benefactor of his kind,
revering him. So that, whatever we may think in our own hearts, Epic and
Theory have to remain the exception. Battles indeed have been fought, but
when you survey the field in preparation for them you are summoned to
observe the preluding courtesies of civilised warfare in a manner
becoming a chivalrous gentleman. It never was the merely flinging of your
leg across a frontier, not even with the abrupt Napoleon. You have
besides to drill your men; and you have often to rouse your foe with a
ringing slap, if he's a sleepy one or shamming sleepiness. As here, for
example: and that of itself devours more minutes than ten. Rockney and
Mattock could be roused; but these English, slow to kindle, can't subside
in a twinkling; they are for preaching on when they have once begun;
betray the past engagement, and the ladies are chilled, and your wife
puts you the pungent question: 'Did you avoid politics, Con?' in the
awful solitude of domestic life after a party. Now, if only there had
been freedom of discourse during the dinner hour, the ten disembarrassed
minutes allotted to close it would have afforded time sufficient for
hearty finishing blows and a soothing word or so to dear old innocent Mr.
Rumford, and perhaps a kindly clap of the shoulder to John Mattock, no
bad fellow at bottom. Rockney too was no bad fellow in his way. He wanted
no more than a beating and a thrashing. He was a journalist, a
hard-headed rascal, none of your good old-fashioned order of regimental
scribes who take their cue from their colonel, and march this way and
that, right about face, with as little impediment of principles to hamper
their twists and turns as the straw he tosses aloft at midnight to spy
the drift of the wind to-morrow. Quite the contrary; Rockney was his own
colonel; he pretended to think independently, and tried to be the
statesman of a leading article, and showed his intention to stem the
current of liberty, and was entirely deficient in sympathy with the
oppressed, a fanatical advocate of force; he was an inveterate Saxon,
good-hearted and in great need of a drubbing. Certain lines Rockney had
written of late about Irish affairs recurred to Captain Con, and the
political fires leaped in him; he sparkled and said: 'Let me beg you to
pass the claret over to Mr. Rockney, Mr. Rumford; I warrant it for the
circulating medium of amity, if he'll try it.'

''Tis the Comet Margaux,' said Dr. Forbery, topping anything