"My sweet child!" said Lady St Julians to Lady Joan, "you have no idea how unhappy Frederick is this evening, but he cannot leave the House, and I fear it will be a late affair."

Lady Joan looked as if the absence or presence of Frederick was to her a matter of great indifference, and then she added, "I do not think the division so important as is generally imagined. A defeat upon a question of colonial government does not appear to me of sufficient weight to dissolve a cabinet."

"Any defeat will do that now," said Lady St Julians, "but to tell you the truth I am not very sanguine. Lady Deloraine says they will be beat: she says the radicals will desert them; but I am not so sure. Why should the radicals desert them? And what have we done for the radicals? Had we indeed foreseen this Jamaica business, and asked some of them to dinner, or given a ball or two to their wives and daughters! I am sure if I had had the least idea that we had so good a chance of coming in, I should not have cared myself to have done something; even to have invited their women."

"But you are such a capital partisan, Lady St Julians," said the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, who with the viceroyalty of Ireland dexterously dangled before his eyes for the last two years, had become a thorough conservative and had almost as much confidence in Sir Robert as in Lord Stanley.

"I have made great sacrifices," said Lady St Julians. "I went once and stayed a week at Lady Jenny Spinner's to gain her looby of a son and his eighty thousand a-year, and Lord St Julians proposed him at White's; and then after all the whigs made him a peer! They certainly make more of their social influences than we do. That affair of that Mr Trenchard was a blow. Losing a vote at such a critical time, when if I had had only a remote idea of what was passing through his mind, I would have even asked him to Barrowley for a couple of days."

A foreign diplomatist of distinction had pinned Lord Marney, and was dexterously pumping him as to the probable future.

"But is the pear ripe?" said the diplomatist.

"The pear is ripe if we have courage to pluck it," said Lord Marney; "but our fellows have no pluck."

"But do you think that the Duke of Wellington—" and here the diplomatist stopped and looked up in Lord Marney's face, as if he would convey something that he would not venture to express.

"Here he is," said Lord Marney, "he will answer the question himself."

Lord Deloraine and Mr Ormsby passed by; the diplomatist addressed them: "You have not been to the Chamber?"

"No," said Lord Deloraine; "but I hear there is hot work. It will be late."

"Do you think—," said the diplomatist, and he looked up in the face of Lord Deloraine.

"I think that in the long run everything will have an end," said Lord Deloraine.

"Ah!" said the diplomatist.

"Bah!" said Lord Deloraine as he walked away with Mr Ormsby. "I remember that fellow—a sort of equivocal attache at Paris, when we were there with Monmouth at the peace: and now he is a quasi ambassador, and ribboned and starred to the chin."

"The only stars I have got," said Mr Ormsby demurely, "are four stars in India stock."

Lady Firebrace and Lady Maud Fitz-Warene were announced: they had just come from the Commons; a dame and damsel full of political enthusiasm. Lady Firebrace gave critical reports and disseminated many contradictory estimates of the result; Lady Maud talked only of a speech made by Lord Milford, which from the elaborate noise she made about it, you would have supposed to have been the oration of the evening; on the contrary, it had lasted only a few minutes and in a thin house had been nearly inaudible; but then, as Lady Maud added, "it was in such good taste!"

Alfred Mountchesney and Lady Joan Fitz-Warene passed Lady Marney who was speaking to Lord Deloraine. "Do you think," said Lady Marney, "that Mr Mountchesney will bear away the prize?"

Lord Deloraine shook his head. "These great heiresses can never make up their minds. The bitter drop rises in all their reveries."

"And yet," said Lady Marney, "I would just as soon be married for my money as my face."

Soon after this there was a stir in the saloons; a murmur, the ingress of many gentlemen: among others Lord Valentine, Lord Milford, Mr Egerton, Mr Berners, Lord Fitz-Heron, Mr Jermyn. The House was up; the great Jamaica division was announced; the radicals had thrown over the government, who left in a majority of only five, had already intimated their sense of the unequivocal feeling of the House with respect to them. It was known that on the morrow the government would resign.

Lady Deloraine, prepared for the great result, was calm: Lady St Julians, who had not anticipated it, was in a wild flutter of distracted triumph. A vague yet dreadful sensation came over her in the midst of her joy that Lady Deloraine had been beforehand with her; had made her combinations with the new Minister; perhaps even sounded the Court. At the same time that in this agitating vision the great offices of the palace which she had apportioned to herself and her husband seemed to elude her grasp; the claims and hopes and interests of her various children haunted her perplexed consciousness. What if Charles Egremont were to get the place which she had projected for Frederick or Augustus? What if Lord Marney became master of the horse? Or Lord Deloraine went again to Ireland? In her nervous excitement she credited all these catastrophes; seized upon "the Duke" in order that Lady Deloraine might not gain his ear, and resolved to get home as soon as possible, in order that she might write without a moment's loss of time to Sir Robert.

"They will hardly go out without making some peers," said Sir Vavasour Firebrace to Mr Jermyn.

"Why they have made enough."

"Hem! I know Tubbe Swete has a promise, and so has Cockawhoop. I don't think Cockawhoop could show again at Boodle's without a coronet."

"I don't see why these fellows should go out," said Mr Ormsby. "What does it signify whether ministers have a majority of five, or ten or twenty? In my time, a proper majority was a third of the House. That was Lord Liverpool's majority. Lord Monmouth used to say that there were ten families in this country who, if they could only agree, could always share the government. Ah! those were the good old times! We never had adjourned debates then; but sate it out like gentlemen who had been used all their lives to be up all night, and then supped at Watier's afterwards."

"Ah! my dear Ormsby," said Mr Berners, "do not mention Watier's; you make my mouth water."

"Shall you stand for Birmingham, Ormsby, if there be a dissolution?" said Lord Fitz-Heron.

"I have been asked," said Mr Ormsby; "but the House of Commons is not the House of Commons of my time, and I have no wish to re-enter it. If I had a taste for business, I might be a member of the Marylebone vestry."

"All I repeat," said Lord Marney to his mother, as he rose from the sofa where he had been some time in conversation with her, "that if there be any idea that I wish Lady Marney should be a lady in waiting, it is an error, Lady Deloraine. I wish that to be understood. I am a domestic man, and I wish Lady Marney to be always with me; and what I want I want for myself. I hope in arranging the household the domestic character of every member of it will be considered. After all that has occurred the country expects that."

"But my dear George, I think it is really premature—"

"I dare say it is; but I recommend you, my dear mother, to be alive. I heard Lady St Julians just now in the supper room asking the Duke to promise her that her Augustus should be a Lord of the Admiralty. She said the Treasury would not do, as there was no house, and that with such a fortune as his wife brought him he could not hire a house under a thousand a-year."

"He will not have the Admiralty," said Lady Deloraine.

"She looks herself to the Robes."

"Poor woman!" said Lady Deloraine.

"Is it quite true?" said a great whig dame to Mr Egerton, one of her own party.

"Quite," he said.

"I can endure anything except Lady St Julian's glance of triumph," said the whig dame. "I really think if it were only to ease her Majesty from such an infliction, they ought to have held on."

"And must the household be changed?" said Mr Egerton. "Do not look so serious," said the whig dame smiling with fascination; "we are surrounded by the enemy."

"Will you be at home to-morrow early?" said Mr Egerton.

"As early as you please."

"Very well, we will talk then. Lady Charlotte has heard something; nous verrons."

"Courage; we have the Court with us, and the Country cares for nothing."



Book 4 Chapter 12

"It is all right," said Mr Tadpole. "They are out. Lord Melbourne has been with the Queen and recommended her Majesty to send for the Duke, and the Duke has recommended her Majesty to send for Sir Robert."

"Are you sure?" said Mr Taper.

"I tell you Sir Robert is on his road to the palace at this moment; I saw him pass, full-dressed."

"It is too much," said Mr Taper.

"Now what are we to do?" said Mr Tadpole.

"We must not dissolve," said Mr Taper. "We have no cry."

"As much cry as the other fellows," said Mr Tadpole; "but no one of course would think of dissolution before the next registration. No, no; this is a very manageable Parliament, depend upon it. The malcontent radicals who have turned them out are not going to bring them in. That makes us equal. Then we have an important section to work upon—the Sneaks, the men who are afraid of a dissolution. I will be bound we make a good working conservative majority of five-and-twenty out of the sneaks."

"With the Treasury patronage," said Mr Taper; "fear and favour combined. An impending dissolution, and all the places we refuse our own men, we may count on the Sneaks."

"Then there are several religious men who have wanted an excuse for a long time to rat," said Mr Tadpole. "We must get Sir Robert to make some kind of a religious move, and that will secure Sir Litany Lax and young Mr Salem."

"It will never do to throw over the Church Commission," said Mr Taper. "Commissions and committees ought always to be supported."

"Besides it will frighten the saints," said Mr Tadpole. "If we could get him to speak at Exeter Hall—were it only a slavery meeting—that would do."

