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truth, I had made up my mind to be persuaded, and had got down a lot of bluebooks and reports to work at in the intervals of idleness; but latterly there has been a sort of awkwardness and constraint. I don't know what it is all about, I'm sure; only this morning, when I threw out a feeler by remarking casually that I thought I should have to be moving on next week, she expressed no consternation at all."

"How mortifying!" exclaimed Nellie, unable to repress a slightly malicious laugh at the sight of his honest, puzzled face. "And so the blue-books will have to be packed up again.”

"It looks like it. I am not fond of thrusting myself upon people who don't want my company."

"I am sure that is the last thing you would ever be guilty of," said Nellie demurely.

the house and see that you had eatable dinners."

“And I am so particular about my dinner," Mr. Stanniforth remarked.

"So that, if you should change your mind," continued Nellie, opening and shutting her fan nervously, "I mean, if you really wished to see something of farming and to spend some days with my father - I hope you would not allow me to stand in your way."

The invitation was not an over-cordial one; but Tom Stanniforth appeared to be quite satisfied with it.

"I'll tell you what," he said; 66 I wouldn't go straight from this to you, because you have all of you really had enough of me for the present; and I believe, too, that I ought to run down and see my father, who is getting to be a very old man, and who writes rather plaintively about his loneliness every now and then; "You are very severe, Miss Brune. but if you would have me for a day or Happily, I am in a position to heap coals two in September, I should enjoy it of all of fire upon your head. Do you know things. Without any humbug, I am anxthat your father has just given me an in-ious to get some hints about farming. I vitation to stay at Broom Leas, and that I have declined it? I don't mind telling you that it was a great sacrifice. You may guess why I made it."

Nellie was a good deal taken aback and much more ashamed than the occasion warranted. "I don't think that could be much of a sacrifice," she said; "for you would be bored to death with us; but I should be very sorry indeed if I thought that anything I had said or done could make you imagine that you would not be welcome. Besides," she added, "I could easily go away. I have an aunt in Devonshire with whom I always spend a fort night in the summer, and I know she can take me at any time."

"That," said Mr. Stanniforth gravely, "is very considerate of you. Only, I think that if you were away from Broom Leas, I shouldn't much care about going there."

A sudden shock of alarm sent the blood into Nellie's cheeks. Was it possible that the pertinacious friendliness of her hereditary enemy could be explained upon another and a less agreeable hypothesis than that of abstract philanthropy? In an instant she had dismissed the notion as ridiculous, and had inwardly laughed at herself for having entertained it. Still, it left her a trifle ill at ease.

"Of course it would never do," she answered hurriedly; "it would look so odd. You would be very uncomfortable too; for there would be nobody to look after

have a property of my own, upon which I mean to settle down one of these fine days, and I am ashamed to say that, at present, if I know oats from barley it is about as much as I do."

"Very well," said Nellie smiling; "then we shall expect you at harvesttime. Perhaps it might amuse you to see a harvest-home."

"Thank you very much indeed," answered Mr. Stanniforth with alacrity; "that will be the very thing."

It was thus that the traditional hospitality of the Brunes triumphed over prejudice, subdued animosity, and was in the sequel productive of much trouble to Mrs. Winnington and others.

From The Cornhill Magazine. GREAT MEN'S RELATIVES.

IN the friendship of great men, once they are passed away, there is this advantage, that you are not obliged to like their relatives. Clarendon says the English could have endured Oliver, if it had not been for the other Cromwells. He, they acknowledged, had a natural nobleness of demeanor: Henry gave himself airs, and it was too evident that the part of heirapparent rather bored Richard. Certainly it is pleasant to know the best thoughts of Hooker's mind, without one's converse being broken upon by the shrill

voice of Mrs. Hooker; or to sail with Nelson into Aboukir Bay without having to follow him to Merton and see Sir William Hamilton trying to look happy.

