of inertness and
+languor; and when Miss Jemima reclined on the sofa, so complete seemed
+the relaxation of nerve and muscle that you would have thought she had
+lost the use of her limbs.  Over her face and form, thus defrauded of the
+charms Providence had bestowed on them, Dr. Riccabocca's eye glanced
+rapidly; and then moving nearer to Mrs. Dale--"Defend me" (he stopped a
+moment, and added) "from the charge of not being able to appreciate
+congenial companionship."
+
+"Oh, I did not say that!" cried Miss Jemima.
+
+"Pardon me," said the Italian, "if I am so dull as to misunderstand you.
+One may well lose one's head, at least, in such a neighbourhood as this."
+He rose as he spoke, and bent over Frank's shoulder to examine some views
+of Italy, which Miss Jemima (with what, if wholly unselfish, would have
+been an attention truly delicate) had extracted from the library in order
+to gratify the guest.
+
+"Most interesting creature, indeed," sighed Miss Jemima, but too--too
+flattering."
+
+"Tell me," said Mrs. Dale, gravely, "do you think, love, that you could
+put off the end of the world a little longer, or must we make haste in
+order to be in time?"
+
+"How wicked you are!" said Miss Jemima, turning aside.  Some few minutes
+afterwards, Mrs. Dale contrived it so that Dr. Riccabocca and herself
+were in a farther corner of the room, looking at a picture said to be by
+Wouvermans.
+
+MRS. DALE.--"She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?"
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Exceedingly so.  Very fine battle-piece!"
+
+MRS. DALE.--"So kind-hearted."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"All ladies are.  How naturally that warrior makes his
+desperate cut at the runaway!"
+
+MRS. DALE.--"She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has
+something very winning."
+
+RICCABOCCA (with a smile).--"So winning, that it is strange she is not
+won.  That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!"
+
+MRS. DALE (distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more
+effective grape-charge).--"Not won yet; and it is strange! she will have
+a very pretty fortune."
+
+RICCABOCCA.--"Ah!"
+
+MRS. DALE.  "Six thousand pounds, I dare say,--certainly four."
+
+RICCABOCCA (suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address).--"If Mrs.
+Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her
+portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is
+not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still--Miss Jemima!"
+
+The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sat himself down beside the
+whist-players.
+
+Mrs. Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended.  It would be such
+a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly.
+
+"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing that night in the large,
+comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great English four-
+posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks out of single
+blessedness, "Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer of probably
+L6000, certainly of four thousand."
+
+"Cosa meravigliosa!"--["Miraculous thing."]--exclaimed Jackeymo, and he
+crossed himself with great fervour.  "Six thousand pounds English!  why,
+that must be a hundred thousand--blockhead that I am!--more than L150,000
+Milanese!"  And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the squire's
+ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of
+which he stopped and cried, "But not for nothing?"
+
+"Nothing! no!"
+
+"These mercenary English! the Government wants to bribe you?"
+
+"That's not it."
+
+"The priests want you to turn heretic?"
+
+"Worse than that!" said the philosopher.
+
+"Worse than that!  O Padrone!  for shame!"
+
+"Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons--they want me never to wear
+THESE again!"
+
+"Never to wear what?" exclaimed Jackeymo, staring outright at his
+master's long legs in their linen drawers,--"never to wear--"
+
+"The breeches," said Riccabocca, laconically.
+
+"The barbarians!" faltered Jackeymo.
+
+"My nightcap!  and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca,
+drawing on the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in
+that," pointing to the four-posted bed; "and to be a bondsman and a
+slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and
+purred at, and pawed and clawed, and scolded and fondled, and blinded and
+deafened, and bridled and saddled--bedevilled and--married!"
+
+"Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately--"that's very bad,
+certainly; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand lire, and perhaps a
+pretty young lady, and--"
+
+"Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into bed and drawing the
+clothes fiercely over him.  "Put out the candle, and get along with you,
+--do, you villanous old incendiary!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+It was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks,
+and it was evident already, to an ordinary observer, that something wrong
+had got into the village.  The peasants wore a sullen expression of
+countenance; when the squire passed, they took off their hats with more
+than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad smile to
+his quick, hearty "Good-day, my man."  The women peered at him from the
+threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont (as least the
+wont of the prettiest), take occasion to come out to catch his passing
+compliment on their own good looks, or their tidy cottages.  And the
+children, who used to play after work on the site of the old stocks, now
+shunned the place, and, indeed, seemed to cease play altogether.
+
+On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great public work
+for nothing.  Now that the squire had resuscitated the stocks, and made
+them so exceedingly handsome, it was natural that he should wish to put
+somebody into them.  Moreover, his pride and self-esteem had been wounded
+by the parson's opposition; and it would be a justification to his own
+forethought, and a triumph over the parson's understanding, if he could
+satisfactorily and practically establish a proof that the stocks had not
+been repaired before they were wanted.
