34Z ^^ ^^^^V. ^^ fc^ fa^^^- S: I ,^.. ^ ^ ^'^y_ ^^-JR^J^ ->^v "^. ^ r»!>>>) 4. > ^ ^- 4 7 >;» ^^ B? mJ;m THE MAK OF THE PEOPLE. BY WILLIAM HOWITT. " It is Calamity vrhi«h proves the man ; the self-sustained is overthrown by it; the God-sustained is ennobled by it" — Sik Philip Sidney. "Time, dark with wrongs and red with patriot blood, is the enfran- chiser of nations."— Sik Philip Stanton's Okatioks. m THREE VOLUMES. VOL. L LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1860. The right of Translation is reserved. LOSDON : raiNTED BV R. BORN, GLOUCESTER STUEET, kegent's park. Q 8Z5 U.l THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ^ CHAPTEE I. It is now fast drawing to half a centuiy, though it seems but yesterday, since a clerical- looking stranger and a lady, who was soon known to be his wife, were observed slowly strolling through the main street, and anon were repeatedly met in the upland lanes around the little town of Dorking. They appeared to be respectively about the age of forty, but perhaps ill-health and suffering had forestalled the effect of years on the face and figure of the gentleman. He was of slight build and spare habit, with something of a VOL. I. B 2 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. stoop, which betokened weakness, or a long and assiduous leaning over his books. His complexion was dark, his face sallow, as with sickness ; his jet-black hair was already thickly streaked with the white monitors of time ; but his features were handsome, intellectually handsome, and they wore a singular expres- sion of mildness and unworldliness. The lady was of a fuller figure, and a very different style of person. Her complexion was fair, her colour almost approaching to florid, her features had a soft and rounded mould, and her large hazel eyes a quiet and observant expression, denoting not only great amiability, but intelligence and good sense. The very first glance at them showed that they were of aristocratic class and breeding ; the second, that they were probably numbered amongst the poor. Their dress was well worn, and the lady's of the simplest materials. Yet a closer inspection would have discerned on the hands of both rings of considerable THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 3 value, and at the lady's side a gold watch and chain of rich workmanship. Probably, if the history of the strangers could have been fully known, it would have disclosed why those articles of so much more value than their attire had been retained through every pressure of existence. Thus, wandering at a leisurely pace, the gentleman always with an old umbrella as a walking-stick, and often with it extended over their heads, as, arm-in-arm, the unknown couple moved along in the sunshine, or stood on some heathy height to gaze over the fair valley below, they who passed them imagined that they came there in pursuit of the gentle- man's health, till his appearance on the Sun- day morning in the reading-desk of the church discovered him to be the new curate. So quietly had the arrival of the expected cleri- cal official taken place, so little eclat attended, even in a small country town, the advent of a curate in those days, that, though the rector b2 4 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. had announced from the pulpit the previous Sunday that his substitute would officiate on the next Sunday — and the clerk, sexton, and churchwarden had been on the qui vive, won- dering that the reverend gentleman did not make his appearance ; yet even when he pre- sented himself, those important public func- tionaries had not made the news very widely known. The public generally knew that the rector had let his house to a wealthy citizen of London, and was already on his way to seek his health on the Continent. But however unimposing was the week-day appearance of the new curate, not a soul, however dense, but felt that they had now a powerful man in the pulpit. The solemn, spiritual aspect of that pallid but finely chiselled face — the grandeur of that ample forehead, around which the dark but grizzled locks wandered in careless but picturesque confusion — the light of that large dark eye, that slowly travelled over the unknown faces THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 5 before him — and the deep, cultivated tones with which he began to read the services of the day, instantly impressed the congregation, even to its least intelligent members, with the fact that there stood a gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian. Feeble as seemed his form, there was no feebleness in his voice ; it was rich, deep, effective, though not sonorous — and so musically natural, so beautifully modulated, that the deep silence that pervaded the church during the service, except in the responses, testified the profound pleasure with which it was heard. His sermon commenced with a simple clearness and tone which in another man would have foreboded common- place, but was instinct with a force that told that more depth and feeling, and wide survey of subject, were behind ; and as he advanced the spirit and strength grew, the soul within warmed, elating and animating the very figure of the preacher, till the invalid had vanished even from the memory, and he stood strong, 6 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. glowing, and even radiant, in the flush of faith and feeling ; the light flashed stronger ; naean- ings profound and thrilling came pouring from his page ; the whole congregation sate fixed in wonder, and rapt into a new and holier sphere ; and when he ceased, each man and •woman turned to his or her neighbour with a look that said no such sermon was ever heard from that pulpit in our time. The enthusiasm with which the curate was greeted on issuing from the church was in- tense. His more distinguished parishioners crowded round him to express their delight at his arrival, and at the noble discourse which they had heard ; a swarm of invitations was given, and the poorer auditors bowed or curt- sied as he passed along the churchyard to the gates with more than reverence, with hope and affection. By the side of the gratified curate, who now seemed to have relapsed into the poor and failing man, the pale hues again rapidly chasing the flush of enthusiasm from THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 7 his thin cheek, walked his smiling, kindly- looking wife, arrayed to-day in a decent black silk, but still in marked contrast to the rich garments of the ladies of the congre- gation, scarcely equalling the substantial, fresh costume of the mistresses of little shops, and the wives of master carpenters, wheelwrights, or tinmen, though worn with the grace and unassumable bearing of a lady. The curate and his wife were seen to take their way to the house of the sexton, a small cottage near the outskirts of the town, the front facing towards the street, but the back looking into a little garden, and beyond it upon a lovely landscape of wood and valley, green slope, and distant airy hill, such as few parts of England could present in equal beauty. There the curate and his wife had engaged the little, old-fashioned parlour, with its brick-floor scantily covered by a rush-mat, and the little chamber over it. They had for many years occupied much humbler abodes, 8 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. on a salary varying from forty to eighty pounds a-year. But they had the taste and tact to convert the rudest dwelling into a place of attraction if not of splendour; a place where mind exhibited its presence, and had some few objects always before it on which it could feed, and by whose power it could cast over the whitewashed wall and the little diamond paned window the glories ot the universe. There already might be seen laid on the old walnut chest of drawers, till the little shelves could receive them, Plato, Homer, Xenophon, Shak- speare, Milton, Herbert, Thomas a Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, and kindred masters of life and spirit. Already the new inmates had bargained for the whole occupation of thegarden, the sexton having another plot below it, for his cabbages and potatoes, and they promised themselves amvle occupation in its culture, and in its altera- tions, so as to extend the region of shrubs andfiow- ers, which was now confined to one little bor- der under each window, where roses and rose- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 9 mary, escaping from their nails and lists, hung down in prodigal luxuriance, as if eager to converse with the flowers on another narrow border, which rose parallel with them, with their edging of crimson thrift, grown wild and mingling with the unchecked weeds of a nar- row gravel-walk. Already the curate saw himself enjoying his books and composing his sermons in the rustic summer-house, at the far corner of the garden, now almost hidden in too luscious syringas, and snowy masses of guelder-rose; and ever-and-anon, when feeling cobwebby with study, rushing forth to demolish weeds and tie up flowers till refreshed. This was the glowing prime of a luxuriant and dusty summer. Time wore on, and at the return of the same period the next year, how stood matters with the curate and his parishioners? For a while he was popular beyond conception. Such a scholar, such a preacher, such a good and gifted man, no other parish in the county could show. He was 10 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. warmly caressed by the wealthy families of both town and country. His wife was pro- nounced to be one of the best informed and most lovable of women. They were both what the world calls well-connected. The Rev. Hugh Meynell Stanton was a name that at once, to the worldly-wise, designated its pos- sessor as belonging to the best families of Der- byshire; and Mrs. Stanton, n^e Isabella Eyre, was at once recognized as equally descended from the ancient magnates of the Peak. So for a time the church of Dorking was crowded by the gentry of the vicinage, to listen to the inspired eloquence of the new preacher. He and Mrs. Stanton were the lions of dinner-parties, and were pressed to spend weeks together in the rural palaces within ten miles round. The carriage was sent to fetch them, and to convey the curate to his necessary attendance on his duties. Never were people more caressed, never did a neighbourhood feel itself so enriched by new THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 11 intellectual light and spiritual warmth. Mr. Stanton was full of knowledge, and so beau- tifully unworldly, it did everyone good to be near him; and Mrs. Stanton was so sensible, so quietly clever, so prudent, and so well read. Besides, she played and sang sacred music divinely. But anon there crept a change, slow and slight indeed, over the mood of many. Mr. Stanton was found to be peculiar. The doctrines which he preached in the pulpit were wonderfully admired. All that he de- clared of Christianity, being a religion of renunciation — an abandonment " of the pomps and vanities of the world" — a religion of love to the poor, of forgiveness of injuries, of visiting the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, and of doing as you would be done by — was assented to as orthodox and unde- niable. These things had been preached from time immemorial; but then Mr. Stanton had the singular habit of preaching the very 12 TOE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. same things in the drawing-room, and insist- ing on them as binding everywhere, in the field and the market, the justice-room and at the quarter-sessions. He often found himself called upon to dissent at the dinner-table, or in the drawing-room, from the sentiments there uttered and discussed with great zeal. It was very soon found that the curate had no taste for the card-table or the turf ; that he cared nothing in the world for the recondite mysteries of the stable and the kennel ; that to him the vital interests of road-trusts, and canal shares, and inclosures, the still more absorbing topics of county and borough elec- tions, had no attraction whatever. All that, however, was very well — it belonged to his cloth ; it was, in truth, very creditable to him, it was admitted, though it made him but a dull fellow to the county squires. But there Mr. Stanton did not stop. Had he mounted a red coat and rushed helter-skelter over hedge and ditch after the hounds, or THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. J 3 appeared an eager spectator on the great Derby-day at Epsom, he would have been dubbed a sporting parson, but a very jolly fellow. As it was, however, dull fellow as he was discovered to be, he had the great want of tact frequently to break into an animat- ed discussion on the vengeance denounced against some tradesman who had dared to vote against the aristocratic man for the county, or some tenant who had been so foolish as to refuse to sell his conscience to his landlord on the same occasion, and was served with notice to quit, amid the exulta- tions of the landed gentry. Not seldom had he protested against the language and the spirit with which the capture of a poacher was commented on ; his laceration in the steel-trap or the spring-gun, and his pre-de- termined transportation for his repeated offences. Poor Mr. Stanton — ])oor Mr. Stanton indeed ! — would strongly reprobate such discourse and such a spirit as unholy 14 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. and unchristian. He would, in the utmost simplicity, ask his great friends if they weighed the lives of men and hares in the same balance. He would ask them, too, whether they knew that the man never was educated to anything better. Whether they knew that he could not read his own name if he saw it ? Whether they knew that he had been driven to poach by want of work in winter, and then driven to desperation by disproportionate severity ? And whether they knew that he had a wife and family who would be left destitute by his removal ? At first his remarks were received with a smile. Then with a remark that such senti- ments were all very well in the church, but that in actual life it was a different affair ; and that whilst they let Mr. Stanton have his own way on Sunday, he must let them have theirs on week-days. But when the curate stuck to his point, and was always the same — when he did not hesitate, though quietly and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 15 courteously, to attempt to dissuade from op- pression, and more than once appeared in the justice-courts tf endeavour to avert a harsh judgment — then a bitter feeling arose in the minds of his quondam friends and admirers. They did not hesitate, on their parts, to tell him, as Squire Weston told Parson Adams, that he was not in the pulpit then, and that they did not mind what he said. That was a dark and hard time towards the end of the great French war, when poor men were looked on chiefly as the material for the necessary crops, and as food for cannon ! — when high and arbitrary notions of church and state predominated ; when the education of the people was not merely neglected, but decried ; when bull-baiting, dog-fighting, and the cock- pit were systematically patronized, to brutalize the masses — and the laws had acquired such a bloody severity, that to purloin half-a-yard of calico, much more a sheep, sent a man or a woman to the gallows. It seemed to be con- 16 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. veiitionally established that the precepts of Christianity extended their authority, only to the Sunday, and then only as far as the church door ; but Mr. Stanton, with a simplicity which amazed his wealthy hearers, seemed to regard them as ruling everywhere and at all times. Such a doctrine and such a man were found to be extremely inconvenient. He was soon voted a bore, a fanatic, an unmanageable man, an eccentric ; and knowing ones, when his strange notions were talked of, touched their foreheads significantly — as much as to say there was a screw loose there. Poor Mr. Stanton ! he was destined to wade still deeper into the waters of controversy. As he took his walk about the little town and its outskirts, he was accustomed to stop little boys and girls, and ask them their names, and also their parents' name, and whether they went to school. To his surprise he found that not one of the children of the working-class was re- ceiving the slightest education. There were THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 17 schools which were attended by the boys and girls of the tradesmen, but the sixpence a week fee was too much for the very poor, and they went nowhere. Very soon Hugh Stanton took out his memorandum-book, and making a domiciliary visit to the cottages of the poor, discovered that no fewer than two hundred children were growing up in utter ignorance even of their alphabet. No sooner had he this fact in his possession than he made another domiciliary visit to the dwellings of the rich, and declared that there must be a school for the poor. '^ A school for the poor ! '^ exclaimed one and all, gentlemen and ladies alike. "A school for the poor ! why, it would ruin the whole neighbourhood ! Not a servant could ever again be had if they could once read and write. It would spoil them for ever ! " It would detain us too long to relate all the arguments which the good curate used to dissipate such fears, and to show that to edu- VOL. I. c 18 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. cate the poor was both an indispensable Chris- tian duty, and the most wise and politic of social measures. From that day poor Mr. Stanton was pronounced to be incurably mad, and strange and averted looks became his for- tune in all high places. *' What a pity,'' said the ladies to Mrs. Stanton, condolingly, ^^ that Mr. Stanton, with his splendid talents, should be so crotchety. How was the world to be carried on with such maxims ? '' And when Mrs. Stanton replied, "Better than ever, and as our Saviour intended," a cold and disdainful curtsey was the answer of the astonished gentlewomen, and the curate's wife was discovered to be " a Methodist," and was cut accordingly. And Mr. Stanton's madness was of that kind which is incurable. He went on without his aristocratic parishioners to establish a school, whose fee should be only a penny a week. With the poor he had no difficulty — THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 1 9* there he was a universal favourite. To them the doctrines of Christianity, love and charity, and knowledge, were as welcome in their cottages as in the church. They were more so, because they had hitherto been rare guests there. So far from its being a Sunday religion, and a dead letter on week-days, it was just what they wanted to comfort and console them in their privations. To them the curate was a constant visitor, a sympathizing friend, a wise and wonderful instructor and counsellor, and his wife was like an angel of mercy and sunshine in their dark and troubled moments. They gladly sent their children to the curate's school; and soon there was a hum as of a swarm of bees, in an old disused malt-house which the curate had engaged. The alarmed gentry tried to prevent his obtaining this old building, in order, as they said, to turn the heads of all the poor children, and to revolutionize the whole working-class. They did not hesitate to insinuate that he was c2 20 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. infected with French principles, tliough no man in reality more intensely abhorred them. Letters were despatched to the rector to request him to dismiss his curate, and get a more rational one ; but, unluckily, they had already sounded the curate's praises to the absent incumbent, and, as he '^ didna want to be fashed," he now took no notice of the appeal. They tried to prevent the curate having the malt-house, but fortunately it was the property of a great admirer of the curate's, a substantial and sturdy man, who had his own notions, and not only let him have the place rent free, but put it into repair. For some time Hugh Stanton and his wife were obliged to act as school-master and school-mistress themselves. Day after day, and week after week, they might be found laboriously at work, instructing their rude little scholars in the simplest elements of learning ; whilst Mrs. Stanton commenced a THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 21 little sewing -class amongst the oldest of the girls. From the day that the school was established, there was a visible decrease in the attendance of the wealthy at church ; and the reason was assigned that " the curate's ser- mons had vastly deteriorated; and no won- der, for all his time was devoted to school teaching." But God and the curate's wife knew that not the less a portion of time or thought did Hugh Stanton devote to the meditation and composition of his sermons ; that not the less punctual and assiduous were his visits to the cottages of the suffering poor, and the bedrooms of the sick. But this time was deducted from his own sleep, and from those delicious country strolls in which he had always been accustomed to indulge with her — ever and anon drawing from his pocket, as they sat on a thymy bank, or in a solitary copse, a volume of Herbert or Vaughan, or of the more modern poet, Cowper, and reading to her, in a voice of 22 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. musical emotion, their beautiful strains of piety and imagination. In fact, Mrs. Stanton began to tremble for her husband's health, and to cast anxious glances at the still paler and more sallow cheek ; and at the spare form, which seemed to pass with a lighter tread from the morning's labour in the little garden to the breakfast table, and thence to the busy school. There was another eye that saw this too, and it was that of the worthy maltster, Stephen Buckles, who did not rest till he had found a youth who was capable of performing the simple duties of the very simple degree of education which, as yet, was reached in the school ; Mrs. Stanton still continuing a general oversight of the girls and the instruction of the sewing- class. Thus, once more, the worthy curate could take his necessary amount of rest and sleep, and relaxation ; again he might be seen slowly strolling along the upland footpaths, or in the glades of the neighbouring park, with THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ^8 his wife and his book ; or might be met on the distant heathy heights of Leith-Hill, in the deep lanes around Lonesome-Lodge, or amid the magnificent birchen glades of Wooton. Often were the inseparable pair seen returning from a long summer ramble, walking wearily along the street, with very dusty shoes, and their botanical case loaded with specimens of plants, many of which they introduced into their little garden, now become a wondrous scene of flowers and fragrance — and their hands besides laden with ferns, mosses, and stones, the subjects of their studiss. With the townspeople in general the curate was still a favourite. With the sturdy maltster, Stephen Buckles, he was a miracle of learning, and a saint without a peer; and with the poor he was an object of unexampled reverence and love. With the great and affluent he was a neglected and unpopular man. But this had ceased either deeply to surprise or to wound the good man. It 24 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. was a cycle of experience which he had, through twenty years of strange trials, often run through before ; and he had long come to the conclusion that it could not, in the nature of things, be otherwise. With his favourite Pascal, he had firmly convinced himself that " the greatness of men of talent is invisible to the rich, to kings and conquerors, and to all these earthly great ones. The greatness of that wisdom which cometh from God is invisible to the worldly and to men of talents. There are three orders of quite different kinds. ** Great geniuses have their empire, their splendour, their greatness, their victories, ind do not stand in need of carnal greatness, which has no relation to that which they seek. They are to be seen with the mind and not with the eye ; but that is enough for them. *^ Saints likewise have their empire, their splendour, their greatness, and their victories, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 25 and have no need either of carnal or mental greatness, which are out of their order, and neither increase nor diminish the greatness to which they aspire. They are seen of God and angels, and not with the eye of the body, nor by curious minds, and God is sufficient for them. ** But there are some who can admire no greatness but that of this world, as if there was none in understanding ; and others admire only that of the understanding, as if there was not a greatness infinitely more sublime in heavenly wisdom." This, then, was the fixed law of the world and of Christianity ; he could not alter it, but he could submit to it. They to whom he had spoken in vain were yet only of the world, and had only admitted Christianity theoretically. He had adopted it fully, prac- tically, and as the only real good, and he must and did joyfully accept the same treat- ment as the Divine Master of his order. In the words of the same admirable Pascal : — 26 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " Jesus Christ lived in so much obscurity — as the world terms obscurity — that histo- rians who record only things of import- ance have scarcely taken any notice of him. '* Yet what man ever possessed so much glory as Jesus Christ? The whole Jewish nation predicted him before his coming ; the Gentile world adore him since his coming. Both Jews and Gentiles regard him as their centre. And yet who enjoyed so little of so much glory ? Of thirty-three years he spent thirty in privacy. During the other three he passed for an impostor ; the priests and rulers of his nation rejected him ; his friends and kinsmen despised him ; and at last he died an ignominious death, betrayed by one of his attendants, denied by another, and deserted by all. "What share had he in this glory? No man had ever so much, and yet no man was ever in a meaner condition. All his glory was, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 27 therefore, for our sake, to render him evident to us, but was not intended to aggrandize himself.'