again, as we did of old, why, my estates will be his some day; and he'll not grudge the mortgage, so fond as he always was of you; and if we don't come together, what do I care for hundreds or thousands, either more or less? So I shall be down at Lansmere the day after to-morrow, just in the thick of your polling. Beat the manufacturer, my boy, and stick up for the land. Tell Levy to have all ready. I shall bring the money down in good bank-notes, and a brace of pistols in my coat pocket to take care of them, in case robbers get scent of the notes and attack me on the road, as they once did my grandfather. A Lansmere election puts one in mind of pistols. I once fought a duel with an officer in his Majesty's service, R.N., and had a ball lodged in my right shoulder, on account of an election at Lansmere; but I have forgiven Audley his share in that transaction. Remember me to him kindly. Don't get into a duel yourself; but I suppose manufacturers don't fight; not that I blame them for that-far from it."

The letter then ran on to express surprise, and hazard conjecture, as to the wealthy marriage which Randal had announced as a pleasing surprise to the Squire. "It could not be Miss Sticktorights!"

"Well," said Levy, returning the

letter, "you must have written as cleverly as you talk, or the Squire is a booby indeed."

Randal smiled, pocketed his letter, and responding to the impatient call of his proposer, sprang lightly into the carriage.

Harley, too, seemed pleased with the letters delivered to himself, and now joined Levy, as the candidates drove slowly off.

"Has not Mr Leslie received from the Squire an answer to that letter of which you informed me?"

"Yes, my lord, the Squire will be here to-morrow."

"To-morrow? Thank you for apprising me; his rooms shall be prepared.”

"I suppose he will only stay to see Leslie and myself, and pay the money."

"Aha! Pay the money. Is it so,

then?"

"Twice the sum, and, it seems, as a gift, which Leslie only asked as a loan. Really, my Lord, Mr Leslie is a very clever man; and though I am at your commands, I should not like to injure him, with such matrimonial prospects. He could be a very powerful enemy; and, if he succeed in Parliament, still more so."

"Baron, these gentlemen are waiting for you. I will follow by myself."

In the centre of the raised platform in the town-hall sat the Mayor. On either hand of that dignitary now appeared the candidates of the respective parties. To his right, Audley Egerton and Leslie; to his left, Dick Avenel and Leonard. The place was as full as it could hold. Rows of grimy faces peeped in, even from the upper windows outside the building. The contest was one that created intense interest, not only from public principles, but local passions. Dick Avenel, the son of a small tradesman, standing against the Right Honourable Audley Egerton, the choice of the powerful Lansmere aristocratic party-standing, too, with his nephew by his side-taking, as he himself was wont to say, "the tarnation Blue Bull

by both its oligarchical horns!" There was a pluck and gallantry in the very impudence of the attempt to convert the important borough-for one member of which a great Earl had hitherto striven, "with labour dire and weary woe"-into two family seats for the house of Avenel and the triumph of the Capelocracy.

This alone would have excited all the spare passions of a country borough; but, besides this, there was the curiosity that attached to the long-deferred public appearance of a candidate so renowned as the exminister-a man whose career had commenced with his success at Lansmere, and who now, amidst the popular tempest that scattered his colleagues, sought to refit his vessel in

the same harbour from which it had first put forth. New generations had grown up since the name of Audley Egerton had first fluttered the dovecotes in that Corioli. The questions that had then seemed so important, were, for the most part, settled and at rest. But those present who remembered Egerton in the former day, were struck to see how the same characteristics of bearing and aspect which had distinguished his early youth, revived their interest in the mature and celebrated man. As he stood up for a few moments, before he took his seat beside the Mayor, glancing over the assembly, with its uproar of cheers and hisses, there was the same stately erectness of form and steadfastness of look-the same indefinable and mysterious dignity of externals, that imposed respect, confirmed esteem, or stilled dislike. The hisses involuntarily ceased. The preliminary proceedings over, the proposers and seconders commenced their office.

