iew
everything I say, or do, or think, with an even excessive favour.
They think me moonstruck. Lord Eskdale is a perfect man of the world;
proverbially shrewd, and celebrated for his judgment; he looks upon me
as a raw boy, and believes that, if my father had kept me at Eton and
sent me to Paris, I should by this time have exhausted my crudities. The
bishop is what the world calls a great scholar; he is a statesman
who, aloof from faction, ought to be accustomed to take just and
comprehensive views; and a priest who ought to be under the immediate
influence of the Holy Spirit. He says I am a visionary. All this might
well be disheartening; but now comes one whom no circumstances impel to
judge my project with indulgence; who would, at the first glance, appear
to have many prejudices arrayed against it, who knows more of the world
than Lord Eskdale, and who appears to me to be more learned than
the whole bench of bishops, and he welcomes my ideas, approves my
conclusions, sympathises with my suggestions; develops, illustrates,
enforces them; plainly intimates that I am only on the threshold of
initiation, and would aid me to advance to the innermost mysteries.

There was this night a great ball at Lady Bardolfs, in Belgrave Square.
One should generally mention localities, because very often they
indicate character. Lady Bardolf lived next door to Mrs. Guy Flouncey.
Both had risen in the world, though it requires some esoteric knowledge
to recognise the patrician par-venue; and both had finally settled
themselves down in the only quarter which Lady Bardolf thought worthy of
her new coronet, and Mrs. Guy Flouncey of her new visiting list.

Lady Bardolf had given up the old family mansion of the Firebraces in
Hanover Square, at the same time that she had resigned their old title.
Politics being dead, in consequence of the majority of 1841, who, after
a little kicking for the million, satisfactorily assured the minister
that there was no vice in them.

Lady Bardolf had chalked out a new career, and one of a still more
eminent and exciting character than her previous pursuit. Lady Bardolf
was one of those ladies--there are several--who entertain the curious
idea that they need only to be known in certain high quarters to be
immediately selected as the principal objects of court favour. Lady
Bardolf was always putting herself in the way of it; she never lost an
opportunity; she never missed a drawing-room, contrived to be a