"It is difficult," said Taper; "he must be pledged to nothing—not even to the right of search. Yet if we could get up something with a good deal of sentiment and no principle involved; referring only to the past, but with his practised powers touching the present. What do you think of a monument to Wilberforce or a commemoration of Clarkson?"

"There is a good deal in that," said Mr Tadpole. "At present go about and keep our fellows in good humour. Whisper nothings that sound like something. But be discreet; do not let there be more than half a hundred fellows who believe they are going to be Under Secretaries of State. And be cautious about titles. If they push you, give a wink and press your finger to your lip. I must call here," continued Mr Tadpole as he stopped before the house of the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine. "This gentleman is my particular charge. I have been cooking him these three years. I had two notes from him yesterday, and can delay a visit no longer. The worst of it is, he expects that I shall bear him the non-official announcement of his being sent to Ireland, of which he has about as much chance as I have of being Governor-General of India. It must be confessed ours is critical work sometimes, friend Taper; but never mind—what we have to do to individuals Peel has to with a nation, and therefore we ought not to complain."

The Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine wanted Ireland and Lord de Mowbray wanted the Garter. Lord Marney, who wanted the Buckhounds, was convinced that neither of his friends had the slightest chance of obtaining their respective objects, but believed that he had a very good one of securing his own if he used them for his purpose, and persuaded them to combine together for the common good. So at his suggestion they had all met together at the duke's, and were in full conference on the present state of affairs, while Tadpole and Taper were engaged in that interesting and instructive conversation of which we have snatched a passage.

"You may depend upon it," said Lord Marney, "that nothing is to be done by delicacy. It is not delicacy that rules the House of Lords. What has kept us silent for years? Threats; and threats used in the most downright manner. We were told that if we did not conform absolutely and without appeal to the will and pleasure of one individual, the cards would be thrown up. We gave in; the game has been played, and won. I am not at all clear that it has been won by those tactics—but gained it is; and now what shall we do? In my opinion it is high time to get rid of the dictatorship. The new ruse now for the palace is to persuade her Majesty that Peel is the only man who can manage the House of Lords. Well, then it is exactly the time to make certain persons understand that the House of Lords are not going to be tools any longer merely for other people. Rely upon it a bold united front at this moment would be a spoke in the wheel. We three form the nucleus; there are plenty to gather round. I have written to Marisforde; he is quite ripe. Lord Hounslow will be here to-morrow. The thing is to be done; and if we are not firm the grand conservative triumph will only end in securing the best posts both at home and abroad for one too powerful family."

"Who had never been heard of in the time of my father," said the duke.

"Nor in the time of mine," said Lord de Mowbray.

"Royal and Norman blood like ours," said Lord Marney, "is not to be thrown over in that way."

It was just at this moment that a servant entered with a card, which the duke looking at said "It is Tadpole; shall we have him in? I dare say he will tell us something." And notwithstanding the important character of their conference, political curiosity and perhaps some private feeling which not one of them cared to acknowledge, made them unanimously agree that Mr Tadpole should be admitted.

"Lord Marney and Lord de Mowbray with the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine," thought Mr Tadpole, as he was ushered into the library and his eye, practised in machinations and prophetic in manoeuvres surveyed the three nobles. "This looks like business and perhaps means mischief. Very lucky I called!" With an honest smile he saluted them all.

"What news from the palace, Tadpole?" inquired the duke.

"Sir Robert is there," replied Tadpole.

"That's good news," exclaimed his grace, echoed by Lord de Mowbray, and backed up with a faint bravo from Lord Marney.

Then arose a conversation in which all affected much interest respecting the Jamaica debate; whether the whigs had originally intended to resign; whether it were Lord Melbourne or Lord John who had insisted on the step; whether if postponed they could have tided over the session; and so on. Tadpole, who was somewhat earnest in his talk, seemed to have pinned the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine; Lord Marney who wanted to say a word alone to Lord de Mowbray had dexterously drawn that personage aside on the pretence of looking at a picture. Tadpole, who had a most frank and unsophisticated mien had an eye for every corner of a room, seized the opportunity for which he had been long cruising. "I don't pretend to be behind the scenes, duke; but it was said to me to-day, 'Tadpole, if you do chance to see the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine you may say that positively Lord Killcroppy will not go to Ireland.'"

A smile of satisfaction played over the handsome face of the duke—instantly suppressed lest it might excite suspicion; and then with a friendly and very significant nod that intimated to Tadpole not to dwell on the subject at the present moment, the duke with a rather uninterested air recurred to the Jamaica debate, and soon after appealed on some domestic point to his son-in-law. This broke up the conversation between Lord de Mowbray and Lord Marney. Lord de Mowbray advancing was met accidentally on purpose by Mr Tadpole, who seemed anxious to push forward to Lord Marney.

"You have heard of Lord Ribbonville?" said Tadpole in a suppressed tone.

"No; what?"

"Can't live the day out. How fortunate Sir Robert is! Two garters to begin with!"

Tadpole had now succeeded in tackling Lord Marney alone; the other peers were far out of ear-shot. "I don't pretend to be behind the scenes, my Lord," said the honest gentleman in a peculiarly confidential tone, and with a glance that spoke volumes of state secrecy; "but it was said to me to-day, 'Tadpole, if you do chance to meet Lord Marney, you may say that positively Lord Rambrooke will not have the Buck-hounds.'"

"All I want," said Lord Marney, "is to see men of character about her Majesty. This is a domestic country, and the country expects that no nobleman should take household office whose private character is not inexpugnable. Now that fellow Rambrooke keeps a French woman. It is not much known, but it is a fact."

"Dreadful!" exclaimed Mr Tadpole. "I have no doubt of it. But he has no chance of the Buck-hounds, you may rely on that. Private character is to be the basis of the new government. Since the Reform Act that is a qualification much more esteemed by the constituency than public services. We must go with the times, my Lord. A virtuous middle class shrink with horror from French actresses; and the Wesleyans—the Wesleyans must be considered, Lord Marney."

"I always subscribe to them," said his Lordship.

"Ah!" said Mr Tadpole mysteriously, "I am glad to hear that. Nothing I have heard to-day has given me so much pleasure as those few words. One may hardly jest on such a subject," he added with a sanctimonious air; "but I think I may say"—and here he broke into a horse smile—"I think I may say that those subscriptions will not be without their fruit." And with a bow honest Tadpole disappeared, saying to himself as he left the house, "If you were ready to be conspirators when I entered the room, my Lords, you were at least prepared to be traitors when I quitted it."

In the meantime Lord Marney in the best possible humour said to Lord de Mowbray, "You are going to White's are you? If so take me."

"I am sorry, my dear Lord, but I have an appointment in the city. I have got to go to the Temple, and I am already behind my time."



Book 4 Chapter 13

And why was Lord de Mowbray going to the Temple? He had received the day before when he came home to dress a very disagreeable letter from some lawyers, apprising him that they were instructed by their client Mr Walter Gerard to commence proceedings against his lordship on a writ of right with respect to his manors of Mowbray, Valence, Mowedale, Mowbray Valence, and several others carefully enumerated in their precise epistle, and the catalogue of which read like an extract from Domesday Book.

More than twenty years had elapsed since the question had been mooted; and though the discussion had left upon Lord de Mowbray an impression from which at times he had never entirely recovered, still circumstances had occurred since the last proceedings which gave him a moral if not a legal conviction that he should be disturbed no more. And these were the circumstances: Lord de Mowbray after the death of the father of Walter Gerard had found himself in communication with the agent who had developed and pursued the claim for the yeoman, and had purchased for a good round sum the documents on which that claim was founded, and by which apparently that claim could only be sustained.

The vendor of these muniments was Baptist Hatton, and the sum which he obtained for them, by allowing him to settle in the metropolis, pursue his studies, purchase his library and collections, and otherwise give himself that fair field which brains without capital can seldom command, was in fact the foundation of his fortune. Many years afterwards Lord de Mowbray had recognised Hatton in the prosperous parliamentary agent who often appeared at the bar of the House of Lords and before committees of privileges, and who gradually obtained an unrivalled reputation and employment in peerage cases. Lord de Mowbray renewed his acquaintance with a man who was successful; bowed to Hatton whenever they met; and finally consulted him respecting the barony of Valence which had been in the old Fitz-Warene and Mowbray families and to which it was thought the present earl might prefer some hocus-pocus claim through his deceased mother; so that however recent was his date as an English earl, he might figure on the roll as a Plantagenet baron, which in the course of another century would complete the grand mystification of high nobility. The death of his son dexterously christened Valence had a little damped his ardour in this respect; but still there was a sufficiently intimate connection kept up between him and Hatton; so that before he placed the letter he had received in the hands of his lawyers he thought it desirable to consult his ancient ally.

This was the reason that Lord de Mowbray was at the present moment seated in the same chair in the same library as was a few days back that worthy baronet, Sir Vavasour Firebrace. Mr Hatton was at the same table similarly employed; his Persian cat on his right hand, and his choice spaniels reposing on their cushions at his feet.

