waiter at the Clarendon. But it was the calm
seclusion, the perfect isolation that gratified him most. Let him
stroll which way he would, he never chanced upon a traveller. It was
marvellous, indeed, how such a place could have escaped that prying
tribe of ramblers which England each year sends forth to wrangle,
dispute, and disparage everything over Europe; and yet here were
precisely the very objects they usually sought after,--beautiful
scenery, a picturesque peasantry, and a land romantic in all its traits
and traditions.

Not that Grog cared for these: rocks, waterfalls, ruins, leafy groves,
or limpid streams made no appeal to _him_, He lived for the life of men,
their passions and their ambitions. He knew some people admired this
kind of thing, and there were some who were fond of literature; others
liked pictures; others, again, fancied old coins. He had no objection.
They were, if not very profitable, at least, harmless tastes. All he
asked was, not to be the companion of such dreamers. "Give me the fellow
that knows life," would he say; and I am afraid that the definition of
that same "life" would have included some things scarcely laudable.

If the spot were one to encourage indolence and ease, Davis did not
yield to this indulgence. He arose early; walked for health; shot with
the pistol for practice; studied his martingale for the play-table; took
an hour with the small-sword with an old maitre d'armes whom he found
in the village; and, without actually devoting himself to it as a task,
practised himself in German by means of conversation; and, lastly, he
thought deeply and intently over the future. For speculations of this
kind he had no mean capacity. If he knew little of the human heart in
its higher moods, he understood it well in its shortcomings and its
weaknesses; to what temptations a man might yield, when to offer them,
and how, were mysteries he had often brooded over. In forecastings of
this order, therefore, Davis exercised himself. Strange eventualities,
"cases of conscience," that I would fain believe never occurred to you,
dear reader, nor to me, arose before him, and he met them manfully.

The world is generous in its admiration of the hard-worked minister,
toiling night-long at his desk, receiving and answering his twenty
despatches daily, and rising in the House to explain this, refute that,
confirm the other, with all the clearness of an orator and all the
calmness of a clerk; but, after