+
+Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the squire
+more burly and authoritative and menacing than heretofore.  Old Gaffer
+Solomons observed, "that they had better moind well what they were about,
+for that the squire had a wicked look in the tail of his eye,--just as
+the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbour Barnes's little boy."
+
+For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the
+atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any positive
+overt act of tyranny on the one hand or rebellion on the other.  But on
+the very Saturday night in which Dr. Riccabocca was installed in the
+four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened revolution
+commenced.  In the dead of that night personal outrage was committed on
+the stocks.  And on the Sunday morning, Mr. Stirn, who was the earliest
+riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, that the knob
+of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously broken off;
+that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some jacobinical
+villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish or scroll-work,
+"Dam the stoks!"  Mr. Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much
+too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings
+with horror and alarm.  And when the squire came into his dressing-room
+at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet)
+informed him, with a mysterious air, that Mr. Stirn had something "very
+partikler to communicate about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and
+'sault."
+
+The squire stared, and bade Mr. Stirn be admitted.
+
+"Well?" cried the squire, suspending the operation of stropping his
+razor.
+
+Mr. Stirn groaned.
+
+"Well, man, what now?"
+
+"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr.
+Stirn; "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign
+Papishers have been semminating--"
+
+"Been what?"
+
+"Semminating--"
+
+"Disseminating, you blockhead,--disseminating what?"
+
+"Damn the stocks," began Mr. Stirn, plunging right /in medias res/, and
+by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric.
+
+"Mr. Stirn!" cried the squire, reddening, "did you say, 'Damn the
+stocks'?--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"
+
+"Lord forbid, sir; that's what they say: that's what they have digged on
+it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four holes,
+and broken the capital of the elewation."
+
+The squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor;
+he seated himself in his armchair majestically, crossed his legs, and, in
+a voice that affected tranquillity, said,--
+
+"Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an
+assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks.  Compose
+yourself; be calm.  Now!  What the devil is come to the parish?"
+
+"Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr. Stirn: and then laying the forefinger
+of the right hand on the palm of the left he narrated the case.
+
+"And whom do you suspect?  Be calm now; don't speak in a passion.  You
+are a witness, sir,--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness.  Zounds and
+fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do you
+suspect, I say?" Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his
+thumb over his shoulder, and whispered, "I hear as how the two Papishers
+slept at your honour's last night."
+
+"What, dolt!  do you suppose Dr. Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to
+bung up the holes in my new stocks?"
+
+"Noa; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have been
+semminating.  He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honour knows
+as how the parson set his face agin the stocks.  Wait a bit, sir,--don't
+fly at me yet.  There be a boy in this here parish--"
+
+"A boy!  ah, fool, now you are nearer the mark.  The parson write 'Damn
+the stocks,' indeed!  What boy do you mean?"
+
+"And that boy be cockered up much by Mr. Dale; and the Papisher went and
+sat with him and his mother a whole hour t' other day; and that boy is as
+deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and hiding
+hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up,--and that 'ere boy
+is Lenny Fairfield."
+
+"Whew," said the squire, whistling, "you have not your usual senses about
+you to-day, man.  Lenny Fairfield,--pattern boy of the village.  Hold
+your tongue.  I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish, after
+all: some good-for-nothing vagrant--that cursed tinker, who goes about
+with a very vicious donkey,--a donkey that I caught picking thistles out
+of the very eyes of the old stocks!  Shows how the tinker brings up his
+donkeys!  Well, keep a sharp look-out.  To-day is Sunday; worst day of
+the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows and depredations.
+Between the services, and after evening church, there are always idle
+fellows from all the neighbouring country about, as you know too well.
+Depend on it, the real culprits will be found gathering round the stocks,
+and will betray themselves; have your eyes, ears, and wits about you, and
+I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the matter before the day's
+out.  And if we do," added the squire, "we'll make an example of the
+ruffian!"
+
+"In course," said Stirn: "and if we don't find him we must make an
+example all the same.  That's what it is, sir.  That's why the stocks
+ben't respected; they has not had an example yet,--we wants an example."
+
+"On my word I believe that's very true; and we'll clap in the first idle
+fellow you catch in anything wrong, and keep him there for two hours at
+least."
+
+"With the biggest pleasure, your honour,--that's what it is."
+
+And Mr. Stirn having now got what he considered a complete and
+unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean parish,
+/quoad/ the stocks, took his departure.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+"Randal," said Mrs. Leslie on this memorable Sunday,--"Randal, do you
+think of going to Mr. Hazeldean's?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal.  "Mr. Egerton does not object to it; and
+as I do not return to Eton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing
+Frank for some time.  I ought not to fail in respect to Mr. Egerton's
+natural heir."
+
+"Gracious me!" cried Mrs. Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and
+kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced
+in her conduct,--"gracious me! natural heir to the old Leslie property!"