Mr Hatton held forward his hand to receive the letter of which Lord de Mowbray had been speaking to him, and which he read with great attention, weighing as it were each word. Singular! as the letter had been written by himself, and the firm who signed it were only his instruments, obeying the spring of the master hand.

"Very remarkable!" said Mr Hatton.

"Is it not!" said Lord de Mowbray.

"And your Lordship received this yesterday?"

"Yesterday. I lost no time in communicating with you."

"Jubb and Jinks," continued Mr Hatton, musingly, surveying the signature of the letter. "A very respectable firm."

"That makes it more strange," said his Lordship.

"It does," said Mr Hatton.

"A respectable firm would hardly embark in such a proceeding without some show of pretext," said Lord de Mowbray.

"Hardly," said Mr Hatton.

"But what can they have?" urged his Lordship.

"What indeed!" said Mr Hatton. "Mr Walter Gerard without his pedigree is a mere flash in the pan; and I defy him to prove anything without the deed of '77."

"Well, he has not got that," said Lord de Mowbray.

"Safe, of course?" said Mr Hatton.

"Certain. I almost wish I had burnt it as well as the whole box-full."

"Destroy that deed and the other muniments, and the Earl de Mowbray will never be Baron Valence," said Mr Hatton.

"But what use are these deeds now?" said his lordship. "If we produce them, we may give a colour to this fellow's claim."

"Time will settle his claim," said Mr Hatton; "it will mature yours. You can wait."

"Alas! since the death of my poor boy—"

"It has become doubly important. Substantiate the barony, it will descend to your eldest daughter, who, even if married, will retain your name. Your family will live, and ennobled. The Fitz-Warenes Lords Valence will yield to none in antiquity; and as to rank, as long as Mowbray Castle belongs to them, the revival of the earldom is safe at the first coronation, or the first ministry that exists with a balanced state of parties."

"That is the right view of the case," said Lord de Mowbray; "and what do you advise?"

"Be calm, and you have nothing to fear. This is the mere revival of an old claim, too vast to be allowed to lapse from desuetude. Your documents you say are all secure?"

"Be sure of that. They are at this moment in the muniment room of the great tower of Mowbray Castle; in the same iron box and in the same cabinet they were deposited—"

"When, by placing them in your hands," said Mr Hatton finishing a sentence which might have been awkward, "I had the extreme satisfaction of confirming the rights and calming the anxieties of one of our ancient houses. I would recommend your lordship to instruct your lawyers to appear to this writ as a matter of course. But enter into no details, no unnecessary confidence with them. They are needless. Treat the matter lightly, especially to them. You will hear no more of it."

"You feel confidence?"

"Perfect. Walter Gerard has no documents of any kind. Whatever his claim might be, good or bad, the only evidence that can prove his pedigree is in your possession and the only use to which it ever will be put, will be in due time to seat your grandson in the House of Lords."

"I am glad I called upon you," said Lord Mowbray.

"To be sure. Your lordship can speak to me without reserve, and I am used to these start-ups. It is part of the trade; but an old soldier is not to be deceived by such feints."

"Clearly a feint, you think?"

"A feint! a feint."

"Good morning. I am glad I have called. How goes on my friend Sir Vavasour?"

"Oh! I shall land him at last."

"Well, he is an excellent, neighbourly, man. I have a great respect for Sir Vavasour. Would you dine with me, Mr Hatton, on Thursday? It would give me and Lady de Mowbray great pleasure."

"Your lordship is extremely kind," said Mr Hatton bowing with a slight sarcastic smile, "but I am an hermit."

"But your friends should see you sometimes," said Lord de Mowbray.

"Your lordship is too good, but I am a mere man of business and know my position. I feel I am not at home in ladies' society."

"Well then come to-morrow: I am alone, and I will ask some persons to meet you whom you know and like,—Sir Vavasour and Lord Shaftesbury and a most learned Frenchman who is over here—a Vicomte de Narbonne, who is very anxious to make your acquaintance. Your name is current I can tell you at Paris."

"Your lordship is too good; another day: I have a great pressure of affairs at present."

"Well, well; so be it. Good morning, Mr Hatton."

Hatton bowed lowly. The moment the door was shut, rubbing his hands, he said, "In the same box and in the same cabinet: the muniment room in the great tower of Mowbray Castle! They exist and I know their whereabouts. I'll have 'em."



Book 4 Chapter 14.

Two and even three days had rolled over since Mr Tadpole had reported Sir Robert on his way to the palace, and marvellously little had transpired. It was of course known that a cabinet was in formation, and the daily papers reported to the public the diurnal visits of certain noble lords and right honourable gentlemen to the new first minister. But the world of high politics had suddenly become so cautious that nothing leaked out. Even gossip was at fault. Lord Marney had not received the Buckhounds, though he never quitted his house for ride or lounge without leaving precise instructions with Captain Grouse as to the identical time he should return home, so that his acceptance should not be delayed. Ireland was not yet governed by the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, and the Earl de Mowbray was still ungartered. These three distinguished noblemen were all of them anxious—a little fidgetty; but at the same time it was not even whispered that Lord Rambrooke or any other lord had received the post which Lord Marney had appropriated to himself; nor had Lord Killcroppy had a suspicious interview with the prime minister, which kept the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine quiet though not easy; while not a shadow of coming events had glanced over the vacant stall of Lord Ribbonville in St George's Chapel, and this made Lord de Mowbray tranquil, though scarcely content. In the meantime, daily and hourly they all pumped Mr Tadpole, who did not find it difficult to keep up his reputation for discretion; for knowing nothing, and beginning himself to be perplexed at the protracted silence, he took refuge in oracular mystery, and delivered himself of certain Delphic sentences which adroitly satisfied those who consulted him while they never committed himself.

At length one morning there was an odd whisper in the circle of first initiation. The blood mantled on the cheek of Lady St Julians; Lady Deloraine turned pale. Lady Firebrace wrote confidential notes with the same pen to Mr Tadpole and Lord Masque. Lord Marney called early in the morning on the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, and already found Lord de Mowbray there. The clubs were crowded even at noon. Everywhere a mysterious bustle and an awful stir.

What could be the matter? What has happened?

"It is true," said Mr Egerton to Mr Berners at Brookes'.

"Is it true?" asked Mr Jermyn of Lord Valentine at the Canton.

"I heard it last night at Crockford's," said Mr Ormsby; "one always hears things there four-and-twenty hours before other places."

The world was employed the whole of the morning in asking and answering this important question "Is it true?" Towards dinner time, it was settled universally in the affirmative, and then the world went out to dine and to ascertain why it was true and how it was true.

And now what really had happened? What had happened was what is commonly called a "hitch." There was undoubtedly a hitch somewhere and somehow; a hitch in the construction of the new cabinet. Who could have thought it? The whig ministers it seems had resigned, but somehow or other had not entirely and completely gone out. What a constitutional dilemma? The Houses must evidently meet, address the throne, and impeach its obstinate counsellors. Clearly the right course, and party feeling ran so high, that it was not impossible that something might be done. At any rate, it was a capital opportunity for the House of Lords to pluck up a little courage and take what is called, in high political jargon, the initiative. Lord Marney at the suggestion of Mr Tadpole was quite ready to do this; and so was the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, and almost the Earl de Mowbray.

But then when all seemed ripe and ready, and there appeared a probability of the "Independence of the House of Lords" being again the favourite toast of conservative dinners, the oddest rumour in the world got about, which threw such a ridicule on these great constitutional movements in petto, that even with the Buckhounds in the distance and Tadpole at his elbow, Lord Marney hesitated. It seemed, though of course no one could for a moment credit it, that these wrong-headed, rebellious ministers who would not go out, wore—petticoats!

And the great Jamaica debate that had been cooked so long, and the anxiously expected, yet almost despaired of, defection of the independent radical section, and the full-dressed visit to the palace that had gladdened the heart of Tadpole—were they all to end in this? Was Conservatism, that mighty mystery of the nineteenth century—was it after all to be brained by a fan!

Since the farce of the "Invincibles" nothing had ever been so ludicrously successful.

Lady Deloraine consoled herself for the "Bedchamber Plot" by declaring that Lady St Julians was indirectly the cause of it, and that had it not been for the anticipation of her official entrance into the royal apartments the conspiracy would not have been more real than the Meal-tub plot or any other of the many imaginary machinations that still haunt the page of history, and occasionally flit about the prejudiced memory of nations. Lady St Julians on the contrary wrung her hands over the unhappy fate of her enthralled sovereign, deprived of her faithful presence and obliged to put up with the society of personages of whom she knew nothing and who called themselves the friends of her youth. The ministers who had missed, especially those who had received their appointments, looked as all men do when they are jilted—embarrassed and affecting an awkward ease; as if they knew something which, if they told, would free them from the supreme ridicule of their situation, but which, as men of delicacy and honour, they refrained from revealing. All those who had been in fluttering hopes, however faint, of receiving preferment, took courage now that the occasion had passed, and loudly complained of their cruel and undeniable deprivation. The constitution was wounded in their persons. Some fifty gentlemen who had not been appointed under secretaries of state, moaned over the martyrdom of young ambition.

