ily into my room, exclaiming, "By Jove,
Templeton! Mr. Kitely has done the thing at last, as he would say
himself, entirely."

"How do you mean? what has he done?" "You know my father is excessively
vain of his landscape-gardening, and the prodigious improvements which
he has made in this same demesne around us. Well, compassionating some
one whom Kitely was mangling, 'more suo' in an argument, he took
that gentleman out for a walk, and, with a conscious pride in his own
achievements, led him towards the Swiss cottage beside the waterfall.

"Kitely was pleased with every thing; the timber is really well grown,
and he praised it; the view is fine, and he said so. Even of the
_chalet_ he condescended a few words of approval, as a feature in the
scene. The waterfall, however, he would not praise; it might foam, and
splash, and whirl as it would; in vain it threw its tiny spray aloft,
and hissed beneath the rocks below; he never wasted even a word upon it.

"You'd scarce fancy, Mr. Kitely," said my father, whose patience was
sorely tried; "you'd scarce fancy that river you see there was only a
mill-stream."

"I'd scarcely think of calling that mill-stream a river, my lord," was
the reply.

"Hence the borough of Collyton is still open, and I have come, by his
grace's request, to say that if you desire to enter Parliament it is
very much at your service."

This was my introduction to the House.

My parliamentary life was, as I have said, a brief one, but not without
its triumphs. I was long enough a member to have excited the ardent
hopes of my friends, and make my name a thing quoted in the lists of
party.

Had I remained, I was to have spoken second to the address on the
opening of the new session. There was, I own, a most intoxicating sense
of pleasure in the first success. The moment in which, fatigued and
almost overpowered, I sank into a chair at Bellamy's, with some twenty
around me, congratulating, praising, flattering, and foretelling, was
worth living for; and yet, perhaps, in that same instant of triumph were
sown the seeds of my malady. I was greatly heated; I had excited myself
beyond my strength, and spoken for two hours--to myself it seemed
scarce twenty minutes; and then, with open cravat and vest, I sat in the
current of air between a door and window, drinking in delicious draughts
of iced water and flattery. I went home with a slight cough, and
something strange, like an obstruction to full breathi