MMH 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 r 
 
 c 

 
 MY N V E L'
 
 Lately Published, 
 
 THE CAXTONS; 
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 
 
 SIR E. BULWER LYTTON, BART. 
 
 AUTHOR OP "MY NOVEL," ETC. 
 
 In 3 vols. post octavo, price 1, 11s. 6d.
 
 MY NOVEL 
 
 iS 2 ^fetetratu* aiton; f- 
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE 
 
 " Xeque enim notare singulos rnens est laihi, 
 Verum ipsam vitam et mores hominum osteudere." 
 
 PHJSDRUS. 
 
 IN FOUR VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLIII 
 
 The Author of /his Work (fives notice that he reserves the right of 
 translating it.
 
 PHINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH
 
 A- 
 J 
 
 VJ 
 
 TO THE 
 
 EIGHT HON. SIR HEMY LYTTOX BULWEK, 
 
 G.C.B. &c. ic. i-e. 
 
 THIS WORK, DESIGNED TO ILLUSTRATE 
 
 THE VARIETIES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE, 
 
 IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR, 
 
 PROUD TO UNITE A TRIBUTE 
 
 TO SERVICES RECOGNISED BT ENGLAND, 
 
 WITH A MEMORIAL OP BROTHERLY AFFECTION. 
 
 LONDON, 15th Dec. 1852. 
 
 552767 
 
 RESERVE
 
 MY NOVEL
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
 
 BOOK FIBST
 
 MY NOVEL. 
 
 BOOK L INITIAL CHAPTEK. 
 
 SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE WRITTEN. 
 
 SCENE, The Hall in Uncle Roland's Tower TIME, Night 
 SEASON, Winter. 
 
 Mr Caxton is seated before a great geographical globe, which 
 he is turning round leisurely, and " for his own recreation," as, 
 according to Sir Thomas Browne, a philosopher should turn 
 round the orb, of which that globe professes to be the repre- 
 sentation and effigies. My mother having just adorned a very 
 small frock with a very smart braid, is holding it out at arni's- 
 length, the more to admire the effect. Blanche, though leaning 
 both hands on my mother's shoulder, is not regarding the frock, 
 but glances towards PISISTRATUS, who, seated near the fire, 
 leaning back in the chair, and his head bent over his breast, 
 seems in a very bad humour. Uncle Roland, who has become a 
 great novel-reader, is deep in the mysteries of some fascinating 
 Third Volume. Mr Squills has brought The Times in his pocket 
 for his own special profit and delectation, and is now bending 
 his brows over " the state of the money market," in great doubt 
 whether railway shares can possibly fall lower. For Mr Squills, 
 happy man ! has large savings, and does not know what to do 
 with his money, or, to use his own phrase, " how to buy in at 
 the cheapest, in order to sell out at the dearest."
 
 4 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 MR CAXTON, (musingly.)" li must have been a monstrous 
 long journey. It would be somewhere hereabouts, I take it, 
 that they would split off." 
 
 MY MOTHER, (mechanically, and in order to show Austin 
 that she paid him the compliment of attending to his remarks.) 
 " Who split off, my dear 1 " 
 
 Bless me, Kitty," said my father, in great admiration, " you 
 ask just the question which it is most difficult to answer. An 
 ingenious speculator on races contends that the Danes, whose 
 descendants make the chief part of our northern population, 
 (and indeed, if his hypothesis could be correct, we must sup- 
 pose all the ancient worshippers of Odin,) are of the same 
 origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty I just ask you, 
 why ! " 
 
 My mother shook her head thoughtfully, and turned the frock 
 to the other side of the light. 
 
 " Because, forsooth," cried my father, exploding" because 
 the Etrurians called their gods ' the JSsar,' and the Scandina- 
 vians called theirs the jEsir, or Aser ! And where do you think 
 this adventurous scholar puts their cradle 1 " 
 
 " Cradle ! " said my mother, dreamily "it must be in the 
 nursery." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " Exactly in the nursery of the hurnan race 
 just here," and my father pointed to the globe ; bounded, 
 you see, by the River Halys, and in that region which, taking 
 its name from Ees, or As, (a word designating light or fire,) 
 has been immemorially called Asia. Now, Kitty, from Ees or 
 As our ethnological speculator would derive not only Asia, the 
 land, but JEsar, or Aser, its primitive inhabitants. Hence he 
 supposes the origin of the Etrurians and the Scandinavians. 
 But, if we give him so much, we must give him more, and 
 deduce from the same origin the Es of the Celt and the Ized of 
 the Persian, and what will be of more use to him, I dare say, 
 poor man, than all the rest put together the Ms of the Romans, 
 that is, the God of Copper-Money a very powerful household 
 god he is to this day ! " 
 
 My mother looked musingly at her frock, as if she were 
 taking my father's proposition into serious consideration.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 5 
 
 " So perhaps," resumed my father, " and not unconformably 
 with sacred records, from one great parent horde came all those 
 various tribes, carrying with them the name of their beloved 
 Asia ; and whether they wandered north, south, or west, exalt- 
 ing their own emphatic designation of ' Children of the Land of 
 Light ' into the title of gods. And to think," (added Mr Caxton 
 pathetically, gazing upon that speck in the globe on which his 
 forefinger rested,) " to think how little they changed for the 
 better when they got to the Don, or entangled their rafts amidst 
 the icebergs of the Baltic so comfortably off as they were here, 
 if they could but have stayed quiet ! " 
 
 " And why the deuce could not they 1 " asked Mr Squills, 
 
 " Pressure of population, and not enough to live upon, I sup- 
 pose," said my father. 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (sulkily.) " More probably they did away with 
 the Corn Laws, sir." 
 
 " Papce ! " quoth my father, " that throws a new light on the 
 subject." 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (full of his grievances, and not caring three 
 straws about the origin of the Scandinavians.) " I know that 
 if we are to lose .500 every year on a farm which we hold 
 rent-free, and which the best judges allow to be a perfect model 
 for the whole country, we had better make haste and turn Msir 
 or Aser, or whatever you call them, and fix a settlement on the 
 property of other nations otherwise, I suspect, our probable 
 settlement will be on the parish." 
 
 MR SQUILLS, (who, it must be remembered, is an enthusiastic 
 Free-trader.) " You have only got to put more capital on the 
 land." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. "Well, Mr Squills, as you think so well of 
 that investment, put your capital on it. I promise that you 
 shall have every shilling of profit." 
 
 MR SQUILLS, (hastily retreating behind The Times!) "I don't 
 think the Great Western can fall any lower ; though it is 
 hazardous I can but venture a few hundreds " 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " On our land, Squills ? Thank you." 
 
 MR SQUILLS. " No, no anything but that on the Great 
 Western."
 
 6 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 Pisistratus relapses into gloom. Blanche steals up coaxingly, 
 and gets snubbed for her pains. m 
 
 A pause. 
 
 MR CAXTON. " There are two golden rules of life ; one relates 
 to the mind, and the other to the pockets. The first is If our 
 thoughts get into a low, nervous, aguish condition, we should 
 make them change the air ; the second is comprised in the pro- 
 verb, ' It is good to have two strings to one's bow.' Therefore, 
 Pisistratus, I tell you what you must do Write a Book ! " 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Write a Book ! Against the abolition of the 
 Corn Laws ? Faith, sir, the mischief's done. It takes a much 
 better pen than mine to write down an Act of Parliament." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " I only said, ' Write a Book.' All the rest is 
 the addition of your own headlong imagination." 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (with the recollection of The Great Book rising 
 before him.) " Indeed, sir, I should think that that would just 
 finish us ! " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (not seeming to heed the interruption.) " A 
 book that will sell ! A book that will prop up the fall of 
 prices ! A book that will distract your mind from its dismal 
 apprehensions, and restore your affection to your species, and 
 your hopes in the ultimate triumph of sound principles by the 
 sight of a favourable balance at the end of the yearly accounts. 
 It is astonishing what a difference that little circumstance makes 
 in our views of things in general. I remember when the bank in 
 which Squills had incautiously left 1000 broke, one remarkably 
 healthy year, that he became a great alarmist, and said that the 
 country was on the verge of ruin ; whereas you see now, when, 
 thanks to a long succession of sickly seasons, he has a surplus 
 capital to risk in the Great Western, he is firmly persuaded that 
 England was never in so prosperous a condition." 
 
 MR SQUILLS, (rather sullenly.) "Pooh, pooh." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " Write a book, my son write a book. Need 
 [ tell you that Money or Moneta, according to Hyginus, was the 
 mother of the Muses ? Write a book." 
 
 BLANCHE and my MOTHER (in full chorus.)" yes, Sisty 
 a b^ok a book ! you must write a book." 
 
 " I am sure," quoth my Uncle Roland, slamming down the
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 7 
 
 volume he had just concluded, " he could write a devilish deal 
 better book than this ; and how I come to read such trash, 
 night after night, is more than I could possibly explain to 
 the satisfaction of any intelligent jury, if I were put into a 
 witness-box, and examined in the mildest manner by my 
 own counsel." 
 
 MR CAXTON. "You see that Roland tells us exactly what 
 sort of a book it shall be." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Trash, sir ? " 
 
 MR CAXTON. "No that is, not necessarily trash but a 
 book of that class which, whether trash or not, people can't 
 help reading. Novels have become a necessity of the age. You 
 must write a novel." 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (flattered, but dubious.) " A novel ! But every 
 subject on which novels can be written is preoccupied. There 
 are novels of low life, novels of high life, military novels, uaval 
 novels, novels philosophical, novels religious, novels historical, 
 novels descriptive of India, the Colonies, Ancient Rome, and 
 the Egyptian Pyramids. From what bird, wild eagle, or barn- 
 door fowl, can I 
 
 ' Pluck one unwearied plume from Fancy's wing ? ' " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (after a little thought.) "You remember the 
 story which Trevanion (I beg his pardon, Lord Ulswater) 
 told us the other night. That gives you something of the 
 romance of real life for your plot puts you chiefly among 
 scenes with which you are familiar, and furnishes you with 
 characters which have been very sparingly dealt with since the 
 time of Fielding. You can give us the Country Squire, as you 
 remember him in your youth ; it is a specimen of a race worth 
 preserving the old idiosyncrasies of which are rapidly dying 
 off, as the railways bring Norfolk and-Yorksbire within easy 
 reach of the manners of London. You can give us the old- 
 fashioned Parson, as in all essentials he may yet be found but 
 before you had to drag him out of the great Tractarian bog ; 
 and, for the rest, I really think that while, as I am told, many 
 popular writers are doing their best, especially in France, and 
 perhaps a little in England, to set class against class, and pick
 
 8 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 up every stone in the kennel to shy at a gentleman with a good 
 coat on his back, something useful might be done by a few 
 good-humoured sketches of those innocent criminals a little 
 better off than their neighbours, whom, however we dislike 
 them, I take it for granted we shall have to endure, in one 
 shape or another, as long as civilisation exists ; and they seem, 
 on the whole, as good in their present shape as we are likely to 
 get, shake the dice-box of society how we will." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Very well said, sir ; but this rural country- 
 gentleman life is not so new as you think. There's Washington 
 Irving " 
 
 MR CAXTON. "Charming but rather the manners of the 
 last century than this. You may as well cite Addison and Sir 
 Roger de Coverley." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Tremaine and De Fere." 
 
 MR CAXTON. "Nothing can be more graceful, nor more un- 
 like what I mean. The Pales and Terminus I wish you to put 
 up in the fields are familiar images, that you may cut out of an 
 oak tree not beautiful marble statues, on porphyry pedestals 
 twenty feet high." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Miss Austin ; Mrs Gore in her masterpiece 
 of Mrs Armytage; Mrs Marsh, too ; and then (for Scottish 
 manners) Miss Ferrier ! " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (growing cross.) " Oh, if you cannot treat on 
 bucolics but what you must hear some Virgil or other cry ' Stop 
 thief,' you deserve to be tossed by one of your own 'short- 
 horns.' " (Still more contemptuously) " I am sure I don't know 
 why we spend so much money on sending our sons to school to 
 learn Latin, when that Anachronism of yours, Mrs Caxton, 
 can't even construe a line and a half of PliEedrus. Phaxlrus, 
 Mrs Caxton a book which is in Latin what Goody Two-Shoes 
 is in the vernacular ! " 
 
 MRS CAXTON, (alarmed and indignant.)" Fie ! Austin ! I 
 am sure you can construe Phacdrus, dear ! " 
 
 Pisistratus prudently preserves silence. 
 
 MR CAXTON." I'll try him 
 
 ' Sua cuique quum sit animi cogitatio 
 Colorque propius.'
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 9 
 
 What does that mean 1 " 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (smiling.) " That every man has some colour- 
 ing matter within him, to give his own tinge to " 
 
 " His own novel," interrupted my father. " Contentus pera- 
 gis!" 
 
 During the latter part of this dialogue, Blanche had sewn 
 together three quires of the best Bath paper, and she now 
 placed them on a little tahle before me, with her own inkstand 
 and steel pen. 
 
 My mother put her finger to her lip, and said, " Hush ! " my 
 father returned to the cradle of the JSsar ; Captain Roland leant 
 his cheek on his hand, and gazed abstractedly on the fire ; Mr 
 Squills fell into a placid doze ; and, after three sighs that would 
 have melted a heart of stone, I rushed into My NOVEL.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " THERE has never been occasion to use them since I've been 
 in the parish," said Parson Dale. 
 
 "What does that prove?" quoth the Squire sharply, and 
 looking the Parson full in the face. 
 
 " Prove ! " repeated Mr Dale, with a smile of benign, yet too 
 conscious superiority " What does experience prove 1 " 
 
 " That your forefathers were great blockheads, and that their 
 descendant is not a whit the wiser." 
 
 " Squire," replied the Parson, "although that is a melancholy 
 conclusion, yet if you mean it to apply universally, and not to 
 the family of the Dales in particular, it is not one which my 
 candour as a reasoner, and my humility as a mortal, will permit 
 me to challenge." 
 
 " I defy you," said Mr Hazeldean triumphantly. " But to 
 stick to the subject, (which it is monstrous hard to do when one 
 talks with a parson,) I only just ask you to look yonder, and tell 
 me on your conscience I don't even say as a parson, but as a 
 parishioner whether you ever saw a more disreputable spec- 
 tacle 1 " 
 
 While he spoke, the Squire, leaning heavily on the Parson's 
 left shoulder, extended his cane in a line parallel with the right 
 eye of that disputatious ecclesiastic, so that he might guide 
 the organ of sight to the object he had thus unflatteringly 
 described. 
 
 " I confess," said the Parson, " that, regarded by the eye of 
 the senses, it is a thing that in its best day had small preten- 
 sions to beauty, and is not elevated into the Picturesque even 
 by neglect and decay. But, my friend, regarded by the eye of
 
 MY NOVEL. 11 
 
 the inner man of the rural philosopher and parochial legisla- 
 tor I say it is by neglect and decay that it is rendered a very 
 pleasing featiire in what I may call 'the moral topography of a 
 parish.' " 
 
 The Squire looked at the Parson as if he could have beaten 
 him ; and, indeed, regarding the object in dispute not only 
 with the eye of the outer man, but the eye of law and order, 
 the eye of a country gentleman and a justice of the peace, the 
 spectacle was scandalously disreputable. It was moss-grown ; 
 it was worm-eaten ; it was broken right in the middle ; through 
 its four socketless eyes, neighboured by the nettle, peered the 
 thistle : the thistle ! a forest of thistles ! and, to complete 
 the degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the 
 donkey of an itinerant tinker ; and the irreverent animal was 
 in the very act of taking his luncheon out of the eyes and jaws 
 of THE PARISH STOCKS. 
 
 The Squire looked as if he could have beaten the Parson ; but 
 as he was not without some slight command of temper, and a 
 substitute was luckily at hand, he gulped down his resentment, 
 and made a rush at the donkey ! 
 
 Now the donkey was hampered by a rope to its forefeet, to 
 the which was attached a billet of wood, called technically "a 
 clog," so that it had no fair chance of escape from the assault its 
 sacrilegious luncheon had justly provoked. But, the ass turning 
 round with unusual nimbleness at the first stroke of the cane, 
 the Squire caught his foot in the rope, and went head over heels 
 among the thistles. The donkey gravely bent down, and thrice 
 smelt or sniffed its prostrate foe ; then, having convinced itself 
 that it had nothing farther to apprehend for the present, and 
 very willing to make the best of the reprieve, according to the 
 poetical admonition, " Gather your rosebuds while you may," it 
 cropped a thistle in full bloom, close to the ear of the Squire ; 
 so close, indeed, that the Parson thought the ear was gone ; and 
 with the more probability, inasmuch as the Squire, feeling the 
 warm breath of the creature, bellowed out with all the force of 
 lungs accustomed to give a View-hallo ! 
 
 " Bless me, is it gone ? " said the Parson, thrusting his person 
 between the ass and the Squire.
 
 12 MY XOVEL; OR, 
 
 - Zounds and the devil ! " cried the Squire, rubbing himself 
 as he rose to his feet 
 
 u Hush," said the Farson gently. " What a horrible oath ! " 
 " Horrible oath ! If you had my nankeens on," said the 
 Squire, still rubbing himself, " and had fallen into a thicket of 
 thistles with a donkey's teeth within an inch of your ear ! " 
 * It is not gone then ! "' interrupted the Parson. 
 a So that is, I think not," said the Squire dubiously ; and he 
 clapped his hand to the organ in question. " Xo ! it is not gone! " 
 " Thank heaven 1 " said the good clergyman kindly. 
 " Hum," growled the Squire, who was now once more engaged 
 in rubbing himself. " Thank heaven indeed, when I am as full 
 of thorns as a porcupine ! I should just like to know what 
 use thistles are in the world." 
 
 * For donkeys to eat, if you will let them, Squire," answered 
 the Parson. 
 
 * Ugh, you beast ! " cried Mr Hazeldean, all his wrath re- 
 awakened, whether by the reference to the donkey species, or 
 his inability to reply to the Parson, or perhaps by some sudden 
 prick too sharp for humanity especially humanity in nankeens 
 to endure without kicking ; *' Ugh, you beast ' " he exclaimed, 
 shaking his cane at the donkey, which, at the interposition of 
 the Parson, had respectfully recoiled a few paces, and now stood 
 switching its thin tail, and trying vainly to lift one of its fore- 
 legs for the flies teased it 
 
 a Poor thing ! " said the Parson pityingly. ' See, it has a raw 
 place on the shoulder, and the flies have found out the sore." 
 u I am devilish glad to hear it,"' said the Squire vindictively. 
 c Fie, fie!" 
 
 B It is very well to say ' Fie, fie,' It was not you who fell 
 among the thistles. What's the man about now, I wonder < ~ 
 
 The Parson had walked towards a chestnut tree that stood on 
 the village green he broke off a bough returned to the donkev 
 whisked away the flies, and then tenderly placed the broad 
 leaves over the sore, as a protection from the swarms. The 
 donkey turned round its head, and looked at him with mild 
 vooder. 
 " I would bet a shilling" said the Parson softly. " that this
 
 VARTCTI8 Df Z3TGLISH LIFE. 13 
 
 j- the first act of kindness them hast met with thi many a day. 
 And slight enough it is, Heaven knows." 
 
 With that the Parson put his hand into his pocket, and drew 
 out an apple. It was a fine large rosfe-cheeked apple ; one of 
 the last winter's store, from the celebrated tree in the parsonage 
 garden, and he was taking it as a present to a little LOT in the 
 Tillage who had notably distinguished himself in the Sunday 
 sehooL " Xay, in common justice. Lenny Fairfield should hare 
 the preference," muttered the Parson. The as? pricked up one 
 of ita ears, and advanced its head timidly. " But Lenny Fair- 
 field would be as much pleased with twopence ; and what could 
 twopence do to thee ? " The ass's nose now touched the apple. 
 " Take it in the name of Charity." quoth the Parson ; " Justice 
 is aecurtomed to be served last : " and the aas took the apple. 
 - How had you the heart '. " said the Parson, pointing to the 
 Squire's cane. 
 
 The ass stopped munching, and looked askant at the Squire. 
 
 " Pooh ! eat on ; he'll not beat thee now ! " 
 
 " Xo," said the Squire apologetically. " But, after alL he is 
 not an Ass of the Parish ; he is a vagrant, and he ought to 
 be pounded. But the pound is in as bad a state as the stocks, 
 thanks to your new-fashioned doctrines." 
 
 u yew-fashioned ! " cried the Parson almost indignantly, for 
 he had a great disdain of new fashions. " They are as old as 
 Christianity ; nay, as old as Paradise, which you will observe 
 is derived from a Greek, or rather a Persian word, and means 
 something more than ' garden.' corresponding (pursued the Par- 
 ion rather pedantically; with the Latin rtearitw viz. grove or 
 park full of innocent dumb creatures. Depend on it, donkeys 
 were allowed to eat thistles there." 
 
 " Tery possibly," said the Squire drily. " But Hazeldean. 
 though a very pretty village, is not Paradise. The stocks shall 
 be mended to-morrow ay, and the pound too and the next 
 donkey found trespassing shall go into it. as sure as my name's 
 Hazeldean." 
 
 " Then," said the Parson gravely, a I can only hope that the 
 next parish may not follow your example ; or that you and I 
 may never be caught straying."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PARSON DALE and Squire Hazeldean parted company ; the latter 
 to inspect his sheep, the former to visit some of his parishioners, 
 including Lenny Fairfield, whom the donkey had defrauded of 
 his apple. 
 
 Lenny Fairfield was sure to be in the way, for his mother 
 rented a few acres of grass-land from the Squire, and it was now 
 hay-time. And Leonard, commonly called Lenny, was an only 
 son, and his mother a widow. The cottage stood apart, and 
 somewhat remote, in one of the many nooks of the long green 
 village lane. And a thoroughly English cottage it "Was three 
 centuries old at least ; with walls of rubble let into oak frames, 
 and duly white-washed every summer, a thatched roof, small 
 panes of glass, and an old doorway raised from the ground by 
 two steps. There was about this little dwelling all the homely 
 rustic elegance which peasant life admits of : a honeysuckle was 
 trained over the door ; a few flower-pots were placed on the 
 window-sills ; the small plot of ground in front of the house 
 was kept with great neatness, and even taste ; some large rough 
 stones on either side the little path having been formed into a 
 sort of rockwork, with creepers that were now in flower ; and 
 the potato-ground was screened from the eye by sweet pease and 
 lupine. Simple elegance all this, it is true ; but how well it 
 speaks for peasant and landlord, when you see that the peasant 
 is fond of his home, and has some spare time and heart to bestow 
 upon mere embellishment. Such a peasant is sure to be a bad 
 customer to the alehouse, and a safe neighbour to the Squire's 
 preserves. All honour and praise to him, except a small tax 
 upon both, which is due to the landlord !
 
 MY NOVEL. 15 
 
 Such sights were as pleasant to the Parson as the most beau- 
 tiful landscapes of Italy can be to the dilettante. He paused a 
 moment at the wicket to look around him, and distended his 
 nostrils voluptuously to inhale the smell of the sweet pease, 
 mixed with that of the new-mown hay in the fields behind, 
 which a slight breeze bore to him. He then moved on, care- 
 fully scraped his shoes, clean and well polished as they were 
 for Mr Dale was rather a beau in his own clerical way on the 
 scraper without the door, and lifted the latch. 
 
 Your virtuoso looks with artistical delight on the figure of 
 some nymph painted on an Etruscan vase, engaged in pouring 
 out the juice of the grape from her classic urn. And the Parson 
 felt as harmless, if not as elegant a pleasure, in contemplating 
 Widow Fairfield brimming high a glittering can, which she 
 designed for the refreshment of the thirsty haymakers. 
 
 Mrs Fairfield was a middle-aged tidy woman, with that alert 
 precision of movement which seems to come from an active 
 orderly mind ; and as she now turned her head briskly at the 
 sound of the Parson's footstep, she showed a countenance pre- 
 possessing, though not handsome a countenance from which a 
 pleasant hearty smile, breaking forth at that moment, effaced 
 some lines that, in repose, spoke "of sorrows, but of sorrows 
 past ;" and her cheek, paler than is common to the complexions 
 even of the fair sex, when born and bred amidst a rural popu- 
 lation, might have favoured the guess that the earlier part of 
 her life had been spent in the languid air and " within doors" 
 occupations of a town. 
 
 " Never mind me," said the Parson, as Mrs Fairfield dropped 
 her quick curtsey, and smoothed her apron ; " if you are going 
 into the hayfield, I will go with you ; I have something to say 
 to Lenny an excellent boy." 
 
 WIDOW. " Well, sir, and you are kind to say it but so he 
 is." 
 
 PARSON. " He reads uncommonly well, he writes tolerably ; 
 he is the best lad in the whole school at his Catechism and in 
 the Bible lessons; and I assure you, when I see his face at 
 church, looking up so attentively, I fancy that I shall read my 
 sermon all the better for such a listener !"
 
 16 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 WIDOW, (wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.) 
 " 'Deed, sir, when my poor Mark died, I never thought I could 
 have lived on as I have done. But that boy is so kind and good, 
 that when I look at him sitting there in dear Mark's chair, and 
 remember how Mark loved him, and all he used to say to me 
 about him, I feel somehow or other as if my goodman smiled 
 on me, and would rather I was not with him yet, till the lad 
 had grown up, and did not want me any more." 
 
 PARSON, (looking away, and after a pause.) " You never hear 
 anything of the old folks at Lansmere ? " 
 
 " 'Deed, sir, sin' poor Mark died, they han't noticed me, nor 
 the boy ; but," added the widow, with all a peasant's pride, 
 " it in't that I wants their money ; only it's hard to feel strange 
 like to one's own father and mother !" 
 
 PARSON. " You must excuse them. Your father, Mr Avenel, 
 was never quite the same man after that sad event which but 
 you are weeping, my friend, pardon me : your mother is a little 
 proud ; but so are you, though in another way." 
 
 WIDOW. " I proud ! Lord love ye, sir, I have not a bit o' 
 pride in me ! and that's the reason they always looked down on 
 me." 
 
 PARSON." Your parents must be well off ; and I shall apply 
 to them in a year or two on behalf of Lenny, for they promised 
 me to provide for him when he grew up, as they ought." 
 
 WIDOW, (with flashing eyes.)" I am sure, sir, I hope you 
 will do no such thing ; for I would not have Lenny beholden to 
 them as has never given him a kind word sin' he was born !" 
 
 The Parson smiled gravely, and shook his head at poor Mrs 
 Fairfield's hasty confutation of her own self-acquittal from the 
 charge of pride ; but he saw that it was not the time or moment 
 for effectual peace-making in the most irritable of all rancours, 
 viz., that nourished against one's nearest relations. He there- 
 fore dropped the subject, and said," Well, time enough to 
 think of Lenny's future prospects ; meanwhile we are forgetting 
 the haymakers. Come." 
 
 The Widow opened the back door, which led across a little 
 apple orchard into the fields. 
 
 PARSON." You have a pleasant place here ; and I see that
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 17 
 
 my friend Lenny should be in no want of apples. I had brought 
 him one, but I have given it away on the road." 
 
 WIDOW. " Oh, sir, it is not the deed it is the will ; as I felt 
 when the Squire, God bless him ! took two pounds off the rent 
 the year he that is, Mark died." 
 
 PARSON. " If Lenny continues to be such a help to you, it 
 will not be long before the Squire may put the two pounds on 
 again." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said the Widow simply ; " I hope he will." 
 
 " Silly woman ! " muttered the Parson. " That's not exactly 
 what the schoolmistress would have said. You don't read nor 
 write, Mrs Fairfield ; yet you express yourself with great pro- 
 priety." 
 
 " You know Mark was a schollard, sir, like my poor, poor 
 sister ; and though I was a sad stupid girl afore I married, I 
 tried to take after him when we came together." 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THEY were now in the hayfield, and a boy of about sixteen, 
 but, like most country lads, to appearance much younger than 
 he was, looked up from his rake, with lively blue eyes beaming 
 forth under a profusion of brown curly hair. 
 
 Leonard Fairfield was indeed a very handsome boy not so 
 stout nor so ruddy as one would choose for the ideal of rustic 
 beauty ; nor yet so delicate in limb and keen in expression as 
 are those children of cities, in whom the mind is cultivated at 
 the expense of the body ; but still he had the health of the 
 country in his cheeks, and was not without the grace of the city 
 in his compact figure and easy movements. There was in his 
 physiognomy something interesting from its peculiar character 
 of innocence and simplicity. You could see that he had been 
 brought up by a woman, and much apart from familiar contact 
 with other children ; and such intelligence as was yet developed 
 in him, was not ripened by the jokes and cuffs of his coevals, 
 but fostered by decorous lecturings from his elders, and good 
 little boy maxims in good little boy books. 
 
 PARSON. " Come hither, Lenny. You know the benefit of 
 school, I see : it can teach you nothing better than to be a sup- 
 port to your mother." 
 
 LENNY, (looking down sheepishly, and with a heightened glow 
 over his face.) " Please, sir, that may come one of these days." 
 
 PARSON." That's right, Lenny. Let me see ! why you must 
 be nearly a man. How old are you 1 " 
 
 Lenny looks up inquiringly at his mother. 
 
 PARSON." You ought to know, Lenny : speak for yourself. 
 Hold your tongue, Mrs Fairfield."
 
 MY NOVEL. 19 
 
 LENNY, (twirling his hat, and in great perplexity.) " Well, 
 and there is Flop, neighbour Button's old sheep-dog. He be 
 very old now." 
 
 PARSON. " I am not asking Flop's age, but your own." 
 
 LENNY. " 'Deed, sir, I have heard say as how Flop and I 
 were pups together. That is, I I " 
 
 For the Parson is laughing, and so is Mrs Fairfield ; and the 
 haymakers, who have stood still to listen, are laughing too. 
 And poor Lenny has quite lost his head, and looks as if he 
 would like to cry. 
 
 PARSON, (patting the curly locks, encouragingly.) " Never 
 mind ; it is not so badly answered after all. And how old is 
 Flop?" 
 
 LENNY. " "Why, he must be fifteen year and more." 
 
 PARSON. " How old, then, are you 1 " 
 
 LENNY, (looking up with a beam of intelligence.) " Fifteen 
 year and more ! " 
 
 Widow sighs and nods her head. 
 
 " That's what we call putting two and two together," said 
 the Parson. " Or, in other words," and here he raised his eyes 
 majestically towards the haymakers " in other words thanks 
 to his love for his book simple as he stands here, Lenny Fair- 
 field has shown himself capable of INDUCTIVE RATIOCINATION." 
 
 At those words, delivered ore rotunda, the haymakers ceased 
 laughing. For even in lay matters they held the Parson to be 
 an oracle, and words so long must have a great deal in them. 
 
 Lenny drew up his head proudly. 
 
 " You are very fond of Flop, I suppose ? " 
 
 " 'Deed he is," said the Widow, " and of all poor dumb crea- 
 tures." 
 
 " Very good. Suppose, my lad, that you had a fine apple, 
 and that you met a friend who wanted it more than you ; what 
 would you do with it ? " 
 
 " Please you, sir, I would give him half of it." 
 
 The Parson's face fell." Not the whole, Lenny 1 " 
 
 Lenny considered. " If he was a friend, sir, he would not 
 like me to give him all ! " 
 
 " Upon my word, Master Leonard, you speak so well that I
 
 20 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 must e'en tell the truth. I brought you an apple, as a prize for 
 good conduct in school. But I met by the way a poor donkey, 
 and some one beat him for eating a thistle ; so I thought I 
 would make it up by giving him the apple. Ought I only to 
 have given him the half? " 
 
 Lenny's innocent face became all smile ; his interest was 
 aroused. " And did the donkey like the apple 1 " 
 
 " Very much," said the Parson, fumbling in his pocket, but 
 thinking of Leonard Fairfield's years and understanding ; and 
 moreover, observing, in the pride of his heart, that there were 
 many spectators to his deed, he thought the meditated twopence 
 not sufficient, and he generously produced a silver sixpence. 
 
 " There, my man, that will pay for the half apple which you 
 would have kept for yourself." The Parson again patted the 
 curly locks, and, after a hearty word or two with the other hay- 
 makers, and a friendly " Good-day " to Mrs Fairfield, struck 
 into a path that led towards his own glebe. 
 
 He had just crossed the stile, when he heard hasty but timor- 
 ous feet behind him. He turned, and saw his friend Lenny. 
 
 LENNY, (half crying, and holding out the sixpence.) " In- 
 deed, sir, I would rather not. I would have given all to the 
 Neddy." 
 
 PARSON. " "Why, then, my man, you have a still greater right 
 to the sixpence." 
 
 LENNY. " No, sir ; 'cause you only gave it to make up for 
 the half apple. And if I had given the whole, as I ought to 
 have done, why I should have had no right to the sixpence. 
 Please, sir, don't be offended ; do take it back, will you 1 " 
 
 The Parson hesitated. And the boy thrust the sixpence into 
 his hand, as the ass had poked its nose there before in quest of 
 the apple. 
 
 " I see," said Parson Dale, soliloquising, " that if one don't 
 give Justice the first place at the table, all the other Virtues eat 
 up her share." 
 
 Indeed, the case was perplexing. Charity, like a forward 
 impudent baggage as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, 
 and taking other people's apples to make her own little pie, had 
 defrauded Lenny of his due ; and now Susceptibility, who looks
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 21 
 
 like a shy, blush-faced, awkward Virtue in her teens but who, 
 nevertheless, is always engaged in picking the pockets of her 
 sisters, tried to filch from him his lawful recompense. The case 
 was perplexing; for the Parson held Susceptibility in great 
 honour, despite her hypocritical tricks, and did not like to give 
 her a slap in the face, which might frighten her away for ever. 
 So Mr Dale stood irresolute, glancing from the sixpence to 
 Lenny, and from Lenny to the sixpence. 
 
 " Buon giorno," (good-day to you,) said a voice behind, in an 
 accent slightly but unmistakably foreign, and a strange-looking 
 figure presented itself at the stile. 
 
 Imagine a tall and exceedingly meagre man, dressed in a rusty 
 suit of black the pantaloons tight at the calf and ankle, and 
 there forming a loose gaiter over thick shoes buckled high at 
 the instep ; an old cloak, lined with red, was thrown.over one 
 shoulder, though the day was sultry ; a quaint, red, outlandish 
 umbrella, with a carved brass handle, was thrust under one arm, 
 though the sky was cloudless ; a profusion of raven hair, in 
 waving curls that seemed as fine as silk, escaped from the sides 
 of a straw-hat of prodigious brim ; a complexion sallow and 
 swarthy, and features which, though not without considerable 
 beauty to the eye of the artist, were not only unlike what we 
 fair, well-fed, neat-faced Englishmen are wont to consider 
 comely, but exceedingly like what we are disposed to regard as 
 awful and Satanic to wit, a long hooked nose, sunken cheeks, 
 black eyes, whose piercing brilliancy took something wizard-like 
 and mystical from the large spectacles through which they 
 shone ; a mouth round which played an ironical smile, and in 
 which a physiognomist would have remarked singular shrewd- 
 ness and some closeness, complete the picture. Imagine this 
 figure, grotesque, peregrinate, and to the eye of a peasant cer- 
 tainly diabolical, then perch it on the stile in the midst of those 
 green English fields, and in sight of that primitive English 
 village ; there let it sit straddling, its long legs dangling down, 
 a short German pipe emitting clouds from one corner of those 
 sardonic lips, its dark eyes glaring through the spectacles full 
 upon the Parson, yet askant upon Lenny Fairfield. Lenny 
 Fairfield looked exceedingly frightened.
 
 22 MY NOVEL. 
 
 " Upon my word, Dr Riccabocca," said Mr Dale, smiling, 
 " you come in good time to solve a very nice question in casuis- 
 try ;" and herewith the Parson explained the case, and put the 
 question " Ought Lenny Fairfield to have the sixpence, or 
 ought he not ? " 
 
 " Cospetto ! " said the Doctor, " if the hen would but hold her 
 tongue, nobody would know that she had laid an egg."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " GRANTED," said the Parson ; " but what follows ? The saying 
 is good, but I don't see the application." 
 
 " A thousand pardons ! " replied Dr Riccabocca, with all the 
 urbanity of an Italian ; " but it seems to me, that if you had 
 given the sixpence to the fanciullo that is, to this good little 
 boy without telling him the story about the donkey, you would 
 never have put him and yourself into this awkward dilemma." 
 
 " But, my dear sir," whispered the Parson mildly, as he 
 inclined his lips to the Doctor's ear, " I should then have lost 
 the opportunity of inculcating a moral lesson you under- 
 stand." 
 
 Dr Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his 
 mouth, and took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though 
 cynical a whiff peculiar to your philosophical smoker a whiff 
 that implied the most absolute but the most placid incredulity 
 as to the effect of the Parson's moral lesson. 
 
 " Still you have not given us your decision," said the Parson, 
 after a pause. 
 
 The Doctor withdrew the pipe. " Cospetto I " said he " he 
 who scrubs the head of an ass wastes his soap." 
 
 " If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical 
 proverbs of yours," said the Parson testily, " you would not 
 make it any the wiser." 
 
 " My good sir," said the Doctor, bowing low from his perch 
 on the stile, " I never presumed to say that there were more 
 asses than one in the story ; but I thought that I could not 
 better explain my meaning, which is simply this you scrubbed 
 the ass's head, and therefore you must lose the soap. Let the
 
 24 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 fanciullo have the sixpence ; and a great sum it is, too, for a 
 little boy, who may spend it all as pocket-money ! " 
 
 " There, Lenny you hear ? " said the Parson, stretching out 
 the sixpence. But Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a 
 look of great aversion and disgust. 
 
 K Please, Master Dale," said he obstinately, " I'd rather not." 
 
 " It is a matter of feeling, you see," said the Parson, turning 
 to the umpire ; " and I believe the boy is right." 
 
 " If it be a matter of feeling," replied Dr Riccabocca, " there 
 is no more to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, 
 Reason has nothing to do but to jump out of the -window," 
 
 " Go, my good boy," said the Parson, pocketing the coin ; 
 " but stop ! give me your hand first. There I understand you ; 
 good-by ! " 
 
 Lenny's eyes glistened as the Parson shook him by the hand, 
 and, not trusting himself to speak, he walked off sturdily. The 
 Parson wiped his forehead, and sat himself down on the stile 
 beside the Italian. The view before them was lovely, and both 
 enjoyed it (though not e'qually) enough to be silent for some 
 moments. On the other side the lane, seen between gaps in the 
 old oaks and chestnuts that hung over the moss-grown pales of 
 Hazeldean Park, rose gentle verdant slopes, dotted with sheep 
 and herds of deer ; a stately avenue stretched far away to the 
 left, and ended at the right hand, within a few yards of a ha-ha 
 that divided the park from a level sward of table-land gay with 
 shrubs and flower-plots, relieved by the shade of two mighty 
 cedars. And on this platform, only seen in part, stood the 
 Squire's old-fashioned house, red brick, with stone mullions, 
 gable-ends, and quaint chimney-pots. On this side the road, 
 immediately facing the two gentlemen, cottage after cottage 
 whitely emerged from the curves in the lane, while, beyond, 
 the ground declining gave an extensive prospect of woods and 
 corn-fields, spires and farms. Behind, from a belt of lilacs and 
 evergreens, you caught a peep of the parsonage-house, backed 
 by woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The 
 birds were still in the hedgerows, only, as if from the very heart 
 of the most distant woods, there came now and then the mellow 
 note of the cuckoo.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 25 
 
 " Verily," said Mr Dale, softly, " my lot has fallen on a goodly 
 heritage." 
 
 The Italian twitched his cloak over him, and sighed almost 
 inaudibly. Perhaps he thought of his own Summer Land, and 
 felt that, amidst all that fresh verdure of the North, there was 
 no heritage for the stranger. 
 
 However, before the Parson could notice the sigh, or conjec- 
 ture the cause, Dr Riccabocca's thin lips took an expression 
 almost malignant. 
 
 " Per Bacco ! " said he ; " in every country I observe that 
 the rooks settle where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, 
 when Noah first landed on Ararat, he must have found some 
 gentleman in black already settled in the pleasantest part of 
 the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the cattle as they 
 came out of the Ark." 
 
 The Parson fixed his meek eyes on the philosopher, and 
 there was in them something so deprecating, rather than 
 reproachful, that Dr Riccabocca turned away his face, and 
 refilled his pipe. Dr Riccabocca abhorred priests ; but though 
 Parson Dale was emphatically a parson, he seemed at that 
 moment so little of what Dr Riccabocca understood by a priest, 
 that the Italian's heart smote him for his irreverent jest on the 
 cloth. Luckily at this moment there was a diversion to that 
 untoward commencement of conversation, in the appearance of 
 no less a personage than the donkey himself I mean the 
 donkey who ate the apple.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE Tinker was a stout swarthy fellow, jovial and musical 
 withal, for he was singing a stave as he flourished his staff, and 
 at the end of each refrain down came the staff on the quarters 
 of the donkey. The Tinker went behind and sung, the donkey 
 went before and was thwacked. 
 
 " Yours is a droll country," quoth Dr Riccabocca ; " in mine, 
 it is not the ass that walks first in the procession that gets the 
 blows." 
 
 The Parson jumped from the stile, and, looking over the 
 hedge that divided the field from the road " Gently, gently," 
 said he ; " the sound of the stick spoils the singing ! Mr 
 Sprott, Mr Sprott ! a good man is merciful to his beast." 
 
 The donkey seemed to recognise the voice of its friend, for it 
 stopped short, pricked one ear wistfully, and looked up. 
 
 The Tinker touched his hat, and looked up too. " Lord bless 
 your reverence ! he does not mind it, he likes it. I vould not 
 hurt thee ; vould I, Neddy ? " 
 
 The donkey shook his head and shivered : perhaps a fly had 
 settled on the sore, which the chestnut leaves no longer pro- 
 tected. 
 
 " I am sure you did not mean to hurt him, Sprott," said the 
 Parson, more politely I fear than honestly for he had seen 
 enough of that cross-grained thing called the human heart, even 
 in the little world of a country parish, to know that it requires 
 management, and coaxing, and flattering, to interfere success- 
 fully between a man and his own donkey " I am sure you did 
 not mean to hurt him ; but he has already got a sore on his 
 shoulder as big as my hand, poor thing ! "
 
 MY NOVEL. 27 
 
 " Lord love 'un ! yes ; that was done a-playing with the 
 manger, the day I gave 'un oats ! " said the Tinker. 
 
 Dr Riccabocca adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the ass. 
 The ass pricked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr Riccabocca. 
 In that mutual survey of physical qualifications, each being 
 regarded according to the average symmetry of its species, it 
 may be doubted whether the advantage was on the side of the 
 philosopher. 
 
 The Parson had a great notion of the wisdom of his friend, in 
 all matters not purely ecclesiastical : 
 
 " Say a good word for the donkey ! " whispered he. 
 
 " Sir," said the Doctor, addressing Mr Sprott, with a respect- 
 ful salutation, " there's a great kettle at my house the Casino 
 which wants soldering : can you recommend me a tinker ? " 
 
 " Why, that's all in my line," said Sprott, " and there ben't a 
 tinker in the county that I vould recommend, like myself, thof 
 I say it." 
 
 " You jest, good sir," said the Doctor, smiling pleasantly. 
 " A man who can't mend a hole in his own donkey, can never 
 demean himself by patching up my great kettle." 
 
 " Lord, sir ! " said the Tinker, archly, " if I had known that 
 poor Neddy had had two sitch friends in court, I'd have seen he 
 vas a gintleman, and treated him as sitch." 
 
 " Corpo di Bacco ! " quoth the Doctor, " though that jest's 
 not new, I think the Tinker comes very well out of it." 
 
 " True ; but the donkey ! " said the Parson, " I've a great 
 mind to buy it." 
 
 " Permit me to tell you an anecdote in point," said Dr Ricca- 
 bocca. 
 
 " Well ? " said the Parson, interrogatively. 
 
 " Once in a time," pursued Riccabocca, " the Emperor Adrian, 
 going to the public baths, saw an old soldier, who had served 
 under him, rubbing his back against the marble wall. The 
 Emperor, who was a wise, and therefore a curious, inquisitive 
 man, sent for the soldier, and asked him why he resorted to 
 that sort of friction. ' Because,' answered the veteran, ' I am 
 too poor to have slaves to rub me down.' The Emperor was 
 touched, and gave him slaves and money. The next day, when
 
 28 MY NOVEL. 
 
 Adrian went to the baths, all the old men in the city were to 
 be seen rubbing themselves against the marble as hard as they 
 could. The Emperor sent for them, and asked them the same 
 question which he had put to the soldier ; the cunning old 
 rogues, of course, made the same answer. ' Friends,' said 
 Adrian, ' since there are so many of you, you will just rub one 
 another ! ' Mr Dale, if you don't want to have all the donkeys 
 in the county with holes in their shoulders, you had better not 
 buy the Tinker's ! " 
 
 " It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of 
 good," groaned the Parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge 
 nervously, snapped it in two, and flung away the fragments : 
 one of them hit the donkey on the nose. If the ass could 
 have spoken Latin, he would have said, " Et tw, Brute ! " As 
 it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on. 
 
 " Gee hup," said the Tinker, and he followed the ass. Then 
 stopping, he looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the Par- 
 son's eyes were gazing mournfully on his protege, " Never fear, 
 your reverence," cried the Tinker kindly ; " I'll not spite 'un."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " FOUR o'clock," cried the Parson, looking at his watch : 
 " half an hour after dinner-time, and Mrs Dale particularly 
 begged me to be punctual, because of the fine trout the Squire 
 sent us. Will you venture on what our homely language calls 
 1 pot luck,' Doctor ? " 
 
 Now Riccabocca was a professed philosopher, and valued 
 himself on his penetration into the motives of human conduct. 
 And when the Parson thus invited him to pot luck, he smiled 
 with a kind of lofty complacency ; for Mrs Dale enjoyed the 
 reputation of having what her friends styled " her little tem- 
 pers." And, as well-bred ladies rarely indulge " little tempers " 
 in the presence of a third person, not of the family, so Dr Ricca- 
 bocca instantly concluded that he was invited to stand between 
 the pot and the luck ! Nevertheless as he was fond of trout, 
 and a much more good-natured man than he ought to have been 
 according to his principles he accepted the hospitality ; but he 
 did so with a sly look from over his spectacles, which brought a 
 blush into the guilty cheeks of the Parson. Certainly Riccabocca 
 had for once guessed right, in his estimate of human motives. 
 
 The two walked on, crossed a little bridge that spanned the 
 rill, and entered the parsonage lawn. Two dogs, that seemed to 
 have sate on watch for their master, sprang towards him bark- 
 ing ; and the sound drew the notice of Mrs Dale, who, with 
 parasol in hand, sallied out from the sash window which opened 
 011 the lawn. Now, reader ! I know that, in thy secret heart, 
 thou art chuckling over the want of knowledge in the sacred 
 arcana of the domestic hearth, betrayed by the author ; thou
 
 30 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 art saying to thyself, "A pretty way to conciliate ' little tempers' 
 indeed, to add to the offence of spoiling the fish the crime of 
 bringing an unexpected friend to eat it. Pot luck, quotha, 
 when the pot's boiled over this half-hour ! " 
 
 But, to thy utter shame and confusion, reader, learn that 
 both the author and Parson Dale knew very well what they 
 were about. 
 
 Dr Riccabocca was the special favourite of Mrs Dale, and the 
 only person in the whole county who never put her out, by 
 dropping in. In fact, strange though it may seem at first 
 glance, Dr Riccabocca had that mysterious something about him 
 which we of his own sex can so little comprehend, but which 
 always propitiates the other. He owed this, in part, to his own 
 profound but hypocritical policy ; for he looked upon woman 
 as the natural enemy to man against whom it was necessary 
 to be always on the guard ; whom it was prudent to disarm by 
 every species of fawning servility and abject complaisance. He 
 owed it also, in part, to the compassionate and heavenly nature 
 of the angels whom his thoughts thus villanously traduced for 
 women like one whom they can pity without despising ; and 
 there was something in Signor Riccabocca's poverty, in his lone- 
 liness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited 
 pity ; while, despite the threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and 
 the wild fc&ir, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that 
 air of gentleman and cavalier, which is or was more innate in 
 an educated Italian, of whatever rank, than perhaps in the 
 highest aristocracy of any other country in Europe. For, 
 though I grant that nothing is more exquisite than the polite- 
 ness of your French marquis of the old regime nothing more 
 frankly gracious than the cordial address of a high-bred English 
 gentleman nothing more kindly prepossessing than the genial 
 good-nature of some patriarchal German, who will condescend 
 to forget his sixteen quarterings in the pleasure of doing you a 
 favour yet these specimens of the suavity of their several 
 nations are rare ; whereas blandness and polish are common 
 attributes with your Italian. They seem to have been imme- 
 morially handed down to him, from ancestors emulating the 
 urbanity of Csesar, and refined by the grace of Horace.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 31 
 
 " Dr Riccabocca consents to dine with us," cried the Parson 
 hastily. 
 
 " If Madame permit ? " said the Italian, bowing over the 
 hand extended to him, which, however, he forbore to take, 
 seeing it was already full of the watch. 
 
 " I am only sorry that the trout must be quite spoiled," 
 began Mrs Dale plaintively. 
 
 " It is not the trout one thinks of when one dines with Mrs 
 Dale," said the infamous dissimulator. 
 
 "But I see James coming to say that dinner is ready?" 
 observed the Parson. 
 
 " He said that, three quarters of an hour ago, Charles dear," 
 retorted Mrs Dale, taking the arm of Dr Riccabocca.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHILE the Parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I 
 propose to regale the reader with a small treatise apropos of 
 that " Charles dear," murmured by Mrs Dale ; a treatise 
 expressly written for the benefit of THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE. 
 
 It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that 
 conveys so little endearment as the word " dear." But though 
 the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no 
 little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the 
 varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign mono- 
 syllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the 
 degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its 
 collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through 
 the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that 
 " Charles dear " of Mrs Dale, it has spilt so much of its natural 
 bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, " amara 
 lento temperet risu." Sometimes the smile is plaintive, some- 
 times arch. Ex. gr. 
 
 (Plaintive.) 
 
 " I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear." 
 " Nay, I am only glad you amused yourself so much without 
 
 me, Charles dear." 
 
 " Not quite so loud ! If you had but my poor head, Charles 
 
 dear," &c. 
 
 (Arch.) 
 
 " If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best table- 
 cloth, Charles dear ! "
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 33 
 
 " But though you must always have your own way, you are 
 not quite faultless, own, Charles dear," &c. 
 
 When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its 
 venom is naturally less exhausted. Ex. gr. 
 
 " Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most 
 fidgetty person," &c. 
 
 " And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles 
 dear, I should just like to know whose fault it was that's all." 
 
 "But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me 
 and the children than " &c. 
 
 But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at 
 the head of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then 
 assumes the majesty of "my" before it ; is generally more than 
 simple objurgation it prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges 
 me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful mono- 
 syllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the 
 one flesh ; and has something about it of the odious assump- 
 tion of the Petruchian pater-familias the head of the family 
 boding, not perhaps "peace, and love, and quiet life," but cer- 
 tainly "awful rule and right supremacy." Ex, gr. 
 
 "My dear Jane I wish you would just put by that everlast- 
 ing crochet, and listen to me for a few moments," &c. 
 
 " My dear Jane I wish you would understand me for once 
 don't think I am angry no, but I am hurt ! You must con- 
 sider," &c. 
 
 " My dear Jane I don't know if it is your intention to ruin 
 me ; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who 
 care three straws for their husband's property," &c. 
 
 " My dear Jane I wish you to understand that I am the 
 last person in the world to be jealous ; but I'll be d d if that 
 puppy, Captain Prettyman," &c. 
 
 JS'ow, few so carefully cultivate the connubial garden, as to 
 feel much surprise at the occasional sting of a homely nettle or 
 two ; but who ever expected, before entering that garden, to 
 find himself pricked and lacerated by an insidious exotical 
 " dear," which he had been taught to believe only lived in a 
 hothouse, along with myrtles and other tender and sensitive 
 VOL. i. c
 
 34 MY NOVEL. 
 
 shrubs, which poets appropriate to Venus ? Nevertheless Par- 
 son Dale, being a patient man, and a pattern to all husbands, 
 would have found no fault with his garden, though there had 
 not been a single specimen of " dear," whether the de&rhumilis, 
 or the dear superba ; the dear pallida, rubra, or nigra ; the 
 dear suavis, or the dear horrida ; no, not a single " dear" in 
 the whole horticulture of matrimony which Mrs Dale had not 
 brought to perfection. But this was far from being the case 
 Mrs Dale, living much in retirement, was unaware of the 
 modern improvements, in variety of colour and sharpness of 
 prickle, which have rewarded the persevering skill of our female 
 florists.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IN the cool of the evening, Dr Riccabocca walked home across 
 the fields. Mr and Mrs Dale had accompanied him half-way ; 
 and as they now turned back to the parsonage, they looked 
 behind, to catch a glimpse of the tall, outlandish figure, winding 
 slowly through the path amidst the waves of the green corn. 
 
 " Poor man ! " said Mrs Dale, feelingly ; " and the button 
 was off his wristband ! What a pity he has nobody to take care 
 of him ! He seems very domestic. Don't you think, Charles, 
 it would be a great blessing if we could get him a good wife ? " 
 
 " Um," said the Parson ; " I doubt if he values the married 
 state as he ought." 
 
 " What do you mean, Charles ? I never saw a man more 
 polite to ladies in my life." 
 
 Yes, but" 
 
 " But what 1 You are always so mysterious, Charles dear." 
 
 " Mysterious ! No, Carry ; but if you could hear what the 
 Doctor says of the ladies sometimes." 
 
 " Ay, when you men get together, my dear. I know what 
 that means pretty things you say of us. But you are all alike ; 
 you know you are, love ! " 
 
 '' I am sure," said the Parson simply, " that I have good 
 cause to speak well of the sex when I think of you, and my 
 poor mother." 
 
 Mrs Dale, who, with all her ' tempers,' was an excellent 
 woman, and loved her husband with the whole of her quick 
 little heart, was touched. She pressed his hand, and did not 
 call him dear all the way home. 
 
 Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the
 
 as veil 5-33^1 : 'i iff"
 
 VARIETIES 19 EKGLI8H LIFE. 37 
 
 a country gentleman who had actually been in Italy, (a 
 journey rare enough to boast of in those days.) and who, on his 
 return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian 
 villa. He left an only daughter and sole heiress, who married 
 Squire Hazeldean's father; and since that time, the house, 
 abandoned by its proprietors for the larger residence of the 
 Hazeldeans, bad been uninhabited and neglected. Several 
 tenants, indeed, had offered themselves ; but your true country 
 squire is slow in admitting upon hi? own property a rival 
 neighbour. Some wanted shooting. ' That," said the Haze;- 
 deans, who were great sportsmen and strict preservers, - wag 
 quite out of the question." Others were fine folks from 
 London. " London servants," said the Hazeldeans. who were 
 moral and prudent people, a would corrupt their own. and bring 
 London prices." Others, again, were retired manufacturers, at 
 whom the Haze-Means turned up their agricultural noses. In 
 short, some were too grand, and others too vulgar. Some were 
 refused because they were known so well : - Friends are best at 
 a distance,' 1 said the Hazeldeans. Others because they were not 
 known at all : ' ; Xo good comes of strangers." said the Hazel- 
 deans, And finally, as the house fell more and more into 
 decay, no one would take it unless it was put into thorough 
 repair : " As if one was made of money ! " said the Hazeldeans. 
 In short, there stood the house unoccupied and ruinous ; and 
 there, on its terrace, stood the two forlorn Italians, surveying 
 it with a smile at each other, as, for the first time since they 
 set foot in England, they recognised, in dilapidated pilasters 
 and broken statues, in a weed-grown terrace and the remains of 
 an orangery, something that reminded them of the land they 
 had left behind. 
 
 On returning to the inn, Dr Riccabocca took the occasion to 
 learn from the innkeeper (who was indeed a tenant of the 
 Squire's) such particulars as he could collect ; and a few days 
 afterwards Mr Hazeldean received a letter from a solicitor of 
 repute in London, stating that a very respectable foreign gen- 
 tleman had commissioned him to treat for Clump Lodge, other- 
 wise called the '' Casino : " that the said gentleman did not 
 shoot lived in great seclusion and, having no family, did
 
 38 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 not care about the repairs of the place, provided only it were 
 made weather-proof if the omission of more expensive repara- 
 tions could render the rent suitable to his finances, which were 
 very limited. The offer came at a fortunate moment when 
 the steward had just been representing to the Squire the 
 necessity of doing something to keep the Casino from falling 
 into positive ruin, and the Squire was cursing the fates which 
 had put the Casino into an entail so that he could not pull it 
 down for the building materials. Mr Hazeldean therefore 
 caught at the proposal even as a fair lady, who has refused the 
 best offers in the kingdom, catches, at last, at some battered old 
 captain on half-pay, and replied that, as for rent, if the soli- 
 citor's client was a quiet respectable man, he did not care for 
 that, but that the gentleman might have it for the first year 
 rent-free, on condition of paying the taxes and putting the 
 place a little in order. If they suited each other, they could 
 then come to terms. Ten days subsequently to this gracious 
 reply, Signer Riccabocca and his servant arrived ; and, before 
 the year's end, the Squire was so contented with his tenant 
 that he gave him a running lease of seven, fourteen, or twenty- 
 one years, at a rent nearly nominal, on condition that Signor 
 Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in repair, barring 
 the roof and fences, which the Squire generously renewed at 
 his own expense. It was astonishing, by little and little, what 
 a pretty place the Italian had made of it, and, what is more 
 astonishing, how little it had cost him. He had indeed painted 
 the walls of the hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to 
 himself, with his own hands. His servant had done the 
 greater part of the upholstery. The two between them had got 
 the garden into order. The Italians seemed to have taken a 
 joint love to the place, and to deck it as they would have done 
 some favourite chapel to their Madonna. 
 
 It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd 
 ways of the foreign settlers the first thing that offended them 
 was the exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days 
 out of the seven, indeed, both man and master dined on nothing 
 else but the vegetables in the garden, and the fishes in the 
 neighbouring rill : when no trout could be caught they fried
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 39 
 
 the minnows, (and certainly, even in the best streams, minnows 
 are more frequently caught than trouts.) The next thing which 
 angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of 
 the neighbourhood, was the very sparing employment the two 
 he creatures gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable 
 in household matters. At first, indeed, they had no woman 
 servant at all. But this created such horror that Parson Dale 
 ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca took in 
 very good part, and an old woman was forthwith engaged, after 
 some bargaining at three shillings a- week to wash and scrub 
 as much as she liked during the day-time. She always re- 
 turned to her own cottage to sleep. The man-servant, who was 
 styled in the neighbourhood " Jackeymo," did all else for his 
 master smoothed his room, dusted his papers, prepared his 
 coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned his 
 pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection. But however 
 close a man's character, it generally creeps out in driblets ; 
 and on many little occasions the Italian had shown acts of 
 kindness, and, on some more rare occasions, even of generosity, 
 which had served to silence his calumniators, and by degrees 
 he had established a very fair reputation suspected, it is true, 
 of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and of a strange 
 inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself, in other respects 
 harmless enough. 
 
 Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have 
 seen, at the Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though 
 the Squire was inclined to be very friendly to all his neigh- 
 bours, he was, like most country gentlemen, rather easily 
 huffed. Riccabocca had, if with great politeness, still with 
 great obstinacy, refused Mr Hazeldean's earlier invitations to 
 dinner ; and when the Squire found that the Italian rarely 
 declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his 
 weak points viz., his pride in the hospitality of Hazeldean 
 Hall and he ceased altogether invitations so churlishly re- 
 jected. Nevertheless, as it was impossible for the Squire, how- 
 ever huffed, to bear malice, he now and then reminded Ricca- 
 bocca of his existence by presents of game, and would have 
 called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca
 
 40 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt 
 country gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say that 
 " to call on Rickeybockey was as bad as going to Court." 
 
 But we have left Dr Riccabocca on the high-road. By this 
 time he has ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of 
 the cascade, he has passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from 
 the which Jackeymo has positively succeeded in making what 
 he calls wine a liquid, indeed, that, if the cholera had been 
 popularly known in those days, would have soured the mildest 
 member of the Board of Health ; for Squire Hazeldean, though 
 a robust man who daily carried off his bottle of port with im- 
 punity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect 
 till he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own 
 arm. Passing this trellis, Dr Riccabocca entered upon the ter- 
 race, with its stone pavement smoothed and trimmed as hands 
 could make it. Here, on neat stands, all his favourite flowers 
 were arranged. Here four orange trees were in full blossom ; 
 here a kind of summerhouse or Belvidere, built by Jackeymo 
 and himself, made his chosen morning room from May till 
 October ; and from this Belvidere there was as beautiful an 
 expanse of prospect as if our English Nature had hospitably 
 spread on her green board all that she had to offer as a banquet 
 to the exile. 
 
 A man without his coat, which was thrown over the balus- 
 trade, was employed in watering the flowers ; a man with 
 movements so mechanical with a face so rigidly grave in its 
 tawny hues that he seemed like an automaton made out of 
 mahogany. 
 
 " Giacomo," said Dr Riccabocca softly. 
 
 The automaton stopped its hand, and turned its head. 
 
 " Put by the watering-pot, and come hither," continued Ricca- 
 bocca in Italian ; and, moving towards the balustrade, he 
 leaned over it. Mr Mitford, the historian, calls Jean Jacques 
 " John James." Following that illustrious example, Giacomo 
 shall be Anglified into Jackeymo. Jackeymo came to the balus- 
 trade also, and stood a little behind his master. 
 
 " Friend," said Riccabocca, " enterprises have not always suc- 
 ceeded with us. Don't you think, after all, it is tempting our
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 41 
 
 evil star to rent those fields from the landlord 1 " J.ackeymo 
 crossed himself, and made some strange movement with a little 
 coral charm which he wore set in a ring on his finger. 
 
 " If the Madonna send us luck, and we could hire a lad 
 cheap 1 " said Jackeymo, doubtfully. 
 
 " Piu vale un presents che dui futuri," said Riccabocca ("A 
 bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.") 
 
 " Chi nonfa quandopud, nonpuu fare quando vuole" ("He 
 who will not when he may, when he wills it shall have nay,") 
 answered Jackeymo, as seutentiously as his master. " And 
 the Padrone should think in time that he must lay by for the 
 dower of the poor signorina," (young lady.) 
 
 Riccabocca sighed, and made no reply. 
 
 " She must be that high now ! " said Jackeymo, putting his 
 hand on some imaginary line a little above the balustrade. 
 Riccabocca's eyes, raised over the spectacles, followed the hand. 
 
 " If the Padrone could but see her here " 
 
 " I thought I did ! " muttered the Italian. 
 
 " He would never let her go from his side till she went to a 
 husband's," continued Jackeymo. 
 
 " But this climate she could never stand it," said Ricca- 
 bocca, drawing his cloak round him, as a north wind took him 
 in the rear. 
 
 " The orange trees blossom even here with care," said Jack- 
 eymo, turning back to draw down an awning where the orange 
 trees faced the north. " See ! " he added, as he returned with a 
 sprig in full bud. 
 
 Dr Riccabocca bent over the blossom, and then placed it in his 
 bosom. 
 
 " The other one should be there too," said Jackeymo. 
 
 " To die as this does already ! " answered Riccabocca. " Say 
 no more." 
 
 Jackeymo shrugged his shoulders ; and then, glancing at his 
 master, drew his hand over his eyes. 
 
 There was a pause. Jackeymo was the first to break it. 
 
 " But, whether here or there, beauty without money is the 
 orange tree without shelter. If a lad could be got cheap, I 
 would hire the land, and trust for the crop to the Madonna."
 
 42 MY NOVEL. 
 
 K I think I know of such a lad," said Riccabocca, recovering 
 himself, and with his sardonic smile once more lurking about 
 the corners of his mouth " a lad made for us." 
 
 " Diavolo ! " 
 
 " No, not the Diavolo I Friend, I have this day seen a boy 
 who refused sixpence ! " 
 
 " Cosa stupenda ! " (Stupendous thing !) exclaimed Jack- 
 eymo, opening his eyes, and letting fall the watering-pot. 
 
 " It is true, my friend." 
 
 " Take him, Padrone, in Heaven's name, and the fields will 
 grow gold." 
 
 " I will think of it, for it must require management to catch 
 such a boy," said Riccabocca. " Meanwhile, light a candle in 
 the parlour, and bring from my bedroom that great folio 
 of Machiavelli."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IN my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patri- 
 archal state not exactly under the fig-tree he has planted, but 
 before the stocks he has reconstructed Squire Hazeldean and 
 his family on the village green ! The canvass is all ready for 
 the colours. 
 
 But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into ante- 
 cedents as to let the reader know that there is one member 
 of the family whom he is not likely to meet at present, if ever, 
 on the village green at Hazeldean. 
 
 Our Squire lost his father two years after his birth ; his 
 mother was very handsome and so was her jointure; she 
 married again at the expiration of her year of mourning the 
 object of her second choice was Colonel Egertou. 
 
 In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively 
 reign of Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius 
 skims off from the milk of human nature, and reserves for the 
 cream of society. Colonel Egerton was one of these terque, 
 quaterque beati, and dwelt apart on a top shelf in that delicate 
 porcelain dish not bestowed upon vulgar buttermilk which 
 persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was the 
 marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park Lane, 
 when this super-eminent personage condescended to lower him- 
 self into a husband. But Colonel Egerton was not a mere 
 gaudy butterfly ; he had the provident instincts ascribed to the 
 bee. Youth had passed from him, and carried off much solid 
 property in its flight ; he saw that a time was fast coming when 
 a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would 
 be conducive to his comforts, and an occasional hum-drum even-
 
 44 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 ing by the fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst of one 
 season at Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the 
 Prince of Wales, he saw a widow who, though in the weeds of 
 mourning, did not appear inconsolable. Her person pleased his 
 taste the accounts of her jointure satisfied his understanding 
 he contrived an introduction, and brought a brief wooing to a 
 happy close. The late Mr Hazeldean had so far anticipated the 
 chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in case of 
 that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the 
 guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires 
 whom he had named his executors. This circumstance com- 
 bined with her new ties somewhat to alienate Mrs Hazeldean 
 from the pledge of her former loves ; and when she had borne 
 a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child that her 
 maternal affections gradually concentrated. 
 
 William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large pro- 
 vincial academy, at which his forefathers had received their 
 education time out of mind. At first he spent his holidays 
 with Mrs Egerton ; but as she now resided either in London, or 
 followed her lord to Brighton to partake of the gaieties at the 
 Pavilion so, as he grew older, William, who had a hearty 
 affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners and rural 
 breeding Mrs Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was 
 openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his 
 vacations either with his guardians or at the old Hall. He went 
 late to a small college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth 
 century by some ancestral Hazeldean ; and left it, on coming of 
 age, without taking a degree. A few years afterwards he mar- 
 ried a young lady, country born and bred like himself. 
 
 Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to 
 have begun his initiation into the beau monde before he had well 
 cast aside his coral and bells ; he had been fondled in the lap of 
 duchesses, and had galloped across the room astride on the canes 
 of ambassadors and princes. For Colonel Egerton was not only 
 very highly connected not only one of the Dii majores of 
 fashion but he had the still rarer good fortune to be an ex- 
 ceedingly popular man with all who knew him ; so popular, 
 that even the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 45 
 
 forgave him for marrying out of " the set," and continued to be 
 as friendly as if he had not married at all. People who were 
 commonly called heartless, were never weary of doing kind 
 things to the Egertons. "When the time came for Audley to 
 leave the preparatory school, at which his infancy budded forth 
 amongst the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to 
 Eton, half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be 
 exceedingly civil to young Egerton. The boy soon showed 
 that he inherited his father's talent for acquiring popularity, 
 and that to this talent he added those which put popularity to 
 use. Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet con- 
 trived to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which 
 a boy can obtain namely, that among his own contemporaries ; 
 the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when he 
 grew to be a man. As a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, 
 Oxford, he continued to sustain this high expectation, though 
 he won no prizes, and took but an ordinary degree ; and at 
 Oxford the future " something " became more defined it was 
 " something in public life " that this young man was to do. 
 
 While he was yet at the university, both his parents died 
 within a few months of each other. And when Audley Eger- 
 ton came of age, he succeeded to a paternal property which was 
 supposed to be large, and indeed had once been so ; but Colonel 
 Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his heir, and 
 about ,1500 a-year was all that sales and mortgages left of an 
 estate that had formerly approached a rental of ten thousand 
 pounds. 
 
 Still, Audley was considered to be opulent, and he did not 
 dispel that favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of 
 parsimony. On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew 
 open to receive him ; and he woke one morning to find himself, 
 not indeed famous but the fashion. To this fashion he at 
 once gave a certain gravity and value he associated as much as 
 possible with public men and political ladies he succeeded in 
 confirming the notion that he was " born to ruin or to rule the 
 State." 
 
 The dearest and most intimate friend of Audley Egerton was 
 Lord L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton ;
 
 46 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 and who now, if Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely 
 the rage in London. 
 
 Harley, Lord L'Estrange, was the only son of the Earl of 
 Lansmere, a nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied by 
 intermarriages to the loftiest and most powerful families in 
 England. Lord Lansmere, nevertheless, was but little known 
 in the circles of London. He lived chiefly on his estates, 
 occupying himself with the various duties of a great proprietor, 
 and when he came to the metropolis, it was rather to save 
 than to spend ; so that he could afford to give his son a very 
 ample allowance, when Harley, at the age of sixteen, (having 
 already attained to the sixth form at Eton,) left school for one 
 of the regiments of the Guards. 
 
 Few knew what to make of Harley L'Estrange and that was, 
 perhaps, the reason why he was so much thought of. He had 
 been by far the most brilliant boy of his time at Eton not only 
 the boast of the cricket-ground, but the marvel of the school- 
 room ; yet so full of whims and oddities, and seeming to achieve 
 his triumphs with so little aid from steadfast application, that he 
 had not left behind him the same expectations of solid eminence 
 which his friend and senior, Audley Egerton, had excited. His 
 eccentricities his quaint sayings and out-of-the-way actions, 
 became as notable in the great world as they had been in the 
 small one of a public school. That he was very clever there was 
 no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might be 
 surmised not only from the originality but the independence 
 of his character. He dazzled the world, without seeming to 
 care for its praise or its censure dazzled it, as it were, because he 
 could not help shining. He had some strange notions, whether 
 political or social, which rather frightened his father. Accord- 
 ing to Southey, " A man should be no more ashamed of having 
 been a republican than of having been young." Youth and 
 extravagant opinions naturally go together. I don't know 
 whether Harley L'Estrange was a republican at the age of 
 eighteen ; but there was no young man in London who seemed 
 to care less for being heir to an illustrious name and some forty 
 or fifty thousand pounds a-year. It was a vulgar fashion in 
 that day to play the exclusive, and cut persons who wore bad
 
 VARIETIES IX ENGLISH LIFE, 47 
 
 neckcloths, and called themselves Smith or Johnson. Lord 
 L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to 
 slight some worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth, 
 to insure to the offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric 
 successor to the Belforts and the Wildairs. 
 
 It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came 
 of age, should represent the borough of Lansmere, (which said 
 borough was the single plague of the Earl's life,) But this 
 wish was never realised. Suddenly, when the young idol of 
 London still wanted some two or three years of his majority, 
 a new whim appeared to seize him. He withdrew entirely 
 from society he left unanswered the most pressing three- 
 cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed the 
 table of a young Guardsman ; he was rarely seen anywhere 
 in his former haunts when seen, was either alone or with 
 Egertou ; and his gay spirits seemed wholly to have left him. 
 A profound melancholy was written in his countenance, and 
 breathed in the listless tones of his voice. About this time a 
 vacancy happening to occur for the representation of Lansmere, 
 Harley made it his special request to his father that the family 
 interest might be given to Audley Egerton a request which 
 was backed by all the influence of his lady mother, who shared 
 in the esteem which her son felt for his friend. The Earl 
 yielded ; and Egertou, accompanied by Harley. went down to 
 Lansmere Park, which adjoined the borough, in order to be 
 introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable epoch in 
 the history of many personages who figure in my narrative ; 
 but at present I content myself with saying, that circumstances 
 arose which, just as the canvass for the new election com- 
 menced, caused both L'Estrange and Audley to absent them- 
 selves from the scene of action, and that the last even wrote 
 to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention of declining to con- 
 test the borough. 
 
 Fortunately for the parliamentary career of Audley Egerton, 
 the election had become to Lord Lansmere not only a matter 
 of public importance, but of personal feeling. He resolved that 
 the battle should be fought out, even in the absence of the 
 candidate, and at his own expense. Hitherto the contest for
 
 48 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 this distinguished borough had been, to use the language of 
 Lord Lansmere, " conducted in the spirit of gentlemen," that, 
 is to say, the only opponents to the Lansmere interest had 
 been found in one or the other of two rival families in the same 
 county ; and as the Earl was a hospitable courteous man, much 
 respected and liked by the neighbouring gentry, so the hostile 
 candidate had always interlarded his speeches with profuse 
 compliments to his Lordship's high character, and civil expres- 
 sions as to his Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to successive 
 elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and its 
 actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the 
 Bench ; the head of the other family was the sitting member, 
 and, by an amicable agreement with the Lansmere interest, he 
 remained as neutral as it is in the power of any sitting member 
 to be amidst the passions of an intractable committee. Accord- 
 ingly, it had been hoped that Egerton would come in without 
 opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly left 
 the place, a handbill, signed " Haverill Dashmore, Captain 
 R.N., Baker Street, Portman Square," announced, in very 
 spirited language, the intention of that gentleman "to eman- 
 cipate the borough from the unconstitutional domination of 
 an oligarchical faction, not with a view to his own political 
 aggrandisement indeed, at great personal inconvenience but 
 actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and patriotic passion 
 for the purity of election." 
 
 This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the 
 arrival of Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage-and-four, 
 covered with yellow favours, and filled, inside and out, with 
 harum-scarum-looking friends, who had come down with him 
 to share the canvass and partake the fun. 
 
 Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, 
 conceived a disgust to the profession from the date in which a 
 Minister's nephew had been appointed to the command of a 
 ship to which the Captain considered himself unquestionably 
 entitled. It is just to the Minister to add, that Captain Dash- 
 more had shown as little regard for orders from a distance, as 
 had immortalised Nelson himself; but then the disobedience 
 had not achieved the same redeeming success as that of Nelson,
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 49 
 
 and Captain Dashmore ought to have thought himself fortunate 
 in escaping a severer treatment than the loss of promotion. 
 But no man knows when he is well off ; and retiring on half- 
 pay, just as he came into unexpected possession of some 
 forty or fifty thousand pounds, bequeathed by a distant rela- 
 tion, Captain Dashmore was seized with a vindictive desire to 
 enter parliament, and inflict oratorical chastisement on the 
 Administration. 
 