+
+"He is Mr. Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out
+his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr. Egerton at all."
+
+"But," said poor Mrs. Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be a
+shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to Oxford,
+and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not mean
+anything by it."
+
+"Anything, Mother, yes,--but not the thing you suppose.  No matter.  It
+is enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as
+seems to me best."
+
+Here the dialogue was suspended by the entrance of the other members of
+the family, dressed for church.
+
+"It can't be time for church!  No, it can't," exclaimed Mrs. Leslie.  She
+was never in time for anything,
+
+"Last bell ringing," said Mr. Leslie, who, though a slow man, was
+methodical and punctual.  Mrs. Leslie made a frantic rush at the door,
+the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze, dashed up the stairs, burst
+into her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest
+shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl
+on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to
+conceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back
+like a whirlwind.  Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in
+waiting; and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the
+shabby house to the dilapidated church.
+
+The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was
+the income of the parson.  It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had
+belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold.  The
+vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than L100 a
+year.  The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon.  He was a
+good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious
+cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary
+confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged
+creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can
+exchange one extra-parochial thought, had lulled him into a lazy
+mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility.  His income
+allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or
+charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond the
+example of his sinless life, and such negative effect as might be
+produced by his slumberous exhortations.  Therefore his parishioners
+troubled him very little; and but for the influence which, in hours of
+Montfydget activity, Mrs. Leslie exercised over the most tractable,--that
+is, the children and the aged,--not half-a-dozen persons would have known
+or cared whether he shut up his church or not.
+
+But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr.
+Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and
+the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet
+learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the
+choral frogs in Aristophanes; and there was a long sermon a propos to
+nothing which could possibly interest the congregation,--being, in fact,
+some controversial homily which Mr. Dumdrum had composed and preached
+years before.  And when this discourse was over, there was a loud
+universal grunt, as if of relief and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of
+shoes, and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church door.
+
+Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and as soon as dinner
+was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall.
+
+Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and
+quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he
+tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a guide
+for the first two or three miles.  Though Randal had not the gracious
+open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was
+still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice at war with the character
+of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his
+inferiors.  He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the
+boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic
+comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some
+compliments on the young gentleman himself.  Randal drew his hat over his
+brows.  There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding in your agricultural
+peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish specimen of the class,
+he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain.  He paused, scratched his
+head, and, glancing affectionately towards his companion, exclaimed,--
+
+"But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little
+pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman as
+any in the land."
+
+"Thank you," said Randal.  "But I like walking better than riding,--I am
+more used to it."
+
+"Well, and you walk bra'ly,--there ben't a better walker in the county.
+And very pleasant it is walking; and 't is a pretty country afore you,
+all the way to the Hall."
+
+Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to
+soothe; and coming at length into a broader lane, said, "I think I can
+find my way now.  Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into
+Tom's horny palm.  The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his
+eye.  He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's
+liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot
+his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.
+
+He stayed lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of
+sight, and then returned slowly.  Young Leslie continued to walk on at
+a quick pace.  With all his intellectual culture and his restless
+aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no sentiment
+so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept slouchingly
+homeward.
+
+As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of
+waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened.  Just then a
+gig emerged from one of these byroads, and took the same direction as the
+pedestrian.  The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded at a
+foot's pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well abreast.
+
+"You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer of the
+higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the boy's
+pale countenance and weary stride.  "Perhaps we are going the same way,
+and I can give you a lift?"
+
+It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advantage proffered
+to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please the honest
+farmer.
+
+"A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side.  "Have you
+come far?"
+
+"From Rood Hall."
+
+"Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more respectfully, and
+lifting his hat.
+
+"Yes, my name is Leslie.  You know Rood, then?"
+
+"I was brought up on your father's land, sir.  You may have heard of
+Farmer Bruce?"
+
+RANDAL.--"I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr. Bruce who rented,
+I believe, the best part of our land, and who used to bring us cakes when
+he called to see my father.  He is a relation of yours?"
+
+FARMER BRUCE.--"He was my uncle.  He is dead now, poor man."
+
+RANDAL.-"Dead!  I am grieved to hear it.  He was very kind to us
+children.  But it is long since he left my father's farm."
+
+FARMER BRUCE (apologetically).--"I am sure he was very sorry to go.  But,
+you see, he had an unexpected legacy--"
+
+RANDAL.--"And retired from business?"
+
+FARMER BRUCE.--"No.  But, having capital, he could afford to pay a good
+rent for a real good farm."
+
+RANDAL (bitterly).--"All capital seems to fly from the lands of Rood.
+And whose farm did he take?"
+
+FARMER BRUCE.--" He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazeldean.  I rent it
+now.  We've laid out a power o' money on it.  But I don't complain.  It
+pays well."
+
+RANDAL.--"Would the money have paid as well sunk on my father's land?"
