aten Lord Brock
with the open enmity of Mr Palliser,--and of Mr Palliser's great
follower.

"This kind of thing won't do long, you know," repeated Mr Bott for
the second or third time, as he stood upon the rug before the fire at
his club, with one or two of his young friends around him.

"I suppose not," said Calder Jones, the hunting Member of Parliament
whom we once met at Roebury. "Planty Pall won't stand it, I should
say."

"What can he do?" asked another, an unfledged Member who was not as
yet quite settled as to the leadership under which he intended to
work.

"What can he do?" said Mr Bott, who on such an occasion as this could
be very great,--who, for a moment, could almost feel that he might
become a leader of a party for himself, and some day institute a Bott
Ministry. "What can he do? You will very shortly see what he can do.
He can make himself the master of the occasion. If Lord Brock doesn't
look about him, he'll find that Mr Palliser will be in the Cabinet
without his help."

"You don't mean to say that the Queen will send for Planty Pall!"
said the young Member.

"I mean to say that the Queen will send for any one that the House
of Commons may direct her to call upon," said Mr Bott, who conceived
himself to have gauged the very depths of our glorious Constitution.
"How hard it is to make any one understand that the Queen has really
nothing to do with it!"

"Come, Bott, draw it mild," said Calder Jones, whose loyalty was
shocked by the utter Manchesterialism of his political friend.

"Not if I know it," said Mr Bott, with something of grandeur in his
tone and countenance. "I never drew it mild yet, and I shan't begin
now. All our political offences against civilization have come from
men drawing it mild, as you call it. Why is it that Englishmen can't
read and write as Americans do? Why can't they vote as they do even
in Imperial France? Why are they serfs, less free than those whose
chains were broken the other day in Russia? Why is the Spaniard more
happy, and the Italian more contented? Because men in power have been
drawing it mild!" And Mr Bott made an action with his hand as though
he were drawing up beer from a patent tap.

"But you can't set aside Her Majesty like that, you know," said the
young Member, who had been presented, and whose mother's old-world
notions about the throne still clung to him.

"I should be very sorry," said Mr Bott; "I'm no republican." With
all his constitut