 A very few hours sufficed to show the sea-captain to be a 
 most capital electioneerer fora popular but not enlightened con- 
 stituency. It is true that he talked the saddest nonsense ever 
 heard from an open window ; but then his jokes were so broad, 
 his manner so hearty, his voice so big, that in those dark days, 
 before the schoolmaster was abroad, he would have beaten your 
 philosophical Radical and moralising Democrat hollow. More- 
 over, he kissed all the women, old and young, with the zest of 
 a sailor who has known what it is to be three years at sea 
 without sight of a beardless lip ; he threw open all the public- 
 houses, asked a numerous committee every day to dinner, and, 
 chucking his purse up in the air, declared "he would stick to 
 his guns while there was a shot in the locker." Till then, there 
 had been but little political difference between the candidate 
 supported by Lord Lansmere's interest and the opposing parties 
 for country gentlemen, in those days, were pretty much of 
 the same way of thinking, and the question had been really 
 local viz., whether the Lansmere interest should or should not 
 prevail over that of the two squirearchical families who had 
 alone, hitherto, ventured to oppose it. But though Captain 
 Dashmore was really a very loyal man, and much too old a 
 sailor to think that the State (which, according to established 
 metaphor, is a vessel par excellence) should admit Jack upon 
 quarterdeck, yet, what with talking against lords and aristo- 
 cracy, jobs and abuses, and searching through no very refined 
 vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating 
 nouns-substantive, his bile had got the better of his understand- 
 ing, and he became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. 
 Thus, though as innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 MY NOVEL ; OB, 
 
 incapable of setting the Thames on fire, you would have guessed 
 him, by his speeches, to be one of the most determined incen- 
 diaries that ever applied a match to the combustible materials 
 of a contested election ; while, being by no means accustomed 
 to respect his adversaries, he could not have treated the Earl 
 of Lansmere with less ceremony if his Lordship had been 
 a Frenchman. He usually designated that respectable noble- 
 man, who was still in the prime of life, by the title of " Old 
 Pompous ;" and the Mayor, who was never seen abroad but in 
 top-boots, and the Solicitor, who was of a large build, received 
 from his irreverent wit the joint soubriquet of " Tops and Bot- 
 toms ! " Hence the election had now become, as I said before, 
 a personal matter with my Lord, and, indeed, with the great 
 heads of the Lansmere interest. The Earl seemed to consider 
 his very coronet at stake in the question. " The Man from 
 Baker Street," with his preternatural audacity, appeared to him 
 a being ominous and awful not so much to be regarded with 
 resentment, as with superstitious terror : he felt as felt the dig- 
 nified Montezuma, when that ruffianly Cortez, with his handful 
 of Spanish rapscallions, bearded him in his own capital, and 
 in the midst of his Mexican splendour. The gods were menaced 
 if man could be so insolent ! wherefore, said my Lord tremu- 
 lously, "The Constitution is gone if the Man from Baker 
 Street comes in for Lansmere ! " 
 
 But, in the absence of Audley Egerton, the election looked 
 extremely ugly, and Captain Dashmore gained ground hourly, 
 when the Lansmere Solicitor happily bethought him of a 
 notable proxy for the missing candidate. The Squire of Hazel- 
 dean, with his young wife, had been invited by the Earl in 
 honour of Audley ; and in the Squire the Solicitor beheld the 
 only mortal who could cope with the sea-captain a man with 
 a voice as burly, and a face as bold a man who, if permitted 
 for the nonce by Mrs Hazeldean, would kiss all the women 
 no less heartily than the Captain kissed them ; and who was, 
 moreover, a taller, and a handsomer, and a younger man all 
 three great recommendations in the kissing department of a 
 contested election. Yes, to canvass the borough, and to speak 
 from the window, Squire Hazeldeau would be even more
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 51 
 
 popularly presentable than the London-bred and accomplished 
 Audley Egerton himself. 
 
 The Squire, applied to and urged on all sides, at first said 
 bluntly, "that he would do anything in reason to serve his 
 brother, but that he did not like, for his own part, appearing, 
 even in proxy, as a Lord's nominee ; and moreover, if he was 
 to be sponsor for his brother, why, he must promise and vow, 
 in his name, to be staunch and true to the land they lived by ? 
 And how could he tell that Audley, when once he got into 
 the House, would not forget the land, and then he, William 
 Hazeldean, would be made a liar, and look like a turncoat ! " 
 
 But these scruples being overruled by the arguments of the 
 gentlemen, and the entreaties of the ladies, who took in the 
 election that intense interest which those gentle creatures 
 usually do take in all matters of strife and contest, the Squire 
 at length consented to confront the Man from Baker Street, 
 and went accordingly into the thing with that good heart and 
 old English spirit with which he went into everything whereon 
 he had once made up his mind. 
 
 The expectations formed of the Squire's capacities for popular 
 electioneering were fully realised. He talked quite as much 
 nonsense as Captain Dashmore on every subject except the 
 landed interest ; there he was great, for he knew the subject 
 well knew it by the instinct that comes with practice, and 
 compared to which all your showy theories are mere cobwebs 
 and moonshine. 
 
 The agricultural outvoters many of whom, not living under 
 Lord Lansmere, but being small yeomen, had hitherto prided 
 themselves on their independence, and gone against my Lord 
 could not in their hearts go against one who was every inch the 
 farmer's friend. They began to share in the Earl's personal 
 interest against the Man from Baker Street ; and big fellows, 
 with legs bigger round than Captain Dashmore's tight little 
 body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen entering 
 the shops, " intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore 
 indignantly declared. 
 
 These new recruits made a great difference in the muster- 
 roll of the Lansmere books ; and when the day for polling
 
 52 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 arrived, the result was a fair question for even betting. At 
 the last hour, after a neck-and-ueck contest, Mr Audley 
 Egerton beat the Captain by two votes. And the names of 
 these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his 
 son-in-law, Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lans- 
 mere freeman, had settled in Hazeldean, where he had obtained 
 the situation of head carpenter on the Squire's estate. 
 
 These votes were unexpected ; for, though Mark Fairfield 
 had come to Lansmere on purpose to support the Squire's 
 brother, and though the Avenels had been always staunch 
 supporters of the Lansmere Blue interest, yet a severe affliction 
 (as to the nature of which, not desiring to sadden the opening 
 of my story, I am considerately silent) had befallen both these 
 persons, and they had left the town on the very day after Lord 
 L'Estrange and Mr Bgerton had quitted Lansmere Park. 
 
 Whatever might have been the gratification of the Squire, as 
 a canvasser and a brother, at Mr Egerton's triumph, it was much 
 damped when, on leaving the dinner given in honour of the 
 victory at the Lansmere Arms, and about, with no steady step, 
 to enter the carriage which was to convey him to his Lordship's 
 house, a letter was put into his hands by one of the gentlemen 
 who had accompanied the Captain to the scene of action ; and 
 the perusal of that letter, and a few whispered words from the 
 bearer thereof, sent the Squire back to Mrs Hazeldean a much 
 soberer man than she had ventured to hope for. The fact was, 
 that on the day of nomination, the Captain having honoured 
 Mr Hazeldean with many poetical and figurative appellations 
 such as " Prize Ox," " Tony Lumpkin," " Blood-sucking Vam- 
 pire," and " Brotherly Warming-pan," the Squire had retorted 
 by a joke about " Salt-water Jack ;" and the Captain, who, 
 like all satirists, was extremely susceptible and thin-skinned, 
 could not consent to be called " Salt-water Jack " by a " Prize 
 Ox " and a " Blood-sucking Vampire." 
 
 The letter, therefore, now conveyed to Mr Hazeldean by a 
 gentleman, who, being from the Sister Country, was deemed 
 the most fitting accomplice in the honourable destruction of a 
 brother mortal, contained nothing more nor less than an invita- 
 tion to single combat ; and the bearer thereof, with the suave
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 53 
 
 politeness enjoined by etiquette on such well-bred homicidal 
 occasions, suggested the expediency of appointing the place of 
 meeting in the neighbourhood of London, in order to prevent 
 interference from the suspicious authorities of Lansmere. 
 
 The natives of some countries the warlike French in parti- 
 cular think little of that formal operation which goes by the 
 name of DUELLING. Indeed, they seem rather to like it than 
 otherwise. But there is nothing your thorough-paced English- 
 man a Hazeldean of Hazeldean considers with more repug- 
 nance and aversion, than that same cold-blooded ceremonial. 
 It is not within the range of an Englishman's ordinary habits 
 of thinking. He prefers going to law a much more destruc- 
 tive proceeding of the two. Nevertheless, if an Englishman 
 must fight, why, he will fight. He says "it is very foolish ;" 
 he is sure "it is most unchristianlike ;" he agrees with all that 
 Philosopher, Preacher, and Press have laid down on the subject; 
 but he makes his will, says his prayers, and goes out like a 
 heathen. 
 
 It never, therefore, occurred to the Squire to show the white 
 feather upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning 
 excuse to attend the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, 
 he ruefully went up to London, after taking a peculiarly affec- 
 tionate leave of his wife. Indeed, the Squire felt convinced that 
 he should never return home except in a coffin. " It stands to 
 reason," said he to himself, " that a man who has been actually 
 paid by the King's Government for shooting people ever since 
 he was a little boy in a midshipman's jacket, must be a dead 
 hand at the job. I should not mind if it was with double-bar- 
 relled Mantons and small shot ; but, ball and pistol ! they aren't 
 human nor sportsmanlike ! " However, the Squire, after set- 
 tling his worldly affairs, and hunting up an old college friend 
 who undertook to be his second, proceeded to a sequestered 
 corner of Wimbledon Common, and planted himself, not side- 
 ways, as one ought to do in such encounters, (the which pos- 
 ture the Squire swore was an unmanly way of shirking,) but 
 full front to the mouth of his adversary's pistol, with such 
 sturdy composure that Captain Dashmore, who, though an 
 excellent shot, was at bottom as good-natured a fellow as ever
 
 54 MY NOVEL. 
 
 lived, testified his admiration by letting off his gallant opponent 
 with a ball in the fleshy part of the shoulder, after which he 
 declared himself perfectly satisfied. The parties then shook 
 hands, mutual apologies were exchanged, and the Squire, much 
 to his astonishment to find himself still alive, was conveyed to 
 Limmer's Hotel, where, after a considerable amount of anguish, 
 the ball was extracted, and the wound healed. Now it was all 
 over, the Squire felt very much raised in his own conceit : and, 
 when he was in a humour more than ordinarily tierce, that 
 perilous event became a favourite allusion with him. 
 
 He considered, moreover, that his brother had incurred at his 
 hand the most lasting obligations ; and that, having procured 
 Audley's return to Parliament, and defended his interests at 
 risk of his own life, he had an absolute right to dictate to that 
 gentleman how to vote upon all matters, at least, connected 
 with the landed interest. And when, not very long after Audley 
 took his seat in Parliament, (which he did not do for some 
 months,) he thought proper both to vote and to speak in a 
 manner wholly belying the promises the Squire had made on 
 his behalf, Mr Hazeldean wrote him such a trimmer that it 
 could not but produce an unconciliatory reply. Shortly after- 
 wards, the Squire's exasperation reached the culminating point ; 
 for, having to pass through Lansmere on a market day, he was 
 hooted by the very farmers whom he had induced to vote for his 
 brother ; and, justly imputing the disgrace to Audley, he never 
 heard the name of that traitor to the land mentioned without a 
 heightened colour and an indignant expletive. Monsieur de 
 Buqueville who was the greatest wit of his day had, like the 
 Squire, a half-brother, with whom he was not on the best of 
 terms, and of whom he always spoke as his "frere de loin" 
 Audley Egerton was thus Squire Hazeldean 's " distant-brother /" 
 Enough of these explanatory antecedents let us return to the 
 Stocks.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE Squire's carpenters were taken from the park pales, and 
 set to work at the Parish Stocks. Then came the painter and 
 coloured them a beautiful dark blue, with white border and a 
 white rim round the holes with an ornamental flourish in the 
 middle. It was the gayest public edifice in the whole village 
 though the village possessed no less than three other monuments 
 of the Vitruvian genius of the Hazeldeans to wit, the alms- 
 house, the school, and the parish pump. 
 
 A more elegant, enticing, coquettish pair of stocks never glad- 
 dened the eye of a justice of the peace. 
 
 And Squire Hazeldean's eye was gladdened. In the pride of 
 his heart he brought all the family down to look at the stocks. 
 The Squire's family (omitting the frere de loin) consisted of 
 Mrs Hazeldean, his wife ; next, of Miss Jemima Hazeldean, his 
 first cousin ; thirdly, of Mr Francis Hazeldean, his only son ; and 
 fourthly, of Captain Barnabas Higginbotham, a distant relation 
 who, indeed, strictly speaking, was not of the family, but 
 only a visitor ten months in the year. Mrs Hazeldean was 
 every inch the lady the lady of the parish. In her comely, 
 florid, and somewhat sunburnt countenance, there was an equal 
 expression of majesty and benevolence ; she had a blue eye that 
 invited liking, and an aquiline nose that commanded respect. 
 Mrs Hazeldean had no affectation of fine airs no wish to be 
 greater and handsomer and cleverer than she was. She knew 
 herself, and her station, and thanked heaven for it. There was 
 about her speech and manner something of the shortness and 
 bluntness which often characterise royalty : and if the lady of 
 a parish is not a queen in her own circle, it is never the fault of
 
 56 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 the parish. Mrs Hazeldean dressed her part to perfection. She 
 wore silks that seemed heirlooms so thick were they, so sub- 
 stantial and imposing. And over these, when she was in her 
 own domain, the whitest of aprons ; while at her waist was 
 seen no fiddle-faddle chatelaine, with breloques and trumpery, 
 but a good honest gold watch to mark the time, and a long pair 
 of scissors to cut off the dead leaves from her flowers for she was 
 a great horticulturist. When occasion needed, Mrs Hazeldean 
 could, however, lay by her more sumptuous and imperial 
 raiment for a stout riding-habit, of blue Saxony, and canter by 
 her husband's side to see the hounds throw off. Nay, on the 
 days on which Mr Hazeldean drove his famous fast-trotting cob 
 to the market town, it was rarely that you did not see his wife 
 on the left side of the gig. She cared as little as her lord did 
 for wind and weather, and, in the midst of some pelting shower, 
 her pleasant face peeped over the collar and capes of a stout 
 dreadnought, expanding into smiles and bloom as some frank 
 rose, that opens from its petals, and rejoices in the dews. It 
 was easy to see that the worthy couple had married for love ; 
 they were as little apart as they could help it. And still, on 
 the First of September, if the house was not full of company 
 which demanded her cares, Mrs Hazeldean " stepped out " over 
 the stubbles by her husband's side, with as light a tread and as 
 blithe an eye as when, in the first bridal year, she had enchanted 
 the Squire by her genial sympathy with his sports. 
 
 So there now stands Harriet Hazeldean, one hand leaning on 
 the Squire's broad shoulder, the other thrust into her apron, 
 and trying her best to share her husband's enthusiasm for his 
 own public-spirited patriotism, in the renovation of the parish 
 stocks. A little behind, with two fingers resting on the thin arm 
 of Captain Barnabas, stood Miss Jemima, the orphan daughter 
 of the Squire's uncle, by a runaway imprudent marriage with 
 a young lady who belonged to a family which had been at 
 war with the Hazeldeans since the reign of Charles the First, 
 respecting a right of way to a small wood (or rather spring) 
 of about an acre, through a piece of furze land, which was let 
 to a brickmaker at twelve shillings a-year. The wood belonged 
 to the Hazeldeans, the furze land to the Sticktorights, (an old
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 57 
 
 Saxon family, if ever there was one.) Every twelfth year, when 
 the faggots and timber were felled, this feud broke out afresh ; 
 for the Sticktorights refused to the Hazeldeans the right to cart 
 off the said faggots and timber, through the only way by which 
 a cart could possibly pass. It is just to the Hazeldeans to say 
 that they had offered to buy the land at ten times its value. 
 But the Sticktorights, with equal magnanimity, had declared 
 that they would not " alienate the family property for the con- 
 venience of the best squire that ever stood upon shoe leather." 
 Therefore, every twelfth year, there was always a great breach 
 of the peace on the part of both Hazeldeans and Sticktorights, 
 magistrates and deputy-lieutenants though they were. The 
 question was fairly fought out by their respective dependants, 
 and followed by various actions for assault and trespass. As 
 the legal question of right was extremely obscure, it never had 
 been properly decided ; and, indeed, neither party wished it to 
 be decided, each at heart having some doubt of the propriety of 
 its own claim. A marriage between a younger son of the 
 Hazeldeans, and a younger daughter of the Sticktorights, was 
 viewed with equal indignation by both families ; and the con- 
 sequence had been that the runaway couple, unblessed and 
 unforgiven, had scrambled through life as they could, upon the 
 scanty pay of the husband, who was in a marching regiment, 
 and the interest of .1000, which was the wife's fortune inde- 
 pendent of her parents. They died and left an only daughter, 
 (upon whom the maternal .1000 had been settled,) about the 
 time that the Squire came of age and into possession of his 
 estates. And though he inherited all the ancestral hostility 
 towards the Sticktorights, it was not in his nature to be unkind 
 to a poor orphan, who was, after all, the child of a Hazeldean. 
 Therefore, he had educated and fostered Jemima with as much 
 tenderness as if she had been his sister ; put out her 1000 at 
 nurse, and devoted, from the ready money which had accrued 
 from the rents during his minority, as much as made her for- 
 tune (with her own accumulated at compound interest) no less 
 than 4000, the ordinary marriage portion of the daughters of 
 Hazeldean. On her coming of age, he transferred this sum to 
 her absolute disposal, in order that she might feel herself inde-
 
 58 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 pendent, see a little more of the world than she could at Hazel- 
 dean, have candidates to choose from if she deigned to marry ; 
 or enough to live upon, if she chose to remain single. Miss 
 Jemima had somewhat availed herself of this liberty, by occa- 
 sional visits to Cheltenham and other watering-places. But her 
 grateful affection to the Squire was such, that she could never 
 bear to be long away from the Hall. And this was the more 
 praise to her heart, inasmuch as she was far from taking kindly 
 to the prospect of being an old maid. And there were so few 
 bachelors in the neighbourhood of Hazeldean, that she could 
 not but have that prospect before her eyes whenever she looked 
 out of the Hall windows. Miss Jemima was indeed one of the 
 most kindly and affectionate of beings feminine ; and if she 
 disliked the thought of single blessedness, it really was from 
 those innocent and womanly instincts towards the tender chari- 
 ties of hearth and home, without which a lady, however other- 
 wise estimable, is little better than a Minerva in bronze. But 
 whether or not, despite her fortune and her face, which last, 
 though not strictly handsome, was pleasing, and would have 
 been positively pretty if she had laughed more often, (for when 
 she laughed, there appeared three charming dimples, invisible 
 when she was grave) whether or not, I say, it was the fault of 
 our insensibility or her own fastidiousness, Miss Jemima 
 approached her thirtieth year, arid was still Miss Jemima. 
 Now, therefore, that beautifying laugh of hers was very rarely 
 heard, and she had of late become confirmed in two opinions, 
 not at all conducive to laughter. One was a conviction of the 
 general and progressive wickedness of the male sex, and the 
 other was a decided and lugubrious belief that the world was 
 coming to an end. Miss Jemima was now accompanied by a 
 small canine favourite, true Blenheim, with a snub nose. It 
 was advanced in life, and somewhat obese. It sate on its 
 haunches, with its tongue out of its mouth, except when it 
 snapped at the flies. There was a strong Platonic friend- 
 ship between Miss Jemima and Captain Barnabas Higgin- 
 botham ; for he too was unmarried, and he had the same ill 
 opinion of your sex, my dear madam, that Miss Jemima had 
 of ours. The Captain was a man of a slim and elegant figure ;
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 59 
 
 the less said about the face the better, a truth of which the 
 Captain himself was sensible, for it was a favourite maxim of 
 his "that in a man, everything is a slight, gentlemanlike 
 figure." Captain Barnabas did not absolutely deny that the 
 world was coming to an end, only he thought it would last his 
 time. 
 
 Quite apart from all the rest, with the nonchalant survey of 
 virgin dandeyism, Francis Hazeldean looked over one of the 
 high starched neckcloths which were then the fashion a hand- 
 some lad, fresh from Eton for the summer holidays, but at that 
 ambiguous age, when one disdains the sports of the boy, and has 
 not yet arrived at the resources of the man. 
 
 " I should be glad, Frank," said the Squire, suddenly turning 
 round to his son, "to see you take a little more interest in 
 duties which, one day or other, you may be called upon to dis- 
 charge. I can't bear to think that the property should fall into 
 the hands of a fine gentleman, who will let things go to rack 
 and ruin, instead of keeping them up as I do." 
 
 And the Squire pointed to the stocks. 
 
 Master Frank's eye followed the direction of the cane, as well 
 as his cravat would permit ; and he said, drily 
 
 " Yes, sir; but how came the stocks to be so long out of repair?" 
 
 " Because one can't see to everything at once," retorted the 
 Squire, tartly. " When a man has got eight thousand acres to 
 look after, he must do a bit at a time." 
 
 " Yes," said Captain Barnabas. " I know that by experience." 
 
 " The deuce you do !" cried the Squire, bluntly. " Experience 
 in eight thousand acres ! " 
 
 "No; in my apartments in the Albany No. 3 A. I have 
 had them ten years, and it was only last Christmas that I 
 bought my Japan cat." 
 
 " Dear me," said Miss Jemima ; " a Japan cat ! that must be 
 very curious ! What sort of a creature is it ? " 
 
 " Don't you know ? Bless me, a thing with three legs, and 
 holds toast ! I never thought of it, I assure you, till my friend 
 Cosey said to me, one morning when he was breakfasting at my 
 rooms ' Higginbotham, how is it that you, who like to have 
 things comfortable about you, don't have a cat T ' Upon my
 
 
 60 MY NOVEL j OB, 
 
 life,' said I, 'one can't think of everything at a time ;' just like 
 you, Squire." 
 
 " Pshaw," said Mr Hazeldean, gruffly " not at all like me. 
 And I'll thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to 
 put me out, when I'm speaking on matters of importance ; 
 poking your cat into my stocks ! They look something like 
 now, my stocks don't they, Harry ? I declare that the whole 
 village seems more respectable. It is astonishing how much 
 a little improvement adds to the to the " 
 
 "Charm of a landscape," put in Miss Jemima sentimentally. 
 
 The Squire neither accepted nor rejected the suggested termi- 
 nation ; but, leaving his sentence uncompleted, broke suddenly 
 off with 
 
 " And if I had listened to Parson Dale " 
 
 " You would have done a very wise thing," said a voice be- 
 hind, as the Parson presented himself in the rear. 
 
 " Wise thing ! Why, surely, Mr Dale," said Mrs Hazeldean 
 with spirit, for she always resented the least contradiction to 
 her lord and master perhaps as an interference with her own 
 special right and prerogative ! "why, surely if it is necessary 
 to have stocks, it is necessary to repair them." 
 
 " That's right go it, Harry ! " cried the Squire, chuckling, 
 and rubbing his hands as if he had been setting his terrier at 
 the Parson : " St St at him ! Well, Master Dale, what do 
 you say to that ? " 
 
 " My dear ma'am," said the Parson, replying in preference to 
 the lady, "there are many institutions in the country which 
 are very old, look very decayed, and don't seem of much use ; 
 but I would not pull them down for all that." 
 
 " You would reform them, then," said Mrs Hazeldean, doubt- 
 fully, and with a look at her husband, as much as to say, " He 
 is on politics now that's your business." 
 
 " No, I would not, ma'am," said the Parson stoutly. 
 
 " What on earth would you do, then ? " quoth the Squire. 
 
 " Just let 'em alone," said the Parson. " Master Frank, there's 
 a Latin maxim which was often in the mouth of Sir Robert 
 Walpole, and which they ought to put into the Eton grammar 
 ' Quieta non movere.' If things are quiet, let them be quiet !
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 61 
 
 I would not destroy the stocks, because that might seem to the 
 ill-disposed like a license to offend ; and I would not repair the 
 stocks, because that puts it into people's heads to get into them." 
 
 The Squire was a staunch politician of the old school, and he 
 did not like to think that, in repairing the stocks, he had per- 
 haps been conniving at revolutionary principles. 
 
 " This constant desire of innovation," said Miss Jemima, sud- 
 denly mounting the more funereal of her two favourite hobbies, 
 " is one of the great symptoms of the approaching crash. We 
 are altering, and mending, and reforming, when in twenty 
 years at the utmost the world itself may be destroyed ! " The 
 fair speaker paused, and 
 
 Captain Barnabas said, thoughtfully " Twenty years ! the 
 insurance offices rarely compute the best life at more than four- 
 teen." He struck his hand on the stocks as he spoke, and added 
 with his usual consolatory conclusion " The odds are, that it 
 will last our time, Squire." 
 
 But whether Captain Barnabas meant the stocks or the world, 
 he did not clearly explain, and no one took the trouble to 
 inquire. 
 
 " Sir," said Master Frank, to his father, with that furtive 
 spirit of quizzing which he had acquired amongst other polite 
 accomplishments at Eton '' sir, it is no use now considering 
 whether the stocks should or should not have been repaired. 
 The only question is, whom you will get to put into them ? " 
 
 "True," said the Squire, with much gravity. 
 
 '' Yes, there it is ! " said the Parson, mournfully. " If you 
 would but learn ' non quieta movere ! ' " 
 
 " Don't spout your Latin at me, Parson ! " cried the Squire, 
 angrily ; " I can give you as good as you bring any day. 
 
 ' Propria quae maribus tribuuntur mascula dicas. 
 As in prsesenti, perfectum format in avi.' 
 
 There," added the Squire, turning triumphantly towards his 
 Harry, who looked with great admiration at this unprecedented 
 burst of learning on the part of Mr Hazeldean " there, two can 
 play at that game ! And now that we have all seen the stocks, 
 we may as well go home, and drink tea. Will you come up and
 
 62 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 play a rubber, Dale ? No ! hang it, man, I've not offended 
 you you know my ways." 
 
 " That I do, and they are among the things I would not have 
 altered," cried the Parson holding out his hand cheerfully. 
 The Squire gave it a hearty shake, and Mrs Hazeldean hastened 
 to do the same. 
 
 "Do come; I am afraid we've been very rude; we are sad 
 blunt folks. Do come ; that's a dear good man ; and of course 
 poor Mrs Dale too." Mrs Hazeldean's favourite epithet for Mrs 
 Dale was poor, and that for reasons to be explained hereafter. 
 
 " I fear my wife has got one of her bad headaches, but I will 
 give her your kind message, and at all events you may depend 
 upon me." 
 
 " That's right," said the Squire ; " in half-an-hour, eh ? How 
 d'ye do, my little man ? " as Lenny Fairfield, on his way home 
 from some errand in the village, drew aside and pulled off his 
 hat with both hands. " Stop you see those stocks eh? 
 Tell all the bad boys in the parish to take care how they 
 get into them a sad disgrace you'll never be in such a quan- 
 dary?" 
 
 " That at least I will answer for," said the Parson. 
 
 " And I too," added Mrs Hazeldean, patting the boy's curly 
 head. " Tell your mother I shall come and have a good chat 
 with her to-morrow evening." 
 
 And so the party passed on, and Lenny stood still on the 
 road, staring hard at the stocks, which stared back at him from 
 its four great eyes. 
 
 But Lenny did not remain long alone. As soon as the great 
 folks had fairly disappeared, a large number of small folks 
 emerged timorously from the neighbouring cottages, and 
 approached the site of the stocks with much marvel, fear, and 
 curiosity. 
 
 In fact, the renovated appearance of this monster a propos 
 de bottes, as one may say had already excited considerable 
 sensation among the population of Hazeldean. And even as 
 when an unexpected owl makes his appearance in broad day- 
 light, all the little birds rise from tree and hedgerow, and 
 cluster round their ominous enemy, so now gathered all the
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 63 
 
 much excited villagers round the intrusive and portentous 
 Phenomenon. 
 
 " D'ye know what the diggius the Squire did it for, Gaffer 
 Solomons ? " asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in 
 arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, 
 and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous 
 hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his head into one 
 of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to a sage old man, the 
 oracle of the village, who, leaning both hands on his crutch, 
 shook his head bodingly. 
 
 " Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some of the boys ha' been 
 robbing the orchards." 
 
 " Orchards ! " cried a big lad who seemed to think himself 
 personally appealed to "why, the bud's scarce off the trees 
 yet ! " 
 
 " No more it in't ! " said the dame with many children, and 
 she breathed more freely. 
 
 " Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, " some o' ye has been sitting 
 snares." 
 
 " What for ? " said a stout sullen-looking young fellow, whom 
 conscience possibly pricked to reply " what for, when it beau't 
 the season 1 And if a poor man did find a hear in his pocket 
 i' the haytime, I should like to know if ever a squire in the 
 world would let un off wi' the stocks eh 1 " 
 
 This last question seemed a settler, and the wisdom of Gaffer 
 Solomons went down fifty per cent in the public opinion of 
 Hazel dean. 
 
 " Maw be," said the Gaffer this time with a thrilling effect, 
 which restored his reputation " maw be some o' ye ha' been 
 getting drunk, and making beestises o' yoursels ! " 
 
 There was a dead pause, for this suggestion applied too gener- 
 ally to be met with a solitary response. At last one of the 
 women said, with a meaning glance at her husband, " God bless 
 the Squire ; he'll make some on us happy women if that's all ! " 
 
 There then arose an almost unanimous murmur of approba- 
 tion among the female part of the audience ; and the men looked 
 at each other, and then at the Phenomenon, with a very hang- 
 dog expression of countenance.
 
 64 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 "Or, maw be," resumed Gaffer Solomons, encouraged to a 
 fourth suggestion by the success of its predecessor " maw be 
 some o' the Misseses ha' been making a rumpus, and scolding 
 their goodmen. I heard say in my granfeythir's time, that 
 arter old Mother Bang nigh died o' the ducking-stool, them 'ere 
 stocks were first made for the women, out o' compassion like ! 
 And every one knows the Squire is a koind-hearted man, God 
 bless un ! " 
 
 " God bless un ! " cried the men heartily ; and they gathered 
 lovingly round the Phenomenon, like heathens of old round a 
 tutelary temple. But then there rose one shrill clamour among 
 the females, as they retreated with involuntary steps towards 
 the verge of the green, whence they glared at Solomons and the 
 Phenomenon with eyes so sparkling, and pointed at both with 
 gestures so menacing, that Heaven only knows if a morsel of 
 either would have remained much longer to offend the eyes of 
 the justly enraged matronage of Hazeldean, if fortunately Master 
 Stirn, the Squire's right-hand man, had not come up in the nick 
 of time. 
 
 Master Stirn was a formidable personage more formidable 
 than the Squire himself as, indeed, a squire's right hand is 
 generally more formidable than the head can pretend to be. He 
 inspired the greater awe, because, like the stocks, of which he 
 was deputed guardian, his powers were undefined and obscure, 
 and he had no particular place in the out-of-door establishment. 
 He was not the steward, yet he did much of what ought to be 
 the steward's work ; he was not the farm-bailiff, for the Squire 
 called himself his own farm-bailiff; nevertheless, Mr Hazeldean 
 sowed and ploughed, cropped and stocked, bought and sold, very 
 much as Mr Stirn condescended to advise. He was not the 
 park-keeper, for he neither shot the deer nor superintended the 
 preserves ; but it was he who always found out who had broken 
 a park-pale or snared a rabbit. In short, what may be called 
 all the harsher duties of a large landed proprietor devolved by 
 custom and choice upon Mr Stirn. If a labourer was to be dis- 
 charged, or a rent enforced, and the Squire knew that he should 
 be talked over, and that the Steward would be as soft as himself, 
 Mr Stirn was sure to be the avenging ayyikog or messenger, to
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 65 
 
 pronounce the words of fate ; so that he appeared to the inhabi- 
 tants of Hazeldean like the Poet's Saeva Necessitas, a vague 
 incarnation of remorseless power, armed with whips, nails, and 
 wedges. The very brute creation stood in awe of Mr Stirn. 
 The calves knew that it was he who singled out which should 
 be sold to the butcher, and huddled up into a corner with beat- 
 ing hearts at his grim footstep ; the sow grunted, the duck 
 quacked, the hen bristled her feathers and called to her chicks 
 when Mr Stirn drew near. Nature had set her stamp upon 
 him. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the great M. de 
 Chambray himself, surnamed the Brave, had an aspect so awe- 
 inspiring as that of Mr Stirn ; albeit the face of that hero was 
 so terrible, that a man who had been his lackey, seeing his por- 
 trait after he had been dead twenty years, fell a-trembling all 
 over like a leaf ! 
 
 " And what the plague are you all doing here ? " said Mr 
 Stirn, as he waved and smacked a great cart-whip which he 
 held in his hand, " making such a hullabaloo, you women, you ! 
 that I suspect the Squire will be sending out to know if the 
 village is on fire. Go home, will ye 1 High time indeed to 
 have the stocks ready, when you get squalling and conspiring 
 under the very nose of a justice of the peace, just as the French 
 revolutioners did afore they cut off their king's head; my hair 
 stands on end to look at ye." But already, before half this 
 address was delivered, the crowd had dispersed in all directions 
 the women still keeping together, and the men sneaking off 
 towards the ale-house. Such was the beneficent effect of the 
 fatal stocks on the first day of their resuscitation ! 
 
 However, in the break-up of every crowd there must always 
 be one who gets off the last ; and it so happened that our friend 
 Lenny Fairfield, who had mechanically approached close to the 
 stocks, the better to hear the oracular opinions of Gaffer Solo- 
 mons, had no less mechanically, on the abrupt appearance of 
 Mr Stirn, crept, as he hoped, out of sight behind the trunk of 
 the elm-tree which partially shaded the stocks ; and there now, 
 as if fascinated, he still cowered, not daring to emerge in full 
 view of Mr Stirn, and in immediate reach of the cart-whip 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 66 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 when the quick eye of the right-hand man detected his 
 retreat. 
 
 "Hallo you, sir what the deuce, laying a mine to blow up 
 the stocks ! just like Guy Fox and the Gunpowder Plot, I de- 
 clares ! What ha' you got in your willainous little fist there ? " 
 
 " Nothing, sir," said Lenny, opening his palm. 
 
 "Nothing um ! " said Mr Stirn, much dissatisfied ; and then, 
 as he gazed more deliberately, recognising the pattern boy of 
 the village, a cloud yet darker gathered over his brow ; for Mr 
 Stirn, who valued himself much on his learning and who, 
 indeed, by dint of more knowledge as well as more wit than his 
 neighbours, had attained his present eminent station of life 
 was extremely anxious that his only son should also be a 
 scholar ; that wish 
 
 " The gods dispersed in empty air." 
 
 Master Stirn was a notable dunce at the Parson's school, while 
 Lenny Fairfield was the pride and boast of it ; therefore Mr 
 Stirn was naturally, and almost justifiably, ill-disposed towards 
 Lenny Fairfield, who had appropriated to himself the praises 
 which Mr Stirn had designed for his son. 
 
 " Um ! " said the right-hand man, glowering on Lenny malig- 
 nantly, " you are the pattern boy of the village, are you 1 Very 
 well, sir then I put these here stocks under your care and 
 you'll keep off the other boys from sitting on 'em, and picking 
 off the paint, and playing three-holes and chuck-farthing, as 
 I declare they've been a-doing, just in front of the elewation. 
 Now, you knows your 'sponsibilities, little boy and a great 
 honour they are too, for the like o' you. If any damage be 
 done, it is to you I shall look ; d'ye understand 1 and that's 
 what the Squire says to me. So you sees what it is to be a 
 pattern boy, Master Lenny ! " 
 
 With that Mr Stirn gave a loud crack of the cart-whip, by 
 way of military honours, over the head of the vicegerent he had 
 thus created, and strode off to pay a visit to two young unsus- 
 pecting pups, whose ears and tails he had graciously promised 
 their proprietor to crop that evening. Nor, albeit few charges 
 could be more obnoxious than that of deputy-governor or
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 67 
 
 charge-d 1 affaires extraordinaire to the Parish Stocks, nor one 
 more likely to render Lenny Fairfield odious to his contem- 
 poraries, ought he to have been insensible to the signal advan- 
 tage of his condition over that of the two sufferers, against whose 
 ears and tails Mr Stirn had no especial motives of resentment. 
 To every bad there is a worse and fortunately for little boys, 
 and even for grown men, whom the Stirns of the world regard 
 malignly, the majesty of law protects their ears, and the merci- 
 ful forethought of nature deprived their remote ancestors of the 
 privilege of entailing tails upon them. Had it been otherwise 
 considering what handles tails would have given to the 
 oppressor, how many traps envy would have laid for them, how 
 often they must have been scratched and mutilated by the briars 
 of life, how many good excuses would have been found for 
 lopping, docking, and trimming them I fear that only the lap- 
 dogs of Fortune would have gone to the grave tail-whole.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE card-table was set out in the drawing-room at Hazeldean 
 Hall ; though the little party were still lingering in the deep 
 recess of the large bay window which (in itself of dimensions 
 that would have swallowed up a moderate-sized London parlour) 
 held the great round tea-table, with all appliances and means 
 to boot for the beautiful summer moon shed on the sward so 
 silvery a lustre, and the trees cast so quiet a shadow, and the 
 flowers and new-mown hay sent up so grateful a perfume, that, 
 to close the windows, draw the curtains, and call for other lights 
 than those of heaven, would have been an abuse of the prose of 
 life which even Captain Barnabas, who regarded whist as the 
 business of town and the holiday of the country, shrank from 
 suggesting. Without, the scene, beheld by the clear moonlight, 
 had the beauty peculiar to the garden-ground round those old- 
 fashioned country residences which, though a little modernised, 
 still preserve their original character : the velvet lawn, studded 
 with large plots of flowers, shaded and scented here, to the left 
 by lilacs, laburnums, and rich seringas there, to the right, 
 giving glimpses, over low-clipped yews, of a green bowling-alley, 
 with the white columns of a summerhouse built after the Dutch 
 taste, in the reign of William III. ; and in front stealing away 
 under covert of those still cedars, into the wilder landscape of 
 the well- wooded undulating park. Within, viewed by the placid 
 glimmer of the moon, the scene was no less characteristic of the 
 abodes of that race which has no parallel in other lands, and 
 which, alas, is somewhat losing its native idiosyncrasies in this 
 the stout country gentleman, not the fine gentleman of the 
 country the country gentleman somewhat softened and civilised
 
 MY NOVEL. 69 
 
 from the mere sportsman or farmer, but still plain and homely, 
 relinquishing the old hall for the drawing-room, and with books 
 not three months old on his table, instead of Fox's Martyrs and 
 Baker's Chronicle yet still retaining many a sacred old preju- 
 dice, that, like the knots in his native oak, rather adds to the 
 ornament of the grain than takes from the strength of the tree. 
 Opposite to the window, the high chimney-piece rose to the 
 heavy cornice of the ceiling, with dark panels glistening against 
 the moonlight. The broad and rather clumsy chintz sofas and 
 settees of the reign of George III., contrasted at intervals with 
 the tall-backed chairs of a far more distant generation, when 
 ladies in fardingales, and gentlemen in trunk-hose, seem never 
 to have indulged in horizontal positions. The walls, of shining 
 wainscot, were thickly covered, chiefly with family pictures ; 
 though now and then some Dutch fair, or battle-piece, showed 
 that a former proprietor had been less exclusive in his taste for 
 the arts. The pianoforte stood open near the fireplace ; a long 
 dwarf bookcase, at the far end, added its sober smile to the room. 
 That bookcase contained what was called " The Lady's Library," 
 a collection commenced by the Squire's grandmother, of pious 
 memory, and completed by his mother, who had more taste for 
 the lighter letters, with but little addition from the bibliomaniac 
 tendencies of the present Mrs Hazeldean, who, being no great 
 reader, contented herself with subscribing to the Book Club. In 
 this feminine Bodleian, the sermons collected by Mrs Hazeldean, 
 the grandmother, stood cheek-by-jowl beside the novels pur- 
 chased by Mrs Hazeldean, the mother. 
 
 " Mixtaque rideuti fundet colcasia acantho ! " 
 
 But, to be sure, the novels, in spite of very inflammatory titles, 
 such as "Fatal Sensibility," " Errors of the Heart," &c., were so 
 harmless that I doubt if the sermons could have had much to 
 say against their next-door neighbours and that is all that can 
 be expected by the best of us. 
 
 A parrot dozing on his perch some gold fish fast asleep in 
 their glass bowl two or three dogs on the rug, and Flimsey, 
 Miss Jemima's spaniel, curled into a ball on the softest sofa 
 Mrs Hazeldean's work-table, rather in disorder, as if it had been
 
 70 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 lately used the St James's Chronicle dangling down from a little 
 tripod near the Squire's arm-chair a high screen of gilt and 
 stamped leather fencing off the card-table : all these, dispersed 
 about a room large enough to hold them all and not seem 
 crowded, offered many a pleasant resting-place for the eye, 
 when it turned from the world of nature to the home of man. 
 
 But see, Captain Barnabas, fortified by his fourth cup of tea, 
 has at length summoned courage to whisper to Mrs Hazeldean, 
 " Don't you think the Parson will be impatient for his rubber?" 
 Mrs Hazeldean glanced at the Parson, and smiled ; but she gave 
 the signal to the Captain, and the bell was rung, lights were 
 brought in, the curtains let down ; in a few moments more, the 
 group had collected round the card-table. The best of us are 
 but human that is not a new truth, I confess, but yet people 
 forget it every day of their lives and I dare say there are many 
 who are charitably thinking at this very moment, that my Par- 
 son ought not to be playing at whist. All I can say to those 
 rigid disciplinarians is, " Every man has his favourite sin : whist 
 was Parson Dale's ! ladies and gentlemen, what is yours 1 " In 
 truth, I must not set up my poor parson, now-a-days, as a pat- 
 tern parson it is enough to have one pattern in a village no 
 bigger than Hazeldean, and we all know that Lenny Fairfield 
 has bespoken that place, and got the patronage of the stocks for 
 his emoluments ! Parson Dale was ordained, not indeed so very 
 long ago, but still at a time when churchmen took it a great 
 deal more easily than they do now. The elderly parson of that 
 day played his rubber as a matter of course, the middle-aged 
 parson was sometimes seen riding to cover, (I knew a school- 
 master, a doctor of divinity, and an excellent man, whose pupils 
 were chiefly taken from the highest families in England, who 
 hunted regularly three times a-week during the season,) and the 
 young parson would often sing a capital song not composed 
 by David and join in those rotatory dances, which certainly 
 David never danced before the ark. 
 
 Does it need so long an exordium to excuse thee, poor Parson 
 Dale, for turning up that ace of spades with so triumphant a 
 smile at thy partner ? I must own that nothing which could well 
 add to the Parson's offence was wanting. In the first place, he
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 71 
 
 did not play charitably, and merely to oblige other people. He 
 delighted in the game he rejoiced in the game his whole 
 heart was in the game neither was he indifferent to the mam- 
 moii of the thing, as a Christian pastor ought to have been. He 
 looked very sad when he took his shillings out of his purse, and 
 exceedingly pleased when he put the shillings that had just 
 before belonged to other people into it. Finally, by one of those 
 arrangements common with married people, who play at the 
 same table, Mr and Mrs Hazeldean were invariably partners, 
 and no two people could play worse ; while Captain Barnabas, 
 who had played at Graham's with honour and profit, necessarily 
 became partner to Parson Dale, who himself played a good 
 steady parsonic game. So that, in strict truth, it was hardly 
 fair play it was almost swindling the combination of these 
 two great dons against that innocent married couple ! Mr Dale, 
 it is true, was aware of this disproportion of force, and had often 
 proposed either to change partners or to give odds propositions 
 always scornfully scouted by the Squire and his lady ; so that 
 the Parson was obliged to pocket his conscience, together with 
 the ten points which made his average winnings. 
 
 The strangest thing in the world is the different way in which 
 whist affects the temper. It is no test of temper, as some pre- 
 tend not at all ! The best-tempered people in the world grow 
 snappish at whist ; and I have seen the most testy and peevish 
 in the ordinary affairs of life bear their losses with the stoicism 
 of Epictetus. This was notably manifested in the contrast 
 between the present adversaries of the Hall and the Rectory. 
 The Squire, who was esteemed as choleric a gentleman as most 
 in the county, was the best-humoured fellow you could imagine 
 when you set him down to whist opposite the sunny face of his 
 wife. You never heard one of those incorrigible blunderers 
 scold each other ; on the contrary, they only laughed when they 
 threw away the game, with four by honours in their hands. 
 The utmost that was ever said was a " Well, Harry, that was 
 the oddest trump of yours. Ho ho ho ! " or a " Bless me, 
 Hazeldean why, they made three tricks in clubs, and you had 
 the ace in your hand all the time ! Ha ha ha ! " 
 
 Upon which occasions Captain Barnabas, with great good
 
 72 JIT NOVEL; OB, 
 
 humour, always echoed both the Squire's Ho ho ho ! and Mrs 
 Hazeldean's Ha ha ha ! 
 
 Not so the Parson. He had so keen and sportsmanlike an 
 interest in the game, that even his adversaries' mistakes ruffled 
 him. And you would hear him, with elevated voice and agi- 
 tated gestures, laying down the law, quoting Hoyle, appealing 
 to all the powers of memory and common sense against the 
 very delinquencies by which he was enriched a waste of elo- 
 quence that always heightened the hilarity of Mr and Mrs 
 Hazeldean. While these four were thus engaged, Mrs Dale, 
 who had come with her husband despite her headache, sate on 
 the sofa beside Miss Jemima, or rather beside Miss Jemima's 
 Flimsey, which had already secured the centre of the sofa, and 
 snarled at the very idea of being disturbed. And Master Frank 
 at a table by himself was employed sometimes in looking 
 at his pumps, and sometimes at Gilray's Caricatures, which 
 his mother had provided for his intellectual requirements. 
 Mrs Dale, in her heart, liked Miss Jemima better than Mrs 
 Hazeldean, of whom she was rather in awe, notwithstanding 
 they had been little girls together, and occasionally still called 
 each other Harry and Carry. But those tender diminutives 
 belonged to the " Dear " genus, and were rarely employed 
 by the ladies, except at times when had they been little 
 girls still, and the governess out of the way, they would 
 have slapped and pinched each other. Mrs Dale was still 
 a very pretty woman, as Mrs Hazeldean was still a very 
 fine woman. Mrs Dale painted in water colours and sang, and 
 made card-racks and pen-holders, and was called an "elegant 
 accomplished woman." Mrs Hazeldean cast up the Squire's 
 accounts, wrote the best part of his letters, kept a large estab- 
 lishment in excellent order, and was called "a clever, sensible 
 woman." Mrs Dale had headaches and nerves, Mrs Hazeldean 
 had neither nerves nor headaches. Mrs Dale said " Harry had 
 no real harm in her, but was certainly very masculine." Mrs 
 Hazeldean said, " Carry would be a good creature, but for her 
 airs and graces." Mrs Dale said, Mrs Hazeldean was "just made 
 to be a country squire's lady." Mrs Hazeldean said, " Mrs 
 Dale was the last person in the world who ought to have been
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 73 
 
 a parson's wife." Carry, when she spoke of Harry to a third 
 person, said, " Dear Mrs Hazeldean." Harry, when she refer- 
 red incidentally to Carry, said, " Poor Mrs Dale." And now the 
 reader knows why Mrs Hazeldean called Mrs Dale " poor," at 
 least as well as I do. For, after all, the word belonged to that class 
 in the female vocabulary which may be called " obscure signifi- 
 cants," resembling the Konx Ompax, which hath so puzzled the 
 inquirers into the Eleusinian Mysteries : the application is rather 
 to be illustrated than the meaning to be exactly explained. 
 
 " That's really a sweet little dog of yours, Jemima," said 
 Mrs Dale, who was embroidering the word CAROLINE on the 
 border of a cambric pocket-handkerchief, but edging a little 
 farther off, as she added, " he'll not bite, will he ? " " Dear me, 
 no ! " said Miss Jemima ; but (she added, in a confidential 
 whisper) " don't say he 'tis a lady dog ! " " Oh," said Mrs Dale, 
 edging off still farther, as if that confession of the creature's sex 
 did not serve to allay her apprehensions " oh, then, you carry 
 your aversion to the gentlemen even to lap-dogs that is being 
 consistent indeed, Jemima ! " 
 
 Miss JEMIMA. " I had a gentleman dog once a pug ! 
 pugs are getting'very scarce now. I thought he was so fond of 
 me he snapped at every one else : the battles I fought for 
 him ! Well, will you believe I had been staying with my 
 friend Miss Smilecox at Cheltenham. Knowing that William 
 is so hasty, and his boots are so thick, I trembled to think what 
 a kick might do. So, on coming here, I left Buff that was his 
 name with Miss Smilecox." (A pause.) 
 MRS DALE, (looking up languidly.) "Well, my love?" 
 Miss JEMIMA. "Will you believe it, I say, when I re- 
 turned to Cheltenham, only three months afterwards, Miss 
 Smilecox had seduced his affections from me, and the ungrate- 
 ful creature did not even know me again. A pug, too yet 
 people say pugs are faithful ! ! ! I am sure they ought to be, 
 nasty things. I have never had a gentleman dog since they 
 are all alike, believe me heartless, selfish creatures." 
 MRS DALE. " Pugs 1 I dare say they are ! " 
 Miss JEMIMA, (with spirit.) " MEN ! I told you it was a 
 gentleman dog ! "
 
 74 MY NOVEL j OB, 
 
 MRS DALE, (apologetically.) " True, my love, but the whole 
 thing was so mixed up ! " 
 
 Miss JEMIMA." You saw that cold-blooded case of Breach 
 of Promise of Marriage in the papers an old wretch, too, of 
 sixty-four. No age makes them a bit better. And when one 
 thinks that the end of all flesh is approaching, and that " 
 
 MRS DALE, (quickly, for she prefers Miss Jemima's other 
 hobby to that black one upon which she is preparing to precede 
 the bier of the universe.) " Yes, my love, we'll avoid that 
 subject, if you please. Mr Dale has his own opinions, and it 
 becomes me, you know, as a parson's wife," (said smilingly : 
 Mrs Dale has as pretty a dimple as any of Miss Jemima's, and 
 makes more of that one than Miss Jemima of three,) " to agree 
 with him that is, in theology." 
 
 Miss JEMIMA, (earnestly.) " But the thing is so clear, if 
 you would but look into " 
 
 MRS DALE, (putting her hand on Miss Jemima's lips play- 
 fully.) "Not a word more. Pray, what do you think of the 
 Squire's tenant at the Casino, Signer Riccabocca 1 An inter- 
 esting creature, is not he 1 " 
 
 Miss JEMIMA. "Interesting! not to me. Interesting? 
 Why is he interesting 1 " 
 
 Mrs Dale is silent, and turns her handkerchief in her pretty 
 little white hands, appearing to contemplate the R in Caroline. 
 
 Miss JEMIMA, (half pettishly, half coaxingly.) " Why is he 
 interesting ? I scarcely ever looked at him ; they say he 
 smokes, and never eats. Ugly, too ! " 
 
 MRS DALE. "Ugly no. A fine head very like Dante's 
 but what is beauty ? " 
 
 Miss JEMIMA. " Very true : what is it indeed ? Yes, as 
 you say, I think there is something interesting about him ; he 
 looks melancholy, but that may be because he is poor." 
 
 MRS DALE. "It is astonishing how little one feels poverty 
 when one loves. Charles and I were very poor once before 
 
 the Squire ." Mrs Dale paused, looked towards the Squire, 
 
 and murmured a blessing, the warmth of which brought tears 
 into her eyes. " Yes," she added, after a pause, " we were very 
 poor, but we were happy even then more thanks to Charles
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 75 
 
 than to me ;" and tears from a new source again dimmed those 
 quick lively eyes, as the little woman gazed fondly on her hus- 
 band, whose brows were knit into a black frown over a bad 
 hand. 
 
 Miss JEMIMA. " It is only those horrid men who think of 
 money as a source of happiness. I should be the last person to 
 esteem a gentleman less because he was poor." 
 
 MRS DALE. " I wonder the Squire does not ask Signor Ric- 
 cabocca here more often. Such an acquisition we find him ! " 
 
 The Squire's voice from the card-table. " Whom ought I to 
 ask more often, Mrs Dale 1 " 
 
 Parson's voice impatiently. " Come come come, Squire : 
 play to my queen of diamonds do ! " 
 
 SQUIRE. " There, I trump it pick up the trick, Mrs H." 
 
 PARSON. " Stop ! stop ! trump my diamond ? " 
 
 The CAPTAIN, (solemnly.) " Trick turned play on, Squire." 
 
 SQUIRE. " The king of diamonds." 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN. "Lord! Hazeldean why, that's the 
 most barefaced revoke ha ha ha ! trump the queen of dia- 
 monds and play out the king ! well I never ha ha ha ! " 
 
 CAPTAIN BARNABAS, (in tenor.) " Ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 SQUIRE. " Ho ho ho ! bless my soul ho, ho, ho ! " 
 
 CAPTAIN BARNABAS, (in base.) " Ho ho ho." 
 
 Parson's voice raised, but drowned by the laughter of his 
 adversaries and the firm clear tone of Captain Barnabas 
 " Three to our score ! game ! " 
 
 SQUIRE, (wiping his eyes.) "N"o help for it, Harry deal 
 for me ! "Whom ought I to ask, Mrs Dale 1 (waxing angry.) 
 First time I ever heard the hospitality of Hazeldean called in 
 question ! " 
 
 MRS DALE. "My dear sir, I beg a thousand pardons, but 
 listeners you know the proverb." 
 
 SQUIRE, (growling like a bear.) " I hear nothing but pro- 
 verbs ever since we had that Mounseer among us. Please to 
 speak plainly, ma'am." 
 
 MRS DALE, (sliding into a little temper at being thus roughly 
 accosted.) " It was of Mounseer, as you call him, that I spoke, 
 Mr Hazeldean."
 
 76 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 SQUIRE." What ! Rickeybockey ? " 
 
 MRS DALE, (attempting the pure Italian accentuation.) 
 " Signer Riccabocca." 
 
 PARSON, (slapping his cards on the table in despair.) " Are 
 we playing at whist, or are we not ? " 
 
 The Squire, who is fourth player, drops the king to Captain 
 Higginbotham's lead of the ace of hearts. Now the Captain has 
 left queen, knave, and two other hearts four trumps to the 
 queen and nothing to win a trick with in the two other suits. 
 This hand is therefore precisely one of those in which, especially 
 after the fall of that king of hearts in the adversary's hand, it 
 becomes a matter of reasonable doubt whether to lead trumps 
 or not. The Captain hesitates, and not liking to play out his 
 good hearts with the certainty of their being trumped by the 
 Squire, nor, on the other hand, liking to open the other suits 
 in which he has not a card that can assist his partner, resolves, 
 as becomes a military man, in such dilemma, to make a bold 
 push and lead out trumps, in the chance of finding his partner 
 strong, and so bringing in his long suit. 
 
 SQUIRE, (taking advantage of the much meditating pause 
 made by the Captain.) " Mrs Dale, it is not my fault. I have 
 asked Rickeybockey time out of mind. But I suppose I am 
 not fine enough for those foreign chaps. He'll not come that's 
 all I know ! " 
 
 PARSON, (aghast at seeing the Captain play out trumps, of 
 which he, Mr Dale, has only two, wherewith he expects to ruff 
 the suit of spades of which he has only one the cards all fall- 
 ing in suits while he has not a single other chance of a trick 
 in his hand.) " Really, Squire, we had better give up playing 
 if you put out my partner in this extraordinary way jabber 
 jabber jabber ! " 
 
 SQUIRE. " Well, we must be good children, Harry. What ! 
 trumps, Barney 1 Thank ye for that ! " And the Squire 
 might well be grateful, for the unfortunate adversary has led up 
 to ace king knave with two other trumps. Squire takes the 
 Parson's ten with his knave, and plays out ace king ; then, 
 having cleared all the trumps except the Captain's queen and 
 his own remaining two, leads off tierce major in that very suit
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 77 
 
 ,of spades of which the Parson has only one and the Captain, 
 indeed, but two forces out the Captain's queen, and wins the 
 game in a canter. 
 
 PARSON, (with a look at the Captain which might have 
 become the awful brows of Jove, when about to thunder.) 
 " That, I suppose, is the new-fashioned London play ! In my 
 time the rule was ' First save the game, then try to win it.' " 
 
 CAPTAIN. "Could not save it, sir." 
 
 PARSON, (exploding.) " Not save it ! two ruffs in my own 
 hand two tricks certain till you took them out ! Mon- 
 strous ! The rashest trump " Seizes the cards spreads them 
 on the table, lip quivering, hands trembling tries to show 
 how five tricks could have been gained (N.B. it is short whist, 
 which Captain Barnabas had introduced at the Hall) can't make 
 out more than four Captain smiles triumphantly Parson in 
 a passion, and not at all convinced, mixes all the cards together 
 again, and falling back in his chair, groans, with tears in his 
 voice. " The cruellest trump ! the most wanton cruelty ! " 
 
 The Hazeldeans in chorus. " Ho ho ho ! Ha ha 
 ha ! " 
 
 The Captain, who does not laugh this time, and whose turn 
 it is to deal, shuffles the cards for the conquering game of the 
 rubber with as much caution and prolixity as Fabius might 
 have employed in posting his men. The Squire gets up to 
 stretch his legs, and, the insinuation against his hospitality re- 
 curring to his thoughts, calls out to his wife " Write to Rickey- 
 bockey to-morrow yourself, Harry, and ask him to come and 
 spend two or three days here. There, Mrs Dale, you hear me 1 " 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Dale, putting her hands to her ears in implied 
 rebuke at the loudness of the Squire's tone. " My dear sir, do 
 remember that I'm a sad nervous creature." 
 
 " Beg pardon," muttered Mr Hazeldean, turning to his son, 
 who having got tired of the caricatures, had fished out for him- 
 self the great folio County History, which was the only book in 
 the library that the Squire much valued, and which he usually 
 kept under lock and key, in his study, together with the field- 
 books and steward's accounts, but which he had reluctantly 
 taken into the drawing-room that day, in order to oblige Cap-
 
 78 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 tain Higginbotham. For the Higginbotliams an old Saxon 
 family, as the name evidently denotes had once possessed lands 
 in that very county. And the Captain during his visits to 
 Hazeldean Hall was regularly in the habit of asking to look 
 into the County History, for the purpose of refreshing his eyes, 
 and renovating his sense of ancestral dignity with the following 
 paragraph therein : " To the left of the village of Dunder, and 
 pleasantly situated in a hollow, lies Botham Hall, the residence 
 of the ancient family of Higginbotham, as it is now commonly 
 called. Yet it appears by the county rolls, and sundry old 
 deeds, that the family formerly styled itself Higges, till the 
 Manor House lying in Botham, they gradually assumed the 
 appellation of Higges-in-Botham, and in process of time, yield- 
 ing to the corruptions of the vulgar, Higginbotham." 
 
 "What, Frank! my County History!" cried the Squire. 
 " Mrs H., he has got my County History ! " 
 
 " "Well, Hazeldean, it is time he should know something about 
 the County." 
 
 " Ay, and History too," said Mrs Dale, malevolently for the 
 little temper was by no means blown over. 
 
 FRANK. " I'll not hurt it, I assure you, sir. But I'm very 
 much interested just at present." 
 
 The CAPTAIN, (putting down the cards to cut.) "You've 
 got hold of that passage about Botham Hall, page 706, eh 1 " 
 
 FRANK. "No; I was trying to make out how far 'it is to 
 Mr Leslie's place, Rood Hall. Do you know, mother 1 " 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN. "I can't say I do. The Leslies don't 
 mix with the county ; and Rood lies very much out of the 
 way." 
 
 FRANK." Why don't they mix with the county 1 " 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN. "I believe they are poor, and therefore 
 I suppose they are proud : they are an old family." 
 
 PARSON, (thrumming on the table with great impatience.) 
 " Old fiddledee ! talking of old families when the cards have 
 been shuffled this half-hour ! " 
 
 CAPTAIN BARNABAS. "Will you cut for your partner, 
 ma'am 1 " 
 
 SQUIRE, (who has been listening to Frank's inquiries with a
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 79 
 
 musing air.) " Why do you want to know the distance to 
 Rood Hall ? " 
 
 FRANK, (rather hesitatingly.) " Because Randal Leslie is 
 there for the holidays, sir." 
 
 PARSON. " Your wife has cut for you, Mr Hazeldean. I 
 don't think it was quite fair ; and my partner has turned up a 
 deuce deuce of hearts. Please to come and play, if you mean 
 to play." 
 
 The Squire returns to the table, and in a few minutes the 
 game is decided by a dexterous finesse of the Captain against 
 the Hazeldeans. The clock strikes ten ; the servants enter with 
 a tray ; the Squire counts up his own and his wife's losings : and 
 the Captain and Parson divide sixteen shillings between them. 
 
 SQUIRE. " There, Parson, I hope now you'll be in a better 
 humour. You win enough out of us to set up a coach-and- 
 four." 
 
 "Tut!" muttered the Parson ; "at the end of the year, I'm 
 not a penny the richer for it all." 
 
 And, indeed, monstrous as that assertion seemed, it was per- 
 fectly true, for the Parson portioned out his gains into three 
 divisions. One-third he gave to Mrs Dale, for her own special 
 pocket-money ; what became of the second third he never 
 owned, even to his better half but certain it was, that every 
 time the Parson won seven-and-sixpence, half-a-crown, which 
 nobody could account for, found its way to the poor-box ; while 
 the remaining third, the Parson, it is true, openly and avowedly 
 retained ; but I have no manner of doubt that, at the year's 
 end, it got to the poor quite as safely as if it had been put into 
 the box. 
 
 The party had now gathered round the tray, and were helping 
 themselves to wine and water, or wine without water except 
 Frank, who still remained poring over the map in the County 
 History, with his head leaning on his hands, and his fingers 
 plunged in his hair." 
 
 " Frank," said Mrs Hazeldean, " I never saw you so studious 
 before." 
 
 Frank started up, and coloured, as if ashamed of being accused 
 of too much study in anything.
 
 80 MY NOVEL j OR, 
 
 The SQUIRE, (with a little embarrassment in his voice.) 
 " Pray, Frank, what do you know of Randal Leslie ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, he is at Eton." 
 
 " What sort of a boy is he ? " asked Mrs Ha/eldean. 
 
 Frank hesitated, as if reflecting, and then answered " They 
 say he is the cleverest boy in the school. But then he saps." 
 
 " In other words," said Mr Dale, with proper parsonic gravity, 
 " he understands that he was sent to school to learn his lessons, 
 and he learns them. You call that sapping I call it doing his 
 duty. But pray, who and what is this Randal Leslie, that you 
 look so discomposed, Squire ? " 
 
 " Who and what is he ? " repeated the Squire, in a low growl. 
 "Why, you know, Mr Audley Bgerton married Miss Leslie 
 the great heiress ; and this boy is a relation of hers. I may 
 say," added the Squire, " that he is a near relation of mine, for 
 his grandmother was a Hazeldean. But all I know about the 
 Leslies is, that Mr Egerton, as I am told, having no children of 
 his own, took up young Randal, (when his wife died, poor 
 woman,) pays for his schooling, and has, I suppose, adopted the 
 boy as his heir. Quite welcome. Frank and I want nothing 
 from Mr Audley Egerton, thank heaven ! " 
 
 " I can well believe in your brother's generosity to his wife's 
 kindred," said the Parson sturdily, " for I am sure Mr Egerton 
 is a man of strong feeling." 
 
 " What the deuce do you know about Mr Egerton ? I don't 
 suppose you could ever have even spoken to him." 
 
 " Yes," said the Parson, colouring up, and looking confused, 
 " I had some conversation with him once ;" and, observing 
 the Squire's surprise, he added " when I was curate at Lans- 
 mere and about a painful business connected with the family 
 of one of my parishioners." 
 
 " Oh ! one of your parishioners at Lausmere one of the con- 
 stituents Mr Audley Egerton threw over, after all the pains I 
 had taken to get him his seat. Rather odd you should never 
 have mentioned this before, Mr Dale ! " 
 
 " My dear sir," said the Parson, sinking his voice, and in a 
 mild tone of conciliatory expostulation, " you are so irritable 
 whenever Mr Egcrton's name is mentioned at all."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 81 
 
 " Irritable !" exclaimed the Squire, whose wrath had been 
 long simmering, and now fairly boiled over. " Irritable, sir ! 
 I should think so : a man for whom I stood godfather at the 
 hustings, Mr Dale ! a man for whose sake I was called a ' prize 
 ox,' Mr Dale ! a man for whom I was hissed in a market-place, 
 Mr Dale ! a man for whom I was shot at, in cold blood, by an 
 officer in his Majesty's service, who lodged a ball in my right 
 shoulder, Mr Dale ! a man who had the ingratitude, after all 
 this, to turn his back on the landed interest to deny that there 
 was any agricultural distress in a year which broke three of the 
 best farmers I ever had, Mr Dale ! a man, sir, who made a 
 speech on the Currency which was complimented by Ricardo, a 
 Jew ! Good heavens ! a pretty parson you are, to stand up for 
 a fellow complimented by a Jew ! Nice ideas you must have 
 of Christianity. Irritable, sir ! " now fairly roared the Squire, 
 adding to the thunder of his voice the cloud of a brow, which 
 evinced a menacing ferocity that might have done honour to 
 Bussy d'Amboise or Fighting Fitzgerald. " Sir, if that man 
 had not been my own half-brother, I'd have called him out. 
 I have stood my ground before now. I have had a ball in my 
 right shoulder. Sir, I'd have called him out." 
 
 " Mr Hazeldean ! Mr Hazeldean ! I'm shocked at you," 
 cried the Parson ; and, putting his lips close to the Squire's ear, 
 he went on in a whisper " "What an example to your son ! 
 You'll have him fighting duels one of these days, and nobody 
 to blame but yourself." 
 
 This warning cooled Mr Hazeldean ; and, muttering, " Why 
 the deuce did you set me off 1 " he fell back into his chair, and 
 began to fan himself with his pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 The Parson skilfully and remorselessly pursued the advan- 
 tage he had gained. " And now, that you may have it in 
 your power to show civility and kindness to a boy whom Mr 
 Egerton has taken up, out of respect to his wife's memory a 
 kinsman, you say, of your own and who has never offended 
 you a boy whose diligence in his studies proves him to 
 be an excellent companion to your son ; Frank," (here the 
 Parson raised his voice,) " I suppose you would like to call 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 82 M? NOVEL; OB, 
 
 on young Leslie, as you were studying the county map so 
 attentively?" 
 
 " Why, yes," answered Frank, rather timidly, " if my father 
 does not object to it. Leslie has been very kind to me, though 
 he is in the sixth form, and, indeed, almost the head of the 
 school." 
 
 " Ah !" said Mrs Hazeldean, " one studious boy has a fellow- 
 feeling for another ; and though you enjoy your holidays, 
 Frank, I am sure you read hard at school." 
 
 Mrs Dale opened her eyes very wide, and stared in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN retorted that look with great animation. 
 " Yes, Carry," said she, tossing her head, " though you may not 
 think Frank clever, his masters find him so. He got a prize 
 last half. That beautiful book, Frank hold up your head, my 
 love what did you get it for 1 " 
 
 FRANK, (reluctantly.) " Verses, ma'am." 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN, (with triumph.) " Verses ! there, Carry, 
 verses ! " 
 
 FRANK, (in a hurried tone.) " Yes, but Leslie wrote them 
 for me." 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN, (recoiling.) " Frank ! a prize for what 
 another did for you that was mean." 
 
 FRANK, (ingenuously.) " You can't be more ashamed, 
 mother, than I was when they gave me the prize." 
 
 MRS DALE, (though previously provoked at being snubbed 
 by Harry, now showing the triumph of generosity over temper.) 
 " I beg your pardon, Frank. Your mother must be as proud 
 of that shame as she was of the prize." 
 
 Mrs Hazeldean puts her arm round Frank's neck, smiles 
 beamingly on Mrs Dale, and converses with her son in a low 
 tone about Randal Leslie. Miss Jemima now approached Carry, 
 and said in an " aside," " But we are forgetting poor Mr Ricca- 
 bocca. Mrs Hazeldean, though the dearest creature in the 
 world, has such a blunt way of inviting people don't you think 
 if you were to say a word to him, Carry 1 " 
 
 MRS DALE, (kindly, as she wraps her shawl round her.)
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 83 
 
 " Suppose you write the note yourself. Meanwhile, I shall see 
 him, no doubt." 
 
 PARSON, (putting his hand on the Squire's shoulder.) " You 
 forgive my impertinence, my kind friend. We parsons, you 
 know, are apt to take strange liberties, when we honour and 
 love folks, as I do you." 
 
 "Pish!" said the Squire; but his hearty smile came to 
 his lips in spite of himself. " You always get your own 
 way, and I suppose Frank must ride over and see this pet 
 of my " 
 
 " Brother's" quoth the Parson, concluding the sentence in a 
 tone which gave to the sweet word so sweet a sound that the 
 Squire would not correct the Parson, as he had been about to 
 correct himself. 
 
 Mr Dale moved on ; but as he passed Captain Barnabas, the 
 benignant character of his countenance changed sadly. 
 
 " The cruellest trump, Captain Higginbotham ! " said he 
 sternly, and stalked by majestic. 
 
 The night was so fine that the Parson and his wife, as they 
 walked home, made a little dttour through the shrubbery. 
 
 MRS DALE. " I think I have done a good piece of work to- 
 night." 
 
 PARSON, (rousing himself from a reverie.) " Have you, 
 Carry 1 it will be a very pretty handkerchief." 
 
 MRS DALE. "Handkerchief! nonsense, dear. Don't you 
 think it would be a very happy thing for both, if Jemima and 
 Signor Riccabocca could be brought together 1 " 
 
 PARSON. " Brought together ! " 
 
 MRS DALE. " You do snap up one so, my dear I mean if I 
 could make a match of it." 
 
 PARSON. " I think Riccabocca is a match already, not only 
 for Jemima, but yourself into the bargain." 
 
 MRS DALE, (smiling loftily.) " "Well, we shall see. Was not 
 Jemima's fortune about 4000 1 
 
 PARSON, (dreamily, for he is relapsing fast into his inter- 
 rupted reverie.) " Ay ay I daresay." 
 
 MRS DALE. " And she must have saved ! I dare say it is
 
 84 MY NOVEL. 
 
 nearly J6000 by this time ; eh ! Charles dear, you really are 
 so good gracious, what's that ! " 
 
 As Mrs Dale made this exclamation, they had just emerged 
 from the shrubbery, into the village green. 
 
 PARSON." What's what 1 " 
 
 MRS DALE, (pinching her husband's arm very nippingly.) 
 " That thing there there." 
 
 PARSON. " Only the new stocks, Carry ; I don't wonder 
 they frighten you, for you are a very sensible woman. I only 
 wish they would frighten the Squire."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Supposed to be a letter from Mrs Hazeldean to A. Ricca- 
 bocca, Esq., The Casino ; but edited, and indeed composed, 
 by Miss Jemima Hazeldean. 
 
 "DEAR SIR. To a feeling heart it must always be painful to 
 give pain to another, and (though I am sure unconsciously) you 
 have given the greatest pain to poor Mr Hazeldean and myself, 
 indeed to all our little circle, in so cruelly refusing our attempts 
 to become better acquainted with a gentleman we so highly 
 ESTEEM. Do, pray, dear sir, make us the amende honorable, 
 and give us the pleasure of your company for a few days at the 
 Hall ! May we expect you Saturday next 1 our dinner hour 
 is six o'clock. 
 
 " With the best compliments of Mr and Miss Jemima Hazeldean, 
 " Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " HAZELDEAN HALL. " H. H." 
 
 Miss Jemima having carefully sealed this note, which Mrs 
 Hazeldean had very willingly deputed her to write, took it her- 
 self into the stable-yard, in order to give the groom proper 
 instructions to wait for an answer. But while she was speak- 
 ing to the man, Frank, equipped for riding with more than his 
 usual dandyism, came into the yard, calling for his pony in a 
 loud voice, and singling out the very groom whom Miss Jemima 
 was addressing for, indeed, he was the smartest of all in the 
 Squire's stables told him to saddle the grey pad, and accom- 
 pany the pony.
 
 86 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 " No, Frank," said Miss Jemima, " you can't have George ; 
 your father wants him to go on a message you can take Mat." 
 
 " Mat, indeed ! " said Frank, grumbling with some reason ; 
 for Mat was a surly old fellow, who tied a most indefensible 
 neckcloth, and always contrived to have a great patch in his 
 boots ; besides, he called Frank " Master," and obstinately 
 refused to trot down hill ; " Mat, indeed ! let Mat take the 
 message, and George go with me." 
 
 But Miss Jemima had also her reasons for rejecting Mat. 
 Mat's foible was not servility, and he always showed true 
 English independence in all houses where he was not invited 
 to take his ale in the servants' hall. Mat might offend Signer 
 Riccabocca, and spoil all. An animated altercation ensued, in 
 the midst of which the Squire and his wife entered the yard, 
 with the intention of driving in the conjugal gig to the market 
 town. The matter was referred to the natural umpire by both 
 the contending parties. 
 
 The Squire looked with great contempt on his son. " And 
 what do you want a groom at all for 1 Are you afraid of tum- 
 bling off the pony ?" 
 
 FRANK. " No, sir ; but I like to go as a gentleman, when I 
 pay a visit to a gentleman ! " 
 
 SQUIRE, (in high wrath.) " You precious puppy ! I think 
 I'm as good a gentleman as you, any day, and I should like to 
 know when you ever saw me ride to call on a neighbour, with 
 a fellow jingling at my heels, like that upstart Ned Spankie, 
 whose father kept a cotton-mill. First time I ever heard of a 
 Hazeldean thinking a livery-coat was necessary to prove his 
 gentility ! " 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN, (observing Frank colouring, and about to 
 reply.) " Hush, Frank, never answer your father, and you 
 are going to call on Mr Leslie 1 " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, and I am very much obliged to my father for 
 letting me," said Frank, taking the Squire's hand. 
 
 " Well, but Frank," continued Mrs Hazeldean, " I think you 
 heard that the Leslies were very poor." 
 
 FRANK. Eh, mother 1 " 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN. " And would you run the chance of
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 87 
 
 wounding the pride of a gentleman, as well born as yourself, by- 
 affecting any show of being richer than he is ? " 
 
 SQUIRE, (with great admiration.) " Harry, I'd give ^10 to 
 have said that ! " 
 
 FRANK, (leaving the Squire's hand to take his mother's.) 
 " You're quite right, mother nothing could be more snobbish /" 
 
 SQUIRE " Give us your fist too, sir ; you'll be a chip of the 
 old block, after all." 
 
 Frank smiled and walked off to his pony. 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN, (to Miss Jemima.) " Is that the note you 
 were to write for me ? " 
 
 Miss JEMIMA. " Yes ; I supposed you did not care about 
 seeing it, so I have sealed it, and given it to George." 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN. " But Frank will pass close by the Casino 
 on his way to the Leslies'. It may be more civil if he leaves 
 the note himself." 
 
 Miss JEMIMA, (hesitatingly.) " Do you think so 1 " 
 
 MRS HAZELDEAN. " Yes, certainly. Frank Frank as 
 you pass by the Casino, call on Mr Riccabocca, give this note, 
 and say we shall be heartily glad if he will come." 
 
 Frank nods. 
 
 " Stop a bit," cried the Squire. If Rickeybockey's at home, 
 'tis ten to one if he don't ask you to take a glass of wine ! If 
 he does, mind, 'tis worse than asking you to take a turn on the 
 rack. Faugh ! you remember, Harry ? I thought it was all 
 up with me." 
 
 "Yes," cried Mrs Hazeldean ; "for Heaven's sake, not a drop ! 
 Wine indeed ! " 
 
 "Don't talk of it," cried the Squire, making a wry face. 
 
 " I'll take care, sir ! " said Frank, laughing as he disappeared 
 within the stable, followed by Miss Jemima, who now coaxingly 
 makes it up with him, and does not leave off her admonitions 
 to be extremely polite to the poor foreign gentleman, till Frank 
 gets his foot into the stirrup ; and the pony, who knows whom 
 he has got to deal with, gives a preparatory plunge or two, and 
 then darts out of the yard.
 
 BOOK SECOND
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 INITIAL CHAPTER. 
 
 INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE 
 INITIAL CHAPTERS. 
 
