ced to them, bowing, and
presuming thus far, he said, under the supposition that he was accosting
the junior Liberal candidate for the borough. He announced his name and
his principles Tomlinson, progressive Liberal.

'A true distinction from some Liberals I know,' said Beauchamp.

Mr. Tomlinson hoped so. Never, he said, did he leave it to the man of
his choice at an election to knock at his door for the vote.

Beauchamp looked as if he had swallowed a cordial. Votes falling into
his lap are heavenly gifts to the candidate sick of the knocker and the
bell. Mr. Tomlinson eulogized the manly candour of the junior
Liberal candidate's address, in which he professed to see ideas
that distinguished it from the address of the sound but otherwise
conventional Liberal, Mr. Cougham. He muttered of plumping for
Beauchamp. 'Don't plump,' Beauchamp said; and a candidate, if he would
be an honourable twin, must say it. Cougham had cautioned him against
the heresy of plumping.

They discoursed of the poor and their beverages, of pothouses, of the
anti-liquorites, and of the duties of parsons, and the value of a robust
and right-minded body of the poor to the country. Palmet found himself
following them into a tolerably spacious house that he took to be the
old gentleman's until some of the apparatus of an Institute for literary
and scientific instruction revealed itself to him, and he heard Mr.
Tomlinson exalt the memory of one Wingham for the blessing bequeathed by
him to the town of Bevisham. 'For,' said Mr. Tomlinson, 'it is open to
both sexes, to all respectable classes, from ten in the morning up
to ten at night. Such a place affords us, I would venture to say, the
advantages without the seductions of a Club. I rank it next--at a far
remove, but next-the church.'

Lord Palmet brought his eyes down from the busts of certain worthies
ranged along the top of the book-shelves to the cushioned chairs, and
murmured, 'Capital place for an appointment with a woman.'

Mr. Tomlinson gazed up at him mildly, with a fallen countenance. He
turned sadly agape in silence to the busts, the books, and the range
of scientific instruments, and directed a gaze under his eyebrows at
Beauchamp. 'Does your friend canvass with you?' he inquired.

'I want him to taste it,' Beauchamp replied, and immediately introduced
the affable young lord--a proceeding marked by some of the dexterity he
had once been famous for, as was shown by a subsequent obser