^ And therefore his humble but noble dis- ciple, Hugh Meynell Stanton, the feeble- bodied but masterly-minded curate of Dork- ing, had no desire whatever to aggrandize himself. It was enough for him that he knew the world, though the world did not know him ; for they were separated by an eternal law. But within that world there was another world of true and loving hearts, in which he was already walking in heaven. With the love of the poor — with the con- sciousness that he was a ministering angel to them — with the glorious world of nature, of poetry, of profound lettered wisdom, which he carried about with him in his memory and his books — and the dear and unseverable affec- tion of two precious souls — his wife and his son — he went on his way, silent as the river Mole through the valley beneath, obscure 28 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. as the pale orchis in its slumbering woodlands, but happy as the lark in its sky. And his son ? — who was he ? At times there joined the curate and his wife a youth, all life and ardour, who bore a strong resem- blance to them both. He was apparently about eighteen ; his handsome features and dark hair assimilated him to the father — his fresher and rounder cheek, and more well-knit frame and buoyant step, to the mother. Whilst he was there, the walks of the curate and his wife were more constant, and longer. They went out full of eager talk, and the counte- nances of the parents caught the gaiety of the youth, and they seemed to live a new life in him. They listened unweariedly to his narra- tives of the life which he passed while away from them, and even laughed heartily at what ever and anon he told them, laughing himself. The blithe-spirited lad might frequently be seen careering here and there on the higher slopes of the neighbouring heaths, as if to seek out plants THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 29 there, or to catch a wider view of the landscape — wading through deep vegetation in the river- side copses, or poising himself on the stones in the river, to cross for some like object. All their tastes seemed to be his own, and his young limbs and spirits were freely used to save the more subdued energy of his parents. Philip Stanton was already earning his liv- ing as the usher of a large public school. He had been educated by his father, and in classi- cal and mathematical studies was far in ad- vance of youths of his age. In fact, his educa- tion had been the delight of his father, who, at the same time that he had well grounded him in those branches of knowledge which are deemed of the first necessity towards distinction at the universities, had read with him history, phi- losophy, both natural and moral, and had studied with him the leading departments of na- tural history, botany, zoology, chemistry, and geology. In those studies which he had not before made himself familiar with, the curate 30 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. became a fellow-learner with his son, and the mother too went along with them in many of them. Poetry, the noblest works of eloquence and imagination in our own and other lan- guages, and the sublime reading of the Bible, and discourses on its topics and promises — these were the daily pleasures and aliment of their lives. In fact, no three souls were ever so bound up in each other. For years they had lived on together, as if they had but one exist- ence; and now, when the holiday times allowed their son to join them for a season in their walks and talks, everything else was forgotten but the duties of the day, and the grateful thanks to the ever-bounteous Giver of life, love, and the heaven of spiritual union. How little could the spirit and antagonism of the outward world break into or comprehend the felicity of that charmed circle ! It will be necessary, however, for the clear conception of our narrative, to take a closer view of the early history of our curate. 31 CHAPTEE 11. The tourists of the Peak, as they have as- cended Darley Dale, on their way to the inte- rior of that miniature mountain land, have often stopped to inquire of the passing peasant the name of a stately grey mansion rising from amid its verdant woods on a long and lofty moorland range, and have been answered that it was Druid's Moor House, the seat of Sir Marmaduke Stanton. That wild moorland range, with the pleasant Derwent flowing at its feet, with its sombre mass of oak woods, at its outskirts embroidered as it were with larch and fir plantations, with their varied 32 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. hues, and the brown heathery expanses stretch- ing lonelily on either hand, give to the tra- veller a vivid feeling of the aijry and pictur- esque region that he is approaching. Rich and busy cultivation has of late years made wide encroachments on the primitive rudeness of those once solitary hills. At the time when this narrative commences, they presented a very different aspect. Then the dark heather, or the brachen and the rush gave their native tints to many a swelling hill which now waves with corn, or is cheerfully green with its pasturage. Vast and solitary spread the unbroken waste, intersected with many a bog where waved the cotton-rush, and W'hence came "wild and wide" the cries of the peewit and the curlew, mingled with the more plaintive bleat of the mountain lamb. Then the pile of dark weather-stained rock, or the ancient croralech, the monuments of the long-departed Druid, stood undisturbed, wrapped, as it were, in the silence of ages, and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 33 that solitude was rarely broken except by the herdsmen — by some antiquarian, who must now be dubbed archaeologist, visiting the remains of the great Celtic Temple of Arbor Low — or the fishermen following with nimble fly the sonorous lapsings of the Lathkill, or the Wye. Now all is one scene of culture ; the rocks are cleared from the heath, and converted into stone walls for the interminable webwork of fields ; the cromlech, even where spared, is shrouded from public gaze in fast-rising plan- tations, and turnips and corn flourish on the site of the ancient barrow. You must travel on to the north, to the east and Heegh Moors, as they are called, to Longstone Edge, or the vicinage of Castleton and Hathersage, to Axe-Edge and Kinderscout, to reach the dark and unreclaimed wilds which in our own fa- thers' time spread their melancholy yet in- spiring and storm-traversed features over the greater part of Peak Land. There, what was once wildness is still VOL. I. D 34 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. beauty. Still the free air blows over many a lonely peak, whence superb scenery and far- oflf vales reach the eye. Still the Dove, the Wye, the Lathkill, and many a lesser stream, leap along in untamed beauty through glens, and rock-pillared and pinnacled defiles, and hidden dales, whose loveliness neither time nor art can touch. All hail, then, to the still genuinely Saxon highlands of the Peak, po- lished and burnished up, as they have become, like all the rest of busy England, yet still beautiful ! Where even the show-booths and baths of Matlock, and the railway train rush- ing through the bowels of the High Tor, have not been able utterly to extinguish the beau- ties of that scene. Where old Haddon still stands grey and unpolluted by modern novel- ties, in his plenteous meadows ; where Chats- worth rears its palace-roofs amid its antique gardens and fountains, its verdant meads and heathery moorlands ; where the crumbling halls of Dethick appear hushed, as it were, by THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 35 the sad memory of Anthony Babington, and the decapitated queen who once '^ bided her time " there, and whom he tried to save. Where the old abode of President Bradshaw, who doomed Charles Stuart to the block, re- mains. Where the bleak moors of Buxton still send the gales of health to the pale invalid. Where Little John, the chief captain of Eobin Hood, sleeps, as it would be well for many a greater man to sleep, in Hope Dale. Where Isaak Walton angled and sung the light ma- drigals of Raleigh and Marlowe, or penned pious stories of great churchmen. Where Devonshire planned the Revolution of 1688; and where the caverns of Castleton, and the mines of Odin, and the hoary Mam-Tor, and many a purple moorland peak, and craggy dell, and dashing stream, and bubbling spring shall live, instinct with poetry, for ages ! Hugh Meynell Stanton was born at Druid's Moor House. He was the second son of Sir George Hunloke Stanton, baronet of an ancient d2 36 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. baronetcy, dating even from the first purchase of the new-fangled dignity in James, the Bri- tish Solomon's time. Since then many a good marriage, as worldly-wise marriages are styled, had added both to the dignity of the house and the extent and value of the estate. Sir George, Hugh Meynell's father, was a wise man, of that kind of wisdom which all the world acknowledges. He had, it is true, con- fined his ambition to the circle of his own hills chiefly, and its most adventurous yearnings had rarely over-passed the borders of the county. By that means, however, he had avoided the ruinous expenditure inseparable from a life in Parliament and the rivalries of the capital ; and in his own neighbourhood he was potent and right worshipful. He was not only of the quorum, but chairman of the bench. He was lieutenant-colonel of the county militia, and great in all matters of highway trusts, charity trusts, local privileges, and local honours. He had married into the house of a THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 37 peer, and was on the most intimate terms with the two great ducal families whose demesnes abutted on his own. Of course, he hunted, and coursed, and shot, and sometimes fished — but the latter with a decaying interest as his years increased, and only when the May-fly was in season, and sport was brisk. But as to hounds, that luxury of great cost, they were a subscription pack, towards which Rut- land and Devonshire, the Marquis of Harting- ton, and Sir Hugh Bateman liberally contri- buted, and of which Sir Hugh was the master. Sir George had seen one estate after another absorbed into his own, till his domain extended from the Derwent to far distant hills. Amid this growing greatness were growing also two fine lads, Marmaduke and Hugh Meynell. When the former was about four- teen and the latter twelve, there arose already sufficiently marked difference of character to afford a prognostic of the future tendencies of the men. Marmaduke was a strong and comely 38 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. lad, with fair hair, and an oval face and hand- some prominent nose, with already something of the conscious but firm expression of his father, the consciousness of being the great man of the district. Hugh was more slightly built, and had the dark hair and eyes, and somewhat brunette complexion of his mother. The boys who had played together at peg-top and marbles, had flown their kites, and whirled their slings, and twanged their bows together, had fished together, and together tried their first hands at the fowling-piece, now began clearly to go different ways. At the great grammar school of Repton, to which they now went, they naturally fell into different sets, and dis- played very different tastes. Marmaduke be- came a passionate associate of the bigger boys, who already began to talk of their dogs and horses, and were ambitious of distinction for feats of swimming, boxing, and daring practi- cal jokes; and even prided themselves on their precocious observations of the farmers' pretty THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 39 daughters that they saw at church. Hugh, though fond of play, was found the eager com- panion of a younger crew, who in school were noted for their bookishness, and dubbed milk- sops and saints by their more boisterous seniors. When at home, during the holidays, though the two handsome lads were occasionally seen mounted on their ponies, accompanying their father in his rides, yet more often the elder was trotting alongside of his father's tall horse, or dropping behind, and learning things better unknown from John, the groom, by whom he was made cognizant of the wonderful merits of cocks and bull-dogs, and badger-baitings, and scandalous village histories. Hugh was as regularly the delighted companion of his mother. Whilst the father was detailing to his eldest born the plans he had for purchasing such and such a little freehold, and rounding off such an awkward corner by the demolition of some old cottage that was the patrimony of some old rustic couple, and the admira- 40 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. tion of the passing stranger — of this footpath that he meant to get stopped, and that poach- ing villain that he hoped to transport — the mother was traversing the heaths on her pony, and followed by her favourite dogs, relating to the listening Hugh the traditions of the place, and grafting on many a grey stone and shadowy dingle memories that would never for- sake him. She taught him the most beautiful of the wild flowers and plants, and directed his attention to the pictorial effects of lights and shadows on the hills, and to the wide-stretched view into the lowland country. Together mother and son walked the large old garden, and shrubberies, inclosed in tall grey stone walls, at the bottom of which lay silent, deep and dark ponds, overhung by ancient oaks and ashes. Often she took him into her little retired boudoir, then contented with the humbler name of closet, and read to him her favourite passages in the Bible, and in her favourite authors ; and saw with secret trans- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 41 port the deep and tender impression which they made. The love of the gentle boy was as essential to her happiness as it was animat- ing to her future hope of him ; for Lady Stan- ton, though of outwardly prosperous estate, had her own secret sorrow. Her marriage had not been her own choice, but one of those conven- tional bargains in which the position goes for everything and the heart for nothing. The stern and unsympathetic temper of her husband did not tend to make her forget what she had hoped once to have been, and Hugh often saw her in private shed silent tears, when he stole closer to her and took her hand in his, and laid his head on it on her knee. Often she would only gently stroke his dark locks with the fair hand at liberty, but sometimes she would suddenly clasp him in her arms, and press him in a close and convulsive embrace. This intercourse of mother and son did not escape the notice of either Sir George or the elder son. The father, however, took no out- 42 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ward note of it ; the son would occasionally taunt Hugh with being his mammy's pet, and the little lap-dog tied to her apron-strings. That was not the only thing which he had to bear from the elder brother, but Hugh bore it patiently — for in that house, from generation to generation, there was rarely a daughter, and rarely more than two sons. There was no daughter there at this time, and Hugh, young as he was, felt that he supplied a daughter's place to his beloved mother. And well did she deserve such love. Lady Stanton was a woman of a slender and graceful figure, and of pretty, rather than handsome, face. Her features were small and delicate, her eyes large and dark, her complexion retaining the dusky tinge of her mother, who was from the south of France ; but her soul, which was overflow- ing with affection, and bright with intelligence and womanly tastes, gave to her face a charm that was more attractive than beauty. Lady Stanton saw with a painful anxiety THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 43 the fast developing character of her elder son. There was a hardness and an overbearing dis- position in him, which the very prospects around him made it impossible to counteract. Already the poison of primogeniture began to work The lad felt that he was the future great man of Druid's Moor ; his father's present importance, and everything that he saw, were one day to be his. The secret as well as the avowed flatteries of visitors, of dependents, of the whole people of the neighbourhood, who saw in him the Sir Marmaduke of a few years hence, all fostered this no longer latent feeling. The very reverence with which the farmer and the cottager that he passed in his rides, doffed their hats and stooped their heads, was signi- ficant. Hugh was treated kindly and respect- fully from the natural kindness towards a son of a great house, but there was a more easy and familiar recognition, which only pointed to the future occupant of the neighbouring parsonage. But from his brother, Hugh did 44 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. not always receive that ordinary courtesy. He was often made to feel that he was but the younger son. The already important Marma- duke actually affected on certain occasions to patronize his younger brother. He talked of the time when he should be master of Druid's Moor, and what he would do for his brother the rector. He would give him a favourite horse, or he should have a cow any time from the hall-farm ; and he should always expect him to shoot with him, and if ever he was in any trouble he was to be sure to come to him. All this sounded very fine in the ears of servants, for it was freely uttered before them, and they would tell Hugh how lucky he would be in such a generous brother. But as for Hugh himself, it grated harshly on his feelings. He felt humiliated and indignant. Why should his brother pretend to patronize him ? He had never asked him for anything, and did not know that he ever should. He felt THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 45 that there was an indelicacy, a grossness of nature, an ugly pride in the spirit which could thus dictate such words from one brother to another, born of the same parents, and intended by God, if not by man, to be equal — endowed with the same senses, soul, and faculties — intended to inherit the same advan- tages. It was in vain, however, that Hugh secretly spurned these supercilious condescen- sions. His evident dislike of them, and even plainly avowed refusal of them, seemed to produce no impression on the patronizing brother ; and he would now offer Hugh a dog that he ceased to care for, or a pony that he had said was not good enough for himself, but would do very well for Hugh, and was astonish- ed that Hugh showed no recognition of the kindness. " Why, Hugh," he would say, ^' what is the matter ? You might at least thank me. I thought you would jump at ifc. I would not do that for anyone, you know." 46 THE MAN OF TUE PEOPLE. But if Hugh, by some rare chance, had a pony, or a terrier, or a hawk given him that Marmaduke took a fancy to, he thought nothing so natural or reasonable as that Hugh should make it over to him ; and was sure to succeed in getting it, offering something in exchange which he thought would do very well for Hugh, who did not much mind such things, he said. Lady Stanton never ceased to oppose and correct this selfishness in her eldest son, and often endeavoured to stimulate her husband to do the same ; but Sir George seemed generally to think it very reasonable and natural that Marmaduke should have the preference, seeing, he said, the different po- sitions the boys were destined to occupy. Marmaduke he thought the very model of generosity. He was always, he said, giving away his things to Hugh. "Yes," observed Lady Stanton, ^'such things as he himself did not care for ; but THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 47 wanting just the things that poor Hugh did particularly care for." It was in vain. Nature, strong in the elder born, and custom adding its strength, went on doing what no one could undo, and what none but the mother sought to change. It was not long after this period that an incident occurred which left deep traces on the minds of the brothers, small as it was. During the summer-holidays, the Hon. Mrs. Curzon was spending some time with Lady Stanton. They were dear and congenial friends. With Mrs. Curzon was her little daughter, Mary, who became a great companion of the two boys. She rode out with them through the neighbouring heaths and woods. Both the boys were her j^reua; chevaliers, Marma- duke was proud to be her guide to the beauties of the vicinity, and rode with her to Haddon and Bakewell, and Rowsley, and entertained her with what he deemed interesting accounts of fishing and dogs, and rabbit-catching, 48 TOE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. and the merits of horses. Hugh showed her the old Druid cromlechs and rocking-stones, and the remains of a hermit's chapel in a rock, and told her wonderful stories of the old times, and of what he had read in his favourite books. Mary Curzon was about the age of Hugh, with all a girl's vivacity and wonder, and she enjoyed being thus feted and amused by her two new friends, but gradually it required no close observance to perceive that it was to Hugh that she more readily listened, and with whom she stole away to some pleasant spot, or to his mother's boudoir, to listen to his reading. As for poor Hugh, he was thoroughly enamoured of the fairy-like little girl. On his young imagination she rose with all those beautiful hues which array a child's first passion — a thing like a morning dream, as en- chanting and not always as evanescent. Never was there such a lovely and enrapturing fairy as little Mary Curzon ; nothing was there THE MAN or THE PEOPLE. 49 like her in the tales of the ^ ^Arabian Nights/' nothing in the stories of those young saints, and princesses, and heroines of early romance to which Hugh's reading had yet extended. But not the less, in his way, was Marmaduke bewitched by the little visitor. He was dis- gusted with Hugh's stealing her away so often, as he called it, and would break in abruptly, and call her from those stupid books, or equally stupid strolls in the garden, to ride with him, or to witness his dexterous management of the angling-rod in the Lath- kill. Hugh generally followed mechanically, and still enjoyed the pleasure of seeing the fair vision, or listening to her. But one day, as Hugh and Mary were seated under a rock projecting from amongst the broom on the heath, reading ^'Paul and Vir- ginia," Marmaduke came fiercely up, tore the book from Hugh's hand, and flung it away. Hugh reddened and sprung to his feet. Marmaduke, scowling and dignified, said, VOL. I. E 50 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " Mary, do you know that that little imper- tinence there will only be a poor parson, but that I shall be master of Druid's Moor ? '' " No," said Mary, innocently. '* I never heard anything about it." " But it is so," Marmaduke grandly re- marked ; " and yet he dares to monopolize you." '' And what of that ? " said Hugh ; ^4f Mary likes to talk to me, what matters it if you will be lord of Druid's Moor?" *'It matters a good deal, I should think," retorted Marmaduke ; " don't you think so too, Marv?" But before the wondering Mary could give any answer, the enraged Hugh had seized his taller and more muscular brother by the luxuriant brown locks on each side of his head, and knocked that head lustily against the iron-grey rock. The astonished Marmaduke, with the blood rushing to his face till it was crimson, stood THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 51 dumb, confounded and cowed — when Hugh as suddenly let go of him ; but, instead of retali- ating, Marmaduke said, with tears of anger and shame starting to his eyes, '' You'll catch it for that," and darted away, disappearing the next moment over the stone wall into the neigh- bouring copse in the direction of home. The juvenile lovers, for so we may call them, stood mute as statues, gazing on each other— Mary all wonder and confusion, Hugh pale, trembling, and with an eye that sought to learn what she thought of the rencontre. At length, Mary said in a low, reproving voice, " Oh, Hugh, you should not have done so." " But he is so provoking," said Hugh, in- dignantly. '^ He will never be quiet. What is it to me that he will be master of Druid's Moor? What business has he to insult me before you, when I was only trying to amuse you?" "Oh! let us go," said Mary; "what will Sir George say ? " £ 2 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLiMols 52 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. She hurried away, and Hugh followed in silence. When they drew near the house, he said, "Mary, I was very wrong, though he was so provoking. But you will forgive me, won't you ? You won't bear malice ?'