 " THERE can't be a doubt," said my father, " that to each of the 
 main divisions of your work whether you call them Books or 
 Parts you should prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter." 
 PISISTRATUS. " Can't be a doubt, sir ! Why so 1 " 
 MR CAXTON. " Fielding lays it down as an indispensable 
 rule, which he supports by his example ; and Fielding was an 
 artistical writer, and knew what he was about." 
 PISISTRATUS. " Do you remember any of his reasons, sir 1 " 
 MR CAXTON. "Why, indeed, Fielding says very justly that 
 he is not bound to assign any reason ; but he does assign a good 
 many, here and there to find which, I refer you to Tom Jones. 
 I will only observe, that one of his reasons, which is unanswer- 
 able, runs to the effect that thus, in every Part or Book, the 
 reader has the advantage of beginning at the fourth or fifth page 
 instead of the first ' a matter by no means of trivial conse- 
 quence,' saith Fielding, ' to persons who read books with no 
 other view than to say they have read them a more general 
 motive to reading than is commonly imagined ; and from 
 which not only law books and good books, but the pages of 
 Homer and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes, have been often
 
 92 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 turned over.' There," cried my father triumphantly, " I will 
 lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words." 
 
 MRS CAXTON. " Dear me, that only means skipping : I don't 
 see any great advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people 
 to skip it." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Neither do I ! " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (dogmatically.) " It is the repose in the picture 
 Fielding calls it ' contrast ' (still more dogmatically) I say 
 there can't be a doubt about it. Besides, (added my father 
 after a pause,) besides, this usage gives you opportunities to 
 explain what has gone before, or to prepare for what's coming ; 
 or, since Fielding contends, with great truth, that some learning 
 is necessary for this kind of historical composition, it allows 
 you, naturally and easily, the introduction of light and pleasant 
 ornaments of that nature. At each flight in the terrace, you 
 may give the eye the relief of an urn or a statue. Moreover, 
 when so inclined, you create proper pausing places for reflection ; 
 and complete, by a separate yet harmonious ethical department, 
 the design of a work, which is but a mere Mother Goose's tale 
 if it does not embrace a general view of the thoughts and actions 
 of mankind." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " But then, in these initial chapters, the author 
 thrusts himself forward ; and just when you want to get on 
 with the dramatis personce, you find yourself face to face with 
 the poet himself." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " Pooh ! you can contrive to prevent that ! 
 Imitate the chorus of the Greek stage, who fill up the intervals 
 between the action by saying what the author would otherwise 
 say in his own person." 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (slily.) " That's a good idea, sir and I have a 
 chorus, and a choregus too, already in my eye." 
 
 MR CAXTON, (unsuspectingly.) " Aha ! you are not so dull 
 a fellow as you would make yourself out to be ; and, even if an 
 author did thrust himself forward, what objection is there to 
 that ? It is a mere affectation to suppose that a book can come 
 into the world without an author. Every child has a father 
 one father at least as the great Conde says very well in his 
 poem."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 93 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " The great Conde a poet ! I never heard that 
 before." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " I don't say he was a poet, but he sent a poem 
 to Madame de Montansier. Envious critics think that he must 
 have paid somebody else to write it ; but there is no reason 
 why a great Captain should not write a poem I don't say a 
 good poem, but a poem. I wonder, Roland, if the Duke ever 
 tried his hand at 'Stanzas to Mary,' or 'Lines to a sleeping 
 babe.' " 
 
 CAPTAIN ROLAND. " Austin, I'm ashamed of you. Of course 
 the Duke could write poetry if he pleased something, I dare 
 say, in the way of the great Conde that is, something warlike 
 and heroic, I'll be bound. Let's hear ! " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (reciting) 
 
 " Telle est du Ciel la loi severe 
 Qu'il faut qu'un enfant ait un pere ; 
 On dit meme quelque fois 
 Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois." 
 
 CAPTAIN ROLAND, (greatly disgusted.) " Conde write such 
 stuff ! I don't believe it." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " I do, and accept the quotation you and 
 Roland shall be joint fathers to my child as well as myself. 
 
 1 Tel enfant en a jusqu/a trois.' " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (solemnly.) " I refuse the proffered paternity ; 
 but so far as administering a little wholesome castigation, now 
 and then, I have no objection to join in the discharge of a 
 father's duty." 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Agreed. Have you anything to say against 
 the infant hitherto ? " 
 
 MR CAXTON. " He is in long clothes at present ; let us wait 
 till he can walk." 
 
 BLANCHE. " But pray whom do you mean for a hero ? and 
 is Miss Jemima your heroine 1 " 
 
 CAPTAIN ROLAND. " There is some mystery about the " 
 
 PISISTRATCS, (hastily.) "Hush, Uncle; no letting the cat 
 out of the bag yet. Listen, all of you ! I left Frank Hazeldean 
 on his wav to the Casino."
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 " IT is a sweet pretty place," thought Frank, as he opened the 
 gate which led across the fields to the Casino, that smiled down 
 upon him with its plaster pilasters. " I wonder, though, that 
 my father, who is so particular in general, suffers the carriage- 
 road to be so full of holes and weeds. Mounseer does not 
 receive many visits, I take it." 
 
 But when Frank got into the ground immediately before the 
 house, he saw no cause of complaint as to want of order and 
 repair. Nothing could be kept more neatly. Frank was 
 ashamed of the dint made by the pony's hoofs in the smooth 
 gravel : he dismounted, tied the animal to the wicket, and 
 went on foot towards the glass door in front. 
 
 He rang the bell once, twice, but nobody came, for the old 
 woman-servant, who was hard of hearing, was far away in the 
 yard, searching for any eggs which the hen might have scan- 
 dalously hidden from culinary purposes ; and Jackeymo was 
 fishing for the sticklebacks and minnows, which were, when 
 caught, to assist the eggs, when found, in keeping together the 
 bodies and souls of himself and his master. The old woman 
 had been lately put upon board wages lucky old woman ! 
 Frank rang a third time, and with the impetuosity of his age. 
 A face peeped from the Belvidere on the terrace. "Diavolo ! " 
 said Dr Riccabocca to himself. " Young cocks crow hard on 
 their own dunghill ; it must be a cock of a high race to crow 
 so loud at another's." 
 
 Therewith he shambled out of the summer-house, and appeared 
 suddenly before Frank, in a very wizard-like dressing-robe of 
 black serge, a red cap on his head, and a cloud of smoke coming
 
 MY NOVEL. 95 
 
 rapidly from his lips, as a final consolatory whiff, before he 
 removed the pipe from them. Frank had indeed seen the 
 Doctor before, but never in so scholastic a costume, and he 
 was a little startled by the apparition at his elbow, as he 
 turned round. 
 
 " Signorino," (young gentleman,) said the Italian, taking off 
 his cap with his usual urbanity, " pardon the negligence of my 
 people I am too happy to receive your commands in person." 
 
 " Dr Rickeybockey ? " stammered Frank, much confused by 
 this polite address, and the low yet stately bow with which it 
 was accompanied. " I I have a note from the Hall. Mama 
 that is, my mother and Aunt Jemima beg their best compli- 
 ments, and hope you will come, sir." 
 
 The Doctor took the note with another bow, and, opening 
 the glass door, invited Frank to enter. 
 
 The young gentleman, with a schoolboy's usual bluntness, 
 was about to say that he was in a hurry, and had rather not ; 
 but Dr Riccabocca's grand manner awed him, while a glimpse 
 of the hall excited his curiosity so he silently obeyed the 
 invitation. 
 
 The hall, which was of an octagon shape, had been originally 
 panelled off into compartments, and in these the Italian had 
 painted landscapes, rich with the warm sunny light of his 
 native climate. Frank was no judge of the art displayed ; but 
 he was greatly struck with the scenes depicted : they were all 
 Tiews of some lake, real or imaginary in all, dark-blue shin- 
 ing waters reflected dark-blue placid skies. In one, a flight 
 of steps descended to the lake, and a gay group was seen 
 feasting on the margin ; in another, sunset threw its rose-hues 
 over a vast villa or palace, backed by Alpine hills, and flanked 
 by long arcades of vines, while pleasure-boats skimmed over 
 the waves below. In short, throughout all the eight compart- 
 ments, the scene, though it differed in details, preserved the 
 same general character, as if illustrating some favourite locality. 
 The Italian did not, however, evince any desire to do the 
 honours of his own art, but, preceding Frank across the hall, 
 opened the door of his usual sitting-room, and requested him 
 to enter. Frank did so, rather reluctantly, and seated himself
 
 96 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 with unwonted bashfulness on the edge of a chair. But here 
 new specimens of the Doctor's handicraft soon riveted attention. 
 The room had heen originally papered ; but Riccabocca had 
 stretched canvass over the walls, and painted thereon sundry 
 satirical devices, each separated from the other by scroll-works 
 of fantastic arabesques. Here a Cupid was trundling a wheel- 
 barrow full of hearts, which he appeared to be selling to an 
 ugly old fellow, with a money-bag in his hand probably 
 Plutus. There Diogenes might be seen walking through a 
 market-place, with his lantern in his hand, in search of an 
 honest man, whilst the children jeered at him, and the curs 
 snapped at his heels. In another place, a lion was seen half 
 dressed in a fox's hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was 
 conversing very amicably with a young lamb. Here again 
 might be seen the geese* stretching out their necks from the 
 Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders were 
 beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could. In 
 short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was 
 symbolically conveyed ; only over the mantelpiece was the 
 design graver and more touching. It was the figure of a man 
 in a pilgrim's garb, chained to the earth by small but innu- 
 merable ligaments, while a phantom likeness of himself, his 
 shadow, was seen hastening down what seemed an interminable 
 vista ; and underneath were written the pathetic words of 
 Horace 
 
 " Patriso quis exul 
 
 Se quoque fugit ? " 
 
 ("What exile from his country can also fly from himself?") 
 The furniture of the room was extremely simple, and somewhat 
 scanty ; yet it was arranged so as to impart an air of taste and 
 elegance to the room. Even a few plaster busts and statues, 
 though bought but of some humble itinerant, had their classical 
 effect, glistening from out stands of flowers that were grouped 
 around them, or backed by graceful screen-works formed from 
 twisted osiers, which, by the simple contrivance of trays at the 
 bottom, filled with earth, served for living parasitical plants, 
 with gay flowers contrasting thick ivy leaves, and gave to the 
 whole room the aspect of a bower.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 97 
 
 " May I ask your permission ? " said the Italian, with his 
 finger on the seal of the letter. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Frank with naivete. 
 
 Riccabocca broke the seal, and a slight smile stole over his 
 countenance. Then he turned a little aside from Frank, shaded 
 his face with his hand, and seemed to muse. " Mrs Hazeldean," 
 said he at last, " does me very great honour. I hardly recognise 
 her handwriting, or I should have been more impatient to open 
 the letter." The dark eyes were lifted over the spectacles, and 
 went right into Frank's unprotected and undiplomatic heart. 
 The doctor raised the note, and pointed to the characters with 
 his forefinger. 
 
 " Cousin Jemima's hand," said Frank, as directly as if the 
 question had been put to him. 
 
 The Italian smiled. " Mr Hazeldean has company staying 
 with him 1 " 
 
 " No ; that is, only Barney the Captain. There's seldom 
 much company before the shooting season," added Frank with 
 a slight sigh ; " and then you know the holidays are over. For 
 my part, I think we ought to break up a month later." 
 
 The Doctor seemed reassured by the first sentence in Frank's 
 reply, and, seating himself at the table, wrote his answer not 
 hastily, as we English write, but with care and precision, like 
 one accustomed to weigh the nature of words in that stiff 
 Italian hand, which allows the writer so much time to think 
 while he forms his letters. He did not therefore; reply at once 
 to Frank's remark about the holidays, but was silent till he had 
 concluded his note, read it three times over, sealed it by the 
 taper he slowly lighted, and then, giving it to Frank, he 
 said 
 
 " For your sake, young gentleman, I regret that your holidays 
 are so early ; for mine, I must rejoice, since I accept the kind 
 invitation you have rendered doubly gratifying by bringing it 
 yourself." 
 
 " Deuce take the fellow and his fine speeches ! One don't 
 know which way to look," thought English Frank. 
 
 The Italian smiled again, as if this time he had read the boy's 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 MY NOVEL ; OB, 
 
 heart, without need of those piercing black eyes, and said, less 
 ceremoniously than before, " You don't care much for compli- 
 ments, young gentleman 1 " 
 
 " No, I don't indeed," said Frank heartily. 
 
 " So much the better for you, since your way in the world 
 is made : it would be so much the worse if you had to make 
 it!" 
 
 Frank looked puzzled : the thought was too deep for him so 
 he turned to the pictures. 
 
 " Those are very funny," said he : " they seem capitally done. 
 Who did 'em ? " 
 
 " Signorino Hazeldean, you are giving me what you refused 
 yourself." 
 
 " Eh ? " said Frank inquiringly. 
 
 " Compliments ! " 
 
 " Oh I no ; but they are well done, arn't they, sir ? " 
 
 " Not particularly : you speak to the artist." 
 
 " What ! you painted them 1 " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And the pictures in the hall ? " 
 
 ' Those too." 
 
 " Taken from nature eh 1 " 
 
 " Nature," said the Italian sententiously, perhaps evasively, 
 " lets nothing be taken from her." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Frank, puzzled again. " Well, I must wish you 
 good morning, sir; I am very glad you are coming." 
 
 " Without compliment 1 " 
 
 " Without compliment." 
 
 "A rivedersi good-by for the present, my young Signorino. 
 This way," observing Frank make a bolt towards the wrong 
 door. 
 
 " Can I offer you a glass of wine ? it is pure, of our own 
 making." 
 
 " No, thank you, indeed, sir," cried Frank, suddenly recollect- 
 ing his father's admonition. " Good-by don't trouble yourself, 
 sir ; I know my way now." 
 
 But the bland Italian followed his guest to the wicket, where 
 Frank had left the pony. The young gentleman, afraid lest so
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 99 
 
 courteous a host should hold the stirrup for him, twitched off 
 the bridle, and mounted in haste, not even staying to ask if the 
 Italian could put him in the way to Rood Hall, of which way 
 he was profoundly ignorant. The Italian's eye followed the 
 boy as he rode up the ascent in the lane, and the Doctor sighed 
 heavily. " The wiser we grow," said he to himself, " the more 
 we regret the age of our follies : it is better to gallop with a 
 light heart up the stony hill than sit in the summer-house and 
 cry ' How true ! ' to the stony truths of Machiavelli ! " 
 
 With that he turned back into the Belvidere ; but he could 
 not resume his studies. He remained some minutes gazing on 
 the prospect, till the prospect reminded him of the fields which 
 Jackeymo was bent on his hiring, and the fields reminded him 
 of Lenny Fairfield. He returned to the house, and in a few 
 moments re-emerged in his out-of-door trim, with cloak and 
 umbrella, relighted his pipe, and strolled towards Hazeldean 
 village. 
 
 Meanwhile Frank, after cantering on for some distance, 
 stopped at a cottage, and there learned that there was a short 
 cut across the fields to Rood Hall, by which he could save 
 nearly three miles. Frank, however, missed the short cut, 
 and came out into the high-road : a turnpike keeper, after first 
 taking his toll, put him back again into the short cut ; and 
 finally, he got into some green lanes, where a dilapidated 
 finger-post directed him to Rood. Late at noon, having 
 ridden fifteen miles in the desire to reduce ten to seven, he 
 came suddenly upon a wild and primitive piece of ground, 
 that seemed half chace, half common, with slovenly tumble- 
 down cottages of villanous aspect scattered about in odd nooks 
 and corners ; idle dirty children were making mud pies ou 
 the road ; slovenly-looking women were plaiting straw at the 
 thresholds ; a large but forlorn and decayed church, that seemed 
 to say that the generation which saw it built was more pious 
 than the generation which now resorted to it, stood boldly and 
 nakedly out by the roadside. 
 
 " Is this the village of Rood 1 " asked Frank of a stout young 
 man breaking stones on the road sad sign that no better labour 
 could be found for him !
 
 ]00 MY NOVEL. 
 
 The man sullenly nodded, and continued his work. 
 
 And where's the Hall Mr Leslie's ? " 
 
 The man looked up in stolid surprise, and this time touched 
 his hat. 
 
 " Be you going there ? " 
 
 " Yes, if I can find out where it is." 
 
 " I'll show your honour," said the hoor alertly. 
 
 Frank reined in the pony, and the man walked by his side. 
 
 Frank was much of his father's son, despite the difference of 
 age, and that more fastidious change of manner which charac- 
 terises each succeeding race in the progress of civilisation. 
 Despite all his Eton finery, he was familiar with peasants, and 
 had the quick eye of one country-born as to country matters. 
 
 " You don't seem very well off in this village, my man ? " 
 said he knowingly. 
 
 " Noa ; there be a deal of distress here in the winter time, 
 and summer too, for that matter ; and the parish ben't much 
 help, to a single man." 
 
 " But, surely, the farmers want work here as well as else- 
 where ? " 
 
 " 'Deed, and there ben't much farming work here most o' 
 the parish be all wild ground loike." 
 
 " The poor have a right of common, I suppose," said Frank, 
 surveying a large assortment of vagabond birds and quadrupeds. 
 
 " Yes ; neighbour Timmins keeps his geese on the common, 
 and some has a cow and them be neighbour Jowlas's pigs. I 
 don't know if there's a right, loike ; but the folks at the Hall 
 does all they can to help us, and that ben't much : they ben't 
 as rich as some folks ; but," added the peasant proudly, " they 
 be as good blood as any in the shire." 
 
 " I'm glad to see you like them, at all events." 
 
 " Oh yes, I loikes them well eno' ; mayhap you are at school 
 with the young gentleman ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Frank. 
 
 " Ah ! I heard the clergyman say as how Master Randal was 
 a mighty clever lad, and would get rich some day. I'se sure I 
 wish he would, for a poor squire makes a poor parish. There's 
 the Hall, sir."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRANK looked right ahead, and saw a square house that, in 
 spite of modern sash-windows, was evidently of remote anti- 
 quity ; a high conical roof ; a stack of tall quaint chimney-pots 
 of red baked clay (like those at Sutton Place in Surrey) domi- 
 nating over isolated vulgar smoke-conductors, of the ignoble 
 fashion of present times ; a dilapidated groin-work, encasing 
 within a Tudor arch a door of the comfortable date of George 
 III., and the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance 
 of the small finely-finished bricks, of which the habitation was 
 built all showed the abode of former generations adapted with 
 tasteless irreverence to the habits of descendants unenlightened 
 by Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the past. The house 
 had emerged suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste 
 land, for it was placed in a hollow, and sheltered from sight by 
 a disorderly group of ragged, dismal, valetudinarian fir-trees, 
 until an abrupt turn of the road cleared that screen, and left 
 the desolate abode bare to the discontented eye. Frank dis- 
 mounted ; the man held his pony ; and, after smoothing his 
 cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the door, and startled 
 the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the modern 
 brass knocker a knock which instantly brought forth an 
 astonished starling who had built under the eaves of the gable 
 roof, and called up a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow- 
 hammers, who had been regaling themselves amongst the litter 
 of a slovenly farmyard that lay in full sight to the right of the 
 house, fenced off by a primitive, paintless wooden rail. In pro- 
 cess of time a sow, accompanied by a thriving and inquisitive 
 family, strolled up to the gate of the fence, and, leaning her
 
 102 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 nose on the lower bar of the gate, contemplated the visitor with 
 much curiosity and some suspicion. 
 
 While Frank is still without, impatiently swingeing his white 
 trousers with his whip, we will steal a hurried glance towards 
 the respective members of the family within. Mr Leslie, the 
 pater- familias, is in a little room called his " study," to which he 
 regularly retires every morning after breakfast, rarely reappear- 
 ing till one o'clock, which is his unfashionable hour for dinner. 
 In what mysterious occupations Mr Leslie passes those hours no 
 one ever formed a conjecture. At the present moment he is 
 seated before a little rickety bureau, one leg of which (being 
 shorter than the other) is propped up by sundry old letters and 
 scraps of newspapers ; and the bureau is open, and reveals a 
 great number of pigeon-holes and divisions, filled with various 
 odds and ends, the collection of many years. In some of these 
 compartments are bundles of letters, very yellow, and tied in 
 packets with faded tape ; in another, all by itself, is a fragment 
 of plum-pudding stone, which Mr Leslie has picked up in his 
 walks, and considered a rare mineral. It is neatly labelled, 
 " Found in Hollow Lane, May 21st, 1804, by Maunder Slugge 
 Leslie, Esq." The next division holds several bits of iron in the 
 shape of nails, fragments of horse-shoes, &c., which Mr Leslie 
 had also met with in his rambles, and, according to a harmless 
 popular superstition, deemed it highly unlucky not to pick up, 
 and, once picked up, no less unlucky to throw away. Item, in 
 the adjoining pigeon-hole, a goodly collection of pebbles with 
 holes in them, preserved for the same reason, in company with 
 a crooked sixpence : item, neatly arranged in fanciful mosaics, 
 several periwinkles, Blackamoor's teeth, (I mean the shell so 
 called,) and other specimens of the conchiferous ingenuity of 
 Nature, partly inherited from some ancestral spinster, partly 
 amassed by Mr Leslie himself in a youthful excursion to the 
 sea-side. There, were the farm-bailiff's accounts, several files of 
 bills, an old stirrup, three sets of knee and shoe buckles which 
 had belonged to Mr Leslie's father, a few seals tied together by 
 a shoe-string, a shagreen toothpick-case, a tortoise-shell magni- 
 fying glass to read with, his eldest son's first copybooks, his 
 second son's ditto, his daughter's ditto, and a lock of his wife's
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 103 
 
 hair arranged in a true lover's knot, framed and glazed. There, 
 were also a small mouse-trap ; a patent corkscrew, too good to 
 be used in common ; fragments of a silver tea-spoon, that had, 
 by natural decay, arrived at a dissolution of its parts ; a small 
 brown Holland bag, containing halfpence of various dates, as 
 far back as Queen Anne, accompanied by two French sous, and 
 a German silber gros ; the which miscellany Mr Leslie magui- 
 loquently called " his coins," and had left in his will as a family 
 heir.-loom. There were many other curiosities of congenial 
 nature and equal value quce nunc describere longum est" Mr 
 Leslie was engaged at this time in what is termed " putting 
 things to rights " an occupation he performed with exemplary 
 care once a- week. This was his day ; and he had just counted 
 his coins, and was slowly tying them up again in the browu 
 Holland bag, when Frank's knock reached his ears. 
 
 Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie paused, shook his head as if incre- 
 dulously, and was about to resume his occupation, when he was 
 seized with a fit of yawning which prevented the bag being tied 
 for full two minutes. 
 
 While such the employment of the study, let us turn to the 
 recreations in the drawing-room, or rather parlour. A drawing- 
 room there was on the first floor, with a charming look-out, not 
 on the dreary fir-trees, but on the romantic undulating forest- 
 land ; but the drawing-room had not been used since the death 
 of the last Mrs Leslie. It was deemed too good to sit in, except 
 when there was company : there never being company, it was 
 never sate in. Indeed, now the paper was falling off the walls 
 with the damp, and the rats, mice, and moths those " edaces 
 rerum " had eaten, between them, most of the chair-bottoms 
 and a considerable part of the floor. Therefore the parlour was 
 the sole general sitting-room ; and being breakfasted in, dined 
 and supped in, and, after supper, smoked in by Mr Leslie to the 
 accompaniment of rum-and-water, it is impossible to deny that 
 it had what is called "a smell" a comfortable wholesome 
 family smell speaking of numbers, meals, and miscellaneous 
 social habitation. There were two windows : one looked full 
 on the fir-trees ; the other on the farmyard, with the pigsty 
 closing the view. Near the fir-tree window sate Mrs Leslie ;
 
 104 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 before her, on a high stool, was a basket of the children's clothes 
 that wanted mending. A work-table of rosewood inlaid with 
 brass, which had been a wedding present, and was a costly thing 
 originally, but in that peculiar taste which is vulgarly called 
 " Brumagem," stood at hand : the brass had started in several 
 places, and occasionally made great havoc in the children's fin- 
 gers and in Mrs Leslie's gown ; in fact, it was the liveliest piece 
 of furniture in the house, thanks to that petulant brass- work, and 
 could not have been more mischievous if it had been a monkey. 
 Upon the work-table lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors 
 and skeins of worsted and thread, and little scraps of linen and 
 cloth for patches. But Mrs Leslie was not actually working 
 she was preparing to work ; she had been preparing to work for 
 the last hour and a half. Upon her lap she supported a novel, 
 by a lady who wrote much for a former generation, under the 
 name of " Mrs Bridget Blue Mantle." She had a small needle 
 in her left hand, and a very thick piece of thread in her right ; 
 occasionally she applied the end of the said thread to her lips, 
 and then her eyes fixed on the novel made a blind vacillating 
 attack at the eye of the needle. But a camel would have gone 
 through it with quite as much ease. Nor did the novel alone 
 engage Mrs Leslie's attention, for ever and anon she interrupted 
 herself to scold the children ; to inquire " what o'clock it was ;" 
 to observe that " Sarah would never suit," and to wonder " why 
 Mr Leslie would not see that the work-table was mended." Mrs 
 Leslie has been rather a pretty woman. In spite of a dress at 
 once slatternly and economical, she has still the air of a lady 
 rather too much so, the hard duties of her situation considered. 
 She is proud of the antiquity of her family on both sides ; her 
 mother was of the venerable stock of the Daudlers of Daudle 
 Place, a race that existed before the Conquest. Indeed, one has 
 only to read our earliest chronicles, and to glance over some of 
 these long-winded moralising poems which delighted the thanes 
 and ealdermen of old, in order to see that the Daudles must have 
 been a very influential family before William the First turned 
 the country topsy-turvy. While the mother's race was thus 
 indubitably Saxon, the father's had not only the name but the 
 peculiar idiosyncrasy of the Normans, and went far to establish
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 105 
 
 that crotchet of the brilliant author of Sybil, or the Two Nations, 
 as to the continued distinction between the conquering and 
 conquered populations. Mrs Leslie's father boasted the name of 
 Montfydget ; doubtless of the same kith and kin as those great 
 barons Montfichet, who once owned such broad lands and such 
 turbulent castles. A high-nosed, thin, nervous, excitable pro- 
 geny, those same Montfydgets, as the most troublesome Norman 
 could pretend to be. This fusion of race was notable to the 
 most ordinary physiognomist in the physique and in the morale 
 of Mrs Leslie. She had the speculative blue eye of the Saxon, 
 and the passionate high nose of the Norman ; she had the 
 musing do-nothingness of the Daudlers, and the reckless have- 
 at-every-thingness of the Montfydgets. At Mrs Leslie's feet, a 
 little girl with her hair about her ears (and beautiful hair it 
 was too) was amusing herself with a broken-nosed doll. At 
 the far end of the room, before a high desk, sate Frank's Eton 
 schoolfellow, the eldest son. A minute or two before Frank's 
 alarum had disturbed the tranquillity of the household, he had 
 raised his eyes from the books on the desk, to glance at a very 
 tattered copy of the Greek Testament, in which his brother Oliver 
 had found a difficulty that he came to Randal to solve. As the 
 young Etonian's face was turned to the light, your first impres- 
 sion, on seeing it, would have been melancholy but respectful 
 interest for the face had already lost the joyous character of 
 youth there was a wrinkle between the brows ; and the lines 
 that speak of fatigue were already visible under the eyes and 
 about the mouth : the complexion was sallow, the lips were 
 pale. Years of study had already sown, in the delicate organi- 
 sation, the seeds of many an infirmity and many a pain ; but if 
 your look had rested longer on that countenance, gradually 
 your compassion might have given place to some feeling uneasy 
 and sinister a feeling akin to fear. There was in the whole 
 expression so much of cold calm force, that it belied the debility 
 of the frame. You saw there the evidence of a mind that was 
 cultivated, and you felt that in that cultivation there was some- 
 thing formidable. A notable contrast to this countenance, pre- 
 maturely worn and eminently intelligent, was the round healthy 
 face of Oliver, with slow blue eyes fixed hard on the peuetrat-
 
 106 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 ing orbs of his brother, as if trying with might and main to 
 catch from them a gleam of that knowledge with which they 
 shone clear and frigid as a star. 
 
 At Frank's knock, Oliver's slow blue eyes sparkled into ani- 
 mation, and he sprang from his brother's side. The little girl 
 flung back the hair from her face, and stared at her mother with 
 a look which spoke wonder and fright. 
 
 The young student knit his brows, and then turned wearily 
 back to the books on his desk. 
 
 " Dear me," cried Mrs Leslie, " who can that possibly be ? 
 Oliver, come from the window, sir, this instant you will be 
 seen ! Juliet, run ring the bell no, go to the head of the 
 kitchen stairs, and call out to Jenny ' Not at home.' Not at 
 home on any account," repeated Mrs Leslie nervously, for the 
 Montfydget blood was now in full flow. 
 
 In another minute or so, Frank's loud boyish voice was dis- 
 tinctly heard at the outer door. 
 Randal slightly started. 
 
 " Frank Hazeldean's voice," said he ; "I should like to see 
 him, mother." 
 
 " See him," repeated Mrs Leslie in amaze ; " see him ! and 
 the room in this state ! " 
 
 Randal might have replied, that the room was in no worse 
 state than usual ; but he said nothing. A slight flush came and 
 went over his pale face ; and then he leaned his cheek on his 
 hand, and compressed his lips firmly. 
 
 The outer door closed with a sullen inhospitable jar, and 
 a slip-shod female servant entered with a card between her 
 finger and thumb. 
 
 " Who is that for 1 give it to me, Jenny," cried Mrs Leslie. 
 But Jenny shook her head, laid the card on the desk beside 
 Randal, and vanished without saying a word. 
 
 " Oh look, Randal, look up," cried Oliver, who had again 
 rushed to the window ; " such a pretty grey pony ! " 
 
 Randal did look up ; nay, he went deliberately to the 
 window, and gazed a moment on the high-mettled pony, 
 and the well-dressed, spirited rider. In that moment changes 
 passed over Randal's countenance more rapidly than clouds
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 107 
 
 over the sky in a gusty day. Now envy and discontent, with 
 the curled lip and the gloomy scowl ; now hope and proud self- 
 esteem, with the clearing brow, and the lofty smile ; and then 
 all again became cold, firm, and close, as he walked back to his 
 books, seated himself resolutely, and said half aloud, 
 
 " Well, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER ! "
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MRS LESLIE came up in fidget and in fuss ; she leant over Ran- 
 dal's shoulder and read the card. Written in pen and ink, with 
 an attempt at imitation of printed Roman character, there 
 appeared first " MR FRANK HAZELDEAN ;" but just over these 
 letters, and scribbled hastily and less legibly in pencil was 
 
 " Dear Leslie, sorry you are out come and see us Do ! " 
 
 " You will go, Randal ? " said Mrs Leslie, after a pause. 
 
 " I am not sure." 
 
 " Yes, you can go ; you have clothes like a gentleman ; you 
 can go anywhere, not like those children ;". and Mrs Leslie 
 glanced almost spitefully at poor Oliver's coarse threadbare 
 jacket, and little Juliet's torn frock. 
 
 " What I have I owe at present to Mr Egerton, and I should 
 consult his wishes ; he is not on good terms with these Hazel- 
 deans." Then turning towards his brother, who looked mor- 
 tified, he added, with a strange sort of haughty kindness, 
 " What I may have hereafter, Oliver, I shall owe to myself ; 
 and then, if I rise, I will raise my family." 
 
 " Dear Randal," said Mrs Leslie, fondly kissing him on the 
 forehead, " what a good heart you have ! " 
 
 " No, mother ; my books don't tell me that is a good heart 
 that gets on in the world : it is a hard head," replied Randal, 
 with a rude and scornful candour. " But I can read no more 
 just now ; come out, Oliver." 
 
 So saying, he slid from his mother's hand and left the room. 
 
 When Oliver joined him, Randal was already on the com- 
 mon ; and, without seeming to notice his brother, he continued 
 to walk quickly and with long strides in profound silence. At
 
 MY NOVEL. 109 
 
 length he paused under the shade of an old oak, that, too old to 
 be of value save for firewood, had escaped the axe. The tree 
 stood on a knoll, and the spot commanded a view of the decayed 
 house the old dilapidated church the dismal, dreary village. 
 
 " Oliver," said Randal between his teeth, so that his voice had 
 the sound of a hiss, " it was under this tree that I first resolved 
 to" 
 
 He paused. 
 
 " What, Randal ? " 
 
 " Read hard : knowledge is power ! " 
 
 " But you are so fond of reading." 
 
 " I ! " cried Randal. " Do you think, when Wolsey and 
 Thomas-a-Becket became priests they were fond of telling their 
 beads and pattering Aves 1 I fond of reading ! " 
 
 Oliver stared ; the historical allusions were beyond his com- 
 prehension. 
 
 " You know," continued Randal, " that we Leslies were not 
 always the beggarly poor gentlemen we are now. You know 
 that there is a man who lives in Grosvenor Square, and is very 
 rich very. His riches come to him from a Leslie ; that man is 
 my patron, Oliver, and he is very good to me." 
 
 Randal's smile was withering as he spoke. " Come on," he 
 said, after a pause " come on." Again the walk was quick, 
 and the brothers were silent. 
 
 They came at length to a little shallow brook, across which 
 some large stones had been placed at short intervals, so that the 
 boys walked over the ford dryshod. " Will you pull me down 
 that bough, Oliver?" said Randal abruptly, pointing to a tree. 
 Oliver obeyed mechanically ; and Randal, stripping the leaves, 
 and snapping off the twigs, left a fork at the end ; with this he 
 began to remove the stepping-stones. 
 
 " What are you about, Randal ? " asked Oliver, wonderingly. 
 
 " We are on the other side of the brook now ; and we shall 
 not come back this way. We don't want the stepping-stones 
 any more ! away with them ! "
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE morning after this visit of Frank Hazeldean's to Rood 
 Hall, the Eight Honourable Audley Egerton, member of parlia- 
 ment, privy councillor, and minister of a high department in 
 the state just below the rank of the cabinet was seated in 
 his library, awaiting the delivery of the post, before he walked 
 down to his office. In the meanwhile, he sipped his tea, and 
 glanced over the newspapers with that quick and half-disdain- 
 ful eye with which your practical man in public life is wont to 
 regard the abuse or the eulogium of the Fourth Estate. 
 
 There is very little likeness between Mr Egerton and his half- 
 brother ; none indeed, except that they are both of tall stature, 
 and strong, sinewy, English build. But even in this last they 
 do not resemble each other ; for the Squire's athletic shape is 
 already beginning to expand into that portly embonpoint which 
 seems the natural development of contented men as they 
 approach middle life. Audley, on the contrary, is inclined to 
 be spare ; and his figure, though the muscles are as firm as iron, 
 has enough of the slender to satisfy metropolitan ideas of ele- 
 gance. His dress, his look his tout ensemble are those of the 
 London man. In the first, there is more attention to fashion 
 than is usual amongst the busy members of the House of Com- 
 mons ; but then Audley Egerton has always been something 
 more than a mere busy member of the House of Commons. He 
 has always been a person of mark in the best society ; and one 
 secret of his success in life has been his high reputation as 
 "a gentleman." 
 
 As he now bends over the journals, there is an air of distinc- 
 tion in the turn of the well-shaped head, with the dark-brown
 
 MY NOVEL. Ill 
 
 hair dark in spite of a reddish tinge cut close behind, and 
 worn away a little towards the crown, so as to give additional 
 height to a commanding forehead. His profile is very hand- 
 some, and of that kind of beauty which imposes on men if it 
 pleases women ; and is, therefore, unlike that of your mere 
 pretty fellows, a positive advantage in public life. It is a profile 
 with large features clearly cut, masculine, and somewhat severe. 
 The expression of his face is not open, like the Squire's j nor has 
 it the cold closeness which accompanies the intellectual character 
 of young Leslie's ; but it is reserved and dignified, and signifi- 
 cant of self-control, as should be the physiognomy of a man 
 accustomed to think before he speaks. When you look at him, 
 you are not surprised to learn that he is not a florid orator nor 
 a smart debater he is a " weighty speaker." He is fairly read, 
 but without any great range either of ornamental scholarship 
 or constitutional lore. He has not much humour ; but he has 
 that kind of wit which is essential to grave and serious irony. 
 He has not much imagination, nor remarkable subtlety in rea- 
 soning ; but if he does not dazzle, he does not bore : he is too 
 much the man of the world for that. He is considered to have 
 sound sense and accurate judgment. Withal, as he now lays 
 aside the journals, and his face relaxes its austerer lines, you 
 will not be astonished to hear that he is a man who is said to 
 have been greatly beloved by women, and still to exercise much 
 influence in drawing-rooms and boudoirs. At least, no one was 
 surprised when the great heiress, Clementina Leslie, kinswoman 
 and ward to Lord Lansmere a young lady who had refused 
 three earls and the heir-apparent to a dukedom was declared 
 by her dearest friends to be dying of love for Audley Egerton. 
 It had been the natural wish of the Lansmeres that this lady 
 should marry their son, Lord L'Estrange. But that young gen- 
 tleman, whose opinions on matrimony partook of the eccentri- 
 city of his general character, could never be induced to propose, 
 and had, according to the on-dits of town, been the principal 
 party to make up the match between Clementina and his friend 
 Audley ; for the match required making-up, despite the predi- 
 lections of the young heiress. Mr Egerton had had scruples of 
 delicacy. He avowed, for the first time, that his fortune was
 
 112 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 much less than had been generally supposed, and he did not 
 like the idea of owing all to a wife, however highly he might 
 esteem and admire her. Now, Lord L'Estrange (not long after 
 the election at Lansmere, which had given to Audley his first 
 seat in Parliament) had suddenly exchanged from the battalion 
 of the Guards to which he belonged, and which was detained at 
 home, into a cavalry regiment in active service in the Penin- 
 sula. Nevertheless, even abroad, and amidst the distractions of 
 war, his interest in all that could forward Egerton's career was 
 unabated ; and, by letters to his father, and to his cousin Cle- 
 mentina, he assisted in the negotiations for the marriage 
 between Miss Leslie and his friend; and, before the year in 
 which Audley was returned for Lansmere had expired, the 
 young senator received the hand of the great heiress. The 
 settlement of her fortune, which was chiefly in the funds, had 
 been unusually advantageous to the husband ; for though the 
 capital was tied up so long as both survived for the benefit 
 of any children they might have yet, in the event of one of 
 the parties dying without issue by the marriage, the whole 
 passed without limitation to the survivor. Miss Leslie, in spite 
 of all remonstrance from her own legal adviser, had settled this 
 clause with Egertou's confidential solicitor, one Mr Levy, of 
 whom we shall see more hereafter ; and Egerton was to be kept 
 in ignorance of it till after the marriage. If in this Miss Leslie 
 showed a generous trust in Mr Egerton, she still inflicted no 
 positive wrong on her relations, for she had none sufficiently 
 near to her to warrant their claim to the succession. Her nearest 
 kinsman, and therefore her natural heir, was Harley L'Estrange; 
 and if he was contented, no one had a right to complain. The 
 tie of blood between herself and the Leslies of Rood Hall was, 
 as we shall see presently, extremely distant. 
 
 It was not till after his marriage that Mr Egerton took an 
 active part in the business of the House of Commons. He was 
 then at the most advantageous starting-point for the career of 
 ambition. His words on the state of the country took impor- 
 tance from his stake in it. His talents found accessories in the 
 opulence of Grosvenor Square, the dignity of a princely estab- 
 lishment, the respectability of one firmly settled in life, the
 
 VAEIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 113 
 
 reputation of a fortune in reality very large, and which was 
 magnified by popular report into the revenues of a Cro3sus. 
 Audley Egerton succeeded in Parliament beyond the early 
 expectations formed of him. He took, from the first, that sta- 
 tion in the House which it requires tact to establish, and great 
 knowledge of the world to free from the charge of imprac- 
 ticability and crotchet, but which, once established, is peculiarly 
 imposing from the rarity of its independence ; that is to say, 
 the station of the moderate man who belongs sufficiently to a 
 party to obtain its support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged 
 from a party to make his vote and word, on certain questions, 
 matter of anxiety and speculation. 
 
 Professing Toryism, (the word Conservative, which would 
 have suited him better, was not then known,) he separated 
 himself from the country party, and always avowed great 
 respect for the opinions of the large towns. The epithet given 
 to the views of Audley Egerton was " enlightened." Never too 
 much in advance of the passion of the day, yet never behind its 
 movement, he had that shrewd calculation of odds which a con- 
 summate mastery of the world sometimes bestows upon politi- 
 cians perceived the chances for and against a certain question 
 being carried within a certain time, and nicked the question 
 between wind and water. He was so good a barometer of that 
 changeful weather called Public Opinion, that he might have 
 had a hand in the Times newspaper. He soon quarrelled, and 
 purposely, with his Lansmere constituents ; nor had he ever 
 revisited that borough perhaps because it was associated with 
 unpleasant reminiscences in the shape of the Squire's epistolary 
 trimmer, and in that of his own effigies which his agricultural 
 constituents had burned in the corn-market. But the speeches 
 that produced such indignation at Lansmere had delighted 
 one of the greatest of our commercial towns, which at the next 
 general election honoured him with its representation. In those 
 days, before the Reform Bill, great commercial towns chose men 
 of high mark for their members ; and a proud station it was for 
 him who was delegated to speak the voice of the princely mer- 
 chants of England. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 114 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 Mrs Egerton survived her marriage but a few years she left 
 no children ; two had been born, but died in their first infancy. 
 The property of the wife, therefore, passed without control or 
 limit to the husband. 
 
 Whatever might have been the grief of the widower, he dis- 
 dained to betray it to the world. Indeed, Audley Egerton was 
 a man who had early taught himself to conceal emotion. He 
 buried himself in the country, none knew where, for some 
 months : when he returned, there was a deep wrinkle on his 
 brow ; but no change in his habits and avocations, except that, 
 shortly afterwards, he accepted office, and thus became more 
 busy than ever. 
 
 Mr Egerton had always been lavish and magnificent in money 
 matters. A rich man in public life has many claims on his for- 
 tune, and no one yielded to those claims with an air so regal as 
 Audley Egerton. But amongst his many liberal actions, there 
 was none which seemed more worthy of panegyric, than the 
 generous favour he extended to the son of his wife's poor and 
 distant kinsfolk, the Leslies of Rood Hall. 
 
 Some four generations back, there had lived a certain Squire 
 Leslie, a man of large acres and active mind. He had cause to 
 be displeased with his elder son, and though he did not disin- 
 herit him, he left half his property to a younger. 
 
 The younger had capacity and spirit, which justified the 
 parental provision. He increased his fortune ; lifted himself 
 into notice and consideration, by public services and a noble 
 alliance. His descendants followed his example, and took rank 
 among the first commoners in England, till the last male, dying, 
 left his sole heiress and representative in one daughter, Clemen- 
 tina, afterwards married to Mr Egerton. 
 
 Meanwhile the elder son of the fore-mentioned squire had 
 muddled and sotted away much of his share in the Leslie pro- 
 perty ; and, by low habits and mean society, lowered in repute 
 his representation of the name. 
 
 His successors imitated him, till nothing was left to Randal's 
 father, Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the decayed house, which 
 was what the Germans call the stamm schloss, or " stem hall" 
 of the race, and the wretched lands immediately around it.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 115 
 
 Still, though all intercourse between the two branches of the 
 family had ceased, the younger had always felt a respect for the 
 elder, as the head of the house. And it was supposed that, on 
 her deathbed, Mrs Egerton had recommended her impoverished 
 namesakes and kindred to the care of her husband ; for, when 
 he returned to town after Mrs Egerton's death, Audley had sent 
 to Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie the sum of 5000, which he said his ( 
 wife, leaving no written will, had orally bequeathed as a legacy 
 to that gentleman ; and he requested permission to charge him- 
 self with the education of the eldest son. 
 
 Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie might have done great things for 
 his little property with those 5000, or even (kept in the three- 
 per-cents) the interest would have afforded a material addition 
 to his comforts. But a neighbouring solicitor, having caught 
 scent of the legacy, hunted it down into his own hands, on pre- 
 tence of having found a capital investment in a canal. And 
 when the solicitor had got possession of the 5000, he went off 
 with them to America. 
 
 Meanwhile Randal, placed by Mr Egerton at an excellent 
 preparatory school, at first gave no signs of industry or talent ; 
 but just before he left it, there came to the school, as classical 
 tutor, an ambitious young Oxford man ; and his zeal for he 
 was a capital teacher produced a great effect generally on 
 the pupils, and especially on Randal Leslie. He talked to them 
 much in private on the advantages of learning, and shortly 
 afterwards he exhibited those advantages in his own person ; 
 for, having edited a Greek play with much subtle scholarship, 
 his college, which some slight irregularities of his had displeased, 
 recalled him to its venerable bosom by the presentation of a 
 fellowship. After this he took orders, became a college tutor, 
 distinguished himself yet more by a treatise on the Greek 
 accent, got a capital living, and was considered on the high road 
 to a bishopric. This young man, then, communicated to Ran- 
 dal the thirst for knowledge ; and when the boy went after- 
 wards to Eton, he applied with such earnestness and resolve 
 that his fame soon reached the ears of Audley ; and that person, 
 who had the sympathy for talent, and yet more for purpose, 
 which often characterises ambitious men, went to Eton to see
 
 116 MY NOVEL. 
 
 him. From that time, Audley evinced great and almost fatherly 
 interest in the brilliant Etonian ; and Randal always spent with 
 him some days in each vacation. 
 
 I have said that Egerton's conduct, with respect to this boy, 
 was more praiseworthy than most of those generous actions for 
 which he was renowned, since to this the world gave no ap- 
 plause. What a man does within the range of his family con- 
 nections, does not carry with it that eclat which invests a muni- 
 ficence exhibited on public occasions. Either people care 
 nothing about it, or tacitly suppose it to be but his duty. It 
 was true, too, as the Squire had observed, that Randal Leslie 
 was even less distantly related to the Hazeldeans than to Mrs 
 Egerton, since Randal's grandfather had actually married a Miss 
 Hazeldean, (the highest worldly connection that branch of the 
 family had formed since the great split I have commemorated.) 
 But Audley Egerton never appeared aware of that fact. As he 
 was not himself descended from the Hazeldeans, he did not 
 trouble himself about their genealogy ; and he took care to 
 impress it upon the Leslies that his generosity on their behalf 
 was solely to be ascribed to his respect for his wife's memory 
 and kindred. Still the Squire had felt as if his "distant 
 brother" implied a rebuke on his own neglect of these poor 
 Leslies, by the liberality Audley evinced towards them ; and 
 this had made him doubly sore when the name of Randal Leslie 
 was mentioned. But the fact really was, that the Leslies of 
 Rood had so shrunk out of all notice that the Squire had ac- 
 tually forgotten their existence, until Randal became thus in- 
 debted to his brother ; and then he felt a pang of remorse that 
 any one save himself, the head of the Hazeldeans, should lend a 
 helping hand to the grandson of a Hazeldean. 
 
 But having tlkus, somewhat too tediously, explained the posi- 
 tion of Audley Egerton, whether in the world or in relation to 
 his young protege, I may now permit him to receive and to read 
 his letters.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MR EGERTON glanced over the pile of letters placed beside him, 
 and first he tore up some, scarcely read, and threw them into 
 the waste-basket. Public men have such odd out-of-the-way 
 letters that their waste-baskets are never empty : letters from 
 amateur financiers proposing new ways to pay off the National 
 Debt ; letters from America, (never free !) asking for autographs ; 
 letters from fond mothers in country villages, recommending 
 some miracle of a son for a place in the king's service ; letters 
 from free-thinkers in reproof of bigotry ; letters from bigots in 
 reproof of free-thinking ; letters signed Brutus Redivivus, con- 
 taining the agreeable information that the writer has a dagger 
 for tyrants, if the Danish claims are not forthwith adjusted ; 
 letters signed Matilda or Caroline, stating that Caroline or Ma- 
 tilda has seen the public man's portrait at the Exhibition, and 
 that a heart sensible to its attractions may be found at No. 
 Piccadilly; letters from beggars, impostors, monomaniacs, specu- 
 lators, jobbers all food for the waste-basket. 
 
 From the correspondence thus winnowed, Mr Egerton first 
 selected those on business, which he put methodically together 
 in one division of his pocket-book ; and secondly, those of a pri- 
 vate nature, which he as carefully put into another. Of these 
 last there were but three one from his steward, one from Har- 
 ley L'Estrange, one from Randal Leslie. It was his custom to 
 answer his correspondence at his office ; and to his office, a few 
 minutes afterwards, he slowly took his way. Many a passenger 
 turned back to look again at the firm figure, which, despite the 
 hot summer day, was buttoned up to the throat ; and the black 
 frock-coat thus worn well became the erect air, and the deep
 
 118 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 full chest of the handsome senator. "When he entered Parlia- 
 ment Street, Audley Egerton was joined by one of his colleagues, 
 also on his way to the cares of office. 
 
 After a few observations on the last debate, this gentleman 
 said 
 
 " By the way, can you dine with me next Saturday, to meet 
 Lansmere ? He comes up to town to vote for us on Monday." 
 
 " I had asked some people to dine with me," answered Eger- 
 ton, " but I will put them off. I see Lord Lansmere too seldom, 
 to miss any occasion to meet a man whom I respect so much." 
 
 " So seldom ! True, he is very little in town ; but why don't 
 you go and see him in the country ? Good shooting pleasant, 
 old-fashioned house." 
 
 "My dear Westbourne, his house is ' nimium mdna Cremona?,' 
 close to a borough in which I have been burned in effigy." 
 
 " Ha ha yes I remember you first came into Parliament 
 for that sung little place ; but Lansmere himself never found 
 fault with your votes, did he 1 " 
 
 " He behaved very handsomely, and said he had not presumed 
 to consider me his mouthpiece ; and then, too, I am so intimate 
 with L'Estrange." 
 
 " Is that queer fellow ever coming back to England ? " 
 
 " He comes, generally every year, for a few days, just to see his 
 father and mother, and then returns to the Continent." 
 
 " I never meet him." 
 
 " He comes in September or October, when you, of course, are 
 not in town, and it is in town that the Lansmeres meet him." 
 
 " Why does not he go to them 1 " 
 
 " A man in England but once a-year, and for a few days, has 
 so much to do in London, I suppose." 
 
 " Is he as amusing as ever 1 " 
 
 Egerton nodded. 
 
 " So distinguished as he might be ! " remarked Lord "Westbourne. 
 
 " So distinguished as he is ! " said Egerton formally ; " an 
 officer selected for praise, even in such fields as Quatre Bras and 
 Waterloo ; a scholar, too, of the finest taste ; and as an accom- 
 plished gentleman, matchless !" 
 
 " I like to hear one man praise another so warmly in these
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 119 
 
 ill-natured days," answered Lord "Westbourne. " But still, 
 though L'Estrange is doubtless all you say, don't you think he 
 rather wastes his life living abroad ? " 
 
 " And trying to be happy, Westbourne 1 Are you sure it is 
 not we who waste our lives 1 But I can't stay to hear your 
 answer. Here we are at the door of my prison." 
 
 " On Saturday, then 1 " 
 
 " On Saturday. Good day." 
 
 For the next hour, or more, Mr Egerton was engaged on the 
 affairs of the state. He then snatched an interval of leisure, 
 (while awaiting a report, which he had instructed a clerk to 
 make him,) in order to reply to his letters. Those on public 
 business were soon despatched; and throwing his replies aside, 
 to be sealed by a subordinate hand, he drew out the letters 
 which he had put apart as private. 
 
 He attended first to that of his steward : the steward's letter 
 was long, the reply was contained in three lines. Pitt himself 
 was scarcely more negligent of his private interests and con- 
 cerns than Audley Egerton yet, withal, Audley Egerton was 
 said by his enemies to be an egotist. 
 
 The next letter he wrote was to Randal, and that, though 
 longer, was far from prolix : it ran thus 
 
 "Dear Mr Leslie, I appreciate your delicacy in consulting 
 me, whether you should accept Frank Hazeldean's invitation to 
 call at the Hall. Since you are asked, I can see no objection to 
 it. I should be sorry if you appeared to force yourself there ; 
 and for the rest, as a general rule, I think a young man who 
 has his own way to make in life had better avoid all intimacy 
 with those of his own age who have no kindred objects nor 
 congenial pursuits. 
 
 "As soon as this visit is paid, I wish you to come to London. 
 The report I receive of your progress at Eton renders it unneces- 
 sary, in my judgment, that you should return there. If your 
 father has no objection, I propose that you should go to Oxford 
 at the ensuing term. Meanwhile, I have engaged a gentleman, 
 who is a fellow of Baliol, to read with you. He is of opinion, 
 judging only by your high repute at Eton, that you may at
 
 120 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 once obtain a scholarship in that college. If you do so, I shall 
 look upon your career in life as assured. 
 
 " Your affectionate friend, and sincere well-wisher, 
 
 " A. E." 
 
 The reader will remark that, in this letter, there is a certain 
 tone of formality. Mr Egerton does not call his protege " Dear 
 Randal," as would seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, " Dear 
 Mr Leslie." He hints, also, that the boy has his own way to 
 make in life. Is this meant to guard against too sanguine 
 notions of inheritance, which his generosity may have excited ? 
 
 The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind 
 from the others. It was long, and full of such little scraps of 
 news and gossip as may interest friends in a foreign land ; it 
 was written gaily, and as with a wish to cheer his friend ; you 
 could see that it was a reply to a melancholy letter ; and in the 
 whole tone and spirit there was an affection, even to tenderness, 
 of which those who most liked Audley Egerton would have 
 scarcely supposed him capable. Yet, notwithstanding, there 
 was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the fine 
 tact of a woman would detect. It had not that abandon, that 
 hearty self-outpouring, which you might expect would charac- 
 terise the letters of two such friends, who had been boys at 
 school together, and which did breathe indeed in all the abrupt 
 rambling sentences of his correspondent. But where was the 
 evidence of the constraint ? Egerton is off-hand enough where 
 his pen runs glibly through paragraphs that relate to others ; it 
 is simply that he says nothing about himself that he avoids 
 all reference to the inner world of sentiment and feeling. But 
 perhaps, after all, the man has no sentiment and feeling ! How 
 can you expect that a steady personage in practical life, whose 
 mornings are spent in Downing Street, and whose nights are 
 consumed in watching Government bills through a committee, 
 can write iu the same style as an idle dreamer amidst the pines 
 of Ravenna, or on the banks of Como ? 
 
 Audley had just finished this epistle, such as it was, when 
 the attendant in waiting announced the arrival of a deputation 
 from a provincial trading town, the members of which deputa-
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 121 
 
 tion be had appointed to meet at two o'clock. There was no 
 office in London at which deputations were kept waiting less 
 than at that over which Mr Egerton presided. 
 
 The deputation entered some score or so of middle-aged, 
 comfortable-looking persons, who nevertheless had their griev- 
 ance and considered their own interests, and those of the 
 country, menaced by a certain clause in a bill brought in by 
 Mr Egerton. 
 
 The mayor of the town was the chief spokesman, and he 
 spoke well but in a style to which the dignified official was 
 not accustomed. It was a slap-dash style unceremonious, 
 free, and easy an American style. And, indeed, there was 
 something altogether in the appearance and bearing of the 
 Mayor which savoured of residence in the Great Republic. He 
 was a very handsome man, but with a look sharp and domineer- 
 ing the look of a man who did not care a straw for president 
 or monarch, and who enjoyed the liberty to speak his mind, 
 and " Avallop his own nigger ! " 
 
 His fellow-burghers evidently regarded him with, great 
 respect; and Mr Egerton had penetration enough to perceive 
 that Mr Mayor must be a rich man, as well as an eloquent one, 
 to have overcome those impressions of soreness or jealousy 
 which his tone was calculated to create in the self-love of his 
 equals. 
 
 Mr Egerton was far too wise to be easily offended by mere 
 manner ; and, though he stared somewhat haughtily when he 
 found his observations actually pooh-poohed, he was not above 
 being convinced. There was much sense and much justice in 
 Mr Mayor's arguments, and the statesman civilly promised to 
 take them into full consideration. 
 
 He then bowed out the deputation ; but scarcely had the door 
 closed before it opened again, and Mr Mayor presented himself 
 alone, saying aloud to his companions in the passage, " I forgot 
 something I had to say to Mr Egerton ; wait below for me." 
 
 " Well, Mr Mayor," said Audley, pointing to a seat, " what 
 else would you suggest 1 " 
 
 The Mayor looked round to see that the door was closed ; and 
 then, drawing his chair close to Mr Egerton's, laid his forefinger
 
 122 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 on that gentleman's arm, and said, " I think I speak to a man 
 of the world, sir ? " 
 
 Mr Egerton bowed, and made no reply by word, but he gently 
 removed his arm from the touch of the forefinger. 
 
 MR MAYOR. " You observe, sir, that I did not ask the mem- 
 bers whom we return to Parliament to accompany us. Do 
 better without 'em. You know they are both in Opposition 
 out-and-outers." 
 
 MR EGERTON. " It is a misfortune which the Government 
 cannot remember, when the question is whether the trade of 
 the town itself is to be served or injured." 
 
 MR MAYOR. " Well, I guess you speak handsome, sir. But 
 you'd be glad to have two members to support Ministers after 
 the next election." 
 
 MR EGERTON, (smiling.) "Unquestionably, Mr Mayor." 
 
 MR MAYOR. " And I can do it, Mr Egerton. I may say I 
 have the town in my pocket ; so I ought I spend a great deal 
 of money in it. Now, you see, Mr Egerton, I have passed a part 
 of my life in a land of liberty the United States and I come 
 to the point when I speak to a man of the world. I'm a man 
 of the world myself, sir. And so, if the Government will do 
 something for me, why, I'll do something for the Government. 
 Two votes for a free and independent town like ours that's 
 something, isn't it ? " 
 
 MR EGERTON, (taken by surprise.) " Really, I " 
 
 MR MAYOR, (advancing his chair still nearer, and interrupt- 
 ing the official.) "No nonsense, you see, on one side or the 
 other. The fact is that I've taken it into my head that I should 
 like to be knighted. You may well look surprised, Mr Egerton 
 trumpery thing enough, I daresay; still, every man has his 
 weakness, and I should like to be Sir Richard. Well, if you can 
 get me made Sir Richard, you may just name your two mem- 
 bers for the next election that is, if they belong to your own 
 set, enlightened men, up to the times. That's speaking fair 
 and manful, isn't it 1 " 
 
 MR EGERTON, (drawing himself up.) " I am at a loss to guess 
 why you should select me, sir, for this very extraordinary pro- 
 position."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 123 
 
 MR MAYOR, (nodding good-humouredly.) " Why, you see, 
 I don't go all along with the Government; you're the best of 
 the bunch. And maybe you'd like to strengthen your own 
 party. This is quite between you and me, you understand ; 
 honour's a jewel ! " 
 
 MR EGERTON, (with great gravity.) " Sir, I am obliged by 
 your good opinion ; but I agree with my colleagues in all the 
 great questions that affect the government of the country, 
 and" 
 
 MR MAYOR, (interrupting him.) " Ah, of course, you must 
 say so; very right. But I guess things would go differently if 
 you were Prime Minister. However, I have another reason for 
 speaking to you about my little job. You see you were member 
 for Lansmere once, and I think you only came in by a majority 
 of two, eh 1 " 
 
 MR EGERTON. " I know nothing of the particulars of that 
 election ; I was not present." 
 
 MR MAYOR. " No ; but, luckily for you, two relations of 
 mine were, and they voted for you. Two votes, and you came 
 in by two ! Since then, you have got into very snug quarters 
 here, and I think we have a claim on you " 
 
 MR EGERTON. " Sir, I acknowledge no such claim ; I was 
 and am a stranger to Lansmere ; and, if the electors did me the 
 honour to return me to Parliament, it was in compliment 
 rather to " 
 
 MR MAYOR, (again interrupting the official.) " Rather to 
 Lord Lansmere, you were going to say; unconstitutional doc- 
 trine that, I fancy. Peer of the realm. But, never mind, I 
 know the world ; and I'd ask Lord Lansmere to do my affair for 
 me, only he is a pompous sort of man ; might be qualmish : 
 antiquated notions. Not up to snuff like you and me." 
 
 MR EGERTON, (in great disgust, and settling his papers before 
 him.) " Sir, it is not in my department to recommend to His 
 Majesty candidates for the honour of knighthood, and it is still 
 less in my department to make bargains for seats in Parlia- 
 ment." 
 
 MR MAYOR. " Oh, if that's the case, you'll excuse me ; I 
 don't know much of the etiquette in these matters. But I
 
 124 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 thought that, if I put two seats in your hands, for your own 
 friends, you might contrive to take the affair into your depart- 
 ment, whatever it was. But, since you say you agree with your 
 colleagues, perhaps it comes to the same thing. Now, you must 
 not suppose I want to sell the town, and that I can change and 
 chop my politics for my own purpose. No such thing ! I 
 don't like the sitting members ; I'm all for progressing, but they 
 so too much ahead for me ; and. since the Government is dis- 
 
 O r f 
 
 posed to move a little, why, I'd as lief support them as not. 
 But, in common gratitude, you see, (added the Mayor, coaxingly,) 
 I ought to be knighted ! I can keep up the dignity, and do 
 credit to His Majesty." 
 
 MR EGERTON, (without looking up from his papers.) " I can 
 only refer you, sir, to the proper quarter." 
 
 MR MAYOR, (impatiently.) " Proper quarter ! Well, since 
 there is so much humbug in this old country of ours, that one 
 must go through all the forms and get at the job regularly, just 
 tell me whom I ought to go to." 
 
 MR EGERTON, (beginning to be amused as well as indignant.) 
 " If you want a knighthood, Mr Mayor, you must ask the 
 Prime Minister ; if you want to give the Government informa- 
 tion relative to seats in Parliament, you must introduce your- 
 self to Mr , the Secretary of the Treasury." 
 
 MR MAYOR. " And if I go to the last chap, what do you 
 think he'll say ? " 
 
 MR EGERTON, (the amusement preponderating over the indig- 
 nation.) " He will say, I suppose, that you must not put the 
 thing in the light in which you have put it to me ; that the 
 Government will be very proud to have the confidence of your- 
 self and your brother electors ; and that a gentleman like you, 
 in the proud position of Mayor, may well hope to be knighted 
 on some fitting occasion, but that you must not talk about the 
 knighthood just at present, and must confine yourself to con- 
 verting the unfortunate political opinions of the town." 
 
 MR MAYOR. " Well, I guess that chap there would want to 
 do me ! Not quite so green, Mr Egerton. Perhaps I'd better 
 go at once to the fountain-head. How d'ye think the Premier 
 would take it ? "
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 125 
 
 MR EGEKTON, (the indignation preponderating over the 
 amusement.) " Probably just as I am about to do." 
 
 Mr Egerton rang the bell ; the attendant appeared. 
 
 " Show Mr Mayor the way out/' said the Minister. 
 
 The Mayor turned round sharply, and his face was purple. 
 He walked straight to the door ; but, suffering the attendant to 
 precede him along the corridor, he came back with a rapid 
 stride, and, clenching his hands, and with a voice thick with 
 passion, cried, " Some day or other I will make you smart for 
 this, as sure as my name's Dick Avenel ! " 
 
 " Avenel ! " repeated Egerton, recoiling " Aveuel ! " 
 
 But the Mayor was gone. 
 
 Audlcy fell into a deep, and musing reverie which seemed 
 gloomy, and lasted till the attendant announced that the horses 
 were at the door. 
 
 He then looked up, still abstractedly, and saw his letter to 
 Harley L'Estrange open on the table. He drew it towards 
 him, and wrote, " A man has just left me, who calls himself 
 Aven ' In the middle of the name his pen stopped. " No, no," 
 muttered the writer, " what folly to re-open the old wounds 
 there" and he carefully erased the words. 
 
 Audley Egerton did not ride in the Park that day, as was his 
 wont, but dismissed his groom ; and, turning his horse's head 
 towards Westminster Bridge, took his solitary way into the 
 country. He rode at first slowly, as if in thought ; then fast, 
 as if trying to escape from thought. He was later than usual 
 at the House that evening, and he looked pale and fatigued. 
 But he had to speak, and he spoke well.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IN spite of all his Machiavellian wisdom, Dr Riccabocca had 
 been foiled in his attempt to seduce Leonard Fairfield into his 
 service, even though he succeeded in partially winning over the 
 widow to his views. For to her he represented the worldly 
 advantages of the thing. Lenny would learn to be fit for 
 more than a day-labourer ; he would learn gardening, in all 
 its branches rise some day to be a head gardener. " And," 
 said Riccabocca, "I will take care of his book learning, and 
 teach him whatever he has a head for." 
 " He has a head for everything," said the widow. 
 " Then," said the wise man, " everything shall go into it." 
 The widow was certainly dazzled ; for, as we have seen, she 
 highly prized scholarly distinction, and she knew that the 
 Parson looked upon Riccabocca as a wondrous learned man. 
 But still, Riccabocca was said to be a. Papist, and suspected 
 to be a conjuror. Her scruples on both these points the 
 Italian, who was an adept in the art of talking over the fair 
 sex, would no doubt have dissipated, if there had been any 
 use in it ; but Lenny put a dead stop to all negotiations. He 
 had taken a mortal dislike to Riccabocca ; he was very much 
 frightened by him and the spectacles, the pipe, the cloak, 
 the long hair, and the red umbrella ; and said so sturdily, in 
 reply, to every overture "Please, sir, I'd rather not ; I'd rather 
 stay along with mother" that Riccabocca was forced to sus- 
 pend all farther experiments in his Machiavellian diplomacy. 
 He was not at all cast down, however, by his first failure ; on 
 the contrary, he was one of those men whom opposition stimu- 
 lates. And what before had been but a suggestion of prudence,
 
 iir NOVEL. 127 
 
 became an object of desire. Plenty of other lads might no 
 doubt be had, on as reasonable terms as Lenny Fairfield ; but 
 the moment Lenny presumed to baffle the Italian's designs 
 upon him, the special acquisition of Lenny became of para- 
 mount importance in the eyes of Signor Riccabocca. 
 
 Jackeymo, however, lost all his interest in the traps, snares, 
 and gins which his master proposed to lay for Leonard Fair- 
 field, in the more immediate surprise that awaited him on 
 learning that Dr Riccabocca had accepted an invitation to pass 
 a few days at the Hall. 
 
 " There will be no one there but the family," said Riccabocca. 
 " Poor Giacomo, a little chat in the servants' hall will do you 
 good ; and the Squire's beef is more nourishing, after all, than 
 the stickle-backs and minnows. It will lengthen your life." 
 
 " The Padrone jests," said Jackeymo statelily ; " as if any one 
 could starve in his service." 
 
 " Um," said Riccabocca. " At least, faithful friend, you have 
 tried that experiment as far as human nature will permit ; " 
 and he extended his hand to his fellow-exile with that fami- 
 liarity which exists between servant and master in the usages 
 of the Continent. Jackeymo bent low, and a tear fell upon the 
 hand he kissed. 
 
 " Cospetto ! " said Dr Riccabocca, " a thousand mock pearls 
 do not make up the cost of a single true one ! The tears of 
 women we know their worth ; but the tear of an honest 
 man Fie, Giacomo ! at least I can never repay you this ! 
 Go and see to our wardrobe." 
 
 So far as his master's wardrobe was concerned, that order 
 was pleasing to Jackeymo ; for the Doctor had in his drawers 
 suits which Jackeymo pronounced to be as good as new, though 
 many a long year had passed since they left the tailor's hands. 
 But when Jackeymo came to examine the state of his own 
 clothing department, his face grew considerably longer. It was 
 not that he wa= without other clothes than those on his back 
 quantity was there, but the quality ! Mournfully he gazed on two 
 suits, complete in the three separate members of which man's 
 raiments are composed : the one suit extended at length upon 
 his bed, like a veteran stretched by pious hands after death ;
 
 128 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 the other brought piecemeal to the invidious light the torso 
 placed upon a chair, the limbs dangling down from Jackeymo's 
 melancholy arm. No bodies long exposed at the Morgue could 
 evince less sign of resuscitation than those respectable defuncts ! 
 For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his apparel 
 more profusus sui than his master. In the earliest days of 
 their exile, he preserved the decorous habit of dressing for 
 dinner it "was a respect due to the Padrone and that habit 
 had lasted till the two habits on which it necessarily depended 
 had evinced the first symptoms of decay ; then the evening 
 clothes had been taken into morning wear, in which hard 
 service they had breathed their last. 
 
 The Doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical ab- 
 straction from such household details, had more than once 
 said, rather in pity to Jackeymo than with an eye to that 
 respectability which the costume of the servant reflects on 
 the dignity of the master " Giacomo, thou wantest clothes ; 
 fit thyself out of mine ! " 
 
 And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation 
 had been accepted ; but the fact was, that that same fitting-out 
 was easier said than done. For though thanks to an exist- 
 ence mainly upon sticklebacks and minnows both Jackeymo 
 and Riccabocca had arrived at that state which the longevity 
 of misers proves to be most healthful to the human frame 
 viz., skin and bone yet the bones contained in the skin of 
 Riccabocca all took longitudinal directions ; while those in 
 the skin of Jackeymo spread out latitudinally. And you 
 might as well have made the bark of a Lombardy poplar 
 serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and pollarded oak in 
 whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at their 
 ease as have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca. 
 Moreover, if the skill of the tailor could have accomplished 
 that undertaking, the faithful Jackeymo would never have 
 had the heart to avail himself of the generosity of his master. 
 He had a sort of religious sentiment, too, about those vestments 
 of the Padrone. The ancients, we know, when escaping from 
 shipwreck, suspended in the votive temple the garments in 
 which they had struggled through the wave. Jackeymo looked
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 129 
 
 on those relics of the past with a kindred superstition. " This 
 coat the Padrone wore on such an occasion. I remember the 
 very evening the Padrone last put on those pantaloons ! " And 
 coat and pantaloons Avere tenderly dusted, and carefully restored 
 to their sacred rest. 
 
 But now, after all, what was to be done 1 Jackeymo was 
 much too proud to exhibit his person, to the eyes of the 
 Squire's butler, in habiliments discreditable to himself and 
 the Padrone. In the midst of his perplexity the bell rang, 
 and he went down into the parlour. 
 
 lliccabocca was standing on the hearth under his symbolical 
 representation of the " Patrice Exul." 
 
 " Giacomo," quoth he, " I have been thinking that thou hast 
 never done what I told thee, and fitted thyself out from my 
 superfluities. But we are going now into the great world : 
 visiting once begun. Heaven knows where it may stop ! Go 
 to the nearest town and get thyself clothes. Things are dear 
 in England. Will this suffice ? " And Riccabocca extended 
 a 5 note. 
 
 Jackeymo, we have seen, was more familiar with his master 
 than we formal English permit our domestics to be with us. 
 But in his familiarity he was usually respectful. This time, 
 however, respect deserted him. 
 
 " The Padrone is mad ! " he exclaimed ; " he would fling 
 away his whole fortune if I would let him. Five pounds 
 English, or a hundred and twenty-six pounds Milanese ! * 
 Santa Maria ! Unnatural father ! And what is to become 
 of the poor Signorina 1 Is this the way you are to marry 
 her in the foreign land ? " 
 
 " Giacomo," said Riccabocca, bowing his head to the storm ; 
 " the Signorina to-morrow ; to-day, the honour of the house. 
 Thy small-clothes, Giacomo. Miserable man, thy small- 
 clothes ! " 
 
 " It is just," said Jackeymo, recovering himself, and with 
 humility ; "and the Padrone does right to blame me, but not 
 
 * By the pounds Milanese, Giacomo means the Milanese lira. 
 VOL. I. I
 
 130 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 in so cruel a way. It is just the Padrone lodges and boards 
 me, and gives me handsome wages, and he has a right to expect 
 that I should not go in this figure." 
 
 " For the board and the lodgment, good," said Riccabocca. 
 " For the handsome wages, they are the visions of thy fancy ! " 
 
 " They are no such thing," said Jackeymo, " they are only in 
 arrear. As if the Padrone could not pay them some day or 
 other as if I was demeaning myself by serving a master who 
 did not intend to pay his servants ! And can't I wait ? Have 
 I not my savings too 1 But be cheered, be cheered ; you shall 
 be contented with me. I have two beautiful suits still. I was 
 arranging them when you rang for me. You shall see, you 
 shall see." 
 
 And Jackeymo hurried from the room, hurried back into his 
 own chamber, unlocked a little trunk which he kept at his bed 
 head, tossed out a variety of small articles, and from the deepest 
 depth extracted a leathern purse. He emptied the contents on 
 the bed. They were chiefly Italian coins, some five-franc pieces, 
 a silver medallion enclosing a little image of his patron saint 
 San Giacomo one solid English guinea, and two or three 
 pounds' worth in English silver. Jackeymo put back the 
 foreign coins, saying prudently, " One will lose on them here :" 
 he seized the English coins, and counted them out. " But are 
 you enough, you rascals 1 " quoth he angrily, giving them a 
 good shake. His eye caught sight of the medallion he paused ; 
 and after eyeing the tiny representation of the saint with great 
 deliberation, he added, in a sentence which he must have picked 
 up from the proverbial aphorisms of his master 
 
 " What's the difference between the enemy who does not hurt 
 me, and the friend who does not serve me 1 Monsignore San 
 Giacomo, my patron saint, you are of very little use to me in the 
 leathern bag. But if you help me to get into a new pair of 
 small-clothes on this important occasion, you will be a friend 
 indeed. Alia lisogna, Monsignore." Then, gravely kissing the 
 medallion, he thrust it into one pocket, the coins into the other, 
 made up a bundle of the two defunct suits, and muttering to 
 himself, " Beast, miser, that I am, to disgrace the Padrone, with 
 all these savings in his service ! " ran down stairs into his
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 131 
 
 pantry, caught up his hat and stick, and in a few moments 
 
 more was seen trudging off to the neighbouring town of L . 
 
 Apparently the poor Italian succeeded, for he came back that 
 evening in time to prepare the thin gruel which made his mas- 
 ter's supper, with a suit of black a little threadbare, but still 
 highly respectable two shirt fronts, and two white cravats. 
 But, out of all this finery, Jackeymo held the small-clothes in 
 especial veneration ; for, as they had cost exactly what the 
 medallion had sold for, so it seemed to him that San Giacomo 
 had heard his prayer in that quarter to which he had more 
 exclusively directed the saint's direction. The other habili- 
 ments came to him in the merely human process of sale and 
 barter; the small-clothes were the personal gratuity of San 
 Giacomo !
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LIFE has been subjected to many ingenious comparisons ; and 
 if we do not understand it any better, it is not for want of what 
 is called "reasoning by illustration." Amongst other resem- 
 blances, there are moments when, to a quiet contemplator, it 
 suggests the image of one of those rotatory entertainments com- 
 monly seen in fairs, and known by the name of " whirligigs or 
 roundabouts," in which each participator of the pastime, seated 
 on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of pursuing some 
 one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind. Man, 
 and woman too, are naturally animals of chase ; the greatest 
 still finds something to follow, and there is no one too humble 
 not to be an object of prey to another. Thus, confining our 
 view to the village of Hazeldean, we behold in this whirligig 
 Dr Riccabocca spurring his hobby after Lenny Fairfield ; and 
 Miss Jemima, on her decorous side-saddle, whipping after Dr 
 Riccabocca. Why, with so long and intimate a conviction of 
 the villany of our sex, Miss Jemima should resolve upon giving 
 the male animal one more chance of redeeming itself in her 
 eyes, I leave to the explanation of those gentlemen who profess 
 to find "their only books in woman's looks." Perhaps it 
 might be from the over-tenderness and clemency of Miss 
 Jemima's nature ; perhaps it might be that, as yet, she had 
 only experienced the villany of man born and reared in these 
 cold northern climates ; and in the land of Petrarch and Romeo, 
 of the citron and myrtle, there was reason to expect that the 
 native monster would be more amenable to gentle influences, 
 less obstinately hardened in his iniquities. Without entering 
 farther into these hypotheses, it is sufficient to say, that, on
 
 MY NOVEL. 133 
 
 Signer Riccabocca's appearance in the drawing-room at Hazel- 
 dean, Miss Jemima felt more than ever rejoiced that she had 
 relaxed in his favour her general hostility to man. In truth, 
 though Frank saw something quizzical in the old-fashioned 
 and outlandish cut of the Italian's sober dress ; in his long 
 hair, and the chapeau bras, over which he bowed so gracefully, 
 and then pressed it, as if to his heart, before tucking it under 
 his arm, after the fashion in which the gizzard reposes under 
 the wing of a roasted pullet ; yet it was impossible that even 
 Frank could deny to Riccabocca that praise which is due to 
 the air and manner of an unmistakable gentleman. And cer- 
 tainly as, after dinner, conversation grew more familiar, and 
 the Parson and Mrs Dale, who had been invited to meet their 
 friend, did their best to draw him out, his talk, though some- 
 times a little too wise for his listeners, became eminently ani- 
 mated and agreeable. It was the conversation of a man who, 
 besides the knowledge which is acquired from books and life, 
 had studied the art which becomes a gentleman that of pleas- 
 ing in polite society. 
 