+
+FARMER BRUCE.---"Perhaps it might, in the long run.  But then, sir, we
+wanted new premises,--barns and cattlesheds, and a deal more,--which the
+landlord should do; but it is not every landlord as can afford that.
+Squire Hazeldean's a rich man."
+
+RANDAL.---"Ay!"
+
+The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his horse into a
+brisk trot.
+
+"But which way be you going, sir?  I don't care for a few miles more or
+less, if I can be of service."
+
+"I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself from a revery.
+"Don't let me take you out of your way."
+
+"O, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so it be quite my
+way, sir."
+
+The farmer, then, who was really a smart young fellow,--one of that race
+which the application of capital to land has produced, and which, in
+point of education and refinement, are at least on a par with the squires
+of a former generation,--began to talk about his handsome horse, about
+horses in general, about hunting and coursing: he handled all these
+subjects with spirit, yet with modesty.  Randal pulled his hat still
+lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt him till they passed the
+Casino, when, struck by the classic air of the place, and catching a
+scent from the orange-trees, the boy asked abruptly, "Whose house is
+that?"
+
+"Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent to a foreign
+mounseer.  They say he is quite the gentleman, but uncommonly poor."
+
+"Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim garden, the neat
+terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door of the house being open)
+catching a glimpse of the painted hall within,--"poor?  The place seems
+well kept.  What do you call poor, Mr. Bruce?"
+
+The farmer laughed.  "Well, that's a home question, sir.  But I believe
+the mounseer is as poor as a man can be who makes no debts and does not
+actually starve."
+
+"As poor as my father?" asked Randal, openly and abruptly.
+
+"Lord, sir! your father be a very rich man compared to him."  Randal
+continued to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast of his
+slovenly shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances.  No trim
+garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms.  Here poverty
+at least was elegant,--there, how squalid!  He did not comprehend at how
+cheap a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected.  They now
+approached the extremity of the squire's park pales; and Randal, seeing a
+little gate, bade the farmer stop his gig, and descended.  The boy
+plunged amidst the thick oak groves; the farmer went his way blithely,
+and his mellow merry whistle came to Randal's moody ear as he glided
+quick under the shadow of the trees.
+
+He arrived at the Hall to find that all the family were at church; and,
+according to the patriarchal custom, the churchgoing family embraced
+nearly all the servants.  It was therefore an old invalid housemaid who
+opened the door to him.  She was rather deaf, and seemed so stupid that
+Randal did not ask leave to enter and wait for Frank's return.  He
+therefore said briefly that he would just stroll on the lawn, and call
+again when church was over.
+
+The old woman stared, and strove to hear him; meanwhile Randal turned
+round abruptly, and sauntered towards the garden side of the handsome old
+house.
+
+There was enough to attract any eye in the smooth greensward of the
+spacious lawn, in the numerous parterres of variegated flowers, in the
+venerable grandeur of the two mighty cedars, which threw their still
+shadows over the grass, and in the picturesque building, with its
+projecting mullions and heavy gables; yet I fear that it was with no
+poet's nor painter's eye that this young old man gazed on the scene
+before him.
+
+He beheld the evidence of wealth--and the envy of wealth jaundiced his
+soul.
+
+Folding his arms on his breast, he stood a while, looking all around him,
+with closed lips and lowering brow; then he walked slowly on, his eyes
+fixed on the ground, and muttered to himself,--
+
+"The heir to this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell
+me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim,
+'Knowledge is power.'  And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge
+ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born?  I
+don't wonder that the poor should hate the rich.  But of all the poor,
+who should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman?  I suppose Audley
+Egerton means me to come into parliament, and be a Tory like himself?
+What! keep things as they are!  No; for me not even Democracy, unless
+there first come Revolution.  I understand the cry of a Marat,--'More
+blood!'  Marat had lived as a poor man, and cultivated science--in the
+sight of a prince's palace."
+
+He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor old Hall,
+which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace;
+and, with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backward, as if
+not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it conjured up.
+
+"But," he continued to soliloquize,--"but of revolution there is no
+chance.  Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in revolutions
+should thrive in this commonplace life.  Knowledge is power.  Well, then,
+shall I have no power to oust this blockhead?  Oust him--what from?  His
+father's halls?  Well, but if he were dead, who would be the heir of
+Hazeldean?  Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in blood to
+this squire as any one, if he had no children?  Oh, but the boy's life is
+worth ten of mine!  Oust him from what?  At least from the thoughts of
+his Uncle Egerton,--an uncle who has never even seen him!  That, at
+least, is more feasible.  'Make my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley
+Egerton?  Ay,--and to the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors.
+Simulation! simulation!  Lord Bacon allows simulation.  Lord Bacon
+practised it, and--"
+
+Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts,
+the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where
+the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha; and just as he was
+fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the
+ground went from under him, and--slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie!