"Peel ought to have taken office," said Lord Marney. "What are the women to us?"

"Peel ought to have taken office," said the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine. "He should have remembered how much he owed to Ireland."

"Peel ought to have taken office," said Lord de Mowbray. "The garter will become now a mere party badge."

Perhaps it may be allowed to the impartial pen that traces these memoirs of our times to agree, though for a different reason, with these distinguished followers of Sir Robert Peel. One may be permitted to think that, under all circumstances, he should have taken office in 1839. His withdrawal seems to have been a mistake. In the great heat of parliamentary faction which had prevailed since 1831, the royal prerogative, which, unfortunately for the rights and liberties and social welfare of the people, had since 1688 been more or less oppressed, had waned fainter and fainter. A youthful princess on the throne, whose appearance touched the imagination, and to whom her people were generally inclined to ascribe something of that decision of character which becomes those born to command, offered a favourable opportunity to restore the exercise of that regal authority, the usurpation of whose functions has entailed on the people of England so much suffering and so much degradation. It was unfortunate that one who, if any, should have occupied the proud and national position of the leader of the tory party, the chief of the people and the champion of the throne, should have commenced his career as minister under Victoria by an unseemly contrariety to the personal wishes of the Queen. The reaction of public opinion, disgusted with years of parliamentary tumult and the incoherence of party legislation, the balanced state in the kingdom of political parties themselves, the personal character of the sovereign—these were all causes which intimated that a movement in favour of prerogative was at hand. The leader of the tory party should have vindicated his natural position, and availed himself of the gracious occasion: he missed it; and as the occasion was inevitable, the whigs enjoyed its occurrence. And thus England witnessed for the first time the portentous anomaly of the oligarchical or Venetian party, which had in the old days destroyed the free monarchy of England, retaining power merely by the favour of the Court.

But we forget, Sir Robert Peel is not the leader of the Tory party: the party that resisted the ruinous mystification that metamorphosed direct taxation by the Crown into indirect taxation by the Commons; that denounced the system that mortgaged industry to protect property; the party that ruled Ireland by a scheme which reconciled both churches, and by a series of parliaments which counted among them lords and commons of both religions; that has maintained at all times the territorial constitution of England as the only basis and security for local government, and which nevertheless once laid on the table of the House of Commons a commercial tariff negociated at Utrecht, which is the most rational that was ever devised by statesmen; a party that has prevented the Church from being the salaried agent of the state, and has supported through many struggles the parochial polity of the country which secures to every labourer a home.

In a parliamentary sense, that great party has ceased to exist; but I will believe it still lives in the thought and sentiment and consecrated memory of the English nation. It has its origin in great principles and in noble instincts; it sympathises with the lowly, it looks up to the Most High; it can count its heroes and its martyrs; they have met in its behalf plunder, proscription, and death. Nor when it finally yielded to the iron progress of oligarchical supremacy, was its catastrophe inglorious. Its genius was vindicated in golden sentences and with fervent arguments of impassioned logic by St John; and breathed in the intrepid eloquence and patriot soul of William Wyndham. Even now it is not dead, but sleepeth; and in an age of political materialism, of confused purposes and perplexed intelligence, that aspires only to wealth because it has faith in no other accomplishment, as men rifle cargoes on the verge of shipwreck, Toryism will yet rise from the tomb over which Bolingbroke shed his last tear, to bring back strength to the Crown, liberty to the Subject, and to announce that power has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the PEOPLE.



Book 4 Chapter 15

During the week of political agitation which terminated with the inglorious catastrophe of the Bedchamber plot, Sybil remained tranquil, and would have been scarcely conscious of what was disturbing so many right honourable hearts, had it not been for the incidental notice of their transactions by her father and his friends. To the chartists indeed the factious embroilment at first was of no great moment, except as the breaking up and formation of cabinets might delay the presentation of the National Petition. They had long ceased to distinguish between the two parties who then and now contend for power. And they were tight. Between the noble lord who goes out and the right honourable gentleman who comes in, where is the distinctive principle? A shadowy difference may be simulated in opposition, to serve a cry and stimulate the hustings: but the mask is not even worn in Downing Street: and the conscientious conservative seeks in the pigeon-holes of a whig bureau for the measures against which for ten years he has been sanctioning by the speaking silence of an approving nod, a general wail of frenzied alarm.

Once it was otherwise; once the people recognised a party in the state whose principles identified them with the rights and privileges of the multitude: but when they found the parochial constitution of the country sacrificed without a struggle, and a rude assault made on all local influences in order to establish a severely organised centralisation, a blow was given to the influence of the priest and of the gentleman, the ancient champions of the people against arbitrary courts and rapacious parliaments, from which they will find that it requires no ordinary courage and wisdom to recover.

The unexpected termination of the events of May, 1839, in the re-establishment in power of a party confessedly too weak to carry on the parliamentary government of the country, was viewed however by the chartists in a very different spirit to that with which they had witnessed the outbreak of these transactions. It had unquestionably a tendency to animate their efforts, and imparted a bolder tone to their future plans and movements. They were encouraged to try a fall with a feeble administration. Gerard from this moment became engrossed in affairs; his correspondence greatly increased; and he was so much occupied that Sybil saw daily less and less of her father.

It was on the morning after the day that Hatton had made his first and unlooked-for visit in Smith's Square, some of the delegates who had caught the rumour of the resignation of the whigs had called early on Gerard, and he had soon after left the house in their company; and Sybil was alone. The strange incidents of the preceding day were revolving in her mind, as her eye wandered vaguely over her book. The presence of that Hatton who had so often and in such different scenes occupied their conversation; the re-appearance of that stranger, whose unexpected entrance into their little world had eighteen months ago so often lent interest and pleasure to their life—these were materials for pensive sentiment. Mr Franklin had left some gracious memories with Sybil; the natural legacy of one so refined, intelligent, and gentle, whose temper seemed never ruffled, and who evidently so sincerely relished their society. Mowedale rose before her in all the golden beauty of its autumnal hour; their wild rambles and hearty greetings and earnest converse, when her father returned from his daily duties and his eye kindled with pleasure as the accustomed knock announced the arrival of his almost daily companion. In spite of the excitement of the passing moment, its high hopes and glorious aspirations, and visions perchance of greatness and of power, the eye of Sybil was dimmed with emotion as she recalled that innocent and tranquil dream.

Her father had heard from Franklin after his departure more than once; but his letters, though abounding in frank expressions of deep interest in the welfare of Gerard and his daughter, were in some degree constrained: a kind of reserve seemed to envelope him; they never learnt anything of his life and duties: he seemed sometimes as it were meditating a departure from his country. There was undoubtedly about him something mysterious and unsatisfactory. Morley was of opinion that he was a spy; Gerard, less suspicious, ultimately concluded that he was harassed by his creditors, and when at Mowedale was probably hiding from them.

And now the mystery was at length dissolved. And what an explanation! A Norman, a noble, an oppressor of the people, a plunderer of the church—all the characters and capacities that Sybil had been bred up to look upon with fear and aversion, and to recognise as the authors of the degradation of her race.

Sybil sighed: the door opened and Egremont stood before her. The blood rose to her cheek, her heart trembled; for the first time in his presence she felt embarrassed and constrained. His countenance on the contrary was collected; serious and pale.

"I am an intruder," he said advancing, "but I wish much to speak to you," and he seated himself near her. There was a momentary pause. "You seemed to treat with scorn yesterday," resumed Egremont in accents less sustained, "the belief that sympathy was independent of the mere accidents of position. Pardon me, Sybil, but even you may be prejudiced." He paused.

"I should be sorry to treat anything you said with scorn," replied Sybil in a subdued tone. "Many things happened yesterday," she added, "which might be offered as some excuse for an unguarded word."

"Would that it had been unguarded!" said Egremont in a voice of melancholy. "I could have endured it with less repining. No, Sybil, I have known you, I have had the happiness and the sorrow of knowing you too well to doubt the convictions of your mind, or to believe that they can be lightly removed, and yet I would strive to remove them. You look upon me as an enemy, as a natural foe, because I am born among the privileged. I am a man, Sybil, as well as a noble." Again he paused; she looked down, but did not speak.

"And can I not feel for men, my fellows, whatever be their lot? I know you will deny it; but you are in error, Sybil; you have formed your opinions upon tradition, not upon experience. The world that exists is not the world of which you have read; the class that calls itself your superior is not the same class as ruled in the time of your fathers. There is a change in them as in all other things, and I participate that change. I shared it before I knew you, Sybil; and if it touched me then, at least believe it does not influence me less now."

"If there be a change," said Sybil, "it is because in some degree the People have learnt their strength."

