One
feels a respect for the ruin of a man like Audley Egerton. He is ruined
en roi! From the wrecks of his fortune he can look down and see stately
monuments built from the stones of that dismantled edifice. In every
institution which attests the humanity of England was a record of the
princely bounty of the public man. In those objects of party, for
which the proverbial sinews of war are necessary, in those rewards for
service, which private liberality can confer, the hand of Egerton
had been opened as with the heart of a king. Many a rising member of
parliament, in those days when talent was brought forward through
the aid of wealth and rank, owed his career to the seat which Audley
Egerton's large subscription had secured to him; many an obscure
supporter in letters and the Press looked back to the day when he had
been freed from the jail by the gratitude of the patron. The city he
represented was embellished at his cost; through the shire that held his
mortgaged lands, which he had rarely ever visited, his gold had flowed
as a Pactolus; all that could animate its public spirit, or increase
its civilization, claimed kindred with his munificence, and never had a
claim disallowed. Even in his grand, careless household, with its
large retinue and superb hospitality, there was something worthy of a
representative of that time-honoured portion of our true nobility,
the untitled gentlemen of the land. The Great Commoner had, indeed,
"something to show" for the money he had disdained and squandered. But
for Frank Hazeldean's mode of getting rid of the dross, when gone, what
would be left to tell the tale? Paltry prints in a bachelor's lodging; a
collection of canes and cherry-sticks; half-a-dozen letters in ill-spelt
French from a figurante; some long-legged horses, fit for nothing but to
lose a race; that damnable Betting-Book; and--sic transit gloria--down
sweeps some hawk of a Levy, on the wings of an I O U, and not a feather
is left of the pigeon!

Yet Frank Hazeldean has stuff in him,--a good heart, and strict honour.
Fool though he seem, there is sound sterling sense in some odd corner
of his brains, if one could but get at it. All he wants to save him
from perdition is, to do what he has never yet done,--namely, pause and
think. But, to be sure, that same operation of thinking is not so easy
for folks unaccustomed to it, as people who think--think!

"I can't bear this," said Frank, suddenly, and springing to his fe