pends
wholly on the landed powers.

Barsetshire, however, is not now so essentially one whole as it was
before the Reform Bill divided it. There is in these days an East
Barsetshire, and there is a West Barsetshire; and people conversant
with Barsetshire doings declare that they can already decipher some
difference of feeling, some division of interests. The eastern moiety
of the county is more purely Conservative than the western; there
is, or was, a taint of Peelism in the latter; and then, too, the
residence of two such great Whig magnates as the Duke of Omnium and
the Earl de Courcy in that locality in some degree overshadows and
renders less influential the gentlemen who live near them.

It is to East Barsetshire that we are called. When the division above
spoken of was first contemplated, in those stormy days in which
gallant men were still combatting reform ministers, if not with hope,
still with spirit, the battle was fought by none more bravely than
by John Newbold Gresham of Greshamsbury, the member for Barsetshire.
Fate, however, and the Duke of Wellington were adverse, and in the
following Parliament John Newbold Gresham was only member for East
Barsetshire.

Whether or not it was true, as stated at the time, that the aspect of
the men with whom he was called on to associate at St Stephen's broke
his heart, it is not for us now to inquire. It is certainly true that
he did not live to see the first year of the reformed Parliament
brought to a close. The then Mr Gresham was not an old man at the
time of his death, and his eldest son, Francis Newbold Gresham, was a
very young man; but, notwithstanding his youth, and notwithstanding
other grounds of objection which stood in the way of such preferment,
and which must be explained, he was chosen in his father's place.
The father's services had been too recent, too well appreciated, too
thoroughly in unison with the feelings of those around him to allow
of any other choice; and in this way young Frank Gresham found
himself member for East Barsetshire, although the very men who
elected him knew that they had but slender ground for trusting him
with their suffrages.

Frank Gresham, though then only twenty-four years of age, was a
married man, and a father. He had already chosen a wife, and by
his choice had given much ground of distrust to the men of East
Barsetshire. He had married no other than Lady Arabella de Courcy,
the sister of the great Whig earl who li