 The result was, that all were charmed with him ; and that 
 even Captain Barnabas postponed the whist-table for a full 
 hour after the usual time. The Doctor did not play he thus 
 became the property of the two ladies, Miss Jemima and Mrs 
 Dale. 
 
 Seated between the two, in the place rightfully appertaining 
 to Flimsey, who this time was fairly dislodged, to her great 
 wonder and discontent, the Doctor was the emblem of true 
 Domestic Felicity, placed between Friendship and Love. 
 
 Friendship, as became her, worked quietly at the embroidered 
 pocket-handkerchief, and left Love to more animated opera- 
 tions. " You must be very lonely at the Casino," said Love, in 
 a sympathising tone. 
 
 "Madam," replied Riccabocca gallantly, "I shall think so 
 when I leave you." 
 
 Friendship cast a sly glance at Love Love blushed or looked 
 down on the carpet, which comes to the same thing. " Yet," 
 began Love again " yet solitude, to a feeling heart 
 
 Riccabocca thought of the note of invitation, and involun-
 
 134 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 tarily buttoned his coat, as if to protect the individual organ 
 thus alarmingly referred to. 
 
 " Solitude, to a feeling heart, has its charms. It is so hard 
 even for us poor ignorant women, to find a congenial com- 
 panion but for you!" Love stopped short, as if it had said 
 too much, and smelt confusedly at its bouquet. 
 
 Dr Riccabocca cautiously lowered his spectacles, and darted 
 one glance, which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of 
 lightning, seemed to envelope and take in it, as it were, the 
 whole inventory of Miss Jemima's personal attractions. Now, 
 Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a mild and pensive 
 expression of countenance, and she would have been positively 
 pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the 
 pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In t fact, though Miss 
 Jemima was constitutionally mild, she was not de naturct 
 pensive ; she had too much of the Hazeldean blood in her veins 
 for that sullen and viscid humour called melancholy, and 
 therefore this assumption of pensiveness really spoiled her cha- 
 racter of features, which only wanted to be lighted up by a 
 cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing. The same remark 
 might apply to the figure, which thanks to the same pensive- 
 ness lost all the undulating grace which movement and ani- 
 mation bestow on the fluent curves of the feminine form. The 
 figure was a good figure, examined in detail a little thin, per- 
 haps, but by no means emaciated with just and elegant pro- 
 portions, and naturally light and flexible. But that same un- 
 fortunate pensiveness gave to the whole a character of inertness 
 and languor ; and when Miss Jemima reclined on the sofa, so 
 complete seemed the relaxation of nerve and muscle that you 
 would have thought she had lost the use of her limbs. Over 
 her face and form, thus defrauded of the charms Providence 
 had bestowed on them, Dr Riccabocca's eye glanced rapidly ; 
 and then moving nearer to Mrs Dale "Defend me" (he 
 stopped a moment, and added) " from the charge of not being 
 able to appreciate congenial companionship." 
 
 " Oh, I did not say that ! " cried Miss Jemima. 
 
 " Pardon me," said the Italian, " if I am so dull as to misun- 
 derstand you. One may well lose one's head, at least, in such a
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 135 
 
 neighbourhood as this." He rose as he spoke, and bent over 
 Frank's shoulder to examine some Views of Italy, which Miss 
 Jemima (with what, if wholly unselfish, would have been an 
 attention truly delicate) had extracted from the library in order 
 to gratify the guest. 
 
 " Most interesting creature, indeed," sighed Miss Jemima, 
 " but too too flattering ! " 
 
 " Tell me," said Mrs Dale gravely, " do you think, love, that 
 you could put off the end of the world a little longer, or must 
 we make haste in order to be in time 1 " 
 
 " How wicked you are ! " said Miss Jemima, turning aside. 
 
 Some few minutes afterwards, Mrs Dale contrived it so that 
 Dr Riccabocca and herself were in a farther corner of the room, 
 looking at a picture said to be by Wouvermans. 
 
 MRS DALE. " She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?" 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece ! " 
 
 MRS DALE. " So kind-hearted." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " All ladies are. How naturally that warrior 
 makes his desperate cut at the runaway ! " 
 
 MRS DALE. " She is not what is called regularly handsome, 
 but she has something very winning." 
 
 RICCABOCCA, (with a smile.) " So winning, that it is strange 
 she is not won. That grey mare in the foreground stands out 
 very boldly ! " 
 
 MRS DALE, (distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throw- 
 ing in a more effective grape charge.) " Not won yet ; and it is 
 strange ! she will have a very pretty fortune." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Ah ! " 
 
 MRS DALE. " Six thousand pounds, I daresay certainly 
 four." 
 
 RICCABOCCA, (suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted 
 address.) " If Mrs Dale were still single, she would never need 
 a friend to say what her portion might be ; but Miss Jemima 
 is so good that I am quite sure it is not Miss Jemima's fault 
 that she is still Miss Jemima ! " 
 
 The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sate himself 
 down beside the whist-players. 
 
 Mrs Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended.
 
 136 MY NOVEL j OB, 
 
 " It would be such a good thing for both," muttered she, almost 
 inaudibly. 
 
 " Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing that night 
 in the large, comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with 
 that great English four-posted bed in the recess which seems 
 made to shame folks out of single-blessedness " Giacomo, I 
 have had this evening the offer of probably six thousand pounds 
 certainly of four thousand." 
 
 " Cosa meravigliosa ! " exclaimed Jackeymo "miraculous 
 thing ! " and he crossed himself with great fervour. " Six 
 thousand pounds English ! why, that must be a hundred 
 thousand blockhead that I am ! more than a hundred and 
 fifty thousand pounds Milanese ! " And Jackeymo, who was 
 considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series 
 of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped 
 and cried, " But not for nothing ?" 
 
 "Nothing! no!" 
 
 " These mercenary English ! the Government wants to bribe 
 you." 
 
 " That's not it." 
 
 " The priests want you to turn heretic." 
 
 " Worse than that," said the philosopher. 
 
 " Worse than that ! Padrone ! for shame ! " 
 
 "Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons they want me 
 never to wear these again ! " 
 
 " Never to wear what 1 " exclaimed Jackeymo, staring out- 
 right at his master's long legs in their linen drawers " never 
 to wear " 
 
 " The breeches," said Riccabocca laconically. 
 
 " The barbarians ! " faltered Jackeymo. 
 
 " My nightcap ! and never to have any comfort in this," 
 said Riccabocca, drawing on the cotton head-gear ; " and never 
 to have any sound. sleep in that," pointing to the four-posted 
 bed. " And to be a bondsman and a slave," continued Ricca- 
 bocca, waxing wroth ; " and to be wheedled and purred at, and 
 pawed, and clawed, and scolded, and fondled, and blinded, 
 and deafened, and bridled, and saddled bedevilled and mar- 
 ried ! "
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 137 
 
 "Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately "that's 
 very bad, certainly ; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand 
 lire, and perhaps a pretty young lady, and " 
 
 "Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into 
 bed and drawing the clothes fiercely over him. " Put out the 
 candle, and get along with you do, you villanous old incen- 
 diary ! "
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IT was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened 
 stocks, and it was evident already, to an ordinary observer, that 
 something wrong had got into the village. The peasants wore 
 a sullen expression of countenance ; when the Squire passed, 
 they took off their hats with more than ordinary formality, but 
 they did not return the same broad smile to his quick, hearty 
 " Good day, my man." The women peered at him from the 
 threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont, (at 
 least the wont of the prettiest,) take occasion to come out to 
 catch his passing compliment on their own good looks, or their 
 tidy cottages. And the children, who used to play after work 
 on the site of the old stocks, now shunned the place, and, 
 indeed, seemed to cease play altogether. 
 
 On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great 
 public work for nothing. Now that the Squire had resuscitated 
 the stocks, and made them so exceedingly handsome, it was 
 natural that he should wish to put somebody into them. 
 Moreover, his pride and self-esteem had been wounded by the 
 Parson's opposition ; and it would be a justification to his own 
 forethought, and a triumph over the Parson's understanding, if 
 he could satisfactorily and practically establish a proof that the 
 stock's had not been repaired before it was wanted. 
 
 Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something 
 about the Squire more burly, and authoritative, and menacing 
 than heretofore. Old Gaffer Solomons observed, '' that they 
 had better moind well what they were about, for that the 
 Squire had a wicked look in the tail of his eye just as the dun 
 bull had afore it tossed neighbour Barnes's little boy."
 
 MY NOVEL. 139 
 
 For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing 
 in the atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, 
 without any positive overt act of tyranny on the one hand, or 
 rebellion on the other. But on the very Saturday night in 
 which Dr Riccabocca was installed in the four-posted bed in the 
 chintz chamber, the threatened revolution commenced. In the 
 dead of that night, personal outrage was committed on the 
 stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr Stirn, who was the 
 earliest riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, 
 that the nob of the column that flanked the board had been 
 feloniously broken off ; that the four holes were bunged up with 
 mud ; and that some Jacobinical villain had carved, on the very 
 centre of the flourish or scroll-work, " Dam the stoks ! " Mr 
 Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much too zealous 
 a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings with 
 horror and alarm. And when the Squire came into his dressing- 
 room at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties 
 of valet) informed him, with a mysterious air, that Mr Stirn 
 had something " very partikler to communicate, about a most 
 howdacious midnight 'spiracy and 'sault." 
 
 The Squire stared, and bade Mr Stiru be admitted. 
 
 " Well ? " cried the Squire, suspending the operation of strop- 
 ping his razor. 
 
 Mr Stirn groaned. 
 
 " Well, man, what now 1 " 
 
 " I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," 
 began Mr Stirn, " and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that 
 them foreign Papishers have been semminating " 
 
 " Been what 1 " 
 
 " Semminating " 
 
 " Disseminating, you blockhead disseminating what 1 " 
 
 " Damn the stocks," began Mr Stirn, pjunging right in medias 
 res, and by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric. 
 
 "Mr Stirn!" cried the Squire, reddening, "did you say, 
 ' Damn the stocks 1 ' damn my new handsome pair of stocks !" 
 
 " Lord forbid, sir ; that's what they say : that's what they 
 have digged on it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed 
 mud in its four holes, and broken the capital of the elewation."
 
 140 JJY NOVEL ; OB, 
 
 The Squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop 
 and razor ; he seated himself in his arm-chair majestically, 
 crossed his legs, and in a voice that affected tranquillity, said 
 
 " Compose yourself, Stirn ; you have a deposition to make, 
 touching an assault upon can I trust my senses ? upon my 
 new stocks. Compose yourself be calm. NOW ! What the 
 devil is come to the parish 1 " 
 
 " Ah, sir, what indeed 1 " replied Mr Stirn ; and then, laying 
 the fore-finger of the right hand on the palm of the left, he 
 narrated the case. 
 
 " And whom do you suspect ? Be calm now ; don't speak in 
 a passion. You are a witness, sir a dispassionate, unprejudiced 
 witness. Zounds and fury ! this is the most insolent, unpro- 
 voked, diabolical but whom do you suspect, I say 1 " 
 
 Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his thumb 
 over his shoulder, and whispered " I hear as how the two 
 Papishers slept at your honour's last night." 
 
 " What, dolt ! do you suppose Dr Rickeybockey got out of his 
 warm bed to bung up the holes in my new stocks 1 " 
 
 " Noa ; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have 
 been semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and 
 your honour knows as how the Parson set his face agin the 
 stocks. Wait a bit, sir don't fly at me yet. There be a boy in 
 this here parish " 
 
 " A boy ah, fool, now you are nearer the mark. The Parson 
 write 'Damn the stocks,' indeed ! What boy do you mean 1 " 
 
 " And that boy be cockered up much by Mister Dale ; and 
 the Papisher went and sat with him and his mother a whole 
 hour t'other day ; and that boy is as deep as a well ; and I seed 
 him lurking about the place, and hiding hisself under the tree 
 the day the stocks was put up and that 'ere boy is Lenny 
 Fairfield." 
 
 "Whew," said the Squire, whistling, "you have not your 
 usual senses about you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield pattern 
 boy of the village. Hold your tongue. I dare say it is not done 
 by any one in the parish, after all ; some good-for-nothing 
 vagrant that cursed tinker, who goes about with a very vicious 
 donkey a donkey that I caught picking thistles out of the very
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 141 
 
 eyes of the old stocks ! Shows how the tinker brings up his 
 donkeys ! "Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day is Sunday ; 
 worst day of the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows 
 and depredations. Between the services, and after evening 
 church, there are always idle fellows from all the neighbouring 
 country about, as you know too well. Depend on it, the real 
 culprits will be found gathering round the stocks, and will 
 betray themselves : have your eyes, ears, and wits about you, 
 and I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the matter 
 before the day's out. And if we do," added the Squire, " we'll 
 make an example of the ruffian ! " 
 
 " In course," said Stirn ; " and if we don't find him, we must 
 make an example all the same. That's what it is, sir. That's 
 why the stocks ben't respected ; they has not had an example 
 yet-^-we wants an example." 
 
 " On my word, I believe that's very true ; and we'll clap in 
 the first idle fellow you catch in anything wrong, and keep him 
 there for two hours at least." 
 
 " With the biggest pleasure, your honour that's what it is." 
 
 And Mr Stirn, having now got what he considered a complete 
 and unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of 
 Hazel dean parish, quoad the stocks, took his departure.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " RANDAL," said Mrs Leslie, on this memorable Sunday 
 " Eandal, do you think of going to Mr Hazeldean's 1 " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. " Mr Egerton does not 
 object to it ; and as I do not return to Eton, I may have no 
 other opportunity of seeing Frank for some time. I ought not 
 to fail in respect to Mr Egerton's natural heir ! " 
 
 " Gracious me ! " cried Mrs Leslie, who, like many women of 
 her cast and kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, 
 which she never evinced in her conduct " gracious me ! 
 natural heir to the old Leslie property ! " 
 
 " He is Mr Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenu- 
 ously letting out his thoughts, " I am no relation to Mr Egerton 
 at all." 
 
 " But," said poor Mrs Leslie, with tears in her eyes, " it would 
 be a shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending 
 you to Oxford, and having you to stay with him in the holi- 
 days, if he did not mean anything by it." 
 
 "Anything, mother yes but not the thing you suppose. 
 No matter. It is enough that he has armed me for life, and I 
 shall use the weapons as seems to me best." 
 
 Here the dialogue was suspended by the entrance of the other 
 members of the family, dressed for church. 
 
 " It can't be time for church ! No ! it can't ! " exclaimed 
 Mrs Leslie. She was never in time for anything. 
 
 " Last bell ringing," said Mr Leslie, who, though a slow man, 
 was methodical and punctual. Mrs Leslie made a frantic rush 
 at the door, the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze 
 dashed up the stairs burst into her room, tore her best bonnet
 
 MY NOVEL. 143 
 
 from the peg, snatched her newest shawl from the drawers, 
 crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl on her 
 shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to con- 
 ceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew 
 back like a whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already 
 out of doors, in waiting ; and just as the bell ceased, the pro- 
 cession moved from the shabby house to the dilapidated 
 church. 
 
 The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, 
 and so was the income of the Parson. It was a lay rectory, and 
 the great tithes had belonged to the Leslies, but they had been 
 long since sold. The vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth 
 a little more than 100 a-year. The present incumbent had 
 nothing else to live upon. He was a good man, and not origin- 
 ally a stupid one ; but penury and the anxious cares for wife 
 and family, combined with what may be called solitary confine- 
 ment for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged 
 creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with Avhich it 
 can exchange one extra-parochial thought had lulled him into 
 a lazy mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. 
 His income allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether 
 in work, trade, or charity ; and thus he had no moral weight 
 with the parishioners beyond the example of his sinless life, 
 and such negative effect as might be produced by his slumber- 
 ous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners troubled him very 
 little ; and but for the influence which, in hours of Montfydget 
 activity, Mrs Leslie exercised over the most tractable that is, 
 the children and the aged not half-a-dozen persons would have 
 known or cared whether he shut up his church or not. 
 
 But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial 
 pew, and Mr Dumdrura, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously 
 through the prayers ; and the old people who could sin no 
 more, and the children who had not yet learned to sin, croaked 
 forth responses that might have come from the choral frogs in 
 Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon apropos to 
 nothing which could possibly interest the congregation being, 
 in fact, some controversial homily, which Mr Dumdrum had 
 composed and preached years before. And when this discourse
 
 144 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 was over, there was a loud universal grunt as if of relief and 
 thanksgiving, and a great clatter of shoes and the old hobbled, 
 aud the young scrambled, to the church door. 
 
 Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined ; and, as 
 soon as dinner was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to 
 Hazeldean Hall. 
 
 Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy 
 and quickness of movement which belongs to nervous tempera- 
 ments ; and he tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he 
 took to serve him as a guide for the first two or three miles. 
 Though Randal had not the gracious open manner with the 
 poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was still (despite 
 many a secret hypocritical vice, at war with the character of a 
 gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his 
 inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk ; 
 and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, 
 indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's 
 pony, from which he diverged into some compliments on the 
 young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his brows. 
 There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding in your agricultural 
 peasant ; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish specimen 
 of the class, he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain. He 
 paused, scratched his head, and glancing affectionately towards 
 his companion, exclaimed 
 
 " But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that 
 little pony, Master Randal ; and sure I oug-ht, for you be as 
 good a gentleman as any in the land." 
 
 " Thank you," said Randal. " But I like walking better than 
 riding I am more used to it." 
 
 " Well, and you walk bra'ly there ben't a better walker in 
 the county. And very pleasant it is walking ; and 'tis a 
 pretty country afore you, all the way to the Hall." 
 
 Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter 
 or to soothe ; and, coming at length into a broader lane, said 
 " I think I can find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom :" 
 and he forced a shilling into Tom's horny palm. The man took 
 it reluctantly, and a tear started to his eye. He felt more grate- 
 ful for that shilling than he had for Frank's liberal half-crown ;
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 145 
 
 and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot his own 
 dire wrestle with the wolf at his door. 
 
 He staid lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was 
 out of sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued 
 to walk on at a quick pace. With all his intellectual culture, 
 and his restless aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought 
 so generous, no sentiment so poetic, as those with which the 
 unlettered clown crept slouchingly homeward. 
 
 As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad 
 piece of waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slack- 
 ened. Just then a gig emerged from one of these by-roads, and 
 took the same direction as the pedestrian. The road was rough 
 and hilly, and the driver proceeded at a foot's-pace ; so that the 
 gig and the pedestrian went pretty well abreast. 
 
 "You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer 
 of the higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassion- 
 ately on the boy's pale countenance and weary stride. " Perhaps 
 we are going the same way, and I can give you a lift ? " 
 
 It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advan- 
 tage proffered to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly 
 enough to please the honest farmer. - 
 
 "A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. 
 " Have you come far ] " 
 
 "From Rood Hall." 
 
 " Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more 
 respectfully, and lifting his hat. 
 
 " Yes, my name is Leslie. You know Rood, then 1 " 
 
 "I was brought up on your father's land, sir. You may have 
 heard of Farmer Bruce ? " 
 
 RANDAL. "I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr 
 Bruce, who rented, I believe, the best part of our land, and 
 who used to bring us cakes when he called to see my father. 
 He is a relation of yours ? " 
 
 FARMER BRUCE. " He was my uncle. lie is dead now, 
 poor man." 
 
 RANDAL. "Dead! I am grieved to hear it. He was very kind 
 to us children. But it is long since he left my father's farm." 
 
 VOL. i. K
 
 146 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 FARMER BRUCE, (apologetically.) " I am sure he was very 
 sorry to go. But, you see, he had an unexpected legacy " 
 
 RANDAL. "And retired from business 1 " 
 
 FARMER BRUCE. " No. But, having capital, he could afford 
 to pay a good rent for a real good farm." 
 
 RANDAL, (bitterly.) " All capital seems to fly from the lands 
 of Rood. And whose farm did he take ? " 
 
 FARMER BRUCE. " He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazel- 
 dean. I rent it now. "We've laid out a power o' money on it. 
 But I don't complain. It pays well." 
 
 RANDAL. "Would the money have paid as well, sunk on 
 my father's land 1 " 
 
 FARMER BRUCE. " Perhaps it might, in the long run. But 
 then, sir, we wanted new premises barns and cattle-sheds, 
 and a deal more which the landlord should do ; but it is 
 not every landlord as can afford that. Squire Hazeldean's a 
 rich man." 
 
 RANDAL. " Ay ! " 
 
 The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his 
 horse into a brisk trot. 
 
 " But which way be you going, sir 1 I don't care for a few 
 miles more or less, if I can be of service." 
 
 "I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself 
 from a reverie. " Don't let me take you out of your way." 
 
 " Oh, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so 
 it be quite my way, sir." 
 
 The farmer then, who was really a smart young fellow one 
 of that race which the application of capital to land has pro- 
 duced, and which, in point of education and refinement, are 
 at least on a par with the squires of a former generation 
 began to talk about his handsome horse, about horses in 
 general, about hunting and coursing : he handled all these 
 subjects with spirit, yet with modesty. Randal pulled his 
 hat still lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt 
 him till they passed the Casino, when, struck by the classic 
 air of the place, and catching a scent from the orange trees, 
 the boy asked abruptly " Whose house is that 1 " 
 
 " Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 147 
 
 to a foreign Mounseer. They say he is quite the gentleman, 
 but uncommonly poor." 
 
 "Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim 
 garden, the neat terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door 
 of the house being open) catching a glimpse of the painted 
 hall within " poor : the place seems well kept. "What do you 
 call poor, Mr Bruce ? " 
 
 The farmer laughed. " Well, that's a home question, sir. 
 But I believe the Mounseer is as poor as a man can be who 
 makes no debts and does not actually starve." 
 
 " As poor as my father ? " asked Randal openly and abruptly. 
 
 " Lord, sir ! your father be a very rich man compared to 
 him." 
 
 Randal continued to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up 
 the contrast of his slovenly shabby home, with all its neglected 
 appurtenances ! JS T o trim garden at Rood Hall, no scent from 
 odorous orange blossoms. Here poverty at least was elegant 
 there, how squalid ! He did not comprehend at how cheap 
 a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected. They now 
 approached the extremity of the Squire's park pales ; and 
 Randal, seeing a little gate, bade the farmer stop his gig, and 
 descended. The boy plunged amidst the thick oak groves ; the 
 farmer went his way blithely, and his mellow merry whistle 
 came to Randal's moody ear as he glided quick under the 
 shadow of the trees. 
 
 He arrived at the Hall, to find that all the family were at 
 church ; and, according to the patriarchal custom, the church- 
 going family embraced nearly all the servants. It was there- 
 fore an old invalid housemaid who opened the door to him. 
 She was rather deaf, and seemed so stupid that Randal did not 
 ask leave to enter and wait for Frank's return. He therefore 
 said briefly that he would just stroll on the lawn, and call 
 again when church was over. 
 
 The old woman stared, and strove to hear him ; meanwhile 
 Randal turned round abruptly, and sauntered towards the 
 garden side of the handsome old house. 
 
 There was enough to attract any eye in the smooth green- 
 sward of the spacious lawn in the numerous parterres of
 
 148 MT NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 variegated flowers in the venerable grandeur of the two 
 mighty cedars, which threw their still shadows over the grass 
 and in the picturesque building, with its projecting mul- 
 lions and heavy gables ; yet I fear that it was with no 
 poet's nor painter's eye that this young old man gazed on the 
 scene before him. 
 
 He beheld the evidence of wealth and the envy of wealth 
 jaundiced his soul. 
 
 Folding his arms on his breast, he stood awhile, looking 
 all around him with closed lips and lowering brow ; then he 
 walked slowly on, his eyes fixed on the ground, and muttered 
 to himself 
 
 " The heir to this property is little better than a dunce ; and 
 they tell me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to 
 my heart the maxim, ' Knowledge is power.' And yet, with 
 all my struggles, will knowledge ever place me on the same 
 level as that on which this dunce is born 1 I don't wonder 
 that the poor should hate the rich. But of all the poor, who 
 should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman 1 I suppose 
 Audley Egerton means me to come into Parliament, and be a 
 Tory like himself. "What ! keep things as they are ! No ; for 
 me not even Democracy, unless there first come Revolution. I 
 understand the cry of a Marat ' More blood ! ' Marat had 
 lived as a poor man, and cultivated science in the sight of a 
 prince's palace." 
 
 He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor 
 old hall, which, though a very comfortable habitation, was 
 certainly no palace ; and with his arms still folded on his 
 breast, he walked backward, as if not to lose the view, nor the 
 chain of ideas it conjured up. 
 
 "But," he continued to soliloquise "but of revolution there 
 is no chance. Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in 
 revolutions should thrive in this common-place life. Know- 
 ledge is power. Well, then, shall I have no power to oust this 
 blockhead? Oust him what from? His father's halls? 
 Well, but if he were dead, who would be the heir of Hazel- 
 dean ? Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in 
 blood to this Squire as any one, if he had no children ? Oh,
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 149 
 
 but the boy's life is worth ten of mine ! Oust him from what? 
 At least from the thoughts of his uncle Egerton an uncle who 
 has never even seen him ! That, at least, is more feasible. ' Make 
 my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley Egerton. Ay and to 
 the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors. Simulation 
 simulation. Lord Bacon allows simulation. Lord Bacon 
 practised it and 
 
 Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end ; for as, rapt in his 
 thoughts, the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had 
 come to the verge, where the lawn slided off into the ditch of 
 the ha-ha ; and, just as he was fortifying himself by the pre- 
 cept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the ground went from 
 under him, and slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie 1 
 
 It so happened that the Squire, whose active genius was 
 always at some repair or improvement, had been but a few 
 days before widening and sloping off the ditch just in that part, 
 so that the earth was fresh and damp, and not yet either turfed 
 or flattened down. Thus when Randal, recovering his first 
 surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he found his clothes covered 
 with mud ; while the rudeness of the fall was evinced by the 
 fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat, which, hol- 
 lowed here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition 
 generally, was as little like the hat of a decorous hard-reading 
 young gentleman protege of the dignified Mr Audley Egerton 
 as any hat picked out of a kennel after some drunken brawl 
 possibly could be. 
 
 Randal was dizzy, and stunned, and bruised, and it was 
 some moments before he took heed of his raiment. "When he 
 did so, his spleen was greatly aggravated. He was still boy 
 enough not to like the idea of presenting himself to the un- 
 known Squire, and the dandy Frank, in such a trim : he 
 resolved at once to regain the lane and return home, without 
 accomplishing the object of his journey ; and seeing the foot- 
 path right before him, which led to a gate that he conceived 
 would admit him into the highway sooner than the path by 
 which he had come, he took it at once. 
 
 It is surprising how little we human creatures heed the 
 warnings of our good genius. I have no doubt that some
 
 150 MY NOVEL. 
 
 benignant Power had precipitated Randal Leslie into the ditch, 
 as a significant hint of the fate of all who choose what is, now- 
 a-days, by no means an uncommon step in the march of in- 
 tellect viz., the walking backwards, in order to gratify a 
 vindictive view of one's neighbour's property ! I suspect that, 
 before this century is out, many a fine fellow will thus have 
 found his ha-ha, and scrambled out of the ditch with a much 
 shabbier coat than he had on when he fell into it. But Randal 
 did not thank his good genius for giving him a premonitory 
 tumble ; and I never yet knew a man who did !
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 
 THE Squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He 
 was too much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and 
 he considered that he had been personally insulted in the out- 
 rage offered to his recent donation to the parish. His feelings, 
 too, were hurt as well as his pride. There was something so 
 ungrateful in the whole thing, just after he had taken so much 
 pains, not only in the resuscitation, but the embellishment of 
 the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence for the 
 Squire to be ruffled, as to create any remark. Riccabocca, 
 indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs Hazeldean, as a wife, had the 
 quick tact to perceive that the host was glum and the husband 
 snappish ; but the one was too discreet, and the other too sen- 
 sible to chafe the new sore, whatever it might be ; and shortly 
 after breakfast the Squire retired into his study, and absented 
 himself from morning service. 
 
 In his delightful Life of Oliver Goldsmith, Mr Forster 
 takes care to touch our hearts by introducing his hero's ex- 
 cuse for not entering the priesthood. " He did not feel himself 
 good enough." Thy Vicar of Wakefield, poor Goldsmith, was an 
 excellent substitute for thee ; and Dr Primrose, at least, will be 
 good enough for the world until Miss Jemima's fears are rea- 
 lised. Now, Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience 
 much less reasonable than Goldsmith's. There were occasion- 
 ally days in which he did not feel good enough I don't say for 
 a priest, but even for one of the congregation " days in which, 
 (said the Squire in his own blunt way,) as I have never in my 
 life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry 
 mine into the family pew. He shan't be growling out hypo-
 
 152 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 critical responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book." 
 So the Squire and his demon staid at home. But the demon 
 was generally cast out before the day was over ; and. on this 
 occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon service, it may be 
 presumed that the Squire had reasoned or fretted himself into 
 a proper state of mind ; for he was then seen sallying forth 
 from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the 
 head of his household. The second service was (as is commonly 
 the case in rural districts) more numerously attended than the 
 first one ; and it was our Parson's wont to devote to this service 
 his most effective discourse. 
 
 Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep 
 theology nor the archaeological learning that distinguish the 
 rising generation of the clergy. I much doubt if he could have 
 passed what would now be called a creditable examination in 
 the Fathers ; and as for all the nice formalities in the rubric, 
 he would never have been the man to divide a congregation or 
 puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in 
 ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all 
 the details in the church were purely Gothic or not : crockets 
 and finials, round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, 
 on which he had never troubled his head. But one secret Par- 
 'son Dale did possess, which is perhaps of equal importance with 
 those subtler mysteries he knew how to fill his church ! Even 
 at morning service no pews were empty, and at evening service 
 the church overflowed. 
 
 Parson Dale, too, may be considered, now-a-days, to hold but 
 a mean idea of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had 
 never been known to dispute on its exact bearing with the 
 State whether it was incorporated with the State, or above 
 the State whether it was antecedent to the Papacy, or formed 
 from the Papacy, &c., &c. According to his favourite maxim, 
 Quieta non movere, (not to disturb things that are quiet,) I 
 have no doubt that he would have thought that the less discus- 
 sion is provoked upon such matters, the better for both church 
 and laity. Nor had he ever been known to regret the disuse of 
 the ancient custom of excommunication, nor any other diminu- 
 tion of the powers of the priesthood, whether minatory or mili-
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 153 
 
 tant ; yet for all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of the 
 sacred privilege of a minister of the gospel to advise to deter 
 to persuade to reprove. And it was for the evening service 
 that he prepared those sermons, \vhich may be called "sermons 
 that preach at you." He preferred the evening for that salutary 
 discipline, not only because the congregation was more numer- 
 ous, but also because, being a shrewd man in his own innocent 
 way, he knew that people bear better to be preached at after 
 dinner than before ; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the 
 heart when the stomach is at peace. There was a genial kind- 
 ness in Parson Dale's way of preaching at you. It was done in 
 so imperceptible fatherly a manner, that you never felt offended. 
 He did it, too, with so much art that nobody but your own 
 guilty self knew that you were the sinner he was exhorting. 
 Yet he did not spare rich nor poor : he preached at the Squire, 
 and that great fat farmer, Mr Bullock the churchwarden, as 
 boldly as at Hodge the ploughman and Scrub the hedger. As 
 for Mr Stirn, he had preached at him more often than at any 
 one in the parish ; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know 
 it, never had the grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson 
 Dale's sermons, something of that boldness of illustration which 
 would have been scholarly if he had not made it familiar, and 
 which is found in the discourses of our elder divines. Like 
 them, he did not scruple, now and then, to introduce an anec- 
 dote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scrip- 
 tural author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, 
 or render an argument more plain. And the good man had an 
 object in this, a little distinct from, though wholly subordinate 
 to, the main purpose of his discourse. He was a friend to 
 knowledge but to knowledge accompanied by religion ; and 
 sometimes his references to sources not Avithin the ordinary 
 reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son, 
 with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the Parson for 
 farther explanation, and so be lured on to a little solid or grace- 
 ful instruction under a safe guide. 
 
 Now, on the present occasion, the Parson, who had always 
 his eye and heart on his flock, and who had seen with great 
 grief the realisation of his fears at the revival of the stocks ; seen
 
 154 MY NOVEL. 
 
 that a spirit of discontent was already at work amongst the 
 peasants, and that magisterial and inquisitorial designs were 
 darkening the natural benevolence of the Squire ; seen, in short, 
 the signs of a breach between classes, and the precursors of the 
 ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor, meditated 
 nothing less than a great Political Sermon a sermon that 
 should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue 
 for the wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his 
 parish of Hazeldean. 
 
 And thus ran 
 
 THE POLITICAL SERMON OF PARSON DALE.
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 " For every man shall bear his o\vn burden." Gal. vi. 5. 
 
 "BRETHREN, every man has his burden. If God designed our 
 lives to end at the grave, may we not believe that he would have 
 freed an existence so brief from the cares and sorrows to which, 
 since the beginning of the world, mankind has been subjected 1 
 Suppose that I am a kind father, and have a child whom I 
 dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that he will die 
 at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his infancy by 
 needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am a rich man, 
 I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the 
 stern discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not 
 take him with me to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to 
 freeze in the winter's cold : why inflict hardships on his child- 
 hood, for the purpose of fitting him for manhood, when I know 
 that he is doomed not to grow into man 1 But if, on the other 
 hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable exis- 
 tence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him, 
 prepare his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that 
 station in which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain, to 
 the infant, in order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as 
 man 1 So is it with our Father that is in Heaven. Viewing 
 this life as our infancy, and the next as our spiritual maturity; 
 where, ' in the ages to come, he may show the exceeding riches 
 of his grace,' it is in his tenderness, as in his wisdom, to permit 
 the toil and the pain which, in tasking the powers and develop- 
 ing the virtues of the soul, prepare it for 'the earnest of our 
 inheritance.' Hence it is that every man has his burden.
 
 156 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 Brethren, if you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as 
 a human father, you will know that your troubles in life are a 
 proof that you are reared for an eternity. But each man thinks 
 his own burden the hardest to bear : the poor man groans under 
 his poverty, the rich man under the cares that multiply with 
 wealth. For, so far from wealth freeing us from trouble, all the 
 wise men who have written in all ages have repeated, with one 
 voice, the words of the wisest, ' When goods increase, they are 
 increased that eat them : and what good is there to the owners 
 thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes 1 ' And 
 this is literally true, my brethren : for, let a man be as rich as 
 was the great King Solomon himself, unless he lock up all his 
 gold in a chest, it must go abroad to be divided amongst 
 others ; yea, though, like Solomon, he make him great works 
 though he build houses and plant vineyards, and make him 
 gardens and orchards still the gold that he spends feeds but 
 the mouths he employs ; and Solomon himself could not eat 
 with a better relish than the poorest mason who builded the 
 house, or the humblest labourer who planted the vineyard. 
 Therefore, ' when goods increase, they are increased that eat 
 them.' And this, my brethren, may teach us toleration and 
 compassion for the rich. We share their riches whether they 
 Avill or not ; we do not share their cares. The profane history 
 of our own country tells us that a princess, destined to be the 
 greatest queen that ever sat on this throne, envied the milk-maid 
 singing ; and a profane poet, whose wisdom was only less than 
 that of the inspired writers, represents the man who, by force 
 and wit, had risen to be a king, sighing for the sleep vouchsafed 
 to the meanest of his subjects all bearing out the words of 
 the son of David 'The sleep of the labouring man is sweet, 
 whether he eat little or much ; but the abundance of the rich 
 will not suffer him to sleep.' 
 
 "Amongst my brethren now present, there is doubtless some 
 one who has been poor, and by honest industry has made 
 himself comparatively rich. Let his heart answer me while 
 I speak : are not the chief cares that now disturb him to be 
 found in the goods he hath acquired 1 has he not both 
 vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew 
 not when he went forth to his labour, and took no heed of
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 157 
 
 the morrow 1 But it is right, nay brethren, that to every 
 station there should be its care to every man his burden ; 
 for if the poor did not sometimes so far feel poverty to be a 
 burden as to desire to better their condition, and (to use the 
 language of the world) ' seek to rise in life,' their most valuable 
 energies would never be aroused ; and we should not witness 
 that spectacle, which is so common in the land AVC live in 
 namely, the successful struggle of manly labour against adverse 
 fortune a struggle in which the triumph of one gives hope to 
 thousands. It is said that necessity is the mother of inven- 
 tion ; and the social blessings which are now as common to us 
 as air and sunshine, have come from that law of our nature 
 which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement, en- 
 riches each successive generation by the labours of the last, 
 and, in free countries, often lifts the child of the labourer to 
 place amongst the rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the 
 mother of invention, poverty is the creator of the arts. If 
 there had been no poverty, and no sense of poverty, where 
 would have been that which we call the wealth of a country ? 
 Subtract from civilisation all that has been produced by the 
 poor, and what remains 1 the state of the savage. Where you 
 now see labourer and prince, you would see equality indeed 
 the equality of wild men. No ; not even equality there ! for 
 there, brute force becomes lordship, and woe to the weak ! 
 Where you now see some in frieze, some in purple, you would 
 see nakedness in all. Where stand the palace and the cot, you 
 would behold but mud huts and caves. As far as the peasant 
 excels the king among savages, so far does the society exalted 
 and enriched by the struggles of labour excel the state in which 
 Poverty feels no disparity, and Toil sighs for no ease. On the 
 other hand, if the rich were perfectly contented with their 
 wealth, their hearts would become hardened in the sensual 
 enjoyments it procures. It is that feeling, by Divine Wisdom 
 implanted in the soul, that there is vanity and vexation of 
 spirit in the things of Mammon, which still leaves the rich 
 man sensitive to the instincts of heaven, and teaches him to 
 seek for happiness in those beneficent virtues which distribute 
 his wealth to the profit of others. If you could exclude the air 
 from the rays of the fire, the fire itself would soon languish and
 
 158 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 die in the midst of its fuel ; and so a man's joy in his wealth is 
 kept alive by the air which it warms ; and, if pent within itself 
 is extinguished. 
 
 " And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the 
 vast subject opened to us by the words of the apostle 'Every 
 man shall bear his own burden.' The worldly conditions of 
 life are unequal. Why are they unequal 1 my brethren, 
 do you not perceive? Think you that, if it had been better 
 for our spiritual probation that there should be neither great 
 nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered 
 the dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but 
 merciful agencies, have influenced the framework and founda- 
 tions of society 1 But if from the remotest period of human 
 annals, and in all the numberless experiments of government 
 which the wit of man has devised, still this inequality is ever 
 found to exist, may we not suspect that there is something in 
 the very principles of our nature to which that inequality is 
 necessary and essential 1 Ask why this inequality ! Why 1 as 
 well ask why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of 
 virtues ! For if all men were equal, if there were no suffering 
 and no ease, no poverty and no wealth, would you not sweep 
 with one blow the half at least of human virtues from the 
 world ? If there were no penury and no pain, what would 
 become of fortitude 1 what of patience ? what of resignation 1 
 If there were no greatness and no wealth, what would become 
 of benevolence, of charity, of the blessed human pity, of temper- 
 ance in the midst of luxury, of justice in the exercise of power ] 
 Carry the question farther ; grant all conditions the same no 
 reverse, no rise and no fall nothing to hope for, nothing to 
 fear what a moral death you would at once inflict upon all 
 the energies of the soul, and what a link between the Heart of 
 Man and the Providence of God would be snapped asunder ! 
 If we could annihilate evil, we should annihilate hope ; and 
 hope, my brethren, is the avenue to faith. If there be 'a time 
 to weep, and a time to laugh,' it is that he who mourns may 
 turn to eternity for comfort, and he who rejoices may bless 
 God for the happy hour. Ah ! my brethren, were it possible 
 to annihilate the inequalities of human life, it would be the
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 159 
 
 banishment of our worthiest virtues, the torpor of our spiritual 
 nature, the palsy of our mental faculties. The moral world, 
 like the world without us, derives its health and its beauty 
 from diversity and contrast. 
 
 "'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True: but now 
 turn to an earlier verse in the same chapter, 'Bear ye one 
 another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Yes ; while 
 Heaven ordains to each his peculiar suffering, it connects the 
 family of man into one household, by that feeling which, more 
 perhaps than any other, distinguishes us from the brute creation 
 I mean the feeling to which we give the name of sympathy 
 the feeling for each other ! The herd of deer shun the stag that 
 is marked by the gunner ; the flock heedeth not the sheep that 
 creeps into the shade to die ; but man has sorrow and joy not 
 in himself alone, but in the joy and sorrow of those around 
 him. He who feels only for himself abjures his very nature as 
 man ; for do we not say of one who has no tenderness for man- 
 kind that he is inhuman ? and do we not call him who sorrows 
 with the sorrowful, humane ? 
 
 " Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine 
 mission of our Lord, is the direct appeal to this sympathy 
 which distinguishes us from the brute. He seizes, not upon 
 some faculty of genius given but to few, but upon that ready 
 impulse of heart which is given to us all ; and in saying, 'Love 
 one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates the 
 most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of His 
 laws. The lawyer asks our Lord, 'Who is my neighbour?' 
 Our Lord replies by the parable of the good Samaritan. The 
 priest and the Levite saw the wounded man that fell among 
 the thieves, and passed by on the other side. That priest might 
 have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have been 
 learned in the law ; but neither to the learning of the Levite, 
 nor to the doctrine of the priest, does our Saviour even deign to 
 allude. He cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to 
 the lawyer, ' Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was 
 neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves ? And he said, 
 He that showed mercy unto him. Then said Jesus unto him, 
 Go, and do thou likewise.'
 
 160 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 " shallowness of human judgments ! It was enough to be 
 born a Samaritan in order to be rejected by the priest, and 
 despised by the Levite. Yet now, what to us the priest and the 
 Levite of God's chosen race though they were ] They passed 
 from the hearts of men when they passed the sufferer by the 
 wayside ; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from the 
 pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred ; a 
 brother amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and 
 Affliction shall meet in the common thoroughfare of Life ! 
 
 " ' Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
 Christ.' Think not, my brethren, that this applies only to 
 almsgiving to that relief of distress which is commonly called 
 charity to the obvious duty of devoting, from our superfluities, 
 something that we scarcely miss, to the wants of a starving 
 brother. No. I appeal to the poorest amongst ye, if the worst 
 burdens are those of the body if the kind word and the tender 
 thought have not often lightened your hearts more than bread 
 bestowed with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a 
 frown. Sympathy is a beneficence at the command of us all, 
 yea, of the pauper as of the king ; arid sympathy is Christ's 
 wealth. Sympathy is brotherhood. The rich are told to have 
 charity for the poor, and the poor are enjoined to respect their 
 superiors. Good : I say not to the contrary. But I say also to 
 the poor, 'In your turn have charity for the rich;' and I say to 
 the rich, ' In your turn respect the poor.' 
 
 "'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
 Christ.' Thou, poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother 
 his larger portion of worldly goods. Believe that he hath his 
 sorrows and crosses like thyself, and perhaps, as more delicately 
 nurtured, he feels them more ; nay, hath he not temptations 
 so great that our Lord hath exclaimed ' How hardly shall they 
 that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven 1 ' And what 
 are temptations but trials? what are trials but perils and 
 sorrows 1 Think not that you can bestow no charity on the 
 rich man, even while you take your sustenance from his 
 hands. A heathen writer, often cited by the earliest preachers 
 of the gospel, hath truly said 'Wherever there is room for a 
 man, there is place for a benefit.'
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 161 
 
 " And I ask any rich brother amongst you, when he hath gone 
 forth to survey his barns and his granaries, his gardens and 
 orchards, if suddenly, in the vain pride of his heart, he sees the 
 scowl on the brow of the labourer if he deems himself hated 
 in the midst of his wealth if he feels that his least faults are 
 treasured up against him with the hardness of malice, and his 
 plainest benefits received with the ingratitude of envy I ask, 
 I say, any rich man, whether straightway all pleasure in his 
 worldly possessions does not fade from his heart, and whether 
 he does not feel what a wealth of gladness it is in the power of 
 the poor man to bestow ! For all these things of Mammon 
 pass away ; but there is in the smile of him whom we have 
 served, a something that we may take with us into heaven. 
 If, then, ye bear one another's burdens, they who are poor will 
 have mercy on the errors, and compassion for the griefs of the 
 rich. To all men it was said yes, to Lazarus as to Dives 
 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' But think not, rich 
 man, that we preach only to the poor. If it be their duty not 
 to grudge thee thy substance, it is thine to do all that may 
 sweeten their labour. Remember, that when our Lord said, 
 ' How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the king- 
 dom of heaven,' he replied also to them who asked, ' Who then 
 shall be saved T 'The things which are impossible with men 
 are possible with God : ' that is, man left to his own tempta- 
 tions would fail ; but, strengthened by God, he shall be saved. 
 If thy riches are the tests of thy trial, so may they also be the 
 instruments of thy virtues. Prove by thy riches that thou art 
 compassionate and tender, temperate and benign ; and thy 
 riches themselves may become the evidence at once of thy faith 
 and of thy works. 
 
 "We have constantly on our lips the simple precept, 'Do 
 unto others as you would be done by.' Why do we fail so 
 often in the practice ? Because we neglect to cultivate that 
 SYMPATHY which nature implants as an instinct, and the 
 Saviour exalts as a command. If thou wouldst do unto thy 
 neighbour as thou wouldst be done by, ponder well how thy 
 neighbour will regard the action thou art about to do to him. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 162 MY NOVEL. 
 
 Put thyself into his place. If thou art strong, and he is weak, 
 descend from thy strength, and enter into his weakness ; lay 
 aside thy burden for the while, and buckle on his own ; let thy 
 sight see as through his eyes thy heart beat as in his bosom. 
 Do this, and thou wilt often confess that what had seemed just to 
 thy power will seem harsh to his weakness. For ' as a zealous 
 man hath not done his duty, when he calls his brother drunk- 
 ard and beast,' * even so an administrator of the law mistakes 
 his object if he writes on the grand column of society only 
 warnings that irritate the bold, and terrify the timid : and a 
 man will be no more in love with law than with virtue, ' if he be 
 forced to it with rudeness and incivilities.' t If, then, ye would 
 bear the burden of the lowly, ye great, feel not only for them, 
 but with ! Watch that your pride does not chafe them your 
 power does not wantonly gall. Your worldly inferior is of the 
 class from which the Apostles were chosen amidst which the 
 Lord of Creation descended from a throne above the seraphs." 
 
 The Parson here paused a moment, and his eye glanced to- 
 wards the pew near the pulpit, where sat the magnate of Hazel- 
 dean. The Squire was leaning his chin thoughtfully on his 
 hand, his brow inclined downwards, and the natural glow of 
 his complexion much heightened. 
 
 " But" resumed the Parson softly, without turning to his 
 book, and rather as if prompted by the suggestion of the moment 
 " but he who has cultivated sympathy commits not these 
 errors, or, if committing them, hastens to retract. So natural is 
 sympathy to the good man, that he obeys it mechanically when 
 he suffers his heart to be the monitor of his conscience. In this 
 sympathy behold the bond between rich and poor ! By this 
 sympathy, whatever our varying worldly lots, they become 
 what they were meant to be exercises for the virtues more 
 peculiar to each ; and thus, if in the body each man bear his 
 own burden, yet in the fellowship of the soul all have common 
 relief in bearing the burdens of each other. 
 
 " This is the law of Christ fulfil it, my flock ! " 
 
 Here the Parson closed his sermon, and the congregation 
 bowed their heads. 
 
 * JEREMY TAYLOR Of Christian Prudence. Part II. f Ibid.
 
 BOOK THIRD. 
 
 INITIAL CHAPTER. 
 
 SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE CALLED " MY NOVEL." 
 
 " I AM not displeased with your novel, so far as it has gone," 
 said my father graciously ; " though as for The Sermon " 
 
 Here I trembled ; but the ladies, Heaven bless them ! had 
 taken Parson Dale under their special protection ; and, observ- 
 ing that my father was puckering up his brows critically, they 
 rushed boldly forward in defence of The Sermon, and Mr Caxton 
 was forced to beat a retreat. However, like a skilful general, 
 he renewed the assault upon outposts less gallantly guarded. 
 But as it is not my business to betray my weak points, I leave 
 it to the ingenuity of cavillers to discover the places at which 
 the Author of Human Error directed his great guns. 
 
 " But," said the Captain, " you are a lad of too much spirit, 
 Pisistratus, to keep us always in the obscure country quarters 
 of Hazeldean you will march us out into open service before 
 you have done with us 1 " 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (magisterially, for he has been somewhat nettled 
 by Mr Caxton's remarks and he puts on an air of dignity, in 
 order to awe away minor assailants.) " Yes, Captain Roland 
 not yet awhile, but all in good time. I have not stinted myself
 
 166 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 in canvass, and behind my foreground of the Hall and the Par- 
 sonage I propose, hereafter, to open some lengthened perspective 
 of the varieties of English life " 
 
 MR CAXTON. " Hum ! " 
 
 BLANCHE, (putting her hand on my father's lip.) " We shall 
 know better the design, perhaps, when we know the title. 
 Pray, Mr Author, what is the title 1 " 
 
 MY MOTHER, (with more animation than usual.) " Ay, Sisty 
 the title ! " 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (startled.) " The title ! By the soul of Cer- 
 vantes ! I have never yet thought of a title ! " 
 
 CAPTAIN ROLAND, (solemnly.) " There is a great deal in a 
 good title. As a novel-reader, I know that by experience." 
 
 MR SQ.UILLS. " Certainly ; there is not a catchpenny in the 
 world but what goes down, if the title be apt and seductive. 
 Witness ' Old Parr's Life Pills.' Sell by the thousand, sir, when 
 my** Pills for Weak Stomachs,' which I believe to be just the 
 same compound, never paid for the advertising." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " Parr's Life Pills ! a fine stroke of genius ! It 
 is not every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to 
 it, if he have. But who would not swallow a pill to live to a 
 hundred and fifty-two ? " 
 
 PISISTRATCS, (stirring the fire in great excitement.) " My 
 title ! my title ! what shall be my title ! " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in 
 his most didactic of tones.) " From a remote period, the choice 
 of a title has perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We 
 may guess how their invention has been racked by the strange 
 contortions it has produced. To begin with the Hebrews. 
 ' The Lips of the Sleeping,' (Labia Dormientium} what book do 
 you suppose that title to designate ? A Catalogue of Rabbini- 
 cal Writers ! Again, imagine some young lady of old captivated 
 by the sentimental title of ' The Pomegranate with its Flower,' 
 and opening on a Treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials ! Let us 
 turn to the Romans. Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant 
 gossiping ' Noctes ' with a list of the titles in fashion in his day. 
 For instance, ' The Muses' and ' The Veil? ' The Cornucopia,' 
 1 The Beehive,' and ' The Meadow.' Some titles, indeed, were
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 167 
 
 more truculent, and promised food to those who love to sup upon 
 horrors such as ' The Torch,' ' The Poniard,' ' The Stiletto ' " 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (impatiently.) " Yes, sir ; but to come to My 
 Novel." 
 
 MR CAXTON, (unheeding the interruption.) " You see you 
 have a fine choice here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfa- 
 miliar to a classical reader ; or you may borrow a hint from the 
 early Dramatic Writers." 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (more hopefully.) " Ay ! there is something 
 in the Drama akin to the Novel. Now, perhaps, I may catch 
 an idea." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " For instance, the author of the Curiosities 
 of Literature (from whom, by the way, I am plagiarising much 
 of the information I bestow upon you) tells us of a Spanish 
 gentleman who wrote a Comedy, by which he intended to serve 
 what he took for Moral Philosophy." 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (eagerly.) " Well, sir ? " 
 
 MR CAXTON. " And called it ' The Pain of the Sleep of the 
 World.' " 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Very comic indeed, sir." 
 
 MR CAXTON. " Grave things were then called Comedies, as 
 old things are now called Novels. Then there are all the titles 
 of early Romance itself at your disposal ' Theagenes and 
 Chariclea,' or ' The Ass ' of Longus, or ' The Golden Ass ' of 
 Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic Romance, such as ' The most 
 elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful History of Perce- 
 forest, King of Great Britain.' " And therewith my father ran 
 over a list of names as long as the Directory, and about as 
 amusing. 
 
 " Well, to my taste," said my mother, " the novels I used to 
 read when a girl, (for I have not read many since, I am ashamed 
 to say,) " 
 
 MR CAXTON. " No, you need not be at all ashamed of it, 
 Kitty." 
 
 MY MOTHER, (proceeding.) " Were much more inviting than 
 any you mention, Austin." 
 
 THE CAPTAIN. " True." 
 
 MR SQUILLS. " Certainly. Nothing like them now-a-days ! "
 
 168 Mr NOVEL; OR, 
 
 MY MOTHER. " ( Says she to her Neighbour, What ? ' " 
 
 THE CAPTAIN. " ' The Unknown, or the Northern Gallery ' " 
 
 MR SQUILLS. " ' There is a Secret ; Find it Out ! ' ' 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (pushed to the verge of human endurance, and 
 upsetting tongs, poker, and fire-shovel.) " What nonsense you 
 are talking, all of you ! For heaven's sake, consider what an 
 important matter we are called upon to decide. It is not now 
 the titles of those very respectable works which issued from the 
 Minerva Press that I ask you to remember it is to invent a 
 title for mine My Novel ! " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (clapping his hands gently.) " Excellent capi- 
 tal! Nothing can be better; simple, natural, pertinent, con- 
 cise " 
 
 PISISTRATOS. " What is it, sir what is it ! Have you really 
 thought of a title to My Novel ? " 
 
 MR CAXTON. " You have hit it yourself ' My Novel.' It is 
 your Novel people will know it is your Novel. Turn and 
 twist the English language as you will be as allegorical as 
 Hebrew, Greek, Roman Fabulist or Puritan still, after all, 
 it is your Novel, and nothing more nor less than your Novel." 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (thoughtfully, and sounding the words various 
 ways.) " ' My Novel ' urn um ! ' My Novel ! ' rather bald 
 and curt, eh 1" 
 
 MR CAXTON. " Add what you say you intend it to depict 
 Varieties in English Life.'' 
 
 MY MOTHER. '" My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life' 
 I don't think it sounds amiss. What say you, Roland 1 Would 
 it attract you in a catalogue ? " 
 
 My Uncle hesitates, when Mr Caxton exclaims imperiously 
 " The thing is settled ! Don't disturb Camarina." 
 
 SQUILLS. " If it be not too great a liberty, pray who or what 
 is Camarina 1 " 
 
 MR CAXTON. "Camarina, Mr Squills, was a lake, apt to be 
 low, and then liable to be muddy ; and ' Don't disturb Cama- 
 rina ' was a Greek proverb derived from an Oracle of Apollo ; 
 and from that Greek proverb, no doubt, comes the origin of the 
 injunction, ' Quieta non moverej which became the favourite 
 maxim of Sir Robert Walpole and Parson Dale. The Greek
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 169 
 
 line, Mr Squills, (here my father's memory began to warm,) is 
 preserved by STEPHANUS BYZANTINUS, de Urlibus 
 
 ' Mij KLvei Kapapivav, aKivrj-ros yap d 
 
 ZENOBIUS explains it in his Proverbs; SUIDAS repeats ZENO- 
 BIUS ; LUCIAN alludes to it ; so does VIRGIL in the Third Book 
 of the ^ENEID ; and SILIUS ITALICUS imitates Virgil 
 
 ' Et cui non licitum fatis Camarina mover!.' 
 
 Parson Dale, as a clergyman and a scholar, had, no doubt, these 
 authorities at his fingers' end. And I wonder he did not quote 
 them," quoth my father ; " but, to be sure, he is represented as 
 a mild man, and so might not wish to humble the Squire over 
 much in the presence of his family. Meanwhile, My Novel is 
 My Novel ; and now that that matter is settled, perhaps the 
 tongs, poker, and shovel may be picked up, the children may 
 go to bed, Blanche and Kitty may speculate apart upon the 
 future dignities of the Ncogilos, taking care, nevertheless, to 
 finish the new pinbefores he requires for the present ; Roland 
 may cast up his account-book, Mr Squills have his brandy and 
 water, and all the world be comfortable, each in his own way. 
 Blanche, come away from the screen, get me my slippers, 
 and leave Pisistratus to himself. Mq xivsi Kapdgivav don't 
 disturb Camarina. You see, my dear," added my father kindly, 
 as, after settling himself into his slippers, he detained Blanche's 
 hand in his own " you see, my dear, every house has its Cama- 
 rina. Man, who is a lazy animal, is quite content to let it 
 alone ; but woman, being the more active, bustling, curious 
 creature, is always for giving it a sly stir." 
 
 BLANCHE, (with female dignity.) " I assure you, that if 
 Pisistratus had not called me, I should not have " 
 
 MR CAXTON, (interrupting her, without lifting his eyes from 
 the book he has already taken.) " Certainly you would not. 
 I am now in the midst of the great Oxford Controversy. Mq 
 /.mi Ka>j,dgivav don't disturb Camarina." 
 
 A dead silence for half-an-hour, at the end of which 
 
 PISISTRATUS, (from behind the screen.) " Blanche, my dear, 
 I want to consult you."
 
 170 MY NOVEL. 
 
 Blanche does not stir. 
 
 PISISTRATUS. " Blanche, I say." 
 
 Blanche glances in triumph towards Mr Caxtoti. 
 
 MR CAXTON, (laying down his theological tract, and rubbing 
 his spectacles mournfully.) " I hear him, child ; I hear him. 
 I retract my vindication of Man. Oracles warn in vain : so 
 long as there is a woman on the other side of the screen, it is 
 all up with Camarina ! "
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IT is greatly to be regretted that Mr Stirn was not present at 
 the Parson's Discourse but that valuable functionary was far 
 otherwise engaged indeed, during the summer months he was 
 rarely seen at the afternoon service. Not that he cared for 
 being preached at not he : Mr Stirn would have snapped his 
 finger at the thunders of the Vatican. But the fact was, that 
 Mr Stirn chose ' to do a great deal of gratuitous business upon 
 the day of rest. The Squire allowed all persons who chose to 
 walk about the park on a Sunday ; and many came from a 
 distance to stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms. These 
 visitors were objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive annoy- 
 ance, to Mr Stirn and, indeed, not altogether without reason, 
 for we English have a natural love of liberty, which we are 
 even more apt to display in the grounds of other people than in 
 those which we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to his inex- 
 pressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr Stirn fell upon a knot of 
 boys pelting the swans ; sometimes he missed a young sapling, 
 and found it in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick ; 
 sometimes he caught a hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha ! 
 to gather a nosegay for his sweetheart from one of poor Mrs 
 Hazeldean's pet parterres ; not unfrequently, indeed, when all 
 the family were fairly at church, some curious impertinents 
 forced or sneaked their way into the gardens, in order to peep 
 in at the windows. For these, and various other offences of 
 like magnitude, Mr Stirn had long, but vainly, sought to induce 
 the Squire to withdraw a permission so villanously abused. 
 But though there were times when Mr Hazeldean grunted and 
 growled, and swore " that he would shut up the park, and fill it
 
 172 ^Y NOVEL; OB, 
 
 (illegally) with man-traps and spring-guns," his anger always 
 evaporated in words. The park was still open to all the world 
 on a Sunday; and that blessed day was therefore converted 
 into a day of travail and wrath to Mr Stirn. But it was from 
 the last chime of the afternoon service bell until dusk that 
 the spirit of this vigilant functionary was most perturbed ; for, 
 amidst the flocks that gathered from the little hamlets round to 
 the voice of the Pastor, there were always some stray sheep, or 
 rather climbing, desultory, vagabond goats, who struck off in 
 all perverse directions, as if for the special purpose of distracting 
 the energetic watchfulness of Mr Stirn. As soon as church was 
 over, if the day were fine, the whole park became a scene ani- 
 mated with red cloaks, or lively shawls, Sunday waistcoats, and 
 hats stuck full of wild-flowers which last Mr Stirn often 
 stoutly maintained to be Mrs Hazeldean's newest geraniums. 
 Now, on this Sunday especially, there was an imperative call 
 upon an extra exertion of vigilance on the part of the superin- 
 tendent he had not only to detect ordinary depredators and 
 trespassers ; but, first, to discover the authors of the conspiracy 
 against the Stocks ; and secondly, to " make an example." 
 
 He had begun his rounds, therefore, from the early morn- 
 ing ; and just as the afternoon bell was sounding its final peal, 
 he emerged upon the village green from a hedgerow, behind 
 which he had been at watch to observe who had the most sus- 
 piciously gathered round the stocks. At that moment the place 
 was deserted. At a distance, the superintendent saw the fast dis- 
 appearing forms of some belated groups hastening towards the 
 church ; in front, the stocks stood staring at him mournfully 
 from its four great eyes, which had been cleansed from the 
 mud, but still looked bleared and stained with the marks of the 
 recent outrage. Here Mr Stirn paused, took off his hat, and 
 wiped his brows. 
 
 " If I had sum un, to watch here," thought he, " while I 
 takes a turn by the water-side, praps summat might come out ; 
 praps them as did it ben't gone to church, but will come sneak- 
 ing round to look on their willany ! as they says murderers 
 are always led back to the place where they ha' left the body. 
 But in this here willage there ben't a man, woman, nor child,
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLIS^JFE. 173 
 
 as has any consarn fdPSquire or Parish, barring myself." It 
 was just as he arrived at that misanthropical conclusion that 
 Mr Stirn beheld Leonard Fairfield walking very fast from his 
 own home. The superintendent clapped on his hat, and stuck 
 his right arm akimbo. " Hollo, you sir," said he, as Lenny 
 now came in hearing, " where be you going at that rate 1 " 
 
 " Please, sir, I be going to church." 
 
 " Stop, sir stop, Master Lenny. Going to church ! why, 
 the bell's done ; and you knows the Parson is very angry at 
 them as comes in latej disturbing the congregation. You can't 
 go to church now ! " 
 
 " Please, sir " 
 
 " I says you can't go to church now. You must learn to 
 think a little of others, lad. You sees how I sweats to serve 
 the Squire ! and you must serve him too. Why, your mother's 
 got the house and premishes almost rent free : you ought to 
 have a grateful heart, Leonard Fairfield, and feel for his hon- 
 our ! Poor man ! his heart is well-nigh bruk, I am sure, with 
 the goings on." 
 
 Leonard opened his innocent blue eyes, while Mr Stirn dolor- 
 ously wiped his own. 
 
 "Look at that 'ere dumb cretur," said Stirn suddenly, point- 
 ing to the stocks " look at it. If it could speak, what would 
 it say, Leonard Fairfield 1 Answer me that ! ' Damn the 
 stocks,' indeed ! " 
 
 " It was very bad in them to write such naughty words," 
 said Lenny gravely. " Mother was quite shocked when she 
 heard of it, this morning." 
 
 MR STIRN. " I dare say she was, considering what she pays 
 for the premishes : (insinuatingly,) you does no* know who did 
 it eh, Lenny ? " 
 
 LENNY. "No, sir ; indeed I does not ! " 
 
 MR STIRN. "Well, you see, you can't go to church prayers 
 half over by this time. You recollex that I put them stocks 
 under your ' sponsibility,' and see the way you's done your 
 duty by 'em. I've half a mind to " 
 
 Mr Stirn cast his eyes on the eyes of the stocks. 
 
 " Please, sir," began Lenny again, rather frightened.
 
 174 tonr NOVEL; on, 
 
 "No, I won't please ; it ben't pleasing at all. But I forgives 
 you this time, only keep a sharp look-out, lad, in future. Now 
 you just stay here no, there, under the hedge, and you 
 watches if any persons comes to loiter about, or looks at the 
 stocks, or laughs to hisself, while I go my rounds. I shall be 
 back either afore church is over or just arter ; so you stay till I 
 comes, and give me your report. Be sharp, boy, or, it will be 
 worse for you and your mother : I can let the premishes for 
 four pounds a-year more, to-morrow." 
 
 Concluding with that somewhat menacing and very signifi- 
 cant remark, and not staying for an answer, Mr Stirn waved 
 his hand, and walked off. 
 
 Poor Lenny remained by the stocks, very much dejected, and 
 greatly disliking the neighbourhood to which he was consigned. 
 At length he slowly crept off to the hedge, and sate himself 
 down in the place of espionage pointed out to him. Now, phi- 
 losophers tell us that what is called the point of honour is 
 a barbarous feudal prejudice. Amongst the higher classes, 
 wherein those feudal prejudices may be supposed to prevail, 
 Lenny Fairfield's occupation would not have been considered 
 peculiarly honourable ; neither would it have seemed so to the 
 more turbulent spirits among the humbler orders, who have a 
 point of honour of their own, which consists in the adherence 
 to each other in defiance of all lawful authority. But to Lenny 
 Fairfield, brought up much apart from other boys, and with a 
 profound and grateful reverence for the Squire instilled into all 
 his habits of thought, notions of honour bounded themselves to 
 simple honesty and straightforward truth ; and as he cherished 
 an unquestioning awe of order and constitutional authority, so 
 it did not appear to him that there was anything derogatory 
 and debasing in being thus set to watch for an offender. On 
 the contrary, as he began to reconcile himself to the loss of the 
 church service, and to enjoy the cool of the summer shade, and 
 the occasional chirp of the birds, he got to look on the bright 
 side of the commission to which he was deputed. In youth, 
 at least, everything has its bright side even the appointment 
 of Protector to the Parish Stocks. For the stocks themselves 
 Leonard had no affection, it is true ; but he had no sympathy
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 175 
 
 with their aggressors, and he could well conceive that the 
 Squire would be very much hurt at the revolutionary event of 
 the night. "So," thought poor Leonard in his simple heart 
 " so if I can serve his honour, by keeping off mischievous boys, 
 or letting him know who did the thing, I'm sure it would be a 
 proud day for mother." Then he began to consider that, how- 
 ever ungraciously Mr Stirn had bestowed on him the appoint- 
 ment, still it was a compliment to him showed trust and con- 
 fidence in him, picked him out from his contemporaries as the 
 sober moral pattern boy ; and Lenny had a great deal of pride 
 in him, especially in matters of repute and character. 
 
 All these things considered, I say, Leonard Fairfield reclined 
 in his lurking-place, if not with positive delight and intoxicat- 
 ing rapture, at least with tolerable content and some com- 
 placency. 
 
 Mr Stirn might have been gone a quarter of an hour, when 
 a boy came through a little gate in the park, just opposite to 
 Lenny's retreat in the hedge, and, as if fatigued with walking, 
 or oppressed by the heat of the day, paused on the green for a 
 moment or so, and then advanced under the shade of the great 
 tree which overhung the stocks. 
 
 Lenny pricked up his ears, and peeped out jealously. 
 
 He had never seen the boy before : it was a strange face to 
 him. 
 
 Leonard Fairfield was not fond of strangers ; moreover, he 
 had a vague belief that strangers were at the bottom of that 
 desecration of the stocks. The boy, then, was a stranger ; but 
 what was his rank 1 Was he of that grade in society in which 
 the natural offences are or are not consonant to, or harmonious 
 with, outrages upon stocks 1 On that Lenny Fairfield did not 
 feel quite assured. According to all the experience of the 
 villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman. 
 Leonard's notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally 
 fashioned upon the model of Frank Hazeldean. They repre- 
 sented to him a dazzling vision of snow-white trousers, and 
 beautiful blue coats, and incomparable cravats. Now the dress 
 of this stranger, though not that of a peasant nor of a farmer, 
 did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notions of the
 
 176 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 costume of a young gentleman : it looked to him highly dis- 
 reputable ; the coat was coVered with mud, and the hat was 
 all manner of shapes, with a gap between the side and crown. 
 
 Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the 
 gate through which the boy had passed was in the direct path 
 across the park from a small town, the inhabitants of which 
 were in very bad odour at the Hall they had immemorially 
 furnished the most daring poachers to the preserves, the most 
 troublesome trespassers on the park, the most unprincipled 
 orchard robbers, and the most disputatious assertors of various 
 problematical rights of way, which, according to the Town, 
 were public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since 
 the Conquest. It was true that the same path led also directly 
 from the Squire's house, but it was not probable that the 
 wearer of attire so equivocal had been visiting there. All 
 things considered, Lenny had no doubt in his mind but that 
 the stranger was a shopboy or prentice from the town of 
 Thorndyke ; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled 
 with this presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw 
 before him one of the midnight desecrators of the stocks. As 
 if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's 
 mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number 
 of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing right 
 before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema 
 with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated 
 it aloud, and Lenny actually saw him smile such a smile ! 
 so disagreeable and sinister ! Lenny had never before seen 
 the smile Sardonic. 
 
 But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this 
 ominous stranger fairly seated himself on the stocks, rested 
 his heels profanely on the lids of two of the four round eyes, 
 and, taking out a pencil and a pocket-book, began to write. 
 Was this audacious Unknown taking an inventory of the 
 church and the Hall for the purposes of conflagration He 
 looked at one, and at the other, with a strange, fixed stare as 
 he wrote not keeping his eyes on the paper, as Lenny had 
 been taught to do when he sate down to his copy-book. The 
 fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the
 
 - 
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFB: '' 177 
 
 shock of his fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, 
 so Jfcat he was glad to rest himself a few moments ; and he 
 took that opportunity to write a v line to Frank, to excuse 
 himself for not calling again, intending to tear the leaf on 
 which he wrote out of his pocket-book, and leave it at the 
 first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall. 
 
 While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up 
 to him, with the firm and measured pace of one who has 
 resolved, cost what it may, to do his duty. And as Lenny, 
 though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he felt, and the 
 suspicions he entertained, only exhibited themselves in the 
 following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety, 
 
 "Ben't you ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the Squire's 
 new stocks ! Do get up, and go along with you ! " 
 
 Randal turned round sharply ; and though, at any other 
 moment, he would have had sense enough to extricate himself 
 very easily from his false position, yet, Nemo mortalium, <fec. 
 No one is always wise. And Randal was in an exceedingly 
 bad humour. The affability towards his inferiors, for which 
 I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for 
 impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian. 
 
 Therefore, eyeing Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered 
 briefly, 
 
 " You are an insolent young blackguard." 
 
 So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Per- 
 suaded before that the intruder was some lawless apprentice 
 or shop lad, he was now more confirmed in that judgment, 
 not only by language so uncivil, but by the truculent glance 
 which accompanied it, and which certainly did not derive any 
 imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous 
 hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire. 
 
 Of all the various articles of which our male attire is com- 
 posed, there is perhaps not one which has so much character 
 and expression as the top covering. A neat, well-brushed, 
 short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on with a certain air, 
 gives a distinction and respectability to the whole exterior ; 
 whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat, 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 178 MY NOVEL. 
 
 such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transform- 
 ing the stateliest gentleman who ever walked down St J 
 Street into the ideal of a ruffianly scamp. 
 
 Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic 
 to you! peasant-boy than a shop-boy. Even on grand political 
 oecu-ions, the rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into 
 -yinnathy with the trading town-class. Your true English 
 peasant 13 ahvays an aristocrat. Moreover, and irrespectively 
 of this immemorial grudge of class, there is something pecu- 
 liarly hostile in the relationship between b4y and boy when 
 their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit 
 of green. Something of the game-cock feeling something 
 that tends to keep alive, in the population of this island, 
 (otherwise so lamb-like and peaceful,) the martial propensity 
 to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers, and make 
 what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these 
 mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny 
 Fairfield at the words and the look of the unprepossessing 
 stranger. And the stranger seemed aware of them ; for his 
 pale face grew more pale, and his sullen eye more fixed and 
 more vigilant. 
 
 " You get off them stocks," said Lenny, disdaining to reply 
 to the coarse expressions bestowed on him ; and, suiting the 
 action to the word, he gave the intruder what he meant for 
 a shove, but what Randal took for a blow. The Etonian 
 sprang up, and the quickness of his movement, aided but by 
 a slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his balance, and 
 sent him neck-and-crop over the stocks. Burning with rage, 
 the young villager rose alertly, and, flying at Randal, struck 
 out right and left.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 
 AID me, ye Nine ! whom the incomparable Persius satirised 
 his contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, in- 
 voked on his own behalf aid me to describe that famous battle 
 by the stocks, and in defence of the stocks, which was waged 
 by the two representatives of Saxon and Norman England. 
 Here, sober support of law and duty and delegated trust pro 
 aris et focis ; there, haughty invasion, and bellicose spirit of 
 knighthood, and that respect for name and person, which we 
 call " honour." Here, too, hardy physical force there, skilful 
 discipline. Here The Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold 
 as a stone ! Plague take the jades ! I can do better without 
 them. 
 
 Randal was a year or two older than Lenny, but he was not 
 so tall nor so strong, nor even so active ; and after the first 
 blind rush, when the two boys paused, and drew back to 
 breathe, Lenny, eyeing the slight form and hueless cheek of his 
 opponent, and seeing blood trickling from Randal's lip, was 
 seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse. " It was 
 not fair," he thought, " to fight one whom he could beat so 
 easily." So, retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to 
 his side, he said mildly " There, let's have no more of it ; 
 but go home and be good." 
 
 Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional 
 quality called physical courage ; but he had some of those moral 
 qualities which supply its place. He was proud he was vin- 
 dictive he had high self-esteem he had the destructive organ 
 more than the combative ; what had once provoked his wrath 
 it became his instinct to sweep away. Therefore, though all
 
 180 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in his eyes, he 
 approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, amteaid 
 between his teeth, which he set hard, choking back the so% of 
 rage and pain 
 
 " You have struck me and you shall not stir from this 
 grounJjj^U I have made you repent it. Put up your hands 
 
 LennH^PWanically obeyed ; and he had good need of the 
 admonition: for if before he had had the advantage, now that 
 Randal had recovered the surprise to his nerves, the battle was 
 not to the strong. 
 
 Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his 
 temper had involved him in some conflicts when he was in the 
 lower forms, and he had learned something of the art as well as 
 the practice in pugilism an excellent thing, too, I am barbar- 
 ous enough to believe, and which I hope will never quite die 
 out of our public schools. Ah, many a young duke has been a 
 better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's son ; and 
 many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully 
 in the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound 
 thrashing he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle. 
 
 So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear ; put 
 aside those heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own, 
 quick and sharp supplying to the natural feebleness of his 
 arm the due momentum of pugilistic mechanics. Ay, and the 
 arm, too, was no longer so feeble : for strange is the strength 
 that comes from passion and pluck ! 
 
 Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered ; 
 his sensations grew so entangled that he could never recall them 
 distinctly : he had a dim reminiscence of some breathless impo- 
 tent rush of a sudden blindness followed by quick flashes of 
 intolerable light of a deadly faintness, from which he was 
 roused by sharp pangs here there everywhere ; and then 
 all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, 
 huddled up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over 
 him with a countenance as dark and livid as Lara himself might 
 have bent over the fallen Otho. For Randal Leslie was not one 
 who, by impulse and nature, subscribed to the noble English
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 181 
 
 maxim " Never hit a foe when he is down ;" and it cost him 
 a strong if brief self-struggle, not to set his heel on that prostrate 
 form. It was the mind, not the heart, that subdued the savage 
 within him, as, muttering something inwardly certainly not 
 Christian forgiveness the victor turned gloomily a 
 
 ny a^ay. 
 
