nent soldier-nobles, comporting themselves as imitative
servants of their god Mars, on the fields of love and war, stood
necessarily prepared to vindicate their conduct as the field of the
measured paces, without deeming themselves bounden to defend the course
they took. Our burgess, who bowed head to his aristocrat, and hired the
soldier to fight for him, could not see that such mis-behaviour
necessarily ensued. Lord Ormont had fought duels at home and abroad. His
readiness to fight again, and against odds, and with a totally unused
weapon, was exhibited by his attack on the Press in the columns of the
Press. It wore the comical face to the friends deploring it, which
belongs to things we do that are so very like us. They agreed with his
devoted sister, Lady Charlotte Eglett, as to the prudence of keeping him
out of England for a time, if possible.

At the first perusal of the letter, Lady Charlotte quitted her place in
Leicestershire, husband, horses, guests, the hunt, to scour across a
vacant London and pick up acquaintances under stress to be spots there in
the hunting season, with them to gossip for counsel on the subject of
"Ormont's hand-grenade," and how to stop and extinguish a second. She was
a person given to plain speech. "Stinkpot" she called it, when
acknowledging foul elements in the composition and the harm it did to the
unskilful balist. Her view of the burgess English imaged a mighty monster
behind bars, to whom we offer anything but our hand. As soon as he gets
held of that he has you; he won't let it loose with flesh on the bones.
We must offend him--we can't be man or woman without offending his tastes
and his worships; but while we keep from contact (i.e. intercommunication)
he may growl, he is harmless. Witness the many occasions when her brother
offended worse, and had been unworried, only growled at, and distantly,
not in a way to rouse concern; and at the neat review, or procession into
the City, or public display of any sort, Ormont had but to show himself,
he was the popular favourite immediately. He had not committed the folly
of writing a letter to a newspaper then.

Lady Charlotte paid an early visit to the office of the great London
solicitor, Arthur Abner, who wielded the law as an instrument of
protection for countless illustrious people afflicted by what they stir
or attract in a wealthy metropolis. She went simply to gossip of her
brother's affairs with a refreshing man of the world,