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And yet there could be few more interesting subjects of study than this of great men's relatives. The moment one is not bound to admire them, or be civil to them, one can profitably spend an hour in their company. They may at least teach us what not to be, and how not to do it. Sometimes we may learn from them a more useful lesson that greatness is not necessarily goodness nor happiness. The moral is old enough, but none the less requires to be enforced again from age to age. Gray imagined a Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. Well, poor Richard was that -a better man than his father, if old-fashioned canons of right and wrong are to hold, if ambi tion be at best but a splendid sin, if the meek are really blessed, if a good cause has no need of legions. Quintus Cicero, again, strikes one as a healthier type of man than his eloquent brother, for all Mr. Trollope's pleadings. Quintus has left us no Tusculan disputations; but the record of an orderly and honorable life is worth a good many arguments on the immortality of the soul. Who would have been the most reliable friend in need, Goldsmith or his brother, the original of the Vicar of Wakefield? Whose lot was the more enviable, Napoleon's or Lucien's?

It is amusing or sad, according as you are of the Democritan or Heraclitan school, to take any prominent historic character, whom hitherto you have only known in his public or literary capacity; and try to find out "all about him," as if you were employed by a private inquiry office. You know that Wolsey was a pluralist, but were not perhaps aware that he had a natural son whom he made an archdeacon; or that Milton's brother Christopher turned Catholic, and was knighted and made a judge by James II.; or that Wesley's wife had a great deal to put up with from the pontiff of Methodism; or that Lord Stowell's harshness broke his son's heart.

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pectations his friends had formed of him.
"I assure you," says Francis, "I some-
times wish your infirmities translated
upon myself, that her Majesty might have
the service of so active and able a mind;
and I might be with excuse confined to
these contemplations and studies for
which I am fitted." The next edition of
the " Essays was dedicated to Sir John
Constable, for Anthony was with God,"
as Francis informs Sir John Bacon's
wife, whom he described in 1603 as “an
alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden,
to his liking," proved ill-suited to him, or
he to her; for the truth is difficult to get
at. If one may judge from the sentiments
expressed in the "Essays," Bacon was
hardly what is termed a marrying man.
He scorns the poetic ideal of love."
as if
man, made for the contemplation of
heaven, and all noble objects, should do
nothing but kneel before a little idol, and
make himself a subject, though not of the
mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye,
which was given him for higher pur-
poses." And "he was reputed one of the
wise men, that made answer to the ques-
tion when a man should marry: A young
man not yet, an elder man not at all."

In Bishop Hall's autobiography we get a glimpse of another Bacon, Sir Edmund, grandson of Sir Nicholas, and consequently nephew of Francis. He does not fail to exhibit the family characteristic of prudence. In 1605 Sir Edmund invited Hall to accompany him to Spa, or the Spa, as he calls it, representing "the safety, the easiness, the pleasure, and the benefit of that small excursion, if opportu nity were taken at that time, when the Earl of Hertford passed as ambassador to the archduke Albert of Brussels (sic).” Once on Belgian soil, Hall soon got into theological discussion with a Jesuit, whom he conceived he had worsted. Father Baldwin, however, an English Jesuit, sent Hall a polite invitation next day to come and renew the argument with himself. "Sir Edmund Bacon, in whose hearing the message was delivered, gave me secret signs of his utter unwillingness to give way to any further conferences, the issue whereof might prove dangerous, since we But there are more agreeable discov- were to pass further, and beyond the eries to be made. For instance, one bounds of the protection of our ambassawould be glad of further acquaintance dor." In a subsequent discussion with a with Mr. Anthony Bacon, the "loving prior of the Carmelites, Sir Edmund, and beloved brother" of Francis, as the" both by his eye and tongue," wisely latter addresses him in the prefatory" took off" Hall, as the latter confesses." epistle to the first edition of the essays. Anthony seems to have been prevented by ill health from realizing the high ex