 *
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JUST at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr Stirn ! 
 For, in fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into dis- 
 grace, he had hoped that he should have found the young villa- 
 ger had shirked the commission intrusted to him ; and the 
 Right-hand Man had slily come back, to see if that amiable 
 expectation were realised. He now beheld Lenny rising with 
 some difficulty still panting hard and with hysterical sounds 
 akin to what is vulgarly called blubbering his fine new waist- 
 coat sprinkled with his own blood, which flowed from his nose 
 nose that seemed to Lenny Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no 
 more, but a swollen, gigantic, mountainous Slawkenbergian 
 excrescence ; in fact, he felt all nose ! Turning aghast from 
 this spectacle, Mr Stirn surveyed, with no more respect than 
 Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again seated 
 himself on the stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether 
 to show that his victory was consummated, and that he was in 
 his rights of possession.) " Hollo," said Mr Stirn, " what is all 
 this ? what's the matter, Lenny, you blockhead 1 " 
 
 " He will sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, " and 
 he has beat me because I would not let him ; but I doesn't 
 mind that," added the villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, 
 " and I'm ready again for him that I am." 
 
 " And what do you do lolloping there on them blessed 
 stocks ? " 
 
 "Looking at the landscape ; out of my light, man ! " 
 
 This tone instantly inspired Mr Stirn with misgivings : it was 
 a tone so disrespectful to him that he was seized with involun- 
 tary respect ; who but a gentleman could speak so to Mr Stirn.
 
 MY NOVEL. 183 
 
 " And may I ask who you be ? " said Stirn, falteringly, 
 and half inclined to touch his hat. " What's your name, pray ? 
 what's your bizness 1 " 
 
 " My name is Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit 
 your master's family that is, if you are, as I guess from your 
 manner, Mr Hazeldean's ploughman ! " 
 
 So saying, Randal rose ; and, moving on a few paces^urned, 
 and throwing half-a-crown on the road, said to Lenny, "Let 
 that pay you for your bruises, and remember anotherume how 
 you speak to a gentleman. As for you, fellow," and he pointed 
 his scornful hand towards Mr Stirn, who, with his mouth open, 
 and his hat now fairly off, stood bowing to the earth "as 
 for you, give my compliments to Mr Hazeldean, and say that, 
 when he does us the honour to visit us at Rood Hall, I trust 
 that the manners of our villagers will make him ashamed of 
 Hazeldean." 
 
 my poor Squire ! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean ! If 
 that message had been delivered to you, you would never have 
 looked up again ! 
 
 With those bitter words, Randal swung himself over the stile 
 that led into the Parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still 
 feeling his nose, and Mr Stirn still bowing to the earth.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 RANDAL LESLIE had a very long walk home : he was bruised 
 and sore from head to foot, and his mind was still more sore 
 and more bruised than his body. But if Randal Leslie had 
 rested himself in the Squire's gardens, without walking back- 
 wards, and indulging in speculations suggested by Marat, and 
 warranted by my Lord Bacon, he would have passed a most 
 agreeable evening, and really availed himself of the Squire's 
 wealth by going home in the Squire's carriage. But because he 
 chose to take so intellectual a view of property, he tumbled into 
 a ditch ; because he tumbled into a ditch, he spoiled his clothes; 
 because he spoiled his clothes, he gave up his visit ; because he 
 gave up his visit, he got into the village green, and sat on the 
 stocks with a hat that gave him the air of a fugitive from the 
 treadmill ; because he sat on the stocks with that hat, and a 
 cross face under it he had been forced into the most discre- 
 ditable squabble with a clodhopper, and was now limping 
 home, at war with gods and men ; ergo (this is a moral that 
 will bear repetition) ergo, when you walk in a rich man's 
 grounds, be contented to enjoy what is yours, namely, the pros- 
 pect ; I dare say you will enjoy it more than he does !
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IF, in the simplicity of his heart, and the crudeness of his ex- 
 perience, Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr 
 Stirn would address to him some words in approbation of his 
 gallantry, and in sympathy for his bruises, he soon found him- 
 self woefully mistaken. That truly great man, worthy prime- 
 minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps, pardon a dereliction 
 from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the 
 interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief ; 
 but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences 
 an ill-timed, stupid, over-zealous obedience to orders, which, if 
 it established the devotion of the employe, got the employer into 
 what is popularly called a scrape ! And though, by those un- 
 versed in the intricacies of the human heart, and unacquainted 
 with the especial hearts of prime-ministers and right-hand 
 men, it might have seemed natural that Mr Stirn, as he stood 
 still, hat in hand, in the middle of the road, stung, humbled, and 
 exasperated by the mortification he had received from the lips 
 of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that young gentleman 
 was the proper object of his resentment ; yet such a breach of 
 all the etiquette of diplomatic life as resentment towards a 
 superior power was the last idea that would have suggested 
 itself to -the profound intellect of the Premier of Hazeldean. 
 Still, as rage like steam must escape somewhere, Mr Stirn, on 
 feeling as he afterwards expressed it to his wife that his 
 " buzzom was a burstin," turned with the natural instinct of 
 self-preservation to the safety-valve provided for the explosion ; 
 and the vapours within him rushed into vent upon Lenny Fair-
 
 186 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 field. He clapped his hat on his head fiercely, and thus relieved 
 his " buzzom." 
 
 "You young willain ! you howdacious wiper ! and so all this 
 blessed Sabbath afternoon, when you ought to have been in 
 church on your marrow-bones, a-praying for your betters, you 
 has been a-fitting with a young gentleman, and a wisiter to 
 your master, on the wery place of the parridge hinstitution that 
 you was to guard and pertect ; and a-bloodying it all over, I 
 declares, with your blaggard little nose ! " Thus saying, and as 
 if to mend the matter, Mr Stirn aimed an additional stroke at 
 the offending member ; but, Lenny mechanically putting up 
 both arms to defend his face, Mr Stirn struck his knuckles 
 against the large brass buttons that adorned the cuff of the 
 boy's coat-sleeve an incident which considerably aggravated 
 his indignation. And Lenny, whose spirit was fairly roused 
 at what the narrowness of his education conceived to be a 
 signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree between Mr Stirn 
 and himself, began that task of self-justification which it was 
 equally impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute, since, 
 in such a case, to justify was to recriminate. 
 
 "I wonder at you, Master Stirn, if mother could hear you ! 
 You know it was you who would not let me go to church ; it 
 was you who told me to " 
 
 " Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr 
 Stirn, interrupting him with a withering sneer. " yes ! I 
 told you to disgrace his honour the Squire, and me, and the 
 parridge, and bring us all into trouble. But the Squire told me 
 to make an example, and I will ! " With those words, quick as 
 lightning flashed upon Mr Stirn's mind the luminous idea of 
 setting Lenny in the very stocks which he had too faithfully 
 guarded. Eureka ! the " example" was before him ! Here, he 
 could gratify his long grudge against the pattern boy ; here, by 
 such a selection of the very best lad in the parish, he could 
 strike terror into the worst ; here he could appease the offended 
 dignity of Randal Leslie ; here was a practical apology to the 
 Squire for the affront put upon his young visitor ; here, too, 
 there was prompt obedience to the Squire's own wish that the 
 stocks should be provided as soon as possible with a tenant.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 187 
 
 Suiting the action to the thought, Mr Stirn made a rapid 
 plunge at his victim, caught him by the skirt of his jacket, and, 
 in a few seconds more, the jaws of the stocks had opened, and 
 Lenny Fairfield was thrust therein a sad spectacle of the 
 reverses of fortune. This done, and while the boy was too 
 astounded, too stupefied by the suddenness of the calamity for 
 the resistance he might otherwise have made nay, for more 
 than a few inaudible words Mr Stirn hurried from the spot, 
 but not without first picking up and pocketing the half-crown 
 designed for Lenny, and which, so great had been his first 
 emotions, he had hitherto even almost forgotten. He then 
 made his way towards the church, with the intention to place 
 himself close by the door, catch the Squire as he came out, 
 whisper to him what had passed, and lead him, with the whole 
 congregation at his heels, to gaze upon the sacrifice offered up 
 to the joint Powers of Nemesis and Themis.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 UNAFFECTEDLY I say it upon the honour of a gentleman, and 
 the reputation of an author, unaffectedly I say it no words of 
 mine can do justice to the sensations experienced by Lenny 
 Fairfield, as he sate alone in that place of penance. He felt no 
 more the physical pain of his bruises ; the anguish of his mind 
 stifled and overbore all corporeal suffering an anguish as great 
 as the childish breast is capable of holding. For first and 
 deepest of all, and earliest felt, was the burning sense of in- 
 justice. He had, it might be with erring judgment, but with 
 all honesty, earnestness, and zeal, executed the commission 
 intrusted to him ; he had stood forth manfully in discharge of 
 his duty ; he had fought for it, suffered for it, bled for it. This 
 was his reward ! Now, in Lenny's mind there was pre- 
 eminently that quality which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon 
 race the sense of justice. It was perhaps the strongest prin- 
 ciple in his moral constitution ; and the principle had never 
 lost its virgin bloom and freshness by any of the minor acts of 
 oppression and iniquity which boys of higher birth often suffer 
 from harsh parents, or in tyrannical schools. So that it was 
 for the first time that that iron entered into his soul, and with 
 it came its attendant feeling the wrathful, galling sense of 
 impotence. He had been wronged, and he had no means to 
 right himself. Then came another sensation, if not so deep, 
 yet more smarting and envenomed for the time shame ! He, 
 the good boy of all good boys he, the pattern of the school, 
 and the pride of the parson he, whom the Squire, in sight of 
 all his contemporaries, had often singled out to slap on the 
 back, and the grand Squire's lady to pat on the head, with a
 
 MY NOVEL. 189 
 
 smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute he, who had 
 already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honourable 
 name he, to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a 
 mark for opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword ! 
 The streams of his life were poisoned at the fountain. And 
 then came a tenderer thought of his mother ! of the shock this 
 would be to her she who had already begun to look up to him 
 as her stay and support : he bowed his head, and the tears, 
 long suppressed, rolled down. 
 
 Then he wrestled and struggled, and strove to wrench his 
 limbs from that hateful bondage ; for he heard steps approach- 
 ing. And he began to picture to himself the arrival of all the 
 villagers from church, the sad gaze of the Parson, the bent brow 
 of the Squire, the idle ill-suppressed titter of all the boys, 
 jealous of his unspotted character character of which the 
 original whiteness could never, never be restored ! He would 
 always be the boy who had sate in the stocks ! And the words 
 uttered by the Squire came back on his soul, like the voice of 
 conscience in the ears of some doomed Macbeth. " A sad dis- 
 grace, Lenny you'll never be in such a quandary." " Quan- 
 dary," the word was unfamiliar to him ; it must mean some- 
 thing awfully discreditable. The poor boy could have prayed 
 for the earth to swallow him.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 " KETTLES and frying-pans ! what has us here 1 " cried the Tinker. 
 
 This time Mr Sprott was without his donkey ; for, it being 
 Sunday, it is to be presumed that the donkey was enjoying his 
 Sabbath on the Common. The Tinker was in his Sunday's 
 best, clean and smart, about to take his lounge in the park. 
 
 Lenny Fairfield made no answer to the appeal. 
 
 " You in the wood, my baby ! Well, that's the last sight I 
 should ha' thought to see. But we all lives to larn," added the 
 Tinker sententiously. " Who gave you them leggings 1 Can't 
 you speak, lad ?" 
 
 "Nick Stirn." 
 
 " Nick Stirn ! Ay, I'd ha' ta'en my davy on that : and cos 
 vy ? " 
 
 "'Cause I did as he told me, and fought a boy as was tres- 
 passing on these very stocks ; and he beat me but I don't care 
 for that ; and that boy was a young gentleman, and going to 
 visit the Squire ; and so Nick Stirn " Lenny stopped short, 
 choked by rage and humiliation. 
 
 " Augh," said the Tinker, staring, " you fit with a young 
 gentleman, did you 1 Sorry to hear you confess that, my lad ! 
 Sit there, and be thankful you ha' got off so cheap. 'Tis salt 
 and battery to fit with your betters, and a Lunnon justice o' 
 peace would have given you two months o' the treadmill. But 
 vy should you fit cos he trespassed on the stocks 1 It ben't 
 your natural side for fitting, I takes it." 
 
 Lenny murmured something not very distinguishable about 
 serving the Squire, and doing as he was bid. 
 
 " Oh, I sees, Lenny," interrupted the Tinker, in a tone of great
 
 MY NOVEL. 191 
 
 contempt, " you be one of those who would rayther 'unt with 
 the 'ounds than run with the 'are ! You be's the good pattern 
 boy, and would peach agin your own border to curry favour 
 with the grand folks. Fie, lad ! you be sarved right : stick by 
 your border, then you'll be 'spected when you gets into trouble, 
 and not be 'varsally 'espised as you'll be arter church-time ! 
 Veil, I can't be seen 'sorting with you, now you are in this dro- 
 gotary fix ; it might hurt my cracter, both with them as built 
 the stocks and them as wants to pull 'em down. Old kettles 
 to mend ! Vy, you makes me forgit the Sabbath. Sarvent, 
 my lad, and wish you well out of it ; 'specks to your mother, 
 and say we can deal for the pan and shovel all the same for 
 your misfortin." 
 
 The Tinker went his way. Lenny's eye followed him with 
 the sullenness of despair. The Tinker, like all the tribe of 
 human comforters, had only watered the brambles to invigorate 
 the prick of the thorns. Yes, if Lenny had been caught break- 
 ing the stocks, some at least would have pitied him ; but to be 
 incarcerated for defending them, you might as well have ex- 
 pected that the widows and orphans of the Reign of Terror 
 would have pitied Dr Guillotin when he slid through the 
 grooves of his own deadly machine. And even the Tinker, 
 itinerant, ragamuffin vagabond as he was, felt ashamed to be 
 found with the pattern boy ! Lenny's head sank again on his 
 breast, heavily as if it had been of lead. Some few minutes 
 thus passed, when the unhappy prisoner became aware of the 
 presence of another spectator to his shame : he heard no step, 
 but he saw a shadow thrown over the sward. He held his 
 breath, and would not look up, with some vague idea that if he 
 refused to see he might escape being seen.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "Per Bacco!" said Dr Riccabocca, putting his hand on 
 Lenny's shoulder, and bending down to look into his face 
 "Per Bacco ! my young friend, do you sit here from choice or 
 necessity ? " 
 
 Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of 
 one whom he had hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious 
 abhorrence. 
 
 " I fear," resumed Eiccabocca, after waiting in vain for an 
 answer to his question, " that, though the situation is charming, 
 you did not select it yourself. What is this 1 " and the irony 
 of the tone vanished " what is this, my poor boy 1 You have 
 been bleeding, and I see that those tears which you try to check 
 come from a deep well. Tell me, povero fanciullo mio, (the 
 sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not understand them, 
 sounded softly and soothingly,) tell me, my child, how all this 
 happened. Perhaps I can help you we have all erred ; we 
 should all help each other." 
 
 Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, 
 found itself a way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the 
 tears rushed down ; but he again stopped them, and gulped out 
 sturdily, 
 
 " I have not done no wrong ; it ben't my fault and 'tis that 
 which kills me ! " concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy. 
 
 "You have not done wrong 1 ? Then," said the philosopher, 
 drawing out his pocket-handkerchief with great composure, and 
 spreading it on the ground " then I may sit beside you. I 
 could only stoop pityingly over sin, but I can lie down on 
 equal terms with misfortune."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 193 
 
 Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but 
 enough of their general meaning was apparent to make him 
 cast a grateful glance on the Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he 
 adjusted the pocket-handkerchief, " I have a right to your confi- 
 dence, my child, for I have been afflicted in my day ; yet I too 
 say with thee, ' I have not done wrong.' Cospetto ! (and here 
 the Doctor seated himself deliberately, resting one arm on the 
 side column of the Stocks, in familiar contact with the captive's 
 shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene around) 
 " Cospetto ! my prison, if they had caught me, would not 
 have had so fair a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all 
 one ; there are no ugly loves, and no handsome prisons ! " 
 
 With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in 
 his native Italian, Riccabocca turned round and renewed his 
 .soothing invitations to confidence. A friend in need is a friend 
 indeed, even if he come in the guise of a Papist and wizard. 
 All Lenny's ancient dislike to the foreigner had gone, and he 
 told him his little tale. 
 
 Dr Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly 
 the motives which had induced Mr Stirn to incarcerate his 
 agent, (barring only that of personal grudge, to which Lenny's 
 account gave him no clue.) That a man high in office should 
 make a scape-goat of his own watch-dog for an unlucky snap, 
 or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the wisdom 
 of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the 
 task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He 
 began by reminding, or rather informing, Leonard Fairfield of 
 all the instances of illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of 
 others that occurred to his own excellent memory. He told 
 him how the great Epictetus, when in slavery, had a master 
 whose favourite amusement was pinching his leg, which, as the 
 amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse than the 
 stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant 
 countryman, Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Vol- 
 taire's celebrated witticism, "En Anyleterre on tue un amiral 
 pour encourager les auti-es." (" In England they execute one 
 admiral in order to encourage the others.") Many other illus- 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 194 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 trations, still more pertinent to the case in point, his erudition 
 supplied from the stores of history. But on seeing that Lenny 
 did not seem in the slightest degree consoled by these memor- 
 able examples, he shifted his ground, and, reducing his logic to 
 the strict argumentum ad rem, began to prove, 1st, that there 
 was no disgrace at all in Lenny's present position, that every 
 equitable person would recognise the tyranny of Stirn and the 
 innocence of its victim ; 2dly, that if even here he were mis- 
 taken, for public opinion was not always righteous, what was 
 public opinion after all 1 " A breath a puff," cried Dr Ricca- 
 bocca "a thing without matter without length, breadth, or 
 substance a shadow a goblin of our own creating. A man's 
 own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more 
 for that phantom ' opinion ' than he should fear meeting a ghost 
 if he cross the churchyard at dark." 
 
 Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he 
 crossed the churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, 
 and he shook his head very mournfully. Dr Riccabocca was about 
 to enter into a third course of reasoning, which, had it come to 
 an end, would doubtless have settled the matter, and reconciled 
 Lenny to sitting in the stocks till doomsday, when the captive, 
 with the quick ear and eye of terror and calamity, became con- 
 scious that church was over, that the congregation in a few 
 seconds more would be flocking thitherwards. He saw vision- 
 ary hats and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw 
 not, despite all the excellence of his spectacles heard phantas- 
 mal rustlings and murmurings which Riccabocca heard not, 
 despite all that theoretical experience in plots, stratagems, and 
 treasons, which should have made the Italian's ear as fine as a 
 conspirator's or a mole's. And, -with another violent but vain 
 effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed, 
 
 " Oh, if I could but get out before they come ! Let me out 
 let me out. 0, kind sir, have pity let me out ! " 
 
 " Diavolo!" said the philosopher, startled, " I wonder that I 
 never thought of that before. After all, I believe he has hit the 
 right nail on the head ; " and, looking close, he perceived that 
 though the partition wood had hitched firmly into a sort of 
 spring-clasp, which defied Lenny's unaided struggles, still it
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 195 
 
 was not locked, (for, indeed, the padlock and key were snug in 
 the justice-room of the Squire, who never dreamt that his 
 orders would be executed so literally and summarily as to dis- 
 pense with all formal appeal to himself.) As soon as Dr Ilicca- 
 bocca made that discovery, it occurred to him that all the wis- 
 dom of all the schools that ever existed can't reconcile man or 
 boy to a bad position the moment there is a fair opportunity 
 of letting him out of it. Accordingly, without more ado, he 
 lifted up the creaking board, and Lenny Fairfield darted forth 
 like a bird from a cage halted a moment as if for breath, or 
 in joy ; and then, taking at once to his heels, fled/ fast as a 
 hare to its form fast to his mother's home. 
 
 Dr Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, 
 picked up his handkerchief and restored it to his pocket ; and 
 then, with some curiosity, began to examine the nature of that 
 place of duresse which had caused so much painful emotion to 
 its rescued victim. 
 
 "Man is a very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage, 
 soliloquising, " and is frightened by strange buggabooes ! "Tis 
 but a piece of wood ! how little it really injures ! And, after all, 
 the holes are but rests to the legs, and keep the feet out of the 
 dirt. And this green bank to sit upon under the shade of the 
 elm-tree verily the position must be more pleasant than other- 
 wise ! I've a great mind " Here the Doctor looked around, 
 and, seeing the coast still clear, the oddest notion imaginable 
 took possession of him ; yet not indeed a notion so odd, con- 
 sidered philosophically for all philosophy is based on practical 
 experiment and Dr Riccabocca fel t an irresistible desire practi- 
 cally to experience what manner of thing that punishment of 
 the stocks really was. " I can but try ! only for a moment," 
 said he apologetically to his own expostulating sense of dignity. 
 " I have time to do it, before any one comes." He lifted up the 
 partition again : but stocks are built on the true principle of 
 English law, and don't easily allow a man to criminate himself 
 it was hard to get into them without the help of a friend. 
 However, as we before noticed, obstacles only whetted Dr 
 Riccabocca's invention. He looked round and saw a withered 
 bit of stick under the tree this he inserted iu the division of
 
 196 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 the stocks, somewhat in the manner in which boys place a stick 
 under a sieve for the purpose of ensnaring sparrows : the fatal 
 wood thus propped, Dr Riccabocca sate gravely down on the 
 bank, and thrust his feet through the apertures. 
 
 "Nothing in it !" cried he triumphantly, after a moment's 
 deliberation. " The evil is only in idea. Such is the boasted 
 reason of mortals ! " With that reflection, nevertheless, he was 
 about to withdraw his feet from their voluntary dilemma, when 
 the crazy stick suddenly gave way, and the partition fell back 
 into its clasp. Dr Riccabocca was fairly caught " Facilis des- 
 censw sed revocare gradum /" True, his hands were at liberty, 
 but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they kept the 
 hands from the rescue ; and as Dr Riccabocca's form Avas by no 
 means supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together 
 with that firmness of adhesion which things newly painted 
 possess, so, after some vain twists and contortions, in which 
 he succeeded at length (not without a stretch of the sinews 
 that made them crack again) in finding the clasp and break- 
 ing his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash experiment 
 resigned himself to his fate. Dr Riccabocca was one of those 
 men who never do things by halves. "When I say he resigned 
 himself, I mean not only Christian but philosophical resigna- 
 tion. The position was not quite so pleasant as, theoretically, 
 he had deemed it ; but he resolved to make himself as comfort- 
 able as he could. And first, as is natural in all troubles to men 
 who have grown familiar with that odoriferous comforter which 
 Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have bestowed upon the 
 Caucasian races, the Doctor made use of his hands to extract 
 from his pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch. After 
 a few whiffs he would have been quite reconciled to his situa- 
 tion, but for the discovery that the sun had shifted its place in 
 the heavens, and was no longer shaded from his face by the 
 elm-tree. The Doctor again looked round, and perceived that 
 his red silk umbrella, which he had laid aside when he had 
 seated himself by Lenny, was within arm's reach. Possessing 
 himself of this treasure, he soon expanded its friendly folds. 
 And thus doubly fortified within and without, under shade of 
 the umbrella, and his pipe composedly between his lips, Dr
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 197 
 
 Riccabocca gazed on his own incarcerated legs, even with com- 
 placency. 
 
 " ' He who can despise all things,' " said he, in one of his 
 native proverbs, " ' possesses all things ! ' if one despises free- 
 dom, one is free ! This seat is as soft as a sofa ! I am not 
 sure," he resumed, soliloquising, after a pause " I am not sure 
 that there is not something more witty than manly and philo- 
 sophical in that national proverb of mine which I quoted to 
 the fanciutto, 'that there are no handsome prisons !' Did not 
 the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamed Bras de Fer, 
 write a book not only to prove that adversities are more neces- 
 sary than prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison 
 is the most pleasant and profitable ?* But is not this condition 
 of mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type of my 
 life 1 Is it the first time that I have thrust myself into a 
 hobble 1 and if in a hobble of mine own choosing, why should 
 I blame the gods 1 " 
 
 Upon this Dr Riccabocca fell into a train of musing so re- 
 mote from time and place, that in a few minutes he no more 
 remembered that he was in the Parish Stocks, than a lover 
 remembers that flesh is grass, a miser that mammon is perish- 
 able, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity. Dr Riccabocca was 
 in the clouds. 
 
 * " Entre tout, fetal tfune prison est le plus doux, et le plus profitable ! "
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and, entre nous, 
 reader but let it go no farther we have a good -many dogs 
 among the fraternity that are not Munitos,*) might have seen 
 with half an eye that the Parson's discourse had produced a 
 very genial and humanising effect upon his audience. When 
 all was over, and the congregation stood up to let Mr Hazeldean 
 and his family walk first down the aisle, (for that was the 
 custom at Hazeldean,) moistened eyes glanced at the Squire's 
 sun-burned, manly face with a kindness that bespoke revived 
 memory of many a generous benefit and ready service. The 
 head might be wrong now and then the heart was in the 
 right place after all. And the lady, leaning on his arm, came 
 in for a large share of that gracious good feeling. True, she 
 now and then gave a little offence when the cottages were not 
 so clean as she fancied they ought to be and poor folks don't 
 like a liberty taken with their houses any more than the rich 
 do ; true, that she was not quite so popular with the women as 
 the Squire was, for, if the husband went too often to the ale- 
 house, she always laid the fault on the wife, and said, " No man 
 would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had a smiling face 
 and a clean hearth at his home ; " whereas the Squire main- 
 tained the more gallant opinion, that " if Gill was a shrew, it 
 was because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her mouth with 
 a kiss ! " Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions 
 on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown 
 and the handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible, especially in 
 
 * Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Person of a dog) 
 at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs now-a-days.
 
 MY NOVEL. 199 
 
 the softened tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to associate 
 the honest, comely, beaming countenance of Mrs Hazeldean with 
 comfortable recollections of soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, 
 loaves and blankets in winter, cheering words and ready visits 
 in every little distress, and pretexts afforded by improvement 
 in the grounds and gardens (improvements which, as the Squire, 
 who preferred productive labour, justly complained, " would 
 never finish") for little timely jobs of work to some veteran 
 grandsire, who still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy urchin 
 in a family that " came too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked 
 a little behind, in the whitest of trousers and the stiffest of 
 neckcloths with a look of suppressed roguery in his bright 
 hazel eye, that contrasted his assumed stateliness of mien 
 without his portion of the silent blessing. Not that he had 
 done anything yet to deserve it ; but we all give youth so large 
 a credit in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her trifling foibles 
 only rose from too soft and feminine a susceptibility, too ivy- 
 like a yearning for some masculine oak, whereon to entwine 
 her tendrils ; and so little confined to self was the natural 
 lovingness of her disposition, that she had helped many a village 
 lass to find a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift from, 
 her own privy purse ; notwithstanding the assurances with 
 which she accompanied the marriage gift, viz., that " the 
 bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his ungrateful sex ; 
 but that it was a comfort to think that it would be all one in 
 the approaching crash." So that she had her warm partisans, 
 especially amongst the young ; while the slim Captain, on 
 whose arm she rested her forefinger, was at least a civil-spoken 
 gentleman, who had never done any harm, and who would 
 doubtless do a deal of good if he belonged to the parish. Nay, 
 even the fat footman, who came last with the family Prayer- 
 book, had his due share in the general association of neigh- 
 bourly kindness between hall and hamlet. Few were there 
 present to whom he had not extended the right hand of fellow- 
 ship, with a full horn of October in the clasp of it : and he was 
 a Hazeldean man, too, born and bred, as two-thirds of the 
 Squire's household (now letting themselves out from their large 
 pew under the gallery) were.
 
 200 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 On his part, too, you could see that the Squire was " moved 
 withal," and a little humbled moreover. Instead of walking 
 erect, and taking bow and curtsey as matter of course, and of 
 no meaning, he hung his head somewhat, and there was a slight 
 blush on his cheek ; and as he glanced upward and round him 
 shyly, as it were and his eye met those friendly looks, it 
 returned them with an earnestness that had in it something 
 touching as well as cordial an eye that said, as well as eye 
 could say, " I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbours ; but I 
 thank you for your good-will with my whole heart." And so 
 readily was that glance of the eye understood, that I think, if 
 that scene had taken place out of doors instead of in the church, 
 there would have been a hurrah as the Squire passed out of 
 sight. 
 
 Scarcely had Mr Hazeldean got clear of the churchyard, 
 ere Mr Stirn was whispering in his ear. As Stirn whispered, 
 the Squire's face grew long, and his colour rose. The con- 
 gregation, now nocking out of the church, exchanged looks with 
 each other ; that ominous conjunction between Squire and man 
 chilled back all the effects of the Parson's sermon. The Squire 
 struck his cane violently into the ground. " I would rather you 
 had told me Black Bess had got the glanders. A young gentle- 
 man, coming to visit my son, struck and insulted in Hazeldean ; 
 a young gentleman 'sdeath, sir, a relation his grandmother 
 was a Hazeldean. I do believe Jemima's right, and the world's 
 coming to an end ! But Leonard Fairfield in the stocks ! 
 "What will the Parson say 1 and after such a sermon ! ' Rich 
 man, respect the poor ! ' And the good widow too ; and poor 
 Mark, who almost died in my arms. Stirn, you have a heart of 
 stone ! You confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the 
 deuce gave you the right to imprison man or boy in my parish 
 of Hazeldean without trial, sentence, or warrant 1 ? Run and 
 let the boy out before any one sees him : run, or I shall " The 
 Squire elevated the cane, and his eyes shot fire. Mr Stirn did 
 not run, but he walked off very fast. The Squire drew back a 
 few paces, and again took his wife's arm. " Just wait a bit for 
 the Parson, while I talk to the congregation. I want to stop 
 'em all, if I can, from going into the village ; but how ? "
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 201 
 
 Frank heard, and replied readily 
 
 " Give 'em some beer, sir." 
 
 " Beer ! on a Sunday ! For shame, Frank ! " cried Mrs 
 Hazeldean. 
 
 " Hold your tongue, Harry. Thank you, Frank," said the 
 Squire, and his brow grew as clear as the blue sky above him. 
 I doubt if K-iccabocca could have got him out of his dilemma 
 with the same ease as Frank had done. 
 
 " Halt there, my men lads and lasses too there, halt a bit. 
 Mrs Fairfield, do you hear 1 halt ! I think his reverence has 
 given us a capital sermon. Go up to the Great House all of 
 you, and drink a glass to his health. Frank, go with them ; 
 and tell Spruce to tap one of the casks kept for the haymakers. 
 Harry, [this in a whisper,] catch the Parson, and tell him to 
 come to me instantly." 
 
 " My dear Hazeldean, what has happened 1 you are mad." 
 
 " Don't bother do what I tell you." 
 
 " But where is the Parson to find you 1 " 
 
 " Where, gad zooks, Mrs H., at the Stocks to be sure ! "
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 DR RICCABOCCA, awakened out of his reverie by the sound of 
 footsteps, was still so little sensible of the indignity of his 
 position that he enjoyed exceedingly, and with all the malice 
 of his natural humour, the astonishment and stupor manifested 
 by Stirn, when that functionary beheld the extraordinary sub- 
 stitute which fate and philosophy had found for Lenny Fairfield. 
 Instead of the weeping, crushed, broken-hearted captive whom 
 he had reluctantly come to deliver, he stared, speechless and 
 aghast, upon the grotesque but tranquil figure of the Doctor, 
 enjoying his pipe and cooling himself under his umbrella, with 
 a sang-froid that was truly appalling and diabolical: Indeed, 
 considering that Stirn always suspected the Papisher of having 
 had a hand in the whole of that black and midnight business, 
 in which the stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned 
 to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation of 
 dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the 
 Lenny he had incarcerated was transformed into the Doctor 
 lie found, conjoined with the peculiarly strange, eldritch, and 
 Mephistophelean physiognomy and person of Riccabocca, could 
 not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into the breast of 
 the parochial tyrant. While to his first confused and stam- 
 mered exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca replied 
 with so tragic an air, such ominous shakes of the head, such 
 mysterious, equivocating, long-worded sentences, that Stirn 
 every moment felt more and more convinced that the boy had 
 sold himself to the Powers of Darkness ; and that he himself, 
 prematurely, and in the flesh, stood face to face with the Arch- 
 Enemy.
 
 MY NOVEL. 203 
 
 Mr Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, 
 which, to do him justice, was usually prompt enough when 
 the Squire, followed hard by the Parson, arrived at the spot. 
 Indeed, Mrs Hazeldean's report of the Squire's urgent message, 
 disturbed manner, and most unparalleled invitation to the 
 parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's ordinarily slow 
 and sedate movements. And while the Squire, sharing Stirn's 
 amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from 
 the Stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Doctor Eicca- 
 bocca, under the majestic shade of the umbrella, but not a 
 vestige of the only being his mind could identify with the 
 tenancy of the stocks, Mr Dale, catching him by the arm, and 
 panting hard, exclaimed with a petulance he had never before 
 been known to display except at the whist-table, 
 
 " Mr Hazeldean, Mr Hazeldean, I am scandalised I am 
 shocked at you. I can bear a great deal from you, sir, as I 
 ought to do ; but to ask my whole congregation, the moment 
 after divine service, to go up and guzzle ale at the Hall, and 
 drink my health, as if a clergyman's sermon had been a speech 
 at a cattle-fair ! I am ashamed of you, and of the parish ! 
 What on earth has come to you all?" 
 
 " That's the very question I wish to heaven I could answer," 
 groaned the Squire, quite mildly and pathetically "What on 
 earth has come to us all ! Ask Stirn :" (then bursting out) 
 " Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't you hear 1 what on earth 
 has come to us all?" 
 
 " The Papisher is at the bottom of it, sir," said Stirn, pro- 
 voked out of all temper. "I does my duty, but I is but a mortal 
 man, arter all." 
 
 " A mortal fiddlestick where's Leonard Fairfield, I say ?" 
 
 " Him knows best," answered Stirn, retreating mechanically, 
 for safety's sake, behind the Parson, and pointing to Dr Ricca- 
 bocca. Hitherto, though both the Squire and Parson had 
 indeed recognised the Italian, they had merely supposed him to 
 be seated on the bank. It never entered into their heads that 
 so respectable and dignified a man could by any possibility be 
 an inmate, compelled or voluntary, of the Parish Stocks. No, 
 not even though, as I before said, the Squire had seen, just
 
 204 MY NOVEL. 
 
 under his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted in the aper- 
 tures that sight had only confused and bewildered him, 
 unaccompanied as it ought to have been with the trunk and 
 face of Lenny Fairfield. Those soles seemed to him optical 
 delusions, phantoms of the overheated brain ; but now, catch- 
 ing hold of Stirn, while the Parson in equal astonishment 
 caught hold of him the Squire faltered out, " "Well, this beats 
 cock-fighting ! The man's as mad as a march hare, and has 
 taken Dr Eickeybockey for little Lenny ! " 
 
 "Perhaps," said the Doctor, breaking silence, with a bland 
 smile, and attempting an inclination of the head as courteous 
 as his position would permit "perhaps, if it be quite the same 
 to you, before you proceed to explanations, you will just help 
 me out of the stocks." 
 
 The Parson, despite his perplexity and anger, could not 
 repress a smile, as he approached his learned friend, and bent 
 down for the purpose of extricating him. 
 
 "Lord love your reverence, you'd better not!" cried Mr 
 Stirn. "Don't be tempted he only wants to get you into his 
 claws. I would not go a-near him for all the " 
 
 The speech was interrupted by Dr Riccabocca himself, who 
 now, thanks .to the Parson, had risen into his full height, and 
 half a head taller than all present even than the tall Squire 
 approached Mr Stirn, with a gracious wave of the hand. Mr 
 Stirn retreated rapidly towards the hedge, amidst the brambles 
 of which he plunged himself incontinently. 
 
 "I guess whom you take me for, Mr Stirn," said the Italian, 
 lifting his hat with his characteristic politeness. "It is cer- 
 tainly a great honour ; but you will know better one of these 
 days, when the gentleman in question admits you to a personal 
 interview in another and a hotter world."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " BUT how on earth did you get into my new stocks ? " asked 
 the Squire, scratching his head. 
 
 "My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount 
 Etna." 
 
 "Did he, and what for ?" 
 
 " To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca. 
 
 The Squire burst out a-laughing. 
 
 " And so you got into the stocks to try what it was like. 
 Well, I can't wonder it is a very handsome pair of stocks," 
 continued the Squire, with a loving look at the object of his 
 praise. " Nobody need be ashamed of being seen in those 
 stocks I should not mind it myself." 
 
 " We had better move on," said the Parson drily, " or we 
 shall have the whole village here presently, gazing on the 
 lord of the manor in the same predicament as that from which 
 we have just extricated the Doctor. Now pray, what is the 
 matter with Lenny Fail-field ? I can't understand a word of 
 what has passed. You don't mean to say that good Lenny 
 Fairfield (who was absent from church, by the by) can have 
 done anything to get into disgrace ? " 
 
 "Yes, he has though," cried the Squire. " Stirn, I say 
 Stirn." But Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and 
 vanished. Thus left to his own powers of narrative at second- 
 hand, Mr Hazeldean now told all he had to communicate ; the 
 assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt punishment in- 
 flicted by Stirn ; his own indignation at the affront to his young 
 kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the cul- 
 prit from public humiliation.
 
 206 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 The Parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention 
 of the beer-drinking, took the Squire by the hand. " Ah, Mr 
 Hazeldean, forgive me," he said repentantly ; " I ought to have 
 known at once that it was only some ebullition of your heart 
 that could stifle your sense of decorum. But this is a sad story 
 about Lenny, brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day. So 
 unlike him, too I don't know what to make of it." 
 
 " Like or unlike," said the Squire, " it has been a gross insult 
 to young Leslie ; and looks all the worse because I and Audley 
 are not just the best friends in the world. I can't think what 
 it is," continued Mr Hazeldean, musingly; " but it seems that 
 there must be always some association of fighting connected 
 with that prim half-brother of mine. There was I, son of his 
 own mother who might have been shot through the lungs, 
 only the ball lodged in the shoulder and now his wife's kins- 
 man my kinsman, too grandmother a Hazeldean a hard- 
 reading sober lad, as I am given to understand, can't set his foot 
 into the quietest parish in the three kingdoms, but what the 
 mildest boy that ever was seen makes a rush at him like a mad 
 bull. It is FATALITY ! " cried the Squire solemnly. 
 
 " Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in cer- 
 tain houses," observed Riccabocca. " There was the House of 
 Pelops and Polynices and Eteocles the sons of (Edipus ! " 
 
 " Pshaw ! " said the Parson ; " but what's to be done 1 " 
 
 " Done 1 " said the Squire ; " why, reparation must be made 
 to young Leslie. And though I wished to spare Lenny, the 
 young ruffian, a public disgrace for your sake, Parson Dale, 
 and Mrs Fairfield's ; yet a good caning in private " 
 
 " Stop, sir ! " said Riccabocca mildly, " and hear me." The 
 Italian then, with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded 
 the cause of his poor protege, and explained how Lenny's error 
 arose only from mistaken zeal for the Squire's service, and in 
 the execution of the orders received from Mr Stirn. 
 
 " That alters the matter," said the Squire, softened ; " and all 
 that is necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology 
 to my kinsman." 
 
 " Yes, that is just," rejoined the Parson ; " but I still don't 
 learn how he got out of the stocks."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 207 
 
 Riccabocca then resumed his tale ; and, after confessing his 
 own principal share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture 
 of the boy's shame and honest mortification. " Let us march 
 against Philip ! " cried the Athenians when they heard Demos- 
 thenes 
 
 " Let us go at once and comfort the child ! " cried the Parson, 
 before Riccabocca could finish. 
 
 With that benevolent intention, all three quickened their 
 pace, and soon arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had 
 caught sight of their approach through the window ; and not 
 doubting that, in spite of Riccabocca's intercession, the Parson 
 was come to upbraid, and the Squire to re-imprison, he darted 
 out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and lay there 
 perdu all the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that his 
 mother who sate wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and 
 trying in vain to listen to the Parson and Mrs Dale, who (after 
 sending in search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console 
 the mother heard a timid knock at the door and a nervous 
 fumble at the latch. She started up, opened the door, and 
 Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his face, sobbing 
 loud. 
 
 " Jfo harm, my boy," said the Parson tenderly ; " you have 
 nothing to fear all is explained and forgiven." 
 
 Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much 
 swollen. " Sir," said he sturdily, " I don't want to be forgiven 
 I ain't done no wrong. And I've been disgraced and I 
 won't go to school, never no more." 
 
 " Hush, Carry ! " said the Parson to his wife, who, with the 
 usual liveliness of her little temper, was about to expostulate. 
 " Good night, Mrs Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to- 
 morrow, Lenny ; by that time you will think better of it." 
 
 The Parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to 
 the Hall to report Lenny's safe return ; for the Squire was very 
 uneasy about him, and had even in person shared the search. 
 As soon as he heard Lenny was safe " Well," said the Squire, 
 " let him go the first thing in the morning to Rood Hall, to ask 
 Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and smooth again." 
 
 " A young villain ! " cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour
 
 208 MY NOVEL. 
 
 of scarlet ; " to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had 
 just been to call on me ! But I wonder Randal let him off so 
 well any other boy in the sixth form would have killed him ! " 
 
 " Frank," said the Parson sternly, " if we all had our deserts, 
 what should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down 
 on his own wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan 
 the dying embers of another's 1 " 
 
 The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his 
 lip, and seemed abashed while even his mother said not a word 
 in his exculpation ; for when the Parson did reprove in that 
 stern tone, the majesty of the Hall stood awed before the rebuke 
 of the Church. Catching Eiccabocca's inquisitive eye, Mr Dale 
 drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to him his fears that 
 it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg Randal 
 Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy 
 would not digest the stocks with as much ease as a long regimen 
 of philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss 
 Jemima soon interrupted by a direct appeal to the Doctor 
 respecting the number of years (even without any previous and 
 more violent incident) that the world could possibly withstand 
 its own wear and tear. 
 
 " Ma'am," said the Doctor, reluctantly summoned away, to 
 look at a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that inter- 
 esting subject " ma'am, it is very hard that you should make 
 one remember the end of the world, since, in conversing with 
 you, one's natural temptation is to forget its existence." 
 
 Miss Jemima's cheeks were suffused with a deeper scarlet than 
 Frank's had been a few minutes before. Certainly that deceit- 
 ful, heartless compliment justified all her contempt for the 
 male sex ; and yet such is human blindness it went far to 
 redeem all mankind in her credulous and too confiding soul. 
 
 " He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima. 
 
 " Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and 
 stepped majestically into the four-posted bed, " I think we shall 
 get that boy for the garden now ! " 
 
 Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the 
 Hazeldean whirligig.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WHATEVER may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazel- 
 dean's designs upon Dr Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity 
 with which the Italian had counted upon securing the services 
 of Lenny Fairfield was speedily and triumphantly established 
 by the result. No voice of the Parson's, charmed he ever so 
 wisely, could persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask pardon of 
 the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was 
 bid, he owed an agonising defeat and a shameful incarceration. 
 And, to Mrs Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part. 
 She was deeply offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had 
 undergone in being put in the stocks ; she shared his pride, and 
 openly approved his spirit. Nor was it without great difficulty 
 that Lenny could be induced to resume his lessons at school ; 
 nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his mother's hold- 
 ing. The point of the school at last he yielded, though sullenly ; 
 and the Parson thought it better to temporise as to the more 
 unpalatable demand. Unluckily, Lenny's apprehensions of the 
 mockery that awaited him in the merciless world of his village 
 were realised. Though Stirn at first kept his own counsel, the 
 Tinker blabbed the whole affair. And after the search insti- 
 tuted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt to hush up what 
 had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn told his 
 story, as the Tinker had told his own ; both tales were very 
 unfavourable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern-boy had broken 
 the Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into 
 the bargain ; the village lad had sided with Stirn and the 
 authorities in spying out the misdemeanours of his equals : 
 VOL. i. o
 
 210 MY NOVEL; OK, 
 
 therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both capacities of degraded pat- 
 tern-boy and baffled spy, could expect no mercy ; he was ridi- 
 culed in the one, and hated in the other. 
 
 It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster, and under 
 the eye of Mr Dale, no one openly gave vent to malignant feel- 
 ings ; but the moment those checks were removed, popular 
 persecution began. 
 
 Some pointed and mowed at him ; some cursed him for a 
 sneak, and all shunned his society ; voices were heard in the 
 hedgerows, as he passed through the village at dusk, "Who was 
 put in the stocks ? baa !" " Who got a bloody nob for playing 
 spy to Nick Stirn 1 baa ! " To resist this species of aggression 
 would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and a colder 
 temper than our poor pattern boy's. He took his resolution at 
 once, and his mother approved it ; and the second or third day 
 after Dr Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fail-field pre- 
 sented himself on the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. 
 " Please sir," said he to the Doctor, who was sitting cross- 
 legged on the balustrade, with his red silk umbrella over his 
 head "please, sir, if you'll be good enough to take me now, and 
 give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honour night 
 and day ; and as for the wages, mother says, 'just suit yourself, 
 sir.'" 
 
 " My child," said the Doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and 
 looking at him with the sagacious eye of a wizard, " I knew 
 you would come ! and Giacomo is already prepared for you ! 
 As to wages, we'll talk of them by and by." 
 
 Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some even- 
 ings on the vacant chair, where he had so long sate in the place 
 of her beloved Mark ; and the chair seemed so comfortless and 
 desolate, thus left all to itself, that she could bear it no longer. 
 
 Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to 
 Lenny perhaps more so ; and one morning she hailed the 
 Steward as he was trotting his hog-maned cob beside the door, 
 and bade him tell the Squire that "she would take it very kind 
 if he would let her off the six months' notice for the land and 
 premises she held there were plenty to step into the place at a 
 much better rent."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 211 
 
 " You're a fool," said the good-natured Steward ; " and I'm 
 very glad you did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to 
 me. You've been doing extremely well here, and have the 
 place, I may say, for nothing." 
 
 "Nothin'as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feelin'," said 
 the widow. " And now Lenny has gone to work with the 
 foreign gentleman, I should like to go and live near him." 
 
 " Ah yes I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino 
 more fool he; but, bless your heart, 'tis no distance two 
 miles or so. Can't he come home every night after work ?" 
 
 " No, sir," exclaimed the widow almost fiercely ; " he shan't 
 come home here, to be called bad names and jeered at ! he 
 whom my dead good-man was so fond and proud of. No, sir ; 
 we poor folks have our feelings, as I said to Mrs Dale, and as I 
 will say to the Squire hisself. Not that I don't thank him for 
 all favours he be a good gentleman if let alone ; but he says 
 he w r on't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin. Pardin 
 for what, I should like to know ? Poor lamb ! I wish you 
 could ha' seen his nose, sir as big as your two fists. Ax par- 
 din ! If the Squire had had such a nose as that, I don't think 
 it's pardin he'd been ha' axing. But I let the passion get the 
 better of me I humbly beg you'll excuse it, sir. I'm no 
 scollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have been, if the 
 Lord had not visited us other ways. Therefore just get the 
 Squire to let me go as soon as may be ; and as for the bit o' 
 hay and what's on the grounds and orchard, the new comer 
 will no doubt settle that." 
 
 The Steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the 
 widow to relinquish her resolution, took her message to the 
 Squire. Mr Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the 
 boy's obstinate refusal to make the amende honorable to Randal 
 Leslie, at first only bestowed a hearty curse or two on the pride 
 and ingratitude both of mother and son. It may be supposed, 
 however, that his second thoughts were more gentle, since that 
 evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent 
 his " Harry." Now, though Harry was sometimes austere arid 
 brusque enough on her own account, and in such business as 
 might especially be transacted between herself and the cottagers,
 
 212 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 yet she never appeared as the delegate of her lord except in the 
 capacity of a herald of peace and mediating angel. It was with 
 good heart, too, that she undertook this mission, since, as we 
 have seen, hoth mother and son were great favourites of hers. 
 She entered the cottage with the friendliest heam in her bright 
 blue eye, and it was with the softest tone of her frank cordial 
 voice that she accosted the widow. But she was no more suc- 
 cessful than the Steward had been. The truth is, that I don't 
 believe the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so 
 proud as your plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to 
 propitiate and deal with when his sense of dignity is ruffled. 
 Nor are there many of my own literary brethren (thin-skinned 
 creatures though we are) so sensitively alive to the Public Opi- 
 nion, wisely despised by Dr Riccabocca, as that same peasant. 
 He can endure a good deal of contumely sometimes, it is true, 
 from his superiors, (though, thank Heaven ! that he rarely meets 
 with unjustly ;) but to be looked down upon, and mocked, and 
 pointed at by his own equals his own little world cuts him 
 to the soul. And if you can succeed in breaking this pride, 
 and destroying this sensitiveness, then he is a lost being. He 
 can never recover his self-esteem, and you have chucked him 
 half way a stolid, inert, sullen victim to the perdition of the 
 prison or the convict-ship. 
 
 Of this stuff was the nature both of the widow and her son. 
 Had the honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs Hazel- 
 dean, it could not have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit 
 upon which it descended. But Mrs Hazeldean, though an excel- 
 lent woman, was rather a bluff plain-spoken one and, after all, 
 she had some little feeling for the son of a gentleman, and a 
 decayed fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account, had 
 been assailed without any intelligible provocation ; nor could 
 she, with her strong common sense, attach all the importance 
 which Mrs Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence of a 
 few young cubs, Avhich, she said truly, " would soon die away if 
 no notice was taken of it." The widow's mind was made up, 
 and Mrs Hazeldean departed with much chagrin and some 
 displeasure. 
 
 Mrs Fairfield, however, tacitly understood that the request
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 213 
 
 she had made was granted, and early one morning her door 
 was found locked the key left at a neighbour's to be given to 
 the Steward ; and, on farther inquiry, it was ascertained that 
 her furniture and effects had been removed by the errand-cart 
 in the dead of the night. Lenny had succeeded in finding a 
 cottage on the road-side, not far from the Casino ; and there, 
 with a joyous face, he waited to welcome his mother to break- 
 fast, and show how he had spent the night in arranging her 
 furniture. 
 
 " Parson ! " cried the Squire, when all this news came upon 
 him, as he was walking arm in arm with Mr Dale to inspect 
 some proposed improvement in the Alms-house, " this is all 
 your fault. Why did not you go and talk to that brute of a 
 boy, and that dolt of a woman 1 You've got * soft sawder 
 enough,' as Frank calls it in his new-fashioned slang." 
 
 " As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both ! " said the 
 Parson in a tone of reproachful surprise at the accusation. 
 " But it was in vain ! Squire, if you had taken my advice 
 about the stocks quieta non movere 1 " 
 
 " Bother ! " said the Squire. " I suppose I am to be held up 
 as a tyrant, a Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, 
 merely for having things smart and tidy ! Stocks indeed ! 
 your friend Rickeybockey said he was never more comfortable 
 in his life quite enjoyed sitting there. And what did not 
 hurt Rickeybockey's dignity (a very gentlemanlike man he is, 
 when he pleases) ought to be no such great matter to Master 
 Leonard Fairfield. But 'tis no use talking ! What's to be done 
 now 1 The woman must not starve ; and I'm sure she can't 
 live out of Rickeybockey's wages to Lenny (by the way, I 
 hope he don't board the boy upon his and Jackeymo's leavings : 
 I hear they dine upon newts and sticklebacks faugh !) I'll tell 
 you what, Parson, now I think of it at the back of the cottage 
 which she has taken there are some fields of capital land just 
 vacant. Rickeybockey wants to have 'em, and sounded me as 
 to the rent when he was at the Hall. I only half promised 
 him the refusal. And he must give up four or five acres of the 
 best land round the cottage to the widow just enough for her 
 to manage and she can keep a dairy. If she want capital, I'll
 
 214 MY NOVEL. 
 
 lend her some in your name only don't tell Stirn ; and as for 
 the rent we'll talk of that when we see how she gets on, 
 thankless obstinate jade that she is ! You see," added the 
 Squire, as if he felt there was some apology due for this gene- 
 rosity to an object whom he professed to consider so ungrateful, 
 " her husband was a faithful servant, and so I wish you would 
 not stand there staring me out of countenance, but go down to 
 the woman at once, or Stirn will have let the land to Rickey- 
 bockey, as sure as a gun. And harkye, Dale, perhaps you can 
 contrive, if the woman is so cursedly stiff-backed, not to say 
 the land is mine, or that it is any favour I want to do hdr or, 
 in short, manage it as you can for the best." Still even this 
 charitable message failed. The widow knew that the land was 
 the Squire's, and worth a good .3 an acre. " She thanked him 
 humbly for that and all favours ; but she could not afford to 
 buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden to any one for 
 her living. And Lenny was well off at Mr Rickeybockey's, and 
 coming on wonderfully in the garden way and she did not 
 doubt she could get some washing ; at all events, her haystack 
 would bring in a good bit of money, and she should do nicely, 
 thank their honours." 
 
 Nothing farther could be done in the direct way, but the 
 remark about the washing suggested some mode of indirectly 
 benefiting the widow. And a little time afterwards, the sole 
 laundress in that immediate neighbourhood happening to die, a 
 hint from the Squire obtained from the landlady of the inn 
 opposite the Casino such custom as she had to bestow, which at 
 times was not inconsiderable. And what with Lenny's wages, 
 (whatever that mysterious item might be,) the mother and sou 
 contrived to live without exhibiting any of those physical signs 
 of fast and abstinence which Riccabocca and his valet gratui- 
 tously afforded to the student in animal anatomy.
 
 CHAPTEK XIV. 
 
 OF all the wares and commodities in exchange and barter, 
 wherein so mainly consists the civilisation of our modern world, 
 there is not one which is so carefully weighed so accurately 
 measured so plumbed and gauged so doled and scraped so 
 poured out in minima and balanced with scruples as that 
 necessary of social commerce called " an apology ! " If the 
 chemists were half so careful in vending their poisons, there 
 would be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims 
 to arsenic and oxalic acid. But, alas, in the matter of apology, 
 it is not from the excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, 
 miserly manner in which it is dispensed, that poor Humanity 
 is hurried off to the Styx ! How many times does a life depend 
 on the exact proportions of an apology ! Is it a hairbreadth 
 too short to cover the scratch for which you want it 1 Make 
 your will you are a dead man ! A life do I say 1 a hecatomb 
 of lives ! How many wars would have been prevented, how 
 many thrones would be standing, dynasties flourishing com- 
 monwealths brawling round a lema, or fitting out galleys for 
 corn and cotton if an inch or two more of apology had been 
 added to the proffered ell ! But then that plaguy, jealous, sus- 
 picious, old vinegar-faced Honour, and her partner Pride as 
 penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint as herself have 
 the monopoly of the article. And what with the time they 
 lose in adjusting their spectacles, hunting in the precise shelf 
 for the precise quality demanded, then (quality found) the 
 haggling as to quantum considering whether it should be 
 Apothecary's weight or Avoirdupois, or English measure or 
 Flemish and, finally, the hullabuloo they make if the customer
 
 216 MY NOVEL. 
 
 is not perfectly satisfied with the monstrous little he gets for 
 his money, I don't wonder, for my part, how one loses temper 
 and patience, and sends Pride, Honour, and Apology, all to the 
 devil. Aristophanes, in his " Comedy of Peace," insinuates a 
 beautiful allegory by only suffering that goddess, though in fact 
 she is his heroine, to appear as a mute. She takes care never 
 to open her lips. The shrewd Greek knew very well that she 
 would cease to be Peace, if she once began to chatter. Where- 
 fore, reader, if ever you find your pump under the iron heel 
 of another man's boot, heaven grant that you may hold your 
 tongue, and not make things past all endurance and forgiveness 
 by bawling out for an apology !
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BUT the Squire and his son, Frank, were large-hearted generous 
 creatures in the article of apology, as in all things less skim- 
 pinkly dealt out. And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would 
 offer no plaister to Randal Leslie, they made amends for his 
 stinginess by their own prodigality. The Squire accompanied 
 his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family choosing to be at 
 home, the Squire in his own hand, and from his own head, 
 indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied 
 all the wounds which the dignity of the Leslies had ever 
 received. 
 
 This letter of apology ended with a hearty request that Ran- 
 dal would come and spend a few days with his son. Frank's 
 epistle was to the same purport, only more Etonian and less 
 legible. 
 
 It was some days before Randal's replies to these epistles 
 were received. The replies bore the address of a village near 
 London, and stated that the writer was now reading with a 
 tutor preparatory to entrance at Oxford, and could not, there- 
 fore, accept the invitation extended to him. 
 
 For the rest, Randal expressed himself with good sense, 
 though not with much generosity. He excused his participa- 
 tion in the vulgarity of such a conflict by a bitter but short 
 allusion to the obstinacy and ignorance of the village boor; 
 and did not do what you, my kind reader, certainly would 
 have done under similar circumstances viz. intercede in behalf 
 of a brave and unfortunate antagonist. Most of us like a foe 
 better after we have fought him that is, if we are the conquer-
 
 218 MY NOVEL. 
 
 ing party ; this was not the case with Randal Leslie. There, so 
 far as the Etonian was concerned, the matter rested. And the 
 Squire, irritated that he could not repair whatever wrong that 
 young gentleman had sustained, no longer felt a pang of regret 
 as he passed by Mrs Fairfield's deserted cottage.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 LENNY F AIRFIELD continued to give great satisfaction to his 
 new employers, and to profit in many respects by the familiar 
 kindness with which he was treated. Riccabocca, who valued 
 himself on penetrating into character, had from the first seen 
 that much stuff of no common quality and texture was to be 
 found in the disposition and mind of the English village boy. 
 On farther acquaintance, he perceived that, under a child's 
 innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness 
 that required but development and direction. He ascertained 
 that the pattern boy's progress at the village school proceeded 
 from something more than mechanical docility and readiness of 
 comprehension. Lenny had a keen thirst for knowledge, and 
 through all the disadvantages of birth and circumstance, there 
 were the indications of that natural genius which converts dis- 
 advantages themselves into stimulants. Still, with the germs of 
 good qualities lay the embryos of those which, difficult to sepa- 
 rate, and hard to destroy, often mar the produce of the soil. 
 With a remarkable and generous pride in self-repute, there was 
 some stubbornness ; with great sensibility to kindness, there 
 was also strong reluctance to forgive affront. 
 
 This mixed nature in an uncultivated peasant's breast inte- 
 rested Riccabocca, who, though long secluded from the commerce 
 of mankind, still looked upon man as the most various and 
 entertaining volume which philosophical research can explore. 
 He soon accustomed the boy to the tone of a conversation gene- 
 rally subtle and suggestive ; and Lenny's language and ideas 
 became insensibly less rustic and more refined. Then Ricca- 
 bocca selected from his library, small as it was, books that,
 
 220 MY NOVEL; OK, 
 
 though elementary, were of a higher cast than Lenny could have 
 found within his reach at Hazeldean. Riccabocca knew the 
 English language well better in grammar, construction, and 
 genius than many a not ill-educated Englishman ; for he had 
 studied it with the minuteness with which a scholar studies a 
 dead language, and amidst his collection he had many of the 
 books which had formerly served him for that purpose. These 
 were the first works he had lent to Lenny. Meanwhile Jack- 
 eymo imparted to the boy many secrets in practical gardening 
 and minute husbandry, for at that day farming in England 
 (some favoured counties and estates excepted) was far below the 
 nicety to which the art has been immemorially carried in the 
 north of Italy where, indeed, you may travel for miles and 
 miles as through a series of market-gardens so that, all these 
 things considered, Leonard Fairfield might be said to have made 
 a change for the better. Yet in truth, and looking below the 
 surface, that might be fair matter of doubt. For the same 
 reason which had induced the boy to fly his native village, he 
 no longer repaired to the church of Hazeldean. The old inti- 
 mate intercourse between him and the Parson became neces- 
 sarily suspended, or bounded to an occasional kindly visit from 
 the latter visits which grew more rare, and less familiar, as he 
 found his former pupil in no want of his services, and wholly 
 deaf to his mild entreaties to forget and forgive the past, and 
 come at least to his old seat in the parish church. Lenny still 
 went to church a church a long way off in another parish but 
 the sermons did not do him the same good as Parson Dale's had 
 done; and the clergyman, who had his own flock to attend 
 to, did not condescend, as Parson Dale would have done, to 
 explain what seemed obscure, and enforce what was profitable, 
 in private talk, with that stray lamb from another's fold. 
 
 Now I question much if all Dr Riccabocca's sage maxims, 
 though they were often very moral, and generally very wise, 
 served to expand the peasant boy's native good qualities, and 
 correct his bad, half so well as the few simple words, not at all 
 indebted to Machiavelli, which Leonard had once reverently 
 listened to when he stood by Mark's elbow chair, yielded up for 
 the moment to the good Parson, worthy to sit in it ; for Mr
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 221 
 
 Dale had a heart in which all the fatherless of the parish found 
 their place. Nor was this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual lore 
 so counterbalanced by the greater facilities for purely intellec- 
 tual instruction, as modern enlightenment might presume. 
 For, without disputing the advantage of knowledge in a general 
 way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to content. Its ten- 
 dency, of course, is to increase the desires, to dissatisfy us with 
 what is, in order to urge progress to what may be ; and, in that 
 progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall, 
 baffled and crushed by the way ! To how large a number will 
 be given desires they will never realise, dissatisfaction of the lot 
 from which they will never rise ! Allans ! one is viewing the 
 dark side of the question. It is all the fault of that confounded 
 Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny Fairfield to lean 
 gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and seeing no 
 one near him, groan out querulously 
 
 " And am I born to dig a potato ground ? " 
 
 Pardieu, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and 
 ride in your carriage, and by the help of a dinner pill digest 
 a spoonful of curry, you may sigh to think what a relish there 
 was in potatoes, roasted in ashes after you had digged them out 
 of that ground with your own stout young hands. Dig on, 
 Lenny Fairfield, dig on ! Dr Riccabocca will tell you that there 
 was once an illustrious personage* who made experience of two 
 very different occupations one was ruling men, the other was 
 planting cabbages ; he thought planting cabbages much the 
 pleasanter of the two ! 
 
 * The Emperor Diocletian.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 DR RICCABOCCA had secured Lenny Fairfield, and might there- 
 fore be considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirli- 
 gig with adroitness and success. But Miss Jemima was still 
 driving round in her car, handling the reins, and flourishing 
 the whip, without apparently having got an inch nearer to the 
 flying form of Dr Riccabocca. 
 
 Indeed, that excellent and only too susceptible spinster, with 
 all her experience of the villany of man, had never conceived 
 the wretch to be so thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption 
 as when Dr Riccabocca took his leave, and once more interred 
 himself amidst the solitudes of the Casino,"without having made 
 any formal renunciation of his criminal celibacy. For some 
 days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and brooded 
 with more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty 
 of the approaching crash. Indeed, many signs of that universal 
 calamity, which, while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had 
 permitted herself to consider ambiguous, now became lumi- 
 nously apparent. Even the newspaper, which during that 
 credulous and happy period had given half a column to Births 
 and Marriages, now bore an ominously long catalogue of Deaths; 
 so that it seemed as if the whole population had lost heart, and 
 had no chance of repairing its daily losses. The leading articles 
 spoke, with the obscurity of a Pythian, of an impending CRISIS, 
 Monstrous turnips sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted 
 to General News. Cows bore calves with two heads, whales 
 were stranded in the Humber, showers of frogs descended in the 
 High Street of Cheltenham. 
 
 All these symptoms of the world's decrepitude and consum-
 
 MY NOVEL. 223 
 
 mation, which by the side of the fascinating Riccabocca might 
 admit of some doubt as to their origin and cause, now, conjoined 
 with the worst of all, viz. the frightfully progressive wickedness 
 of man left to Miss Jemima no ray of hope save that afforded 
 by the reflection that she could contemplate the wreck of matter 
 without a single sentiment of regret. 
 
 Mrs Dale, however, by no means shared the despondency of 
 her fair friend, and, having gained access to Miss Jemima's 
 chamber, succeeded, though not without difficulty, in her kindly 
 attempts to cheer the drooping spirits of that female misan- 
 thropist. Nor, in her benevolent desire to speed the car of Miss 
 Jemima to its hymeneal goal, was Mrs Dale so cruel towards 
 her male friend, Dr Riccabocca, as she seemed to her husband. 
 For Mrs Dale was a woman of shrewdness and penetration, as 
 most quick-tempered women are ; and she knew that Miss 
 Jemima was one of those excellent young ladies who are likely 
 to value a husband in proportion to the difficulty of obtaining 
 him. In fact, my readers of both sexes must often have met, in 
 the course of their experience, with that peculiar sort of femi- 
 nine disposition, which requires the warmth of the conjugal 
 hearth to develop all its native good qualities ; nor is it to be 
 blamed overmuch if, innocently aware of this tendency in its 
 nature, it turns towards what is best fitted for its growth and 
 improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sun- 
 flower turn to the sun, or the willow to the stream. Ladies of 
 this disposition, permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, 
 gradually languish away into intellectual inanition, or sprout 
 out into those abnormal eccentricities which are classed under 
 the general name of "oddity" or "character." But, once ad- 
 mitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing what healthful im- 
 provement takes place how the poor heart, before starved and 
 stinted of nourishment, 'throws out its suckers, and bursts into 
 bloom and fruit. And thus many a belle from whom the 
 beaux have stood aloof, only because the puppies think she 
 could be had for the asking, they see afterwards settled down 
 into true wife and fond mother, with amaze at their former 
 disparagement, and a sigh at their blind hardness of heart. 
 
 In all probability, Mrs Dale took this view of the subject ;
 
 224 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 and certainly, in addition to all the hitherto dormant virtues 
 which would be awakened in Miss Jemima when fairly Mrs 
 Riccabocca, she counted somewhat upon the mere worldly ad- 
 vantage which such a match would bestow upon the exile. So 
 respectable a connection with one of the oldest, wealthiest, and 
 most popular families in the shire, would in itself give him a 
 position not to be despised by a poor stranger in the land ; and 
 though the interest of Miss Jemima's dowry might not be much, 
 regarded in the light of English pounds, (not Milanese lire,) still 
 it would suffice to prevent that gradual process of dematerialisa- 
 tion which the lengthened diet upon minnows and sticklebacks 
 had already made apparent in the fine and slow-evanishing form 
 of the philosopher. 
 
 Like all persons convinced of the expediency of a thing, Mrs 
 Dale saw nothing wanting but opportunities to insure its success. 
 And that these might be forthcoming, she not only renewed 
 with greater frequency, and more urgent instance than ever, her 
 friendly invitations to Riccabocca to drink tea and spend the 
 evening, but she so artfully chafed the Squire on his sore point 
 of hospitality, that the Doctor received weekly a pressing solici- 
 tation to dine and sleep at the Hall. 
 
 At first the Italian pished and grunted, and said Cospetto, and 
 Per Bacco, and Diavolo, and tried to creep out of so much prof- 
 fered courtesy. But, like all single gentlemen, he was a little 
 under the tyrannical influence of his faithful servant ; and 
 Jackeymo, though he could bear starving as well as his master 
 when necessary, still, when he had the option, preferred roast 
 beef and plum-pudding. Moreover, that vain and incautious 
 confidence of Riccabocca, touching the vast sum at his com- 
 mand, and with no heavier drawback than that of so amiable a 
 lady as Miss Jemima who had already shown him (Jackeymo) 
 many little delicate attentions had greatly whetted the cupi- 
 dity which was in the servant's Italian nature : a cupidity the 
 more keen because, long debarred its legitimate exercise on his 
 own mercenary interests, he carried it all to the account of his 
 master's ! 
 
 Thus tempted by his enemy, and betrayed by his servant, the 
 unfortunate Riccabocca fell, though with eyes not unblinded,
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 225 
 
 into the hospitable snares extended for the destruction of his 
 celibacy ! He went often to the Parsonage, often to the Hall, 
 and by degrees the sweets of the social domestic life, long 
 denied him, began to exercise their enervating charm upon the 
 stoicism of our poor exile. Frank had now returned to Eton. 
 An unexpected invitation had carried off Captain Higginbotham 
 to pass a few weeks at Bath with a distant relation, who had 
 lately returned from India, and who, as rich as Croesus, felt so 
 estranged and solitary in his native isle that, when the Captain 
 " claimed kindred there," to his own amaze " he had his claims 
 allowed ; " while a very protracted sitting of Parliament still 
 delayed in London the Squire's habitual visitors during the 
 later summer ; so that a chasm thus made in his society Mr 
 Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality the diversion or 
 distraction he found in the foreigner's companionship. Thus, 
 with pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the two female 
 conspirators, the intimacy between the Casino and Hall rapidly 
 thickened ; but still not a word resembling a distinct proposal 
 did Dr Riccabocca breathe. And still, if such an idea obtruded 
 itself on his mind, it was chased therefrom with so determined 
 a Diavolo that perhaps, if not the end of the world, at least the 
 end of Miss Jemima's tenure in it, might have approached, and 
 seen her still Miss Jemima, but for a certain letter with 
 a foreign post- mark that reached the Doctor one Tuesday 
 morning. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE servant saw that something had gone wrong, and, under 
 pretence of syringing the orange-trees, he lingered near his 
 master, and peered through the sunny leaves upon Riccabocca's 
 melancholy brows. 
 
 The Doctor sighed heavily. Nor did he, as was his wont, after 
 some such sigh, mechanically take up that dear comforter, the 
 pipe. But though the tobacco-pouch lay by his side on the 
 balustrade, and the pipe stood against the wall between his 
 knees, childlike lifting up its lips to the customary caress he 
 heeded neither the one nor the other, but laid the letter silently 
 on his lap, and fixed his eyes upon the ground. 
 
 " It must be bad news indeed ! " thought Jackeymo, and 
 desisted from his work. Approaching his master, he took up 
 the pipe and the tobacco-pouch, and filled the bowl slowly, 
 glancing all the while towards that dark musing face on which, 
 when abandoned by the expression of intellectual vivacity or 
 the excfuisite smile of Italian courtesy, the deep downward lines 
 revealed the characters of sorrow. Jackeymo did not venture 
 to speak ; but the continued silence of his master disturbed him 
 much. He laid that peculiar tinder which your smokers use 
 upon the steel, and struck the spark still not a word, nor did 
 Riccabocca stretch forth his hand. 
 
 " I never knew him ill this taking before," thought Jackey- 
 mo ; and delicately he insinuated the neck of the pipe into the 
 nerveless fingers of the hand that lay supine on those quiet 
 knees. The pipe fell to the ground. 
 
 Jackeymo crossed himself, and began praying to his sainted 
 namesake with great fervour.
 
 MY NOVEL. 227 
 
 The Doctor rose slowly, and as if with effort ; he walked once 
 or twice to aiid fro the terrace ; and then he halted abruptly, 
 and said 
 
 " Friend ! " 
 
 " Blessed Monsignore San Giacomo, I knew thou wouldst 
 hear me ! " cried the servant ; and he raised his master's hand 
 to his lips, then abruptly turned away and wiped his eyes. 
 
 " Friend," repeated Riccabocca, and this time with a tremu- 
 lous emphasis, and in the softest tone of a voice never wholly 
 without the music of the sweet South, " I would talk to thee of 
 my child."
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " THE letter, then, relates to the Signorina. She is well 1 " 
 
 " Yes, she is well now. She is in our native Italy." 
 
 Jackeymo raised his eyes involuntarily towards the orange- 
 trees, and the morning breeze swept by and bore to him the 
 odour of their blossoms. 
 
 " Those are sweet even here, with care," said he, pointing to 
 the trees. " I think I have said that before to the Padrone." 
 
 But Eiccabocca was now looking again at the letter, and did 
 not notice either the gesture or the remark of his servant. 
 
 " My aunt is no more ! " said he, after a pause. 
 
 " We will pray for her soul ! " answered Jackeymo solemnly, 
 "But she was very old, and had been a long time ailing. Let 
 it not grieve the Padrone too keenly : at that age, and with 
 those infirmities, death comes as a friend." 
 
 " Peace be to her dust ! " returned the Italian. " If she had 
 her faults, be they now forgotten for ever ; and in the hour of 
 my danger and distress, she sheltered my infant ! That shelter 
 is destroyed. This letter is from the priest, her confessor. And 
 the home of which my child is bereaved falls to the inheritance 
 of my enemy." 
 
 " Traitor ! " muttered Jackeymo ; and his right hand seemed 
 to feel for the weapon which the Italians of lower rank often 
 openly wear in their girdles. 
 
 "The priest," resumed Riccabocca calmly, " has rightly judged 
 in removing my child as a guest from the house in which that 
 traitor enters as lord." 
 
 " And where is the Signorina 1 " 
 
 "With the poor priest. See, Giacomo here, here this is
 
 MY NOVEL. 229 
 
 her handwriting at the end of the letter the first lines she 
 ever yet traced to me." 
 
 Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently on the 
 large characters of a child's writing. But large as they were, 
 they seemed indistinct, for the paper was blistered with the 
 child's tears ; and on the place where they had not fallen, there 
 was a round fresh moist stain of the tear that had dropped 
 from the lids of the father. Riccabocca renewed, "The priest 
 recommends a convent." 
 
 "To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then 
 crossing himself rapidly, he added, " I did not mean that, Mon- 
 signore San Giacomo forgive me ! But your Excellency * does 
 not think of making a nun of his only child ! " 
 
 "And yet why not?" said Riccabocca mournfully; "what 
 can I give her in the world 1 Is the land of the stranger a 
 better refuge than the home of peace in her native clime ? " 
 
 " In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart ! " 
 
 " And if that beat were stilled, what then 1 111 fares the 
 life that a single death can bereave of all. In a convent at 
 least (and the priest's influence can obtain her that asylum 
 amongst her equals and amidst her sex) she is safe from trial 
 and from penury to her grave." 
 
 " Penury ! Just see how rich we shall be when we take 
 those fields at Michaelmas." 
 
 "Pazzie!" (follies) said Riccabocca listlessly. "Are these 
 suns more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile ? Yet in 
 our own Italy, saith the proverb, ' he who sows land reaps more 
 care than corn.' It were different," continued the father after a 
 pause, and in a more irresolute tone, " if I had some independ- 
 ence, however small, to count on nay, if among all my tribe of 
 dainty relatives there were but one female who would accom- 
 pany Violante to the exile's hearth Ishmael had his Hagar. 
 But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the 
 nameless wants and cares of a frail female child ? And she has 
 been so delicately reared the woman child needs the fostering 
 hand and tender eye of a woman." 
 
 * The title of Excellency does not, in Italian, necessarily express any 
 exalted rank ; but is often given by servants to their masters.
 
 230 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 " And with a word," said Jackeymo resolutely, " the Padrone 
 might secure to his child all that he needs, to save her from the 
 sepulchre of a convent ; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she 
 might be sitting on his knee. Padrone, do not think that you 
 can conceal from me the truth, that you love your child better 
 than all things in the world now the Patria is as dead to you 
 as the dust of your fathers and your heart-strings would crack 
 with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a 
 convent. Padrone, never again to hear her voice never again 
 to see her face ! Those little arms that twined round your neck 
 that dark night, when we fled fast for life and freedom, and 
 you said, as you felt their clasp, ' Friend, all is not yet lost.' " 
 
 " Giacomo ! " exclaimed the father reproachfully, and his 
 voice seemed to choke him. Riccabocca turned away, and 
 walked restlessly to and fro the terrace ; then, lifting his arms 
 with a wild gesture as he still continued his long irregular 
 strides, he muttered, " Yes, heaven is my witness that I could 
 have borne reverse and banishment without a murmur, had I 
 permitted myself that young partner in exile and privation. 
 Heaven is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it is because I 
 would not listen to my own selfish heart. Yet never, never to 
 see her again my child ! And it was but as the infant that I 
 beheld her ! friend, friend " (and, stopping short with a 
 burst of uncontrollable emotion, he bowed his head upon his 
 servant's shoulder ;) " thou knowest what I have endured and 
 suffered at my hearth, as in my country ; the wrong, the per- 
 fidy, the the " His voice again failed him ; he clung to his 
 servant's breast, and his whole frame shook. 
 
 " But your child, the innocent one think now only of her !" 
 faltered Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs. 
 