+
+It so happened that the squire, whose active genius was always at some
+repair or improvement, had been but a few days before widening and
+sloping off the ditch just in that part, so that the earth was fresh and
+damp, and not yet either turfed or flattened down.  Thus when Randal,
+recovering his first surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he found his
+clothes covered with mud; while the rudeness of the fall was evinced by
+the fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat, which, hollowed
+here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition generally, was as
+little like the hat of a decorous, hard-reading young gentleman--protege
+of the dignified Mr. Audley Egerton--as any hat picked out of a kennel
+after some drunken brawl possibly could be.
+
+Randal was dizzy and stunned and bruised, and it was some moments before
+he took heed of his raiment.  When he did so his spleen was greatly
+aggravated.  He was still boy enough not to like the idea of presenting
+himself to the unknown squire and the dandy Frank in such a trim: he
+resolved incontinently to regain the lane and return home, without
+accomplishing the object of his journey; and seeing the footpath right
+before him, which led to a gate that he conceived would admit him into
+the highway sooner than the path by which he had come, he took it at
+once.
+
+It is surprising how little we human creatures heed the warnings of our
+good genius.  I have no doubt that some benignant power had precipitated
+Randal Leslie into the ditch, as a significant hint of the fate of all
+who choose what is, nowadays; by no means an uncommon step in the march
+of intellect,--namely, the walking backwards, in order to gratify a
+vindictive view of one's neighbour's property!  I suspect that, before
+this century is out, many a fine fellow will thus have found his ha-ha,
+and scrambled out of the ditch with a much shabbier coat than he had on
+when he fell into it.  But Randal did not thank his good genius for
+giving him a premonitory tumble,--and I never yet knew a man who did!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER, XI.
+
+The squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning.  He was too
+much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that he
+had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent
+donation to the parish.  His feelings, too, were hurt as well as his
+pride.  There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after
+he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation but the
+embellishment of the stocks.  It was not, however, so rare an occurrence
+for the squire to be ruffled as to create any remark.  Riccabocca,
+indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs. Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact
+to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the one
+was too discreet, and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore,
+whatever it might be, and shortly after breakfast the squire retired into
+his study, and absented himself from morning service.  In his delightful
+"Life of Oliver Goldsmith," Mr. Forster takes care to touch our hearts by
+introducing his hero's excuse for not entering the priesthood.  "He did
+not feel himself good enough."  Thy Vicar of Wakefield, poor Goldsmith,
+was an excellent substitute for thee; and Dr. Primrose, at least, will be
+good enough for the world until Miss Jemima's fears are realized.  Now,
+Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much less reasonable than
+Goldsmith's.  There were occasionally days in which he did not feel good
+enough--I don't say for a priest, but even for one of the congregation,--
+"days in which," said the squire in his own blunt way, "as I have never
+in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry
+mine into the family pew.  He sha'n't be growling out hypocritical
+responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book."  So the squire and his
+demon stayed at home.  But the demon was generally cast out before the
+day was over: and on this occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon
+service, it may be presumed that the squire had reasoned or fretted
+himself into a proper state of mind; for he was then seen sallying forth
+from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of
+his household.  The second service was (as is commonly the case in rural
+districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our
+parson's wont to devote to this service his most effective discourse.
+
+Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology
+nor the archaeological learning that distinguish the rising generation of
+the clergy.  I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be
+called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice
+formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a
+congregation or puzzle a bishop.  Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in
+ecclesiastical architecture.  He did not much care whether all the
+details in the church were purely Gothic or not; crockets and finials,
+round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had never
+troubled his head.
+
+But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which is perhaps of equal
+importance with those subtler mysteries,--he knew how to fill his church!
+Even at morning service no pews were empty, and at evening service the
+church overflowed.
+
+Parson Dale, too, may be considered nowadays to hold but a mean idea of
+the spiritual authority of the Church.  He had never been known to
+dispute on its exact bearing with the State,--whether it was incorporated
+with the State or above the State, whether it was antecedent to the
+Papacy or formed from the Papacy, etc.  According to his favourite maxim,
+"Quieta non movere,"--["Not to disturb things that are quiet."]--I have
+no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is provoked
+upon such matters the better for both Church and laity.  Nor had he ever
+been known to regret the disuse of the ancient custom of excommunication,
+nor any other diminution of the powers of the priesthood, whether
+minatory or militant; yet for all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of
+the sacred privilege of a minister of the gospel,--to advise, to deter,
+to persuade, to reprove.  And it was for the evening service that he
+prepared those sermons which may be called "sermons that preach at you."
