vitality to be much repressed by any calamity. Have you
heard what is to be done about Silverbridge?"

"The Duchess wants to get it for this man, Ferdinand Lopez."

"But it has not been promised yet?"

"The seat is not vacant," said Mrs. Finn, "and I don't know when it
will be vacant. I think there is a hitch about it,--and I think the
Duchess is going to be made very angry."

Throughout the autumn the Duke had been an unhappy man. While the
absolute work of the Session had lasted he had found something
to console him; but now, though he was surrounded by private
secretaries, and though dispatch-boxes went and came twice a day,
though there were dozens of letters as to which he had to give some
instruction,--yet, there was in truth nothing for him to do. It
seemed to him that all the real work of the Government had been
filched from him by his colleagues, and that he was stuck up in
pretended authority,--a kind of wooden Prime Minister, from whom no
real ministration was demanded. His first fear had been that he was
himself unfit;--but now he was uneasy, fearing that others thought
him to be unfit. There was Mr. Monk with his budget, and Lord
Drummond with his three or four dozen half rebellious colonies, and
Sir Orlando Drought with the House to lead and a ship to build, and
Phineas Finn with his scheme of municipal Home Rule for Ireland, and
Lord Ramsden with a codified Statute Book,--all full of work, all
with something special to be done. But for him,--he had to arrange
who should attend the Queen, what ribbons should be given away, and
what middle-aged young man should move the address. He sighed as he
thought of those happy days in which he used to fear that his mind
and body would both give way under the pressure of decimal coinage.

But Phineas Finn had read the Duke's character rightly in saying that
he was neither gregarious nor communicative, and therefore but little
fitted to rule Englishmen. He had thought that it was so himself,
and now from day to day he was becoming more assured of his own
deficiency. He could not throw himself into cordial relations with
the Sir Orlando Droughts, or even with the Mr. Monks. But, though he
had never wished to be put into his present high office, now that
he was there he dreaded the sense of failure which would follow his
descent from it. It is this feeling rather than genuine ambition,
rather than the love of power or patronage or pay, which induces men
to cling t