"Ah! dismiss from your mind those fallacious fancies," said Egremont. "The People are not strong; the People never can be strong. Their attempts at self-vindication will end only in their suffering and confusion. It is civilisation that has effected, that is effecting this change. It is that increased knowledge of themselves that teaches the educated their social duties. There is a dayspring in the history of this nation which those who are on the mountain tops can as yet perhaps only recognize. You deem you are in darkness, and I see a dawn. The new generation of the aristocracy of England are not tyrants, not oppressors, Sybil, as you persist in believing. Their intelligence, better than that, their hearts are open to the responsibility of their position. But the work that is before them is no holiday-work. It is not the fever of superficial impulse that can remove the deep-fixed barriers of centuries of ignorance and crime. Enough that their sympathies are awakened; time and thought will bring the rest. They are the natural leaders of the People, Sybil; believe me they are the only ones."

"The leaders of the People are those whom the People trust," said Sybil rather haughtily.

"And who may betray them," said Egremont.

"Betray them!" exclaimed Sybil. "And can you believe that my father—"

"No, no; you can feel, Sybil, though I cannot express, how much I honour your father. But he stands alone in the singleness and purity of his heart. Who surround him?"

"Those whom the People have also chosen; and from a like confidence in their virtues and abilities. They are a senate supported by the sympathy of millions, with only one object in view—the emancipation of their race. It is a sublime spectacle, these delegates of labour advocating the sacred cause in a manner which might shame your haughty factions. What can resist a demonstration so truly national! What can withstand the supremacy of its moral power!"

Her eye met the glance of Egremont. That brow full of thought and majesty was fixed on his. He encountered that face radiant as a seraph's; those dark eyes flashing with the inspiration of the martyr.

Egremont rose, moved slowly to the window, gazed in abstraction for a few moments on the little garden with its dank turf that no foot ever trod, its mutilated statue and its mouldering frescoes. What a silence; how profound! What a prospect: how drear! Suddenly he turned, and advancing with a more rapid pace: he approached Sybil. Her head was averted, and leaning on her left arm she seemed lost in reverie. Egremont fell upon his knee and gently taking her hand he pressed it to his lips. She started, she looked round, agitated, alarmed, while he breathed forth in tremulous accents, "Let me express to you my adoration!

"Ah! not now for the first time, but for ever; from the moment I first beheld you in the starlit arch of Marney has your spirit ruled my being and softened every spring of my affections. I followed you to your home, and lived for a time content in the silent worship of your nature. When I came the last morning to the cottage, it was to tell, and to ask, all. Since then for a moment your image has never been absent from my consciousness; your picture consecrates my hearth and your approval has been the spur of my career. Do not reject my love; it is deep as your nature, and fervent as my own. Banish those prejudices that have embittered your existence, and if persisted in may wither mine. Deign to retain this hand! If I be a noble I have none of the accidents of nobility: I cannot offer you wealth, splendour, or power; but I can offer you the devotion of an entranced being—aspirations that you shall guide—an ambition that you shall govern!"

"These words are mystical and wild," said Sybil with an amazed air; "they come upon me with convulsive suddenness." And she paused for an instant, collecting as it were her mind with an expression almost of pain upon her countenance. "These changes of life are so strange and rapid that it seems to me I can scarcely meet them. You are Lord Marney's brother; it was but yesterday—only but yesterday—I learnt it. I thought then I had lost your friendship, and now you speak of—love!

"Love of me! Retain your hand and share your life and fortunes! You forget what I am. But though I learnt only yesterday what you are, I will not be so remiss. Once you wrote upon a page you were my faithful friend: and I have pondered over that line with kindness often. I will be your faithful friend; I will recall you to yourself. I will at least not bring you shame and degradation."

"O! Sybil, beloved, beautiful Sybil—not such bitter words; no, no!"

"No bitterness to you! that would indeed be harsh," and she covered with her hand her streaming eyes.

"Why what is this?" after a pause and with an effort she exclaimed. "An union between the child and brother of nobles and a daughter of the people! Estrangement from your family, and with cause, their hopes destroyed, their pride outraged; alienation from your order, and justly, all their prejudices insulted. You will forfeit every source of worldly content and cast off every spring of social success. Society for you will become a great confederation to deprive you of self-complacency. And rightly. Will you not be a traitor to the cause? No, no, kind friend, for such I'll call you. Your opinion of me, too good and great as I feel it, touches me deeply. I am not used to such passages in life; I have read of such. Pardon me, feel for me, if I receive them with some disorder. They sound to me for the first time—and for the last. Perhaps they ought never to have reached my ear. No matter now—I have a life of penitence before me, and I trust I shall be pardoned." And she wept.

"You have indeed punished me for the fatal accident of birth, if it deprives me of you."

"Not so," she added weeping; "I shall never be the bride of earth; and but for one whose claims though earthly are to me irresistible, I should have ere this forgotten my hereditary sorrows in the cloister."

All this time Egremont had retained her hand, which she had not attempted to withdraw. He had bent his head over it as she spoke—it was touched with his tears. For some moments there was silence; then looking up and in a smothered voice Egremont made one more effort to induce Sybil to consider his suit. He combated her views as to the importance to him of the sympathies of his family and of society; he detailed to her his hopes and plans for their future welfare; he dwelt with passionate eloquence on his abounding love. But with a solemn sweetness, and as it were a tender inflexibility, the tears trickling down her beautiful cheek, and pressing his hand in both of hers, she subdued and put aside all his efforts.

"Believe me," she said, "the gulf is impassable."

END OF THE FOURTH BOOK



BOOK V



Book 5 Chapter 1



"Terrible news from Birmingham," said Mr Egerton at Brookes'. "They have massacred the police, beat off the military, and sacked the town. News just arrived."

"I have known it these two hours," said a grey-headed gentleman, speaking without taking his eyes off the newspaper. "There is a cabinet sitting now."

"Well I always said so," said Mr Egerton, "our fellows ought to have put down that Convention."

"It is deuced lucky," said Mr Berners, "that the Bedchamber business is over, and we are all right. This affair in the midst of the Jamaica hitch would have been fatal to us."

"These chartists evidently act upon a system," said Mr Egerton. "You see they were perfectly quiet till the National Petition was presented and debated; and now, almost simultaneously with our refusing to consider their petition, we have news of this outbreak."

"I hope they will not spread," said the grey-headed gentleman. "There are not troops enough in the country if there be anything like a general movement. I hear they have sent the guards down by a special train, and a hundred more of the police. London is not over-garrisoned."

"They are always ready for a riot at Birmingham," said a Warwickshire peer. "Trade is very bad there and they suffer a good deal. But I should think it would not go farther."

"I am told," said the grey-headed gentleman, "that business is getting slack in all the districts."

"It might be better," said Mr Egerton, "but they have got work." Here several gentlemen entered, enquiring whether the evening papers were in and what was the news from Birmingham.

"I am told," said one of them, "that the police were regularly smashed."

"Is it true that the military were really beat off?"

"Quite untrue: the fact is there were no proper preparations; the town was taken by surprise, the magistrates lost their heads; the people were masters of the place; and when the police did act, they were met by a triumphant populace, who two hours before would have fled before them. They say they have burnt down above forty houses."

"It is a bad thing—this beating the police," said the grey-headed gentleman.

"But what is the present state of affairs?" enquired Mr Berners. "Are the rioters put down?"

"Not in the least," said Mr Egerton, "as I hear. They are encamped in the Bull Ring amid smoking ruins, and breathe nothing but havoc."

"Well, I voted for taking the National Petition into consideration," said Mr Berners. "It could do us no harm, and would have kept things quiet."

"So did every fellow on our side," said Mr Egerton, "who was not in office or about to be. Well, Heaven knows what may come next. The Charter may some day be as popular in this club as the Reform Act."

"The oddest thing in that debate," said Mr Berners, "was Egremont's move."

"I saw Marney last night at Lady St Julians," said Mr Egerton, "and congratulated him on his brother's speech. He looked daggers, and grinned like a ghoul."

"It was a very remarkable speech—that of Egremont," said the grey-headed gentleman. "I wonder what he wants."

"I think he must be going to turn radical," said the Warwickshire peer.

"Why the whole speech was against radicalism," said Mr Egerton.

"Ah, then he is going to turn whig, I suppose."

"He is ultra anti-whig," said Egerton.

"Then what the deuce is he?" said Mr Berners.

"Not a conservative certainly, for Lady St Julians does nothing but abuse him."

"I suppose he is crotchetty," suggested the Warwickshire noble.

"That speech of Egremont was the most really democratic speech that I ever read," said the grey-headed gentleman. "How was it listened to?"

"Oh capitally," said Mr Egerton. "He has very seldom spoken before and always slightly though well. He was listened to with mute attention; never was a better house. I should say made a great impression, though no one knew exactly what he was after."

"What does he mean by obtaining the results of the charter without the intervention of its machinery?" enquired Lord Loraine, a mild, middle-aged, lounging, languid man, who passed his life in crossing from Brookes' to Boodle's and from Boodle's to Brookes', and testing the comparative intelligence of these two celebrated bodies; himself gifted with no ordinary abilities cultivated with no ordinary care, but the victim of sauntering, his sultana queen, as it was, according to Lord Halifax, of the second Charles Stuart.

"He spoke throughout in an exoteric vein," said the grey-headed gentleman, "and I apprehend was not very sure of his audience; but I took him to mean, indeed it was the gist of the speech, that if you wished for a time to retain your political power, you could only effect your purpose by securing for the people greater social felicity."

