erness, their
science knew no specific: like the Babylonian workmen smitten with
confusion of tongues, they had but one word in common, and that word was
'cut.' Mr. Goren contended that to cut was not the key of the science:
but to find a Balance was. An artistic admirer of the frame of man, Mr.
Goren was not wanting in veneration for the individual who had arisen to
do it justice. He spoke of his Balance with supreme self-appreciation.
Nor less so the Honourable Melville, who professed to have discovered the
Balance of Power, at home and abroad. It was a capital Balance, but
inferior to Mr. Goren's. The latter gentleman guaranteed a Balance with
motion: whereas one step not only upset the Honourable Melville's, but
shattered the limbs of Europe. Let us admit, that it is easier to fit a
man's legs than to compress expansive empires.

Evan enjoyed the doctoring of kingdoms quite as well as the diplomatist.
It suited the latent grandeur of soul inherited by him from the great
Mel. He liked to prop Austria and arrest the Czar, and keep a watchful
eye on France; but the Honourable Melville's deep-mouthed phrase conjured
up to him a pair of colossal legs imperiously demanding their Balance
likewise. At first the image scared him. In time he was enabled to smile
it into phantom vagueness. The diplomatist diplomatically informed him,
it might happen that the labours he had undertaken might be neither more
nor less than education for a profession he might have to follow. Out of
this, an ardent imagination, with the Countess de Saldar for an
interpreter, might construe a promise of some sort. Evan soon had high
hopes. What though his name blazed on a shop-front? The sun might yet
illumine him to honour!

Where a young man is getting into delicate relations with a young woman,
the more of his sex the better--they serve as a blind; and the Countess
hailed fresh arrivals warmly. There was Sir John Loring, Dorothy's
father, who had married the eldest of the daughters of Lord Elburne. A
widower, handsome, and a flirt, he capitulated to the Countess instantly,
and was played off against the provincial Don Juan, who had reached that
point with her when youths of his description make bashful confidences of
their successes, and receive delicious chidings for their
naughtiness--rebukes which give immeasurable rebounds. Then came Mr.
Gordon Graine, with his daughter, Miss Jenny Graine, an early friend of
Rose's, and numerous others. For t