onquering
wealth and influence naturally prizes these things in proportion to the
effort their acquisition has cost him. When he heard of his brother's
death, he could in conscience say nothing more than 'Serve him right!'
For all that, he paid the funeral expenses of the Chartist--angrily
declining an offer from Henry's co-zealots, who would have buried the
martyr at their common charges--and proceeded to inquire after the widow
and son. Joseph Mutimer, already one- or two-and-twenty, was in no need
of help; he and his mother, naturally prejudiced against the thriving
uncle, declared themselves satisfied with their lot, and desired no
further connection with a relative who was practically a stranger to
them.

So Richard went on his way and heaped up riches. When already
middle-aged he took to himself a wife, his choice being marked with
characteristic prudence. The woman he wedded was turned thirty, had no
money, and few personal charms, but was a lady. Richard was fully able
to appreciate education and refinement; to judge from the course of
his later life, one would have said that he had sought money only as a
means, the end he really aimed at being the satisfaction of instincts
which could only have full play in a higher social sphere. No doubt the
truth was that success sweetened his character, and developed, as is
so often the case, those possibilities of his better nature which a
fruitless struggle would have kept in the germ or altogether crushed.
His excellent wife influenced him profoundly; at her death the work
was continued by the daughter she left him. The defects of his early
education could not of course be repaired, but it is never too late
for a man to go to school to the virtues which civilise. Remaining the
sturdiest of Conservatives, he bowed in sincere humility to those very
claims which the Radical most angrily disallows: birth, hereditary
station, recognised gentility--these things made the strongest demand
upon his reverence. Such an attitude was a testimony to his own capacity
for culture, since he knew not the meaning of vulgar adulation, and did
in truth perceive the beauty of those qualities to which the uneducated
Iconoclast is wholly blind. It was a joyous day for him when he saw his
daughter the wife of Godfrey Eldon. The loss which so soon followed was
correspondingly hard to bear, and but for Mrs. Eldon's gentle sympathy
he would scarcely have survived the blow. We know already how his