f gross corruption, where jobs, and jobbing,
and selfishness in their worst shapes, aided by knavery, fraud, bigotry,
party rancor, personal hate, and revenge long cherished--where active
loyalty and high political Protestantism, assuming the name of religion,
and all the other passions and prejudices that have been suffered to
scourge the country so long--have often been in full operation, without
check, restraint, or any wholesome responsibility, that might, or could,
or ought to have protected the property of the people from rapine, and
their persons from oppression. The scene we allude to is the Grand Jury
Room of Castle Cumber.

CHAPTER XXI.--Darby's Piety Rewarded

--A Protestant Charger, with his Precious Burthen--A Disaffected Hack
supporting a Pillar of the Church--A Political and Religious Discussion
in a Friendly Way

The Assizes had now arrived, and the Grand Panel of the county met once
more to transact their fiscal and criminal business. We omit the grand
entry of the Judges, escorted, as they were, by a large military guard,
and the _posse comitatus_ of the county, not omitting to mention a
goodly and imposing array of the gentry and squirearchy of the immediate
and surrounding districts, many of Whom were pranked out in all the
grandeur of their Orange robes. As, however, we are only yet upon our
way there, we beg you to direct your attention to two gentlemen dressed
in black, and mounted each in a peculiar and characteristic manner.
One of them is a large, bloated, but rather handsome, and decidedly
aristocratic looking man, with a vermilion face, mounted upon a splendid
charger, whose blood and action must have been trained to that kind of
subdued but elegant bearing that would seem to indicate, upon the part
of the animal, a consciousness that he too owed a duty to the Church
and Constitution, and had a just right to come within the category of
a staunch and loyal Protestant horse, as being entrusted with the
life, virtues, and dignity of no less a person than the Rev. Phineas
Lucre--all of which are now on his back assembled, as they always are,
in that reverend gentleman's precious person. Here we account at once
for the animal's cautious sobriety of step, and pride and dignity
of action, together with his devoted attachment to the Church and
Constitution by which he lived, and owing to which he wore a coat quite
as sleek, but by no means so black as his master's. The gentleman
by whom he