Sir Edmund might have proved a useful private secretary to his uncle. On the whole you find quite as many cases of

great men's relatives proving useful to them as of their being encumbrances. It is a good thing to see brethren working together in unity, as the Wellesleys in India, or the Wesleys in England, or the brothers Grimm, or the Schlegels. The ablest lieutenant of Frederick the Great was his brother Henri. "There is only one of us," the king once said, pointing to Prince Henri, "who has never made a mistake." It is melancholy to remember that Henri hated the brother he served so well. Frederick did all he could to win his affection in vain. A pair of brother soldiers not less interesting to Englishmen are Henry V. and John Duke of Bedford. General Churchill, too, served with credit under Marlborough. The fame of the Napiers is still fresh. One would like to couple the Howes, but it is not fair to the hero of the 1st of June. Sir William was a brave soldier and nothing more.

never thought expedient to confer a peerage on Mr. Richard Clive. On St. John's being created a viscount his father obtained a similar title, though by some blunder his patent was dated after his son's, so that the latter had the prece dence. Their descendant still sits in the House of Lords as Viscount Bolingbroke and St. John. The above precedent, however, has by no means been invariably followed. It is pleasant to read how Rowland Hill, when he returned, from the Peninsula a peer and a general, quietly took his seat at his father's table in the old Shropshire manor-house, not according to his rank, but simply according to his birth as a younger son. It is noteworthy that Lord Beaconsfield, with his usual good nature, turned Mr. AbneyHastings into Lord Donington to lessen the distance between him and his son, the Earl of Loudoun.

islation or war. The circumstance is, by comparison, honorable to humanity. Vul gar personal ambition, ambition purely for self and selfish enjoyment, is rare. Cordially as he detested Shaftesbury, Dryden admits that that statesman neither plotted nor toiled for himself:

One fact the student of history should Partnerships between fathers and sons not lose sight of. Great men, the best of are too numerous to be noticed, but there them, think far more of their relatives are a few curious instances in which the than of the public; otherwise they would father has seconded the son. A certain be, as Bristolle says of the man who king of Media appointed his father to a should prefer an habitual condition of satrapy, and the sire quietly served under solitude to society, either gods or brutes, the son. But since the hereditary princi- either more or less than men. When one ple first found favor among men, no sov- says that they think more of their relaereign can have felt himself altogether a tives than of the community at large, one king while his father lived. Philip II. is not necessarily implying that they would was constantly receiving advice from the prefer a son's interest to that of the State, ex-emperor, and must have felt bound at but simply that that son's welfare and least to excuse himself when he did not happiness is probably a more frequent follow it. How much the paternal super-subject of reflection than schemes of legintendence annoyed him he showed by delaying the payment of the paternal pension. There are fathers, again, and more of them, perhaps, than we suppose, who have been content to be the humble admirers of their sons, and to bask in the rays of their good fortune. Old Mr. Richard Clive had never thought his son good for much till the news of the defence of Arcot arrived in England, but he gradually became immoderately proud and fond of his son, who joined filial piety to his other qualities. Robert cleared off the mortgages on the family estate, settled 800l. a year on his parents, and insisted that they should keep a coach. Mr. Clive now began to mix in fashionable society, and was presented at court. The king graciously noticed him, and asked where Lord Clive was. "He will be in town very soon," said the honest squire quite aloud," and then your Majesty will have another vote," which was true enough, but not intended for publication. One can scarcely be surprised that it was

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide,
Else why should he, with wealth and honor
blest,

Refuse his age the needful hours of rest;
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won
To that unfeathered, two-legged thing -

- a son.

Then it is a truism to observe that statesmen honestly conceive their own kith and kin to be endowed with higher aptitudes for administration than they may actually possess. Again, granted two men, one rather cleverer than the other, but the second a secretary of state's cousin: could one blame the secretary for choosing his cousin as under

secretary rather than the slightly cleverer man? The minister might argue with justice that the inferiority of talent in his kinsman was compensated for by the fact that he knew him well; for no one will deny that it is an advantage to a chief to be thoroughly acquainted with the character and dispositions of his subordinates. Hence the shrewd and by no means cynical remark of Palmerston's, "The best man for any place is the man I like best."