^ "Oh, why should I bear malice?" said Mary, stopping for a moment. " But I trem- ble for you. What will Sir George say ? " "Thank you," said Hugh, with grateful emphasis, and dived down a side walk of the shrubbery. He remained wandering in the woods below for hours. His passion had van- ished, and he now blamed himself bitterly. To have been betrayed into such a paroxysm — to have struck his brother, and that too in the presence of that good and gentle girl — he was overwhelmed with shame and remorse. In the house, meantime, Marmaduke had carried a dreadful story of injury to his father ; the little affrighted girl had unbosomed the tale to her mother. Mrs. Curzon explained the affair to Lady Stanton, and Lady Stanton THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 53 hurried to Sir George to deprecate his anger. But instead of anger she found him rather in- clined to be merry over it. He said that Hugh had served Marmaduke right, for his rudeness in seizing and flinging away the book, and that he did not think little Hugh had had so much pluck. Lady Stanton was relieved from the terrible apprehension of the punishment that she had anticipated for Hugh, but she was not the less wounded at the dis- play of evil passions in her children. She fol- lowed the direction indicated by Mary Curzon, and traversed the garden and the wood, call- ing in a low tone, " Hugh, Hugh ! where are you ? " But it was not till the shades of evening were fast falling that she came near where he was, and saw him advance from his conceal- ment, with his head depressed with shame and remorse, and drop on his knees silently before her. ^' Oh, Hugh ! " said his mother, solemnly^ 54 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " how you have disappointed me ! Could I ever have dreamed that you could give way to passion and strike your brother? Is that the end of all my instructions, and all your apparent goodness ? '^ " I knoAV it all," replied Hugh, weeping and trembling as he knelt, without daring to raise his eyes to hers. ^' I know how bad I am — nothing is too bad for me. Let my father punish me as he pleases, 1 will never complain, for I know I deserve it all." " No, Hugh," said Lady Stanton ; " your father will not punish you. He thinks there was provocation, though," added she, ^^ you were so wrong ; but you must ask pardon of God whom you have so offended, and of your brother, against whom you have raised your hand." " I will," said Hugh. " I have prayed to God to forgive me, and to strengthen me to resist such temptations in future ; and I will ask Marmaduke to forget it." THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 55 *^ That's ray dear boy," said Lady Stanton, embracing him affectionately, and leading him by the hand in silence towards the house. They ascended the stairs to the landing near the bed-room of Marmaduke, when his mother said, in a low voice, " He is there ! " and Hugh, after a moment's pause, knocked at the door and went silently in. Though it was still early in the evening, Marmaduke had gone to bed. Vexed at the manner in which his father had received his tale of injury, he had gone in sullen anger to his room, and to bed. Hugh stole softly across the room, and, kneeling down, took the hand of his brother, which hung on that side of the bed, and kissing it, covered it with hot tears. "Who is there?" said Marmaduke, angrily, and suddenly snatching away his hand. "It is I — it is Hugh," said the young peni- tent ; " who asks your forgiveness from his heart." "Get away with you, you dog ! " said 56 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Marmaduke, violently throwing himself to the other side of the bed. " You are a Jacobin ! " It was the first term of reproach that rose to his lips — for it was a term which, at that time, was used for everything infamous by the Conservative aristocracy of England ; and though it was an epithet which burst from him, as it were, by chance, he thought it a happy one, and in after years thought it still happier, and often applied it to his brother. " You are a Jacobin ! You are a Cain ! You would have killed me if you could/' Hugh was on the point of assuring him that he would never again so offend, when Marmaduke, as if inspired by a new idea, started up, and, with a proud and offended air, exclaimed : — " And I will tell you what it is. Master Hugh — one day you may want that parsonage, and it may be mine to give, and then you shall see — " THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 57 He did not finish the sentence, but, flinging himself down, drew the clothes round his^ averted head, and was silent. Poor Hugh, who had been prepared to do the utmost penance for his oflfence — to humble himself, as it were, to the dust before his offended brother — now suddenly felt his frame stiffen, his heart swell with indignation, and, forgetting all his sorrow and his remorse, he turned away in proud stoicism, and, retiring to his own room, resolved never again to offend, as he had done, that he might never again humiliate himself in vain. No more was said in the family on the sub- ject ; the visit of the little apple of discord had come to an end. For some time the two brothers were awkward and distant to each other, and then all flowed on as usual, ex- ternally at least. But from that day neither offender nor offended ever forgot the transac- tion, or the words that had been spoken. We must now pass more rapidly over the 58 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. early history of the brothers. They went from school to Oxford, where Marmaduke passed his time, as heirs-expectant too often do, in laziness and dissipation, neither working for honours, nor caring for them. These he and his aristocratic comrades left to the younger brothers, the men that, according to their phrase, had to make their way. Hugh, on the contrary, not because he had to make his way, but from his innate love of know- ledge, and of intellectual exertion, studied hard, took first-class honours, and displayed such abilities, that his tutor and the fellows of his college declared that, if he was designed for the Church, no promotion, no dignity was beyond his reach, having family influence to begin with. They returned home — Marmaduke to spend his time as young men of his class, and to strut in a captain's uniform of his father's militia regiment in the chief town of a southern county, coming occasionally to THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 59 Druid's Moor in the shooting and fishing seasons, and bringing with him a number of his young fellow-officers, who kept the neigh- bourhood alive with their ridings and drivings, and servants posting to and fro, joining in the company and the gaieties of Chatsworth, in the autumn ; and in the moorland sports of the Eutland family, who, though Haddon was uninhabited, had a shooting-box in the neighbourhood. Hugh, meantime, was quietly performing a curate's duties at G rectory, to qualify him for the right of holding a living. His father, proud of the honours which he had achieved at college, and of the high expec- tations formed of him there, had opened, in his imagination, a new vista of importance to the family in the future dean or bishop that it might boast — and already cast about in his mind for patronage from his great neighbours on Hugh's behalf. But, unfortunately, Hugh formed an attachment to the daughter and 60 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. only child of the rector for whom he officiated, and married her. The attachment in itself was most natural and happy, for the young lady was worthy of his love ; but she had no fortune, for her father, now a decrepit old man, had come late into the living, and was already burdened with debts. The heads of the family to which he belonged were Catholics — the rec- tory was already promised, and there was no hope of other promotion in that quarter. In proportion to the golden imagination which Hugh's father had begun to entertain on his account, was his rage at what he called this fool's marriage. Had Sir George used much reflection no great harm was done, for he had powerful friends in other quarters, and might have easily cleared the way for his son to a high position. But his anger and disappoint- ment blinded his judgment — he gave way to intemperate and opprobrious language towards Hugh, and forbade him ever to come near Druid's Moor. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Gl Marraaduke quietly chuckled over Hugh's disgrace, and, instead of endeavouring to mol- lify his father's wrath, said, ^^It was just like Hugh." Lady Stanton's distress may be imagined — not on account of Hugh's marriage, but of its consequences. Though forbidden to see her son or his wife, she continued to see both, and was rejoiced to find her daughter-in-law all that she could desire. She continued to sorrow and sympathize with the young couple, and patiently and prudently endeavoured to soften her husband's mind towards them. But Sir George was not made of meltable, much less malleable stuff. His resentment, if it could be said in any degree to have subsided, set into a sullen and implacable mood. The old rector, Hugh's father-in-law, died ; a young incumbent took his place, who wanted no curate^ and Hugh and his wife went forth to a distant engagement. To follow through the fortunes of nearly the 62 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. next quarter of a century would be to sketch a story of dark struggle, painful disappointment, sorrow, sickness, and suffering. Whenever Hugh ascended the pulpit, he awoke the great- est astonishment by the splendour of his talents and the fervid eloquence of his preaching, but this effect was as certain to be neutralized by the uncompromising honesty with which the preacher carried his principles into actual life. It was his fortune to have to protest against worldly maxims, and to endeavour to turn his principal hearers from cruel preju- dices and oppressions. The gentlest and most courteous of men, Hugh Stanton was at the same time " an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile.'^ With him, principles were substantial and unsurrenderable facts. That Christianity which he taught in the pulpit he felt still more called upon to teach in the dining and drawing-rooms of the great. To be silent there, and to let the tide of worldly doctrine roll on unchallenged, was to concede THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 63 everything. It was to allow all those deeds of authorized yiolence and contempt of the poor to perpetuate themselves, which Christ so strenuously denounced in his day — which were in the height of their baneful ascendancy in the time of Hugh Meynell Stanton — and which the last twenty years have so successfully and so triumphantly done battle with. What a different world we now live in to that in which Hugh Stanton was a martyr ! In that dark day, when the tyranny of government, and the false ideal of property, had debauched the minds of the ruling classes, till the sense of power and the imagined rights of property derived from feudal times had gradually quenched every sense of our duties towards the poor and ignorant — it was astonishing to hear Hugh Stanton thundering from the pulpit to a proud and afSuent county congregation, in which sate more than one state minister as visitors to a neighbouring house, in words like these : — 64 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " Let your power, your property, and your talents be employed as the gifts of God, for the service of God. Let them be employed as the materials for the development not only of your own minds, but for the minds of your poorer fellow-men. Great as you may be, you are but the hired servants of the great Cultivator of the earth, and ought not to receive the wages of health, honour, power, prestige, and ability without doing your proper amount of duty for them. You ought not to defraud God of his paid-for labour, by defrauding your poor neighbour of it. So long as you are willing to receive, you should be willing to give ; for you receive nothing but what belongs to God, and therefore should be employed for God to the benefit of his other children. " Men of this world talk of my property, of my houses, my lands, my ancestral honours, my money, and my talents. Where did they get them ? From their fathers, or their in- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Q5 dustrj, they say. But who gave them fathers ? Who gave them industry and op- portunity ? God ! The wise and good know well that all this is God's property, and use it as he desires. In the great Book of his law he has clearly laid down his mandates for the use of this property. His houses, his lands, his cattle on a thousand hills, his industry, his talents, his energies — and woe to those who do not study that law, and seek to discharge it ! " What is he deemed on earth who is sent on a message and does not deliver it ? Who is sent to discharge a debt, and does not dis- charge it ? Who is sent to accomplish some great commission, and does not accomplish it ? Who loiters or sleeps by the way-side ? Who spends his master's money or goods on himself, and on idle and riotous companions, instead of employing them on the object prescribed? All these are justly accounted dishonest, defaulters, untrustworthy, and de- YOL. I. F 66 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. serving of punishment. How many such un- trustworthy, fraudulent, dishonest servants will have to appear before their Divine Master, and render an account of Ms lands, his houses, his money, or his endowments, who have vainly deluded themselves with the idea that they * were doing as they pleased with their own? ' "Of all delusions the delusion of property or power is the greatest. The man who wraps himself up in earthly good, and deems that it is his own, is no better than the bird which arrays itself in borrowed plumes. The great so-called possessor may become a great defaulter, but he can never really become a great owner. God is a great lender, but not an absolute giver of the goods of the earth. They are wanted from age to age for fresh passengers through time, and must pass from hand to hand as they are required. " Who, then, is their owner ? Can'st thou own the wind, or the water, or the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 67 passing hour : the clouds, the sound of fugi- tive voices, or the dream of night? As much, and no more, can'st thou own the wealth of this world. For all these things will God bring thee into judgment, and thou shalt then learn that the only real wealth is the discharge of thy duty, and the greeting from the great possessor of all things, " Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Such language would now be acknowledged as the everlasting truth of the everlasting gospel, but it was then deemed perfectly revolutionary, Jacobinical, and tainted to the core with French infidelity, and alarming to all established principles of government or so- ciety. In one place poor Hugh was quietly dis- missed by his vicar ; in another the bishop de- manded his removal, and suspended him for two years from all exercise of the sacred func- tions. During that time he drudged in a F 2 68 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. school in the close alley of a great city, to sup- port his wife and child, and at length sunk, op- pressed by typhus, from over-exertion and the exclusion from his wonted country walks and pure air. Whilst he lay betwixt life and death, in the depth of wretchedness and poverty, the only hand stretched to save him was that of the once fairy visitor of Druid's Moor, Mary Curzen, now the beautiful and fashionable Countess of H . She it was who had given to his wife the few trinkets, the rings, the gold watch and chain, which now lay pledged for the means of existence. She now sent to the agonised and watching wife, funds for the doctor and for daily need, and would have gone herself, but was just embark- ing with her husband for his embassy in the north. It was while Hugh Stanton lay in the very jaws of death that the living at Druid's Moor fell vacant, and that his brother had the op- portunity of "letting him see." THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 69 Sir George and Lady Stanton had gone both to their fathers — for this was towards the end of the time we are now treating of, and Marma- duke was Sir Marmaduke, the lord and master of Druid's Moor and many an adjoining es- tate. Lady H did not fail to let him know of his brother's danger and distress ; but without avail. Many a younger brother, bear- ing in mind the enviable living at his disposal, would have long ago paid the due homage, and become the humble expectant of a brother^s bounty. A pliant man would have bent and be- come a servant unto tribute, surrendering prin- ciple and independence for the priest's office and the certain ^^ bit of bread." A politic man would have stooped whilst it was ne- cessary, and then have become a thorn in the proud patron's side when the prize was secured ; but Hugh Stanton was one of those simple, unconventional souls to whom con- science and principle are the life-blood of the heart, and who, looking only to the sacred 70 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. duty of their calling, must go on unswerving, unflinching to the end. If he must die in his destitution, he would have ^^ died and made no sign " so far as asking the living at his brother's hands was concerned. But he lived, and the rectory was given to a stranger. That is the history of Hugh Meynell Stan- ton, and of many a brave, pure, earnest spirit besides. That brings him and his brave wife to Dorking, and a few more lines will tell the remaining story of their pilgrimage. 71 CHAPTEE III. Dark and struggling as was the life of Hugh Stanton, we are not to suppose that it was destitute of its bright moments, of its occa- sional and even deep happiness, and its per- fect compensation. Poor and undeserved as it appears, compared with the brilliant destiny which his talents and early position placed within his reach, it was a life essentially rich. In contemplating the radiant heights of fortune, on which, we think, Hugh Stanton ought to have appeared, addressing the great, the titled, the influential, drawing after him the vast throngs of an admiring metropolis, swaying 72 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. by his impassioned eloquence the public mind and sentiment, and reaching, through the path of general applause and incalculable usefulness, the most elevated seats of the church and the senate — achieving and leaving a great name and honour to his family ; we say, in marking out this proud career for him, are we sure that it was a course that he himself desired to fulfil ? To Hugh Stanton outward circumstances and glories had no such charms as we might suppose for a man of genius and ambition. And he had his ambition, but it was of a still loftier kind. From his pure and serene mind all conventionalism fell off as scales and dust. In his eye the great end and reward of exist- ence lay far beyond the confines of time. He felt himself setting out on a race in which truth, love, and worship were the guides, and the end of that which in itself would have no end. To his soul nothing looked great or substantial which could not accompany him THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 73 where he should be all soul, and where crowns, mitres, lands and tenements would appear only as the pulverized granite and the broken shells on the strand of time's ocean, in the vast retrospect of existence. Therefore, for him to contend for eternal principles ; to maintain the claims of the poor and the oppressed ; to assert the only value of the only permanent realities ; to stand, pure from all sensuality, all meanness, all bitterness, all selfishness, in his place at the end of his days, was his grand and sole ambition. To renounce for this whatever must be renounced was his plainest duty, and he did it manfully. And yet, as he went along his weary way, continually torn and stripped of his very garments, and almost of his skin, by the thorns and briars that beset his path, what man enjoyed so much as he did ? By his side went a faithful partner, a soul married im- mortally to his soul, to all his tastes, his hopes, his sufferings, his triumphs, and his 74 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. spiritual affluence. In the great region of his favourite books, he found deeper and more diamond- bedded mines, wider and wealthier lands, sown with great truths, and growing noblest harvests, even harvests of celestial peace and plenty; and he ascended to mountain tops more glorious than the most tempo- rally fortunate of his fellow-travellers ever reached. In the still greater world of nature, he lived in the primeval paradise ; and not more deliciously fell on Adam's undulled and un- contaminated senses the morning and evening breath of Eden, the nectarous fruit and flowers of the young world, than the fragrant air, the elastic sward, the still wood, and the blossomed heath on our poor curate, as he daily enjoyed them, musing alone, or con- versing with her who was still the love of his youth, and the friend and counsellor of his prime. They who saw Hugh Stanton only as the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 75 poor ftigger along the barren bye-roads of the church, or as a persecuted and disappointed man of genius, saw only a deception; for beneath the meagre and dilapidated exterior sate a giant, who had wielded huge strength, and won no trivial triumphs ; and who, in his darkest and most deserted moments, looked back on light which he had carried to the ignorant, comfort to the despairing, and to fertilizing and ameliorating influences cast into the very sinks of social corruption, which were yet working out health and purification to the multitude. But now a time of stripping and shaking was at hand, which must try the very pillars of life and the foundation-stones of fortitude, and the eve of his short existence must prematurely close in. Hugh Stanton had maintained his position at Dorking for three years — a long sojourn for him in one cure — the incumbent finding the ease of performing the duties by proxy very agreeable, and residing on a less 76 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. laborious living. But now the health of his wife suddenly gave way, and in less than three weeks he had laid her in the church- yard. Various causes were assigned for so unexpected a catastrophe — a cold, a contagion caught in visiting the poor; but the most certain thing was that a febrile attack rapidly under- mined a life that might have been calculated on to reach old age. Such a rending asunder of long-knit affectionate intercourse — such a breaking up of a lifers habit that had but few solaces, and those few almost all wrapped up in her, was too much even for the religious faith and fortitude of Hugh Stanton. He lay prostrate beneath the blow, bowing inwardly to the decree of God, but nature was unable to sustain the shock. Half his life and strength were torn away ; the fabric of his existence was left a mere ruin. The light which shone ever by his side, through all the darkness of earth, was now removed and set on high, where all his other light had long been ; and though THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 77 he still strove to perform his duties below, his mind and soul were constantly travelling up- wards after the lost companion. In a few months his strength had given way so much that he was compelled to resign his clerical duties, and send for Philip to per- form for him another duty which he had for some time exercised. This was to prepare the son of a neighbouring baronet for the university, an office for which he was richly qualified, and which he so admirably dis- charged, that not even his character for free- dom of thought could prevent his receiving and retaining. We shall have to recur to this matter anon ; enough for the present that Philip was found to be fully adequate to supply his father's place, and was duly installed in it. Every day, therefore, he took his way to the Manor-house of Craythorne, through the glades of the charming park, and through a grand avenue of limes, standing a fine ver- 78 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. diirous mass on the open lawn, catching the eye of the traveller afar off, and seldom without calling forth exclamations of admira- tion. Hugh Meynell had always taken his way through this noble avenue to the house, for within it was a superb natural temple, cal- culated to awaken thoughts of reverence and worship. Above met the lofty pointed arch of boughs, demonstrating to the dullest im- agination whence our ancestors, in the old re- ligious time, drew their conception of the grand cathedral aisle. Here stood, reared by nature herself, the stately rows of columns ; aloft stretched from side to side the ribs and groins of the true pointed arch ; afar burned the easternlight, suggestingthe rich orient window, and all within was that sacred shadow tvhich touched the awed spirit with the genuine mood of prayer and praise. The floor of this august avenue was of the bare brown earth, for no weed or grass could live in so perfect a shade ; and still, in the height of summer, the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 79 ruddy, sere leaves of autumn lay in rustling masses where the winds had carried them. Through this natural minster, we say, Hugh Stanton had loved to take his way, and often there lingered to read one of his favour- ite authors, always carried in his pocket. Now, Philip Avas called to traverse it morning and evening to his day's duties. When these were discharged, he would devote himself to the comfort of his father : wandering with him round the garden, supporting him on his arm, or sitting by the window and reading to him. But fast faded away the ebbing strength of the widowed curate. The doctor shook his head; Mrs. Eudd, the landlady, who reve- renced him as a saint, and loved him as a son, could not always, in the presence of Philip, suppress the starting tear ; and Philip himself knew that not many weeks — and he should be alone in the world. A more solitary and unfriended being than Philip it would be impossible to imagine. 