eform, such as the
Liberal, become stately, adopts in speaking of that property of his, but
swinging blows on the heads of many a denounced iniquity.

Cecil forwarded the Address to Everard Romfrey without comment.

Next day the following letter, dated from Itchincope, the house of Mr.
Grancey Lespel, on the borders of Bevisham, arrived at Steynham:

'I have despatched you the proclamation, folded neatly. The electors of
Bevisham are summoned, like a town at the sword's point, to yield him
their votes. Proclamation is the word. I am your born representative! I
have completed my political education on salt water, and I tackle you on
the Land question. I am the heir of your votes, gentlemen!--I forgot, and
I apologize; he calls them fellow-men. Fraternal, and not so risky. Here
at Lespel's we read the thing with shouts. It hangs in the smoking-room.
We throw open the curacoa to the intelligence and industry of the
assembled guests; we carry the right of the multitude to our host's
cigars by a majority. C'est un farceur que notre bon petit cousin. Lespel
says it is sailorlike to do something of this sort after a cruise.
Nevil's Radicalism would have been clever anywhere out of Bevisham. Of
all boroughs! Grancey Lespel knows it. He and his family were Bevisham's
Whig M.P.'s before the day of Manchester. In Bevisham an election is an
arrangement made by Providence to square the accounts of the voters, and
settle arrears. They reckon up the health of their two members and the
chances of an appeal to the country when they fix the rents and leases.
You have them pointed out to you in the street, with their figures
attached to them like titles. Mr. Tomkins, the twenty-pound man; an
elector of uncommon purity. I saw the ruffian yesterday. He has an extra
breadth to his hat. He has never been known to listen to a member under
L20, and is respected enormously--like the lady of the Mythology, who was
an intolerable Tartar of virtue, because her price was nothing less than
a god, and money down. Nevil will have to come down on Bevisham
in the Jupiter style. Bevisham is downright the dearest of
boroughs--"vaulting-boards," as Stukely Culbrett calls them--in the
kingdom. I assume we still say "kingdom."

'He dashed into the Radical trap exactly two hours after landing. I
believe he was on his way to the Halketts at Mount Laurels. A notorious
old rascal revolutionist retired from his licenced business of
slaughterer--one of your grat