arrative
studiously avoiding all party politics even when treating of
politicians. The new ministers had stated the general programme of their
policy, and introduced one measure in especial that had lifted them at
once to the dizzy height of popular power. But it became clear that this
measure could not be carried without a fresh appeal to the people.
A dissolution of parliament, as Audley's sagacious experience had
foreseen, was inevitable. And Audley Egerton had no chance of return for
his own seat, for the great commercial city identified with his name.
Oh, sad, but not rare, instance of the mutabilities of that same popular
favour now enjoyed by his successors! The great commoner, the weighty
speaker, the expert man of business, the statesman who had seemed a
type of the practical steady sense for which our middle class is
renowned,--he who, not three years since, might have had his honoured
choice of the largest popular constituencies in the kingdom,--he, Audley
Egerton, knew not one single town (free from the influences of private
property or interest) in which the obscurest candidate, who bawled out
for the new liberal measure, would not have beaten him hollow. Where one
popular hustings, on which that grave sonorous voice, that had stilled
so often the roar of faction, would not be drowned amidst the hoots of
the scornful mob?

True, what were called the close boroughs still existed; true, many a
chief of his party would have been too proud of the honour of claiming
Andley Egerton for his nominee. But the ex-minister's haughty soul
shrunk from this contrast to his past position. And to fight against
the popular measure, as member of one of the seats most denounced by the
people,--he felt it was a post in the grand army of parties below his
dignity to occupy, and foreign to his peculiar mind, which required the
sense of consequence and station. And if, in a few months, those seats
were swept away--were annihilated from the rolls of parliament--where
was he? Moreover, Egerton, emancipated from the trammels that had bound
his will while his party was in office, desired, in the turn of events,
to be nominee of no man,--desired to stand at least freely and singly on
the ground of his own services, be guided by his own penetration; no law
for action but his strong sense and his stout English heart. Therefore
he had declined all offers from those who could still bestow seats in
parliament. Seats that he could purchase