Audley was proposed, of course, by the crack man of the party-a gentleman who lived on his means in a white house in the High Street-had received a University education, and was a cadet of a "County Family." This gentleman spoke much about the Constitution, something about Greece and Rome-compared Egerton with William Pitt, also with Aristides; and sat down, after an oration esteemed classical by the few, and pronounced prosy by the many. Audley's seconder, a burly and important maltster, struck a bolder key. He dwelt largely upon the necessity of being represented by gentlemen of wealth and rank, and not by "upstarts and adventurers. (Cheers and groans.) Looking at the candidates on the other side, it was an insult to the respectability of Lansmere to suppose its constituents could elect a man who had no pretensions whatever to their notice, except that he had once been a little boy in the town in which his father kept a shopand a very noisy, turbulent, dirty little boy he was!" Dick smoothed his spotless shirt-front, and looked daggers, while the Blues laughed heartily, and the Yellows cried "Shame!" "As for the other candidate on the same side, he (the maltster) had no

thing to say against him. He was, no doubt, seduced into presumption by his uncle and his own inexperience. It was said that that candidate, Mr Fairfield, was an author and a poet; if so, he was unknown to fame, for no bookseller in the town had ever even heard of Mr Fairfield's works. Then it was replied, Mr Fairfield had written under another name. What would that prove? Either that he was ashamed of his name, or that the works did him no credit. For his part, he (the maltster) was an Englishman; he did not like anonymous scribblers; there was something not right in whatever was concealed. A man should never be afraid to put his name to what he wrote. But, grant that Mr Fairfield was a great author and a great poet, what the borough of Lansmere wanted was, not a member who would pass his time in writing sonnets to Peggy or Moggy, but a practical man of business-a statesman-such a man as Mr Audley Egerton-a gentleman of ancient birth, high standing, and princely fortune. The member for such a place as Lansmere should have a proper degree of wealth." ("Hear, hear," from the hundred and fifty hesitators, who all stood in a row at the bottom of the hall; and "Gammon !" "Stuff!" from some revolutionary, but incorruptible Yellows.) Still the allusion to Egerton's private fortune had considerable effect with the bulk of the audience, and the maltster was much cheered on concluding. Mr Avenel's proposer and seconder-the one a large grocer, the other a proprietor of a new shop for ticketed prints, shawls, blankets, and counterpanes, (a man who, as he boasted, dealt with the People for ready money, and no mistake-at least none that he ever rectified,)-next followed. Both said much the same thing. Mr Avenel had made his fortune by honest industry-was a fellow townsman-must know the interests of the town better than strangers-upright public principles-never fawn on governments-would see that the people had their rights, and cut down army, navy, and all other jobs of a corrupt aristocracy, &c. &c. &c. Randal Leslie's proposer, a cap

tain on half-pay, undertook a long defence of army and navy, from the

own

loftiest to labour and compete for those which were the most coveted, because they were derived from the trust of their countrymen, and dignified by the duties which the sense of responsibility entailed. He paid a passing but generous compliment to the reputed abilities of Leonard Fairfield; and, alluding with appropriate grace to the interest he had ever taken in the success of youth striving for place in the van of the new generation that marched on to replace the old, he implied that he did not consider Leonard as opposed to himself, but rather as an emulous competitor for a worthy prize with his " young and valued friend, Mr Randal Leslie." "They are happy at their years!" said the statesman, with a certain pathos. "In the future they see nothing to fear, in the past they have nothing to defend. It is not so with me." And then, passing on to the vague insinuations or bolder charges against himself and his policy proffered by the preceding speakers, Audley gathered himself up, and paused; for his eye here rested on the Reporters seated round the table just below him; and he recognised faces not unfamiliar to his recollection when metropolitan assemblies had hung on the words, which fell from lips then privileged to advise their King. And involuntarily it occurred to the ex-minister to escape altogether from this contracted audience -this election, with all its associations of pain-and address himself wholly to that vast and invisible Public, to which those reporters would transmit his ideas. At this thought his whole manner gradually changed. His eye became fixed on the farthest verge of the crowd; his tones grew more solemn in their deep and sonorous swell. He began to review and to vindicate his whole political life. He spoke of the measures he had aided to pass-of his part in the laws which now ruled the land. He touched lightly, but with pride, on the services he had rendered to the opinions he had represented. alluded to his neglect of his own private fortunes; but in what detail, however minute, in the public business committed to his charge, could even an enemy accuse him of neglect?

He

The allusion was no doubt intended to prepare the public for the news, that the wealth of Audley Egerton was gone. Finally, he came to the questions that then agitated the day; and made a general but masterly exposition of the policy which, under the changes he foresaw, he should recommend his party to adopt.