+He preferred the evening for that salutary discipline, not only because
+the congregation was more numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man
+in his own innocent way, he knew that people bear better to be preached
+at after dinner than before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the
+heart when the stomach is at peace.  There was a genial kindness in
+Parson Dale's way of preaching at you.  It was done in so imperceptible,
+fatherly, a manner that you never felt offended.  He did it, too, with so
+much art that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the
+sinner he was exhorting.  Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached
+at the squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock, the churchwarden,
+as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman and Scrub the hedger.  As for
+Mr. Stirn, he had preached at him more often than at any one in the
+parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the
+grace to reform.  There was, too, in Parson Dale's sermons something of
+that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had
+not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder
+divines.  Like them, he did not scruple now and then to introduce an
+anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural
+author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an
+argument more plain.  And the good man had an object in this, a little
+distinct from, though wholly subordinate to, the main purpose of his
+discourse.  He was a friend to knowledge,--but to knowledge accompanied
+by religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the
+ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son,
+with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the parson for further
+explanation, and so to be lured on to a little solid or graceful
+instruction, under a safe guide.
+
+Now, on the present occasion, the parson, who had always his eye and
+heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of
+his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent
+was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and
+inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the
+squire,--seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the
+precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor,
+meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon,--a sermon that
+should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the
+wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of
+Hazeldean.
+
+And thus ran--
+
+THE POLITICAL SERMON OF PARSON DALE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+     For every man shall bear his own burden.--Gal. vi. 5.
+
+"BRETHREN! every man has his burden.  If God designed our lives to end at
+the grave, may we not believe that He would have freed an existence so
+brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the
+world, mankind has been subjected?  Suppose that I am a kind father, and
+have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that
+he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his
+infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life?  If I am a rich
+man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern
+discipline of school.  If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me
+to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold:
+why inflict hardships on his childhood for the purpose of fitting him for
+manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow into man?  But if, on
+the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable
+existence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him, prepare
+his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that station in
+which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain, to the infant, in
+order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as man?  So it is with
+our Father that is in heaven.  Viewing this life as our infancy and the
+next as our spiritual maturity, where 'in the ages to come He may show
+the exceeding riches of His grace,' it is in His tenderness, as in His
+wisdom; to permit the toil and the pain which, in tasking the powers and
+developing the virtue of the soul, prepare it for 'the earnest of our
+inheritance.'  Hence it is that every man has his burden.  Brethren, if
+you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father, you
+will know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are reared for
+an eternity.  But each man thinks his own burden the hardest to bear: the
+poor-man groans under his poverty, the rich man under the cares that
+multiply with wealth.  For so far from wealth freeing us from trouble,
+all the wise men who have written in all ages have repeated, with one
+voice, the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase, they are increased
+that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the
+beholding of them with their eyes?'  And this is literally true, my
+brethren: for, let a man be as rich as was the great King Solomon
+himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it must go abroad to
+be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon, he make him great
+works,--though he build houses and plant vineyards, and make him gardens
+and orchards,--still the gold that he spends feeds but the mouths he
+employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a better relish than the
+poorest mason who builded the house, or the humblest labourer who planted
+the vineyard.  Therefore 'when goods increase, they are increased that
+eat them.'  And this, my brethren, may teach us toleration and compassion
+for the rich.  We share their riches, whether they will or not; we do not
+share their cares.  The profane history of our own country tells us that
+a princess, destined to be the greatest queen that ever sat on this
+throne, envied the milk-maid singing; and a profane poet, whose wisdom
+was only less than that of the inspired writers, represents the man who,
+by force--and wit, had risen to be a king sighing for the sleep
+vouchsafed to the meanest of his subjects,--all bearing out the words of
+the son of David, 'The sleep of the labouring man is sweet, whether he
+eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to
+sleep.'
+
+"Amongst my brethren now present there is, doubtless, some one who has
+been poor, and by honest industry has made himself comparatively rich.
+Let his heart answer me while I speak: are not the chief cares that now
+disturb him to be found in the goods he hath acquired?  Has he not both
+vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew not when
+he went forth to his labour, and took no heed of the morrow?  But it is
+right, my brethren, that to every station there should be its care, to
+every man his burden; for if the poor did not sometimes so far feel
+poverty to be a burden as to desire to better their condition, and (to
+use the language of the world) 'seek to rise in life,' their most
+valuable energies would never be aroused; and we should not witness that
+spectacle, which is so common in the land we live in,--namely, the
+successful struggle of manly labour against adverse fortune,--a struggle
+in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands.  It is said that
+necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which are
+now as common to us as air and sunshine have come from that law of our
+nature which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement, enriches
+each successive generation by the labours of the last, and in free
+countries often lifts the child of the labourer to a place amongst the
+rulers of the land.  Nay, if necessity is the mother of invention,
+poverty is the creator of the arts.  If there had been no poverty, and no
+sense of poverty, where would have been that which we call the wealth of
+a country?  Subtract from civilization all that has been produced by the
+poor, and what remains?--the state of the savage.  Where you now see
+labourer and prince, you would see equality indeed,--the equality of wild
+men.  No; not even equality there! for there brute force becomes
+lordship, and woe to the weak!  Where you now see some in frieze, some in
+purple, you would see nakedness in all.  Where stands the palace and the
+cot, you would behold but mud huts and caves.  As far as the peasant
+excels the king among savages, so far does the society exalted and
+enriched by the struggles of labour excel the state in which Poverty
+feels no disparity, and Toil sighs for no ease.  On the other hand, if
+the rich were perfectly contented with their wealth, their hearts would
+become hardened in the sensual enjoyments it procures.  It is that
+feeling, by Divine Wisdom implanted in the soul, that there is vanity and
+vexation of spirit in the things of Mammon, which still leaves the rich
+man sensitive to the instincts of Heaven, and teaches him to seek for
+happiness in those beneficent virtues which distribute his wealth to the
+profit of others.  If you could exclude the air from the rays of the
+fire, the fire itself would soon languish and die in the midst of its
+fuel; and so a man's joy in his wealth is kept alive by the air which it
+warms; and if pent within itself, is extinguished.
