e, toothless and tolerant,
and wishing to be on good terms with all sects, provided they pay
church-rates, and another bishop far more vigorous and of greater fame.
By his administration the heir of Bellamont had entered the Christian
Church, and by the imposition of his hands had been confirmed in it. His
lordship, a great authority with the duchess, was specially invited to
be present on the interesting occasion, when the babe that he had held
at the font, and the child that he had blessed at the altar, was about
thus publicly to adopt and acknowledge the duties and responsibility of
a man. But the countess, though she liked bishops, liked them, as she
told her husband, 'in their place.' What that exactly was, she did not
define; but probably their palaces or the House of Lords.

It was hardly to be expected that her ladyship would find any relief
in the society of the Marquis and Marchioness of Hampshire; for his
lordship passed his life in being the President of scientific and
literary societies, and was ready for anything from the Royal, if his
turn ever arrived, to opening a Mechanics' Institute in his neighbouring
town. Lady Hampshire was an invalid; but her ailment was one of those
mysteries which still remained insoluble, although, in the most liberal
manner, she delighted to afford her friends all the information in her
power. Never was a votary endowed with a faith at once so lively and
so capricious. Each year she believed in some new remedy, and announced
herself on the eve of some miraculous cure. But the saint was scarcely
canonised before his claims to beatitude were impugned. One year Lady
Hampshire never quitted Leamington; another, she contrived to combine
the infinitesimal doses of Hahnemann with the colossal distractions
of the metropolis. Now her sole conversation was the water cure. Lady
Hampshire was to begin immediately after her visit to Montacute, and she
spoke in her sawney voice of factitious enthusiasm, as if she pitied the
lot of all those who were not about to sleep in wet sheets.

The members for the county, with their wives and daughters, the
Hungerfords and the Ildertons, Sir Russell Malpas, or even Lord Hull,
an Irish peer with an English estate, and who represented one of the
divisions, were scarcely a relief. Lord Hull was a bachelor, and had
twenty thousand a year, and would not have been too old for Florentina,
if Lord Hull had only lived in 'society,' learnt how to dress and how