"Well, that is sheer radicalism," said the Warwickshire peer, "pretending that the People can be better off than they are, is radicalism and nothing else."

"I fear, if that be radicalism," said Lord Loraine, "we must all take a leaf out of the same book. Sloane was saying at Boodle's just now that he looked forward to the winter in his country with horror."

"And they have no manufactures there," said Mr Egerton.

"Sloane was always a croaker," said the Warwickshire peer. "He always said the New Poor Law would not act, and there is no part of the country where it works so well as his own."

"They say at Boodle's there is to be an increase to the army," said Lord Loraine, "ten thousand men immediately; decided on by the cabinet this afternoon."

"It could hardly have leaked out by this time," said the grey-headed gentleman. "The cabinet were sitting less than an hour ago."

"They have been up a good hour," said Lord Loraine, "quite long enough for their decisions to be known in St James's Street. In the good old times, George Farnley used always to walk from Downing Street to this place the moment the council was up and tell us everything."

"Ah! those were the good old gentleman-like times," said Mr Berners, "when members of Parliament had nobody to please and ministers of State nothing to do."

The riots of Birmingham occurred two months after the events that closed our last volume. That period, as far as the obvious movements of the chartists were concerned, had been passed in preparations for the presentation and discussion of the National Petition, which the parliamentary embroilments of the spring of that year had hitherto procrastinated and prevented. The petition was ultimately carried down to Westminster on a triumphal car accompanied by all the delegates of the Convention in solemn procession. It was necessary to construct a machine in order to introduce the huge bulk of parchment signed by a million and a half of persons, into the House of Commons, and thus supported, its vast form remained on the floor of the House during the discussion. The House after a debate which was not deemed by the people commensurate with the importance of the occasion, decided on rejecting the prayer of the Petition, and from that moment the party in the Convention who advocated a recourse to physical force in order to obtain their purpose, was in the ascendant. The National Petition and the belief that although its objects would not at present be obtained, still that a solemn and prolonged debate on its prayer would at least hold out to the working classes the hope that their rights might from that date rank among the acknowledged subjects of parliamentary discussion and ultimately by the force of discussion be recognized, as other rights of other portions of the people once equally disputed, had been the means by which the party in the Convention who upheld on all occasions the supremacy of moral power had been able to curb the energetic and reckless minority, who derided from the first all other methods but terror and violence as effective of their end. The hopes of all, the vanity of many, were frustrated and shocked by finding that the exertions and expenditure of long months were not only fruitless, but had not even attracted as numerous an assembly or excited as much interest, as an ordinary party struggle on some petty point of factitious interest forgotten as soon as fought. The attention of the working classes was especially called by their leaders to the contrast between the interest occasioned by the endangered constitution of Jamaica, a petty and exhausted colony, and the claims for the same constitutional rights by the working millions of England. In the first instance, not a member was absent from his place; men were brought indeed from distant capitals to participate in the struggle and to decide it; the debate lasted for days, almost for weeks; not a public man of light and leading in the country withheld the expression of his opinion; the fate of governments was involved in it; cabinets were overthrown and reconstructed in the throes and tumult of the strife, and for the first time for a long period the Sovereign personally interposed in public transactions with a significance of character, which made the working classes almost believe that the privileged had at last found a master, and the unfranchished regained their natural chief. The mean position which the Saxon multitude occupied as distinguished from the Jamaica planters sunk deep into their hearts. From that moment all hope of relief from the demonstration of a high moral conduct in the millions, and the exhibition of that well-regulated order of public life which would intimate their fitness for the possession and fulfilment of public rights, vanished. The party of violence, a small minority as is usually the case, but consisting of men of determined character, triumphed; and the outbreak at Birmingham was the first consequence of those reckless councils that were destined in the course of the ensuing years to inflict on the working classes of this country so much suffering and disaster.

It was about this time, a balmy morning of July, that Sybil, tempted by the soft sunshine, and a longing for the sight of flowers and turf and the spread of winding waters, went forth from her gloomy domicile to those beautiful gardens that bloom in that once melancholy region of marsh, celebrated in old days only for its Dutch canal and its Chinese bridge, and now not unworthy of the royal park that incloses them.. Except here and there a pretty nursery-maid with her interesting charge; some beautiful child with nodding plume, immense bow, and gorgeous sash; the gardens were vacant. Indeed it was only at this early hour, that Sybil found from experience, that it was agreeable in London for a woman unaccompanied to venture abroad. There is no European city where our fair sisters are so little independent as in our metropolis; to our shame.

Something of the renovating influence of a beautiful nature was needed by the daughter of Gerard. She was at this moment anxious and dispirited. The outbreak at Birmingham, the conviction that such proceedings must ultimately prove fatal to the cause to which she was devoted, the dark apprehension that her father was in some manner implicated in this movement, that had commenced with so much public disaster, and which menaced consequences still more awful, all these events, and fears, and sad forebodings, acted with immense influence on a temperament which, though gifted with even a sublime courage, was singularly sensitive. The quick and teeming imagination of Sybil conjured up a thousand fears which were in some degree unfounded, in a great degree exaggerated, but this is the inevitable lot of the creative mind practising on the inexperienced.

The shock too had been sudden. The two months that had elapsed since she had parted, as she supposed for ever, from Egremont, while they had not less abounded than the preceding time in that pleasing public excitement which her father's career, in her estimation alike useful, honourable, and distinguished, occasioned her, had been fruitful in some sources of satisfaction of a softer and more domestic character. The acquaintance of Hatton, of whom they saw a great deal, had very much contributed to the increased amenity of her life. He was a most agreeable, instructive, and obliging companion; who seemed peculiarly to possess the art of making life pleasant by the adroit management of unobtrusive resources. He lent Sybil books; and all that he recommended to her notice, were of a kind that harmonized with her sentiment and taste. He furnished her from his library with splendid works of art, illustrative of those periods of our history and those choice and costly edifices which were associated with her fondest thought and fancy. He placed in her room the best periodical literature of the day, which for her was a new world; he furnished her with newspapers whose columns of discussion taught her, that the opinions she had embraced were not unquestioned: as she had never seen a journal in her life before, except a stray number of the "Mowbray Phalanx," or the metropolitan publication which was devoted to the cause of the National Convention, and reported her father's speeches, the effect of this reading on her intelligence was, to say the least, suggestive.

Many a morning too when Gerard was disengaged, Hatton would propose that they should show Sybil something of the splendour or the rarities of the metropolis; its public buildings, museums, and galleries of art. Sybil, though uninstructed in painting, had that native taste which requires only observation to arrive at true results. She was much interested with all she saw and all that occurred, and her gratification was heightened by the society of an individual who not only sympathised with all she felt, but who, if she made an inquiry, was ever ready with an instructive reply. Hatton poured forth the taste and treasures of a well-stored and refined intelligence. And then too, always easy, bland, and considerate; and though with luxuries and conveniences at his command, to participate in which, under any other circumstances, might have been embarrassing to his companions, with so much tact, that either by an allusion to early days, happy days when he owed so much to Gerard's father, or some other mode equally felicitous, he contrived completely to maintain among them the spirit of social equality. In the evening, Hatton generally looked in when Gerard was at home, and on Sundays they were always together. Their common faith was a bond of union which led them to the same altar, and on that day Hatton had obtained their promise always to dine with him. He was careful to ascertain each holy day at what chapel the music was most exquisite, that the most passionate taste of Sybil might be gratified. Indeed, during this residence in London, the opportunity it afforded of making her acquainted with some of the great masters of the human voice was perhaps to Sybil a source of pleasure not the least important. For though it was not deemed consistent with the future discipline which she contemplated to enter a theatre, there were yet occasions which permitted her, under every advantage, to listen to the performance of the master-pieces of sacred melody. Alone, with Hatton and her father, she often poured forth those tones of celestial sweetness and etherial power that had melted the soul of Egremont amid the ruins of Marney Abbey.

More intimately acquainted with Sybil Gerard, Hatton had shrunk from the project that he had at first so crudely formed. There was something about her that awed, while it fascinated him. He did not relinquish his purpose, for it was a rule of his life never to do that; but he postponed the plans of its fulfilment. Hatton was not, what is commonly understood by the phrase, in love with Sybil: certainly not passionately in love with her. With all his daring and talents and fine taste, there was in Hatton such a vein of thorough good sense, that it was impossible for him to act or even to think anything that was ridiculous. He wished still to marry Sybil for the great object that we have stated; he had a mind quite equal to appreciate her admirable qualities, but sense enough to wish that she were a less dazzling creature, because then he would have a better chance of accomplishing his end. He perceived when he had had a due opportunity to study her character, that the cloister was the natural catastrophe impending over a woman who, with an exalted mind, great abilities, a fine and profound education and almost supernatural charms, found herself born and rooted in the ranks of a degraded population. All this Hatton understood; it was a conclusion he had gradually arrived at by a gradual process of induction and by a vigilant observation that in its study of character had rarely been deceived; and when one evening with an art that could not be suspected, he sounded Gerard on the future of his daughter, he found that the clear intellect and straight-forward sagacity of the father had arrived at the same result. "She wishes," said Gerard, "to take the veil, and I only oppose it for a time, that she may have some knowledge of life and a clear conception of what she is about to do. I wish not that she should hereafter reproach her father. But, to my mind, Sybil is right. She cannot look to marriage: no man that she could marry would be worthy of her."

