of the family. What is there in those fellows
down there to make a fellow feel that he ought to bind himself to
them neck and heels?"

"Their principles."

"Yes, their principles! I believe I have some vague idea as to
supporting property and land and all that kind of thing. I don't know
that anybody wants to attack anything."

"Somebody soon would want to attack it if there were no defenders."

"I suppose there is an outside power,--the people, or public opinion,
or whatever they choose to call it. And the country will have to
go very much as that outside power chooses. Here, in Parliament,
everybody will be as Conservative as the outside will let them. I
don't think it matters on which side you sit;--but it does matter
that you shouldn't have to act with those who go against the grain
with you."

"I never heard a worse political argument in my life."

"I dare say not. However, here's Sir Timothy. When he looks in that
way, all buckram, deportment, and solemnity, I know he's going to
pitch into somebody."

At this moment the Leader of the House came in from behind the
Speaker's chair and took his place between Mr. Roper and Sir Orlando
Drought. Silverbridge had been right in saying that Sir Timothy's air
was solemn. When a man has to declare a solemn purpose on a solemn
occasion in a solemn place, it is needful that he should be solemn
himself. And though the solemnity which befits a man best will be
that which the importance of the moment may produce, without thought
given by himself to his own outward person, still, who is there
can refrain himself from some attempt? Who can boast, who that has
been versed in the ways and duties of high places, that he has kept
himself free from all study of grace, of feature, of attitude, of
gait--or even of dress? For most of our bishops, for most of our
judges, of our statesmen, our orators, our generals, for many even of
our doctors and our parsons, even our attorneys, our tax-gatherers,
and certainly our butlers and our coachmen, Mr. Turveydrop, the great
professor of deportment, has done much. But there should always be
the art to underlie and protect the art;--the art that can hide the
art. The really clever archbishop,--the really potent chief justice,
the man who, as a politician, will succeed in becoming a king of men,
should know how to carry his buckram without showing it. It was in
this that Sir Timothy perhaps failed a little. There are men who look
as though