80 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. He hud neither brother nor sister, nor any- other relative that owned him. His father was going, and left only the poor behind him to bless his memory. The good maltster was gone to his rest some time, and those who should be the natural friends and benefactors of the youth either knew nothing of him, or cared nothing. It was impossible that his father should not feel in what an isolated and melancholy condition the youth would be left at his decease — and he was quite aware that his days were numbered ; but the good man had that unquestioning faith in God, that he never for a moment doubted that his child would be as surely provided for as if he had left him the heir to a coronet. It was in vain, when he quoted the words of the Psalmist — " Once I was young and now I am old, yet I never saw the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread" — that it was pointed out to him what thousands were outwardly forsaken — what numbers of good THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 81 people really had begged their bread. Hugh Stanton asked, " Was it really so ? Did those who really depended confidently on God ever find themselves forsaken? For his part/' he said, ^^ he was confident of the truth of the Saviour — and being confident of that, he must believe that when men had really sought first the kingdom of heaven, all things needful would be added." Such, he contended, was a law of the Gospel dispensation, as fixed and immutable as the law of gravity in nature ; and that all who placed themselves within the operation of this law would find it effec- tive for their preservation. "Philip, my dear boy,'' he would say, " fear not ! He whose the whole world is, and who feeds the young ravens when they cry, will feed thee and raise thee up friends, so long as thou art true to the love and faith which thy mother taught thee on her knee. In all this magnificent provision for the lives of millions, how little would it cost the Al- VOL. I. G 82 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. mighty and the All-Good to give thee thy little portion ! " Philip kissed his father's hand, and said he had no fear. But the time was much nearer when Philip was to find himself adrift in the great world, without even that cheering and prophetic voice which had for him such profound authority, than either he or his father was perhaps aware of. The sinking curate had passed a sleepless night, and when Philip arose from a short sleep, for he had watched by him most of the night, he found him complaining of difficulty in breathing, and anxious to be got up and carried near to the window. Philip wrapped him in his dressing-gown, and, calling Mrs. Rudd, they bore him to his cushioned chair, which stood by the open casement. It was a magnificent August morn- ing. The sky was bright and radiant with light white clouds. The view from the win- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 83 dow showed the dark verdant tops of the trees in the park below, and over them at some distance the airy range of Box-hill, and the slopes below mosaicked with the fields of golden corn, of green winter crops, and the snowy scars of the bare chalk-cliffs. Above, the woods and the short velvet pasturage seemed clothed with a beautiful repose. The sick man, when he had somewhat recovered from the exertion of the removal from his bed, gazed awhile silently on the face of that nature which had always had such a charm for him, and then said, with a low but emphatic voice : — ^^ How beautiful ! for ever beautiful ! Man departs, but nature remains strong and un- changed. And thus it should be. In God's great universe why should we wish always to attach ourselves to one scene ? In the night, Philip, I could not help repeating the words of Bishop Hall : — o2 84 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " ' Leave, O my soul, this baser world below, O leave this doleful dungeon of woe, And soar aloft to that supernal rest. That maketh all the saints and angels blessed.' But that was impatience. The world is not so base, it is not so much a dungeon as the vestibule of heaven. How beautifully smiles the face of nature at this moment on its children ! How cheerfully, and with what joy, those labourers are now cutting down the heaven-sent harvest! If I have not found all sweet and smooth here, why should I have expected it ? I ought to have known that, beautiful as it is, this is not my abiding city. If there had been no sorrow in it, how could I have had the luxury of soothing it ? If it were an empty world, as many call it, how could I have found here your dear mother and you ? How could I have felt from day to day the unspeakable pleasure of the divine Comforter inspiring a happiness that passes comprehension ? No ; rather let me now rejoice in that approach to yet more THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 85 glorious scenes, where those who are gone be- fore are awaiting me. Eather let me quote other words of the good bishop : — *' ' How shall I reach thee, Lord? Oh, soar above, Ambitious soul ! But which way shall I fly ? Thou, Lord, art way and end ! What wings have I ? Aspiring thoughts of hope, and faith, and love. Oh, let these wings, that way alone, Present me to thy bhssful throne.' " He paused, exhausted, and perceived that Philip, who sat on a stool by his knee, was clasping strongly his hand, and weeping. He gave the sorrowful youth's hand an affectionate pressure ; and then, suddenly seeming to raise himself, he said, with a vigour that startled his son : — ^^But, Philip! Philip! hark! see! what is that?" Philip looked quietly up, and saw that his father's gaze was turned away from the window, and directed, with an air of awe and wonder, towards the upper corner of the room. 86 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " What is it, dear father? " asked Philip. " What ! hear'st thou nothing ? — see'st thou nothing ? Oh ! transporting ! What heavenly music ! And there, there ! " pointing, " thy sainted mother, Philip, and my mother ! How glorious ! how beautiful ! They beckon me — they show me a crown of bays, wreathed with burning leaves of gold ! Philip, how joyful they seem — there is no doubt of Provi- dence, no fear, no anxiety there ! Saviour, I come — receive thou my spirit ! " As he ceased speaking, he closed his eyes, and dropped his head upon his breast, as in inward contemplation. Philip gazed fixedly and in wonder on him. A slight, soft sigh escaped from his lips ; a slight movement was felt in his hand ; and Mrs. Eudd, who had just come in, and stood silently by his chair, said, reverently : — ** God's will be done ! He is now at peace ! '' Then first Philip comprehended what had THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 87 taken place ; and, dropping on his knees, he clasped vehemently those of his departed father, and burst into a passion of tears. Yet a calm spectator, gazing on the placid features of the deceased, might have truly quoted words which were often on his lips during his lifetime : — " How sweet a dress of smiling gravity- Sat on the reverend brow ! How solidly- Freighted with gospel-treasure, at its home That soul's arrived, like ship from Indies come ! " In a retired corner of the churchyard may yet be seen the headstone, bearing this inscription : — " Sacred to the memory of the Eev. Hugh Meynell Stanton, and Isabella, his wife. — * They were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they are undivided.' " 88 CHAPTER IV. Philip Stanton stood alone in the world. Perhaps there was not a more isolated being in it. He was wholly destitute of fortune. Never had a young man, of so wealthy a family, so few friends. Not only was he an orphan, but he had neither brother, nor sister, nor any near relative but those who looked upon him as an alien and a disgrace for his father's sake. And yet it would be a shame- ful libel on the spirit and name of his father to say that he had left him only a heritage of scorn and poverty. He had richly endowed him with knowledge and sound prin- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 89 ciples. He had amply furnished him with all intellectual weapons and artistic skill, by which men win their way from the lowest to the highest ranks. Many a man much worse equipped and pro- vided than Philip Stanton has climbed, with vigorous hand and foot, and unconquerable re- solution, from the very marshland of clinging poverty to the proudest heights of fortune. Philip had health, vigour, and enthusiasm. He was gifted with an exterior which no eye could look upon without being interested. He was something above the middle height, but well-knit and full of strength and elasticity. His dark hair, his ample forehead, and features, a reproduction of those of his father, with the blue eye of the Stantons, but the dark eye- brows and lashes of his mother, were full of the animation of youth and the beauty of in- tellect. If he had any qualities which were likely to retard his progress, they were his quick, warm sympathy with suffering, and in- 90 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. dignation against injustice and oppression, which he inherited especially from his father, and his carelessness to conceal these feelings. If he made enemies, they must be made by his sense of right, and his eager promptness to declare for it. What is called policy, or the indifference to humanity, or, if that does not wholly exist, a base concealment of the sense of disapproval when conscience calls on you to stand forward in behalf of misconstrued inno- cence — with that Philip was but slenderly stored ; for his father had none of it, and had none of it to give him, by paternity or in- struction. He had indeed taught him to stand on his guard against a hasty indignation ; and though he found himself impelled to dissent and to blame, to remember always that he was a Christian and a gentleman, and to act accord- ingly. With a sad heart, but a resolute mind, Philip took his way, after the funeral, to Cray- thorne Manor. Every step, every tree, every THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 91 green hollow, as he passed, called up times and sounds of past happy walks, which now tried his fortitude to the utmost ; but, with a prayer for cotnposure, he marched on, and entered the accustomed room of his daily duties. His pupil was a young man, of about his own age, who greeted him with a friendly but subdued manner, out of respect to his loss, and they sat down to their labour. Charles Peters, this pupil, was the only son of Sir Huldicote Peters, of Betchworth Manor, who had originally been destined merely to the life of a country gentleman, and whose education, therefore, had not been so sedu- lously followed out as it might have been. He had been at first under the tuition of his uncle, the Rev. John Freemantle, the rector of the neighbouring hamlet of Crackenthorpe, and had then been sent to Harrow ; but at the age of nineteen he had been thought sufficiently educated for the heir of a ba- ronetcy. But recent enlarged views of the 92 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. fortunes of his father, and of the desirableness of his son aiming at high political and diplo- matic rank, had determined his family to re- commence with fresh vigour his education, and to send him for a year or two to the uni- versity. For this reason the learned curate of Dorking had been called in, notwithstand- ing his repute for unorthodox opinions, and with sufficient injunctions to confine his labours to the classics and mathematics, and to strictly leave out all new-fangled ideas, had been set to work. Mr. Freemantle had long ago reached the limit of his own knowledge of Greek, Latin, and English, but he professed to discern that the curate was doing wonders with his scholar. When Philip, owing to his father's failing health, was sent to supply his place, Mr. Freemantle put a few questions to him as to his knowledge and qualifications for con- tinuing his father's labours, but he soon found that it would be much easier to dis- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 93 cover his own ignorance than the extent of the young man's acquirements. Philip as- tonished him by his replies ; and the rector, whom fifty years of rustication had deprived of all but the veriest hackneyed fragments of his Homer and Virgil, declared himself highly satisfied, and gravely recommended Philip to particularly indoctrinate his nephew with Demosthenes and Cicero, in order to kindle in him a passion for forensic and senatorial eloquence, seeing that he was destined to public life, and that naturally his family would like to see him shine — not indeed at the bar, but in parliament. Of course, he said, he would have opportunities to study the general principles of law, Eoman, interna- tional, and British ; but these studies must be reserved for the college. Philip assured him that he had given con- siderable study to the Pandects of Justinian, to Delorme, to Lyttleton and Blackstone, and should be happy to proceed in his read- 94 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ings in those authors with his pupil. The worthy Rector was struck with astonishment at tbe avowal. He himself had no means of testing the young professor who spoke so learnedly, though his brother-in-law, Sir Hul- dicote and Lady Peters, believed him deep in all sorts of learning ; and he had no alter- native but to take all for granted, and cry up the prodigious knowledge of the favourite tutor. Philip might have been an impudent impostor, and only the removal of his pupil to Oxford would have discovered the cheat ; but he appeared to Mr. Freemantle as honest as intelligent, and in that respect he had some claim to judge ; for though the Rector, through half a century of more secular than clerical business, had grown rusty in his Latin, he had acquired a shrewd know- ledge of men. Accordingly he gave the most flattering report of Philip's learning to the baronet and his lady, saying that the poor curate, with all his faults, had certainly THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 95 crammed a prodigious heap of erudition into the boy's head. He might have added that Philip had for three years been teaching, as well as learning, the finest way in the world to drive into the mind the ideas once picked up. Besides that, he had an intense passion for the acquisition of knowledge, and especially in history and its cognate studies bearing on the constitution of society and the interests of men. Philip, during his father's time, had made another important step — he had won the hearty good-will of his pupil ; and now, when their studies for the day were done, Charles Peters told him that he had spoken to his father about his continuing his engage- ment permanently for a year, and that, as he had nothing to bind him to the town, it was proposed that he should come and take up bis quarters in the house. This, in one sense, was a great relief to the mind of Philip, for hitherto he had been only his father's locum tenens, and considered his con- 96 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. tinuance after his decease problematical. In another sense, he felt rather inclined to shrink from it. Reader, canst thounotdivinehis reason? It was one thing to muster a decent suit and a nicely-got-up shirt to appear at his daily- lessons in, but it was another thing to become a part of a baronet's household. To take up his constant residence under the eyes of the family^ — to transport his little bundle of effects into his new appointment — to have his very slender catalogue of raiment, and of linen, stockings, boots, and other indis- pensables, submitted to the inspection of valets, laundry- worn en, chamber-maids, shoe- blacks, and the like. Besides, when the day's tasks were done, Philip, when not attending his father, liked to be able to retreat into his little attic with his books, or to take his free, solitary walk, like his father. But here, he felt that he must conform to the hours and habits of the house ; he must lay himself out to be the constant companion of his pupil, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 97 and he must possess and display all the private appurtenances of a gentleman. As to companionship with Charles Peters, that he rather inclined to, for he was a very good- natured fellow, and he had taken a great liking to him. As it was, he had occasionally beguiled him out rabbit-shooting, and for a ride in the adjacent country ; but the matter of his wardrobe was not so soon got over. During his three-years' arduous service in a great public school in the outskirts of London, he had managed to save a little hoard of about 20, but all that had gone to pay the doctor, and the undertaker, and the lodgings during his father's illness. And never did any young man pay with more satisfac- tion for his own pleasures and appearance than Philip had paid these few pounds for his father. Poor as the curate of Dorking had been, and bitterly as he had been denounced by the hard and the proud for his advocacy of the poor, he lay in a grave over which no VOL. I. H 98 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. mortal could stand and say, " Thou didst owe me somewhat." And that thought was a proud one to his son. But all this would not defend the scanty wardrobe from the prying eyes and jibes of housemaids and washerwomen, or preventJohn the valet from holding up to Thomas and James the threadbare coat and darned trousers of the young domine. Philip, therefore, whilst thanking Charles Peters for his friendly interest, and expressing his pleasure at the prospect of being able to be always at hand, begged for a week to arrange various little matters at his lodgings. He had kept his wardrobe poor and scanty to be able to administer to those sacred necessities ; and though he was persuaded that he had only to confide his secret to the ingenuous youth, his pupil, yet a certain manly pride withheld him, and he determined to battle through without laying himself under an obligation at the outset. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 99 He returned to Mrs. Rudd, informed her that he must leave her roof, which had been so happy an abode to him ; and, after receiving the good woman's blessing, and her exhorta- tion to come to her if ever any trouble fell upon him — and her assurance that whilst she had a vacant corner, or a crumb of bread, he should be welcome to them, for his sainted parents' sake, as well as for his own — he went out and ordered at the tailor's and haber- dasher's, &c., a handsome outfit, to be paid for at Christmas. There was no difficulty in the matter ; the well-known probity of the reverend curate and his family could have procured much more credit than that ; and duly, at the end of the week, he entered the great house, followed by a man bearing a handsome portmanteau, and was installed in a small room overlooking the windings of the Mole, and with a glimpse of the grey spire of Crackenthorpe church. And now, before entering on the life of our H 2 100 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. hero, we may take a view of the place and family in which he was located. Craythorne Manor was an old and not very picturesque house, standing on a lofty bank at a bend in the tortuous course of *^ the sullen Mole," which here crept rather than flowed through meadows of extreme richness. On one side extended fine and spacious old gardens, with their pleached alleys, tall box-hedges, and showy walks, and fine old mulberry and medlar trees, besides all other sorts of fruit- trees and of flowers. This pleasant region was enclosed by high brick walls, grown mossy and lichened and richly toned by time, whilst delicious slopes and grassy terraces stretched down the bank towards the meadows below. On the other hand, the park de- scended rapidly towards the Mole, which there made a considerable sweep before approaching the house ; and on its banks, at some distance^ stood an old mill and extensive stables. Around extended the upland park, beautiful THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 101 with trees of ancient growth, and many a dell and hollow, still ascending till it termi- nated in a considerable hill, giving a wide view of the charming country round ; the wooded environs of Boxhill and Denbighs on the other side of the valley, and of Homewood Moor and Leith Hill in the other direction. Not far from the house stood that magnificent lime-tree grove that we have already men- tioned. It would have been difficult to pitch on a more delicious situation for the good old English gentleman of plentiful estate. The family consisted of Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters, and the son and heir, Charles Peters, besides a daughter, Paulina, not now at home. There might almost be reckoned, also, as one of the family, the rector of Crackenthorpe, Mr. Freemantle, who having lost his wife some years ago — his son being settled in the wealthy rectory of the marine little town of Fishgang in Cornwall, and his daughter, 102 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the lively Helen, being, with her cousin, Paulina Peters, with a lady relative in London for the furtherance of their music, French, and other accomplishments — the Rev. John Freemantle was much more commonly to be found at the manor than at his solitary rectory. To give our readers a more lively idea of the personages with whom Philip Stanton was now to come into daily contact, we may say that Sir Huldicote was like many another country gentleman and justice of the peace of bis day. He was a large, heavy man, of more than seventy years of age, who gave the idea of having been a very fine animal of the rough-riding and jovial kind in his youth. That youth fell out when very little educa- tion was deemed necessary for the county squire. This was left to the parson, and to such as had an ambition to enter into public life. Sir Huldicote never had that ambition — and what little he had learned THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 103 from a former rector and at Rugby, he had greatly forgotten. He had been for many years colonel of the yeomanry cavalry of the neighbourhood ; and had raced, betted, hunted, coursed, and caroused, as was the fashion of the time, till his father died, when he was near forty ; and having sowed his wild oats, he married a woman of high family, but of little fortune, and settled down to justicing, and endeavouring to redeem considerable post-obits out of his rental. In his time canals came into fashion, and in a very minor degree became a subject of specu- lation, as railways have in our time. Sir Huldicote became an eager speculator in them, and was accompanied in his invest- ments, and assisted in them by the judgment of the Rev. John Freemantle, who had married his only sister, and on whom his father had conferred the living of Crackenthorpe. The Rector had done already many years' service in the Church as a curate, before 104 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. it was his luck to marry the somewhat mature spinster, Miss Peters. She was fully as old as Sir Iluldicote, and his previous straitness of circumstances had impressed him with a strong desire for saving and improving as soon as he had wherewithal to save and invest. Sir Huldicote had pro- found faith in his worldly sagacity and pru- dence, and they went hand-in-hand in every- thing. John Freemantle became the manager of the baronet^s affairs ; he was, in fact, his steward, his adviser, and his fellow-magis- trate. Together they ruled the whole domain of Craythorne-cum-Crackenthorpe ; raised rents, pursued poachers, removed paupers to their several parishes, affiliated natural children, and put the unnatural ones in the house of correction. As the great European war grew and raged, and corn was carried out to supply unfortunate nations who had theirs trodden down by eternally tra- versing armies, and therefore rose to 100 and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 105 136 shillings a-quarter at home, land became in immense request, and enclosures were demanded on all sides. Then many a fair chase and moorland, many a green common swarming with cows, pigs, ponies, asses, and geese of the cottagers, and which had so lain, and basked, the blooming paradise of heather, and haunt of the wild-duck and bee, which had so swarmed with the poor man's kine and other creatures for ages — were now beheld with most desiring eyes, declared to be lying waste shamefully, and to the disgrace of the nation ; and bills upon bills from north and south, east and west, were most patriotically hurried into par- liament, to increase the bread of the nation, and to save the poor, who were paying a golden " seven shilling bit " for a single stone of flour. Yes, to save the poor, and to pre- serve the peace and property of the kingdom, were these wastes and wilds duly meted out by land-surveyors and commissioners, and en- 106 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. compassed by the parchment snares of lawyers, and voted away by disinterested and poor-loving senators, and soon were in- tersected by fences, turned up by the plough, and were growing glorious expanses of corn. In the meantime, whither had vanished the swarms of the poor man's cows and pigs and geese ? Gone, no man could say where ! Gone for little or nothing, and with many a silent tear and foreboding soul. Gone ; but then there was the corn for the poor — yes, for the poor of other lands, for the poor of this, as yet, felt no benefit from it. It was still at its 100 or 130 shillings, and the milk of the common-fed cow, and the flitch of bacon of the common-and-milk-fed pig, no longer entered the cottage and made its homely luxury. There was spreading abroad a dark and desperate spirit. It spread over the whole political horizon of the kingdom — over the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 107 north and the south, over the town and the country, over the district of the plough and the district of the spindle. So long ago as 1812, in the swarming hordes of the manufac- turing districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Not- tinghamshire, Leicestershire, and the iron and coal districts of Warwickshire and Staf- fordshire, there were riotings for bread, and for destruction of machinery, which to the spinners and weavers appeared likely for ever to take the bread, dear as it was, from their mouths. There was demolition of bakers' shops, and of spinning-jennies, and of lace- machines. General Ludd was in terrible action at Nottingham ; and Lord Byron, then a young hereditary legislator, coming from his seat at Newstead, in the very vicinity of General Ludd's operations, warned his brother peers in their house that cheap bread, not bayonets and enclosures, could allay the ominous ferment. But for some time the government and the 108 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. landed gentry made a bold stand, by arms and the hand of power, to quell the hunger- cry. That was a far different time from ours. That was no time of listening to the voice of the people, of justice, and of humanity. A long and Herculean wrestling, as it were, with the whole world, in which the blood and the treasure of England had been poured over the whole of the sea and land of Europe, like water, had inured the government to the use of high and arbitrary measures. The people were uneducated, and therefore excitable, heady, but, for their own objects, not perma- nently strong. They had been led along by those appeals to the pride of John Bullism, which in all wars have had a mighty influence on the people ; and, with the rest of the country, they had put forth all their energies, devoting their labour and their lives to the honour of England, and the overthrow of the greatest military genius and most successful tyrant who had trampled on the peoples THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 109 since the days of Alexander of Macedon and Caesar of Rome. Thus, whilst the patriotic orgasm kept on the stretch every grade of the nation ; whilst the peer and the landowner paid freely their heavy property-tax ; whilst the manufacturers spun and weaved, and the scientific engineer and mechanist produced marvels of machinery and means of conveyance to extend their operations ; whilst Watt and Bolton, Brindley, Crompton, and Arkwright, constructed their various inventions, to invest with stupendous powers and capabilities our gigantic textile productions, and enable the manufacturer, and the merchant, and the shopkeeper to yield the most astonishing tribute ot taxation that the world had ever seen — the poor spent their sinews and their heart's blood in the same cause, and the government had come to wield the most enormous influence that ever was in the hands of men. The money of England arrayed, clad, armed, and marched up the 1 1 THE- MAN OF THE PEOPLE. armies of all Europe, from the frozen North to the Mediterranean, against the common foe. The money of England swayed the counsels of kings and emperors. The money of England feed the proud but petty princes of Germany to furnish their quota of men. The money of England crowded the seas with armed fleets to cut off all intercourse with the mainland of Europe but such as she pleased. The money of England shipped armaments to all seas — to the West Indies, to Syria and Egypt, to pull down the power and thwart the designs of the all subduing Napoleon, The money and the arms and genius of England at length turned back the robber from all his wide-spread raids, tracked him to his den, and Paris, so long receiving the trophies of humiliated kings, and the plunder of the world, at length saw the assembled armies of Europe at her gates, and the mighty bandit seized and sent to his island prison. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Ill But with restored peace came a terrible reaction for the governors. The nations began to plough and sow, to spin and weave for themselves, and the price of corn toppled down in England from 13 65. a-quarter to 52s. Qd. Awful was the consternation of farmers and landlords. To the enormous amount of taxation which the incredible ex- penditure of the war had occasioned, the farmer had now added the taxation of a new style of expenditure. The rich profits which had flowed in for so many years from all agricultural produce had turned the whole race of farmers from simple clodhoppers into gentry. The little farmer was become a gentleman, the great farmer a squire. They rode splendid horses instead of following Dobbin and Ball, with their shaggy he(3ls, at the plough. They mounted scarlet coats, and followed the hounds, brushing past Squire Thousandacres and Lord Fivecastles with a new audacity, which was only tolerated from 112 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the recollection of the high rents they paid. Kooms, no longer sanded, but carpeted, received pianos instead of spinning-wheels; and Nancy and Dolly left the milkpail, and went to boarding-schools — whilst Sam and Eobin appeared at market with hunting-whips and Oxonian coats, like their betters, the squirearchy. All this it was impossible to maintain out of wheat at 52^. a-quarter. And if rents fell, the whole landed gentry fell. If this state of things went on, what was to become of the vast purchases of lands on the calculation of the unfailing duration of 1365. a-quarter of wheat? What was to become of marriage-portions, and allowances to eldest sons and others, granted on a scale inspired by the same faith ? There was a vast trembling in the nation, and Sir Huldicote Peters trembled amongst his fellows. He had seen with surprise his old debts cleared, and his income quadrupled. Ambitious views had taken hold on him, or had been whispered THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 113 unto him ; and, under these beguiling influences, he had been led to dream of his son as a great legislator, and therefore his education was extended. There was a talk of a corn-law, a law to exclude all foreign corn from the country, except at famine prices, and then the vast hordes of the manufacturing districts began to tremble too. Their trembling, however, soon changed into rage. Were they, they asked, who had borne the brunt of war to be starved by its termination ? Had they toiled and spun to keep up the flood of taxa- tion, to be now crushed by their own triumph? Had they sent their sons to the war to be themselves annihilated by victory ? The sons of the soil joined the cry, and asked whether they were to grow crops and pay famine- prices for their own loaf? All complained that the gay and osten- tatious Lord Castlereagh had been the first to vote enormous subsidies to the foreign VOL. I. I 114 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. monarchs ; but, at the congress of Vienna, had danced and strutted in diamonds, lace, and feathers, whilst those despots were sharing up the Continent, and had taken not a thought to secure the entry of our manufactured goods into their aggrandized kingdoms — aggrandized at our cost. And worse still, whilst the exhausted Continental nations, con- sulting the first law of nature, their own interest, and thinking very little about grati- tude to us, began to make their own shirts and stockings, as well as they could, and could very little afford to buy anything, our ministers went on to ask the holders of pro- perty to exclude the butter and cheese of Holland and Belgium, and many other neces- sary commodities. The affrighted population saw themselves threatened with being cooped in the island to perish of hunger — for the shipping-trade fell off; the manufacturers had little demand for their fabrics, and turned off their people in THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 115 shoals ; the coalmasters ceased to work many of their mines, and the ironfounders blew out numbers of their furnaces. Sheffield and Birmingham groaned in awful concert with Manchester and Glasgow. But our generals, used to conquer, deter- mined to conquer still. Such troubles, they said, must be on the close of such a war — but they were temporary, and all disorder must be kept down. They had mingled so much with the armed tyrants of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, that they had come to believe in their principle of bayonets and espionage as the principal means of political repose. They, therefore, called out not merely the soldiery of the line, but militia, local militia, yeomen cavalry, even volunteers, and added thereto a mighty band of special constables. With these they prepared to rule, and make artificial famine swallow its desperation instead of bread. But they forgot that the power which had borne them so triumphantly through I 2 116 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the great war — the people — was now against them ; and though it was a people, as yet, ignorant, untrained to mental exercise, liable to be imposed on — in fact, unapprehensive of its own power — it was yet a people which, from the days of King John to those of the Stuarts, and to the present hour, had shown that, roused by an infringement of its liberties, it was a terrible and invincible people. But the struggle was not to come yet. Though riots in city and country, in mine districts and fenlands, were afloat, and looming darker and fiercer — all these were suddenly annihilated by more startling danger. The tempest at home was hushed for awhile by the wilder tempest abroad : and the blood which would have been shed in our own streets was transferred to the wider fields of the Continent. The tyrant had slipped his chain ; the destroyer was once more on foot — Napoleon was once more in Paris ! THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 117 It was at this exciting period, when all the thoughts and feelings of men were turned from domestic calamities to watch once more the trail of British glory abroad — when armies congregated again like clouds, and the thunders of Waterloo announced the final fall of Buonaparte, and the fame of Wellington and England — that Philip Stanton became an inmate of Craythorne Manor. All was once more smiling and hopeful. Eiot, insurrection, famine were forgotten, and the marvellous events of the world at large were the proud themes of every British tongue. Though the Romans and Cartha- ginians fought on at Cannae, unconscious of the ground reeling beneath their feet in the throes of an earthquake, the more violent shock of Waterloo had hushed every hungry murmur even amongst the starving. The very beggar in his rags fluttered them in the elation of an Englishman ; and in the proudest drawing-rooms no longer was heard 118 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the talk of military manoeuvres on the neigh- bouring common, nor the growl of the distant Radical mob. All was one delightful discussion of the glories of this grand finale to the war ; of the modern Prometheus chained to his mid-ocean rock, and of the triumph of Quatre- Bras and Mont St. Jean. At Craythorne, Sir Huldicote and Mr. Free- mantle saw nothing but the interminable reign of high rents, high-priced produce, and ample revenues ; for the corn-law was passed, and, even in this blessed land, could never be less than 80 shillings a quarter. Men love to believe what they wish ; and even the worldly wisdom of the Eev. John Freemantle saw no reason why an unnatural union of scarcity and content, of exaggerated prices of bread, and meat, and a depreciated currency, should not go on for ever ; and the lion of popular distress, and the comfortable well-fed lamb of a protected landed interest, should not lie down together. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 119 In this halcyon moment was it that Philip went to Craythorne. No jarring sound from parliament broke the happy impressions of that happy autumn, for parliament was pro- rogued. The demands for reform by the " Friends of the People '' — Lords Grey, Hol- land, Lansdowne, &c., — were unheard in the Peers ; and in the Commons, the financial ex- positions of Horner, the wit and raillery of Tierney, and the fierce sarcasm of Brougham disturbed no longer the equanimity of ministers, sinecurists, and representatives of rotten boroughs. The distress of the country, frightful as it was, lay hid beneath the halo of martial glory. Not even Komilly disturbed St. Stephen's with his endeavours to soften the worse than Draconian code of blood which then disgraced our statute-books, and gave incessant employment to Jack Ketch. All was harmony and exultation ; for England had spent three thousand millions only, and had put down the modern Attila, and given 120 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. peace to the world and supreme glory to herself. At the dinner-table, and in the drawing- room in the evening, Philip heard the con- versation in which the splendour of our position and felicitations on the national pros- perity were the perpetual topics; and his heart beat in unison with them, for he was patriotic to the back-bone, and his researches into the region of modern politics had been very limited. He was more familiar with the exploits of Themistocles, and Caesar, and Germanicus than with those of the generals of his own time ; and knew far more of the struggles of the Athenian senate than of those of the British parliament. The newspapers which he saw at Craythorne — the Morning Post and the St. James's Chronicle — did not let any light in from the other side of the question — or, rather, did not give him any glimpse into the darkness infinite which there existed. In his rambles about London, Philip had THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 121 seen something of that misery and squalor which, in dense and obscure neighbourhoods, formed a striking contrast to the luxury of the West End; but when he expressed his surprise, he was always told that it was a condition inseparable from great cities ; that if the people were raised out of it to-day, they would fall back into it to-morrow. Though unsatisfied with the reply, he had been too young and too much absorbed by his studies to reason profoundly on what he saw, and to come to a perception of that stupendous labour which was needed to sweep out that Augean stable of ignorance, wretchedness, and crime which had been accumulating its foulness for ages. To have caught a full view of the monstrum horrendum of London lower life, which the indefatigable exertions of senators, patriots, educators, preachers, phi- lanthropists of a dozen kinds, have only yet made a very partial impression upon, would have struck him dumb with despair. 122 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. As to the distress of the manufacturing districts, he knew still less. He had never been there, and his neglect of newspaper literature had left him unacquainted with the appalling revelations of it ever and anon made in Parliament. At this moment, those regions, with all their wild and famishing tribes, were stunned, as it were, by the great thunderbolts of war which had suddenly fallen, and the re-echoing of them in the shape of national triumph which followed. They remained unheard, though not unfelt, and a few more months must pass over before their renewed roar should break the charmed trance of victory, and startle the bloated Sardanapalus in the seat of the Regency, with their muttered fury. Philip heard, indeed, occasionally reference to provincial agitation, demagogues. Radical firebrands, and disaffected popularity -hunters — and they gave him an idea of something especially odious and unreasonable; but these THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 123 allusions were soon lost amid the more pre- dominating recitals of the flourishing state of the countr}', of the good spirits of farmers, of corn fast rising under the fostering influence of the new corn-law, and the prospects of the nation — that is, of the aristocracy — being most cheering. But the greatest portion of Philip\s time and thoughts was occupied with his pupil. He was zealous to discharge his duty to the satisfaction of his employers, who were impa- tient to hear report of good progress ; and besides this, Charles Peters, who had no companion of his own age, very soon made an incessant one of Philip. With the free- masonry of young spirits, they very quickly were on the most intimate terms. Charles soon drew from Philip all his story, and as quickly informed his mother to what a first- rate family he belonged. This went an amazing way with Lady Stanton, who was deeply imbued with the reverence of family ; and when it was again communicated to Mr. 124 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Freemantle, he remarked that there was a Sir Marmaduke Stanton in parliament, who was said to be of true Tory principle, and in great favour with the ministry. Philip was asked at dinner whether he was at all related to Sir Marmaduke, and replied, blushing, that he was his nephew. It was well that they did not proceed to question him further, or he would soon have been com- pelled to say some hard things of his relation ; but, after he withdrew, Mr. Freemantle remarked that he was aware that there had been some misunderstanding betwixt Sir Marmaduke and the late curate, who was too much infected with French principles, and, to say the least, was a great eccentric, and therefore had lost the patronage of the family. " But the lad seems a good lad enough," observed Sir Huldicote, *^ and is not account- able for his father." "Oh, not at all," rejoined the Rector; " and with us he will be shielded from bad THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 125 influences, and I trust will get confirmed in good old English ideas of things." " It is to be hoped so, indeed," said Lady- Peters. "What a pity that so fine and clever a young man should be corrupted by pernicious counsels. It really seems a providence that his misguided father has been taken away." " The ways of God are wonderful," said the Eector. And Sir Huldicote piouslj added : — " Ay, all things turn out for the best ; " and so saying, called Mr. Freemantle away to see after some drainage schemes projected for the new enclosure. Philip found himself treated with great cordiality, which he attributed to the good offices of Charles, but which was not the less to be referred to the possession of gentle blood, and an uncle at once a baronet and an influential member of parliament. He re- ceived the most flattering compliments on the already visible effects of his instruction on 126 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Charles, and Philip already thought he saw that so long as he stood well with the Rector, he should stand well with Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters. But there was a moving cause behind, of which Philip, as yet, knew nothing — and that was the Rev. Hargrave Freemantle, rector of Fishfang, whose opinions had the greatest weight with his father. The Rector, indeed, moved the springs of opinion at Craythorne Manor — but then his son, the incumbent of Fishfang, moved him. 127 CHAPTER Y. Hargraye Freemantle had always been a prudent and far-seeing man, and his father had from his very boyhood a feeling that he would turn out in the end a very fortunate one. Lady Peters, whenever he was men- tioned, said, ** Yes, Hargrave had a head. What a judgment he possessed ! Hargrave could see into persons and things with a clear- ness that was something almost miraculous. Whatever he recommended you might follow as safely as the sun ; where he demurred they would not find her going. He had such ] 28 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. admirable self-possession — such surprising tact — such an infallible prescience ! " Hargrave Freemantle was the son of the Eector's youth — the offspring of a simple love- match, when John Freemantle had no pros- pect beyond a curacy, and married the pretty daughter of a poor clergyman's widow. She died early, and Hargrave became the father's sole consolation for the loss of her who had been the sole romance of his youth. He strained his little means to educate his son, and to pass him through the university — and we must do Hargrave the justice to say that he was most prudent and economical there. He studied hard, lived carefully, indulged in no dissipations, and in few relaxations. He made but few acquaintances, but there was not one that he did make which might not be called strictly politic. All his acquaint- ances had some connections — some prospects which might possibly bring some advantage to him. Hargrave, serious but polished in his THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 129 manner, could make himself extremely agree- able, for he possessed a rather handsome person, was studied in his dress, though never striking by anything mannered or outre ; had a fair, somewhat florid complexion, a grey eye, and a soft hand. He was a connoisseur in music, and his only luxury was an organ, on which he played admirably grand old anthems, and other sacred pieces. His father married Sir Huldicote's sister when he was nearly grown up — and his only half-sister, Helen, was consequently a child when he was a young man. They could never be playfellows ; and, on his return from college, he became rather the mentor and schoolmaster than the brother of the little laughing girl. As she grew into her teens, he was becoming a staid and grave clergyman, and assumed an almost paternal air, and counselled her with much dignity, and advised for her training with much discretion. He was, at the time we are writing of, a man of VOL. I. K 130 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. thirty-five, and she a lovely girl of seven- teen. With all the talents and prudence of Hargrave Freemantle, and notwithstanding his choice friendships, and the high character with which he left the university, some years passed without his receiving any promotion. He relieved his father of the few clerical duties at Crackenthorpe, whilst he and Sir Huldicote pursued their speculations and their magisterial duties ; and he relieved the ennui of Lady Peters by occasionally driving her out, and joining her at cards. His step- mother was then deceased. Lady Peters's idea, as well as that of his own father, that he was born to be fortunate, began to appear problematical. All his great friends, who had livings at disposal, had also younger brothers or cousins, or good, sub- stantial purchasers ready for the next pre- sentation ; and Hargrave obtained no offer but that of a chaplaincy in India, which he THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 131 declined. His excuse was the climate, but his secret determination was never to quit England, where so many chances existed for a much more tempting oflfer. When his own sanguine, yet outwardly unruffled, mind began, however, to despond, he was one night leaving the opera-house — for music was his sole extravagance — when his ear was accosted by the screams of ladies, and he discovered that in the crush of the carriages pressing to the entrance to take up their owners, the pole of one had been driven through the back of another. The confusion was great ; the throng that rushed around the damaged carriage whence the cries came was an intense struggle, but Hargrave elbowed his way through the eager mass, and succeeded in handing out three ladies, two of whom were young, and taking them under his protection till the vehicle was extricated. It was found that the mischief was such as need not prevent its proceeding, and of personal k2 1 32 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. injury the ladies had received none what- ever. Hargrave's quick eye discerned a mitre on the panel of the departing carriage, and he was soon aware that it belonged to the Bishop o( Agrimony. It would have been a piece of neglect which Hargrave Freeman tie was by no means likely to perpetrate, to have omitted calling the next day to inquire whether the ladies were recovered from the effects of their alarm. The card of the Rev. Hargrave Freemantle, sent up with these inquiries, procured him a prompt admission. He found the right reverend prelate and his daughters full of gratitude for his timely aid ; he was invited to dinner in the evening, and, after the ladies had withdrawn, the bishop said he observed that their kind friend was in orders, and intimated a wish to know what were his con- nections and prospects. Hargrave Freemantle informed him that he was the nephew of Sir THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 133 Huldicote Peters, still officiating for his father, the rector of Crackenthorpe. In the drawing- room the young man made himself as agreeable as he had made himself useful the previous evening. The bishop requested that he would do them the pleasure of looking in on them sometimes — and the result was, ere long, the presentation of the living of Fishfang, and soon after that of the hand of one of the daughters. The star of Hargrave Freemantle had vindicated its power, and at the same time the auguries of his father and his aunt. This was regarded but as the stepping-stone to higher honours ; and, at the time we are writing of, he had the promise of the first vacant canonry of Wells. The living of Crackenthorpe he regarded as his heritage, as a matter of course. Sir Huldicote having no second son — though that, it was to be hoped, might be regarded as a distant contingence ; for, though his father was something more than seventy-five, his tall 134 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. form still showed much vigour, and his countenance, ruddy with out-of-door life, yet a little purpled by the enjoyment of old port, displayed a lively contrast with his head of snow-white hair, strong and unthinned by time. Great as had always been the weight attached to the opinion of Hargrave, since his alliance with the family of the bishop, it now became the ruling power in all affairs of Cray- thorne. The rector of Crackenthorpe was great in practical wisdom, but the rector of Fishfang, and future canon of Wells, was supreme. John Freeman tie had slain his hundreds of difficulties in his time, but the Kev. Hargrave was declared to have slain his thousands. When any important matter was under con- sideration the Eector was listened to with respect, but his dictum was no longer altogether decisive. "That seems very right," Sir Huldicote THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 135 would say, " but we must hear what Hargrave says." "Oh, certainly — we must know what Hargrave thinks of it," Lady Peters would exclaim ; and the proud father would add, " Of course we must ! " When Hugh Meynell Stanton was thought of as Charles's tutor, Hargrave for a time demurred. He was well informed of the curate's character and career, and doubted much the propriety of putting a young, im- pulsive man into the danger of contact with him ; but, as no other man of like acquire- ments could be found anywhere near, he had conceded that he might be tried, under strict injunction as to his communicating nothing to his pupil but the languages and the science he was engaged to teach. When Philip was named, Hargrave had again demurred, as he considered the danger from one youth to another still greater. He considered the proverb of " Bad crow, bad egg," as founded in deep 136 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. knowledge of human nature ; but he soon informed himself of the young man's conduct in the public school where he had long taught, and learned, to his great satisfaction, that he was devoted alone to studies principally ancient, and had shown no disposition to acquire, much less diffuse, the restless doctrines of the day ; and when he became aware that Sir Marmaduke Stanton, a baronet of such staunch Conservative principles, a member of parliament, held in such high esteem by the ministers, was his uncle, his hopes of the young man rose greatly. A cynical person might have suggested that any circumstance which pointed towards ministerial influence was by no means likely to be overlooked by the very prudent Rector of Fishfang, who had promise of a prebend, but might still like to see his way to a bishopric ; and, without malice, we may admit that this was precisely the case, for Hargrave Freemantle was so prudent. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 137 Things, therefore, went on swimmingly at Craythorne. Philip pursued with a young man's enthusiasm the education of his pupil, and during their hours of relaxation the pupil became the master, and initiated Philip into all the pleasures and the knowledge of country life. They rode together, Philip having a splendid horse put at his service. They shot together, as soon as September came in ; and Philip soon showed himself an admirable scholar in handling the double-barrelled gun, and bringing down his partridge in the stubbles, his hare on the lea, or the pheasant in the copse. Charles pursued his additional pleasure as the season went on in the pursuit of wild-ducks, snipes, woodcocks, and the like, in the frozen marshes, and by the wild meres. Occasionally they got into their punt on the Mole, and tried their skill in hooking the heavy but shy bream, or in laying night- lines for eels. It was a new existence for the bookworm Philip, who had so long been 138 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. pent amongst hacked and ink-flecked desks, and dog-eared Cornelius Neposes. It was a season of life at which such pleasures come with a relish that would have ere long withered out, in the sickly air of school-rooms ; and they were the more congenial to Philip, because his boyhood had been passed in the daily love and enjoyment of nature. Nevertheless, he omitted no opportunity to effect what Mr. Freemantle had averred to be the great desire of Charles's family — that of inspiring him with a love of eloquence. He declaimed to him, as they rode slowly over the neighbouring commons, or amid the woods, the most magnificent passages from the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, and painted to Charles the glory of directing the counsels of a great nation, and influencing the fortunes of millions of his fellow-men by the power of reason and elocution. Some- times a ludicrous air was indeed thrown over the young professor's declamation THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 139 by accidents of a trivial nature. On one occasion a bull, seeing Philip waving a yellow handkerchief in his hand as he declaimed and gesticulated earnestly, took it for a challenge, and gave chase to the horsemen with a tremen- dous bellow. On another occasion they were suddenly and ignominiously brought up by a waggon loaded with corn, which filled the narrow lane, and swept the overhanging hedges on each side, forcing them to retreat, and at length escape into a field till it had passed, just as Philip was describing the fine effect of a solemn and well-modulated intona- tion, by pronouncing the Divine charge to Jonah — ^^ Go to Nineveh, that great city — " but here the waggon appeared blocking the way, and flight was necessary, and the orator was cut short. Charles laughed heartily as they regained the road, saying — " Well, Phil, we are sent to Nineveh with a vengeance." 140 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. But Still more was he amused another day, as Philip was declaiming, with impassioned emphasis, the third speech of Cicero against Catiline, and was exclaiming, " Abiit ! evasit ! erupit ! " when a great country fellow looked over a hedge and shouted — " What's all that about?'' Charles burst into convulsions of laughter ; and ever and anon, as they rode home, cried, "Abiit! evasit! erupit!" and went off into fresh explosions of merriment, in which Philip joined. The ancients having failed to kindle a passion for oratory in the heir of Craythorne, Philip tried Burke, and Pitt, and Fox, and Erskine, Grattan, Curran, and others, but with as little effect. In fact, it soon became evident to him that Mr. Freemantle had either thoroughly overlooked or mistaken the genius and calling of his nephew, who was a youth of good average sense and an excellent disposition, but had neither the talent nor the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 141 ambition "the applause of listening senates to command." And nobody knew that better than Charles Peters himself. "Phil/' said he, one day, as they were seated at luncheon in the midst of a furze cover, to which they had followed a covey of partridges, dropping them, ever and anon, as they had come, till the remaining three or four had sought refuge there ; and the two sportsmen threw themselves down on the banks of a little stream which ran glittering in the sun over its sands, and drew forth their bread and cold meat, and bade Eobin, the keeper, tot up a foaming horn of home-brewed. " Phil," said Charles, when Robin had re- tired to discuss his share of the bottle and the wallet at a respectful distance, " you'll have to alter your cue." " How so ? " asked Philip. " Why," said Charles, " neither my father, 142 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. God bless him, nor my uncle Freemantle, know me. I should have said some days ago that neither did you, but yet I rather think now that you've got an inkling of the truth." "Of what truth?" asked Philip. *^ Why," replied Charles, *^that I am not just what the worthy governor, and the re- verend worthy lieutenant-governor — that is to say, the venerable Eector of Crackenthorpe, — take me for." " In what respect ? " asked Philip, thinking he knew, however, what he meant. " In this, for instance," said Charles, pro- ceeding to strip off his coat and turn up his shirt sleeves to the shoulders, as if he were preparing for a fight ; and then as de- liberately pulling off his strong waterproof shoes and stockings, and drawing up his trou- sers to the knee, and so walking into the little stream. "Now, I'll bet anything," con- tinued he, " that my father, and Robin yon- der, would never suspect me of poaching, or THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ^ 143 of setting this brilliantly pernicious example to the ragamuffins of Craythorne-cum- Crackenthorpe — yet, verily, I suspect trout under these banks, and mean to have a fry." Whereupon he stooped under the overhang- ing grassy sward, and threw out one fine golden and spotted fish after another. *^Here, Robin a Bobbin,'' he shouted, "keep these flouncing fellows from jumping into the water again ! " At which invocation Robin came running, and cried in astonishment — " Why, Mr. Charles, you're poaching, of all things ! " " Ay, here I am, Rob, and mind you don't let a fish get in again, or you shall go after it ! " And in truth, however much Robin might exclaim, it was clear, by the fun that blazed over every feature, and laughed in his eyes, and made him hop about in rapid gyrations 144 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. to secure the gasping and springing trout, that he enjoyed that bit of poaching more than all his morning's orthodox trudging after the partridges. When Charles had flung out an ample dish of the fish, he resumed his stockings and shoes, and, throwing himself down on the mossy sward, lit a cigar — rather a novel and expensive thing then — and went on talking. " Now, Phil, if you would tell the governor how I caught that trout, he would declare that I was a degenerate son, though I dare- say he has done the same thing more than once in his younger days. But, Phil, I am more degenerate still, for I neither care for Demosthenes, nor Caesar, nor Burke, nor Fox, nor Grattan. In a word, you'll never make a statesman, much less an orator, out of me. Can you tell me, with all your learn- ing, why I should batter my brains, and put myself to endless trouble, to guide and go- vern people who wouldn't thank me for it ? THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 145 You'll tell me that it is a very fine thing, and very philanthropic, and all that, to say nothing of the highway to a larger fortune, and a peerage. That it is noble to have an ambition, and becomes one — ' To scorn delights, and live laborious days,' and all that — may be very true about one who has an ambition ; but I have not a spark of that restless fire, at least not of that par- ticular fire, within me. And now, if you just cast your eyes over this fair estate, and re- member that it stretches from the Mole to Homewood, I would ask you why I should go on fighting my way to empty fame, when I have the solid pudding in my grasp ? Here have the governor and the reverend uncle been planning, and scheming, and scraping together for a whole generation — so don't you think that I may rest and enjoy the good ' the gods provide me ? ' " ''If you are in earnest, Charles," said VOL. I. L 146 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Philip, " it is only another proof that necessity as well as — ' Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise.' Take that away, and how general is the propensity to indolence!" " Indolence ! " exclaimed Charles. ** Indo- lence, quotha ! Why, don't you learned fellows talk perpetually of the otium cum dignitate ? And don't you think I could find means of employment, as well as dignity, in study and improvement — improvement of my- self, of my estate, and all that is upon it, man and beast ? " ^' That is another thing," said Philip ; " that is not rest, or rust, which is the same thing. There may be a noble ambition even there." " But," continued Charles, " if I really had an ambition, it would be to be a soldier. I can tell you that I have listened to you with a real interest when you read of Hector defending Troy, of Hannibal defending THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 147 Carthage — and, by-the-bye, I think the Eomans have given us their own view of the Carthaginian. I should like vastly to read a history of the times by Hannibal himself — Hannibars Commentaries. If one could dig up something of the sort by crossing over to Africa, that, I think, would astonish some of your savans. I can read, too, delightedly of the feats of Miltiades, Leonidas, Epaminondas, and such fellows, and never was more wrapped up in a soldier's story than in the ^ Retreat of the Ten Thousand.' Well, now, though one could not expect to be a Wellington, and would not wish to be a Bony, it would be something to be a Wolfe, scaling the heights of Quebec — an Abercrombie, turning back the Corsican Kengis-Khan, after his proud vaunt of looking down from the pyramids on a con- quered world — or even a Sir John Moore, finishing a forced retreat by a glorious triumph." Philip smiled. l2 148 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ^^You are at least magnanimous in your aspirations," he said, " for you choose as your models those chiefly who died in the field. But if such really are your views, don't you think you ought to explain them to your parents ? In such a case you should give a new direc- tion to your studies. You have classical knowledge enough for a soldier, but you should now study more consecutively your mathe- matics, geometry, fortification, and engineer- ing, preparatory to their direct results in military strategy and mechanical manoeuvres. I think you should candidly open your views to your father." " And so have you sent to the right about, eh? — and myself packed off* to Sandhurst, or put under some queer old military quid- nunc. No, no ; I don't want to part with you. I like you too well for that ; and besides, I know what all this furbishing up of Latin and Greek means — it's cousin Hargrave that's at the bottom of it all." THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 149 "Does he take such zealous interest in you ? '^ asked Philip. "Does he?'' Charles laughed. "You don't know Hargrave yet ; but if there be a smooth, scheming, proud little pomposity, that's my amiable cousin of Fishfang. You could not say that Hargrave was ungenerous, for he is fond rather of making presents, though they are seldom valuable — it's not the value, it's the intention to show a liking, he says ; but I always noticed that when he came home from college, when I was quite a boy, he would bring me a handsome pegtop, or a kite, you would say — no, he could not eat the spike of a pegtop, or the tail of a kite, so he used to bring me a dozen of oranges or a drum of figs — he has a very sweet tooth, has cousin Hargrave yet — and he was sure to get the best half of them himself. And he'd bring my mother a new parasol or a dress? — nothing of the kind, but a nice Stilton cheese, or a basket of lobsters ; oh ! he 150 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. likes lobsters, and lobster salad — and then, of course, he had to come and taste of them. Well, now, you know, he has picked up a bishop's daughter, and so he looks higher than ever, and it would be a famous thing to have a nephew with political influence ; for then, who knows but he might be a bishop himself some day ? But he's out in his reckoning in this quarter, for he won't plough with my heifer, that I know." " But, seriously," said Philip, ^' I think you should explain your views as to your own course to your father. I don't think it quite honest for me to be teaching what will not be of any use to you." " Tut, tut ! my young tender conscience ! — don't trouble yourself on that score. Your instructions will be of use to me — the greatest use. Knowledge is always useful. Why should I not be an accom- plished gentleman, if nothing else? But leave all that to me — you shan't sufier'; I THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 151 shall study pretty hard, and not disgrace you. So, now, come along." And up he sprang, beat the covey for the remaining partridges, but did not find them, and on they went. The next morning Charles Peters came into the room set apart for their studies with a newspaper in his hand, saying — " Look here, old fellow, what the world is doing whilst we are droning over Xenophons, Iinrapxi^Ko^ or his IirTn/o] and solving dry problems. All the world but us is in Paris — kings, emperors, princes, czars, hetmen, bans, marshals, generals, milords, princesses, miladies, countesses, sly diplomats, old noblesse come back from teaching grammar to be counts and courtiers, and all sorts of fine people — Cossacks and Croats, Tschecks, and Dutch, and fat Germans, and English red- coats — all bustling and swarming together in the most variegated and admired confusion that ever was seen since Babel. What ! and are we to be lounging here, as if nothing was 152 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. on foot 1 Curiosity forbid ! Why, there never was, and never will be again, such a scene while the world lasts. Only think ! to see the pious Alexander of all the Kussias, the astute Metternich, the grim Blucher, Orloff, and Nesselrode, hobnobbing with our Wel- lington and Castlereagh, and all the rest of it ! Zounds ! we must go too, Phil, that's certain." ** But what of the studies, then ? " asked Philip. ^' Studies ! oh ! we'll study just the same. We can be up in a morning and take an hour or two for it ; besides, one must have a holi- day now and then like other students." Philip shook his head. " You don't mean that I should go, too ? " " Of course I do, or the governor would never consent to my going." '' But I can't afford it," said Philip. " You afford it ! " exclaimed Charles. " Who ever thought of such a thing ? Of course you go as part and parcel; the young man THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 153 takes his tutor, according to established custom." **But will Sir Huldicote agree to it? It will be an enormous expense/' said Philip ; ^* lodging and everything are, I see by the Post, at salvation prices, and scarcely to be got at all. Yery great people are compelled to squeeze themselves into very little places." " Leave all that to me," said Charles. ^^ I daresay we can afford it a good deal better than thousands who are there in the very front of it. It will all go out of the heap, old fellow, and nobody will miss it at the year's end — and then the advantages ! Don't you think that, if I am to be a soldier, I ought to see all the great nobs of the armies of the world, and the troops now camping round Paris? And who knows what may come to you, Phil ? I've a notion of your taking orders — you could do that in almost no time with your attainments, and then, depend upon it, you'd make your way in the 154 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Church. Or one may get you introduced to some great man whilst there, and so pop you some day into a snug secretaryship or some- thing." *^You are very good to think of me/' said Philip ; *^ but I think you won't accomplish this scheme." "Not?" said Charles, laughing. "Why, I consider it as good as settled already. I have set my mother agog about it. Her sister, Lady Culpepper, is there with a whole troop of daughters, and writes most flaming letters of all the fine people, and fine sights, and fine balls and parties ; and my mother is really dying to go, and has written to desire my aunt to secure some sort of quarters for us — so I am sure we shall go, if we can only get a shed to put our heads into." "And who are to form the party ? " asked Philip. " There's the rub! " said Charles, holding up his finger, as in caution, and speaking with THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 155 bated breath, as if afraid of being heard. " I know who would upset heaven and earth, if possible, but he'd be at the head of it. Oh ! what a fine opportunity for getting amongst ministerial people ! But cousin Har- grave shan't be our Corypheus on this occa- sion. I've made it a stipulation that he shall not hear of it till too late. Uncle Free- mantle, mamma, our two illustrious selves, and Paully and Helen, whom we take up in London — that's the set, and a very pleasant set too, I think." It is needless to say that for some days there was too much excitement afloat at Cray- thorne Manor for much calm study. There were worlds of preparation to be made — the great four-in-hand coach, which Sir Huldicote had sported betwixt Craythorne and London to carry all his establishment on his migrations thither, was examined to see that all its springs and spokes were staunch, was washed, brushed, aired, and made ready. There was 156 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. a great selection of dresses, and dragging out of coffers and portmanteaus, and running to and fro of maids and men, and then eager rushing every morning for tlie letter-bag, and at length came the desired missive. Lady Culpepper had secured the apartments of Lady Tantara in the Eue St. Honore for a fortnight — at an astounding rate, it was true ; but, added Lady Culpepper, there could be no counting the cost on such an occasion, if they were to have a place at all. Charles sprang about the room in all the ecstacies of a schoolboy on the announce- ment of some unexpected holiday, and then rushed away to apprize his uncle that they were to be off the very next morning. Their quarters would not be vacated for a week, but then the young people had never been yet abroad, any more than Mr. Freemantle, and they proposed to travel leisurely, and see something of the chief towns on the way. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 157 Accordingly, at six in the morning, the capacious long coach, covered with trunks and hung with travelling bags, baskets all filled almost to bursting, and with umbrellas bundled up in oil-skin, was seen dashing off at a smart pace. Lady Peters and her daughter, Mr. Freemantle and his daughter, were, from London, to constitute the inside passengers. Charles took his seat on the box with the coachman, and Philip on another just behind on the front of the coach, where he could converse freely with Charles, and the valet and Lady Peters' maid swung snugly in the dicky behind. Philip's seat would have accommodated two or three other persons, but was now, except the space left for him, occupied by the projecting ends of trunks and portmanteaus, which, however, formed a snug enclosure, where he could lean, and, if he pleased, take an occasional nap. But such an event was not likely to occur to a young man all alive to the novel pleasure of 158 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. foreign travel, and with such a mercurial person as Charles close before him. Their shortest route would have been by Keigate, Tunbridge, and Ashford ; but besides that road being far from good at that time, they had letters of credit to obtain in town, and the young ladies and their impedimenta to take up. We must give but a passing notice of their journey, which would detain us far too long in our history. The great event in England was the meet- ing with the young ladies in London, who were all ready packed and equipped for the expedition. To Philip this was a most inte- resting occurrence. He had, of course, often heard them talked of, and occasionally heard portions of very lively letters read from them, but he had no conception of what a couple of radiant, handsome creatures was to break upon him. There was that strong resemblance betwixt them that would have led any stranger to THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 159 regard them as sisters, yet at tlie same time Philip could see in Paulina a decided femi- nine likeness to Charles, and in Helen as un- mistakeable a resemblance to Mr. Freemantle. Paulina was a year older than Charles, and consequently was just turned twenty ; Helen was only about eighteen. Paulina was the taller and more womanly, but Helen appeared still growing, and likely to equal her in height ; and when her now somewhat slender figure, and slender though finely moulded fea- tures, had acquired a maturer fulness, the sis- terly tout-ensemble bade fair to be still greater. As it was, Paulina had a more measured vivacity, and, in Philip's presence, what is called a more maidenly pride ; whilst Helen was all girlish buoyancy and merriment, and her clear ringing laugh was heard con- tinually wherever she was. There was a fire in her rich hazel eye which gleamed with many meanings under her dark lashes, and gave an expression of infinite fun and sense of it to 160 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. her lovely mouth. Philip felt that he' could be at home immediately with the open-hearted and merry girl — but that with the more reserved and sedate Paulina, he must be also sedate and distantly respectful. On the following day they proceeded on their route through the pleasant valleys of Kent, but it was only when they stopped for dinner and change of horses, and for the night, or when the girls got out for a walk up a steep hill, that the young men saw much of the inside passengers. By the time that they set foot on the sands of Calais, the intercourse on the road, and the accidents of travel, always full of amusement to the young, had made Philip and the young ladies agreeably easy in their bearing towards each other; and they sallied forth from the Hotel de Dessein — the same where Sterne stopped, and where his room is yet shown — to take a view of the place, whilst Mr. Free- mantle and the servants saw the luggage THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 161 through the custom-house —a commissionnaire from the inn having undertaken to do the French talking, and make all easy with the douaniers. So, for an hour, our young travellers, under the guidance of Lady Peters, who knew the place, took their first wondering survey of a foreign town. There was nothing very marvellous in the view of that little old town ; but to the young people, and to people generally at that time, everything on the Continent was full of novelty and interest. The old, narrow streets, the shops, the common people in their homely costume, clattering about on the ragged pavements in their sabots^ the antique aspect of the Place d'Armes, the Hotel de Yille, and the great church near it, built by our Edward II. — all had their charms for their young imaginations. They ascended the ramparts, which everywhere hemmed in with their walks and avenues the little seaport, and talked of the times when our Edwards VOTu I. M 162 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. and Henries were masters of the place, and of most of Picardy, Normandy, Brittany, and other provinces of France. From Calais they took their route through St. Omer and Arras, towards Paris, every- where seeing throngs of English loading the heavy diligences, or with post-horses driving along the jarring paved roads in a species of patient martyrdom. Everywhere the open, fenceless fields — the road-sides, bordered with fruit-trees or triple rows of elms — the long villages of white-washed, yet by no means neat cottages — the queer waggons, and queerer har- ness — the picturesque old towns, and richly antique and ever-open cathedrals and churches — the black, long-skirted priests and sable sisters of charity, French looks, French soldiers, French gendarms, French beggars, French inns — finding them perpetual objects of wonder and amusement, comparisons with England, and discussions over their meals. To the satirical Helen these scenes were THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 163 subjects of perpetual merriment, and her clear- ringing laughter might be heard from the interior of the coach as they travelled along, so excitingly, that Charles would lean over frequently, and, like the man over the hedge, call out, ''Nelly, what's all that about? '' To which the laughing reply would be, '' Oh, nothing, nothing." And Charles, saying, '' Then you should not laugh at nothing," would resume his position. Philip's importance grew the further they travelled, for it turned out that he was the only one who was master of intelligible French. Lady Peters had always been sup- posed perfectly au fait in that language. In her earlier years she had been frequently in France, and was always accustomed to astonish those about her with French quotations ; but now it soon became apparent that either her former knowledge of the tongue had been, like that of Chaucer's abbess, the French of Stratford-le-Bow, or that it had grown very M 2 164 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. rusty — for it was, in truth, perfectly execrable in pronunciation, and lamentably deficient in amount, so that she was continually eking it out with distorted English, to the no small wonderment of the femmes-de'Chambres, and messieurs the keepers of the hotels. As for the young ladies, they had plenty of theory and grammar, and tolerable pronunciation — for they had had a refugee nobleman for their master — but they wanted the daily practice which alone gives confidence and facility; and when called upon to explain what was said by the natives, or should be said by the travellers, suddenly became mute, and soon timidly gave up adventuring their aid. But Philip was ready for all occasions. His great-grandmother was French, and his grandmother had loved to converse with his father in the tongue made dear to her by her mother — and Philip had done the same with his father; so that with him it was, as it were, hereditary, and it was a pleasure to him now THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 165 to revive his old habit amongst the natives themselves ; he became, therefore, speedily the courier of the party — did all the talking, carried out all the arrangements, and discharged his duty with so much ability and adroitness, that he rose wonderfully in the estimation of all the party, and smoothed every difficulty from their path. The friendship which Charles had established with him, the know- ledge of the standing of his family, and his own agreeable and companionable qualities, soon made him the family friend of the whole party — and he was regarded not so much as the tutor, as the associate. And thus the great four-in-hand, with its delighted company, and its multitudinous luggage, rolled pleasantly on its way towards the great Gallican city. 166 CHAPTER VI. As our travellers approached Peronne, they came upon the track of the march of the allied army from Waterloo to Paris; and though it was now some months since that great horde of the armed nations had passed that way before them, they could still perceive unmistakable traces of it. The Prussians, hastily pursuing the retreating French, had scoured much of this road. The troops of Grouchy and Yandamme, retreating from Wavre, had made for Namur, pursued by Thielmann. They marched rapidly through Rocroi and Laon to get the start of Blucher, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 167 who was advancing through Arvesnes and Laon towards Senlis, in order that they might throw themselves betwixt him and Paris. They succeeded, and came into repeated conflict betwixt Pont St. Maxence and the gate of St. Denis. But the Prussians did not confine all their attention to the French army — burning with the sense of the years of French insult and outrage in their country — the plunder of their towns, the robbing of their museums and galleries of art, the humiliation of their king, and Napoleon^s unmanly insolence to their queen — they laid waste the whole country as they went : cattle, sheep, poultry, vegetables, standing corn, fruit ripe or unripe, had been swept away as clean as if there had been none there. The English, under Wellington, had marched chiefly through Foucourt, Nesle, Or- ville, and Gonesse to Paris, but General Mait- land's division passed this way, and after the English came the bands of less scrupulous Austrian s and Kussians. 