an at the present moment.
The giants declared that every turn which they attempted to take in
their country's service had been thwarted by faction, in spite of
those benign promises of assistance made to them only a few weeks
since by their opponents; and the gods answered by asserting that
they were driven to this opposition by the Boeotian fatuity of the
giants. They had no doubt promised their aid, and were ready to give
it to measures that were decently prudent; but not to a bill enabling
Government at its will to pension aged bishops! No; there must be
some limit to their tolerance, and when such attempts as these were
made that limit had been clearly passed. All this had taken place
openly only a day or two after that casual whisper dropped by Tom
Towers at Miss Dunstable's party--by Tom Towers, that most pleasant
of all pleasant fellows. And how should he have known it,--he who
flutters from one sweetest flower of the garden to another,

"Adding sugar to the pink, and honey to the rose,
So loved for what he gives, but taking nothing as he goes"?

But the whisper had grown into a rumour, and the rumour into a
fact, and the political world was in a ferment. The giants, furious
about their bishops' pension bill, threatened the House--most
injudiciously; and then it was beautiful to see how indignant members
got up, glowing with honesty, and declared that it was base to
conceive that any gentleman in that House could be actuated in his
vote by any hopes or fears with reference to his seat. And so matters
grew from bad to worse, and these contending parties never hit at
each other with such envenomed wrath as they did now;--having entered
the ring together so lately with such manifold promises of good-will,
respect, and forbearance!

But going from the general to the particular, we may say that nowhere
was a deeper consternation spread than in the electoral division
of West Barsetshire. No sooner had the tidings of the dissolution
reached the county than it was known that the duke intended to change
his nominee. Mr. Sowerby had now sat for the division since the
Reform Bill! He had become one of the county institutions, and by the
dint of custom and long establishment had been borne with and even
liked by the county gentlemen, in spite of his well-known pecuniary
irregularities. Now all this was to be changed. No reason had as yet
been publicly given, but it was understood that Lord Dumbello was to
be r