+
+"And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the vast subject
+opened to us by the words of the apostle, 'Every man shall bear his own
+burden.'  The worldly conditions of life are unequal.  Why are they
+unequal?  O my brethren, do you not perceive?  Think you that, if it had
+been better for our spiritual probation that there should be neither
+great nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered the
+dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but merciful
+agencies, have influenced the framework and foundations of society?  But
+if from the remotest period of human annals, and in all the numberless
+experiments of government which the wit of man has devised, still this
+inequality is ever found to exist, may we not suspect that there is
+something in the very principles of our nature to which that inequality
+is necessary and essential?  Ask why this inequality?  Why?--as well ask
+why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of virtues!  For if all
+men were equal, if there were no suffering and no ease, no poverty and no
+wealth, would you not sweep with one blow the half, at least, of human
+virtues from the world?  If there were no penury and no pain, what would
+become of fortitude; what of patience; what of resignation?  If there
+were no greatness and no wealth, what would become of benevolence, of
+charity, of the blessed human pity, of temperance in the midst of luxury,
+of justice in the exercise of power?  Carry the question further; grant
+all conditions the same,--no reverse, no rise, and no fall, nothing to
+hope for, nothing to fear,--what a moral death you would at once inflict
+upon all the energies of the soul, and what a link between the Heart of
+Man and the Providence of God would be snapped asunder!  If we could
+annihilate evil, we should annihilate hope; and hope, my brethren, is the
+avenue to faith.  If there be 'a time to weep and a time to laugh,' it is
+that he who mourns may turn to eternity for comfort, and he who rejoices
+may bless God for the happy hour.  Ah, my brethren, were it possible to
+annihilate the inequalities of human life, it would be the banishment of
+our worthiest virtues, the torpor of our spiritual nature, the palsy of
+our mental faculties.  The moral world, like the world without us,
+derives its health and its beauty from diversity and contrast.
+
+"'Every man shall bear his own burden.'  True; but now turn to an earlier
+verse in the same chapter,--'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil
+the law of Christ.'  Yes, while Heaven ordains to each his peculiar
+suffering, it connects the family of man into one household, by that
+feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguishes us from the
+brute creation,--I mean the feeling to which we give the name of
+sympathy,--the feeling for each other!  The herd of deer shun the stag
+that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that creeps
+into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself alone,
+but in the joy and sorrow of those around him.  He who feels only for
+himself abjures his very nature as man; for do we not say of one who has
+no tenderness for mankind that he is inhuman; and do we not call him who
+sorrows with the sorrowful humane?
+
+"Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our
+Lord is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us from
+the brute.  He seizes, not upon some faculty of genii given but to few,
+but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all; and in
+saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates
+the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of His laws.
+The lawyer asks our Lord, 'Who is my neighbour?'  Our Lord replies by the
+parable of the good Samaritan.  The priest and the Levite saw the wounded
+man that fell among the thieves and passed by on the other side.  That
+priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have
+been learned in the law; but neither to the learning of the Levite nor to
+the doctrine of the priest does our Saviour even deign to allude.  He
+cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to the lawyer, 'Which
+now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among
+the thieves?  And he said, He that showed mercy unto him.  Then said
+Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.'
+
+"O shallowness of human judgments!  It was enough to be born a Samaritan
+in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite.  Yet
+now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race though
+they were?  They passed from the hearts of men when they passed the
+sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from
+the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred; a brother
+amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and Affliction shall
+meet in the common thoroughfare of Life!
+
+"'Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.'  Think
+not, O my brethren, that this applies only to almsgiving, to that relief
+of distress which is commonly called charity, to the obvious duty of
+devoting from our superfluities something that we scarcely miss to the
+wants of a starving brother.  No.  I appeal to the poorest amongst ye, if
+the worst burdens are those of the body,--if the kind word and the tender
+thought have not often lightened your hearts more than bread bestowed
+with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a frown.  Sympathy is a
+beneficence at the command of us all,--yea, of the pauper as of the king;
+and sympathy is Christ's wealth.  Sympathy is brotherhood.  The rich are
+told to have charity for the poor, and the poor are enjoined to respect
+their superiors.  Good: I say not to the contrary.  But I say also to the
+poor, '/In your turn have charity for the rich/;' and I say to the rich,
+'/In your turn respect the poor/.'
