of rousing flights of tattlers with a twittering of the
disused name of Warwick; our social Gods renewed their combat, and the
verdict of the jury was again overhauled, to be attacked and maintained,
the carpers replying to the champions that they held to their view of
it: as heads of bull-dogs are expected to do when they have got a grip
of one. It is a point of muscular honour with them never to relax their
hold. They will tell you why:--they formed that opinion from the
first. And but for the swearing of a particular witness, upon whom
the plaintiff had been taught to rely, the verdict would have been
different--to prove their soundness of judgement. They could speak from
private positive information of certain damnatory circumstances, derived
from authentic sources. Visits of a gentleman to the house of a married
lady in the absence of the husband? Oh!--The British Lucretia was very
properly not legally at home to the masculine world of that day. She
plied her distaff in pure seclusion, meditating on her absent lord; or
else a fair proportion of the masculine world, which had not yet, has
not yet, 'doubled Cape Turk,' approved her condemnation to the sack.

There was talk in the feminine world, at Lady Wathin's assemblies. The
elevation of her husband had extended and deepened her influence on the
levels where it reigned before, but without, strange as we may think it
now, assisting to her own elevation, much aspired for, to the smooth and
lively upper pavement of Society, above its tumbled strata. She was near
that distinguished surface, not on it. Her circle was practically the
same as it was previous to the coveted nominal rank enabling her to
trample on those beneath it. And women like that Mrs. Warwick, a woman
of no birth, no money, not even honest character, enjoyed the entry
undisputed, circulated among the highest:--because people took her
rattle for wit!--and because also our nobility, Lady Wathin feared,
had no due regard for morality. Our aristocracy, brilliant and ancient
though it was, merited rebuke. She grew severe upon aristocratic
scandals, whereof were plenty among the frolicsome host just overhead,
as vexatious as the drawing-room party to the lodger in the floor below,
who has not received an invitation to partake of the festivities and is
required to digest the noise. But if ambition is oversensitive, moral
indignation is ever consolatory, for it plants us on the Judgement Seat.
There indeed we