caught the red-coat fever;
now, in these talking and thinking days (and be hanged to them for
bores), they have the black-coat fever for the same reason. The
parsons are the workers now-a-days--or rather, all the world expects
them to be so. They have the game in their own hands, if they did
but know how to play it.'

Lancelot stood still, sulking over many thoughts. The colonel
lounged across the room towards Lord Vieuxbois, a quiet, truly high-
bred young man, with a sweet open countenance, and an ample
forehead, whose size would have vouched for great talents, had not
the promise been contradicted by the weakness of the over-delicate
mouth and chin.

'Who is that with whom you came into the room, Bracebridge?' asked
Lord Vieuxbois. 'I am sure I know his face.'

'Lancelot Smith, the man who has taken the shooting-box at Lower
Whitford.'

'Oh, I remember him well enough at Cambridge! He was one of a set
who tried to look like blackguards, and really succeeded tolerably.
They used to eschew gloves, and drink nothing but beer, and smoke
disgusting short pipes; and when we established the Coverley Club in
Trinity, they set up an opposition, and called themselves the
Navvies. And they used to make piratical expeditions down to Lynn
in eight oars, to attack bargemen, and fen girls, and shoot ducks,
and sleep under turf-stacks, and come home when they had drank all
the public-house taps dry. I remember the man perfectly.'

'Navvy or none,' said the colonel, 'he has just the longest head and
the noblest heart of any man I ever met. If he does not distinguish
himself before he dies, I know nothing of human nature.'

'Ah yes, I believe he is clever enough!--took a good degree, a
better one than I did--but horribly eclectic; full of mesmerism, and
German metaphysics, and all that sort of thing. I heard of him one
night last spring, on which he had been seen, if you will believe
it, going successively into a Swedenborgian chapel, the Garrick's
Head, and one of Elliotson's magnetic soirees. What can you expect
after that?'

'A great deal,' said Bracebridge drily. 'With such a head as he
carries on his shoulders the man might be another Mirabeau, if he
held the right cards in the right rubber. And he really ought to
suit you, for he raves about the middle ages, and chivalry, and has
edited a book full of old ballads.'

'Oh, all the eclectics do that sort of thing; and small tha