+
+"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.'  Thou,
+O poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother his larger portion of worldly
+goods.  Believe that he hath his sorrows and crosses like thyself, and
+perhaps, as more delicately nurtured, he feels them more; nay, hath he
+not temptations so great that our Lord hath exclaimed, 'How hardly shall
+they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven'?  And what are
+temptations but trials; what are trials but perils and sorrows?  Think
+not that you can bestow no charity on the rich man, even while you take
+your sustenance from his hands.  A heathen writer, often cited by the
+earliest preachers of the gospel, hath truly said, 'Wherever there is
+room for a man there is place for a benefit.'
+
+"And I ask any rich brother amongst you, when he hath gone forth to
+survey his barns and his granaries, his gardens and orchards, if suddenly
+in the vain pride of his heart, he sees the scowl on the brow of the
+labourer,--if he deems himself hated in the midst of his wealth, if he
+feels that his least faults are treasured up against him with the
+hardness of malice, and his plainest benefits received with the
+ingratitude of envy,--I ask, I say, any rich man, whether straightway all
+pleasure in his worldly possessions does not fade from his heart, and
+whether he does not feel what a wealth of gladness it is in the power of
+the poor man to bestow!  For all these things of Mammon pass away; but
+there is in the smile of him whom we have served a something that we may
+take with us into heaven.  If, then, ye bear one another's burdens, they
+who are poor will have mercy on the errors and compassion for the griefs
+of the rich.  To all men it was said--yes, to Lazarus as to Dives--'Judge
+not, that ye be not judged.'  But think not, O rich man, that we preach
+only to the poor.  If it be their duty not to grudge thee thy substance,
+it is thine to do all that may sweeten their labour.  Remember that when
+our Lord said, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
+kingdom of heaven,' He replied also to them who asked, 'Who then can be
+saved?'  'The things which are impossible with men are possible with
+God,' that is, man left to his own temptations would fail; but,
+strengthened by God, he shall be saved.  If thy riches are the tests of
+thy trial, so may they also be the instruments of thy virtues.  Prove by
+thy riches that thou art compassionate and tender, temperate and benign,
+and thy riches themselves may become the evidence at once of thy faith
+and of thy works.
+
+"We have constantly on our lips the simple precept, 'Do unto others as
+you would be done by.'  Why do we fail so often in the practice?  Because
+we neglect to cultivate that SYMPATHY which nature implants as an
+instinct, and the Saviour exalts as a command.  If thou wouldst do unto
+thy neighbour as thou wouldst be done by, ponder well how thy neighbour
+will regard the action thou art about to do to him.  Put thyself into his
+place.  If thou art strong and he is weak, descend from thy strength and
+enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden for the while, and buckle
+on his own; let thy sight see as through his eyes, thy heart beat as in
+his bosom.  Do this, and thou wilt often confess that what had seemed
+just to thy power will seem harsh to his weakness.  For 'as a zealous man
+hath not done his duty when he calls his brother drunkard and beast,'
+even so an administrator of the law mistakes his object if he writes on
+the grand column of society only warnings that irritate the bold and
+terrify the timid; and a man will be no more in love with law than with
+virtue, 'if he be forced to it with rudeness and incivilities.'  If,
+then, ye would bear the burden of the lowly, O ye great, feel not only
+for them, but with!  Watch that your pride does not chafe them, your
+power does not wantonly gall.  Your worldly inferior is of the class from
+which the Apostles were chosen, amidst which the Lord of Creation
+descended from a throne above the seraphs."
+
+
+The parson here paused a moment, and his eye glanced towards the pew near
+the pulpit, where sat the magnate of Hazeldean.  The squire was leaning
+his chin thoughtfully on his hand, his brow inclined downwards, and the
+natural glow of his complexion much heightened.
+
+"But," resumed the parson, softly, without turning to his book, and
+rather as if prompted by the suggestion of the moment--"but he who has
+cultivated sympathy commits not these errors, or, if committing them,
+hastens to retract.  So natural is sympathy to the good man that he obeys
+it mechanically when he suffers his heart to be the monitor of his
+conscience.  In this sympathy, behold the bond between rich and poor!  By
+this sympathy, whatever our varying worldly lots, they become what they
+were meant to be,--exercises for the virtues more peculiar to each; and
+thus, if in the body each man bear his own burden, yet in the fellowship
+of the soul all have common relief in bearing the burdens of each other.
+This is the law of Christ,--fulfil it, O my flock!"
+
+
+Here the parson closed his sermon, and the congregation bowed their
+heads.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY NOVEL, BY LYTTON, V2 ***
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