168 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Our wondering travellers could see where the green corn had been trampled into the earth, preventing the trouble of the reaper. The poor inhabitants had now returned to their famine-haunted habitations, but pale, meagre, and destitute of their usual French hilarity. There was no longer the dance of the villagers in their wooden shoes in the evening, or the crowded cabarets in the town, with fiddles and dancing, and drinking of small beer. The country displayed ruined chateaux and villages, with windows and doors dashed in, and sometimes houses burnt down. The device of poles stuck into the thatch, with each a white rag fluttering at its summit, to intimate that the inhabitants were for the Bourbons, had evidently been no protection. *^ Les aimables Prussiens/' as the people called them, had ravaged all before them ; and the fugitive French had, according to their own countrymen, been little better. The children and beggars — oh! such beggars! — idiots, para- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 169 lytics, people with every deformity and every sore, as though some great hospital or lazar- house had been emptied on the road, were riotously clamorous for alms, and hung on the coach, and thrust their diseased visages or ulcerated hands in at the windows. In the towns were thickly quartered Bel- gians, and Prussians, and some English. On the doors of great houses were still conspi- cuously chalked the emblazonments of the quarter-masters, which no one had thought it worth while to rub out. The names of Mait- land, Bliicher, Miifflin, Platoff and many an English general and colonel, many a German Oberste and Hauptmann, still attracted the wondering eye of the traveller, on the doors of mansions in which they had been quar- tered. As they advanced, the marks of the fighting between the troops of Bliicher and Grouchy and Yandamme grew more and more visible ; the bridge at Pont St. Maxence had been 170 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. partly destroyed, and was yet only made pass- able by planks. Near to Senlis, the ground was tremendously ploughed up by artillery, and trampled by men and horses — houses and farms were laid in ashes, and fragments of military hats and uniforms, and pestiferous car- casses of horses, too well indicated the terrible work that had taken place there. Still nearer Paris the towns were thronged with the allied troops — English red-coats, Prussian blue-coats, Austrian white-coats, swarmed on all sides. It was a strange sight to see English guards mounted at the Port St. Denis ; still stranger to behold a great English camp on the heights of Montmartre, their white tents visible far over the city ; and descending into the streets and Boulevards, to find them thronged with English, Prussian, Russian, Austrian, Belgian uniforms, mingling with those of the French National Guard, Garde de Corps, and Gen- darms. " What a grand sight !" cried Charles, as THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 171 he gazed on these scenes, and on the number of English and other foreign equipages driv- ing through the streets. English faces and costumes blended with the green uniforms of the Eussian soldiers, and the occasional wild aspect and long coat of a Cossack, or the red jacket and wide blue, trousers of the Cossack Guards. " What a grand sight !" again said Charles to his Uncle Freemantle, who had mounted the top of the coach to have a finer view of Paris as they drove along. "Ay," said the old gentleman, with a shake of the head and a quiet smile, " this is some- thing different to the French lording it all over Europe, except in our own country, and now twice in twelve months having the aveng- ing natives in their haughty capital. This is something different to the camp of Boulogne, and the long-rumoured invasion that never came off.'' The old four-in-hand whirled along, amid the amusing remarks of the Parisian crowd, 172 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. to the lodgings in the Rue St. Honore, where Lady Culpepper and her daughters soon came to welcome their relatives to Paris. We need not attempt to describe the ex- citing pleasure to the young party of finding themselves in the midst of this gay and magnificent capital. A visit to Paris is to the young at any time a hurrying and be- wildering entrancement. Splendid palaces and gardens, theatres, galleries filled with works of art, spots bearing the memories of the most wild and awful transactions, a gay and swarming people, presenting such new and festive features of life, make a wonderful world to the young. But now, the circum- stances were such as ages had not witnessed, and might not witness again. This gay city had been the imperial seat of a man who overran the earth, and for twenty years or more shut out the rest of the world — whilst, except to our own country, he had himself appeared everywhere with his legions, hurl- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 173 ing down thrones, humiliating and deposing kings, and playing the most marvellous and imperious vagaries with myriad-numbered peoples. The incensed world had risen, and, as one man, had pursued him to his proud capi- tal, driven him thence, banished him to a far- off land ; and here, with their kings and princes, their marshals and their ministers, and their troops, came parading their triumph. There came czars and emperors, and men of world-wide renown, seen every day as com- monly as plain monsieur s at other times. There was a great English camp in the Champs Elysees, within five minutes' walk of our friends' abode. There was an English camp at Montmartre ; there was a camp of Sappers and Miners in the Bois de Boulogne ; Versailles, St. Cloud, and all that neigh- bourhood was one great camp of Prussians. It was truly some recompence to a native of England, which had so long been the object of mortal hatred and mortal endeavour on 1 74 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the part of Bonaparte, to traverse the scenes of his late glory, and the emporium of his plunder of a world, and see the Nemesis at work. Already the busy nations were eagerly claiming their own. Already the statue of the haughty tyrant had descended from its bronze pillar in the Place Vendome ; and the Austrians had demanded that the column raised of their captured cannon, and em- bossed with the story of their defeats, should descend too. Already the Prussians had vowed destruction to the insulting bridge of Jena. But though they were not gratified in those two respects by their allies, already the Aus- trians had removed the ignominious bas-re- lievos from the triumphal arch in the Place du Carousel, commemorating their subjection. Already Bllicher was relentlessly employed in carrying away from the Louvre the former contents of the galleries and museums of Germany. Already the Apollo Belvidere, and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 175 the Venus de Medici, and the finest paint- ings of Eaphael, and many another artist, were on their way to their proper homes. Canova was there redeeming the chefs-d'ceuvre of Italy ; and Dutch, Belgian, Russian and Spanish commissioners were sternly laying hands on what belonged to their nations. Already the horses of the Sun had descended from the arch of the Carousel to return to St. Mark's. Our party, with all dispatch, having pro- cured a ticket for admission — for it was, during this process, closed to the public — hastened to the Louvre to catch what glimpses they could of the departing glories. Lady Culpepper and her daughters, lively and energetic dam- sels, were their ever-ready guides. With them they traversed the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg, stood in the Place de la Concorde, and surveyed the splendid scenes around, in strange contrast to the time when the guillotine was there visibly 176 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. at work, clipping off the heads of kings and queens, high-born and beautiful women, states- men and philosophers. With them, in the evening, they visited all the celebrated theatres, opera and opera comique. Saw Talma and Fleury, Mademoiselles Georges and Mars, at the Franqaise ; witnessed the marvels of the orchestra and the ballet at the Academic Roy ale de Musique ; saw ^' Figaro " performed at the Odeon ; and laughed at the inimitable drollery of Brunet, Poitier, and Joly, in the Theatres Yariete and Vaudeville. Then there were grand reviews, in which the kings and emperors, and their victorious troops, raised the dust of the Champ de Mars, and drew together all the foreign celebrities in Paris, and but few Frenchmen. Balls and parties at different commanders and noblemen, to which they were fortunate to obtain access ; and a host of engagements, and a host of new acquaintances, besides old friends, met here — kept them in a continual round of excitement THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 177 and gaiety. In all the general sight-seeing, and seeing of remarkable men and women, there brought together from all the ends of the earth, Philip was a party ; but there were many other occasions when, as not one of the family itself, he was omitted in in- vitations. At such times Philip would make solitary rambles through Paris — solitary, though busy and gay crowds were moving around him, for then he felt how much he was isolated from his race. Except in the one family where he had experienced so much kindness, he was still a solitary and unconnected being. The feeling that he was so kept him so, for he could not, without means and without definite prospects, throw himself ardently and confi- dently into those intimacies, with young men of his age and of equal education, which lead to friendship and unions of various kinds. He could not indulge in the same expenses — he could not invite them to the hospitali- VOL. I. N 178 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ties of his home, if he could call it such, as his friend Charles could and did, for he was but a ** stranger and a sojourner there ; " and, though Charles did all that a young and generous heart could do to make him forget the difference, the difference was founded in realities which no circumstances could alto- gether or nearly obliterate. To have sought to establish a friendship with young men of their circle whom he could cordially esteem, and who could appreciate his knowledge, virtues, and accomplishments, he felt would be a kind of imposture — for they might sup- pose him an independent friend of the family, and not a poor tutor, honoured with an equality that perhaps few families besides would have accorded him. This was a gulph betwixt him and his daily companions which he found impossible to bridge over by any moral reflections on the mere conventionalism of rank, the mere accident of station and fortune, compared THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 179 with the substantial distinctions of intellectual superiority, and accomplishments of genius or of learning. It was only by a successful future that he saw a way over it, and that future he determined to achieve ; meantime, however, he felt that he stood alone, and must so stand — and there was nothing which so helped to drown the melancholy sense of this fact, as busying himself in observing the cha- racteristics of the people amongst whom he was thus for awhile thrown. Thus, when Charles and the rest of the family were occupied by their acquaintances, and by their various engagements, Philip would stroll at his leisure through the galleries of the Louvre, always finding some fresh objects of art, antiquity, or virtu to engage his attention ; and though the priceless trea- sures of Italy were again restored to their proper owners, he found pictures still of the Italian school, which would detain him for many hours day after day. He would visit n2 180 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the then still partly desolated chapels and un- dercroft of the Abbey of St. Denis, or examine the gilded tracery of La Sainte Chapelle. He rambled through the gardens of the Luxem- bourg, watching the life of the various groups which regularly resorted thither to spend the sunny hours of the day; or extended his walk to the Place de la Bastille, recalling the scenes of the popular fury which had raged there ; and he would dive into the neighbouring purlieus of the Faubourg St. Antoine, whence issued such streams of the sans-culottes who swelled the living torrent which swept away the institu- tions and the tyrannies of ages. Here he found their sons busy in great furniture manufactories, smithies, iron-foundries, dyeries, and sundry other handicraft arts, creating instead of destroying. He would enter some humble cabaret or estaminet at noon, where these busy, alert, self-complaisant proletaires drink their chopins of beer after their simple dinners, and sing in THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 181 chorus their song before hurrying away again to their labour. He would then pursue his way along the Eue de la Eoquette, with its end- less shops and yards of monumental statuary, with ready-made gravestones and tombs of all kinds, piles of temporary black crosses to mark the resting-places of the newly-interred till more substantial mementoes could be set up, or to remain where poverty could not command marble. He would pause to read the mottoes attached to variously-coloured wreaths of immortelles for sale, " a ma mere," '^ a mon oncle," " Regrets pour," etc. These announced the approach to that huge city of the dead, Pere Lachaise. There Philip spent whole days, for he could scarcely take a step without being reminded of some celebrity which had figured in the scenes of the Revolution, or the great war which had succeeded. Warriors, orators, poets, actors, philosophers, atheists, deists, saints, lay scattered around him in endless 182 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ruin, extending street after street, wilderness after wilderness, of monuments more or less pretentious, and with exhibitions of sentiment which it would be in vain to look for in any- other country. Now he stood by the stately tomb of Abelard and Heloise, with its effigies and Gothic canopy, and medallion portraits brought from Yaucluse ; and by those of Moliere, Racine, and La Fontaine. He went on wondering. People of all nations — English, Russians, Poles, Spaniards — lay sharing the rest of the departed Frenchmen, but only the Frenchmen bewailed with the true mock-heroic of French sentiment. Showers of large black tears were carved on grave-stones, something in size and shape be- twixt black plums and tadpoles, and followed by ejaculations, " Tout mon Bonheur est la ! " &c. Next came two upright head-stones, those of husband and wife, with an arm extending from the top of each stone, and grasping each other's hand, coloured like THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 183 life, and the wife's with a brass bracelet. Here monuments enormous, pyramid or column fifty feet high — or composing a perfect little chapel and oratory, with richly-painted win- dows, richly-emblazoned arms on the door, surmounted by a massive gilt cross, and within furnished with all the luxuries of opulent woe; carpeted floor, altar, crucifix, candlesticks, and Prie-Dieus. Thence he wandered on through whole wildernesses of broken columns and weeping statues ; of little glass pent-houses, protecting the offered wreaths from the weather, or black iron pent- houses, performing the same office ; through forests of black wooden crosses, sunflowers, beds of china-asters, little white monuments of wood, millions of wreaths, yellow, white, black — the latter of black beads. But in nothing did the strange mixture of pathos, false sentiment, and real nature more strike him than in a momentary peep into the cemetery chapel or oratory, whence Paris lies 184 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. all below you, Notre Dame in the central view. The exterior front covered with hooks for hanging lamps on, the interior very naked and plain. Entering this chapel, he saw, on his right hand, an old woman selling tapers, to burn at the graves, and women in black buying them and shedding tears ; other women sitting absorbed in prayer, but only to a rudely-carved and flaringly-painted Virgin, standing in her niche betwixt two black vases of artificial flowers. "May the Comforter, who leads into all truth and all consolation," whispered Philip to himself, " be nearer to you than he appears ! " But how, thought Philip, did those who lie amid so much artificial grief in the funeral garden of Father Lachaise pass their lives ? In the same, to an English mind, incompre- hensible absence of nature and domesticity. Nothing astonished Philip more than his evening strolls through the streets and boule- vards of Paris. Night after night he saw the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 185 middle of the street filled with carriages with flaming lamps, driving rapidly to opera, theatre, concert, assembly, and brilliant con- versazione — whilst the broad pavement swarmed with its countless crowds seated in front of the briUiantly lighted cafes, restaurants, and news-rooms, supping, drink- ing coffee, or eau-sucre, while other crowds supped within, and still vaster crowds walked to and fro in eternal promenade. What a picture of utterly outward exist- ence — what a picture of frivolity and love of gossip, and mere news ! The very sight of it, day after day, became to Philip an intolerable weariness. " When do these people,'' he asked himself, " really think, and endeavour to become acquainted with themselves ? How much more desirable seemed to him the domestic circle, the retiring habits of his own land, whence came forth solid states- men, profound thinkers, sterlingly pious men 186 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. and women, who spread the power and the freedom and the Christian earnestness of England over the whole earth. It no longer seemed to him a wonder that there were in France fewer Miltons than Yoltaires, fewer Bacons than Rousseaus, fewer Burkes than Mirabeaus, fewer Shakesperes than Molieres. There were, indeed, still some Frenchmen who retired from the crowded pavement of life to nature and to thought ; and thence a Laplace, a Buffon, a Cuvier, a Fenelon, or a Pascal ; but numbered against these few, what a host of the light, the vivacious, the superficial, the sceptical, and un-Christian in the literature of France ! Was it any wonder, he thought, that England asserted and maintained consti- tutional freedom, whilst France burst into revolution and recoiled into despotism ? — that England planted colonies and founded empires, whilst France overran her neighbours' terri- tories only as an inundation, to desolate and retire ? The one produces a Napoleon, to con- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 187 quer — the other a solid Wellington, to drive back the aggressor, and restrain this light en- croaching race to its own soil. But in one particular, Philip thought we might learn a good lesson from our volatile and egotistic neighbours. Yes; even from the excess of their amour propre. Nothing struck him more than the zeal and assiduity with which the glory of la grande nation is made palpable to the whole public in France. Everything is done to proclaim to Frenchmen and the world that they are the first of peoples. On whichever side you turn in Paris you are reminded of its great men and great deeds. The car of Victory, in the Place du Carousel, surmounting the great gates of the Tuileries, in the Place Yendome — Napoleon, on his bronze column, made from 12,000 cannon, taken in his victories, and covered with bas-reliefs of those victories — the emblematic figures on every side, of the Place de la Concorde, telling of so many and so distant nations subjugated, 188 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the obelisk of Luxor being in the midst; the Arc de Triomphe, constituting the Bar- riere de I'Etoile, whilst we had not then even a Waterloo Bridge, and our Nelsons, Kodneys, &c., were only found on ale-house signs — and a host of similar things in the open air. And then every palace in and around Paris — the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Nouveau Louvre, the Luxembourg, Fontainebleau, Versailles, St Cloud, the Trianons, &c., what are they but temples of glory to the French, their princes, their warriors, their statesmen, and their poets ! Though Napoleon's intended Temple of Glory has been converted into the church of the Madeleine, these still remain the temples of French glory. Philip wandered back in imagination to Lon- don, and except two very indifferent equestrian statues — Charles at Charing Cross, and George in. in Giltspur Street — what was there of art to remind the British people of all the illustri- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 189 ous men who have by deed and word and thought raised England to what it is ? Where stood the statues of Alfred, of our great Edwards and Henrys, of the masculine Eliza- beth, and the constitution-restoring William? He could, indeed, think with some complacency of inscriptions and remembrances of heroes and men of genius in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, though he could not pride himself much on the modern art there. He could remember many disconnected paintings of English subjects, scenes and people in Windsor and Hampton Court, mixed with much that is mean and miserable; but in the palaces through which he had lately walked, through all those immense galleries, those endless suites of apartments, what hosts of busts and armies of statues, doing honour to every man and woman — kings, peers, commons, men of war, men of state, and of the judgment-seat, of genius and wit, and to all women of illustrious rank and illustrious name, whether in deed 190 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. or in writing. Scarcely a name, from those of Charlemagne to Napoleon, from Fredegonde to Madame Eoland, not a name in any walk of life or achievement of merit — no, not even very mediocre or very local ones, but has its niche of fame, to be seen and known by the whole French people ; for through these halls the whole French people may walk, if it pleases them. With what a careful attention to the national splendour of France are those enor- mous series of paintings spread on those proud palace walls, displaying before the public eye the wars and victories of her princes and marshals. Wars in the olden time, wars of the crusades — wars with all nations of Europe, and other quarters of the globe. The wars of Na- poleon, from first nearly to the last — all his cam- paigns, all his triumphs — the great man him- self, ever in the front on his charger, point- ing his brave Frenchmen to fresh victories over the nations. Is there a Frenchman who reads only his THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 191 own annals, or does not read at all, but who walks in wonder and in pride through these palatial temples of his nation's glory, who does not think that France has conquered and ruled over the whole world ? Is it wonderful that he should be intensely national, intensely military, intensely egotistical? We, with all our great men, and our great achievements, where have we embodied them, and emblazoned them, that our people may see them, and grow inspired by them ? * * It must be confessed that since then we have improved. We have raised a Parhament House worthy of the nation, and embellished it with statues and paintings of historic interest ; though, therein, we have ignored the greatest man that ever ruled us since AKred — the farmer of Hun- tingdon. We have a Waterloo Bridge, a genuinely national monument ; and a Trafalgar Square, with a Nelson column, and an equestrian figure of that model of wise and liberal princes, that pattern of exalted morals and conjugal virtue — George IV. We have also a column to that illustrious general, the Duke of York. We have two equestrian WeUingtons ; whereas, before meaning to have a Wellington, we threw it into the furnace and it came out, not a calf, but an Achilles. We have a William IV., by mistake for WiUiam HI., and a Peel in Cheapside, because he recom- mended us to purchase in the cheapest market, and seU in the dearest. We axe mending. 