 " True, only of her," replied the exile, raising his face "only 
 of her. Put aside thy thoughts for thyself, friend counsel me. 
 If I were to send for Violante, and if, transplanted to these 
 keen airs, she drooped and died look, look the priest says 
 that she needs such tender care ; or if I myself were summoned 
 from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, 
 breadless perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest trial against 
 temptation, would she not live to mourn the cruel egotism
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 231 
 
 that closed on her infant innocence the gates of the House of 
 God 1 " 
 
 Jackeymo was appalled by this appeal ; and indeed Ricca- 
 hocca had never before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. 
 In his hours of philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks 
 and nuns, priesthood and superstition. But now, in that hour 
 of emotion, the Old Religion reclaimed her empire ; and the 
 sceptical world- wise man, thinking only of his child, spoke and 
 felt with a child's simple faith.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " BUT again I say," murmured Jackeymo scarce audibly, and 
 after a long silence, " if the Padrone would make up his mind 
 to marry ! " 
 
 He expected that his master would start up in his customary 
 indignation at such a suggestion nay, he might not have been 
 sorry so to have changed the current of feeling ; but the poor 
 Italian only winced slightly, and mildly withdrawing him- 
 self from his servant's supporting arm, again paced the terrace, 
 but this time quietly and in silence. A quarter of an hour 
 thus passed. " Give me the pipe," said Dr Riccabocca, passing 
 into the Belvidere. 
 
 Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully relieved 
 at the Padrone's return to the habitual adviser, mentally 
 besought his sainted namesake to bestow a double portion of 
 soothing wisdom on the benignant influences of the weed.
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 DR RICCABOCCA had been some little time in the solitude of 
 the Belvidere, when Lenny Fail-field, not knowing that his 
 employer was therein, entered to lay down a book which" the 
 Doctor had lent him, with injunctions to leave on a certain 
 table when done with. Riccabocca looked up at the sound of 
 the young peasant's step. 
 
 " I beg your honour's pardon I did not know " 
 
 "Never mind: lay the book there. I wish to speak with 
 you. You look well, my child ; this air agrees with you as 
 well as that of Hazeldean ? " 
 
 "Oh yes, sir." 
 
 " Yet it is higher ground more exposed 1 " 
 
 " That can hardly be, sir," said Lenny ; " there are many 
 plants grow here which don't flourish at the Squire's. The hill 
 yonder keeps off the east wind, and the place lays to the south." 
 
 " Lies, not lays, Lenny. What are the principal complaints 
 in these parts 1 " 
 
 " Eh, sir 1 " 
 
 " I mean what maladies, what diseases 1 " 
 
 " I never heard tell of any, sir, except the rheumatism." 
 
 " No low fevers 1 no consumption 1 " 
 
 " Never heard of them, sir." 
 
 Riccabocca drew a long breath, as if relieved. 
 
 " That seems a very kind family at the Hall." 
 
 " I have nothing to say against it," answered Lenny bluntly. 
 " I have not been treated justly. But as that book says, sir, 
 ' It is not every one who comes into the world with a silver 
 spoon in his mouth.' "
 
 234 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 Little thought the Doctor that those wise maxims may leave 
 sore thoughts behind them. He was too occupied with the 
 subject most at his own heart to think then of what was in 
 Lenny Fairfield's. 
 
 " Yes ; a kind, English domestic family. Did you see much 
 of Miss Hazeldean ? " 
 
 " Not so much as of the Lady." 
 
 " Is she liked in the village, think you 1 " 
 
 " Miss Jemima 1 Yes. She never did harm. Her little dog 
 bit me once she did not ask me to beg its pardon, she asked 
 mine ! She's a very nice young lady ; the girls say she's very 
 affable ; and," added Lenny with a smile, " there are always 
 more weddings going on when she's down at the Hall." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Riccabocca. Then, after a long whiff, " Did you 
 ever see her play with the little children 1 Is she fond of 
 children, do you think 1 " 
 
 " Lord, sir, you guess everything ! She's never so pleased as 
 when she's playing with the babies." 
 
 " Humph ! " grunted Riccabocca. " Babies well, that's 
 womanlike. I don't mean exactly babies, but when they're 
 older little girls 1 " 
 
 " Indeed, sir, I daresay ; but," said Lenny primly, " I never 
 as yet kept company with the little girls." 
 
 " Quite right, Lenny ; be equally discreet all your life. Mrs 
 Dale is very intimate with Miss Hazeldean more than with 
 the Squire's lady. Why is that, think you ? " 
 
 " Well, sir," said Leonard shrewdly, " Mrs Dale has her little 
 tempers, though she's a very good lady ; and Madam Hazeldean 
 is rather high, and has a spirit. But Miss Jemima is so soft : 
 any one could live with Miss Jemima, as Joe and the servants 
 say at the Hall." 
 
 "Indeed! Get my hat out of the parlour, and just 
 bring a clothes-brush, Lenny. A fine sunny day for a 
 walk." 
 
 After this most mean and dishonourable inquisition into 
 the character and popular repute of Miss Hazeldean, Signior 
 Riccabocca seemed as much cheered up and elated as if he had 
 committed some very noble action ; and he walked forth in
 
 VARIETIES IX ENGLISH LIFE. 235 
 
 the direction of the Hall with a far lighter and livelier step 
 than that with which he had paced the terrace. 
 
 "Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and the pipe's, the 
 Padrone shall have his child ! " muttered the servant, looking 
 up from the garden.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 YET Dr Riccabocca was not rash. The man who wants his 
 wedding-garment to fit him must allow plenty of time for the 
 measure. But, from that day, the Italian notably changed his 
 manner towards Miss Hazeldean. He ceased that profusion of 
 compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in safety all 
 serious meaning. For indeed the Doctor considered that com- 
 pliments to a single gentleman were what the inky liquid it 
 dispenses is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water 
 sails away from its enemy. Neither did he, as before, avoid 
 prolonged conversations with that young lady, and contrive to 
 escape from all solitary rambles by her side. On the contrary, 
 he now sought every occasion to be in her society; and, entirely 
 dropping the language of gallantry, he assumed something of 
 the earnest tone of friendship. He bent down his intellect to 
 examine and plumb her own. To use a very homely simile, 
 he blew away that froth which there is on the surface of mere 
 acquaintanceships, especially with the opposite sex ; and which, 
 while it lasts, scarce allows you to distinguish between small 
 beer and double X. Apparently Dr Riccabocca was satisfied 
 with his scrutiny at all events, under that froth there was no 
 taste of bitter. The Italian might not find any great strength 
 of intellect in Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled 
 from many little whims and foibles which he had himself 
 the sense to perceive were harmless enough if they lasted, 
 and not so absolutely constitutional but what they might be 
 removed by a tender hand Miss Hazeldean had quite enough 
 sense to comprehend the plain duties of married life ; and if 
 the sense could fail, it found a substitute in good old homely
 
 MY NOVEL. 237 
 
 English principles and the instincts of amiable kindly feel- 
 ings. 
 
 I know not how it is, but your very clever man never seems 
 to care so much as your less gifted mortals for cleverness in his 
 helpmate. Your scholars, and poets, and ministers of state, 
 are more often than not found assorted with exceedingly 
 humdrum good sort of women, and apparently like them all 
 the better for their deficiencies. Just see how happily Racine 
 lived with his wife, and what an angel he thought her, and yet 
 she had never read his plays. Certainly Goethe never troubled 
 the lady who called him "Mr Privy Councillor" with whims 
 about " monads," and speculations on " colour," nor those stiff 
 metaphysical problems on which one breaks one's shins in the 
 Second Part of the Faust. Probably it may be that such great 
 geniuses knowing that, as compared with themselves, there is 
 little difference between your clever woman and your hum- 
 drum woman merge at once all minor distinctions, relinquish 
 all attempts that could not but prove unsatisfactory at sym- 
 pathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are quite satisfied to 
 establish that tie which, after all, best resists wear and tear 
 viz. the tough household bond between one human heart and 
 another. 
 
 At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning of Dr Ricca- 
 bocca, when one morning, after a long walk with Miss Hazel- 
 dean, he muttered to himself 
 
 " Duro con duro 
 Non fece mai buon muro. 11 
 
 Which may bear the paraphrase, " Bricks without mortar 
 would make a very bad wall." There was quite enough in 
 Miss Jemima's disposition to make excellent mortar : the 
 Doctor took the bricks to himself. 
 
 When his examination was concluded, our philosopher sym- 
 bolically evinced the result he had arrived at by a very simple 
 proceeding on his part which would have puzzled you greatly 
 if you had not paused, and meditated thereon, till you saw all 
 that it implied. Dr Riccabocca took off his spectacles ! He 
 wiped them carefully, put them into their shagreen case, and
 
 238 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 locked them in his bureau : that is to say, he left off wearing 
 his spectacles. 
 
 You will observe that there was a wonderful depth of mean- 
 ing in that critical symptom, whether it be regarded as a sign 
 outward, positive and explicit ; or a sign metaphysical, mysti- 
 cal, and esoteric. For, as to the last it denoted that the task of 
 the spectacles was over ; that, when a philosopher has made up 
 his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be shortsighted 
 nay, even somewhat purblind than to be always scrutinising 
 the domestic felicity, to which he is about to resign himself, 
 through a pair of cold unillusory barnacles. And for the 
 things beyond the hearth, if he cannot see without spectacles, 
 is he not about to ally to his own defective vision a good sharp 
 pair of eyes, never at fault where his interests are concerned 1 
 On the other hand, regarded positively, categorically, and expli- 
 citly, Dr Riccabocca, by laying aside those spectacles, signified 
 that he was about to commence that happy initiation of court- 
 ship when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, 
 wishes to look as young and as handsome as time and nature 
 will allow. Vain task to speed the soft language of the eyes, 
 through the medium of those glassy interpreters ! I remember, 
 for my own part, that once, on a visit to the town of Adelaide, 
 I Pisistratus Caxton was in great danger of falling in love 
 with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very 
 good fortune when she suddenly produced from her reticule 
 a very neat pair of No. 4, set in tortoise-shell, and fixing upon 
 me their Gorgon gaze, froze the astonished Cupid into stone ! 
 And I hold it a great proof of the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of 
 his vast experience in mankind, that he was not above the con- 
 sideration of what your pseudo sages would have regarded as 
 foppish and ridiculous trifles. It argued all the better for that 
 happiness which is our being's end and aim, that, in conde- 
 scending to play the lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers 
 under lock and key. 
 
 And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned, it was 
 impossible to deny that the Italian had remarkably handsome 
 eyes. Even through the spectacles, or lifted a little above 
 them, they were always bright and expressive ; but without
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 239 
 
 those adjuncts, the blaze was softer and more tempered : they 
 had that look which the French call veloute, or velvety ; and 
 he appeared altogether ten years younger. If our Ulysses, thus 
 rej urinated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to 
 make a Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is 
 worse than Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos ; 
 He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a Gynopophagite !
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " AND you commission me, then, to speak to our dear Jemima?" 
 said Mrs Dale joyfully, and without any bitterness whatever in 
 that "dear." 
 
 DR RICCABOCCA. " Nay, before speaking to Miss Hazeldean, 
 it would surely be proper to know how far my addresses would 
 be acceptable to the family." 
 
 MRS DALE." Ah ! " 
 
 DR RICCABOCCA. " The Squire is of course the head of the 
 family." 
 
 MRS DALE, (absent and distrait.) " The Squire yes, very 
 true quite proper." (Then looking up and with na'ivete,) 
 " Can you believe me, I never thought of the Squire. And he 
 is such an odd man, and has so many English prejudices, that 
 really dear me, how vexatious that it should never once have 
 occurred to me that Mr Hazeldean had a voice in the matter ! 
 Indeed, the relationship is so distant it is not like being her 
 father ; and Jemima is of age, and can do as she pleases ; and 
 but, as you say, it is quite proper that he should be consulted as 
 the head of the family." 
 
 DR RICCABOCCA. " And you think that the Squire of Hazel- 
 dean might reject my alliance ! Pshaw ! that's a grand word 
 indeed ; I mean, that he might object very reasonably to his 
 cousin's marriage with a foreigner, of whom he can know no- 
 thing, except that which in all countries is disreputable, and is 
 said in this to be criminal poverty." 
 
 MRS DALE, (kindly.) " You misjudge us poor English people, 
 and you wrong the Squire, heaven bless him ! for we were poor 
 enough when he singled out my husband from a hundred for
 
 MY NOVEL. 241 
 
 the minister of his parish, for his neighbour and his friend. I 
 will speak to him fearlessly " 
 
 DR RICCABOCCA. " And frankly. And now I have used that 
 word, let me go on with the confession which your kindly readi- 
 ness, my fair friend, somewhat interrupted. I said that if I 
 might presume to think my addresses would he acceptable to 
 Miss Hazeldean and her family, I was too sensible of her amiable 
 qualities not to not to " 
 
 MRS DALE, (with demure archness.) " Not to be the hap- 
 piest of men that's the customary English phrase, Doctor." 
 
 RICCABOCCA, (gallantly.) " There cannot be a better. But," 
 continued he seriously, " I wish it first to be understood that I 
 have been married before." 
 
 MRS DALE, (astonished.) " Married before ! " 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " And that I have an only child, dear to me 
 inexpressibly dear. That child, a daughter, has hitherto lived 
 abroad ; circumstances now render it desirable that she should 
 make her home with me. And I own fairly that nothing has 
 so attached me to Miss Hazeldean, nor so induced my desire for 
 our matrimonial connection, as my belief that she has the heart 
 and the temper to become a kind mother to my little one." 
 
 MRS DALE, (with feeling and warmth.) " You judge her 
 rightly there." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Now, in pecuniary matters, as you may 
 conjecture from my mode of life, I have nothing to offer to Miss 
 Hazeldean correspondent with her own fortune, whatever that 
 may be ! " 
 
 MRS DALE. " That difficulty is obviated by settling Miss 
 Hazeldeau's fortune on herself, which is customary in such 
 cases." 
 
 Dr Riccabocca's face lengthened. " And my child, then 1 " 
 said he feelingly. There was something in that appeal so alien 
 from all sordid and merely personal mercenary motives, that 
 Mrs Dale could not have had the heart to make the very rational 
 suggestion "But that child is not Jemima's, and you may 
 have children by her." 
 
 " She was touched, and replied hesitatingly " But, from what 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 242 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 you and Jemima may jointly possess, you can save some- 
 thing annually you can insure your life for your child. We 
 did so when our poor child whom we lost was born," (the tears 
 rushed into Mrs Dale's eyes ;) " and I fear that Charles still 
 insures his life for my sake, though heaven knows that 
 that " 
 
 The tears burst out. That little heart, quick and petulant 
 though it was, had not a fibre of the elastic muscular tissues 
 which are mercifully bestowed on the hearts of predestined 
 widows. Dr Eiccabocca could not pursue the subject of life 
 insurances further. But the idea which had never occurred 
 to the foreigner before, though so familiar to us English people 
 when only possessed of a life income pleased him greatly. I 
 will do him the justice to say, that he preferred it to the 
 thought of actually appropriating to himself and to his child a 
 portion of Miss Hazeldean's dower. 
 
 Shortly afterwards he took his leave, and Mrs Dale hastened 
 to seek her husband in his study, inform him of the success of 
 her matrimonial scheme, and consult him as to the chance of 
 the Squire's acquiescence therein. " You see," said she hesitat- 
 ingly, " though the Squire might be glad to see Jemima mar- 
 ried to some Englishman, yet, if he asks who and what is this 
 Dr Riccabocca, how am I to answer him 1 " 
 
 " You should have thought of that before," said Mr Dale, 
 with unwonted asperity; "and, indeed, if I had ever believed 
 anything serious could come out of what seemed to me so ab- 
 surd, I should long since have requested you not to interfere 
 in such matters, "Good heavens!" continued the Parson, 
 changing colour, " if we should have assisted, underhand as it 
 were, to introduce into the family of a man to whom we owe 
 so much, a connection that he would dislike ! how base we 
 should be ! how ungrateful ! " 
 
 Poor Mrs Dale was frightened by this speech, and still more 
 by her husband's consternation and displeasure. To do Mrs 
 Dale justice, whenever her mild partner was really either grieved 
 or offended, her little temper vanished she became as meek as 
 a lamb. As soon as she recovered the first shock she experi- 
 enced, she hastened to dissipate the Parson's apprehensions. She
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 243 
 
 assured him that she was convinced that, if the Squire disap- 
 proved of Riccabocca's pretensions, the Italian would withdraw 
 them at once, and Miss Hazeldean would never know of his 
 proposals. Therefore, in that case, no harm would be done. 
 
 This assurance, coinciding with Mr Dale's convictions as to 
 Riccabocca's scruples on the point of honour, tended much to 
 compose the good man ; and if he did not, as my reader of 
 the gentler sex would expect from him, feel alarm lest Miss 
 Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably engaged, 
 and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the Squire's refusal, 
 it was not that the Parson wanted tenderness of heart, but 
 experience in womankind ; and he believed, very erroneously, 
 that Miss Jemima Hazeldean was not one upon whom a disap- 
 pointment of that kind would produce a lasting impression. 
 Therefore Mr Dale, after a pause of consideration, said kindly 
 
 "Well, don't vex yourself and I was to blame quite as 
 much as you. But, indeed, I should have thought it easier for 
 the Squire to have transplanted one of his tall cedars into his 
 kitchen-garden, than for you to inveigle Dr Riccabocca into 
 matrimonial intentions. But a man who could voluntarily put 
 himself into the Parish Stocks for the sake of experiment must 
 be capable of anything ! However, I think it better that I, 
 rather than yourself, should speak to the Squire, and I will go 
 at once."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE Parson put on the shovel-hat, which conjoined with other 
 details in his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, 
 beginning to be out of fashion with churchmen had served to 
 fix upon him, emphatically, the dignified but antiquated style 
 and cognomen of " Parson ; " and took his way towards the 
 Home Farm, at which he expected to find the Squire. But he 
 had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr 
 Hazeldean, leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently 
 upon the Parish Stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that, ever 
 since the Hegira of Lenny and his mother, the Anti-Stockian 
 and Revolutionary spirit in Hazeldean, which the memorable 
 homily of our Parson had awhile averted or suspended, had 
 broken forth afresh. For though, while Lenny was present to 
 be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no 
 sooner was he removed from the scene of trial, than a universal 
 compassion for the barbarous usage he had received produced 
 what is called " the reaction of public opinion." Not that 
 those who had mowed and jeered repented them of their mock- 
 ery, or considered themselves in the slightest degree the cause 
 of his expatriation. No ; they, with the rest of the villagers, 
 laid all the blame upon the stocks. It was not to be expected 
 that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that 
 place of ignominy, and not be sensible of the affront. And 
 who, in the whole village, was safe, if such goings-on and put- 
 tings-in were to be tolerated in silence, and at the expense of 
 the very best and quietest lad the village had ever known ? 
 Thus, a few days after the widow's departure, the stocks was
 
 MY NOVEL. 245 
 
 again the object of midnight desecration : it was bedaubed and 
 bescratched it was hacked and hewed it was scrawled all 
 over with pithy lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execra- 
 tions on tyrants. Night after night new inscriptions appeared, 
 testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive sentiment of the 
 parish. And perhaps the stocks was only spared from axe and 
 bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice of the dis- 
 affected : it became the Pasquin of Hazeldean. 
 
 As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in 
 authority, so affairs had been lately administered with greater 
 severity than had been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the 
 Squire and his predecessors. Suspected persons were naturally 
 marked out by Mr Stirn, and reported to his employer, who> 
 too proud or too pained to charge them openly with ingrati- 
 tude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent 
 and stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards gradually 
 yielding to the baleful influence of Stirn, the Squire grumbled 
 forth that " he did not see why he should be always putting 
 himself out of his way to show kindness to those who made 
 such a return. There ought to be a difference between the 
 good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had 
 conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their 
 whole kith and kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged 
 to his character. For some, habitual donations of milk from the 
 dairy, and vegetables from the gardens, were surlily suspended ; 
 others were informed that their pigs were always trespassing 
 on the woods in search of acorns ; or that they were violating 
 the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house, popular in 
 the neighbourhood, but of late resorted to over-much by the 
 grievance-mongers, (and no wonder, since they had become the 
 popular party,) was threatened with an application to the 
 magistrates for the withdrawal of its license. Sundry old 
 women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-disposed towards 
 the stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks under 
 the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; 
 and, what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the 
 parish than most other retaliatory measures, three chestnut 
 trees, one walnut, and two cherry trees, standing at the bottom
 
 246 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 of the Park, and which had, from time immemorial, been given 
 up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now solemnly placed under 
 the general defence of " private property." And the crier had 
 announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit-trees in 
 Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigour of the 
 law. Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent pro- 
 ceedings than all these indications of a change of policy, "which, 
 he averred, would soon bring the parish to its senses such as 
 discontinuing many little jobs of unprofitable work that em- 
 ployed the surplus labour of the village. But there the Squire, 
 falling into the department, and under the benigner influence 
 of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened. When it 
 came to a question that affected the absolute quantity of 
 loaves to be consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon 
 him, the milk of human kindness with which Providence 
 has so bountifully supplied that class of the mammalia called 
 the " Bucolic," and of which our Squire had an extra " yield " 
 burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the 
 harsher Adam. 
 
 Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates without 
 crushing its victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with 
 a silk pocket-handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a 
 match and train, is rarely successful ; and, after three or four 
 other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incar- 
 cerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any 
 enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed 
 in the sinks of manufacturing towns found their way into 
 the popular beer-house heaven knows how, though the Tinker 
 was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who 
 still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. And, finally, there 
 appeared amongst the other graphic embellishments which the 
 poor stocks had received, the rude gravure of a gentleman in a 
 broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet, 
 with the inscription beneath " A warnin to hall tirans mind 
 your hi ! sighnde Captin sTraw." 
 
 It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that 
 the Squire was gazing when the Parson joined him. 
 
 " Well, Parson," said Mr Hazeldean, with a smile which he
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 247 
 
 meant to be pleasant and easy, but which was exceedingly 
 bitter and grim, "I wish you joy of your flock you see they 
 have just hanged me in effigy ! " 
 
 The Parson stared, and though greatly shocked, smothered 
 bis emotions ; and attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent 
 and the mildness of the dove, to find another original for the 
 effigy. 
 
 " It is very bad," quoth he, " but not so bad as all that, 
 Squire ; that's not the shape of your hat. It is evidently 
 meant for Mr Stirn." 
 
 " Do you think so ! " said the Squire softened. " Yet the 
 top-boots Stirn never wears top-boots." 
 
 " No more do you except in the hunting-field. If you look 
 again, those are not tops they are leggings Stirn wears leg- 
 gings. Besides, that flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a 
 kind of a hook like Stirn's ; whereas your nose though by no 
 means a snub rather turns up than not, as the Apollo's does, 
 according to the plaister cast in Riccabocca's parlour." 
 
 " Poor Stirn ! " said the Squire, in a tone that evinced com- 
 placency, not unmingled with compassion, " that's what a man 
 gets in this world by being a faithful servant, and doing his 
 duty with zeal for his employer. But you see that things have 
 come to a strange pass, and the question now is, what course to 
 pursue. The miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance, and 
 Stirn recommends the employment of a regular nightwatch 
 Avith a lanthorn and bludgeon." 
 
 " That may protect the stocks certainly ; but will it keep 
 those detestable tracts out of the beer-house ? " 
 
 " We shall shut the beer-house up at the next sessions." 
 
 " The tracts will break out elsewhere the humour's in the 
 blood ! " 
 
 " I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamington 
 good hunting at Leamington for a year, just to let the rogues 
 see how they can get on without me ! " 
 
 The Squire's lip trembled. 
 
 " My dear Mr Hazeldean," said the Parson, taking his friend's 
 hand. "I don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but if 
 you had taken my advice, quieta non movere ! Was there ever
 
 248 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 a parish so peaceable as this, or a country-gentleman so beloved 
 as you were, before you undertook the task which has dethroned 
 kings and ruined states that of wantonly meddling with anti- 
 quity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs or the 
 revival of obsolete uses." 
 
 At this rebuke, the Squire did not manifest his constitutional 
 tendencies to choler ; but he replied almost meekly, " If it were 
 to do again, faith, I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of 
 the shabbiest pair of stocks that ever disgraced a village. Cer- 
 tainly I meant it for the best an ornament to the green ; how- 
 ever, now the stocks is rebuilt, the stocks must be supported. 
 Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of thankless 
 rapscallions." 
 
 "I think," said the Parson, "that you will allow that the 
 House of Tudor, whatever its faults, was a determined resolute 
 dynasty enough high-hearted and strong-headed. A Tudor 
 would never have fallen into the same calamities as the poor 
 Stuart did ! " 
 
 " What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my 
 stocks 1 " 
 
 " A great deal. Henry the VIII. found a subsidy so unpopu- 
 lar that he gave it ,up ; and the people, in return, allowed him 
 to cut off as many heads as he pleased, besides those in his own 
 family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know, is your idol in his- 
 tory " 
 
 " To be sure ! she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort." 
 
 " Good Queen Bess struggled bard to maintain a certain 
 monopoly ; she saw it would not do, and she surrendered it 
 with that frank heartiness which becomes a sovereign, and 
 makes surrender a grace." 
 
 " Ha ! and you would have me give up the stocks ? " 
 
 " I would much rather the stocks had remained as it was, 
 before you touched it ; but, as it is, if you could find a good 
 plausible pretext and there is an excellent one at hand ; the 
 sternest kings open prisons, and grant favours, upon joyful 
 occasions now a marriage in the royal family is of course a 
 joyful occasion ! and so it should be in that of the King of 
 Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the Parson's elo-
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 249 
 
 quence ! it was "worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr 
 Dale had profited much by his companionship with that 
 Machiavellian intellect. 
 
 " A marriage yes ; but Frank has only just got into coat 
 tails ! " 
 
 " I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE Squire staggered as if the breath had been knocked out of 
 him, and, for want of a better seat, sate down on the stocks. 
 
 All the female heads in the neighbouring cottages peered, 
 themselves unseen, through the casements. What could the 
 Squire be about ? what new mischief did he meditate ? Did 
 he mean to fortify the stocks 1 Old Gaffer Solomons, who 
 had an indefinite idea of the lawful power of squires, and 
 who had been for the last ten minutes at watch on his thresh- 
 hold, shook his head and said " Them as a cut out the mon, 
 a-hanging, as a put it in the Squire's head ! " 
 
 " Put what ? " asked his granddaughter. 
 
 " The gallus ! " answered Solomons " he be a-going to have 
 it hung from the great elm-tree. And the Parson, good mon, 
 is a-quoting Scripter agin it you see he's a taking off his 
 gloves, and a-putting his two han's together, as he do when 
 he pray for the sick, Jeany." 
 
 That description of the Parson's mien and manner, which, 
 with his usual niceness of observation, Gaffer Solomons thus 
 sketched off, will convey to you some idea of the earnestness 
 Avith which the Parson pleaded the cause he had undertaken 
 to advocate. He dwelt much upon the sense of propriety 
 which the foreigner had evinced in requesting that the Squire 
 might be consulted before any formal communication to his 
 cousin ; and he repeated Mrs Dale's assurance, that such were 
 Riccabocca's high standard of honour and belief in the sacred 
 rights of hospitality, that, if the Squire withheld his consent 
 to his proposals, the Parson was convinced that the Italian 
 would instantly retract them. Now, considering that Miss
 
 MY NOVEL. 251 
 
 Hazeldean was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, 
 and the Squire had long since placed her property entirely at 
 her own disposal, Mr Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the 
 Parson's corollary remark, " That this was a delicacy which 
 could not be expected from every English pretender to the 
 lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared ground, the 
 Parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that, 
 since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later, (and, 
 indeed, that the Squire could not wish to prevent her,) it might 
 be better for all parties concerned that it should be with some 
 one who, though a foreigner, was settled in the neighbour- 
 hood, and of whose character what was known was certainly 
 favourable, than run the hazard of her being married for her 
 money by some adventurer or Irish fortune-hunter at the 
 watering-places she yearly visited. Then he touched lightly 
 on Riccabocca's agreeable and companionable qualities ; and 
 concluded with a skilful peroration upon the excellent occasion 
 the wedding would afford to reconcile Hall and parish, by 
 making a voluntary holocaust of the stocks. 
 
 As he concluded, the Squire's brow, before thoughtful, though 
 not sullen, cleared up benignly. To say truth, the Squire was 
 dying to get rid of the stocks, if he could but do so handsomely 
 and with dignity ; and had all the stars in the astrological 
 horoscope conjoined together to give Miss Jemima '' assurance 
 of a husband," they could not so have served her with the 
 Squire, as that conjunction between the altar and the stocks 
 which the Parson had effected ! 
 
 Accordingly, when Mr Dale had come to an end, the Squire 
 replied with great placidity and good sense, '' That Mr Rickey- 
 bockey had behaved very much like a gentleman, and that he 
 was very much obliged to him ; that he (the Squire) had no 
 right to interfere in the matter, farther than with his advice; 
 that Jemima was old enough to choose for herself, and that, 
 as the Parson had implied, after all she might go farther and 
 fare worse indeed, the farther she went, (that is, the longer 
 she waited,) the worse she was likely to fare. I own for my 
 part," continued the Squire, "that though I like Rickeybockey 
 very much, I never suspected that Jemima was caught with
 
 252 MT NOVEL; OR, 
 
 his long face ; but there's no accounting for tastes. My Harry, 
 indeed, was more shrewd, and gave me many a hint, for which 
 I only laughed at her. Still I ought to have thought it looked 
 queer when Mounseer took to disguising himself by leaving off 
 his glasses, ha ha ! I wonder what Harry will say ; let's go 
 and talk to her." 
 
 The Parson, rejoiced at this easy way of taking the matter, 
 hooked his arm into the Squire's, and they walked amicably 
 towards the Hall. But on coming first into the gardens they 
 found Mrs Hazeldean herself, clipping dead leaves or fading 
 flower? from her rose-trees. The Squire stole slily behind her, 
 and startled her in her turn by putting his arm round her 
 waist, and saluting her smooth cheek with one of his hearty 
 kisses ; which, by the way, from some association of ideas, was 
 a conjugal freedom that he usually indulged whenever a wed- 
 ding was going on in the village. 
 
 " Fie, "William ! " said Mrs Hazeldean coyly, and blushing as 
 she saw the Parson. " Well, who's going to be married now 1 " 
 
 " Lord, was there ever such a woman 1 she's guessed it ! " 
 cried the Squire in great admiration. "Tell her all about it, 
 Parson." 
 
 The Parson obeyed. 
 
 Mrs Hazeldean, as the reader may suppose, showed much less 
 surprise than her husband had done ; but she took the news 
 graciously, and made much the same answer as that which had 
 occurred to the Squire, only with somewhat more qualification 
 and reserve. "Signer Riccabocca had behaved very hand- 
 somely ; and though a daughter of the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean 
 might expect a much better marriage in a worldly point of 
 view, yet as the lady in question had deferred finding one so 
 long, it would be equally idle and impertinent now to quarrel 
 with her choice if indeed she should decide on accepting Signor 
 Riccabocca. As for fortune, that was a consideration for the 
 two contracting parties. Still, it ought to be pointed out to 
 Miss Jemima that the interest of her fortune would afford but 
 a very small income. That Dr Riccabocca was a widower was 
 another matter for deliberation ; and it seemed rather sus- 
 picious that he should have been hitherto so close upon all
 
 TABIETTES IS ENGLISH LIFE. 253 
 
 matters connected with his former life. Certainly his manners 
 were in his favour, and as long as he was merely an acquaint- 
 ance, and at most a tenant, no one had a right to institute 
 inquiries of a strictly private nature ; but that, when he was 
 about to marry a Hazeldean of Hazddean. it became the Squire 
 at least to know a little more about him who and what he 
 was. Why did he leave his own country ? English people 
 went abroad to save : no foreigner would choose England as a 
 country in which to save money I She supposed that a foreign 
 uoctor was no very great things ; probably he had been a pro- 
 fessor in some Italian university. Ai all events, if the Squire 
 interfered at all, it was on such points that he should request 
 information." 
 
 ~ My dear madam.'' said the Parson, ~ what you say is ex- 
 tremely just. As to the causes which have induced our friend 
 to expatriate himself. I think we need not look far for them. 
 He is evidently one of the many Italian refugees whom political 
 disturbances have^ driven to a land of which it is the boast to 
 receive all exiles of whatever party. For his respectability of 
 birth and family he certainly ought to obtain some vouchers. 
 And if that be the only objection, I trust we may soon con- 
 gratulate Miss Hazeldean on a marriage with a man who, 
 though certainly very poor, has borne privations without a 
 murmur ; has preferred all hardship to debt ; has scorned to 
 attempt betraying the young lady into any clandestine connec- 
 tion : who, in short, has shown himself so upright snd honest, 
 that I hope my dear Mr Hazeldean will forgive him if he is 
 onlv a doctor probably of Laws and not, as most foreigners 
 pretend to be, a marquis, or a baron at least." 
 
 As to that," cried the Squire, - 'tis the best thing I know 
 about Riekeybockey, that he don't attempt to humbug us by 
 anv such foreisn trumpery. Thank heaven, the Hazeldeans of 
 Hazeldesn were never tuft-hunters and title-mongers : and if I 
 never ran after an English lord, I should certainly be devilishly 
 ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call markee 
 or count ! I should feel sure he was a courier, or runaway 
 valley-de-sham. Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed. Harry ! 
 pshaw, good English style that '. Doctor : my aunt married a
 
 254 MY NOVEL. 
 
 Doctor of Divinity excellent man wore a wig, and was made 
 a dean ! So long as Rickeybockey is not a doctor of physic, I 
 don't care a button. If he's that, indeed, it would be suspi- 
 cious ; because, you see, those foreign doctors of physic are 
 quacks, and tell fortunes, and go about on a stage with a 
 Merry-Andrew." 
 
 " Lord, Hazeldean ! where on earth did you pick up that 
 idea 1 ?" said Harry laughing. 
 
 " Pick it up ! why, I saw a fellow myself at the cattle fair 
 last year when I was buying short-horns witli a red waist- 
 coat and a cocked hat, a little like the Parson's shovel. He 
 called himself Doctor Phoscophornio and sold pills ! The 
 Merry-Andrew was the funniest creature in salmon-coloured 
 tights turned head over heels, and said he came from Tim- 
 buctoo. No, no ; if Rickeybockey's a physic Doctor, we shall 
 have Jemima in a pink tinsel dress, tramping about the country 
 in a caravan ! " 
 
 At this notion, both the Squire and his wife laughed so 
 heartily that the Parson felt the thing was settled, and slipped 
 away, with the intention of making his report to Riccabocca.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 IT was with a slight disturbance of his ordinary suave and 
 well-bred equanimity that the Italian received the information, 
 that he need apprehend no obstacle to his suit from the insular 
 prejudices or the worldly views of the lady's family. Not that 
 he was mean and cowardly enough to recoil from the near and 
 unclouded prospect of that felicity which he had left off his 
 glasses to behold with unblinking naked eyes : no, there his 
 mind was made up ; but he had met in life with much that 
 inclines a man towards misanthropy, and he was touched 
 not only by the interest in his welfare testified by a heretical 
 priest, but by the generosity with which he was admitted 
 into a well-born and wealthy family, despite his notorious 
 poverty and his foreign descent. He conceded the propriety 
 of the only stipulation, which was conveyed to him by the 
 Parson with all the delicacy that became one long profes- 
 sionally habituated to deal with the subtler susceptibilities of 
 mankind viz., that, amongst Riccabocca's friends or kindred, 
 some person should be found whose report would confirm 
 the persuasion of his respectability entertained by his neigh- 
 bours ; he assented, I say, to the propriety of this condition ; 
 but it was not with alacrity and eagerness. His brow became 
 clouded. The Parson hastened to assure him that the Squire 
 was not a man qui stupet in titulis, (who was besotted with 
 titles,) that he neither expected nor desired to find an origin 
 and rank for his brother-in-law above that decent medio- 
 crity of condition to which it was evident, from Riccabocca's 
 breeding and accomplishments, he could easily establish his 
 claim. " And though," said he smiling, " the Squire is a warm
 
 256 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 politician in his own country, and would never see his sister 
 again, I fear, if she married some convicted enemy of our happy 
 constitution, yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw; 
 so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel 
 with your Government which, being foreign, he takes for 
 granted must he insupportable he would but consider you as 
 he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of William the 
 Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in our 
 "Wars of the Roses." 
 
 The Italian smiled. " Mr Hazeldean shall be satisfied," said 
 he simply. " I see, by the Squire's newspaper, that an Eng- 
 lish gentleman who knew me in my own country has just 
 arrived in London. I will write to him for a testimonial, at 
 least to my probity and character. Probably he may be known 
 to you by name nay, he must be, for he was a distinguished 
 officer in the late war. I allude to Lord L'Estrange." 
 
 The Parson started. 
 
 " You know Lord L'Estrange 1 a profligate bad man, I fear." 
 
 " Profligate ! bad ! " exclaimed Eiccabocca. " Well, calum- 
 nious as the world is, I should never have thought that such 
 expressions would be applied to one who, though I knew him 
 but little knew him chiefly by the service he once rendered to 
 me first taught me to love and revere the English name !" 
 
 " He may be changed since " The Parson paused. 
 
 "Since when 1" asked Riccabocca, with evident curiosity. 
 
 Mr Dale seemed embarrassed. " Excuse me," said he, " it is 
 many years ago ; and, in short, the opinion I then formed of 
 the nobleman you name was based upon circumstances which 
 I cannot communicate." 
 
 The punctilious Italian bowed in silence, but he still looked 
 as if he should have liked to prosecute inquiry. 
 
 After a pause, he said, " Whatever your impressions respect- 
 ing Lord L'Estrange, there is nothing, I suppose, which would 
 lead you to doubt his honour, or reject his testimonial in my 
 favour 1 " 
 
 " According to fashionable morality," said Mr Dale, rather 
 precisely, " I know of nothing that could induce me to suppose 
 that Lord L'Estrange would not, in this instance, speak the
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 257 
 
 truth. And he has unquestionably a high reputation as a sol- 
 dier, and a considerable position in the world." Therewith the 
 Parson took his leave. A few days afterwards, Dr Riccabocca 
 enclosed to the Squire, in a blank envelope, a letter he had 
 received from Harley L'Estrange. It was evidently intended 
 for the Squire's eye, and to serve as a voucher for the Italian's 
 respectability ; but this object was fulfilled, not in the coarse 
 form of a direct testimonial, but with a tact and delicacy which 
 seemed to show more than the fine breeding to be expected 
 from one in Lord L'Estrange's station. It argued that most 
 exquisite of all politeness which comes from the heart : a cer- 
 tain tone of affectionate respect (which even the homely sense 
 of the Squire felt, intuitively, proved far more in favour of 
 Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities 
 and antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed 
 in itself to remove all scruples from a mind much more sus- 
 picious and exacting than that of the Squire of Hazeldean. 
 But, lo and behold ! an obstacle now occurred to the Parson, of 
 which he ought to have thought long before viz., the Papisti- 
 cal religion of the Italian. Dr Riccabocca was professedly a 
 Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact and, indeed, 
 had assented so readily to any animadversions upon the super- 
 stition and priestcraft which, according to Protestants, are the 
 essential characteristics of Papistical communities that it was 
 not till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, 
 was fairly illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a 
 faith so cast into the shade burst upon the conscience of the 
 Parson. The first idea that then occurred to him was the pro- 
 per and professional one viz., the conversion of Dr Ricca- 
 bocca. He hastened to his study, took down from his shelves 
 long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, armed himself 
 with an arsenal of authorities, arguments, and texts ; then, 
 seizing the shovel-hat, posted off to the Casino. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE Parson burst upon the philosopher like an avalanche ! 
 He was so full of his subject that he could not let it out in 
 prudent driblets. No, he went souse upon the astounded 
 Riccabocca 
 
 " Tremendo, 
 Jupiter ipse ruens tomultu." 
 
 The sage shrinking deeper into his arm-chair, and drawin 
 his dressing-robe more closely round him suffered the Parson 
 to talk for three quarters of an hour, till indeed he had 
 thoroughly proved his case ; and, like Brutus, " paused for a 
 reply." 
 
 Then said Riccabocca mildly, " In much of what you have 
 urged so ably, and so suddenly, I am inclined to agree. But 
 base is the man who formally forswears the creed he has 
 inherited from his fathers, and professed since the cradle up to 
 years of maturity, when the change presents itself in the guise 
 of a bribe ; when, for such is human nature, he can hardly 
 distinguish or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the 
 lure to his interests here a text, and there a dowry ! here 
 Protestantism, there Jemima ! Own, my friend, that the 
 soberest casuist would see double under the inebriating effects 
 produced by so mixing his polemical liquors. Appeal, my 
 good Mr Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober ' from 
 Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent 
 lady, that he is about to be ' the happiest of men,' to Ricca- 
 bocca accustomed to his happiness, and carrying it off with the 
 seasoned equability of one grown familiar with stimulants in
 
 3CT XOTEL. .59 
 
 a word. appeal from Rieeabocea the wooer to Rieeabocca the 
 spouse. I mar be convertible, but conversion is a slow pro- 
 cess ; courtship should be a quick one ask Miss Jemima. 
 Fimalmeniz, marry me first, and convert me afterwards '. " 
 
 - You take this too jestingly. ^ began the Parson : - and I 
 Jon't see "why. with your excellent understandiiis. truths so 
 plain and obvious should not strike you at once." 
 
 ~ Truths,"" interrupted Riccaboeea profoundly. ~ are the slow- 
 est growing things in the world '. It took fifteen hundred years 
 from the date of the Christian era to produce your own Luther. 
 and then he flung his Bible a: Satan. (I have seen the m^rk 
 made by the book on the "wall of his prison in Germany.) be- 
 sides running off with a nun. -which no Protestant clergyman 
 would think it proper and right to do now-a-days," Then be 
 added, with seriousness. - Look you. my dear sir. I should lose 
 my own esteem if I were even to listen to you now -with be- 
 coming attention. now, I say. when you hint that the creed I 
 have professed may be in the way of my advantage. If so, I 
 must keep the creed and resign the advantage. But if. as I 
 trust not only as a Christian, but a Tr.an of her our you wiH 
 defer this discussion. I will promise to listen to you hereafter ; 
 and though, to say truth, I believe that you will not convert 
 me, I will promise you faithfully never to interfere with my 
 wife's religion." 
 
 - And any children you may hsve ; "" 
 
 " Children : ~ said I>r Riecaboeca. recoiling - you are not 
 contented with firing your pocket-pistol right in my face ; you 
 must also pepper me all over whh small-shot. Children ! well, 
 if they are girls, let them follow the faith of their mother ; and 
 if boys, while in childhood, let them be contented with learn- 
 ing to be Christians ; and when they STOW into men. let them 
 choose for themselves which is the best form for the practice of 
 the great principles which all sects have in common." 
 
 ~ But." began Mr I>ale again, pulling a large book from his 
 pocket 
 
 Pr Rieeabocca flung open the window, and jumped out of it. 
 
 It was the rapidest and most dastardly Sight you could possi- 
 bly conceive ; but it was a great compliment to the arguments-
 
 260 MY NOVEL. 
 
 tive powers of the Parson, and he felt it as such. Nevertheless, 
 Mr Dale thought it right to have a long conversation, both with 
 the Squire and Miss Jemima herself, upon the subject which his 
 intended convert had so ignominiously escaped. 
 
 The Squire, though a great foe to Popery, politically consi- 
 dered, had also quite as great a hatred to renegades and apostates. 
 And in his heart he would have despised Riccabocca if he could 
 have thrown off his religion as easily as he had done his spec- 
 tacles. Therefore he said simply " Well, it is certainly a great 
 pity that Rickeybockey is not of the Church of England, though, 
 I take it, that would be unreasonable to expect in a man born 
 and bred under the nose of the Inquisition," (the Squire firmly 
 believed that the Inquisition was in full force in all the Italian 
 states, with whips, racks, and thumb-screws ; and, indeed, his 
 chief information of Italy was gathered from a perusal he had 
 given in early youth to The One-Handed Monk;) "but I think 
 he speaks very fairly, on the whole, as to his wife and children. 
 And the thing's gone too far now to retract. It is all your 
 fault for not thinking of it before ; and I've now just made 
 up my mind as to the course to pursue respecting the 
 d d stocks ! " 
 
 As for Miss Jemima, the Parson left her with a pious thanks- 
 giving that Riccabocca at least was a Christian, and not a Pagan, 
 Mahometan, or Jew !
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THERE is that in a wedding which appeals to a universal sym- 
 pathy. No other event in the lives of their superiors in rank 
 creates an equal sensation amongst the humbler classes. 
 
 From the moment the news that Miss Jemima was to be 
 married had spread throughout the village, all the old affection 
 for the Squire and his House burst forth the stronger for its 
 temporary suspension. Who could think of the stocks in such 
 a season ? The stocks was swept out of fashion hunted from 
 remembrance as completely as the question of Repeal or the 
 thought of Rebellion from the warm Irish heart, when the fair 
 young face of the Royal Wife beamed on the sister isle. 
 
 Again cordial curtseys were dropped at the thresholds by 
 which the Squire passed to his home farm ; again the sun- 
 burnt brows uncovered no more with sullen ceremony were 
 smoothed into cheerful gladness at his nod. JTay, the little ones 
 began again to assemble at their ancient rendezvous by the 
 stocks, as if either familiarised with the Phenomenon, or con- 
 vinced that, in the general sentiment of good-will, its powers of 
 evil were annulled. 
 
 The Squire tasted once more the sweets of the only popularity 
 which is much worth having, and the loss of which a wise man 
 would reasonably deplore viz., the popularity which arises 
 from a persuasion of our goodness, and a reluctance to recall 
 our faults. Like all blessings, the more sensibly felt from pre- 
 vious interruption, the Squire enjoyed this restored popularity 
 with an exhilarated sense of existence ; his stout heart beat 
 more vigorously ; his stalwart step trod more lightly ; his comely 
 English face looked comelier and more English than ever ; you
 
 262 irr XOVZL; OB, 
 
 would have beeu a merrier man for a week to have come within 
 hearing of his jovial laugh. 
 
 He felt grateful to Jemima and to Riccabocca as the special 
 agents of Providence in this general inlwratio amoris. To have 
 looked at hipi ; you would suppose that it was the Squire who 
 was going to be married a second time to his Harry ! 
 
 One may well conceive that such would have been an inau- 
 spicious moment for Parson Dale's theological scruples. To 
 have stopped that marriage chilled all the sunshine it diffused 
 over the village seen himself surrounded again by long sulky 
 visages, I verily believe, though a better friend of Church and 
 State never stood on a hustings, that, rather than court such a 
 revulsion, the Squire would have found Jesuitical excuses for 
 the marriage if Riccabocca had been discovered to be the Pope 
 in disguise ! As for the stocks, its fate was now irrevocably 
 sealed. In short, the marriage was concluded first privately, 
 according to the bridegroom's creed, by a Roman Catholic 
 clergyman, who lived in a town some miles off, and next 
 publicly in the village church of Hazeldean. 
 
 It was the heartiest rural wedding ! Village girls strewed 
 flowers on the way ; a booth was placed amidst the prettiest 
 scenery of the Park on the margin of the lake for there was to 
 be a dance later in the day ; an ox was roasted whole. Even 
 Mr Stirn no, Mr Stirn was not present, so much happiness 
 would have been the death of him ! And the Papisher too, 
 who had conjured Lenny out of the stocks ; nay, who had 
 himself sate in the stocks for the very purpose of bringing them 
 into contempt the Papisher ! he had as lief Miss Jemima had 
 married the devil ! Indeed he was persuaded that, in point of 
 fact, it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr Stirn had asked 
 leave to go and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to 
 undergo a torturing operation for the stone ! Frank was there, 
 summoned from Eton for the occasion having grown two 
 inches taller since he left for the one inch of which nature was 
 to be thanked, for the other a new pair of resplendent Welling- 
 tons. But the boy's joy was less apparent than that of others. 
 For Jemima was a special favourite with him, as she would 
 have been with all boys for she was always kind and gentle,
 
 VARIETIES DC ENGLISH LIFE. 263 
 
 and made him many pretty presents whenever she came from 
 the watering-places. And Frank knew that he should miss 
 her sadly, and thought she had made a very queer choice. 
 
 Captain Higginbotham had been invited ; but, to the asto- 
 nishment of Jemima, he had replied to the invitation by a 
 letter to herself, marked "private and confidential" u She must 
 have long known," said the letter, " of his devoted attachment 
 to her ; motives of delicacy, arising from the narrowness of 
 his income, and the magnanimity of his sentiments, had 
 alone prevented his formal proposals ; but now that he was 
 informed (he could scarcely believe his senses, or command 
 his passions) that her relations wished to force her into a 
 BARBAROUS marriage with a foreigner of MOST FORBIDDING 
 APPEARANCE, and most abject circvtnft-anfef, he lost not a mo- 
 ment in laying at her feet his own hand and fortune. And 
 he did this the more confidently, inasmuch as he could not 
 but be aware of Miss Jemima's SECRET feelings towards him, 
 while he was proud and happy to say. that his dear and dis- 
 tinguished cousin. Mr Sharpe Currie, had honoured him with 
 n warmth of regard, which justified the most brilliant EXPEC- 
 TATIONS likely to be soon realised as his eminent relative 
 hnd contracted a wry bad Hrcr complaint in the service of his 
 country, and could not last long ! "' 
 
 In all the years they had known each other. Miss Jemima, 
 strange as it may appear, had never once suspected the Captain 
 of any other feelings to her than those of a brother. To say 
 that she was not gratified by learning her mistake, would be 
 to say that she was more than woman. Indeed, it must have 
 been a source of no ignoble triumph to think that she could 
 prove her disinterested affection to her dear Riccabocca, by * 
 prompt rejection of this more brilliant offer. She couched the 
 rejection, it is true, in the most soothing terms. But the Cap- 
 tain evidently considered himself ill used ; he did not reply to 
 the letter, and did not come to the wedding. 
 
 To let the reader into a secret never known to Miss Jemima, 
 Captain Higginbotham was much less influenced by Cupid 
 than by Plums in the offer he had made. The Captain was 
 one of that class of gentlemen who read their accounts bv
 
 264 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called expectations. 
 Ever since the Squire's grandfather had left him then in 
 short clothes a legacy of 500, the Captain had peopled the 
 future with expectations ! He talked of his expectations as a 
 man talks of shares in a Tontine ; they might fluctuate a little 
 be now up and now down but it was morally impossible, 
 if he lived on, but that he should be a millionnaire one of these 
 days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good fifteen years 
 younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round 
 sum in the ghostly books of the Captain. She was an expecta- 
 tion to the full amount of her 4000, seeing that Frank was 
 an only child, and it would be carrying coals to Newcastle to 
 leave him anything. 
 
 Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly spunged 
 out of his visionary ledger rather than so much money should 
 vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbothain had 
 taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step 
 for the preservation of his property. If the golden horn could 
 not be had without the heifer, why, he must take the heifer 
 into the bargain. He had never formed to himself an idea 
 that a heifer so gentle would toss and fling him over. The 
 blow was stunning. But no one compassionates the mis- 
 fortunes of the covetous, though few perhaps are in greater 
 need of compassion. And leaving poor Captain Higginbotham 
 to retrieve his illusory fortunes as he best may among " the 
 expectations" which gathered round the form of Mr Sharpe 
 Currie, who was the Grossest old tyrant imaginable, and never 
 allowed at his table any dishes not compounded with rice, 
 which played Old Nick with the Captain's constitutional 
 functions, I return to the wedding at Hazeldean, just in 
 time to see the bridegroom who looked singularly well on 
 the occasion hand the bride (who, between sunshiny tears 
 and affectionate smiles, was really a very interesting and even 
 a pretty bride, as brides go) into a carriage which the Squire 
 had presented to them, and depart on the orthodox nuptial 
 excursion amidst the blessings of the assembled crowd. 
 
 It may be thought strange by the unreflective that these 
 rural spectators should so have approved and blessed the mar-
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 265 
 
 riage of a Hazeldean of Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, 
 long-haired foreigner ; but, besides that Eiccabocca, after all, 
 had become one of the neighbourhood, and was proverbially 
 " a civil-spoken gentleman," it is generally noticeable that on 
 wedding occasions the bride so monopolises interest, curiosity, 
 and admiration, that the bridegroom himself goes for little or 
 nothing. He is merely the passive agent in the affair the 
 unregarded cause of the general satisfaction. It was not Ricca- 
 bocca himself that they approved and blessed it was the gen- 
 tleman in the white waistcoat who had made Miss Jemima 
 Madam Rickeybockey ! 
 
 Leaning on his wife's arm, (for it was a habit of the Squire 
 to lean on his wife's arm rather than she on hig, when he was 
 specially pleased ; and there was something touching in the 
 sight of that strong sturdy frame thus insensibly, in hours of 
 happiness, seeking dependence on the frail arm of woman,) 
 leaning, I say, on his wife's arm, the Squire, about the hour of 
 sunset, walked down to the booth by the lake. 
 
 All the parish young and old, man, woman, and child 
 were assembled there, and their faces seemed to bear one family 
 likeness, in the common emotion which animated all, as they 
 turned to his frank fatherly smile. Squire Hazeldean stood at 
 the head of the long table : he filled a horn with ale from the 
 brimming tankard beside him. Then he looked round, and 
 lifted his hand to request silence ; and, ascending the chair, 
 rose in full view of all. Every one felt that the Squire was 
 about to make a speech, and the earnestness of the attention 
 was proportioned to the rarity of the event ; for (though he 
 was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings) only thrice 
 before had the Squire made what could fairly be called "a 
 speech" to the villagers of Hazeldean once on a kindred fes- 
 tive occasion, when he had presented to them his bride once 
 iu a contested election for the shire, in which he took more than 
 ordinary interest, and was not quite so sober as he ought to 
 have been once in a time of great agricultural distress, when, 
 in spite of reduction of rents, the farmers had been compelled to 
 discard a large number of their customary labourers ; and when 
 the Squire had said, " I have given up keeping the hounds,
 
 266 MY XOVEL. 
 
 because I "want to make a fine piece of water, (that was the 
 origin of the lake.) and to drain all the low lands round the 
 Park. Let every man who wants work come to me ! " And 
 that sad year the parish rates of Hazeldean were not a penny 
 the heavier. 
 
 Xow, for the fourth time, the Squire rose, and thus he spoke. 
 At his right hand, Harry ; at his left, Frank. At the bottom of 
 the table, as vice-president, Parson Dale, his little wife behind 
 him, only obscurely seen. She cried readily, and her handker- 
 chief was alreadv before her eves.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE SQUIRE'S SPEECH. 
 
 " FRIEXDS and neighbours, I thank you kindly for coming 
 round me this day, and for showing so much interest in me and 
 mine. My cousin was not born amongst you as I was, but yon 
 have known her from a child. It is a familiar face, and one 
 that never frowned, which you will miss at your cottage doors, 
 as I and mine will miss it long in the old hall " 
 
 Here there was a sob from some of the women, and nothing 
 was seen of Mrs Dale but the white handkerchief. The Squire 
 himself paused, and brushed away a tear with the back of his 
 hand. Then he resumed, with a sudden change of voice that 
 was electrical 
 
 " For we none of us prize a blessing till we have lost it ! 
 Xow, friends and neighbours, a little time ago, it seemed as if 
 some ill-will had crept into the village ill-will between you 
 and me. neighbours ! why, that is not like Hazeldean ' " 
 
 The audience hung their heads ! You never saw people look 
 so thoroughly ashamed of themselves. The Squire proceeded 
 " I don't say it was all your fault ; perhaps it was mine," 
 " Xoa noa noa," burst forth in a general chorus. 
 " Xay, friends," continued the Squire humbly, and in one of 
 those illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Ricca- 
 boeca'?, were more within reach of the popular comprehen- 
 sion ; " nay we are all human : and every man has his 
 hobby : sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes the 
 hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him. One 
 man's hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public-
 
 268 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 house! (Laughter.) Another man's hobby refuses to stir a 
 peg beyond the door where some buxom lass patted its neck 
 the week before a hobby I rode pretty often when I went 
 courting my good wife here ! (Much laughter and applause.) 
 Others have a lazy hobby, that there's no getting on ; others, 
 a runaway hobby that there's no stopping : but to cut the mat- 
 ter short, my favourite hobby, as you well know, is always 
 trotted out to any place on my property which seems to want 
 the eye and hand of the master. I hate (cried the Squire 
 warming) to sec things neglected and decayed, and going to 
 the dogs ! This land we live in is a good mother to us, and we 
 can't do too much for her. It is very true, neighbours, that I 
 owe her a good many acres, and ought to speak well of her ; 
 but what then ? I live amongst you, and what I take from the 
 rent with one hand, I divide amongst you with the other. (Low 
 but assenting murmurs.) Now the more I improve my pro- 
 perty, the more mouths it feeds. My great-grandfather kept a 
 Field-Book, in which were entered, not only the names of all 
 the farmers and the quantity of land they held, but the average 
 number of the labourers each employed. My grandfather and 
 father followed his example : I have done the same. I find, 
 neighbours, that our rents have doubled since my great-grand- 
 father began to make the book. Ay but there are more than 
 four times the number of labourers employed on the estate, and 
 at much better wages too ! Well, my men, that says a great 
 deal in favour of improving property, and not letting it go to 
 the dogs. (Applause.) And therefore, neighbours, you will 
 kindly excuse my hobby : it carries grist to your mill. (Re- 
 iterated applause.) Well but you will say, ' What's the Squire 
 driving at 1 ' Why this, my friends : There was only one worn- 
 out, dilapidated, tumble-down thing in the parish of Hazeldean, 
 and it became an eyesore to me ; so I saddled my hobby, and 
 rode at it. O ho ! you know what I mean now ! Yes, but 
 neighbours, you need not have taken it so to heart. That was 
 a scurvy trick of some of you to hang me in effigy, as they 
 call it." 
 
 "It warn' t you," cried a voice in the crowd, "it war Nick 
 Stirn."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 269 
 
 The Squire recognised the voice of the Tinker ; but though 
 he now guessed at the ringleader, on that day of general 
 amnesty he had the prudence and magnanimity not to say, 
 " Stand forth, Sprott : thou art the man." Yet his gallant 
 English spirit would not suffer him to come off at the expense 
 of his servant. 
 
 " If it was Nick Stirn you meant," said he gravely, " more 
 shame for you. It showed some pluck to hang the master ; 
 but to hang the poor servant, who only thought to do his duty, 
 careless of what ill-will it brought upon him, was a shabby 
 trick so little like the lads of Hazeldean, that I suspect the 
 man who taught it to them was never born in the parish. But 
 let bygones be bygones. One thing is clear, you don't take 
 kindly to my new pair of stocks ! The stocks has been a stum- 
 blingblock and a grievance, and there's no denying that we 
 went on very pleasantly without it. I may also say that, in 
 spite of it, we have been coming together again lately. And I 
 can't tell you what good it did me to see your children playing 
 again on the green, and your honest faces, in spite of the stocks, 
 and those diabolical tracts you've been reading lately, lighted 
 up at the thought that something pleasant was going on at the 
 Hall. Do you know, neighbours, you put me in mind of an 
 old story which, besides applying to the parish, all who are 
 married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. 
 A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily 
 together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought 
 a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John 
 that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After 
 sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them 
 at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men ; the women 
 did not know which way to look, except, indeed, Mrs Hazel- 
 dean, who, though she was more than usually rosy, maintained 
 her innocent genial smile, as much as to say, "There is no 
 harm in the Squire's jests.") The orator resumed" After 
 they had thus lain apart for a little time, very silent and sullen, 
 John sneezed. ' God bless you ! ' says Joan over the bolster. 
 ' Did you say God bless me 1 ' cries John ; ' then here goes the 
 bolster ! ' "
 
 270 MY NOVEL. 
 
 Prolonged laughter and tumultuous applause. 
 
 " Friends and neighbours," said the Squire when silence was 
 restored, and lifting the horn of ale, " I have the pleasure to 
 inform you that I have ordered the stocks to be taken down, 
 and made into a bench for the chimney-nook of our old friend 
 Gaffer Solomons yonder. But mind me, lads, if ever you make 
 the parish regret the loss of the stocks, and the overseers come 
 to me with long faces and say, ' the stocks must be rebuilded,' 
 why " Here from all the youth of the village rose so depre- 
 cating a clamour, that the Squire would have been the most 
 bungling orator in the world if he had said a word further on 
 the subject. He elevated the horn over his head " Why, 
 that's my old Hazeldean again ! Health and long life to you 
 all ! " 
 
 The Tinker had sneaked out of the assembly, and did not 
 show his face in the village for the next six months. And as 
 to those poisonous tracts, in spite of their salubrious labels, 
 " the Poor Man's Friend," or " the Rights of Labour," you 
 could no more have found one of them lurking in the drawers 
 of the kitchen-dressers in Hazeldean, than you would have 
 found the deadly nightshade on the flower-stands in the draw- 
 ing-room of the Hall. As for the revolutionary beer-house, 
 there was no need to apply to the magistrates to shut it up 
 it shut itself up before the week was out. 
 
 O young head of the great House of Hapsburg, what a 
 Hazeldean you might have made of Hungary ! What a " Mo- 
 riamur pro rege nostro " would have rung in your infant reign, 
 if you had made such a speech as the Squire's !
 
 BOOK FOUETH
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 
 
 INITIAL CHAPTER. 
 
 COMPRISING MR CAXTON's OPINIONS ON THE MATRIMONIAL 
 STATE, SUPPORTED BY LEARNED AUTHORITIES. 
 
 " IT was no bad idea of yours, Pisistratus," said my father gra- 
 ciously, " to depict the heightened affections and the serious 
 intentions of Signer Riccabocca by a single stroke He left off 
 his spectacles ! Good." 
 
 " Yet," quoth my uncle, " I think Shakspeare represents a 
 lover as falling into slovenly habits, neglecting his person, and 
 suffering his hose to be ungartered, rather than, paying that 
 attention to his outer man which induces Signor Riccabocca to 
 leave off his spectacles, and look as handsome as nature will 
 permit him." 
 
 " There are different degrees and many phases of the passion," 
 replied my father. " Shakspeare is speaking of an ill-treated, 
 pining, woebegone lover, much aggrieved by the cruelty of his 
 mistress a lover who has found it of no avail to smarten him- 
 self up, and has fallen despondently into the opposite extreme. 
 Whereas Signor Riccabocca has nothing to complain of in the 
 barbarity of Miss Jemima." 
 
 "Indeed he has not!" cried Blanche, tossing her head 
 " forward creature ! " 
 
 VOL. i. s
 
 274 Mr NOVEL; OR, 
 
 " Yes, my dear," said my mother, trying her best to look 
 stately, " I am decidedly of opinion that, in that respect, 
 Pisistratus has lowered the dignity of the sex. Not intention- 
 ally," added my mother mildly, and afraid she had said some- 
 thing too bitter ; " but it is very hard for a man to describe 
 us women." 
 
 The Captain nodded approvingly ; Mr Squills smiled ; my 
 father quietly resumed the thread of his discourse. 
 
 " To continue," quoth he. " Eiccabocca has no reason to 
 despair of success in his suit, nor any object in moving his 
 mistress to compassion. He may, therefore, very properly tie 
 up his garters and leave off his spectacles. What do you say, 
 Mr Squills ? for, after all, since love-making cannot fail to be a 
 great constitutional derangement, the experience of a medical 
 man must be the best to consult." 
 
 " Mr Caxton," replied Squills, obviously flattered, " you are 
 quite right : when a man makes love, the organs of self-esteem 
 and desire of applause are greatly stimulated, and therefore, of 
 course, he sets himself off to the best advantage. It is only, as 
 you observe, when, like Shakspeare's lover, he has given up 
 making love as a bad job, and has received that severe hit on 
 the ganglions which the cruelty of a mistress inflicts, that he 
 neglects his personal appearance : he neglects it, not because he 
 is in love, but because his nervous system is depressed. That 
 was the cause, if you remember, with poor Major Prim. He 
 wore his wig all awry when Susan Smart jilted him ; but I set 
 it all right for him." 
 
 " By shaming Miss Smart into repentance, or getting him a 
 new sweetheart 1 " asked my uncle. 
 
 " Pooh ! " answered Squills, " by quinine and cold bathing." 
 
 " "We may therefore grant," renewed my father, " that, as a 
 general rule, the process of courtship tends to the spruceness, 
 and even foppery, of the individual engaged in the experiment, 
 as Voltaire has very prettily proved somewhere. Nay, the 
 Mexicans, indeed, were of opinion that the lady at least ought 
 to continue those cares of her person even after marriage. 
 There is extant, in Sahagun's History of New Spain, the advice 
 of an Aztec or Mexican mother to her daughter, in which she
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 275 
 
 says ' That your husband may not take you in dislike, adorn 
 yourself, wash yourself, and let your garments be clean.' It is 
 true that the good lady adds, ' Do it in moderation ; since, if 
 every day you are washing yourself and your clothes, the world 
 will say that you are over-delicate ; and particular people will 
 call you TAPETZON TINEMAXOCH ! ' What those words pre- 
 cisely mean," added my father modestly, " I cannot say, since I 
 never had the opportunity to acquire the ancient Aztec language 
 but something very opprobrious and horrible, no doubt." 
 
 " I daresay a philosopher like Signor Riccabocca," said my 
 uncle, " was not himself very Tapetzon tine what d'ye call it 1 
 and a good healthy English wife, like that poor affectionate 
 Jemima, was thrown away upon him." 
 
 " Roland," said my father, " you don't like foreigners : a 
 respectable prejudice, and quite natural in a man who has been 
 trying his best to hew them in pieces, and blow them up into 
 splinters. But you don't like philosophers either and for that 
 dislike you have no equally good reason." 
 
 " I only implied that they were not much addicted to soap 
 and water," said my uncle. 
 
 " A notable mistake. Many great philosophers have been 
 very great beaux. Aristotle was a notorious fop. Buffon put 
 on his best laced ruffles when he sat down to write, which im- 
 plies that he washed his hands first. Pythagoras insists greatly 
 on the holiness of frequent ablutions ; and Horace who, in his 
 own way, was as good, a philosopher as any the Romans pro- 
 duced takes care to let us know what a neat, well-dressed 
 dapper little gentleman he was. But I don't think you ever 
 read the ' Apology of Apuleius 1 ' " 
 
 " Not I what is it about ? " asked the Captain. 
 
 "About a great many things. It is that Sage's vindication 
 from several malignant charges amongst others, and princi- 
 pally indeed, that of being much too refined and effeminate for 
 a philosopher. Nothing can exceed the rhetorical skill with 
 which he excuses himself for using tooth-powder. ' Ought a 
 philosopher,' he exclaims, ' to allow anything unclean about 
 him, especially in the mouth the mouth, which is the vesti- 
 bule of the soul, the gate of discourse, the portico of thought !
 
 276 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 Ah, but JEmilianus [the accuser of Apuleius] never opens his 
 mouth but for slander and calumny tooth-powder would in- 
 deed be unbecoming to him ! Or, if he use any, it will not be 
 my good Arabian tooth-powder, but charcoal and cinders. Ay, 
 his teeth should be as foul as his language ! And yet even the 
 crocodile likes to have his teeth cleaned ; insects get into them, 
 and, horrible reptile though he be, he opens his jaws inoffen- 
 sively to a faithful dentistical bird, who volunteers his beak for 
 a toothpick.' " 
 
 My father was now warm in the subject he had started, and 
 soared miles away from Riccabocca and " My Novel." " And 
 observe," he exclaimed " observe with what gravity this emi- 
 nent Platonist pleads guilty to the charge of having a mirror. 
 ' Why, what,' he exclaims, ' more worthy of the regards of a 
 human creature than his own image,' (nihil resjjectabilius 
 homini quam formam, suam /) Is not that one of our children 
 the most dear to us who is called " the picture of his father 1 " 
 But take what pains you will with a picture, it can never be so 
 like you as the face in your mirror ! Think it discreditable to 
 look with proper attention on one's-self in the glass ! Did not 
 Socrates recommend such attention to his disciples did he not 
 make a great moral agent of the speculum 1 The handsome, in 
 admiring their beauty therein, were admonished that handsome 
 is who handsome does ; and the more the ugly stared at them- 
 selves, the more they became naturally anxious to hide the 
 disgrace of their features in the loveliness of their merits. Was 
 not Demosthenes always at his speculum 1 Did he not rehearse 
 his causes before it as before a master in the art 1 He learned 
 his eloquence from Plato, his dialectics from Eubulides ; but as 
 for his delivery there, he came to the mirror ! ' 
 
 " Therefore," concluded Mr Caxton, returning unexpectedly 
 to the subject " therefore it is no reason to suppose that Dr 
 Riccabocca is averse to cleanliness and decent care of the per- 
 son, because he is a philosopher ; and, all things considered, he 
 never showed himself more a philosopher than when he left off 
 his spectacles and looked his best." 
 
 " Well," said my mother kindly, " I only hope it may 
 turn out happily. But I should have been better pleased
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 277 
 
 if Pisistratus had not made Dr Riccabocca so reluctant a 
 wooer." 
 
 "Very true," said the Captain ; "the Italian does not shine 
 as a lover. Throw a little more fire into him, Pisistratus 
 something gallant and chivalrous." 
 
 " Fire gallantry chivalry ! " cried my father, who had 
 taken Riccabocca under his special protection " why, don't 
 you see that the man is described as a philosopher 1 and I 
 should like to know when a philosopher ever plunged into 
 matrimony without considerable misgivings and cold shivers. 
 Indeed, it seems that perhaps before he was a philosopher 
 Riccabocca had tried the experiment, and knew what it was. 
 Why, even that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metel- 
 lus Numidicus, who was not even a philosopher, but only a 
 Roman Censor, thus expressed himself in an exhortation to the 
 people to perpetrate matrimony ' If, Quirites, we could do 
 without wives, we should all dispense with that subject of care, 
 (ea molestid careremus /) but since nature has so managed it, 
 that we cannot live with women comfortably, nor without 
 them at all, let us rather provide for the human race than our 
 own temporary felicity. ' " 
 
 Here the ladies set up a cry of such indignation, that both 
 Roland and myself endeavoured to appease their wrath by 
 hasty assurances that we utterly repudiated that damnable 
 doctrine of Metellus Numidicus. 
 
 My father, wholly unmoved, as soon as a sullen silence was 
 established, recommenced " Do not think, ladies," said he, 
 " that you were without advocates at that day : there were 
 many Romans gallant enough to blame the Censor for a mode 
 of expressing himself which they held to be equally impolite 
 and injudicious. ' Surely,' said they, with some plausibility, 
 ' if Numidicus wished men to marry, he need not have referred 
 so peremptorily to the disquietudes of the connection, and thus 
 have made them more inclined to turn away from matrimony 
 than given them a relish for it.' But against these critics one 
 honest man (whose name of Titus Castricius should not be for- 
 gotten by posterity) maintained that Metellus Numidicus could 
 not have spoken more properly ; ' For remark,' said he, ' that
 
 278 MY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 Metellus was a censor, not a rhetorician. It becomes rhetori- 
 cians to adorn, and disguise, and make the best of things ; but 
 Metellus, sanctus vir a holy and blameless man, grave and 
 sincere to wit, and addressing the Roman people in the solemn 
 capacity of Censor was bound to speak the plain truth, espe- 
 cially as he was treating of a subject on which the observation 
 of every day, and the experience of every life, could not leave 
 the least doubt upon the mind of his audience.' Still Ricca- 
 bocca, having decided to marry, has no doubt prepared himself 
 to bear all the concomitant evils as becomes a professed sage ; 
 and I own I admire the art with which Pisistratus has drawn 
 the precise woman likely to suit a philosopher." 
 
 Pisistratus bows, and looks round complacently ; but recoils 
 from two very peevish and discontented faces feminine. 
 
 MR CAXTON, (completing his sentence.) " Not only as re- 
 gards mildness of temper and other household qualifications, 
 but as regards the very person of the object of his choice. For 
 you evidently remembered, Pisistratus, the reply of Bias, when 
 asked his opinion on marriage : '"Hrot KO\T)V lets, rj alaxpav KCU 
 
 el Kokrjv, fgeis KOIVTJV el 8rj aiV^paj', eeis TTOIVTJV.' " 
 
 Pisistratus tries to look as if he had the opinion of Bias by 
 heart, and nods acquiescingly. 
 
 MR CAXTON. " That is, my dears, ' the woman you would 
 marry is either handsome or ugly : if handsome, she is koine, 
 viz., you don't have her to yourself ; if ugly, she is poine that 
 is, a fury.' But, as it is observed in Aulus Gellius, (whence I 
 borrow this citation,) there is a wide interval between hand- 
 some and ugly. And thus Ennius, in his tragedy of Menalip- 
 pus, \ises an admirable expression to designate women of the 
 proper degree of matrimonial comeliness, such as a philosopher 
 would select. He calls this degree stata forma a rational, 
 mediocre sort of beauty, which is not liable to be either koine 
 or poine. And Favorinus, who was a remarkably sensible 
 man, and came from Provence the male inhabitants of which 
 district have always valued themselves on their knowledge of 
 love and ladies calls this said stata forma the beauty of wives 
 the uxorial beauty. Ennius says, that women of a stata 
 forma are almost always safe and modest. Now Jemima, you
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 279 
 
 observe, is described as possessing this stata forma ; and it is 
 the nicety of your observation in this respect, which I like the 
 most in the whole of your description of a philosopher's matri- 
 monial courtship, Pisistratus, (excepting only the stroke of the 
 spectacles,) for it shows that you had properly considered the 
 opinion of Bias, and mastered all the counter logic suggested in 
 Book v. chapter XL, of Aulus Gellius." 
 
 " For all that," said Blanche, half archly, half demurely, 
 with a smile in the eye, and a pout of the lip, " I don't remem- 
 ber that Pisistratus, in the days when he wished to be most 
 complimentary, ever assured me that I had a stata forma a 
 rational, mediocre sort of beauty." 
 
 " And I think," observed my uncle, " that when he comes to 
 his real heroine, whoever she may be, he will not trouble his 
 head much about either Bias or Aulus Gellius."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MATRIMONY is certainly a great change in life. One is aston- 
 ished not to find a notable alteration in one's friend, even if 
 he or she have been only wedded a week. In the instance of 
 Dr and Mrs Riccabocca the change was peculiarly visible. To 
 speak first of the lady, as in chivalry bound, Mrs Riccabocca 
 had entirely renounced that melancholy which had character- 
 ised Miss Jemima : she became even sprightly and gay, and 
 looked all the better and prettier for the alteration. She did 
 not scruple to confess honestly to Mrs Dale, that she was now 
 of opinion that the world was very far from approaching its 
 end. But, in the meanwhile, she did not neglect the duty 
 which the belief she had abandoned serves to inculcate " She 
 set her house in order." The cold and penurious elegance that 
 had characterised the Casino disappeared like enchantment 
 that is, the elegance remained, but the cold and penury fled 
 before the smile of woman. Like Puss-in-JBoots after the nup- 
 tials of his master, Jackeymo only now caught minnows and 
 sticklebacks for his own amusement. Jackeymo looked much 
 plumper, and so did Riccabocca. In a word, the fair Jemima 
 became an excellent wife. Riccabocca secretly thought her 
 extravagant, but, like a wise man, declined to look at the house 
 bills, and ate his joint in unreproachful silence. 
 