"The Complete Patron; or, A Guide to Ministers," has yet to be written; and very difficult it would be to lay down anything more than the vaguest rules for the distribution of loaves and fishes. But there are bright examples and examples to be shunned. After Robert Grosseteste had been named Bishop of Lincoln, his rustic brother called on him and so licited preferment. The bishop replied that if he wanted a new plough or a yoke of oxen he would cheerfully pay for them; but he added, "A peasant I found you, and a peasant I shall leave you." The good bishop might have put the truth a little more politely; possibly he feared that anything less than the plainest speech would not be understood. Napoleon once found himself in exactly the opposite position to Grosseteste, with a poor relative who only begged to be left alone and positively dreaded the idea of elevation out of his own homely sphere. It was quite a surprise to the emperor, in the heyday of his glory, to learn that a mere parish priest in Tuscany bore the name of Bonaparte, and descended from a common ancestor with him. Straightway an aide-de-camp was despatched to Italy to ask the abbé what he would like. The emperor wanted him, if only for the sake of the family prestige, to accept a bishopric; and it was hinted that the purple would soon follow. The padre would none of these honors at any price; and ended by convincing the officer of his sincerity. Napoleon shrugged his shoulders at his emissary's report, but did not insist.

To the question, What caused the fall of Napoleon? Talleyrand would have replied in two words : His relatives." The Prince of Bénévent's answer is as correct as any that could be framed. Properly supported by Joseph in Spain, by Jerome in Westphalia, by Louis in Holland, by Murat in Naples, the emperor would have been invincible. Talleyrand tells us that he warned Napoleon of the inevitable consequence of entrusting important interests to men like Jerome and Joseph.

"Make them,' I said to his Majesty, arch-chancellors, arch-electors, and so forth, as much as you please. Give them any number of honorary distinctions. Do not think of giving them real power."" The ablest opponent of Napoleon during the first half of his career committed the same mistake on a smaller scale. Pitt, whose name was considered synonymous with patriot, would not see that his brother, Lord Chatham, was wholly unfit for high office. For more than six years, including two of war, he kept him at the head of the Admiralty, till something like a public outcry compelled the incapable minister to resign. Pitt soon recalled him to the Cabinet as lord president. The second Chatham was so dull a man that George III. hesitated to give him the Garter which he had offered to Pitt, and which the latter at once begged for his brother. Finally, the king consented, on the distinct understanding, as he wrote, that the honor should be considered as bestowed on the Pitt family in general. It is fair to Pitt to add that others than himself formed a mistaken estimate of the earl's capacities. Even after the terrible fiasco of the Walcheren expedition, Lord Chatham was thought good enough to be governor of Gibraltar. In 1789 Pitt had as colleagues in the Cabinet, his brother aforesaid, and his first cousin, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Grenville, the home minister, who was just thirty years old. His viceroy of Ireland was another first cousin, the Marquis of Buckingham. The elder Pitt was equally partial to his connections, with results, at one time, mournful for his country and almost fatal to his own reputation. But in the administration of 1757-61 he found room for them all, without perceptible injury to the public. His brother-in-law, Lord Temple, held the privy seal; Temple's brother, George Grenville, was treasurer of the navy; James Grenville had a snug post, and Henry Grenville was duly provided for. On the other hand, it was no small gain to Pitt to be able to command the vast Parliamentary influence of his relatives by marriage. There is no doubt he was devoted to Lady Hester; but he had loved wisely.

