phe, was experiencing all the advantages
of prior information. It delighted her to meet Lady St Julians driving
distractedly about town, calling at clubs, closeted with red tapers,
making ingenious combinations that would not work, by means of which
some one of her sons was to stand in coalition with some rich parvenu;
to pay none of the expenses and yet to come in first. And all this time,
Lady Marney, serene and smiling, had the daily pleasure of assuring Lady
St Julians what a relief it was to her that Charles had fixed on his
place. It had been arranged indeed these weeks past; "but then,
you know," concluded Lady Marney in the sweetest voice and with a
blandishing glance, "I never did believe in that hay fever."

In the meantime the impending event changed the whole aspect of the
political world. The king dying before the new registration was the
greatest blow to pseudo-toryism since his majesty, calling for a hackney
coach, went down and dissolved parliament in 1831. It was calculated
by the Tadpoles and Tapers that a dissolution by Sir Robert, after the
registration of 1837, would give him a clear majority, not too great a
one, but large enough: a manageable majority; some five-and-twenty or
thirty men, who with a probable peerage or two dangling in the distance,
half-a-dozen positive baronetcies, the Customs for their constituents,
and Court balls for their wives, might be induced to save the state.
0! England, glorious and ancient realm, the fortunes of thy polity are
indeed strange! The wisdom of the Saxons, Norman valour, the state-craft
of the Tudors, the national sympathies of the Stuarts, the spirit of the
latter Guelphs struggling against their enslaved sovereignty,--these are
the high qualities, that for a thousand years have secured thy national
developement. And now all thy memorial dynasties end in the huckstering
rule of some thirty unknown and anonymous jobbers! The Thirty at Athens
were at least tyrants. They were marked men. But the obscure majority,
who under our present constitution are destined to govern England, are
as secret as a Venetian conclave. Yet on their dark voices all depends.
Would you promote or prevent some great measure that may affect
the destinies of unborn millions, and the future character of the
people,--take, for example, a system of national education,--the
minister must apportion the plunder to the illiterate clan; the scum
that floats on the surface of a party; or hold ou