During these two months, and especially during the last, Morley was rarely in London, though ever much with Gerard, and often with his daughter during his visits. The necessary impulse had been given to the affairs of the Convention, the delegates had visited the members, the preparations for the presentation of the National Petition had been completed; the overthrow of the whig government, the abortive effort of Sir Robert Peel, the return of the whig administration, and the consequent measures, had occasioned a delay of two months in the presentation of the great document: it was well for Gerard to remain, who was a leader in debate, and whose absence for a week would have endangered his position as the head of a party, but these considerations did not influence Morley, who had already found great inconvenience in managing his journal at a distance; so, about the middle of May, he had returned to Mowbray, coming up occasionally by the train if anything important were stirring, or his vote could be of service to his friend and colleague. The affair of Birmingham however had alarmed Morley and he had written up to Gerard that he should instantly repair to town. Indeed he was expected the very morning that Sybil, her father having gone to the Convention where there were at this very moment very fiery debates, went forth to take the morning air of summer in the gardens of St James' Park.

It was a real summer day; large, round, glossy, fleecy clouds, as white and shining as glaciers, studded with their immense and immoveable forms the deep blue sky. There was not even a summer breeze, though the air was mellow, balmy, and exhilarating. There was a bloom upon the trees, the waters glittered, the prismatic wild-fowl dived, breathed again, and again disappeared. Beautiful children, fresh and sweet as the new-born rose, glanced about with the gestures and sometimes the voices of Paradise. And in the distance rose the sacred towers of the great Western Minster.

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence! A curse upon those who vulgarize and desecrate these holy haunts; breaking the hearts of nursery maids, and smoking tobacco in the palace of the rose!

The mental clouds dispelled as Sybil felt the freshness and fragrance of nature. The colour came to her cheek; the deep brightness returned to her eye; her step that at first had been languid and if not melancholy, at least contemplative, became active and animated. She forgot the cares of life and was touched by all the sense of its enjoyment. To move, to breathe, to feel the sunbeam, were sensible and surpassing pleasures. Cheerful by nature, notwithstanding her stately thoughts and solemn life, a brilliant smile played on her seraphic face, as she marked the wild passage of the daring birds, or watched the thoughtless grace of infancy.

She rested herself on a bench beneath a branching elm, and her eye, that for some time had followed the various objects that had attracted it, was now fixed in abstraction on the sunny waters. The visions of past life rose before her. It was one of those reveries when the incidents of our existence are mapped before us, when each is considered with relation to the rest, and assumes in our knowledge its distinct and absolute position; when, as it were, we take stock of our experience, and ascertain how rich sorrow and pleasure, feeling and thought, intercourse with our fellow creatures and the fortuitous mysteries of life,—have made us in wisdom.

The quick intelligence and the ardent imagination of Sybil had made her comprehend with fervor the two ideas that had been impressed on her young mind; the oppression of her church and the degradation of her people. Educated in solitude and exchanging thoughts only with individuals of the same sympathies, these impression had resolved themselves into one profound and gloomy conviction, that the world was divided only between the oppressors and the oppressed. With her, to be one of the people, was to be miserable and innocent; one of the privileged, a luxurious tyrant. In the cloister, in her garden, amid the scenes of suffering which she often visited and always solaced, she had raised up two phantoms which with her represented human nature.

But the experience of the last few months had operated a great change in these impressions. She had seen enough to suspect that the world was a more complicated system than she had preconceived. There was not that strong and rude simplicity in its organization she had supposed. The characters were more various, the motives more mixed, the classes more blended, the elements of each more subtle and diversified, than she had imagined. The People she found was not that pure embodiment of unity of feeling, of interest, and of purpose, which she had pictured in her abstractions. The people had enemies among the people: their own passions; which made them often sympathize, often combine, with the privileged. Her father, with all his virtues, all his abilities, singleness of purpose and simplicity of aim, encountered rivals in their own Convention, and was beset by open or, still worse, secret foes.

Sybil, whose mind had been nurtured with great thoughts, and with whom success or failure alike partook of the heroic, who had hoped for triumph, but who was prepared for sacrifice, found to her surprise that great thoughts have very little to do with the business of the world; that human affairs, even in an age of revolution, are the subject of compromise; and that the essence of compromise is littleness. She thought that the People, calm and collected, conscious at last of their strength and confident in their holy cause, had but to express their pure and noble convictions by the delegates of their choice, and that an antique and decrepid authority must bow before the irresistible influence of their moral power. These delegates of their choice turned out to be a plebeian senate of wild ambitions and sinister and selfish ends, while the decrepid authority that she had been taught existed only by the sufferance of the millions was compact and organized, with every element of physical power at its command, and supported by the interests, the sympathies, the honest convictions, and the strong prejudices of classes influential not merely from their wealth but even by their numbers.

Nor could she resist the belief that the feeling of the rich towards the poor was not that sentiment of unmingled hate and scorn which she associated with Norman conquerors and feudal laws. She would ascribe rather the want of sympathy that unquestionably exists between Wealth and Work in England, to mutual ignorance between the classes which possess these two great elements of national prosperity; and though the source of that ignorance was to be sought in antecedent circumstances of violence and oppression, the consequences perhaps had outlived the causes, as customs survive opinions.

Sybil looked towards Westminster, to those proud and passionate halls where assembles the Parliament of England; that rapacious, violent, and haughty body, that had brought kings and prelates to the block; spoiled churches and then seized the sacred manors for their personal prey; invested their own possessions with infinite privileges, and then mortgaged for their state and empire the labour of countless generations. Could the voice of solace sound from such a quarter?

Sybil unfolded a journal which she had brought; not now to be read for the first time; but now for the first time to be read alone, undisturbed, in a scene of softness and serenity. It contained a report of the debate in the House of Commons on the presentation of the National Petition; that important document which had been the means of drawing forth Sybil from her solitude, and of teaching her something of that world of which she had often pondered, and yet which she had so inaccurately preconceived.

Yes! there was one voice that had sounded in that proud Parliament, that free from the slang of faction, had dared to express immortal truths: the voice of a noble, who without being a demagogue, had upheld the popular cause; had pronounced his conviction that the rights of labour were as sacred as those of property; that if a difference were to be established, the interests of the living wealth ought to be preferred; who had declared that the social happiness of the millions should be the first object of a statesman, and that if that were not achieved, thrones and dominions, the pomp and power of courts and empires, were alike worthless.

With a heart not without emotion; with a kindling cheek, and eyes suffused with tears, Sybil read the speech of Egremont. She ceased; still holding the paper with one hand, she laid on it the other with tenderness, and looked up to breathe as it were for relief. Before her stood the orator himself.



Book 5 Chapter 2



Egremont had recognized Sybil as she entered the garden. He was himself crossing the park to attend a committee of the House of Commons which had sat for the first time that morning. The meeting had been formal and brief, the committee soon adjourned, and Egremont repaired to the spot where he was in the hope of still finding Sybil.

He approached her not without some restraint; with reserve and yet with tenderness. "This is a great, an unexpected pleasure indeed." he said in a faltering tone. She had looked up; the expression of an agitation, not distressful, on her beautiful countenance could not be concealed. She smiled through a gushing vision: and with a flushed cheek, impelled perhaps by her native frankness, perhaps by some softer and irresistible feeling of gratitude, respect, regard, she said in a low voice, "I was reading your beautiful speech."

"Indeed," said Egremont much moved, "that is an honour,—a pleasure,—a reward, I never could have even hoped to have attained."

"By all," continued Sybil with more self-possession, "it must be read with pleasure, with advantage, but by me—oh! with what deep interest."

"If anything that I said finds an echo in your breast," and here he hesitated, "—it will give me confidence for the future," he hurriedly added.

"Ah! why do not others feel like you!" said Sybil, "all would not then be hopeless."

"But you are not hopeless," said Egremont, and he seated himself on the bench, but at some distance from her.

Sybil shook her head.

"But when we spoke last," said Egremont, "you were full of confidence—in your cause, and in your means."

"It is not very long ago," said Sybil, "since we thus spoke, and yet time in the interval has taught me some bitter truths."

"Truth is very precious," said Egremont, "to us all; and yet I fear I could not sufficiently appreciate the cause that deprived you of your sanguine faith."

"Alas!" said Sybil mournfully, "I was but a dreamer of dreams: I wake from my hallucination as others have done I suppose before me. Like them too I feel the glory of life has gone; but my content at least," and she bent her head meekly, "has never rested I hope too much on this world."

"You are depressed, dear Sybil?"