As a rule, great men have oftener helped their relatives than been helped by them. It is strange to see how, at the commencement of their careers, some men of genius, who might have been expected to start in life backed by the eager friendship of powerful kinsmen, have for all practical purposes - stood as much

it; but as his lordship seemed to forget it on a very essential occasion to me, I shall not burden my memory with the recollection ;" and so on, and so on, in a style of increasing petulance, till Byron stoops to italicize the word fools that the reader may be under no mistake as to its application.

alone as the typical Scotch boy who comes
to London with sixpence in his pocket.
Read Byron's account of his first visit to
the House of Lords. He seems, one of
his biographers remarks, to have had "a
keen and painful sense of the loneliness
of his position." He could not find a
single peer to introduce him, and this
from no lack of cousins in the Upper
House. After wandering about for a
while, he made his way into a room where
the fees were to be paid- there is never
any difficulty in finding such places.
Next he entered the House itself. Only
a few lord's were present, and Byron was
afraid to look at them. Without turning
his eyes to the right or to the left, he ad-
vanced straight up to the woolsack to
take the oaths. In the chancellor's seat
sat Eldon, who tried to put the bashful
lad at his ease, spoke kindly to him, and
held out his hand. Byron replied to
these advances with a stiff bow, and gave
the chancellor the tips of his fingers. He
subsequently offered a lame excuse for his
pertness, as one must consider it, remem-
bering Eldon's position and the fact that
Byron was then only known as the author
of "Hours of Idleness." If," says By-
ron, "I had shaken hands heartily, he
would have set me down for one of his
party; but I will have nothing to do with
any of them. I have taken my seat, and
now I will go abroad." Where, all this
time, was Lord Carlisle, whose "obliged
ward and affectionate kinsman " had dedi-
cated to him those very "Hours of Idle-
ness"? In the preface to the volume in
question Byron had spoken of the earl's
works as having long received the meed
of public applause to which by their in-
trinsic worth they were well entitled. In
"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,"
published a few days after the author had
taken his seat in Parliament, one per-
ceives that the season of compliments
between the obliged ward and his guar-ster.
Idian is at an end: -

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Let Stott, Carlisle, Matilda, and the rest
Of Grub Street, and of Grosvenor Place the

best,

Scrawl on till death release us from the strain,
Or common sense assert her rights again.

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It is to be feared the twain were never reconciled. But Carlisle was no fool. In his youth the government of the day held him to be so well worth enlisting on its side as to confer the order of the Thistle on him when he had but just completed his nineteenth year. On his coming of age he was immediately sworn of the Privy Council. In 1780-2 he held the post of viceroy of Ireland. Young Fox, in a letter to Richard Fitzpatrick, supposes he will have heard of Carlisle's green ribbon. "I think it," he observes, one of the best things that has been done this great while." Which may well cause a smile. The Fox of 1767 was not exactly the Fox we think of as we contemplate the tomb in the Abbey, or recall the beautiful eulogy of Scott. But, it may be observed in passing, he was always too warm-hearted a man not to be something of a nepotist. He observes somewhere that a job and a fraud are very different things; and a little job for the sake of a relative would not have appeared to him too much amiss. From his nephew's memoirs of the Whig party one gathers that in the summer of 1806 he was meditating a pretty formidable one - no less than putting Lord Holland at the head of the Foreign Office. Now, Lord Holland, though with age and experience he developed into a meritorious politician, was at that time a young man absolutely unknown to the great body of the public except as the co-respondent in a divorce case, when he had been condemned to pay 6,000l. damages to Sir Godfrey Web

If relatives could ever have helped a man of genius too feeble to help himself, that man was Cowper. His father, as every one knows, was the second son of Spencer Cowper (a younger brother of the chancellor, and first Earl Cowper), who was appointed chief justice of Ches"It may be asked," comments Byron ter in 1717, and afterwards a judge in the on himself, "why I have censured the Court of Common Pleas. Nor were the Earl of Carlisle, my guardian and relative, Cowpers unmindful of their duty to the to whom I dedicated a volume of puerile young poet, for whom they procured the poems a few years ago. The guardian- snug place of reading-clerk to the House ship was nominal—at least as far as I of Lords. He had nothing to do in ordihave been able to discover; the relation-nary times but to read aloud the titles of ship I cannot help, and am very sorry for bills, and draw a salary of 800%. a year.

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