Spoken to the motley assembly in that town-hall, Audley's speech extended to a circle of interests too wide for their sympathy. But that assembly he heeded not- he forgot it. The reporters understood him, as their flying pens followed words which they presumed neither to correct nor to abridge. Audley's speech was addressed to the nation;-the speech of a man in whom the nation yet recognised a chief-desiring to clear all misrepresentation from his past career-calculating, if life were spared to him, on destinies higher than he had yet fulfilled-issuing a manifesto of principles to be carried later into power, and planting a banner round which the divided sections of a broken host might yet rally for battle and for conquest. Or perhaps, in the deeps of his heart, (not even comprehended by reporters, nor to be divined by the public,) the uncertainty of life was more felt than the hope of ambition; and the statesman desired to leave behind him one full vindication of that public integrity and honour, on which, at least, his conscience acknowledged not a stain. "For more than twenty years," said Audley, in conclusion, "I have known no day in which I have not lived for my country. I may at times have opposed the wish of the People-I may oppose it now-but, so far as I can form a judgment, only because I prefer their welfare to their wish. And if as I believe-there have been occasions on which, as one amongst men more renowned, I have amended the laws of England-confirmed her safety, extended her commerce, upheld her honour--I leave the rest to the censure of my enemies, and (his voice trembled) to the charity of my friends."

Before the cheers that greeted the close of this speech were over, Richard Avenel arose. What is called "the more respectable part" of an audi

ence-viz., the better educated and better clad, even on the Yellow side of the question-winced a little for the credit of their native borough, when they contemplated the candidate pitted against the Great Commoner, whose lofty presence still filled the eye, and whose majestic tones yet sounded in the ear. But

the vast majority on both sides, Blue and Yellow, hailed the rise of Dick Avenel as a relief to what, while it had awed their attention, had rather strained their faculties. The Yellows cheered and the Blues groaned; there was a tumultuous din of voices, and a reel to and fro of the whole excited mass of unwashed faces and brawny shoulders. But Dick had as much pluck as Audley himself; and by degrees his pluck and his handsome features, and the curiosity to hear what he had to say, obtained him a hearing; and that hearing, Dick having once got, he contrived to keep. His self-confidence was backed by a grudge against Egerton that mounted to the elevation of malignity. He had armed himself for this occasion with an arsenal of quotations from Audley's speeches, taken out of Hansard's Debates; and, garbling these texts in the unfairest and most ingenious manner, he contrived to split consistency into such fragments of inconsistency-to cut so many harmless sentences into such unpopular, arbitrary, tyrannical segments of doctrine that he made a very pretty case against the enlightened and incorruptible Egerton, as shuffler and trimmer, defender of jobs, and eulogist of Manchester massacres, &c. &c. And all told the more because it seemed courted and provoked by the ex-minister's elaborate vindication of himself. Having thus, as he declared, "triumphantly convicted the Right Honourable Gentleman out of his own mouth," Dick considered himself at liberty to diverge into what he termed the just indignation of a freeborn Britain; in other words, into every variety of abuse which bad taste could supply to acrimonious feeling. But he did it so roundly and dauntlessly, in such true hustings style, that for the moment, at least, he carried the bulk of the crowd along with him sufficiently to bear down all the resentful mur

murs of the Blue Committee men, and the abashed shakes of the head with which the more aristocratic and well-bred among the Yellows signified to each other that they were heartily ashamed of their candidate. Dick concluded with an emphatic declaration that the Right Honourable Gentleman's day was gone by; that the people had been pillaged and plundered enough by pompous redtapists, who only thought of their salaries, and never went to their offices except to waste the pen, ink, and paper which they did not pay for; that the Right Honourable Gentleman had boasted he had served his country for twenty years — served his country! He should have said served her out! (Much laughter.) Pretty mess his country was in now. In short, for twenty years the Right Honourable Gentleman had put his hands into his country's pockets. "And I ask you," bawled Dick, "whether any of you are a bit the better for all that he has taken out of them!" The hundred and fifty hesitators shook their heads. "Noa, that we bea'nt!" cried the hundred and fifty, dolorously. "You hear THE PEOPLE!" said Dick, turning majestically to Egerton, who, with his arms folded on his breast, and his upper lip slightly curved, sat like "Atlas unremoved" -"You hear THE PEOPLE! They condemn you, and the whole set of you. I repeat here what I once vowed on a less public occasion-' As sure as my name is Richard Avenel, you shall smart for'

(Dick hesitated)-smart for your contempt of the just rights, honest claims, and enlightened aspirations of your indignant countrymen. The schoolmaster is abroad, and the British Lion is aroused!"

Dick sat down. The curve of contempt had passed from Egerton's lip; -at the name of Avenel, thus harshly spoken, he had suddenly shaded his face with his hand.

But Randal Leslie next arose, and Audley slowly raised his eyes, and looked towards his protégé with an expression of kindly interest. What better debut could there be for a young man warmly attached to an eminent patron, who had been coarsely assailed-for a political aspirant, vindicat