should have liked him. However, the
match is good. I should have been travelling out of my brief to have
hindered it, let Mrs. Cadwallader say what she will. He is pretty
certain to be a bishop, is Casaubon. That was a very seasonable
pamphlet of his on the Catholic Question:--a deanery at least. They
owe him a deanery."

And here I must vindicate a claim to philosophical reflectiveness, by
remarking that Mr. Brooke on this occasion little thought of the
Radical speech which, at a later period, he was led to make on the
incomes of the bishops. What elegant historian would neglect a
striking opportunity for pointing out that his heroes did not foresee
the history of the world, or even their own actions?--For example, that
Henry of Navarre, when a Protestant baby, little thought of being a
Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great, when he measured his
laborious nights with burning candles, had no idea of future gentlemen
measuring their idle days with watches. Here is a mine of truth,
which, however vigorously it may be worked, is likely to outlast our
coal.

But of Mr. Brooke I make a further remark perhaps less warranted by
precedent--namely, that if he had foreknown his speech, it might not
have made any great difference. To think with pleasure of his niece's
husband having a large ecclesiastical income was one thing--to make a
Liberal speech was another thing; and it is a narrow mind which cannot
look at a subject from various points of view.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now,
And you her father. Every gentle maid
Should have a guardian in each gentleman."

It was wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like
going to the Grange after he had once encountered the difficulty of
seeing Dorothea for the first time in the light of a woman who was
engaged to another man. Of course the forked lightning seemed to pass
through him when he first approached her, and he remained conscious
throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but, good as he was, it
must be owned that his uneasiness was less than it would have been if
he had thought his rival a brilliant and desirable match. He had no
sense of being eclipsed by Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked that
Dorothea was under a melancholy illusion, and his mortification lost
some of its bitterness by being mingled with compassion.

Nevertheless, while Sir James said to himself that he had completely
r