g witness, that such an
advocate of truth should have become the willing victim of falsehood,
the ready and eager martyr of the worst form of falsehood--perjury.

"The decline of his influence between the city and county elections has
been partly attributed, and not without reason, to the sudden change in
his appearance from comparative youth to advancing, if not extreme age.
_On the hustings of the city he shone forth in all the dazzling lustre
of an Oriental chief; and such was the effect of gay clothing on the
meridian of life, that his admirers, especially of the weaker sex, would
insist upon it that he had not passed the beautiful spring-time of May.
There were, indeed, some suspicious appearances of a near approach to
forty, if not two or three years beyond it; but these were fondly
ascribed to his foreign travels in distant and insalubrious climes; he
had acquired his duskiness of complexion, and his strength of feature
and violence of gesture, and his profusion of beard, in Egypt and Syria,
in exploring the catacombs of the one country, and bowing at the shrines
of the other. On the other hand, the brilliancy of his eye, the melody
of his voice, and the elasticity of his muscles and limbs, were
sufficient arguments in favor of his having scarcely passed the limit
that separates manhood from youth._

"All doubts on these points were removed, when the crowd of his fair
admirers visited him at the retirement of his inn, and the intervals of
his polling. These _sub-Rosa_ interviews--we allude to the name of the
inn, and not to anything like privacy there, which the very place and
number of the visitors altogether precluded--convinced them that he was
even a younger and lovelier man than his rather boisterous behavior in
the hall would allow them to hope. In fact, he was now installed by
acclamation _Knight of Canterbury as well as Malta, and King of Kent as
well as Jerusalem_! It became dangerous then to whisper a syllable of
suspicion against his wealth or rank, his wisdom or beauty; and all who
would not bow down before this golden image were deemed worthy of no
better fate than Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego--to be cast into a
burning fiery furnace."

As a sequel to the above story, it may be added that the knight of Malta
became the inmate of a lunatic asylum; and on his liberation was shot at
the head of a band of Kentish hinds, whom he had persuaded that he was
the Messiah!

[75] A pipe of tobacco.

[76