"I am unhappy. I am anxious about my father. I fear that he is surrounded by men unworthy of his confidence. These scenes of violence alarm me. Under any circumstances I should shrink from them, but I am impressed with the conviction that they can bring us nothing but disaster and disgrace."

"I honor your father," said Egremont, "I know no man whose character I esteem so truly noble; such a just compound of intelligence and courage, and gentle and generous impulse. I should deeply grieve were he to compromise himself. But you have influence over him, the greatest, as you have over all. Counsel him to return to Mowbray."

"Can I give counsel?" said Sybil, "I who have been wrong in all my judgments? I came up to this city with him, to be his guide, his guardian. What arrogance! What short-sighted pride! I thought the People all felt as I feel; that I had nothing to do but to sustain and animate him; to encourage him when he flagged, to uphold him when he wavered. I thought that moral power must govern the world, and that moral power was embodied in an assembly whose annals will be a series of petty intrigues, or, what is worse, of violent machinations."

"Exert every energy," said Egremont, "that your father should leave London, immediately; to-morrow, to-night if possible. After this business at Birmingham, the government must act. I hear that they will immediately increase the army and the police; and that there is a circular from the Secretary of State to the Lords Lieutenant of counties. But the government will strike at the Convention. The members who remain will be the victims. If your father return to Mowbray and be quiet, he has a chance of not being disturbed."

"An ignoble end of many lofty hopes," said Sybil.

"Let us retain our hopes," said Egremont, "and cherish them."

"I have none," she replied.

"And I am sanguine," said Egremont.

"Ah! because you have made a beautiful speech. But they will listen to you, they will cheer you, but they will never follow you. The dove and the eagle will not mate; the lion and the lamb will not lie down together; and the conquerors will never rescue the conquered."

Egremont shook his head. "You still will cherish these phantoms, dear Sybil! and why? They are not visions of delight. Believe me they are as vain as they are distressing. The mind of England is the mind ever of the rising race. Trust me it is with the People. And not the less so, because this feeling is one of which even in a great degree it is unconscious. Those opinions which you have been educated to dread and mistrust are opinions that are dying away. Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. Let an accident, which speculation could not foresee, the balanced state at this moment of parliamentary parties cease, and in a few years, more or less, cease it must, and you will witness a development of the new mind of England, which will make up by its rapid progress for its retarded action. I live among these men; I know their inmost souls; I watch their instincts and their impulses; I know the principles which they have imbibed, and I know, however hindered by circumstances for the moment, those principles must bear their fruit. It will be a produce hostile to the oligarchical system. The future principle of English politics will not be a levelling principle; not a principle adverse to privileges, but favourable to their extension. It will seek to ensure equality, not by levelling the Few but by elevating the Many."

Indulging for some little time in the mutual reflections, which the tone of the conversation suggested, Sybil at length rose, and saying that she hoped by this time her father might have returned, bade farewell to Egremont, but he also rising would for a time accompany her. At the gate of the gardens however she paused, and said with a soft sad smile, "Here we must part," and extended to him her hand.

"Heaven will guard over you!" said Egremont, "for you are a celestial charge."



Book 5 Chapter 3



As Sybil approached her home, she recognized her father in the court before their house, accompanied by several men, with whom he seemed on the point of going forth. She was so anxious to speak to Gerard, that she did not hesitate at once to advance. There was a stir as she entered the gate; the men ceased talking, some stood aloof, all welcomed her with silent respect. With one or two Sybil was not entirely unacquainted; at least by name or person. To them, as she passed, she bent her head; and then going up to her father, who was about to welcome her, she said, in a tone of calmness and with a semblance of composure, "If you are going out, dear father, I should like to see you for one moment first."

"A moment, friends," said Gerard, "with your leave;" and he accompanied his daughter into the house. He would have stopped in the hall, but she walked on to their room, and Gerard, though pressed for time, was compelled to follow her. When they had entered their chamber. Sybil closed the door with care, and then, Gerard sitting, or rather leaning carelessly, on the edge of the table, she said, "We are once more together, dear father; we will never again he separated."

Gerard sprang quickly on his legs, his eye kindled, his cheek flushed. "Something has happened to you, Sybil!"

"No," she said, shaking her head mournfully, "not that; but something may happen to you."

"How so, my child?" said her father, relapsing into his customary good-tempered placidity, and speaking in an easy, measured, almost drawling tone that was habitual to him.

"You are in danger," said Sybil, "great and immediate. No matter at this moment how I am persuaded of this I wish no mysteries, but there is no time for details. The government will strike at the Convention; they are resolved. This outbreak at Birmingham has brought affairs to a crisis. They have already arrested the leaders there; they will seize those who remain here in avowed correspondence with them."

"If they arrest all who are in correspondence with the Convention," said Gerard, "they will have enough to do."

"Yes; but you take a leading part," said Sybil; "you are the individual they would select."

"Would you have me hide myself?" said Gerard, "just because something is going on besides talk."

"Besides talk!" exclaimed Sybil. "O! my father, what thoughts are these! It may be that words are vain to save us; but feeble deeds are vainer far than words."

"I do not see that the deeds, though I have nothing to do with them, are so feeble," said Gerard; "their boasted police are beaten, and by the isolated movement of an unorganized mass. What if the outbreak had not been a solitary one? What if the people had been disciplined?"

"What if everything were changed, if everything were contrary to what it is?" said Sybil. "The people are not disciplined; their action will not be, cannot be, coherent and uniform; these are riots in which you are involved, not revolutions; and you will be a victim, and not a sacrifice."

Gerard looked thoughtful, but not anxious: after a momentary pause, he said, "We must not be scared at a few arrests, Sybil. These are hap-hazard pranks of a government that wants to terrify, but is itself frightened. I have not counselled, none of us have counselled, this stir at Birmingham. It is a casualty. We were none of us prepared for it. But great things spring from casualties. I say the police were beaten and the troops alarmed; and I say this was done without organization and in a single spot. I am as much against feeble deeds as you can be, Sybil; and to prove this to you, our conversation at the moment you arrived, was to take care for the future that there shall be none. Neither vain words nor feeble deeds for the future," added Gerard, and he moved to depart.

Sybil approached him with gentleness; she took his hand as if to bid him farewell; she retained it for a moment, and looked at him steadfastly in the face, with a glance at the same time serious and soft. Then throwing her arms round his neck and leaning her cheek upon his breast, she murmured, "Oh! my father, your child is most unhappy."

"Sybil," exclaimed Gerard in a tone of tender reproach, "this is womanish weakness; I love, but must not share it."

"It may be womanish," said Sybil, "but it is wise: for what should make us unhappy if not the sense of impending, yet unknown, danger?"

"And why danger?" said Gerard.

"Why mystery?" said Sybil. "Why are you ever pre-occupied and involved in dark thoughts, my father? It is not the pressure of business, as you will perhaps tell me, that occasions this change in a disposition so frank and even careless. The pressure of affairs is not nearly as great, cannot he nearly as great, as in the early period of your assembling, when the eyes of the whole country were on you, and you were in communication with all parts of it. How often have you told me that there was no degree of business which you found irksome? Now you are all dispersed and scattered: no discussions, no committees, little correspondence—and you yourself are ever brooding and ever in conclave, with persons too who I know, for Stephen has told me so, are the preachers of violence: violence perhaps that some of them may preach, yet will not practise: both bad; traitors it may be, or, at the best, hare-brained men."

"Stephen is prejudiced," said Gerard. "He is a visionary, indulging in impossible dreams, and if possible, little desirable. He knows nothing of the feeling of the country or the character of his countrymen. Englishmen want none of his joint-stock felicity; they want their rights,—rights consistent with the rights of other classes, but without which the rights of other classes cannot, and ought not, to be secure."

"Stephen is at least your friend, my father; and once you honoured him."

"And do so now; and love him very dearly. I honour him for his great abilities and knowledge. Stephen is a scholar; I have no pretensions that way; but I can feel the pulse of a people, and can comprehend the signs of the times, Sybil. Stephen was all very well talking in our cottage and garden at Mowbray, when we had nothing to do; but now we must act, or others will act for us. Stephen is not a practical man; he is crotchety, Sybil, and that's just it."

"But violence and action," said Sybil, "are they identical, my father?"

"I did not speak of violence."

"No; but you looked it. I know the language of your countenance, even to the quiver of your lip. Action, as you and Stephen once taught me, and I think wisely, was to prove to our rulers by an agitation, orderly and intellectual, that we were sensible of our degradation; and that it was neither Christianlike nor prudent, neither good nor wise, to let us remain so. That you did, and you did it well; the respect of the world, even of those who differed from you in interest or opinion, was not withheld from you; and can be withheld from none who exercise the moral power that springs from great talents and a good cause. You have let this great moral power, this pearl of price," said Sybil with emotion,—"we cannot conceal it from ourselves, my father,—you have let it escape from your hands."

Gerard looked at her as she spoke with an earnestness unusual with him. As she ceased, he cast his eyes down, and seemed for a moment deep in thought; then looking up, he said, "The season for words is past. I must be gone, dear Sybil." And he moved towards the door.