"

"That scampish fellow's conduct is killing poor Lackington," would say a
noble lord.

"Annesley can't stand old Lackington's treatment much longer," was the
commentary of half-pay captains of dragoons.

Had you but listened to Lord Lackington, he would have told you of at
least fifty distinct schemes he had contrived for his brother's worldly
success, all marred and spoiled by that confounded recklessness, "that
utter disregard, sir, of the commonest rules of conduct that every man
in life is bound to observe." He might have been, by this time, colonel
of the Fifty-something; he might have been governor of some fortunate
island in the Pacific; consul-general at Sunstroke Town, in Africa,
where, after three years, you retire with a full pension. If he 'd have
gone into the Church,--and there was no reason why he should n't,--there
was the living of St. Cuthbert-in-the-Vale, eight hundred a year, ready
for him. Every Administration for years back had been entreated in his
favor; and from Ordnance clerkships to Commissions in Lunacy he had been
offered places in abundance. Sinecures in India and jobs in Ireland had
been found out in his behalf, and deputy-somethings created in Bermuda
just to provide for him.

The concessions he had made, the proxies he had given, "just for
Annesley's sake," formed a serious charge against the noble Lord's
political consistency; and he quoted them as the most stunning evidences
of fraternal love, and pointed out where he had gone against his
conscience and his party as to a kind of martyrdom that made a man
illustrious forever.

As for Annesley, his indictment had, to the full, as many counts. What
he might have been,--not in a mere worldly sense, not as regards place,
pension, or emolument, but what in integrity, what in fair fame, what
in honorable conduct and unblemished character, if Lackington had only
dealt fairly with him,--"there was really no saying." The noble motives
which might have prompted, the high aspirations that might have
moved him, all the generous impulses of a splendid nature were there,
thwarted, baffled, and destroyed by Lackington's confounded stupidity.
What the Viscount ought to have done, what precise species of culture
he should have devoted to these budding virtues, how he ought to have
trained and trellised these tender shoots of aspiring goodness, he never
exactly detailed. It was only clear that, whatever the road, he had
never taken it; and it was