 Indeed, there was so much unaffected kindness in the nature 
 of Mrs Riccabocca beneath the quiet of her manner there beat 
 so genially the heart of the Hazeldeans that she fairly justi- 
 fied the favourable anticipations of Mrs Dale. And though 
 the Doctor did not noisily boast of his felicity, nor, as some new 
 married folks do, thrust it insultingly under the nimis unctis
 
 MY NOVEL. 281 
 
 naribus the turned-np noses of your surly old married folks 
 nor force it gaudily and glaringly on the envious eyes of the 
 single, you might still see that he was a more cheerful and 
 light-hearted man than before. His smile was less ironical, 
 his politeness less distant. He did not study Machiavelli so 
 intensely, and he did not return to the spectacles ; which last 
 was an excellent sign. Moreover, the humanising influence of 
 the tidy English wife might be seen in the improvement of his 
 outward or artificial man. His clothes seemed to fit him better; 
 indeed, the clothes were new. Mrs Dale no longer remarked 
 that the buttons were off the wristbands, which was a great 
 satisfaction to her. But the sage still remained faithful to the 
 pipe, the cloak, and the red silk umbrella. Mrs Riccabocca had 
 (to her credit be it spoken) used all becoming and wifelike arts 
 against these three remnants of the old bachelor Adam, but in 
 vain. " Anima mia," (soul of mine,) said the Doctor tenderly, 
 " I hold the cloak, the umbrella, and the pipe, as the sole relics 
 that remain to me of my native country. Respect and spare 
 them." 
 
 Mrs Riccabocca was touched, and had the good sense to per- 
 ceive that man, let him be ever so much married, retains certain 
 signs of his ancient independence certain tokens of his old 
 identity, which a wife, the most despotic, will do well to con- 
 cede. She conceded the cloak, she submitted to the umbrella, 
 she overcame her abhorrence of the pipe. After all, considering 
 the natural villany of our sex, she confessed to herself that she 
 might have been worse off. But, through all the calm and 
 cheerfulness of Riccabocca, a nervous perturbation was suffici- 
 ently perceptible ; it commenced after the second week of 
 marriage it went on increasing, till one bright sunny after- 
 noon, as he was standing on his terrace gazing down upon the 
 road, at which Jackeymo was placed, lo, a stage-coach stopped ! 
 The Doctor made a bound, and put both hands to his heart as 
 if he had been shot ; he then leapt over the balustrade, and his 
 wife from her window beheld him flying down the hill, with 
 his long hair streaming in the wind, till the trees hid him from 
 her sight. 
 
 "Ah," thought she with a natural pang of conjugal jealousy,
 
 282 MY NOVEL. 
 
 " henceforth I am only second in his home. He has gone to 
 welcome his child ! " And at that reflection Mrs Klccahocca 
 shed tears. 
 
 But so naturally amiahle was she, that she hastened to curb 
 her emotion, and efface as well as she could the trace of a step- 
 mother's grief. When this was done, and a silent self-rebuking 
 prayer murmured over, the good woman descended the stairs 
 with alacrity, and, summoning up her best smiles, emerged on 
 the terrace. 
 
 She was repaid ; for scarcely had she come into the open air, 
 when two little arms were thrown round her, and the sweetest 
 voice that ever came from a child's lips, sighed out in broken 
 English, " Good mamma, love me a little." 
 
 "Love you? with my whole heart!" cried the stepmother, 
 with all a mother's honest passion. And she clasped the child 
 to her breast. 
 
 " God bless you, my wife ! " said Eiccabocca, in a husky tone. 
 
 "Please take this too," added Jackeymo in Italian, as well as 
 his sobs would let him and he broke off a great bough full of 
 blossoms from his favourite orange-tree, and thrust it into his 
 mistress's hand. She had not the slightest notion what he 
 meant by it !
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 VIOLANTE was indeed a bewitching child a child to whom I 
 defy Mrs Caudle herself (immortal Mrs Caudle !) to have been 
 a harsh stepmother. 
 
 Look at her now, as, released from those kindly arms, she 
 stands, still clinging with one hand to her new mamma, and 
 holding out the other to Riccabocca with those large dark 
 eyes swimming in happy tears. What a lovely smile ! what 
 an ingenuous candid brow ! She looks delicate she evidently 
 requires care she wants the mother. And rare is the woman 
 who would not love her the better for that ! Still, what an 
 innocent infantine bloom in those clear smooth cheeks ! and 
 in that slight frame, what exquisite natural grace ! 
 
 " And this, I suppose, is your nurse, darling 1 " said Mrs 
 Eiccabocca, observing a dark foreign-looking woman, dressed 
 very strangely without cap or bonnet, but a great silver arrow 
 stuck in her hair, and a filagree chain or necklace resting upon 
 her kerchief. 
 
 " Ah, good Annetta," said Violante in Italian. " Papa, she 
 says she is to go back ; but she is not to go back is she ?" 
 
 Riccabocca, who had scarcely before noticed the woman, 
 started at that question exchanged a rapid glance with 
 Jackeymo and then, muttering some inaudible excuse, ap- 
 proached the nurse, and, beckoning her to follow him, went 
 away into the grounds. He did not return for more than an 
 hour, nor did the woman then accompany him home. He said 
 briefly to his wife that the nurse was obliged to return at once 
 to Italy, and that she would stay in the village to catch the 
 mail ; that indeed she would be of no use in their establish-
 
 284 MY NOVEL. 
 
 ment, as she could not speak a word of English ; but that he 
 was sadly afraid Violante would pine for her. And Violante 
 did pine at first. But still, to a child it is so great a thing to 
 find a parent to be at home that, tender and grateful as 
 Violante was, she could not be inconsolable while her father 
 was there to comfort. 
 
 For the first few days, Riccabocca scarcely permitted any one 
 to be with his daughter but himself. He would not even leave 
 her alone with his Jemima. They walked out together sat 
 together for hours in the Belvidere. Then by degrees he began 
 to resign her more and more to Jemima's care and tuition, 
 especially in English, of which language at present she spoke 
 only a few sentences, (previously, perhaps, learned by heart,) 
 so as to be clearly intelligible.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THERE was one person in the establishment of Dr Riccabocca, 
 who was satisfied neither with the marriage of his master nor 
 the arrival of Violante and that was our friend Lenny Fair- 
 field. Previous to the all-absorbing duties of courtship, the 
 young peasant had secured a very large share of Riccabocca's 
 attention. The sage had felt interest in the growth of this rude 
 intelligence struggling up to light. But what with the wooing, 
 and what with the wedding, Lenny Fairfield had sunk very 
 much out of his artificial position as pupil, into his natural 
 station of uuder-gardener. And on the arrival of Violante, he 
 saw, with natural bitterness, that he was clean forgotten, not 
 only by Riccabocca, but almost by Jackeymo. It was true that 
 the master still lent him books, and the servant still gave him 
 lectures on horticulture. But Riccabocca had no time nor in- 
 clination now to amuse himself with enlightening that tumult 
 of conjecture which the books created. And if Jackeymo had 
 been covetous of those mines of gold buried beneath the acres 
 now fairly taken from the Squire, (and good-naturedly added 
 rent-free, as an aid to Jemima's dower,) before the advent of 
 the young lady whose future dowry the produce was to swell 
 now that she was actually under the e} r es of the faithful ser- 
 vant, such a stimulus was given to his industry that he could 
 think of nothing else but the land, and the revolution he de- 
 signed to effect in its natural English crops. The garden, save 
 only the orange-trees, was abandoned entirely to Lenny, and 
 additional labourers were called in for the field-work. Jackeymo 
 had discovered that one part of the soil was suited to lavender, 
 that another would grow camomile. He had in his heart
 
 286 MY NOVEL. 
 
 apportioned a beautiful field of rich loam to flax ; but against the 
 growth of flax the Squire set his face obstinately. That most 
 lucrative, perhaps, of all crops, when soil and skill suit, was 
 formerly attempted in England much more commonly than it 
 is now, since you will find few old leases which do not con- 
 tain a clause prohibitory of flax, as an impoverishment of the 
 land. And though Jackeymo learnedly endeavoured to prove 
 to the Squire that the flax itself contained particles which, if 
 returned to the soil, repaid all that the crop took away, Mr 
 Hazeldean had his old-fashioned prejudices on the matter, 
 which were insuperable. " My forefathers," quoth he, " did 
 not put that clause in their leases without good cause ; and as 
 the Casino lands are entailed on Frank, I have no right to 
 gratify your foreign whims at his expense." 
 
 To make up for the loss of the flax, Jackeymo resolved to 
 convert a very nice bit of pasture into orchard ground, which 
 he calculated would bring in 10 net per acre by the time Miss 
 Violante was marriageable. At this the Squire pished a little ; 
 but as it was quite clear that the land would be all the more 
 valuable hereafter for the fruit-trees, he consented to permit 
 the " grass land " to be thus partially broken up. 
 
 All these changes left poor Lenny Fairfield very much to 
 himself at a time when the new and strange devices which 
 the initiation into book knowledge creates, made it most de- 
 sirable that he should have the constant guidance of a superior 
 mind. 
 
 One evening after his work, as Lenny was returning to his 
 mother's cottage very sullen and very moody, he suddenly came 
 in contact with Sprott the tinker.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE Tinker was seated under a hedge, hammering away at an 
 old kettle with a little fire burning in front of him and the 
 donkey hard by, indulging in a placid doze. Mr Sprott looked 
 up as Lenny passed nodded kindly, and said 
 
 " Good evenin', Lenny : glad to hear you be so 'spectably 
 sitivated with Mounseer." 
 
 " Ay," answered Lenny, with a leaven of rancour in his 
 recollections, " you're not ashamed to speak to me now that I 
 am not in disgrace. But it was in disgrace, when it wasn't my 
 fault, that the real gentleman was most kind to me." 
 
 " Ar r, Lenny," said the Tinker, with a prolonged rattle in 
 that said Ar r, which was not without great significance. 
 " But you sees the real gentleman, who han't got his bread to 
 get, can hafford to 'spise his cracter in the world. A poor tinker 
 must be timbersome and nice in his 'sociations. But sit down 
 here a bit, Lenny ; I've summat to say to ye ! " 
 
 " To me" 
 
 " To ye. Give the neddy a shove out i' the vay, and sit down, 
 I say." 
 
 Lenny rather reluctantly, and somewhat superciliously, ac- 
 cepted this invitation. 
 
 " I hears," said the Tinker in a voice made rather indistinct 
 by a couple of nails which he had inserted between his teeth 
 " I hears as how you be unkimmon fond of reading. I ha' sum 
 nice cheap books in my bag yonder sum as low as a penny." 
 
 " I should like to see them," said Lenny, his eyes spark- 
 ling. 
 
 The Tinker rose, opened one of the paniers on the ass's back,
 
 288 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 took out a bag which he placed before Lenny, and told him to 
 suit himself. The young peasant desired no better. He spread 
 all the contents of the bag on the sward, and a motley collection 
 of food for the mind was there food and poison serpentes 
 avibus good and evil. Here Milton's Paradise Lost, there The 
 Age of Reason here Methodist Tracts, there True Principles of 
 Socialism Treatises on Useful Knowledge by sound learning 
 actuated by pure benevolence Appeals to Operatives by the 
 shallowest reasoners, instigated by the same ambition that had 
 moved Eratosthenes to the conflagration of a temple ; works of 
 fiction admirable as Robinson Crusoe, or innocent as the Old 
 English Baron ; beside coarse translations of such garbage as 
 had rotted away the youth of France under Louis Quinze. This 
 miscellany was an epitome, in short, of the mixed World of 
 Books, of that vast City of the Press, with its palaces and hovels, 
 its aqueducts and sewers which opens all alike to the naked 
 eye and the curious mind of him to whom you say, in the 
 Tinker's careless phrase, " Suit yourself." 
 
 But it is not the first impulse of a nature, healthful and still 
 pure, to settle in the hovel and lose itself amidst the sewers ; 
 and Lenny Fairfield turned innocently over the bad books, and 
 selecting two or three of the best, brought them to the Tinker, 
 and asked the price. 
 
 " Why," said Mr Sprott, putting on his spectacles, " you has 
 taken the werry dearest : them 'ere be much cheaper, and more 
 hinterestin'." 
 
 " But I don't fancy them," answered Lenny ; " I don't un- 
 derstand what they are about, and this seems to tell one how 
 the steam-engine is made, and has nice plates ; and this is Robin- 
 son Crusoe, which Parson Dale once said he would give me 
 I'd rather buy it out of my own money." 
 
 " Well, please yourself," quoth the Tinker ; " you shall have 
 the books for four bob, and you can pay me next month." 
 
 " Four bobs four shillings 1 it is a great sum," said Lenny ; 
 " but I will lay by, as you are kind enough to trust me : good 
 evening, Mr Sprott." 
 
 " Stay a bit," said the Tinker ; " I'll just throw you these 
 two little tracks into the barging ; they be only a shilling a
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 289 
 
 dozen, so 'tis but tuppence and ven you has read those, vy, 
 you'll be a reglar customer." 
 
 The Tinker tossed to Lenny Nos. 1 and 2 of Appeals to Ope- 
 ratives, and the peasant took them up gratefully. 
 
 The young knowledge-seeker went his way across the green 
 fields, and under the still autumn foliage of the hedgerows. He 
 looked first at one book, then at another ; he did not know on 
 which to settle. 
 
 The Tinker rose and made a fire with leaves and furze and 
 stick?, some dry and some green. 
 
 Lenny has now opened Ko. 1 of the tracts: they are the 
 shortest to read, and don't require so much effort of the mind 
 as the explanation of the steam-engine. 
 
 The Tinker has set on his grimy glue-pot, and the glue 
 simmers. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 As Violante became more familiar with her new home, and 
 those around her became more familiar with Violante, she 
 was remarked for a certain stateliness of manner and bearing, 
 which, had it been less evidently natural and inborn, would 
 have seemed misplaced in the daughter of a forlorn exile, 
 and would have been rare at so early an age among children 
 of the loftiest pretensions. It was with the air of a little 
 princess that she presented her tiny hand to a friendly pres- 
 sure, or submitted her calm clear cheek to a presuming kiss. 
 Yet withal she was so graceful, and her very stateliness was 
 so pretty and captivating, that she was not the less loved for 
 all her grand airs. And, indeed, she deserved to be loved ; for 
 though she was certainly prouder than Mr Dale could approve 
 of, her pride was devoid of egotism ; and that is a pride by no 
 means common. She had an intuitive forethought for others ; 
 you could see that she was capable of that grand woman-hero- 
 ism, abnegation of self ; and though she was an original child, 
 and often grave and musing, with a tinge of melancholy, sweet, 
 but deep in her character, still she was not above the happy 
 genial merriment of childhood, only her silver laugh was 
 more attuned, and her gestures more composed, than those of 
 children habituated to many playfellows usually are. Mrs 
 Hazeldean liked her best when she was grave, and said "she 
 would become a very sensible woman." Mrs Dale liked her 
 best when she was gay, and said " she was born to make many 
 a heart ache ; " for which Mrs Dale was properly reproved by 
 the Parson. Mrs Hazeldean gave her a little set of garden 
 tools ; Mrs Dale a picture-book and a beautiful doll. For a
 
 MY NOVEL. 291 
 
 long time the book and the doll had the preference. But Mrs 
 Hazeldean having observed to Riccabocca that the poor child 
 looked pale, and ought to be a good deal in the open air, the 
 wise father ingeniously pretended to Violante that Mrs Ricca- 
 bocca had taken a great fancy to the picture-book, and that he 
 should be very glad to have the doll, upon which Violante 
 hastened to give them both away, and was never so happy as 
 when mamma (as she called Mrs Riccabocca) was admiring the 
 picture-book, and Riccabocca with austere gravity dandled the 
 doll. Then Riccabocca assured her that she could be of great 
 use to him in the garden ; and Violante instantly put into 
 movement her spade, hoe, and wheelbarrow. 
 
 This last occupation brought her into immediate contact with 
 Mr Leonard Fairfield ; and that personage one morning, to his 
 great horror, found Miss Violante had nearly exterminated a 
 whole celery-bed, which she had ignorantly conceived to be 
 a crop of weeds. 
 
 Lenny was extremely angry. He snatched away the hoe, 
 and said angrily, "You must not do that, Miss. I'll tell your 
 papa if you " 
 
 Violante drew herself up, and never having been so spoken 
 to before, at least since her arrival in England, there was some- 
 thing comic in the surprise of her large eyes, as well as 
 something tragic in the dignity of her offended mien. "It 
 is very naughty of you, Miss," continued Leonard in a milder 
 tone, for he was both softened by the eyes and awed by the 
 mien, " and I trust you will not do it again." 
 
 " Non capisco" (I don't understand,) murmured Violante, 
 and the dark eyes filled with tears. At that moment up came 
 Jackeymo ; and Violante, pointing to Leonard, said, with an 
 effort not to betray her emotion, " II fanciullo e molto gros- 
 solano" (he is a very rude boy.) 
 
 Jackeymo turned to Leonard with the look of an enraged 
 tiger. " How you dare, scum of de earth that you are," cried 
 he,* " how you dare make cry the signorina 1 " And his Eng- 
 lish not supplying familiar vituperatiyes sufficiently, he poured 
 
 * It need scarcely be observed, that Jackeymo, in his conversations with his 
 master or Violante, or his conferences with himself, employs his native Ian-
 
 292 HY NOVEL; OB, 
 
 out upon Lenny such a profusion of Italian abuse, that the 
 boy turned red and white in a breath with rage and per- 
 plexity. 
 
 Violante took instant compassion upon the victim she had 
 made, and, with true feminine caprice, now began to scold 
 Jackeymo for his anger, and, finally approaching Leonard, 
 laid her hand on his arm, and said with a kindness at once 
 childlike and queenly, and in the prettiest imaginable mix- 
 ture of imperfect English and soft Italian, to which I cannot 
 pretend to do justice, and shall therefore translate: "Don't 
 mind him. I dare say it was all my fault, only I did not 
 understand you : are not these things weeds ? " 
 
 "No, my darling signorina," said Jackeymo in Italian, look- 
 ing ruefully at the celery-bed, " they are not weeds, and they 
 sell very well at this time of the year. But still, if it amuses 
 you to pluck them up, I should like to see who's to prevent it." 
 
 Lenny walked away. He had been called "the scum of the 
 earth," by a foreigner too ! He had again been ill-treated for 
 doing what he conceived his duty. He was again feeling the 
 distinction between rich and poor, and he now fancied that 
 that distinction involved deadly warfare, for he had read, from 
 beginning to end those two damnable tracts which the Tinker 
 had presented to him. But in the midst of all the angry dis- 
 turbance of his mind, he felt the soft touch of the infant's 
 hand, the soothiijg influence of her conciliating words, and 
 he was half ashamed that he had spoken so roughly to a 
 child. 
 
 Still, not trusting himself to speak, he walked away and sat 
 down at a distance. " I don't see," thought he, " why there 
 should be rich and poor, master and servant." Lenny, be it 
 remembered, had not heard the Parson's Political Sermon. 
 
 An hour after, having composed himself, Lenny returned to 
 his work. Jackeymo was no longer in the garden : he had 
 gone to the fields ; but Riccabocca was standing by the celery- 
 bed, and holding the red silk umbrella over Violante as she 
 
 guage, which is therefore translated without the hlunders that he is driven to 
 commit when compelled to trust himself to the tongue of the country in which 
 he is a sojourner.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 293 
 
 sat on the ground looking up at her father with those eyes 
 already so full of intelligence, and love, and soul. 
 
 " Lenny," said Riccabocca, " my young lady has been telling 
 me that she has been very naughty, and Giacomo very unjust 
 to you. Forgive them both." 
 
 Lenny's sullenness melted in an instant : the reminiscence 
 of tracts Nos. 1 and 2 
 
 " Like the baseless fabric of a vision, 
 Left not a rack behind." 
 
 He raised eyes, swimming with all his native goodness, towards 
 the wise man, and dropped them gratefully on the face of the 
 infant peace-maker. Then he turned away his head and fairly 
 wept. The Parson was right : "0 ye poor, have charity for 
 the rich ; ye rich, respect the poor."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Now from that day the humble Lenny and the regal Violante 
 became great friends. With what pride he taught her to dis- 
 tinguish between celery and weeds and how proud too was 
 she when she learned that she was useful ! There is not a 
 greater pleasure you can give to children, especially female 
 children, than to make them feel they are already of value in 
 the world, and serviceable as well as protected. Weeks and 
 months rolled away, and Lenny still read, not only the books 
 lent him by the Doctor, but those he bought of Mr Sprott. As 
 for the bombs and shells against religion which the Tinker 
 carried in his bag, Lenny was not induced to blow himself up 
 with them. He had been reared from his cradle in simple love 
 and reverence for the Divine Father, and the tender Saviour, 
 whose life beyond all records of human goodness, whose death 
 beyond all epics of mortal heroism, no being whose infancy has 
 been taught to supplicate the Merciful and adore the Holy, yea, 
 even though his later life may be entangled amidst the thorns 
 of some desolate pyrrhonisrn, can ever hear reviled and scoffed 
 without a shock to the conscience and a revolt of the heart. As 
 the deer recoils by instinct from the tiger, as the very look of 
 the scorpion deters you from handling it, though you never saw 
 a scorpion before, so the very first line in some ribald profanity 
 on which the Tinker put his black finger, made Lenny's blood 
 run cold. Safe, too, was the peasant boy from any temptation 
 in works of a gross and licentious nature, not only because of 
 the happy ignorance of his rural life, but because of a more 
 enduring safe-guard genius ! Genius, that, manly, robust, 
 healthful as it be, is long before it lose its instinctive Dorian
 
 MY NOVEL. 295 
 
 modesty; shamefaced, because so susceptible to glory genius, 
 that loves indeed to dream, but on the violet bank, not the 
 dunghill. Wherefore, even in the error of the senses, it seeks 
 to escape from the sensual into worlds of fancy, subtle and 
 refined. But apart from the passions, true genius is the most 
 practical of all human gifts. Like the Apollo, whom the Greek 
 worshipped as its type, even Arcady is its exile, not its home. 
 Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempe, it ascends to its mission 
 the Archer of the silver bow, the guide of the car of light. 
 Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for self-im- 
 provement ; it ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seek- 
 ing some object which it believes of value, and by that object 
 it insensibly connects its self-improvement with the positive 
 advance of the world. At present Lenny's genius had no bias 
 that was not to the Positive and Useful. It took the direction 
 natural to his sphere, and the wants therein viz., to the arts 
 which we call mechanical. He wanted to know about steam- 
 engines and Artesian wells ; and to know about them it was 
 necessary to know something of mechanics and hydrostatics ; 
 so he bought popular elementary works on those mystic sciences, 
 and set all the powers of his mind at work on experiments. 
 
 Noble and generous spirits are ye, who, with small care for 
 fame, and little reward from pelf, have opened to the intellects 
 of the poor the portals of wisdom ! I honour and revere ye ; 
 only do not think ye have done all that is needful. Consider, 
 I pray ye, whether so good a choice from the Tinker's bag 
 would have been made by a boy whom religion had not scared 
 from the Pestilent, and genius had not led to the Self-improv- 
 ing. And Lenny did not wholly escape from the mephitic 
 portions of the motley elements from which his awakening 
 mind drew its nurture. Think not it was all pure oxygen that 
 the panting lip drew in. No ; there were still those inflamma- 
 tory tracts. Political I do not like to call them, for politics 
 means the art of government, and the tracts I speak of assailed 
 all government which mankind has hitherto recognised. Sad 
 rubbish, perhaps, were such tracts to you, sound thinker, in 
 your easy-chair ! Or to you, practised statesman, at your post 
 on the Treasury Bench to you, calm dignitary of a learned
 
 206 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 Church or to you, my lord judge, who may often have sent 
 from your bar to the dire Orcus of Norfolk's Isle the ghosts of 
 men Avhom that rubbish, falling simultaneously on the bumps 
 of acquisitiveness and combativeness, hath untimely slain. Sad 
 rubbish to you ! But seems it such rubbish to the poor man, 
 to whom it promises a paradise on the easy terms of upsetting 
 a world 1 For ye see, these " Appeals to Operatives" represent 
 that same world-upsetting as the simplest thing imaginable a 
 sort of two-and-two-make-four proposition. The poor have 
 only got to set their strong hands to the axle, and heave-a-hoy ! 
 and hurrah for the topsey-turvey ! Then, just to put a little 
 wholesome rage into the heave-a-hoy ! it is so facile to accom- 
 pany the eloquence of "Appeals" with a kind of stir-the-bile- 
 up statistics "Abuses of the Aristocracy" "Jobs of the 
 Priesthood" " Expenses of Army kept up for Peers' younger 
 sons" "Wars contracted for the villanous purpose of raising 
 the rents of the landowners" all arithmetically dished up, and 
 seasoned with tales of every gentleman who has committed a 
 misdeed, every clergyman who has dishonoured his cloth ; as if 
 such instances were fair specimens of average gentlemen and 
 ministers of religion ! All this, passionately advanced, (and 
 observe, never answered, for that literature admits no contro- 
 versialists, and the writer has it all his own way,) may be rub- 
 bish ; but it is out of such rubbish that operatives build barri- 
 cades for attack, and legislators prisons for defence. 
 
 Our poor friend Lenny drew plenty of this stuff from the 
 Tinker's bag. He thought it very clever and very eloquent ; 
 and he supposed the statistics were as true as mathematical 
 demonstrations. 
 
 A famous knowledge-diffuser is looking over my shoulder, 
 and tells me, " Increase education, and cheapen good books, 
 and all this rubbish will disappear ! " Sir, I don't believe a 
 word of it. If you printed Eicardo and Adam Smith at a far- 
 thing a volume, I still believe that they would be as little read 
 by the operatives as they are now-a-days by a very large pro- 
 portion of highly cultivated men. I still believe that, while the 
 press works, attacks on the rich, and propositions for heave-a- 
 hoys, will always form a popular portion of the Literature of
 
 VARIETIES IN EXGLISH LIFE. 297 
 
 Labour. There's Lenny Fairfield reading a treatise on hydrau- 
 lics, and constructing a model for a fountain into the bargain ; 
 but that does not prevent his acquiescence in any proposition 
 for getting rid of a National Debt, which he certainly never 
 agreed to pay, and which he is told makes sugar and tea so 
 shamefully dear. No. I tell you what does a little counteract 
 those eloquent incentives to break his own head against the 
 strong walls of the Social System it is, that he has two eyes 
 in that head, which are not always employed in reading. And, 
 having been told in print that masters are tyrants, parsons 
 hypocrites or drones in the hive, and landowners vampires and 
 bloodsuckers, he looks out into the little world around him, 
 and, first, he is compelled to acknowledge that his master is not 
 a tyrant, (perhaps because he is a foreigner and a philosopher, 
 and, for what I and Lenny know, a republican.) But then 
 Parson Dale, though High Church to the marrow, is neither 
 hypocrite nor drone. He has a very good living, it is true 
 much better than he ought to have, according to the " political" 
 opinions of those tracts ; but Lenny is obliged to confess that, 
 if Parson Dale were a penny the poorer, he would do a penny- 
 worth's less good ; and, comparing one parish with another, 
 such as Rood Hall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there 
 is no greater CIVILISER than a parson tolerably well off. Then, 
 too, Squire Hazeldean, though as arrant a Tory as ever stood 
 upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a vampire nor bloodsucker. 
 He does not feed on the public ; a great many of the public 
 feed upon him : and, therefore, his practical experience a little 
 staggers and perplexes Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel accuracy 
 of his theoretical dogmas. Masters, parsons, and landowners ! 
 having, at the risk of all popularity, just given a coup de patte 
 to certain sages extremely the fashion at present, I am not going 
 to let you off without an admonitory flea in the ear. Don't 
 suppose that any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to 
 answer the scribbling and typework set at work to demolish 
 you write down that rubbish you can't live it down you may. 
 If you are rich, like Squire Hazeldean, do good with your 
 money ; if you are poor, like Signor Riccubocca, do good with 
 your kindness.
 
 298 MY NOVEL. 
 
 See ! there is Lenny now receiving his week's wages ; and 
 though Lenny knows that he can get higher wages in the very 
 next parish, his blue eyes are sparkling with gratitude, not at 
 the chink of the money, but at the poor exile's friendly talk on 
 things apart from all service ; while Violante is descending the 
 steps from the terrace, charged by her/nrother^iifciBfc with a 
 little basket of sago, and suchlike delicacies, for Mrs Fairfield, 
 who has been ailing the last few days. 
 
 Lenny will see the Tinker as he goes home, and he will buy 
 a most Demostheneari "Appeal" a tract of tracts, upon the 
 " Propriety of Strikes," and the Avarice of Masters. But, some- 
 how or other, I think a few words from Signer Riccabocca, that 
 did not cost the Signer a farthing, and the sight of his mother's 
 smile at the contents of the basket, which cost very little, will 
 serve to neutralise the effects of that " Appeal," much more 
 efficaciously than the best article a Brougham or a Mill could 
 write on the subject.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPRING had come again ; and one beautiful May-day, Leonard 
 Fairfield sate beside the little fountain which he had now ac- 
 tually constructed in the garden. The butterflies were hovering 
 over the belt of flowers which he had placed around his foun- 
 tain, and the birds were singing overhead. Leonard Fairfield 
 was resting from his day's work, to enjoy his abstemious dinner, 
 beside the cool play of the sparkling waters, and, with the yet 
 keener appetite of knowledge, he devoured his book as he 
 munched his crusts. 
 
 A penny tract is the shoeing-horn of literature : it draws on 
 a great many books, and some too tight to be very useful in 
 walking. The penny tract quotes a celebrated writer you long 
 to read him ; it props a startling assertion by a grave authority 
 you long to refer to it. During the nights of the past winter, 
 Leonard's intelligence had made vast progress : he had taught 
 himself more than the elements of mechanics, and put to prac- 
 tice the principles he had acquired, not only in the hydraulical 
 achievement of the fountain, nor in the still more notable appli- 
 cation of science, commenced on the stream in which Jackeymo 
 had fished for minnows, and which Lenny had diverted to the 
 purpose of irrigating two fields, but in various ingenious con- 
 trivances for the facilitation or abridgment of labour, which had 
 excited great wonder and praise in the neighbourhood. On the 
 other hand, those rabid little tracts, which dealt so summarily 
 with the destinies of the human race, even when his growing 
 reason, and the perusal of works more classical or more logical, 
 had led him to perceive that they were illiterate, and to suspect 
 that they jumped from premises to conclusions with a celerity
 
 300 MY NOVEL j OR, 
 
 v.ery different from the careful ratiocination of mechanical 
 science, had still, in the citations and references wherewith they 
 abounded, lured him on to philosophers more specious and more 
 perilous. Out of the Tinker's bag he had drawn a translation 
 of Coudorcet's Progress of Man, and another of Rousseau's Social 
 Contract. Works so eloquent had induced him to select from 
 the tracts in the Tinker's miscellany those which abounded most 
 in professions of philanthropy, and predictions of some coming 
 Golden Age, to which old Saturn's was a joke tracts so mild 
 and mother-like in their language, that it required a much more 
 practical experience than Lenny's to perceive that you would 
 have to pass a river of blood before you had the slightest chance 
 of setting foot on the flowery banks on which they invited you 
 to repose tracts which rouged poor Christianity on the cheeks, 
 clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head, and set her 
 to dancing a pas de zephyr in the pastoral ballet in which St 
 Simon pipes to the flock he shears ; or having first laid it down 
 as a preliminary axiom, that 
 
 " The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve," 
 
 substituted in place thereof Monsieur Fourier's symmetrical 
 phalanstere, or Mr Owen's architectural parallelogram. It was 
 with some such tract that Lenny was seasoning his crusts and 
 his radishes, when Riccabocca, bending his long dark face over 
 the student's shoulder, said abruptly 
 
 " Diawlo, my friend ! what on earth have you got there ? 
 Just let me look at it, will you ? " 
 
 Leonard rose respectfully, and coloured deeply as he surren- 
 dered the tract to Riccabocca. 
 
 The wise man read the first page attentively, the second more 
 cursorily, and only ran his eye over the rest. He had gone 
 through too vast a range of problems political, not to have 
 passed over that venerable Pons Asinorum of Socialism, on 
 which Fouriers and St Simons sit straddling, and cry aloud that 
 they have arrived at the last boundary of knowledge ! 
 
 " All this is as old as the hills," quoth Riccabocca irreverently ; 
 " but the hills stand still, and this there it goes ! " and the
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 301 
 
 sage pointed to a cloud emitted from his pipe. " Did you ever 
 read Sir David Brewster on Optical Delusions 1 No ! Well, I'll 
 lend it to you. You will find therein a story of a lady who 
 always saw a black cat on her hearth-rug. The black cat existed 
 only in her fancy, but the hallucination was natural and rea- 
 sonable eh what do you think 1 " 
 
 " Why, sir," said Leonard, not catching the Italian's meaning, 
 " I don't exactly see that it was natural and reasonable." 
 
 " Foolish boy, yes ! because black cats are things possible and 
 known. But who ever saw upon earth a community of men 
 such as sit on the hearth-rugs of Messrs Owen and Fourier ? If 
 the lady's hallucination was not reasonable, what is his, who 
 believes in such visions as these ? " 
 
 Leonard bit his lip. 
 
 " My dear boy," cried Riccabocca kindly, " the only thing 
 sure and tangible to which these writers would lead you, lies at 
 the first step, and that is what is commonly called a Revolution. 
 Now, I know Avhat that is. I have gone, not indeed through a 
 revolution, but an attempt at one." 
 
 Leonard raised his eyes towards his master with a look of 
 profound respect, and great curiosity. 
 
 " Yes," added Riccabocca, and the face on which the boy 
 gazed exchanged its usual grotesque and sardonic expression for 
 one animated, noble, and heroic. " Yes, not a revolution for 
 chimeras, but for that cause which the coldest allow to be good, 
 and which, when successful, all time approves as divine the 
 redemption of our native soil from the rule of the foreigner ! I 
 have shared in such an attempt. And," continued the Italian 
 mournfully, " recalling now all the evil passions it arouses, all 
 the ties it dissolves, all the blood that it commands to flow, all 
 the healthful industry it arrests, all the madmen that it arms, 
 all the victims that it dupes, I question whether one man really 
 honest, piire, and humane, who has once gone through such an 
 ordeal, would ever hazard it again, unless he was assured that 
 the victory was certain ay, and the object for which he fights 
 not to be wrested from his hands amidst the uproar of the ele- 
 ments that the battle has released." 
 
 The Italian paused, shaded his brow with his hand, and
 
 302 MY NOVEL ; OR, 
 
 remained long silent. Then, gradually resuming his ordinary 
 tone, he continued 
 
 " Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the 
 positive experience of history ; revolutions, in a word, that aim 
 less at substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at 
 changing the whole scheme of society, have been little attempted 
 by real statesmen. Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who 
 never existed. They are the suggestions of philosophers who 
 lived apart from the actual world, and whose opinions (though 
 generally they were very benevolent, good sort of men, and 
 wrote in an elegant poetical style) one would no more take 
 on a plain matter of life, than one would look upon Virgil's 
 Eclogues as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and plea- 
 sures of the peasants who tend our sheep. Read them as you 
 would read poets, and they are delightful. But attempt to 
 shape the world according to the poetry and fit yourself for a 
 madhouse. The farther off the age is from the realisation of 
 such projects, the more these poor philosophers have indulged 
 them. Thus, it was amidst the saddest corruption of court 
 manners that it became the fashion in Paris to sit for one's pic- 
 ture, with a crook in one's hand, as Alexis or Daphne. Just as 
 liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alex- 
 ander were founding their monarchies, and Rome was growing 
 up to crush in its iron grasp all states save its own, Plato with- 
 draws his eyes from the world, to open them in his dreamy 
 Atlantis. Just in the grimmest period of English history, with 
 the axe hanging over his head, Sir Thomas More gives you his 
 Utopia. Just when the world is to be the theatre of a new 
 Sesostris, the dreamers of France tell you that the age is too 
 enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by 
 pure reason, and live in a paradise. Very pretty reading all 
 this to a man like me, Lenny, who can admire and smile at it. 
 But to you, to the man who has to work for his living, to the 
 man who thinks it would be so much more pleasant to live at 
 his ease in a phalanstere than to work eight or ten hours a-day ; 
 to the man of talent and action and industry, whose future is 
 invested in that tranquillity and order of a state, in which 
 talent and action and industry are a certain capital ; why,
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 803 
 
 Messrs Coutts the great bankers had better encourage a theory 
 to upset the system of banking ! Whatever disturbs society, 
 yea, even by a causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, 
 falls first upon the market of labour, and thence affects preju- 
 dicially every department of intelligence. In such times the 
 arts are arrested ; literature is neglected ; people are too busy 
 to read anything save appeals to their passions. And capital, 
 shaken in its sense of security, no longer ventures boldly 
 through the land, calling forth all the energies of toil and 
 enterprise, and extending to every workman his reward. Now, 
 Lenny, take this piece of advice. You are young, clever, and 
 aspiring : men rarely succeed in changing the world ; but a 
 man seldom fails of success if he lets the world alone, and 
 resolves to make the best of it. You are in the midst of the 
 great crisis of your life ; it is the struggle between the new 
 desires knowledge excites, and that sense of poverty, which 
 those desires convert either into hope and emulation, or into 
 envy and despair. I grant that it is an up-hill work that lies 
 before you ; but don't you think it is always easier to climb a 
 mountain than it is to level it ? These books call on you to 
 level the mountain ; and that mountain is the property of 
 other people, subdivided amongst a great many proprietors, 
 and protected by law. At the first stroke of the pick-axe, it is 
 ten to one but what you are taken up for a trespass. But the 
 path up the mountain is a right of way uncontested. You may 
 be safe at the summit, before (even if the owners are fools 
 enough to let you) you could have levelled a yard. Cospetto /" 
 quoth the Doctor, " it is more than two thousand years ago 
 since poor Plato began to level it, and the mountain is as high 
 as ever ! " 
 
 Thus saying, Riccabocca came to the end of his pipe, and, 
 stalking thoughtfully away, he left Leonard Fairfield trying to 
 extract light from the smoke.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 SHORTLY after this discourse of Riccabocca's, an incident 
 occurred to Leonard that served to carry his mind into new 
 directions. One evening, when his mother was out, he was at 
 work on a new mechanical contrivance, and had the misfortune 
 to break one of the instruments which he employed. Now it 
 will be remembered that his father had been the Squire's head- 
 carpenter : the widow had carefully hoarded the tools of his 
 craft, which had belonged to her poor Mark ; and though she 
 occasionally lent them to Leonard, she would not give them up 
 to his service. Amongst these, Leonard knew that lie should 
 find the one that he wanted ; and being much interested in his 
 contrivance^ he could not wait till his mother's return. The 
 tools, with other little relics of the lost, were kept in a large 
 trunk in Mrs Fairfield's sleeping-room ; the trunk was not 
 locked, and Leonard went to it without ceremony or scruple. 
 In rummaging for the instrument, his eye fell upon a bundle 
 of MSS. ; and he suddenly recollected that when he was a mere 
 child, and before he much knew the difference between verse 
 and prose, his mother had pointed to these MSS. and said, 
 " One day or other, when you can read nicely, I'll let you look 
 at these, Lenny. My poor Mark wrote such verses ah, he was 
 a scollard ! " Leonard, reasonably enough, thought that the 
 time had now arrived when he was worthy the privilege of 
 reading the paternal effusions, and he took forth the MSS. with 
 a keen but melancholy interest. He recognised his father's 
 handwriting, which he had often seen before in account-books 
 and memoranda, and read eagerly some trifling poems, which 
 did not show much genius, nor much mastery of language and
 
 MY NOVEL. 305 
 
 rhythm such poems, in short, as a self-educated man, with 
 poetic taste and feeling, rather than poetic inspiration or 
 artistic culture, might compose with credit, but not for fame. 
 But suddenly, as he turned over these ' Occasional Pieces,' 
 Leonard came to others in a different handwriting a woman's 
 handwriting small, and fine, and exquisitely formed. He 
 had scarcely read six lines of these last, before his attention 
 was irresistibly chained. They were of a different order of 
 merit from poor Mark's ; they bore the unmistakable stamp 
 of genius. Like the poetry of women in general, they were 
 devoted to personal feeling they were not the mirror of a 
 world, but reflections of a solitary heart. Yet this is the kind 
 of poetry most pleasing to the young. And the verses in ques- 
 tion had another attraction for Leonard : they seemed to 
 express some struggle akin to his own some complaint against 
 the actual condition of the writer's life, some sweet melodious 
 murmurs at fortune. For the rest, they were characterised by 
 a vein of sentiment so elevated that, if written by a man, it 
 would have run into exaggeration ; written by a woman, the 
 romance was carried off by so many genuine revelations of sin- 
 cere, deep, pathetic feeling, that it was always natural, though 
 true to a nature from which you would not augur happiness. 
 
 Leonard was still absorbed in the perusal of these poems, 
 when Mrs Fairfield entered the room. 
 
 " What have you been about, Lenny ? searching in my box ?" 
 
 " I came to look for my father's bag of tools, mother, and I 
 found these papers, which you said I might read some day." 
 
 " I doesn't wonder you did not hear me when I came in," 
 said the widow sighing. " I used to sit still for the hour 
 together, when my poor Mark read his poems to me. There 
 was such a pretty one about the ' Peasant's Fireside,' Lenny 
 have you got hold of that 1 " 
 
 " Yes, dear mother ; and I remarked the allusion to you : it 
 brought tears to my eyes. But these verses are not my father's 
 whose are they 1 They seem in a woman's handwriting." 
 
 Mrs Fairfield looked changed colour grew faint and 
 seated herself. 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 306 MY NOVEL J OR, 
 
 " Poor, poor Nora ! " said she falteringly. " I did not know 
 as they were there ; Mark kep 'em ; they got among his 
 
 LEONARD. " Who was Nora ? " 
 
 MRS F AIRFIELD. "Who? child who? Nora was was 
 my own own sister." 
 
 LEONARD, (in great amaze, contrasting his ideal of the writer 
 of these musical lines, in that graceful hand, with his homely 
 uneducated mother, who can neither read nor write.) " Your 
 sister is it possible? My aunt, then. How comes it you 
 never spoke of her before ? Oh ! you should be so proud of 
 her, mother." 
 
 MRS FAIRFIELD, (clasping her hands.) " We were proud of 
 her, all of us father, mother all ! She was so beautiful and 
 so good, and not proud she ! though she looked like the first 
 lady in the land. Oh ! Nora, Nora ! " 
 
 LEONARD, (after a pause.) " But she must have been highly 
 educated 1 " 
 
 MRS FAIRFIELD. " 'Deed she was ! " 
 
 LEONARD. " How was that ? " 
 
 MRS FAIRFIELD, (rocking herself to and fro in her chair.) 
 " Oh ! my Lady was her godmother Lady Lansmere I mean 
 and took a fancy to her when she was that high ! and had 
 her to stay at the Park, and wait on her ladyship ; and then 
 she put her to school, and Nora was so clever that nothing 
 would do but she must go to London as a governess. But don't 
 talk of it, boy ! don't talk of it ! " 
 
 LEONARD. " Why not, mother ? what has become of her ? 
 where is she ? '' 
 
 MRS FAIRFIELD, (bursting into a paroxysm of tears,) " In 
 her grave in her cold grave ! Dead, dead ! " 
 
 Leonard was inexpressibly grieved and shocked. It is the 
 attribute of the poet to seem always living, always a friend. 
 Leonard felt as if some one very dear had been suddenly torn 
 from his heart. He tried to console his mother ; but her emo- 
 tion was contagious, and he wept with her. 
 
 " And how long has she been dead ? " he asked at last, in 
 mournful accents. 
 
 " Many's the long year, many ; but," added Mrs Fairfield,
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 307 
 
 rising, and putting her tremulous hand on Leonard's shoulder, 
 " you'll just never talk to me about her I can't bear it it 
 breaks my heart I can bear better to talk of Mark come 
 down stairs come." 
 
 " May I not keep these verses, mother 1 Do let me." 
 
 " Well, well, those bits o' paper be all she left behind her 
 yes, keep them, but put back Mark's. Are they all here ? 
 sure ? " And the widow, though she could not read her hus- 
 band' s verses, looked jealously at the MSS. written in his 
 irregular large scrawl, and, smoothing them carefully, replaced 
 them in the trunk, and resettled over them some sprigs of lav- 
 ender, which Leonard had unwittingly disturbed. 
 
 " But," said Leonard, as his eye again rested on the beautiful 
 handwriting of his lost aunt " but you call her Nora I see 
 she signs herself L." 
 
 " Leonora was her name. I said she was my Lady's god- 
 child. We called her Nora for short" 
 
 " Leonora and I am Leonard is that how I came by the 
 name 1 " 
 
 "Yes, yes do hold your tongue, boy," sobbed poor Mrs 
 Fairfield ; and she could not be soothed nor coaxed into con- 
 tinuing or renewing a subject which was evidently associated 
 with insupportable pain.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 IT is difficult to exaggerate the effect that this discovery pro- 
 duced on Leonard's train of thought. Some one belonging to 
 his own humble race had, then, preceded him in his struggling 
 flight towards the loftier regions of Intelligence and Desire. 
 It was like the mariner amidst unknown seas, who finds carved 
 upon some desert isle a familiar household name. And this 
 creature of "genius and of sorrow whose existence he had only 
 learned by her song, and whose death created, in the simple 
 heart of her sister, so passionate a grief, after the lapse of so 
 many years supplied to the romance awaking in his young 
 heart the ideal which it unconsciously sought. He was pleased 
 to hear that she had been beautiful and good. He paused from 
 his books to muse on her, and picture her image to his fancy. 
 That there Avas some mystery in her fate was evident to him ; 
 and while that conviction deepened his interest, the mystery 
 itself, by degrees, took a charm which he was not anxious to 
 dispel. He resigned himself to Mrs Fairfield's obstinate silence. 
 He was contented to rank the dead amongst those holy and 
 ineffable images which we do not seek to unveil. Youth and 
 Fancy have many secret hoards of idea which they do not 
 desire to impart, even to those most in their confidence. I 
 doubt the depth of feeling in any man who has not certain 
 recesses in his soul into which none may enter. 
 
 Hitherto, as I have said, the talents of Leonard Fail-field had 
 been more turned to things positive than to the ideal ; to 
 science and investigation of fact than to poetry, and that airier 
 truth in which poetry has its element. He had read our 
 greater poets, indeed, but without thought of imitating ; and
 
 MY NOVEL. 309 
 
 rather from the general curiosity to inspect all celebrated monu- 
 ments of the human mind, than from that especial predilection 
 for verse which is too common in childhood and youth to be 
 any sure sign of a poet. But now these melodies, unknown to 
 all the world beside, rang in his ear, mingled with his thoughts 
 set, as it were, his whole life to music. He read poetry with 
 a different sentiment it seemed to him that he had discovered 
 its secret. And so reading, the passion seized him, and " the 
 numbers came." 
 
 To many minds, at the commencement of our grave and ear- 
 nest pilgrimage, I am Vandal enough to think that the indul- 
 gence of poetic taste and reverie does great and lasting harm ; 
 that it serves to enervate the character, give false ideas of life, 
 impart the semblance of drudgery to the noble toils and duties 
 of the active man. All poetry would not do this not, for 
 instance, the Classical, in its diviner masters not the poetry of 
 Homer, of Virgil, of Sophocles not, perhaps, even that of the 
 indolent Horace. But the poetry which youth usually loves 
 and appreciates the best the poetry of mere sentiment does 
 so in minds already over-predisposed to the sentimental, and 
 which require bracing to grow into healthful manhood. 
 
 On the other hand, even this latter kind of poetry, which is 
 peculiarly modern, does suit many minds of another mould 
 minds which our modern life, with its hard positive forms, 
 tends to produce. And as in certain climates plants and herbs, 
 peculiarly adapted as antidotes to those diseases most prevalent 
 in the atmosphere, are profusely sown, as it were, by the be- 
 nignant providence of nature so it may be that the softer and 
 more romantic species of poetry, which comes forth in harsh, 
 moneymaking, unromautic times, is intended as curatives and 
 counter-poisons. The world is so much with us, now-a-days, 
 that we need have something that prates to us, albeit even in 
 too fine an euphuism, of the moon and stars. 
 
 Certes, to Leonard Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual 
 life, the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. 
 In his turbulent and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple 
 with the giant forms of political truths, in his bias towards 
 the application of science to immediate practical purposes, this
 
 310 MY NOVEL. 
 
 lovely vision of the Muse came in the white robe of the Peace- 
 maker ; and with upraised hand, pointing to serene skies, she 
 opened to him fair glimpses of the Beautiful, which is given to 
 Peasant as to Prince showed to him that on the surface of 
 earth there is something nobler than fortune that he who can 
 view the world as a poet is always at soul a king ; while to 
 practical purpose itself, that larger and more profound inven- 
 tion, which poetry stimulates, supplied the grand design and 
 the subtle view leading him beyond the mere ingenuity of 
 the mechanic, and habituating him to regard the inert force 
 of the matter at his command with the ambition of the Dis- 
 coverer. But, above all, the discontent that was within him 
 finding a vent, not in deliberate war upon this actual world, 
 but through the purifying channels of song in the vent itself 
 it evaporated, it was lost. By accustoming ourselves to survey 
 all things with the spirit that retains and reproduces them only 
 in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of tolera- 
 tion for what we before gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly 
 grows upon us. Leonard looked into his heart after the En- 
 chantress had breathed upon it ; and through the mists of the 
 fleeting and tender melancholy which betrayed where she had 
 been, he beheld a new sun of delight and joy dawning over the 
 landscape of human life. 
 
 Thus, though she was dead and gone from his actual know- 
 ledge, this mysterious kinswoman " a voice, and nothing more" 
 had spoken to him, soothed, elevated, cheered, attuned each 
 discord into harmony ; and, if now permitted from some serener 
 sphere to behold the life that her soul thus strangely influenced, 
 verily, with yet holier joy, the saving and lovely spirit might 
 have glided onward in the Eternal Progress. 
 
 We call the large majority of human lives obscure. Pre- 
 sumptuous that we are ! How know we what lives a single 
 thought retained from the dust of nameless graves may have 
 lighted to renown 1
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 IT was about a year after Leonard's discovery of the family 
 MSS. that Parson Dale borrowed the quietest pad mare in the 
 Squire's stables, and set out on an equestrian excursion. He 
 said that he was bound on business connected with his old 
 parishioners of Lansmerc ; for, as it has been incidentally 
 implied in a previous chapter, he had been connected Avith 
 that borough town (and, I may here add, in the capacity of 
 curate) before he had been inducted into the living of Hazel- 
 dean. 
 
 It was so rarely that the Parson stirred from home, that this 
 journey to a town more than twenty miles off was regarded as 
 a most daring adventure, both at the Hall and at the Parsonage. 
 Mrs Dale could not sleep the whole previous night with think- 
 ing of it ; and though she had naturally one of her worst 
 nervous headaches on the eventful morn, she yet suffered no 
 hands less thoughtful than her own to pack up the saddle- 
 bags which the Parson had borrowed along with the pad. Nay, 
 so distrustful was she of the possibility of the good man's exert- 
 ing the slightest common sense in her absence, that she kept 
 him close at her side while she was engaged in that same 
 operation of packing-up showing him the exact spot in which 
 the clean shirt was put, and how nicely the old slippers were 
 packed up in one of his own sermons. She implored him not 
 to mistake the sandwiches for his shaving-soap, and made him 
 observe how carefully she had provided against such confusion, 
 by placing them as far apart from each other as the nature of 
 saddlebags will admit. The poor Parson who was really by 
 no means an absent man, but as little likely to shave himself
 
 312 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 with sandwiches and lunch upon soap as the most common- 
 place mortal may be listened with conjugal patience, and 
 thought that man never had such a wife before ; nor was it 
 without tears in his own eyes that he tore himself from the 
 farewell embrace of his weeping Carry. 
 
 I confess, however, that it was with some apprehension that he 
 set his foot in the stirrup, and trusted his person to the mercies 
 of an unfamiliar animal. For whatever might be Mr Dale's 
 minor accomplishments as man and parson, horsemanship was 
 not his forte. Indeed, I doubt if he had taken the reins in his 
 hand more than twice since he had been married. 
 
 The Squire's surly old groom, Mat, was in attendance with 
 the pad ; and, to the Parson's gentle inquiry whether Mat was 
 quite sure that the pad was quite safe, replied laconically, " Oi, 
 oi, give her her head." 
 
 " Give her her head ! " repeated Mr Dale, rather amazed, for 
 he had not the slightest intention of taking away that part of 
 the beast's frame, so essential to its vital economy " Give her 
 her head ! " 
 
 " Oi, oi ; and don't jerk her up like that, or she'll fall a 
 doincing on her hind-legs." 
 
 The Parson instantly slackened the reins ; and Mrs Dale 
 who had tarried behind to control her tears now running to 
 the door for " more last words," he waved his hand with coura- 
 geous amenity, and ambled forth into the lane. 
 
 Our equestrian was absorbed at first in studying the idiosyn- 
 crasies of the pad-mare, and trying thereby to arrive at some 
 notion of her general character : guessing, for instance, why she 
 raised one ear and laid down the other ; why she kept bearing 
 so close to the left that she brushed his leg against the hedge ; 
 and why, when she arrived at a little side-gate in the fields, 
 which led towards the home-farm, she came to a full stop, 
 and fell to rubbing her nose against the rail an occupation 
 from which the Parson, finding all civil remonstrances in 
 vain, at length diverted her by a timorous application of the 
 whip. 
 
 This crisis on the road fairly passed, the pad seemed to com- 
 prehend that she had a journey before her, and giving a petulant
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 313 
 
 whisk of her tail, quickened her amble into a short trot, which 
 soon brought the Parson into the high-road, and nearly opposite 
 the Casino. 
 
 Here, sitting on the gate which led to his abode, and shaded 
 by his umbrella, he beheld Dr Riccabocca. 
 
 The Italian lifted his eyes from the book he was reading, and 
 stared hard at the Parson ; and he not venturing to withdraw 
 his whole attention from the pad, (who, indeed, set up both her 
 ears at the apparition of Riccabocca, and evinced symptoms of 
 that surprise and superstitious repugnance at unknown objects 
 which goes by the name of "shying,") looked askance at Ric- 
 cabocca. 
 
 " Don't stir, please," said the Parson, " or I fear you'll alarm 
 this creature ; it seems a nervous, timid thing ; soho gently 
 gently." 
 
 And he fell to patting the mare with great unction. 
 
 The pad, thus encouraged, overcame her first natural astonish* 
 mcnt at the sight of Riccabocca and the red umbrella ; and 
 having before been at the Casino on sundry occasions, and saga- 
 ciously preferring places within the range of her experience to 
 bournes neither cognate nor conjecturable, she moved gravely 
 up towards the gate on which the Italian sate ; and, after eye- 
 ing him a moment as much as to say, " I wish you would get 
 off" came to a dead lock. 
 
 " Well," said Riccabocca, " since your horse seems more dis- 
 posed to be polite to me than yourself, Mr Dale, I take the 
 opportunity of your present involuntary pause to congratulate 
 you on your elevation in life, and to breathe a friendly prayer 
 that pride may not have a fall ! " 
 
 " Tut," said the Parson, affecting an easy air, though still 
 contemplating the pad, who appeared to have fallen into a quiet 
 doze, " it is true that I have not ridden much of late years, and 
 the Squire's horses are very high fed and spirited ; but there is 
 no more harm in them than their master when one once knows 
 their ways." 
 
 " Chi va piano, va sano, 
 E chi va sano va lontano, 1 " 
 
 said Riccabocca, pointing to the saddle-bags. " You go slowly,
 
 814 Mr NOVEL; OB, 
 
 therefore safely ; and he who goes safely may go far. You seem 
 prepared for a journey ? " 
 
 " I am," said the Parson ; " and on a matter that concerns 
 you a little." 
 
 " Me ! " exclaimed Riccabocca " concerns me ! " 
 
 " Yes, so far as the chance of depriving you of a servant whom 
 you like and esteem affects you." 
 
 " Oh," said Riccabocca, " I understand : you have hinted to 
 me very often that I or Knowledge, or both together, have un- 
 fitted Leonard Fairfield for service." 
 
 " I did not say that exactly ; I said that you have fitted him 
 for something higher than service. But do not repeat this to 
 him. And I cannot yet say more to you, for I am very doubt- 
 ful as to the success of my mission ; and it will not do to un- 
 settle poor Leonard until we are sure that we can improve his 
 condition." 
 
 " Of that you can never be sure," quoth the wise man, shak- 
 ing his head ; " and I can't say that I am unselfish enough not 
 to bear you a grudge for seeking to decoy away from me an in- 
 valuable servant faithful, steady, intelligent, and (added Ric- 
 cabocca, warming as he approached the climacteric udjective) 
 exceedingly cheap ! Nevertheless go, and Heaven speed 
 you. I am not an Alexander, to stand between man and the 
 sun." 
 
 " You are a noble great-hearted creature, Signer Riccabocca, 
 in spite of your cold-blooded proverbs and villanous books." 
 The Parson, as he said this, brought down the whip-hand with 
 so indiscreet an enthusiasm on the pad's shoulder, that the poor 
 beast, startled out of her innocent doze, made a bolt forward, 
 which nearly precipitated Riccabocca from his seat on the stile, 
 and then turning round as the Parson tugged desperately at 
 the rein caught the bit between her teeth, and set off at a 
 canter. The Parson lost both his stirrups ; and when he re- 
 gained them, (as the pad slackened her pace,) and had time to 
 breathe and look about him, Riccabocca and the Casino were 
 both out of sight. 
 
 " Certainly," quoth Parson Dale, as he resettled himself with 
 great complacency, and a conscious triumph that he was still
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 315 
 
 on the pad's back " certainly it is true ' that the noblest con- 
 quest ever made by man was that of the horse :' a fine creature 
 it is a very fine creature and uncommonly difficult to sit 
 on, especially without stirrups." Firmly in his stirrups the 
 Parson planted his feet ; and the heart within him was very 
 proud.
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE borough town of Lansmere was situated in the county 
 adjoining that which contained the village of Hazeldean. Late 
 at noon the Parson crossed the little stream which divided the 
 two shires, and came to an inn, which was placed at an angle, 
 where the great main road branched off into two directions 
 the one leading towards Lansmere, the other going more direct 
 to London. At this inn the pad stopped, and put down both 
 ears with the air of a pad who has made up her mind to bait. 
 And the Parson himself, feeling very warm and somewhat sore, 
 said to the pad benignly, " It is just thou shalt have corn and 
 water ! " 
 
 Dismounting therefore, and finding himself very stiff, as soon 
 as he had reached terra firma, the Parson consigned the pad to 
 the ostler, and walked into the sanded parlour of the inn, to 
 repose himself on a very hard Windsor chair. 
 
 He had been alone rather more than half-an-hour, reading a 
 county newspaper which smelt much of tobacco, and trying to 
 keep off the flies that gathered round him in swarms, as if they 
 had never before seen a Parson, and were anxious to ascertain 
 how the flesh of him tasted, when a stage-coach stopped at 
 the inn. A traveller got out with his carpet-bag in his hand, 
 and was shown into the sanded parlour. 
 
 The Parson rose politely, and made a bow. 
 
 The traveller touched his hat, without taking it off looked 
 at Mr Dale from top to toe then walked to the window, and 
 whistled a lively impatient tune, then strode towards the fire- 
 place and rang the bell ; then stared again at the Parson ; and 
 that gentleman having courteously laid down the newspaper,
 
 MY NOVEL. 317 
 
 the traveller seized it, threw himself into a chair, flung one of 
 his legs over the table, tossed the other up on the mantelpiece, 
 and began reading the paper, while he tilted the chair on its 
 hind legs with so daring a disregard to the ordinary position of 
 chairs and their occupants, that the shuddering Parson expected 
 every moment to see him come down on the back of his skull. 
 
 Moved, therefore, to compassion, Mr Dale said mildly 
 
 " Those chairs are very treacherous, sir. I'm afraid you'll be 
 down." 
 
 " Eh," said the traveller, looking up much astonished. " Eh, 
 down 1 oh, you're satirical, sir." 
 
 " Satirical, sir 1 upon my word, no ! " exclaimed the Parson 
 earnestly. 
 
 " I think every free-born man has a right to sit as he pleases 
 in his own house," resumed the traveller with warmth ; " and 
 an inn is his own house, I guess, so long as he pays his score. 
 Betty, my dear." 
 
 For the chambermaid had now replied to the bell. 
 
 " I han't Betty, sir ; do you want she ?" 
 
 "No, Sally cold brandy and water and a biscuit." 
 
 "I han't Sally, either," muttered the chambermaid ; but the 
 traveller, turning round, showed so smart a neckcloth and so 
 comely a face, that she smiled, coloured, and went her way. 
 
 The traveller now rose, and flung down the paper. He took 
 out a penknife, and began paring his nails. Suddenly desisting 
 from this elegant occupation, his eye caught sight of the Par- 
 son's shovel-hat, which lay on a chair in the corner. 
 
 " You're a clergyman, I reckon, sir," said the traveller, with 
 a slight sneer. 
 
 Again Mr Dale bowed bowed in part deprecatingly in 
 part with dignity. It was a bow that said, "No offence, sir, 
 but I am a clergyman, and I'm not ashamed of it." 
 
 "Going far ?" asked the traveller. 
 
 PARSON. " Not very." 
 
 TRAVELLER." In a chaise or fly 1 If so, and we are going 
 the same way halves." 
 
 PARSON. " Halves 1" 
 
 TRAVELLER. "Yes, I'll pay half the damage pikes inclusive."
 
 318 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 PARSON. " You are very good, sir. " But," (spoken with 
 pride) " I ana on horseback." 
 
 TRAVELLER. " On horseback ! "Well, I should not have 
 guessed that ! You don't look like it. Where did you say you 
 were going ?" 
 
 "I did not say where I was going, sir," said the Parson drily, 
 for he was much offended at that vague and ungrammatical 
 remark applicable to his horsemanship, that "he did not look 
 like it." 
 
 "Close!" said the traveller laughing ; "an old traveller, I 
 reckon." 
 
 The Parson made no reply, but he took up his shovel-hat, 
 and, with a bow more majestic than the previous one, walked 
 out to see if his pad had finished her corn. 
 
 The animal had indeed finished all the corn afforded to her, 
 which was not much, and in a few minutes more Mr Dale 
 resumed his journey. He had performed about three miles, 
 when the sound of wheels behind him made him turn his head, 
 and he perceived a chaise driven very fast, while out of the win- 
 dows thereof dangled strangely a pair of human legs. The pad 
 began to curvet as the post horses rattled behind, and the Par- 
 son had only an indistinct vision of a human face supplanting 
 those human legs. The traveller peered out at him as he 
 whirled by saw Mr Dale tossed up and down on the saddle, 
 and cried out, " How's the leather ? " 
 
 " Leather ! " soliloquised the Parson, as the pad rccomposed 
 herself. " What does he mean by that 1 Leather ! a very vul- 
 gar man. But I got rid of him cleverly." 
 
 Mr Dale arrived without farther adventure at Lansmere. 
 He put up at the principal inn refreshed himself by a general 
 ablution and sate down with good appetite to his beefsteak 
 and pint of port. 
 
 The Parson was a better judge of the physiognomy of man 
 than that of the horse ; and after a satisfactory glance at the 
 civil smirking landlord, who removed the cover and set on the 
 wine, he ventured on an attempt at conversation. " Is my lord 
 at the Park ? " 
 
 LANDLORD, (still more civilly than before.) " No, sir, his
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 319 
 
 lordship and ray lady have gone to town to meet Lord 
 L'Estrange." 
 
 " Lord L'Estrange ! He is in England, then ? " 
 
 " Why, so I heard," replied the landlord, " but we never see 
 him here now. I remember him a very pretty young man. 
 Every one was fond of him and proud of him. But what 
 pranks he did play when he was a lad ! We hoped he would 
 come in for our boro' some of these days, but he has taken to 
 foren parts more's the pity. I am a reg'lar Blue, sir, as I 
 ought to be. The Blue candidate always docs me the honour to 
 come to the Lansmere Arms. 'Tis only the low party puts up 
 with the Boar," added the landlord with a look of ineffable 
 disgust. " I hope you like the wine, sir ? " 
 
 " Very good, and seems old." 
 
 " Bottled these eighteen years, sir. I had in the cask for the 
 great election of Dashmore and Egerton. I have little left of it, 
 and I never give it but to old friends like for, I think, sir, 
 though you be grown stout, and look more grand, I may say 
 that I've had the pleasure of seeing you before." 
 
 " That's true, I daresay, though I fear I was never a very 
 good customer." 
 
 " All, it is Mr Dale, then ! I thought so when you came into 
 the hall. I hope your lady is quite well, and the Squire too ; 
 fine pleasant-spoken gentleman ; no fault of his if Mr Egerton 
 went wrong. Well, we have never seen him I mean Mr Eger- 
 ton since that time. I don't wonder he stays away ; but my 
 lord's son, who was brought up here, it an't nat'ral like that 
 he should turn his back on us ! " 
 
 Mr Dale made no reply, and the landlord was about to retire, 
 when the Parson, pouring out another glass of the port, said, 
 " There must be great changes in the parish. Is Mr Morgan, 
 the medical man, still here 1 " 
 
 " No, indeed ; he took out his plorna after you left, and 
 became a real doctor ; and a pretty practice he had too, when 
 he took, all of a sudden, to some new-fangled way of physick- 
 ing ; I think they calls it homy something." 
 
 " Homoeopathy ! " 
 
 " That's it something against all reason : and so he lost his
 
 320 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 practice here and went up to Lunnun. I've not heard of him 
 since." 
 
 " Do the Avenels still reside in their old house ? " 
 
 " Oh yes ! and are pretty well off, I hear say. John is 
 always poorly ; though he still goes now and then to the Odd 
 Fellows, and takes his glass ; but his wife comes and fetches 
 him away before he can do himself any harm." 
 
 " Mrs Avenel is the same as ever 1 " 
 
 " She holds her head higher, I think," said the landlord, 
 smiling. " She was always not exactly proud like, but what 
 I calls gumptious." 
 
 " I never heard that word before," said the Parson, laying 
 down his knife and fork. " Bumptious, indeed, though I 
 believe it is not in the dictionary, has crept into familiar par- 
 lance, especially amongst young folks at school and college." 
 
 " Bumptious is bumptious, and gumptious is gumptious," 
 said the landlord, delighted to puzzle a parson. " Now the 
 town beadle is bumptious, and Mrs Avenel is gumptious." 
 
 " She is a very respectable woman," said Mr Dale, somewhat 
 rebukingly. 
 
 " In course, sir, all gumptious folks are ; they value them- 
 selves on their respectability, and looks down on their neigh- 
 bours." 
 
 PARSON, (still philologically occupied.) " Gumptious gump- 
 tious. I think I remember the substantive at school not that 
 my master taught it to me. ' Gumption,' it means cleverness." 
 
 LANDLORD, (doggedly.) " There's gumption and gumptious ! 
 Gumption is knowing ; but when I say that sum un is gump- 
 tious, I mean though that's more vulgar like sum un who 
 does not think small beer of hisself. You take me, sir ?" 
 
 " I think I do," said the Parson, half smiling. " I believe the 
 Avenels have only two of their children alive still their 
 daughter, who married Mark Fail-field, and a son who went 
 off to America ? " 
 
 " Ah, but he made his fortune there, and has come back." 
 
 " Indeed ! I'm very glad to hear it. He has settled at Lans- 
 mere 1 " 
 
 " No, sir. I hear as he's bought a property a long way off.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 321 
 
 But he comes to see his parents pretty often so John tells me 
 but I can't say that I ever see him. I fancy Dick doesn't 
 like to be seen by folks who remember him playing in the 
 kennel." 
 
 " Not unnatural," said the Parson indulgently ; " but he 
 visits his parents : he is a good son, at all events, then ] " 
 
 " I've nothing to say against him. Dick was a wild chap 
 before he took himself off. I never thought he would make his 
 fortune ; but the Avenels are a clever set. Do you remember 
 poor Nora the Rose of Lansmere, as they called her 1 Ah, no, 
 I think she went up to Lunnun afore your time, sir." 
 
 " Humph ! " said the Parson drily. " Well, I think yov^ may 
 take away now. It will be dark soon, and I'll just stroll out 
 and look about me." 
 
 " There's a nice tart coming, sir." 
 
 "Tliank you, I've dined." 
 
 The Parson put on his hat and sallied forth into the streets. 
 He eyed the houses on either hand with that melancholy and 
 wistful interest with which, in middle life, men revisit scenes 
 familiar to them in youth surprised to find either so little change 
 or so much, and recalling, by fits and snatches, old associations 
 and past emotions. The long High Street which he threaded 
 now began to change its bustling character, and slide, as it were 
 gradually, into the high-road of a suburb. On the left, the 
 houses gave way to the moss-grown pales of Lansmere Park : 
 to the right, though houses still remained, they were separated 
 from each other by gardens, and took the pleasing appearance 
 of villas such villas as retired tradesmen or their widows, old 
 maids, and half-pay officers, select for the evening of their 
 days. 
 
 Mr Dale looked at these villas with the deliberate attention 
 of a man awakening his power of memory, and at last stopped 
 before one, almost the last on the road, and which faced the 
 broad patch of sward that lay before the lodge of Lansmere 
 Park. An old pollard oak stood near it, and from the oak 
 there came a low discordant sound ; it was the hungry cry of 
 young ravens, awaiting the belated return of the parent bird. 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 322 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 Mr Dale put his hand to his brow, paused a moment, and then, 
 with a hurried step, passed through the little garden and 
 knocked at the door. A light was burning in the parlour, and 
 Mr Dale's eye caught through the window a vague outline of 
 three forms. There was an evident bustle within at the sound 
 of the knock. One of the forms rose and disappeared. A very 
 prim, neat, middle-aged maid-servant now appeared at the 
 threshold, and austerely inquired the visitor's business. 
 
 " I want to see Mr or 'Mrs Avenel. Say tha.t I have come 
 many miles to see them ; and take in this card." 
 
 The maid-servant took the card, and half-closed the door. 
 At least three minutes elapsed before she reappeared. 
 
 " Missis says it's late, sir ; but walk in." 
 
 The Parson accepted the not very gracious invitation, stepped 
 across the little hall, and entered the parlour. 
 
 Old John Avenel, a mild-looking man, Avho seemed slightly 
 paralytic, rose slowly from his arm-chair. Mrs Avenel, in an 
 awfully stiff, clean, Calvinistical cap, and a grey dress, every 
 fold of which bespoke respectability and staid repute stood 
 erect on the floor, and, fixing on the Parson a cold and cautious 
 eye, said 
 
 " You do the like of us great honour, Mr Dale take a chair ! 
 You call upon business ? " 
 
 " Of which I apprised Mr Avenel by letter." 
 
 " My husband is very poorly." 
 
 " A poor creature ! " said John, feebly, and as if in compas- 
 sion of himself. " I can't get about as I used to do. But it 
 ben't near election time, be it, sir 1 " 
 
 " No, John," said Mrs Avenel, placing her husband's arm 
 within her own. " You must lie down a bit, while I talk to 
 the gentleman." 
 
 " I'm a real good Blue," said poor John ; " but I ain't quite 
 the man I was ;" and, leaning heavily on his wife, he left the 
 room, turning round at the threshold, and saying, with great 
 urbanity " Anything to oblige, sir 1 " 
 
 Mr Dale was much touched. He had remembered John 
 Avenel the comeliest, the most active, and the most cheerful 
 man in Lansmere ; great at glee club and cricket, (though then
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 323 
 
 somewhat stricken in years,) greater in vestries ; reputed greatest 
 in elections. 
 
 " Last scene of all," murnmred the Parson ; " and oh well, 
 turning from the poet, may we cry with the disbelieving philo- 
 sopher, ' Poor, poor humanity ! ' " * 
 
 In a few minutes Mrs Avenel returned. She took a chair at 
 some distance from the Parson's, and, resting one hand on the 
 elbow of the chair, while with the other she stiffly smoothed 
 the stiff gown, she said 
 
 " Now, sir." 
 
 That " Now, sir," had in its sound something sinister and 
 warlike. This the shrewd Parson recognised with his usual 
 tact. He edged his chair nearer to Mrs Avenel, and placing 
 his hand on hers 
 
 " Yes, now then, and as friend to friend." 
 
 * Mr Dale probably here alludes to Lord Bolingbroke's ejaculation as he 
 stood by the dying Pope; but bis memory does not serve him with the exact 
 words.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MR DALE had been more than a quarter of an hour conversing 
 with Mrs Avenel, and had seemingly made little progress iu the 
 object of his diplomatic mission, for now, slowly drawing on 
 his gloves, he said 
 
 " I grieve to think, Mrs Avenel, that you should have so har- 
 dened your heart yes you must pardon me it is my voca- 
 tion to speak stem truths. You cannot say that I have not 
 kept faith with you, but I must now invite you to remember 
 that I specially reserved to myself the right of exercising a dis- 
 cretion to act as I judged best, for the child's interests, on any 
 future occasion ; and it was upon this understanding that you 
 gave me the promise, which you would now evade, of providing 
 for him when he came into manhood." 
 
 " I say I will provide for him. I say that you may 'prentice 
 him in any distant town, and by and by we will stock a shop 
 for him. What would you have more, sir, from folks like us, 
 who have kept shop ourselves ? It ain't reasonable what you 
 ask, sir." 
 
 " My dear friend," said the Parson, " what I ask of you at 
 present is but to see him to receive him kindly to listen to 
 his conversation to judge for yourselves. "We can have but a 
 common object that your grandson should succeed in life, and 
 do you credit. Now, I doubt very much whether we can effect 
 this by making him a small shopkeeper." 
 
 " And has Jane Fairfield, who married a common carpenter, 
 brought him up to despise small shopkeepers ? " exclaimed Mrs 
 Avenel, angrily. 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! Some of the first men in England have
 
 MY NOVEL. 325 
 
 been the sons of small shopkeepers. But is it a crime in them, 
 or in their parents, if their talents have lifted them into such 
 rank or renown as the haughtiest duke might envy ? England 
 were not England if a man must rest where his father began." 
 
 " Good ! " said, or rather grunted an approving voice, but 
 neither Mrs Avenel nor the Parson heard it. 
 
 " All very fine," said Mrs Avenel, bluntly. " But to send a boy 
 like that to the university where's the money to come from ?" 
 
 " My dear Mrs Avenel," said the Parson, coaxingly, " the cost 
 need not be great at a small college at Cambridge ; and if you 
 will pay half the expense, I will pay the other half. I have 
 no children of my own, and can afford it." 
 
 " That's very handsome in you, sir," said Mrs Avenel, some- 
 what touched, yet still not graciously. " But the money is not 
 the only point." 
 
 " Once at Cambridge," continued Mr Dale, speaking rapidly, 
 " at Cambridge, where the studies are mathematical that is, of 
 a nature for which he has shown so great an aptitude and I 
 have no doubt he will distinguish himself; if he does, he will 
 obtain, on leaving, what is called a fellowship that is, a colle- 
 giate dignity accompanied by an income on which he could 
 maintain himself until he made his way in life. Come, Mrs 
 Avenel, you are well off; you have no relations nearer to you in 
 want of your aid. Your son, I hear, has been very fortunate." 
 
 " Sir," said Mrs Avenel, interrupting the Parson, " it is not 
 because my son Richard is an honour to us, and is a good son, 
 and has made his fortin, that we are to rob him of what wo 
 have to leave, and give it to a boy whom we know nothing 
 about, and who, in spite of what you say, can't bring upon us 
 any credit at all." 
 
 " Why ? I don't see that." 
 
 " Why !" exclaimed Mrs Avenel, fiercely" why ! you know 
 why. Xo, I don't want him to rise in life : I don't want folks 
 to be speiring and asking about him. I think it is a very 
 wicked thing to have put fine notions in his head, and I am 
 sure my daughter Fairfield could not have done it herself. And 
 now, to ask me to rob Richard, and bring out a great boy 
 who's been a gardener or ploughman, or such like to disgrace
 
 326 MY NOVEL. 
 
 a gentleman who keeps his carriage, as my son Richard does 
 I would have you to know, sir. No ! I won't do it, and there's 
 an end of the matter." 
 
 During the last two or three minutes, and just before that 
 approving " good " had responded to the Parson's popular senti- 
 ment, a door communicating with an inner room had been 
 gently opened, and stood ajar ; but this incident neither party 
 had even noticed. But now the door was thrown boldly open, 
 and the traveller whom the Parson had met at the inn walked 
 up to Mr Dale, and said, " No ! that's not the end of the matter. 
 You say the boy's a 'cute clever lad 1 " 
 
 " Richard, have you been listening ? " exclaimed Mrs Avenel. 
 
