asked me what I thought of the specimen of Lord John's "Sketches of the Reform Era.”

"I did not think that Lord John's pen," said I, "was so mordant. He must have

been inspired by the spleen-the character being drawn in a style more blistering than brilliant."

"Yet there is some truth in what he says about Pallarston wanting a steady moral purpose. He is too much of the mere man of the world to be an original statesman, and an efficient patriot."

.

"If the providence of events," said I, should ever cast Pallarston upon a period when the country were ruled, or mis-ruled, by a coterie of imbeciles, calling themselves a Cabinet-then to hurl such a public obstacle from high places, would give a man of Lord Pallarston's splendid energy and sustained power of action, enough of moral purpose

to teach Lord John Rowland that he took a wrong measure of the versatile and brilliant Viscount.

I wish," I added, "that both Lord John and the Viscount could be both rolled into one- and between them, both united (if it were possible) we should have a very great parliamentary man. Burke wrote that great states must be governed by presiding principle and prolific energy.' Lord John has something of the first-and the Viscount almost a superabundance of the last."

"What you say," said Maclaurin, "reminds me of what Burke said to myself, when I was spending the Christmas of 1793 with him at Beaconsfield. The words are deeply impressed on my memory. • Public duty,' said he, demands that what is right should not only be made known, but made prevalent.'

6

Lord John could indicate a policy, without

being able to sustain it in action, and Lord Pallarston's reiterative energy would uphold

even a bad system, of whose tendency he could not rightly take an estimate. One is like a critic, trying to produce a drama by rules of rhetoric; the other resembles an artist, whose productions have more brilliancy of colour than justness of design.

CHAPTER XX.

KINGSLEIGH HOUSE- -A FAMILY GROUP

A DUCAL INTERIOR.

I ARRIVED at Kingsleigh House, in the evening of a November day, about five o'clock. The place was some sixty miles from London, and was approached through the town of Horwood, a neat place, with good comfortable houses, inhabited by a race of small country gentry, who lived upon the smiles of the Duke and Duchess of Fleetwood.

Kingsleigh House, like other of our great English places, was not to be recognized by a grand gateway. I saw the towers in the stately mansion peeping over the trees in the magnificent park; but my post-boy actually passed the chief gateway, so unpretending was its appearance, as seen from the high road of the town of Horwood. I drove down a straight road for three or four hundred yards, and came upon another gateway, through which we passed, and came into a vast park. It was one of those splendid pieces of rich fallow land, where forest trees shoot up out of the tall fern, diversified into swelling glades. To the right was a vast vista, stretching to the south, in the direction of the upper park; and I could just catch glimpses of the deer as they trooped from place to place. The avenue then went through a thick grove of beech trees, which