 " Well, I guess, yes the last few minutes." 
 
 " And what have you heard ? " 
 
 "Why, that this reverend gentleman thinks so highly of my 
 sister Fairfield's boy that he offers to pay half of his keep at 
 college. Sir, I'm very much obliged to you, and there's my 
 hand, if you'll take it." 
 
 The Parson jumped up, overjoyed, and with a triumphant glance 
 towards Mrs Avenel, shook hands heartily with Mr Richard. 
 
 " Now," said the latter, "just put on your hat, sir, and take a 
 stroll with me, and we'll discuss the thing business-like. Wo- 
 men don't understand business : never talk to women on busi- 
 ness." 
 
 With these words, Mr Richard drew out a cigar-case, selected a 
 cigar, which he applied to the candle, and walked into the hall. 
 
 Mrs Avenel caught hold of the Parson. " Sir, you'll be on 
 your guard with Richard. Remember your promise." 
 
 " He does not know all, then 1 " 
 
 " He ? No ! And you see he did not overhear more than 
 what he says. I'm sure you're a gentleman, and won't go 
 against your word." 
 
 " My word was conditional ; but I will promise you never to 
 break the silence, without more reason than I think there is 
 here for it. Indeed, Mr Richard Avenel seems to save all neces- 
 sity for that." 
 
 " Are you coming, sir 1 " cried Richard, as he opened the 
 street door.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE Parson joined Mr Richard Avenel on the road. It was a 
 fine night, and the moon clear and shining. 
 
 "So, then," said Mr Richard thoughtfully, " poor Jane, who 
 was always the drudge of the family, has contrived to bring up 
 her son well ; and the boy is really what you say, eh ? could 
 make a figure at college ? " 
 
 "I am sure of it," said the Parson, hooking himself on to 
 the arm which -Mr Avenel proffered. 
 
 "I should like to see him," said Richard. "Has he any 
 manner ? Is he genteel ? or a mere country lout ? " 
 
 " Indeed, he speaks with so much propriety, and has so much 
 modest dignity about him, that there's many a rich gentleman 
 who would be proud of such a son." 
 
 " It is odd," observed Richard, " what difference there is in 
 families. There's Jane, now who can't read nor write, and 
 was just fit to be a workman's wife had not a thought above 
 her station ; and when I think of my poor sister Nora yon 
 would not believe it, sir, but she was the most elegant creature 
 in the world yes, even as a child, (she was but a child when 
 I went off to America.) And often, as I was getting on in life, 
 often I used to say to myself, ' My little Nora shall be a lady 
 after all.' Poor thing but she died young." 
 
 Richard's voice grew husky. 
 
 The Parson kindly pressed the arm on which he leaned, and 
 said, after a pause 
 
 " Nothing refines us like education, sir. I believe your sister 
 Nora had received much instruction, and had the talents to 
 profit by it : it is the same with your nephew."
 
 328 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 " I'll see him," said Richard, stamping his foot firmly on the 
 ground, " and if I like him, I'll be as good as a father to him. 
 Look you, Mr what's your name, sir 1 " 
 
 " Dale." 
 
 "Mr Dale, look you, I'm a single man. Perhaps I may 
 marry some day ; perhaps I shan't. I'm not going to throw 
 myself away. If I can get a lady of quality, why but that's 
 neither here nor there ; meanwhile, I should be glad of a 
 nephew whom I need not be ashamed of. You see, sir, I am 
 a new man, the builder of my own fortunes ; and though I 
 have picked up a little education I don't well know how 
 as I scrambled on, still, now I come back to the old country, 
 I'm well aware that I am not exactly a match for those d d 
 aristocrats ; don't show so well in a drawing-room as I could 
 wish. I could be a Parliament man if I liked, but I might 
 make a goose of myself; so, all things considered, if I can get 
 a sort of junior partner to do the polite work, and show off the 
 goods, I think the house of Avenel & Co. might become a 
 pretty considerable honour to the Britishers. You understand 
 me, sir ? " 
 
 " Oh, very well," answered Mr Dale smiling, though rather 
 gravely. 
 
 "Now," continued the New Man, "I'm not ashamed to have 
 risen in life by my own merits ; and I don't disguise what I've 
 been. And, when I'm in my own grand house, I'm fond of 
 saying, ' I landed at New York with .10 in my purse, and here 
 I am ! ' But it would not do to have the old folks with me. 
 People take you with all your faults, if you're rich ; but they 
 won't swallow your family into the bargain. So if I don't 
 have at my house my own father and mother, whom I love 
 dearly, and should like to see sitting at table, with my servants 
 behind their chairs, I could still less have sister Jane. I recol- 
 lect her very well, and she can't have got genteeler as she's 
 grown older. Therefore I beg you'll not set her on coming 
 after me ; it would not do by any manner of means. Don't 
 say a word about me to her. But send the boy down here to 
 his grandfather, and I'll see him quietly, you understand." 
 
 " Yes, but it Avill be hard to separate her from the boy."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 329 
 
 "Stuff! all boys are separated from 'their parents when they 
 go into the world. So that's settled. Now, just tell me. I 
 know the old folks always snubbed Jane that is, mother did. 
 My poor dear father never snubbed any of us. Perhaps mother 
 has not behaved altogether well to Jane. But we must not 
 blame her for that ; you see this is how it happened. There 
 were a good many of us, while father and mother kept shop in 
 the High Street, so we were all to be provided for anyhow ; 
 and Jane, being very useful and handy at work, got a place 
 when she was a little girl, and had no time for learning. After- 
 wards my father made a lucky hit, in getting my Lord Lans- 
 mere's custom after an election, in which he did a great deal 
 for the Blues, (for he was a famous electioneerer, my poor 
 father.) My Lady stood godmother to Nora ; and then all my 
 brothers, and two of my sisters, died off, and father retired from 
 business ; and when he took Jane from service, she was so 
 common-like that mother could not help contrasting her with 
 Nora. You see Jane was their child when they were poor 
 little shop people, with their heads scarce above water ; and 
 Nora was their child when they were well off, and had retired 
 from trade, and lived genteel : so that makes a great difference. 
 And mother did not quite look on her as on her own child. But 
 it was Jane's own fault ; for mother would have made it up 
 with her if she had married the son of our neighbour the great 
 linendraper, as she might have done ; but she would take 
 Mark Fairfield, a common carpenter. Parents like best those 
 of their children who succeed best in life. Natural. "Why, 
 they did not care for me till I came back the man I am. But 
 to return to Jane : I'm afraid they've neglected her. How is 
 she off?" 
 
 " She earns her livelihood, and is poor, but contented." 
 
 "Ah, just be good enough to give her this," (and Richard 
 took a bank-note of =50 from his pocket-book.) " You can say 
 the old folks sent it to her ; or that it is a present from Dick, 
 without telling her he has come back from America." 
 
 "My dear sir," said the Parson, "I am more and more 
 thankful to have made your acquaintance. This is a very 
 liberal gift of yours ; but your best plan will be to send it
 
 330 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 through your mother. For, though I don't want to betray 
 any confidence you place in me, I should not know what to 
 answer if Mrs Fairfield began to question me about her brother. 
 I never had but one secret to keep, and I hope I shall never 
 have another. A secret is very like a lie ! " 
 
 " You had a secret, then ! " said Richard, as he took back the 
 bank-note. He had learned, perhaps in America, to be a very 
 inquisitive man. He added point-blank, " Pray what was it ?" 
 
 " Why, what it would not be if I told you," said the Parson, 
 with a forced laugh " a secret ! " 
 
 " Well, I guess we're in a land of liberty. Do as you like. 
 Now, I daresay you think me a very odd fellow to come out of 
 my shell to you in this off-hand way. But I liked the look of 
 you, even when we were at the inn together. And just now I 
 was uncommonly pleased to find that, though you are a parson, 
 you don't want to keep a man's nose down to a shop-board, if 
 he has anything in him. You're not one of the aristocrats " 
 
 " Indeed," said the Parson with imprudent warmth, " it is* 
 not the character of the aristocracy of this country to keep 
 people down. They make way amongst themselves for any 
 man, whatever his birth, who has the talent and energy to 
 aspire to their level. That's the especial boast of the British 
 constitution, sir ! " 
 
 " Oh, you think so, do you !" said Mr Richard, looking sourly 
 at the Parson. " I daresay those are the opinions in which you 
 have brought up the lad. Just keep him yourself, and let the 
 aristocracy provide for him ! " 
 
 The Parson's generous and patriotic warmth evaporated at 
 once, at this sudden inlet of cold air into the conversation. He 
 perceived that he had made a terrible blunder ; and, as it was 
 not his business at that moment to vindicate the British con- 
 stitution, but to serve Leonard Fairfield, he abandoned the 
 cause of the aristocracy with the most poltroon and scandalous 
 abruptness. Catching at the arm which Mr Avenel had with- 
 drawn from him, he exclaimed 
 
 "Indeed, sir, your are mistaken ; I have never attempted to 
 influence your nephew's political opinions. On the contrary, 
 if, at his age, he can be said to have formed any opinions, I am
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 331 
 
 greatly afraid that is, I think his opinions are by no means 
 sound that is, constitutional. I mean, I mean ' ' And the 
 poor Parson, anxious to select a word that would not offend his 
 listener, stopped short in lamentable confusion of idea. 
 
 Mr Avenel enjoyed his distress for a moment, with a satur- 
 nine smile, and then said 
 
 " Well, I calculate he's a Radical. Natural enough, if he has 
 not got a sixpence to lose all come right by and by. I'm not 
 a Radical at least not a Destructive much too clever a man 
 for that, I hope. But I wish to see things very different from 
 what they are. Don't fancy that I want the common people, 
 who've got nothing, to pretend to dictate to their betters, 
 because I hate to see a parcel of fellows, who are called lords 
 and squires, trying to rule the roast. I think, sir, that it is men 
 like me who ought to be at the top of the tree ! and that's the 
 long and the short of it. "What do you say 1 " 
 
 "I've not the least objection," said the crestfallen Parson 
 basely. But, to do him justice, I must add that he did not the 
 least know what he was saying !
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 UNCONSCIOUS of the change in his fate which the diplomacy 
 of the Parson sought to effect, Leonard Fairfield was enjoying 
 the first virgin sweetness of fame ; for the principal town in 
 his neighbourhood had followed the then growing fashion of 
 the age, and set up a Mechanics' Institute ; and some worthy 
 persons interested in the formation of that provincial Athe- 
 naeum had offered a prize for the best Essay on the Diffusion of 
 Knowledge, a very trite subject, on which persons seem to 
 think they can never say too much, and on which there is, 
 nevertheless, a great deal yet to be said. This prize Leonard 
 Fairfield had recently won. His Essay had been publicly com- 
 plimented by a full meeting of the Institute ; it had been 
 printed at the expense of the Society, and had been rewarded 
 by a silver medal delineative of Apollo crowning Merit, (poor 
 Merit had not a rag to his back ; but Merit, left only to the 
 care of Apollo, never is too good a customer to the tailor !) And 
 the County Gazette had declared that Britain had produced 
 another prodigy in the person of Dr Riccabocca's self-educated 
 gardener. 
 
 Attention was now directed to Leonard's mechanical contri- 
 vances. The Squire, ever eagerly bent on improvements, had 
 brought an engineer to inspect the lad's system of irrigation, 
 and the engineer had been greatly struck by the simple means 
 by which a very considerable technical difficulty had been over- 
 come. The neighbouring farmers now called Leonard "Mr 
 Fairfield," and invited him, on equal terms, to their houses. 
 Mr Stirn had met him on the high-road, touched his hat, and 
 hoped that " he bore no malice." All this, I say, was the first
 
 MY NOVEL. 333 
 
 sweetness of fame ; and if Leonard Fairfield comes to be a great 
 man, he will never find such sweets in the after fruit. It was 
 this success which had determined the Parson on the step which 
 he had just taken, and which he had long before anxiously 
 meditated. For, during the last year or so, he had renewed his 
 old intimacy with the widow and the boy ; and he had noticed, 
 with great hope and great fear, the rapid growth of an intellect, 
 which now stood out from the lowly circumstances that sur- 
 rounded it in bold and unharmonising relief. 
 
 It was the evening after his return home that the Parson 
 strolled up to the Casino. He put Leonard Fairfield's Prize 
 Essay in his pocket. For he felt that he could not let the young 
 man go forth into the world without a preparatory lecture, and 
 he intended to scourge poor Merit with the very laurel wreath 
 which it had received from Apollo. But in this he wanted 
 Riccabocca's assistance ; or rather he feared that, if he did not 
 get the Philosopher on his side, the Philosopher might undo all 
 the work of the Parson.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A SWEET sound came through the orange boughs, and floated 
 to the ears of the Parson, as he wound slowly up the gentle 
 ascent so sweet, so silvery, he paused in delight unaware, 
 wretched man ! that he was thereby conniving at Papistical 
 errors. Soft it came, and sweet ; softer and sweeter " Ave 
 Maria!" Violante was chanting the evening hymn to the 
 Virgin Mother. The Parson at last distinguished the sense of 
 the words, and shook his head with the pious shake of an ortho- 
 dox Protestant. He broke from the spell resolutely, and walked 
 on with a sturdy step. Gaining the terrace, he found the little 
 family seated under an awning. Mrs Riccabocca knitting ; the 
 Signore with his arms folded on his breast : the book he had 
 been reading a few moments before had fallen on the ground, 
 and his dark eyes were soft and dreamy. Violante had finished 
 her hymn, and seated herself on the ground between the two, 
 pillowing her head on her step-mother's lap, but with her hand 
 resting on her father's knee, and her gaze fixed fondly on his 
 face. 
 
 " Good evening," said Mr Dale. Violante stole up to him, 
 and. pulling him so as to bring his ear nearer to her lip, whis- 
 pered, "Talk to papa, do and cheerfully; he is sad." 
 
 She escaped from him as she said this, and appeared to busy 
 herself with watering the flowers arranged on stands round the 
 awning. But she kept her swimming lustrous eyes wisfully on 
 her father. 
 
 "How fares it with you, my dear friend 1 ?" said the Parson 
 kindly, as he rested his hand on the Italian's shoulder. " You 
 must not let him get out of spirits, Mrs Riccabocca."
 
 MY NOVEL. 335 
 
 "I am very ungrateful to her if I ever am so," said the poor 
 Italian, with all his natural gallantry. Many a good wife, Avho 
 thinks it is a reproach to her if her husband is ever 'out of 
 spirits,' might have turned peevishly from that speech, more 
 elegant than sincere, and so have made bad worse. But Mrs 
 Riccabocca took her husband's proffered hand affectionately, 
 and said with great naivete 
 
 " You see I am so stupid, Mr Dale ; I never knew I was so 
 stupid till I married. But I am very glad you are come. You 
 can get on some learned subject together, and then he will not 
 miss so much his 
 
 " His what ?" asked Riccabocca inquisitively. 
 
 " His country. Do you think that I cannot sometimes read 
 your thoughts 1" 
 
 "Very often. But you did not read them just then. The 
 tongue touches where the tooth aches, but the best dentist can- 
 not guess at the tooth unless one open one's mouth. Basta ! 
 Can we offer you some wine of our own making, Mr Dale ? it 
 is pure." 
 
 " I'd rather have some tea," quoth the Parson hastily. 
 
 Mrs Riccabocca, too pleased to be in her natural element of 
 domestic use, hurried into the house to prepare our national 
 beverage. And the Parson, sliding into her chair, said 
 
 " But you are dejected, then ? Fie ! If there's a virtue in the 
 world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness." 
 
 " I don't dispute it," said Riccabocca, with a heavy sigh. 
 " But though it is said by some Greek, who, I think, is quoted 
 by your favourite Seneca, that a wise man carries his country 
 with him at the soles of his feet, he can't carry also the sun- 
 shine over his head." 
 
 " I tell you what it is," said the Parson bluntly, " you would 
 have a much keener sense of happiness if you had much less 
 esteem for philosophy." 
 
 " Cospetto!" said the Doctor, rousing himself. "Just explain, 
 will you 1 " 
 
 " Does not the search after wisdom induce desires not satisfied 
 in this small circle to which your life is confined ? It is not so 
 much your country for which you yearn, as it is for space to
 
 336 JJY NOVEL; OK, 
 
 your intellect, employment for your thoughts, career for your 
 aspirations." 
 
 " You have guessed at the tooth which aches," said Riccabocca 
 with admiration. 
 
 " Easy to do that," answered the Parson. " Our wisdom teeth 
 come last, and give us the most pain. And if you would just 
 starve the mind a little, and nourish the heart more, you would 
 be less of a philosopher, and more of a " The Parson had the 
 word "Christian" at the tip of his tongue: he suppressed a 
 word that, so spoken, would have been exceedingly irritating, 
 and substituted, with inelegant antithesis, " and more of a 
 happy man ! " 
 
 " I do all I can with my heart," quoth the Doctor. 
 
 " Not you ! For a man with such a heart as yours should 
 never feel the want of the sunshine. My friend, we live in an 
 age of over mental cultivation. We neglect too much the 
 simple healthful outer life, in which there is so much positive 
 joy. In turning to the world within us, we grow blind to this 
 beautiful world without : in studying ourselves as men, we 
 almost forget to look up to heaven, and warm to the smile of 
 God." 
 
 The philosopher mechanically shrugged his shoulders, as he 
 always did when another man moralised especially if the 
 moraliser were a priest ; but there was no irony in his smile, 
 as he answered thoughtfully 
 
 " There is some truth in what you say. I own that we live 
 too much as if we were all brain. Knowledge has its penalties 
 and pains, as well as its prizes." 
 
 " That is just what I want you to say to Leonard." 
 
 " How have you settled the object of your journey ? " 
 
 " I will tell you as we walk down to him after tea. At pre- 
 sent, I am rather too much occupied with you." 
 
 " Me 1 The tree is formed try only to bend the young 
 twig ! " 
 
 " Trees are trees, and twigs twigs," said the Parson dogmati- 
 cally ; " but man is always growing till he falls into the grave. 
 I think I have heard you say that you once had a narrow 
 escape of a prison ? "
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 337 
 
 " Very narrow." 
 
 " Just suppose that you were now in that prison, and that a 
 fairy conjured up the prospect of this quiet home in a safe land ; 
 that you saw the orange trees in flower, felt the evening breeze 
 on your cheek ; beheld your child gay or sad, as you smiled or 
 knit your brow ; that within this phantom home was a woman, 
 not, indeed, all your young romance might have dreamed of, 
 but faithful and true, every beat of her heart all your own 
 would you not cry from the depth of the dungeon, 1 
 fairy ! such a change were a paradise.' Ungrateful man ! you 
 want interchange for your mind, and your heart should suffice 
 for all ! " 
 
 Biccabocca was touched and silent. 
 
 " Come hither, my child," said Mr Dale, turning round to 
 Violante, who still stood among the flowers, out of hearing, but 
 with watchful eyes. " Come hither," he said, opening his arms. 
 
 Violante bounded forward, and nestled to the good man's 
 heart. 
 
 " Tell me, Violante, when you are alone in the fields or the 
 garden, and have left your father looking pleased and serene, 
 so that you have no care for him at your heart, tell me, Vio- 
 lante, though you are all alone, with the flowers below and the 
 birds singing overhead, do you feel that life itself is happiness 
 or sorrow ? " 
 
 " Happiness ! " answered Violante, half shutting her eyes, 
 and in a measured voice. 
 
 " Can you explain what kind of happiness it is 1 " 
 
 " Oh no, impossible ! and it is never the same. Sometimes 
 it is so still so still, and sometimes so joyous, that I long for 
 wings to fly up to God, and thank him ! " 
 
 " friend," said the Parson, " this is the true sympathy 
 between life and nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we 
 take more care to preserve the health and innocence of a child. 
 "We are told that we must become as children to enter into 
 the kingdom of heaven ; methinks we should also become as 
 children to know what delight there is in our heritage of 
 earth ! " 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 TUB maid-servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the 
 table under the awning, and, with the English luxury of tea, 
 there were other drinks as cheap and as grateful on summer 
 evenings drinks which Jackeymo had retained and taught 
 from the customs of the south unebriate liquors, pressed from 
 cooling fruits, sweetened with honey, and deliciously iced : ice 
 should cost nothing in a country in which one is frozen up half 
 the year ! And Jackeymo, too, had added to our good, solid, 
 heavy English bread, preparations of wheat much lighter, and 
 more propitious to digestion with those crisp grissins, which 
 seem to enjoy being eaten, they make so pleasant a noise be- 
 tween one's teeth. 
 
 The Parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the 
 Riccaboccas. There was something of elegance and grace, in 
 that homely meal, at the poor exile's table, which pleased the 
 eye as well as taste. And the very utensils, plain Wedgewood 
 though they were, had a classical simplicity, which made Mrs 
 Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs Dale's best Worcester china, 
 look tawdry and barbarous in comparison. For it was Flax- 
 man who gave designs to Wedgewood, and the most truly 
 refined of all our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look 
 to the mere material) is in the reach of the most thrifty. 
 
 The little banquet was at first rather a silent one ; but Ricca- 
 bocca threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then 
 poor Mrs Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the. grissins ; and Vio- 
 lante, forgetting all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks 
 on the Parson, stealing away his cup of warm tea when his 
 head was turned, and substituting iced cherry juice. Then the
 
 MY NOVEL. 339 
 
 Parson got up and ran after Violante, making angry faces, and 
 Violante dodged beautifully, till the Parson, fairly tired out, 
 was too glad to cry " Peace," and comeback to the cherry juice. 
 Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of the dis- 
 tant church clock, and Mr Dale started up and cried, " But we 
 shall be too late for Leonard. Come, naughty little girl, get 
 your father his hat." 
 
 " And umbrella !" said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloud- 
 less moonlit sky. 
 
 " Umbrella against the stars ? " asked the Parson laughing. 
 
 "The stars are no friends of mine," said Riccabocca, "and 
 one never knows what may happen ! " 
 
 The Philosopher and the Parson walked on amicably. 
 
 " You have done me good," said Riccabocca, " but I hope I 
 am not always so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to 
 suspect. The evenings will sometimes appear long, and dull 
 too, to a man \vhose thoughts on the past are almost his sole 
 companions." 
 
 " Sole companions 1 your child 1 " 
 
 " She is so young." 
 
 " Your wife ? " 
 
 " She is so ," the bland Italian appeared to check some dis- 
 paraging adjective, and mildly added, '' so good, I allow ; but 
 you must own that she and I cannot have much in common." 
 
 " I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your 
 interests, your happiness and your lives, in common. We men 
 are so exacting, we expect to find ideal nymphs and goddesses 
 when we condescend to marry a mortal ; and if we did, our 
 chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come up as 
 cold as a stone." 
 
 " Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. 
 " But I am not so sceptical as you are. I honour the fair sex 
 too much. There are a great many women who realise the 
 ideal of men, to be found in the poets ! " 
 
 " There's my dear Mrs Dale," resumed the Parson, not heed- 
 ing this sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice 
 into a whisper, and looking round cautiously " there's my dear
 
 340 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 Mrs Dale, the best woman in the world an angel I would say, 
 if the word was not profane ; BUT " 
 
 "What's the BUT ?" asked the Doctor, demurely. 
 
 " BUT I too might say that ' she and I have not much in com- 
 mon,' if I were only to compare mind to mind, and when my 
 poor Carry says something less profound than Madame de Stael 
 might have said, smile on her in contempt from the elevation 
 of logic and Latin. Yet when I remember all the little sorrows 
 and joys that we have shared together, and feel how solitary I 
 should have been without her oh, then, I am instantly aware 
 that there is between us in common something infinitely closer 
 and better than if the same course of study had given us the 
 same equality of ideas ; and I was forced to brace myself for a 
 combat of intellect, as I am when I fall in with a tiresome sage 
 like yourself. I don't pretend to say that Mrs Riccabocca is a 
 Mrs Dale," added the Parson, with lofty candour " there is but 
 one Mrs Dale in the world ; but still, you have drawn a prize 
 in the wheel matrimonial ! Think of Socrates, and yet he was 
 content even with his Xantippe ! " 
 
 Dr Riccabocca called to mind Mrs Dale's "little tempers," 
 and inly rejoiced that no second Mrs Dale had existed to fall to 
 his own lot. His placid Jemima gained by the contrast. Never- 
 theless, he had the ill grace to reply, " Socrates was a man 
 beyond all imitation ! Yet I believe that even he spent very 
 few of his evenings at home. But, revenons a nos moutons, we 
 are nearly at Mrs Fairfield's cottage, and you have not yet told 
 me what you have settled as to Leonard." 
 
 The Parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and 
 informed him, in very few words, that Leonard was to go to 
 Lansmere to see some relations there, who had the fortune, 
 if they had the will, to give full career to his abilities. 
 
 " The great thing, in the meanwhile," said the Parson, 
 "would be to enlighten him a little as to what he calls 
 enlightenment." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Riccabocca, diverted, and rubbing his hands, 
 " I shall listen with interest to what you say on that subject." 
 
 " And must aid me : for the first step in this modern march 
 of enlightenment is to leave the poor Parson behind ; and if
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 341 
 
 one calls out, ' Hold ! and look at the sign-post,' the traveller 
 hurries on the faster, saying to himself, ' Pooh, pooh ! that is 
 only the cry of the Parson ! ' But my gentleman, when he 
 doubts me, will listen to you you're a philosopher ! " 
 
 "We philosophers are of some use now and then, even to 
 Parsons ! " 
 
 " If you were not so conceited a set of deluded poor creatures 
 already, I would say ' Yes,' " replied the Parson generously ; 
 and, taking hold of Riccabocca's umbrella, he applied the brass 
 handle thereof, by way of a knocker, to the cottage door.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CERTAINLY it is a glorious fever that desire To Know ! And 
 there are few sights in the moral world more sublime than that 
 which many a garret might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the 
 roofs to our survey viz,, a brave, patient, earnest human being, 
 toiling his own arduous way, athwart the iron walls of penury, 
 into the magnificent Infinite, which is luminous with starry 
 souls. 
 
 So there sits Leonard the Self-taught in the little cottage 
 alone ; for, though scarcely past the hour in which great folks 
 dine, it is the hour in which small folks go to bed, and Mrs 
 Fairfield has retired to rest, while Leonard has settled to his 
 books. 
 
 He had placed his table under the lattice, and from time to 
 time he looked up and enjoyed the stillness of the moon. Well 
 for him that, in reparation for those hours stolen from night, 
 the hardy physical labour commenced with dawn. Students 
 would not be the sad dyspeptics they are, if they worked as 
 many hours in the open air as my scholar-peasant. But even 
 in him you could see that the mind had begun a little to affect 
 the frame. They who task the intellect must pay the penalty 
 with the body. Ill, believe me, would this work-day world 
 get on if all within it were hard-reading, studious animals, 
 playing the deuce with the ganglionic apparatus. 
 
 Leonard started as he heard the knock at the door ; the Par- 
 son's well-known voice reassured him. In some surprise he 
 admitted his visitors. 
 
 " We are come to talk to you, Leonard," said Mr Dale, " but 
 I fear we shall disturb Mrs Fairfield."
 
 MY NOVEL. 343 
 
 " Oh no, sir ! the door to the staircase is shut, and she sleeps 
 soundly." 
 
 " Why, this is a French book do you read French, Leonard ?" 
 asked Riccabocca. 
 
 " I have not found French difficult, sir. Once over the gram- 
 mar, and the language is so clear ; it seems the very language 
 for reasoning." 
 
 "True. Voltaire said justly, 'Whatever is obscure is not 
 French,' " observed Riccabocca. 
 
 "I wish I could say the same of English," muttered the 
 Parson. 
 
 "But what is this ? Latin too 1 Virgil 1 " 
 
 "Yes, sir. But I find I make little way there without a 
 master. I fear I must give it up," (and Leonard sighed.) 
 
 The two gentlemen exchanged looks and seated themselves. 
 The young peasant remained standing modestly, and in his air 
 and mien there was something that touched the heart while 
 it pleased the eye. He was no longer the timid boy who had 
 shrunk from the frown of Mr Stirn, nor that rude personation of 
 simple physical strength, roused to undisciplined bravery, which 
 had received its downfall on the village-green of Hazeldean. 
 The power of thought was on his brow somewhat unquiet 
 still, but mild and earnest. The features had attained that 
 refinement which is often attributed to race, but comes, in 
 truth, from elegance of idea, whether caught from our parents 
 or learned from books. In his rich brown hair, thrown care- 
 lessly from his temples, and curling almost to the shoulders 
 in his large blue eye, which was deepened to the hue of the 
 violet by the long dark lash in that firmness of lip, which 
 comes from the grapple with difficulties, there was considerable 
 beauty, but no longer the beauty of the mere peasant. And 
 yet there was still about the whole countenance that expression 
 of goodness and purity which a painter would give to his ideal 
 of the peasant lover such as Tasso would have placed in the 
 Aminta, or Fletcher have admitted to the side of the Faithful 
 Shepherdess. 
 
 "You must draw a chair here, and sit down between us, 
 Leonard," said the Parson.
 
 344 MY NOVEL. 
 
 " If any one," said Riccabocca, " has a right to sit, it is the 
 one who is to hear the sermon ; and if any one ought to stand, 
 it is the one who is about to preach it." 
 
 " Don't be frightened, Leonard," said the Parson graciously ; 
 " it is only a criticism, not a sermon ; " and he pulled out 
 Leonard's Prize Essay.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PARSON. " You take for your motto this aphorism* ' Know- 
 ledge is Power.' BACON." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Bacon make such an aphorism ! The last 
 man in the world to have said anything so pert and so shallow." 
 
 LEONARD, (astonished.) " Do you mean to say, sir, that that 
 aphorism is not in Lord Bacon 1 Why, I have seen it quoted 
 as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech 
 in favour of popular education." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Then that should be a warning to you never 
 again to fall into the error of the would-be scholar viz. quote 
 second-hand. Lord Bacon wrote a great book to show in what 
 knowledge is power, how that power should be defined, in what 
 it might be mistaken. And, pray, do you think so sensible a 
 man would ever have taken the trouble to write a great book 
 upon the subject, if he could have packed up all he had to say 
 into the portable dogma, ' Knowledge is power ? ' Pooh ! no 
 such aphorism is to be found in Bacon from the first page of 
 his writings to the last." 
 
 * This aphorism Las been probably assigned to Lord Bacon upon the mere 
 authority of the index to his works. It is the aphorism of the index-maker, 
 certainly not of the great master of inductive philosophy. Bacon has, it is 
 true, repeatedly dwelt on the power of knowledge, but with so many explana- 
 tions and distinctions, that nothing could be more unjust to his general mean- 
 ing than the attempt to cramp into a sentence what it costs him a volume to 
 define. Thus, if in one page he appears to confound knowledge with power, in 
 another he sets them in the strongest antithesis to each other; as follows 
 " Adeo, signanter Deus opera potentiae et sapiential discriminavit." But it 
 would be as unfair to Bacon to convert into an aphorism the sentence that 
 discriminates between knowledge and power as it is to convert into an aphorism 
 any sentence that confounds them.
 
 346 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 PARSON, (candidly.) " Well, I supposed it was Lord Bacon's, 
 and I am very glad to hear that the aphorism has not the 
 sanction of his authority." 
 
 LEONARD, (recovering his surprise.) " But why so 1 " 
 
 PARSON. " Because it either says a great deal too much, or 
 just nothing at all." 
 
 LEONARD. " At least, sir, it seems to me undeniable." 
 
 PARSON. " "Well, grant that it is undeniable. Does it prove 
 much in favour of knowledge ? Pray, is not ignorance power 
 too ? " 
 
 EICCABOCCA. "And a power that has had much the best 
 end of the quarter-staff." 
 
 PARSON. "All evil is power, and does its power make it 
 anything the better 1 " 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Fanaticism is power and a power that has 
 often swept away knowledge like a whirlwind. The Mussul- 
 man burns the library of a world and forces the Koran and 
 the sword from the schools of Byzantium to the colleges of 
 Hindostan." 
 
 PARSON, (bearing on with a new column of illustration.) 
 " Hunger is power. The barbarians, starved out of their forests 
 by their own swarming population, swept into Italy and anni- 
 hilated letters. The Romans, however degraded, had more 
 knowledge, at least, than the Gaul and the Visigoth." 
 
 RICCABOCCA, (bringing up the reserve.) "And even in 
 Greece, when Greek met Greek, the Athenians our masters 
 in all knowledge were beat by the Spartans, who held learn- 
 ing in contempt." 
 
 PARSON. " Wherefore you see, Leonard, that though know- 
 ledge be power, it is only one of the powers of the world ; that 
 there are others as strong, and often much stronger ; and the 
 assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so fre- 
 quent a repetition, or it means something that you would find 
 it very difficult to prove." 
 
 LEONARD. " One nation may be beaten by another that has 
 more physical strength and more military discipline ; which 
 last, permit me to say, sir, is a species of knowledge ; " 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Yes ; but your knowledge-mongers at pre-
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 347 
 
 sent call upon us to discard military discipline, and the 
 qualities that produce it, from the list of the useful arts. 
 And in your own essay, you insist upon knowledge as the 
 great disbander of armies, and the foe of all military discip- 
 line ! " 
 
 PARSON. " Let the young man proceed. Nations, you say, 
 may be beaten by other nations less learned and civilised 1 " 
 
 LEONARD." But knowledge elevates a class. I invite the 
 members of my own humble order to knowledge, because know- 
 ledge will lift them into power." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " What do you say to that, Mr Dale ? " 
 
 PARSON." " In the first place, is it true that the class which 
 has the most knowledge gets the most power ? I suppose phi- 
 losophers, like my friend Dr Riccabocca, think they have the 
 most knowledge. And pray, in what age have philosophers 
 governed the world ? Are they not always grumbling that 
 nobody attends to them ? " 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " Per Bacco, if people had attended to us, 
 it would have been a droll sort of world by this time ! " 
 
 PARSON. " Very likely. But, as a general rule, those have 
 the most knowledge who give themselves up to it the most. 
 Let us put out of the question philosophers, (who are often but 
 ingenious lunatics,) and speak only of erudite scholars, men of 
 letters and practical science, professors, tutors, and fellows of 
 colleges. I fancy any member of Parliament would tell us that 
 there is no class of men which has less actual influence on pub- 
 lic affairs. These scholars have more knowledge than manu- 
 facturers and shipowners, squires and farmers ; but, do you find 
 that they have more power over the Government and the votes 
 of the House of Commons ? " 
 
 " They ought to have," said Leonard. 
 
 " Ought they ? " said the Parson ; " we'll consider that later. 
 Meanwhile, you must not escape from your own proposition, 
 which is, that knowledge is power not that it ought to be. 
 Now, even granting your corollary, that the power of a class is 
 therefore proportioned to its knowledge pray, do you suppose 
 that while your order, the operatives, are instructing them- 
 selves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand still ?
 
 348 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality 
 of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and 
 aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very 
 natural law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the 
 more the increased competition will favour those most adapted 
 to excel by circumstance and nature. At this day, there is a 
 vast increase of knowledge spread over all society, compared 
 with that in the Middle Ages ; but is there not a still greater 
 distinction between the highly-educated gentleman and the 
 intelligent mechanic, than there was then between the baron 
 who could not sign his name and the churl at the plough ? 
 between the accomplished statesman, versed in all historical 
 lore, and the voter whose politics are formed by his newspaper, 
 than there was between the legislator who passed laws against 
 witches, and the burgher who defended his guild from some 
 feudal aggression 1 between the enlightened scholar and the 
 dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist 
 and the blockhead of yesterday 1 Peasant, voter, and dunce of 
 this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and 
 blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and 
 scholar of the present age are at least quite as favourable a con- 
 trast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of old. As the 
 progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever do. 
 Knowledge is like capital : the more there is in a country, the 
 greater the disparities in wealth between one man and another. 
 Therefore, if the working class increase in knowledge, so do the 
 other classes ; and if the working class rise peacefully and legi- 
 timately into power, it is not in proportion to their own know- 
 ledge alone, but rather according as it seems to the knowledge 
 of the other orders of the community, that such augmentation 
 of proportional power is just, and safe, and wise." 
 
 Placed between the Parson and the Philosopher, Leonard felt 
 that his position was not favourable to the display of Ms forces. 
 Insensibly he edged his chair somewhat away, and said mourn- 
 fully 
 
 " Then, according to you, the reign of knowledge would 
 be no great advance in the aggregate freedom and welfare of 
 man ? "
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 349 
 
 PARSON. "Let us define. By knowledge, do you mean 
 intellectual cultivation ? by the reign of knowledge, the 
 ascendancy of the most cultivated minds 1 " 
 
 LEONARD, (after a pause.) " Yes." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. "Oh, indiscreet young man, that is an un- 
 fortunate concession of yours ; for the ascendancy of the most 
 cultivated minds would be a terrible oligarchy ! " 
 
 PARSON. " Perfectly true ; and we now reply to your 
 assertion, that men who, by profession, have most learning 
 ought to have more influence than squires and merchants, 
 farmers and mechanics. Observe, all the knowledge that we 
 mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive and perfect, 
 but knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and pas- 
 sions of humanity. And suppose that you could establish, as 
 the sole regulators of affairs, those who had the most mental 
 cultivation, do you think they would not like that power well 
 enough to take all means which their superior intelligence could 
 devise to keep it to themselves ? The experiment was tried 
 of old by the priests of Egypt ; and in the empire of China, 
 at this day, the aristocracy are elected from those who have 
 most distinguished themselves in learned colleges. If I may 
 call myself a member of that body, 'the people,' I would 
 rather be an Englishman, however much displeased with dull 
 Ministers and blundering Parliaments, than I would be a 
 Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial 
 Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are 
 governed by many things besides what is commonly called 
 knowledge ; and the greatest practical ministers, who, like 
 Themistocles, have made small states great and the most 
 dominant races, who, like the Romans, have stretched their 
 rule from a village half over the universe have been dis- 
 tinguished by various qualities which a philosopher would 
 sneer at, and a knowledge-monger would call ' sad prejudices,' 
 and ' lamentable errors of reason.' " 
 
 LEONARD, (bitterly.) "Sir, you make use of knowledge 
 itself to argue against knowledge." 
 
 PARSON. " I make use of the little I know to prove the 
 foolishness of idolatry. I do not argue against knowledge ;
 
 350 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 I argue against knowledge-worship. For here, I see in your 
 Essay, that you are not contented with raising human know- 
 ledge into something like divine omnipotence, you must also 
 confound her with virtue. According to you, it is but to 
 diffuse the intelligence of the few among the many, and all 
 at which we preachers aim is accomplished. Nay, more ; for 
 whereas we humble preachers have never presumed to say, 
 with the heathen Stoic, that even virtue is sure of happiness 
 below, (though it be the best road to it,) you tell us plainly 
 that this knowledge of yours gives not only the virtue of a 
 saint, but bestows the bliss of a god. Before the steps of your 
 idol, the evils of life disappear. To hear you, one has but ( to 
 know,' in order to be exempt from the sins and sorrows of 
 the ignorant. Has it ever been so 1 Grant that you diffuse 
 amongst the many all the knowledge ever attained by the 
 few. Have the wise few been so unerring and so happy? 
 You supposed that your motto was accurately cited from 
 Bacon. What Avas Bacon himself 1 The poet tells you 
 
 ' The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind ! ' 
 
 Can you hope to bestow upon the vast mass of your order the 
 luminous intelligence of this ' Lord Chancellor of Nature 1 ' 
 Grant that you do so and what guarantee have you for the 
 virtue and the happiness which you assume as the concomi- 
 tants of the gift 1 See Bacon himself : what black ingratitude ! 
 what miserable self-seeking ! what truckling servility ! what 
 abject and pitiful spirit ! So far from intellectual knowledge, 
 in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is 
 by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation 
 combined with great moral corruption." (Aside to Ricca- 
 bocca " Push on, will you 1 " ) 
 
 RICCABOCCA. "A combination remarkable in eras as in 
 individuals. Petronius shows us a state of morals at which 
 a commonplace devil would blush, in the midst of a society 
 more intellectually cultivated than certainly was that which 
 produced Regulus or the Horatii. And the most learned eras 
 in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the vices 
 into the most ghastly refinement."
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 351 
 
 LEONARD, (rising in great agitation, and clasping his hands.) 
 " I cannot contend with you, who produce against informa- 
 tion so slender and crude as mine the stores which have been 
 locked from my reach. But I feel that there must be another 
 side to this shield a shield that you will not even allow to be 
 silver. And, oh, if you thus speak of knowledge, why have 
 you encouraged me to know 1 "
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 "Air, my son !" said the Parson, "if I wished to prove the 
 value of Religion, would you think I served it much, if I took 
 as my motto, 'Religion is power ?' "Would not that be a base 
 and sordid view of its advantages ] And would you not say, he 
 who regards religion as a power intends to abuse it as a priest- 
 craft?" 
 
 " Well put !" said Riccabocca. 
 
 " Wait a moment let me think ! Ah I see, sir ! " said 
 Leonard. 
 
 PARSON. " If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales 
 of the market ; if its objects be peaceful, do not seek to arm it 
 with the weapons of strife ; if it is to be the cement of society, 
 do not vaunt it as the triumph of class against class." 
 
 LEONARD, (ingenuously.) " You correct me, nobly, sir. 
 Knowledge is power, but not in the sense in which I have 
 interpreted the saying." 
 
 PARSON. " Knowledge is one of the powers in the moral 
 world, but one that, in its immediate result, is not always of 
 the most worldly advantage to the possessor. It is one of the 
 slowest, because one of the most durable, of agencies. It may 
 take a thousand years for a thought to come into power ; and 
 the thinker who originated it might have died in rags or in 
 chains." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. "Our Italian proverb saith that 'the teacher 
 is like the candle, which lights others in consuming itself.'" 
 
 PARSON. " Therefore he who has the true ambition of know- 
 ledge should entertain it for the power of his idea, not for the 
 power it may bestow on himself : it should be lodged in the
 
 MY NOVEL. 353 
 
 conscience, and, like the conscience, look for no certain reward 
 on this side the grave. And since knowledge is compatible 
 with good and with evil, would not it be better to say, ' Know- 
 ledge is a trust 1 ' " 
 
 " You are right, sir," said Leonard cheerfully ; " pray proceed." 
 
 PARSON. '' You ask me why we encourage you to KNOW. 
 First, because (as you say yourself in your Essay) knowledge, 
 irrespective of gain, is in itself a delight, and ought to be some- 
 thing far more. Like liberty, like religion, it may be abused ; 
 but I have no more right to say that the poor shall be ignorant, 
 than I have to say that the rich only shall be free, and 
 that the clergy alone shall learn the truths of redemption. 
 You truly observe in your treatise that knowledge opens to 
 us other excitements than those of the senses, and another 
 life than that of the moment. The difference between us is 
 this, that you forget that the same refinement which brings 
 us new pleasures exposes us to new pains the horny hand 
 of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine skin 
 of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the 
 sphere of the desires, opens to them also new temptations. 
 Vanity, the desire of applause, pride, the sense of superiority 
 gnawing discontent where that superiority is not recognised 
 morbid susceptibility, which comes with all new feelings the 
 underrating of simple pleasures apart from the intellectual the 
 chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for things 
 unattainable below all these are surely amongst the first 
 temptations that beset the entrance into knowledge." 
 
 Leonard shaded his face with his hand. 
 
 "Hence," continued the Parson benignantly "hence, so far 
 from considering that we do all that is needful to accomplish 
 ourselves as men, when we cultivate only the intellect, we 
 should remember that we thereby continually increase the 
 range of our desires, and therefore of our temptations ; and we 
 should endeavour, simultaneously, to cultivate both those affec- 
 tions of the heart which prove the ignorant to be God's children 
 no less than the wise, and those moral qualities which have 
 made men great and good when reading and writing were 
 
 VOL. I. z
 
 354 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 scarcely known : to wit, patience and fortitude under poverty 
 and distress ; humility and beneficence amidst grandeur and 
 wealth ; and, in counteraction to that egotism which all superi- 
 ority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire, Justice, the father of 
 all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity, which is their 
 loving mother. Thus accompanied, knowledge indeed becomes 
 the magnificent crown of humanity not the imperious despot, 
 but the checked and tempered sovereign of the soul." 
 
 The Parson paused, and Leonard, coming near him, timidly 
 took his hand, with a child's affectionate and grateful impulse. 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " And if, Leonard, you are not satisfied with 
 our Parson's excellent definitions, you have only to read what 
 Lord Bacon himself has said upon the true ends of knowledge, 
 to comprehend at once how angry the poor great man, whom 
 Mr Dale treats so harshly, would have been with those who 
 have stinted his elaborate distinctions and provident cautions 
 into that coxcombical little aphorism, and then misconstrued 
 all he designed to prove in favour of the commandment, and 
 authority of learning. For," added the sage, looking up as a 
 man does when he is tasking his memory, "I think it is thus 
 that, after saying the greatest error of all is the mistaking or 
 misplacing the end of knowledge, and denouncing the various 
 objects for which it is vulgarly sought I think it is thus that 
 Lord Bacon proceeds. . . . ' Knowledge is not a shop for 
 profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, 
 and the relief of men's estate.' " * 
 
 * " But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of 
 the last or farthest end of knowledge : for men have entered into a desire of 
 learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive 
 appetite ; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight ; some- 
 times for ornament and reputation ; and sometimes to enable them to victory 
 of wit and contradiction ; and most times for lucre and profession" [that is, 
 for most of those objects which are meant by the ordinary citers of the saying, 
 'Knowledge is power ;'] "and seldom sincerely to give a true account of these 
 gifts of reason to the benefit and use of men ; as if there were sought in know- 
 ledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace 
 for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect ; 
 or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or command- 
 ing ground for strife and contention ; or a shop for profit or sale and not a 
 rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men's estate." 
 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, Book I.
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 355 
 
 PARSON, (remorsefully.) "Are those Lord Bacon's words 1 I 
 am very sorry I spoke so uncharitably of his life. I must 
 examine it again. I may find excuses for it now that I could 
 not when I first formed my judgment. I was then a raw lad 
 at Oxford. But I see, Leonard, there is still something on your 
 mind." 
 
 LEONARD. " It is true, sir, I would but ask whether it is not 
 by knowledge that we arrive at the qualities and virtues you so 
 well describe, but which you seem to consider as coming to us 
 through channels apart from knowledge 1 " 
 
 PARSON. " If you mean by the word knowledge something 
 very different from what you express in your Essay and which 
 those contending for mental instruction, irrespective of religion 
 and ethics, appear also to convey by the word you are right ; 
 but, remember, we have already agreed that by the word 
 knowledge we mean culture purely intellectual." 
 
 LEONARD. " That is true we so understood it." 
 
 PARSON. "Thus, when this great Lord Bacon erred, you 
 may say that he erred from want of knowledge the knowledge 
 which moralists and preachers would convey. But Lord Bacon 
 had read all that moralists and preachers could say on such 
 matters ; and he certainly did not err from want of intellectual 
 cultivation. Let me here, my child, invite you to observe, that 
 He who knew most of our human hearts and our immortal 
 destinies, did not insist on this intellectual culture as essential 
 to the virtues that form our wellbeing here, and conduce to our 
 salvation hereafter. Had it been essential, the Allwise One 
 would not have selected humble fishermen for the teachers of 
 his doctrine, instead of culling his disciples from Roman por- 
 tico or Athenian academe. And this, which distinguishes so 
 remarkably the Gospel from the ethics of heathen philosophy, 
 wherein knowledge is declared to be necessary to virtue, is a 
 proof how slight was the heathen sage's insight into the nature 
 of mankind, when compared with the Saviour's ; for hard in- 
 deed would it be to men, whether high or low, rich or poor, if 
 science and learning, or contemplative philosophy, were the 
 sole avenues to peace and redemption ; since, in this state of 
 ordeal requiring active duties, very few in any age, whether
 
 356 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 they be high or low, rich or poor, ever are or can be devoted to 
 pursuits merely mental. Christ does not represent heaven as 
 a college for the learned. Therefore the rules of the Celestial 
 Legislator are rendered clear to the simplest understanding as 
 to the deepest." 
 
 RICCABOCCA. " And that which Plato and Zeno, Pythagoras 
 and Socrates, could not do, was done by men whose ignorance 
 would have been a by-word in the schools of the Greek. The 
 gods of the vulgar were dethroned ; the face of the world was 
 changed ! This thought may make us allow, indeed, that there 
 are agencies more powerful than mere knowledge, and ask, after 
 all, what is the mission which knowledge should achieve ? " 
 
 PARSON. " The Sacred Book tells us even that ; for after 
 establishing the truth that, for the multitude, knowledge is not 
 essential to happiness and good, it accords still to knowledge 
 its sublime part in the revelation prepared and announced. 
 When an instrument of more than ordinary intelligence was 
 required for a purpose divine when the Gospel, recorded by 
 the simple, was to be explained by the acute, enforced by the 
 energetic, carried home to the doubts of the Gentile the Su- 
 preme Will joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the learn- 
 ing and genius of St Paul not holier than the others calling 
 himself the least, yet labouring more abundantly than them 
 all making himself all things unto all men, so that some 
 might be saved. The ignorant may be saved no less surely 
 than the wise ; but here comes the wise man who helps to 
 save ! And how the fulness and animation of this grand 
 Presence, of this indomitable Energy, seem to vivify the toil, 
 and to speed the work ! ' In journeyings often, in perils of 
 waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, 
 in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the 
 wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils amongst false brethren.' 
 Behold, my son ! does not Heaven here seem to reveal the true 
 type of Knowledge a sleepless activity, a pervading agency, a 
 dauntless heroism, an all-supporting faith ? a power a power 
 indeed a power apart from the aggrandisement of self a 
 power that brings to him who owns and transmits it but 
 * weariness and painfulness ; in watchings often, in hunger and
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 357 
 
 thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness' but a power 
 distinct from the mere circumstance of the man, rushing from 
 him as rays from a sun ; borne through the air, and clothing 
 it with light piercing under earth, and calling forth the 
 harvest ! Worship not knowledge worship not the sun, 
 my child ! Let the sun but proclaim the Creator ; let the 
 knowledge but illumine the worship ! " 
 
 "The good man, overcome by his own earnestness, paused ; his 
 head drooped on the young student's breast, and all three were 
 long: silent.
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 WHATEVER ridicule may be thrown upon Mr Dale's disserta- 
 tions by the wit of the enlightened, they had a considerable, 
 and I think a beneficial, effect upon Leonard Fairfield an 
 effect which may perhaps create less surprise, when the reader 
 remembers that Leonard was unaccustomed to argument, and 
 still retained many of the prejudices natural to his rustic 
 breeding. Nay, he actually thought it possible that, as both 
 Eiccabocca and Mr Dale were more than double his age, and 
 had had opportunities not only of reading twice as many 
 books, but of gathering up experience in wider ranges of life 
 he actually, I say, -thought it possible that they might be better 
 acquainted with the properties and distinctions of knowledge 
 than himself. At all events, the Parson's words were so far 
 well-timed, that they produced in Leonard very much of that 
 state of mind which Mr Dale desired to effect, before commu- 
 nicating to him the startling intelligence that he was to visit 
 relations whom he had never seen, of whom he had heard 
 but little, and that it was at least possible that the result of 
 that visit might be to open to him greater facilities for in- 
 struction, and a higher degree in life. 
 
 Without some such preparation, I fear that Leonard would 
 have gone forth into the world with an exaggerated notion of 
 his own acquirements, and with a notion yet more exaggerated 
 as to the kind of power that such knowledge as he possessed would 
 obtain for itself. As it was, when Mr Dale broke to him the 
 news of the experimental journey before him, cautioning him 
 against being over sanguine, Leonard received the intelligence 
 with a serious meekness, and thoughts that were nobly solemn.
 
 MY NOVEL. 359 
 
 When the door closed on his visitors, he remained for some 
 moments motionless, and in deep meditation ; then he unclosed 
 the door, and stole forth. The night was already far advanced, 
 the heavens were luminous with all the host of stars. "I 
 think," said the student, referring, in later life, to that crisis in 
 his destiny " I think it was then, as I stood alone, yet sur- 
 rounded by worlds so numberless, that I first felt the distinc- 
 tion between mind and soul." 
 
 " Tell me," said Riccabocca, as he parted company with Mr 
 Dale, " whether you think we should have given to Frank 
 Hazeldean, on entering life, the same lecture on the limits and 
 ends of knowledge which we have bestowed on Leonard Fair- 
 field." 
 
 " My friend," quoth the Parson, with a touch of human con- 
 ceit, " I have ridden on horseback, and I know that some horses 
 should be guided by the bridle, and some should be urged by 
 the spur." 
 
 " Cospetto ! " said Riccabocca ; " you contrive to put every 
 experience of yours to some use even your journey on Mr 
 Hazeldean's pad. And I now see why, in this little world of 
 a village, you have picked up so general an acquaintance with 
 life." 
 
 " Did you ever read White's Natural History of Selborne ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Do so, and you will find that you need not go far to learri 
 the habits of birds, and know the difference between a swallow 
 and a swift. Learn the difference in a village, and you know 
 the difference wherever swallows and swifts skim the air." 
 
 "Swallows and swifts ! true ; but men " 
 
 " Are with us all the year round which is more than we 
 can say of swallows and swifts." 
 
 "Mr Dale," said Riccabocca, taking off his hat with great 
 formality, " if ever again I find myself in a dilemma, I will 
 come to you instead of to Machiavelli." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried the Parson, "if I could but have a calm hour's 
 talk with you on the errors of the Papal relig 
 
 Riccabocca was off like a shot.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE next day, Mr Dale had a long conversation with Mrs 
 Fairfield. At first, he found some difficulty in getting over her 
 pride, and inducing her to accept overtures from parents who 
 had so long slighted both Leonard and herself. And it would 
 have been in vain to have put before the good woman the 
 worldly advantages which such overtures implied. But when 
 Mr Dale said, almost sternly, '' Your parents are old, your 
 father infirm ; their least wish should be as binding to you as 
 their command," the Widow bowed her head, and said 
 
 " God bless them, sir, I was very sinful ' Honour your father 
 and mother.' I'm no scollard, but I know the Command- 
 ments. Let Lenny go. But he'll soon forget me, and mayhap 
 he'll learn to be ashamed of me." 
 
 " There I Avill trust him," said the Parson ; and he con- 
 trived easily to reassure and soothe her. 
 
 It was not till all this was settled that Mr Dale drew forth 
 an unsealed letter, which Mr Richard Avenel, taking his hint, 
 had given to him, as from Leonard's grandparents, and said 
 "This is for you, and it contains an enclosure of some 
 value." 
 
 " Will you read it, sir 1 As I said before, I'm no scollard." 
 " But Leonard is, and he will read it to you." 
 When Leonard returned home that evening, Mrs Fairfield 
 showed him the letter. It ran thus 
 
 " DEAR JANE, Mr Dale will tell you that we wish Leonard 
 to come to us. We are glad to hear you are well. We for- 
 ward, by Mr Dale, a bank-note for .50, which comes from
 
 MY NOVEL. 361 
 
 Richard, your brother. So no more at present from your 
 affectionate parents, 
 
 "JOHN AND MARGARET A YEN EL." 
 
 The letter was in a stiff female scrawl, and Leonard observed 
 that two or three mistakes in spelling had been corrected, 
 either in another pen or in a different hand. 
 
 " Dear brother Dick, how good in him ! " cried the widow. 
 "When I saw there was money, I thought it must be him. 
 How I should like to see Dick again. But I s'pose he's still in 
 Amerikay. Well, well, this will buy clothes for you." 
 
 " No ; you must keep it all, mother, and put it in the Sav- 
 ings Bank." 
 
 "I'm not quite so silly as that," cried Mrs Fairfield with 
 contempt ; and she put the fifty pounds into a cracked teapot. 
 
 "It must not stay there when I'm gone. You may be 
 robbed, mother." 
 
 " Dear me, dear me, that's true. What shall I do with it ? 
 what do I want with it, too 1 Dear me ! I wish they hadn't 
 sent it. I shan't sleep in peace. You must e'en put it in your 
 own pouch, and button it up tight, boy." 
 
 Lenny smiled, and took the note ; but he took it to Mr 
 Dale, and begged him to put it into the Savings Bank for his 
 mother. 
 
 The day following he went to take leave of his master, of 
 Jackeymo, of the fountain, the garden. But after he had gone 
 through the first of these adieus with Jackeymo who, poor 
 man, indulged in all the lively gesticulations of grief which 
 make half the eloquence of his countrymen, and then, abso- 
 lutely blubbering, hurried away Leonard himself was so 
 affected that he could not proceed at once to the house, but 
 stood beside the fountain, trying hard to keep back his tears. 
 
 " You, Leonard and you are going ! " said a soft voice ; and 
 the tears fell faster than ever, for he recognised the voice of 
 Violante. 
 
 " Do not cry," continued the child, with a kind of tender 
 gravity. " You are going, but papa says it would be selfish in 
 us to grieve, for it is for your good ; and we should be glad.
 
 362 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 But I am selfish, Leonard, and I do grieve. I shall miss you 
 sadly." 
 
 " You, young lady you miss me ! " 
 
 "Yes. But I do not cry, Leonard, for I envy you, and I 
 wish I were a boy : I wish I could do as you." 
 
 The girl clasped her hands, and reared her slight form, with 
 a kind of passionate dignity. 
 
 " Do as me, and part from all those you love ! " 
 
 " But to serve those you love. One day you will come 
 back to your mother's cottage, and say, ' I have conquered 
 fortune.' Oh that I could go forth and return, as you will. 
 But my father has no country, and his only child is a useless 
 girl." 
 
 As Violante spoke, Leonard had dried his tears : her emotion 
 distracted him from his own. 
 
 " Oh," continued Violante, again raising her head loftily, 
 " what it is to be a man ! A woman sighs ' I wish,' but man 
 should say ' I will.' " 
 
 Occasionally before, Leonard had noted fitful flashes of a na- 
 ture grand and heroic in the Italian child, especially of late 
 flashes the more remarkable from their contrast to a form most 
 exquisitely feminine, and to a sweetness of temper which made 
 even her pride gentle. But now it seemed as if the child spoke 
 with the command of a queen almost with the inspiration of 
 a Muse. A strange and new sense of courage entered within 
 him. 
 
 " May I remember these words ! " he murmured half audibly. 
 
 The girl turned and surveyed him with eyes brighter for their 
 moisture. She then extended her hand to him, with a quick 
 movement, and, as he bent over it, with a grace taught to him 
 by genuine emotion, she said " And if you do, then, girl and 
 child as I am, I shall think I have aided a brave heart in the 
 great strife for honour ! " 
 
 She lingered a moment, smiled as if to herself, and then, 
 gliding away, was lost amongst the trees. 
 
 After a long pause, in which Leonard recovered slowly from 
 the surprise and agitation into which Violante had thrown his 
 spirits previously excited as they were he went, murmuring
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 363 
 
 to himself, towards the house. But Riccabocca was from home. 
 Leonard turned mechanically to the terrace, and busied himself 
 with the flowers. But the dark eyes of Violante shone on his 
 thoughts, and her voice rang in his ear. 
 
 At length Riccabocca appeared on the road, attended by a 
 labourer, who carried something indistinct under his arm. 
 
 The Italian beckoned to Leonard to follow him into the par- 
 lour, and after conversing with him kindly, and at some length, 
 and packing up, as it were, a considerable provision of wisdom 
 in the portable shape of aphorisms and proverbs, the sage left 
 him alone for a few moments. Riccabocca then returned with 
 his wife, and bearing a small knapsack : 
 
 " It is not much we can do for you, Leonard, and money is 
 the worst gift in the world for a keepsake ; but my wife and I 
 have put our heads together to furnish you with a little outfit. 
 Giacomo, who was in our secret, assures us that the clothes will 
 fit ; and stole, I fancy, a coat of yours, to have the right measure. 
 Put them on when you go to your relations : it is astonishing 
 what a difference it makes in the ideas people form of us, accord- 
 ing as our coats are cut one way or another. I should not be 
 presentable in London thus ; and nothing is more true than 
 that a tailor is often the making of a man." 
 
 " The shirts, too, are very good holland," said Mrs Riccabocca, 
 about to open the knapsack. 
 
 " Never mind details, my dear," cried the wise man ; " shirts 
 are comprehended in the general principle of clothes. And, 
 Leonard, as a remembrance somewhat more personal, accept 
 this, which I have worn many a year when time was a thing 
 of importance to me, and nobler fates than mine hung on a 
 moment. We missed the moment, or abused it ; and here I 
 am, a waif on a foreign shore. Methinks I have done with 
 Time." 
 
 The exile, as he thus spoke, placed in Leonard's reluctant 
 hands a watch that would have delighted an antiquary, and 
 shocked a dandy. It was exceedingly thick, having an outer 
 case of enamel, and an inner one of gold. The hands and the 
 figures of the hours had originally been formed of brilliants ; 
 but the brilliants had long since vanished. Still, even thus
 
 364 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 bereft, the watch was much more in character with the giver 
 than the receiver, and was as little suited to Leonard as would 
 have been the red silk umbrella. 
 
 " It is old-fashioned," said Mrs Riccabocca ; " but it goes 
 better than any clock in the county. I really think it will last 
 to the end of the world." 
 
 " Carissima mia ! " cried the Doctor, " I thought I had con- 
 vinced you that the world is by no means come to its 
 last legs." 
 
 " Oh, I did not mean anything, Alphonso," said Mrs Ricca- 
 bocca, colouring. 
 
 " And that is all we do mean when we talk about that of 
 which we can know nothing," said the Doctor, less gallantly 
 than usual, for he resented that epithet of " old-fashioned," as 
 applied to the watch. 
 
 Leonard, we see, had been silent all this time ; he could not 
 speak literally and truly, he could not speak. How he got out 
 of his embarrassment, and how he got out of the room, he never 
 explained to my satisfaction. But, a few minutes afterwards, 
 he was seen Imrrying down the road very briskly. 
 
 Riccabocca and his wife stood at the window gazing after him. 
 
 " There is a depth in that boy's heart," said the sage, "which 
 might float an Argosy." 
 
 " Poor dear boy ! I think we have put everything into the 
 knapsack that he can possibly want," said good Mrs Riccabocca 
 musingly. 
 
 The DOCTOR, (continuing his soliloquy.) " They are strong, 
 but they are not immediately apparent." 
 
 MRS RICCABOCCA, (resuming hers.) " They are at the bottom 
 of the knapsack." 
 
 The DOCTOR. " They will stand long wear and tear." 
 
 MRS RICCABOCCA. " A year, at least, with proper care at the 
 wash." 
 
 The DOCTOR, (startled.) " Care at the wash ! What on earth 
 are you talking of, ma'am ? " 
 
 MRS RICCABOCCA, (mildly.) " The shirts, to be sure, my love ! 
 And you ? " 
 
 The DOCTOR, (with a heavy sigh.) " The feelings, ma'am ! "
 
 VAKIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 365 
 
 Then, after a pause, taking his wife's hand affectionately "But 
 you did quite right to think of the shirts : Mr Dale said very 
 truly " 
 
 MRS RICCABOCCA. " What?" 
 
 The DOCTOR. " That there was a great deal in common be- 
 tween us even when I think of feelings, and you but of 
 shirts ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Mr and Mrs Avenel sate within the parlour Mr Richard stood 
 on the hearth-rug, whistling Yankee Doodle. " The Parson 
 writes word that the lad will come to-day," said Richard, sud- 
 denly " let me 'See the letter ay, to-day. If he took the 
 
 coach as far as , he might walk the rest of the way in 
 
 two or three hours. He should be pretty nearly here. I have 
 a great mind to go and meet him : it will save his asking ques- 
 tions, and hearing about me. I can clear the town by the back 
 way, and get out at the high-road." 
 
 " You'll not know him from any one else," said Mrs Avenel. 
 
 " "Well, that is a good one ! Not know an Avenel ! We've 
 all the same cut of the jib have not we, father ? " 
 
 Poor John laughed heartily, till the tears rolled down his 
 cheeks. 
 
 " We were always a well-favoured fam'ly," said John, recom- 
 posing himself. " There was Luke, but he's gone ; and Harry, 
 but he's dead too ; and Dick, but he's in Amerikay no, he's 
 here ; and my darling Nora, but " 
 
 " Hush ! " interrupted Mrs Avenel ; " hush, John ! " 
 
 The old man stared at her, and then put his tremulous hand 
 to his brow. " And Nora's gone too ! " said he, in a voice of 
 profound woe. Both hands then fell on his knees, and his head 
 drooped on his breast. 
 
 Mrs Avenel tose, kissed her husband on the forehead, and 
 walked away to the window. Richard took up his hat, and 
 brushed the nap carefully with his handkerchief; but his lips 
 quivered. 
 
 " I'm going," said he abruptly. " Now mind, mother, not a
 
 MY NOVEL. 367 
 
 word about uncle Richard yet ; we must first see how we like 
 each other, and (in a whisper) you'll try and get that into my 
 poor father's head 1 " 
 
 "Ay, Richard," said Mrs Avenel, quietly. Richard put on 
 his hat, and went out by the back way. He stole along the 
 fields that skirted the town, and had only once to cross the 
 street before he got into the high-road. 
 
 He walked on till he came to the first milestone. There he 
 seated himself, lighted his cigar, and awaited his nephew. It 
 Avas now nearly the hour of sunset, and the road before him lay 
 westward. Richard from time to time looked along the road, 
 shading his eyes with his hand ; and at length, just as the disc 
 of the sun had half sunk down the horizon, a solitary figure 
 came up the way. It emerged suddenly from the turn in the 
 road : the reddening beams coloured all the atmosphere around 
 it. Solitary and silent it came as from a Land of Light.
 
 CHAPTEK XXIV. 
 
 " You have been walking far, young man 1 " said Richard 
 Avenel. "* 
 
 " No, sir, not very. That is Lansmere before me, is it not 1 " 
 
 " Yes, it is Lansmere ; you stop there, I guess ? " 
 
 Leonard made a sign in the affirmative, and walked on a few 
 paces ; then, seeing the stranger who had accosted him still by 
 his side, he said 
 
 " If you know the town, sir, perhaps you will have the good- 
 ness to tell me whereabouts Mr Avenel lives ? " 
 
 " I can put you into a straight cut across the fields, that will 
 bring you just behind the house." 
 
 " You are very kind, but it will take you out of your way." 
 
 " No, it is in my way. So you are going to Mr Avenel's 1 
 a good old gentleman." 
 
 " I've always heard so ; and Mrs Avenel " 
 
 " A particular superior woman," said Richard. " Any one 
 else to ask after 1 I know the family well." 
 
 " No, thank you, sir." 
 
 " They have a son, I believe ; but he's in America, is not he ?" 
 
 " I believe he is, sir." 
 
 " I see the Parson has kept faith with me," muttered Richard. 
 
 " If you can tell me anything about him" said Leonard, " I 
 should be very glad." 
 
 " Why so, young man 1 perhaps he is hanged by this time." 
 
 " Hanged ! " 
 
 " He was a sad dog, I am told." 
 
 " Then you have been told very falsely," said Leonard, 
 colouring:.
 
 MY NOVEL. 369 
 
 " A sad wild dog his parents were so glad when he cut and 
 run went off to the States. They say he made money ; but, 
 if so, he neglected his relations shamefully." 
 
 <: Sir," said Leonard, " you are wholly misinformed. He has 
 been most generous to a relation who had little claim on him ; 
 and I never heard his name mentioned but with love and 
 praise." 
 
 Richard instantly fell to whistling Yankee Doodle, and 
 walked on several paces without saying a word. He then 
 made a slight apology for his impertinence hoped no offence 
 and, with his usual bold but astute style of talk, contrived to 
 bring out something of his companion's mind. He was evi- 
 dently struck with the clearness and propriety with which 
 Leonard expressed himself, raised his eyebrows in surprise 
 more than once, and looked him full in the face with an atten- 
 tive and pleased survey. Leonard had put on the new clothes 
 with which Riccabocca and wife had provided him. They were 
 those appropriate to a young country tradesman in good cir- 
 cumstances ; but as Leonard did not think about the clothes, 
 so he had unconsciously something of the ease of the gentleman. 
 They now came into the fields. Leonard paused before a slip 
 of ground sown with rye. 
 
 " I should have thought grass land would have answered 
 better, so near a town," said he. 
 
 " No doubt it would," answered Richard ; " but they are 
 sadly behind-hand in these parts. You see that great park 
 yonder, on the other side of the road 1 That would answer 
 better for rye than grass ; but then, what would become of my 
 Lord's deer ? The aristocracy eat us up, young man." 
 
 " But the aristocracy did not sow this piece with rye, I sup- 
 pose?" said Leonard, smiling. 
 " And what do you conclude from that ? " 
 " Let every man look to his own ground," said Leonard, with 
 a cleverness of repartee caught from Doctor Riccabocca. 
 
 "'Cute lad you are," said Richard ; "and we'll talk more of 
 these matters another time." 
 
 They now came within sight of Mr Avenel's house. 
 VOL. i. - A
 
 370 MY NOVEL. 
 
 " You can get through the gap in the hedge, by the old pol- 
 lard oak," said Richard ; " and come round by the front of the 
 house. "Why, you're not afraid are you 1 " 
 
 " I am a stranger." 
 
 " Shall I introduce you 1 I told you that I knew the old 
 couple." 
 
 " Oh no, sir ! I would rather meet them alone." 
 
 " Go ; and wait a bit harkye, young man, Mrs Avenel is a 
 cold-mannered woman ; but don't be abashed by that." 
 
 Leonard thanked the good-natured stranger, crossed the field, 
 passed the gap, and paused a moment under the stinted shade 
 of the old hollow-hearted oak. The ravens were returning to 
 their nests. At the sight of a human form under the tree, they 
 wheeled round, and watched him afar. From the thick of the 
 boughs, the young ravens sent their hoarse low cry.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE young man entered the neat, prim, formal parlour. 
 
 " You are welcome ! " said Mrs Avenel, in a firm voice. 
 
 " The gentleman is heartily welcome," cried poor John. 
 
 " It is your grandson, Leonard Fairfield," said Mrs Avenel. 
 
 But John, who had risen with knocking knees, gazed hard at 
 Leonard, and then fell on his breast, sobbing aloud" Nora's 
 eyes ! he has a blink in his eye like Nora's." 
 
 Mrs Avenel approached with a steady step, and drew away 
 the old man tenderly. 
 
 "He is a poor creature," she whispered to Leonard "you 
 excite him. Come away, I will show you your room." 
 
 Leonard followed her up the stairs, and came into a room 
 neatly, and even prettily furnished. The carpet and curtains 
 were faded by the sun, and of old-fashioned pattern ; there was 
 a look about the room as if it had been long disused. 
 
 Mrs Avenel sank down on the first chair on entering. 
 
 Leonard drew his arm round her waist affectionately : " I 
 fear that I have put you out sadly my dear grandmother." 
 
 Mrs Avenel glided hastily from his arm, and her countenance 
 worked much every nerve in it twitching, as it were ; then, 
 placing her hand on his locks, she said with passion, " God 
 bless you, my grandson,'' and left the room. 
 
 Leonard dropped his knapsack on the floor, and looked 
 around him wistfully. The room seemed as if it had once been 
 occupied by a female. There was a work-box on the chest of 
 drawers, and over it hanging shelves for books, suspended by 
 ribbons that had once been blue, with silk and fringe appended 
 to each shelf, and knots and tassels here and there the taste of 

 
 372 MY NOVEL; OR, 
 
 a woman, or rather of a girl, who seeks to give a grace to the 
 commonest things around her. With the mechanical habit of 
 a student, Leonard took down one or two of the volumes still 
 left on the shelves. He found SPENSER'S Fairy Queen, RACINE 
 in French, TASSO in Italian ; and on the fly-leaf of each volume, 
 in the exquisite handwriting familiar to his memory, the name 
 "Leonora." He kissed the books, and replaced them with a 
 feeling akin both to tenderness and awe. 
 
 He had not been alone in his room more than a quarter of 
 an hour, before the maid-servant knocked at his door and sum- 
 moned him to tea. 
 
 Poor John had recovered his spirits, and his wife sate by his 
 side holding his hand in hers. Poor John was even gay. He 
 asked many questions about his daughter Jane, and did not 
 wait for the answers. Then he spoke about the Squire, whom 
 he confounded with Audley Egerton, and talked of elections 
 and the Blue party, and hoped Leonard would always be a good 
 Blue ; and then he fell to his tea and toast, and said no more. 
 
 Mrs Avenel spoke little, but she eyed Leonard askant, as it 
 were, from time to time ; and after each glance the nerves of 
 the poor severe face twitched again. 
 
 A little after nine o'clock, Mrs Avenel lighted a candle, and 
 placing it in Leonard's hand, said, "You must be tired you 
 know your own room now. Good night." 
 
 Leonard took the light, and, as was his wont with his 
 mother, kissed Mrs Avenel on the cheek. Then he took John's 
 hand and kissed him too. The old man was half asleep, and 
 murmured dreamily, " That's Nora." 
 
 Leonard had retired to his room about half an hour, when 
 Richard Avenel entered the house softly, and joined his parents. 
 
 " Well, mother 1 " said he. 
 
 " Well, Richard you have seen him 1 " 
 
 " And like him. Do you know he has a great look of poor 
 Nora ? more like her than Jane." 
 
 "Yes; he is handsomer than Jane ever was, but more like 
 your father than any one. John was so comely. You take to 
 the boy, then ? " 
 
 " Ay, that I do. Just tell him in the morning that he is to
 
 VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 373 
 
 go with a gentleman who will be his friend, and don't say more. 
 The chaise shall be at the door after breakfast. Let him get into 
 it : I shall wait for him out of the town. What's the room 
 you give him 1 " 
 
 "The room you would not take." 
 
 " The room in which Nora slept 1 Oh no ! I could not have 
 slept a wink there. What a charm there was in that girl 
 how we all loved her ! But she was too beautiful and good 
 for us too good to live ! " 
 
 "None of us are too good," said Mrs Avenel with great 
 austerity, "and I beg you will not talk in that way. Good 
 night I must get your poor father to bed." 
 
 When Leonard opened his eyes the next morning, they 
 rested on the face of Mrs Avenel, which was bending over his 
 pillow. But it was long before he could recognise that coun- 
 tenance, so changed was its expression so tender, so mother- 
 like. Nay, the face of his own mother had never seemed to 
 him so soft with a mother's passion. 
 
 " Ah ! " he murmured, half rising and flinging his young 
 arms round her neck. Mrs Avenel, this time taken by surprise, 
 warmly returned the embrace : she clasped him to her breast, 
 she kissed him again and again. At length with a quick start 
 she escaped, and walked up and down the room, pressing her 
 hands tightly together. When she halted, her face had reco- 
 vered its usual severity and cold precision. 
 
 " It is time for you to rise, Leonard," said she. " You will 
 leave us to-day. A gentleman has promised to take charge of 
 you, and do for you more than we can. A chaise will be at the 
 door soon make haste." 
 
 John was absent from the breakfast-table. His wife said 
 that he never rose till late, and must not be disturbed. 
 
 The meal was scarcely over, before a chaise and pair came to 
 the door. 
 
 " You must not keep the chaise waiting the gentleman is 
 very punctual." 
 " But he is not come." 
 
 " No, he has walked on before, and will get in after you are 
 out of the town."
 
 374 MY NOVEL. 
 
 " What is his name, and why should he care for me, grand- 
 mother ? " 
 
 " He will tell you himself. Now, come." 
 
 "But you will bless me again, grandmother. I love you 
 already." 
 
 " I do bless you," said Mrs Avenel firmly. " Be honest and 
 good, and beware of the first false step." She pressed his hand 
 with a convulsive grasp, and led him to the outer door. 
 
 The postboy clanked his whip, the chaise rattled off. Leonard 
 put his head out of the window to catch a last glimpse of the 
 old woman. But the boughs of the pollard oak, and its gnarled 
 decaying trunk, hid her from his eye. And look as he would, 
 till the road turned, he saw but the melancholy tree. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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