192 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. It was with thoughts like these that Philip was sitting one day within the magni- ficent archway of the Barriere de I'Etoile, now covered with those long columns of names with which it is inscribed all over from top to bottom. There we see all the campaigns of Napoleon enumerated — campaigns in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Bel- gium, Spain, Egypt, and Syria — with all the great marshals and generals who served in them. There, too, we read the long cata- logues of countries and cities subdued, and new kingdoms founded, soon to be confounded. Philip, however, could only read them in imagination, for their inscriptions were only projected, and the proud arch stood an un- completed trophy of the fallen conqueror. As he sat, thus pondering, a tall gentleman stepped up to him and said, *^You will have nothing like this in London when it is finished ! " It was Philip's own thought, but he replied, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 193 *^ And you, do you not address that reflection to yourself? " " No/' replied the stranger ; "I am an American." Philip paused a moment, and then said, ** And yet, we might erect a much greater. We can show greater national deeds than those of mere evanescent conquest. We have not contented ourselves with treading down our neighbours ; we have planted mighty nations in the east and the west — and we have so planted in them all our knowledge, our science, our laws, our liberties, the spirit of Alfred, the spirit of Milton and Shakspeare, the spirit of Hampden, of Cromwell, of Chat- ham, Burke, and Fox — that we have taught you already to assert your freedom, and to stand side by side with us, great in your youth, as we are great, ay, the greatest in our age." " Bravo ! " said the American ; " that is spoken like an Englishman ; as an American I must endorse that sentiment — I claim it by VOL. I. 194 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. birth-right as my own," and he seized the young man^s hand and wrung it warmly. '^ This was intended to be a boastful monu- ment," continued Philip, " raised by a boast- ful adventurer, in imitation of the Romans ; and yet, as nothing is perfect, I already foresee that this will not be so." '^ How so ? " asked the stranger. '' Whoever shall run his eye over the names of kingdoms conquered, which may be written on these arches, will not see that of Eng- land," — the American bowed, — ^' nor of cities occupied, that ofLondon," — he bowed again, — " nor will he find the great and decisive battle, that of Waterloo." The American bowed once more, and said, '* There you are right ; to you alone it be- longs to emblazon that name." " And," continued the young Englishman, with a pardonable pride, " we can record, too, that whenever we have met these conquering French we have conquered them, except when THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 195 they fought side by side with Brother Jona- than, and helped to wrest independence from our ancestors of the last age." At this the American bowed still more pro- foundly. " And," continued he, " we met the French in your valley of the Ohio, where they had extended their forts and outposts from the Canadian lakes to New Orleans, and wanted to seize all North America, and we drove them thence. We met them in Canada and Nova Scotia, and drove them also thence. We met them in the Indies east and west, and in the Mauritius, and drove them thence, only restoring a portion of our conquests at the conclusion of peace. We met them in Syria, in Egypt, in Portugal, in Spain, and drove them thence, following them step by step to this boastful imperial city. We met them, finally, at Waterloo — and here we are. Let them add that to the emblazonries of the Arc de Triomphe when they finish it." o2 196 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. And with that he lifted his hat, made a smiling bow to Brother Jonathan, and pur- sued his solitary walk along the Eoute de St. Germain to his favourite haunts in the Bois de Boulogne. 197 CHAPTER VII. It was the same evening after this burst of patriotism, in which Philip, piqued by the taunting vanity of the Arc de Triomphe, and by the remark of the American, had, like patriots in general, taken a somewhat one- sided view of the question in hand, and had failed, with his usual fairness, to do justice to the better qualities of the French — their bon- homie, their patriotism, their lightness of heart and vivacity of genius, their ingenuity, and, in matters of social art, unquestionable elegance of taste — that he met Charles Peters in the street with one of his English comrades 198 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. picked up in Paris, named George Bracken - bury. ** Brackenbury and I are going to dine at his inn, the Hotel des Princes, Rue Richelieu ; so come along with us," said Charles. " With all my heart," said Philip ; " for a walk round by Passy has sharpened my appe- tite." "You could not do better," said Bracken- bury ; " ril match our table d'hote with any in Paris, and it is only six francs, vin ordinaire included. But we must make haste — six o'clock is the hour." In a few minutes they turned into the gateway of the spacious hotel, and the two friends led the way through an ante-room, where a smart damsel was seated at her desk, taking her account of all who went to the table d'hote. They then found them- selves in a sort of salon or coffee-room, where a considerable throng of ladies and gentlemen were standing in groups, conversing, as they THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 199 Traited, on the on dits of the day. The ladies in full dinner dress ; the gentlemen, many ol them in that half dress, or usual morning style, which Englishmen indulge themselves in on the Continent, though they would never have dreamed of it at home. Scarcely had the new comers had the opportunity to accost some of their acquaintance whom they saw there, when a waiter threw open a pair of large folding doors, and announced that dinner was on the table. The host himself, who was conversing with some of his guests, a tall and most gentlemanly-looking man, fashionably dressed, and with the air of a nobleman, led the way, saw his guests seated, and then took his seat half-way down the table. Philip was agreeably struck with the coup doeil of the room. It consisted of a large apartment with arched arabesque ceilings, supported on arabesque pillars, with pictur- esque recesses, where stood the side-boards. It 200 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. was brilliantly lighted by chandeliers sus- pended over the tables, though daylight was far from done outside, and had its windows in the arched ceiling — for it was a room of only fi single story standing in an inner court. A number of handsomely -dressed servants surrounded the long table, which was arranged with great elegance and taste ; with piled dishes of grapes, peaches, and other fine fruit, alternating with rich bouquets of natural flowers. The snowy cloth, the neatly folded napkins, the plate, the numerous decanters of no mean Burgundy standing between each two guests, and the distinguished- looking company who took their places, presented a more imposing scene than any of the kind that Philip had witnessed in Paris. Family groups, including several very handsome and aristocratic looking ladies, with grown-up, or growing-up children, came ever and anon from their different private THE MAN OF THE FEOPLE! 201 apartments, and seated themselves amid, here and there, very foreign-looking individuals, till the table was full, numbering some sixty or seventy people. The dinner, served up in many successive courses, was superb, and whilst it was going on for its full hour, Philip let his eye range over the company with considerable curiosity. He could see that there were various nationalities there, and he caught fragments of discourse which were neither French nor German, and which he concluded to be Russian or Polish. A certain intonation apprized him that all who spoke English were not Englishmen, but the countrymen of his friendof the ArcdeTriomphe. The bulk of the guests were undoubtedly, however, his countrymen and countrywomen. The nationality of the Anglo-Saxon insulars was stamped on every inch of form, visage, and attire. There was a proud reserve, mingled with an open confident air, which seemed to say, we are the lords of human 202 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. kind, and though in a foreign land, not we, but all the rest are foreigners. But there was one group, and a large one, consisting entirely of men, who sat around the end of the table to Philip's right, which particularly attracted his attention. They were English, mostly men somewhat past their prime ; a few of them old, yet very well preserved, interspersed with a few younger men. The more Philip contemplated them, the more he was, as it were, at once attracted and repelled. There was a sort of indefinable hardness and blunt hauteur about them that gave him a singular sensation. He looked into their faces in vain for a sentiment of humanity, of intellectuality, of spirituality. There was courtesy amongst themselves, but it was courtesy without heart. He thought he had never seen a set of men who so thoroughly impressed him with the feeling ^^ of the earth, earthy.'' They were talking with much quiet vivacity, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 20«3 and a tone of remarkable confidence ; and from snatches of their conversation which reached him, it was of the great topics of the day — those which concerned the settlement of France, and the various claims and interests of the allies. There was great practical sense in what they said, so far as Philip was a judge of the merits of the question, yet it struck him that there was in the midst of this very conversation the same absolute lack of feeling, of sentiment — in a word, of the poetry of human life. One or two of the speakers talked warmly, indeed, and with considerable loudness, but their warmth seemed rather the warmth of party fire than of a true and chivalric sympathy with the great principles of international, far less of popular justice ; and there were two or three old men, one with a singular nipped-up ruddy face, who sat half sunk in his chair, who replied with an evident caution, and in such low tones that not a word was distinguishable to Philip. 204 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ^^You seem very much attracted by our friends to the right/' said Brackenbury, who sat next to Philip. ^^What do you think of them?" ** I may do them injustice/* replied Philip ; '^ but my feeling is, that if all Englishmen resembled them, I would renounce my country.'' Brackenbury laughed in his napkin. " Do you know who they are ?" '^Not a man of them," replied Philip. " They are all big- wigs, every one of them," said Brackenbury'; "they are our masters, in fact." " How so ? " " They are all members of Parliament to a man. No ! there is that tall pasty-looking clergyman nearly opposite, whose cravat is tied in a very ancient bow, and his hair white as his face ; very cadaverous he looks and insalubrious, and as though such a thing as a reasoning faculty, far less a feeling soul, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 205 never belonged to him — yet he is the possessor of five livings, and an old grammar-school^ where he keeps a master at 30/. a-year to teach one scholar, whose education costs 1000/. a-year, for that is the income of the foundation. His father was a bishop, and he is — what he looks like. As for the rest, they are chiefly not only members of Parliament, but distinguished sinecurists, whose votes belong to the ministers who have bought them, and what they call their consciences. Look there, at that stout man in the yellow waistcoat, that is actually the member for Old Sarum, who represents a certain tumulus near Salisbury — and himself And that old anatomy half sunk in his chair, yet with a cheek well purpled with claret, is old Stick-fast of the Treasury, who has clung to the skirts of every administration for the last half-cen- tury. The portly country-squire looking man, with full-moon face, bald grey head and low brow, that is old General Hardiron of the 206 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Ordnance Department, who never was in the field except to shoot partridges, but is re- nowned for quelling mobs." " But who," said Philip, '' is that tall gen- tlemanly-looking man at the end of the table?" *^ What, talking to old George Rose ?" *^ He is talking to an old gentleman on his left." *^ The same," said Brackenbury. " He is a leading member too — Sir Marmaduke Stan- ton, great in committees, but who, though he has sat for Derbyshire for the last seven years, has never been heard to open his mouth in the house except to desire that a window near him might be mended, as it incommoded him by a draught. He is a very clever man though, and he is talking hard enough now. Would you like to know any more of them, for this is the set that you may find here any day, and might have done for the last three weeks." THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 207 Brackenbury went on describing various other individuals, but Philip did not hear him. His whole attention was fixed on the tall, handsome man speaking with much air of authority at the head of the table. That, then, was his uncle. Sir Marmaduke : that was the only brother of his late father. What a rush of strange feelings and memories went through him as he gazed on him ! There sat the nearest and almost the only relation that he had in the world, and yet as strange to him as if he were from another planet. That was the man who had been the play-fellow of his beloved father, and yet had shut his heart against him, and suffered him to live and die without one kindly thought, one friendly recognition. Through the soul of Philip careered a bitter succession of feelings — sorrow, wonder, indignation, and deep melan- choly. He looked again to find in the face of his uncle traces of that cruel hardness which his conduct seemed to fix on him as an 208 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. inseparable attribute. He beheld a man still eminently handsome, though his years must be upwards of fifty. He had a commanding figure, a finely shaped face, with a straight nose, expressing pride and decision, a clear hawk-like glance, a high though not broad forehead, and a head of brown hair mingled with grey, but full and strong. His bearing was that of a man conscious of his standing and influence ; and whatever his conversation was, it was delivered with a courteous frank- ness and confidence, as if master of his topic. But amid these favourable aspects, Philip looked in vain for a trace of kindliness, of that tone which betrays the benign and domestic feeling, lurking under the mask of the man ot office, and of the world. Pride, self-compla- cency, a consciousness of the advantages with which fortune had surrounded him, were there — but what else was not traceable? Philij- thought he saw in two young men sitting on Sir Marmaduke's right a family resemblance ; THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 209 and turned to ask of Brackenbury who they were. He was now conversing intently with Charles, but immediately listened to his question, and said — " Those are Stantons too — Sir Marmaduke's sons. Lucky dogs they are, and, if the world speaks truly, as sad dogs as they are fortunate. The eldest, next to his father, is called after him, and has already a goodly clerkship of some kind, where there is nothing to do but receive your salary. The other is the Rev. Hugh, though in his blue coat and white waistcoat he doesn't look very clerical. But it does not matter ; for though he has a good living at Rathcormorant, in Ireland, he has no church — and never saw the place in his life, nor, very likely, ever will. Why should he ? The people are all Catholics. So there were again a Marmaduke and a Hugh. But what a different Hugh ! thought Philip, as he gazed on a tall but slight figure and thin face, with deep-set eyes and ruddy VOL. I. P 210 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. brown hair. There was something in that face which spoke of a close yet observant nature — of a man who was always on the watch; had acquired a habit of being on the look-out, and of listening, but was not prodigal of his own remarks. A spongy nature, which absorbed, but made no return ; a spider-like soul, which made use of its nerves as that lover of holes and corners does of his web, always feeling out for some self-advantage. Philip shuddered, wisely thinking, if such be the young man, what will be the old, if he lives to become such ? He turned to survey the other and elder brother, but with little addition of satisfaction. He was of good fea- tures, and of robust form, but an air of sensual indolence and ennui reduced his good looks to mere animalism. His round chin, his long, yet fresh and full cheek, and his full-fed figure, spoke of lethargic plethora, rather than the health of youth ; and the indolent eye that gazed listlessly on the scene before it, indicated THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 2 1 1 but too plainly a mind that had never wres- tled after the noble and the true, but had grazed, as it were, at ease in the deep mea- dows of primogeniture, and had more in common with the ox than with the immortal man. Yet with all this there was an expres- sion of cold pride, which sought to shroud its intellectual nakedness, and satisfy itself with a stolid indifference. Philip felt that there was a chasm deeper and wider, betwixt himself and his own kin, than he had ever yet imagined. Never could those natures and his own assimilate, and he now saw how inevitable had been the aliena- tion betwixt his father and the possessor of Druid's Moor. Whilst he was sunk deep in these re- flections, the company was fast retiring, and Charles touched him on the shoulder to do the same. As they reached the outer room, Brackenbury stopped to speak to the young Stantons, and Philip found himself standing p2 212 THE xAIAN OF THE PEOPLE. face to face with his uncle. It would be im- possible to describe his sensations. The tall, commanding man cast a grave look on the dark-haired handsome young man before him, and a light came into his eyes as if that face and figure awoke a feeling that he ought to know something about them. Philip trembled, for he expected that he would actually ask his name, but, after a transient though close and penetrating glance, during which not a senti- ment of surprise or curiosity was visible on that proud and well -practised countenance, he turned towards his sons, and said — " Now, boys, if you are for the rran9ais, you must not waste time." And with that the three marched down the court, entered a carriage waiting at the gate- way, and were driven off. ^*Why, it never occurred to me," said Brackenbury, turning to Philip, ^Hhat you are a Stanton too. The parson asked me who you were, and when I said Mr. Stanton, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 213 he asked what Stanton, hut I could not tell him more than that you were a friend of the Peters'. Do you know them ? '' "Yes," said Philip, "I know them, though I never saw them before- They are from the same county as myself. '' ** Would you like to be introduced to them ? " asked Brackenbury. "Not for the world," said Philip, with a solemn emphasis. "Well, perhaps you are right,'' added Brackenbury, though he seemed to give a curious look at Philip ; " such people can do one no real good, though one finds it necessary to do the civil to many strange creatures in this world." " Could those be your worthy uncle and cousins, old boy ? " said Charles, as soon as they were alone. " They were," said Philip. " Whew ! " cried Charles, with an express- ive elevation of the eye-brows, " out of that 214 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. quarter blows nothing either pleasant or pro- fitable for you, Phil, I feel pretty sure. Well, there never was such luck as yours, I think, to have only those three relatives, and such relatives ! The razor of your delicate wit would never cut those stately blocks ; and as for you, you'd be altogether lost upon them. I'm glad I've seen them, however." And with this they entered the tea-room in the Rue St. Honore, where sat the rosy- faced, white-headed, tall old rector of Cracken- thorpe, cup in hand, relating to the smiling and blooming Paulina and Helen, and the comfortable, portly Lady Peters in her cushioned chair, the honours of the day, in introductions to no less personages than Marshal Blucher and Prince Schwarzenberg, by his quondam college-chum, the Bishop of Sodor and Man. What a different atmosphere seemed that to the cold and unhealthy chill of his relatives THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 215 of Druid's Moor to Philip. The delighted old country parson, rejuvenating amongst old acquaintances who had climbed aloft in the world, and yet had escaped the chill of the mountain-tops of worldly greatness — and in being brought into contact with numbers of the great men of sundry nations, who had fought out the destinies of Europe, and whom he had never dreamed of seeing but afar off, and through the dim haze of the daily gazette — and the young warmed-hearted girls, equally over-flowing with the pleasures and novelties of their exciting life. Here, all was warmth, light, pleasure, and that of a kind which glowed in cordial natures ; there, all looked dark and bleak, like rugged stony precipices overlooking some sunny and smil- ing vale. With such thoughts, Philip retired to his room and bed, to dream of his father and himself wearily toiling over the heaths around Druid's Moor, amid rains and tempests, and 216 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. finding no place of shelter in the murky night — and amid the roar of mountains, winds, and waters. 217 CHAPTER YIIL But the fortnight had run out to three weeks amid the intoxicating delights of this Parisian visit. The sands of life seemed to have chased rapidly through the glass of time, and no one was ready to take his or her depar- ture. They had seen much, heard much, enjoyed much, made many pleasant acquain- tances, gathered up whole heaps of reminis- cences for the Craythorne fireside — but really they seemed to have come only yesterday. The young people pleaded for a week more, but the elder ones shook their heads, and said it could not be. Lady Peters said the rooms 218 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. were already engaged by another party, and they could not stay if they would ; but, as for that, Charles and the girls engaged to secure half-a-dozen other suites of apartments if necessary. "But the money," said Lady Peters. " We have spent a fortune ! — a monstrous sum ! I am really afraid to face Sir Huldi- cote with the account.'' That was a poser ; and it was decided to vacate on the morrow, and start homeward in the old four-in-hand. Charles and the girls were disconsolate ; and at length it was arranged that the two latter should remain some weeks longer with Lady Culpepper, and return with her — as their fluency in French would be improved by a little longer stay. But for the rest, in- exorably they were doomed to enter the old coach the next morning, which accordingly bore them away with many regrets from that gay and then especially fascinating city. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 219 To all but Philip it had been a time of unmixed pleasure ; and to him it had, with much mingled pleasure and pain, brought a world of new knowledge and new reflections — and in his soul had been born a deep resolve, come what would, to assert a position of some mark and influence amid the busy, planning, aspiring, and working activities of the ever- moving mass of human life. To be a cipher seemed to him to be worse than nothing at all. It was the only figure which was of no value till it linked itself to other figures. A painful sense of dependence, which appeared to him a combination of uselessness and slavery weighed on him like a nightmare, which all the kindness and friendship of Charles could not disperse. We may pass over their homeward journey ; we may pass briefly their arrival at Cray- thorne Manor. There they had recounted over and over again the various incidents of their visit ; described the various great people 220 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. and places they had seen, till they often found Sir Huldicote beginning to snore in his after-dinner chair. Life fell into its old channel, and Charles and Philip resumed their studies and their rides. Charles now was more than ever bent on being a soldier, and desired Philip to devote more attention to such instructions as would be of use to him in that character. Philip had still his qualm regarding their conceal- ment of this resolution, but Charles insisted on their continuing their silence. He knew, he said, that cousin Hargrave would upset all, their plans if he once got wind of Charles's real intentions ; and part of his scheme was that Philip should go to the university with him, and take a degree. He knew, he con- tinued, that he could do that in a very short time, splendidly posted up for it as he was already. And then, with his abilities, he said, he would be a made man. Nay, if the living of Crackenthorpe ever became his to be- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 221 stow — though God send long life to the two old gentlemen — he knew who would get it. With Philip's new ambition, the temptations of this scheme, spite of his secret scruples as to Charles's proceedings, were irresistible. He pushed on Charles's mathematics, with such kindred branches of the exact sciences as were advantageous to a military man ; and on their readings in history, they fell, by a natural proclivity, where will led the way, into those eras where great martial leaders and great campaigns particularly lay. The miracles of Cressy, Agincourt, Poictiers, were read and discussed with admiration. The Thirty Years' War, with its Gustavas Adolphus, Wallenstein, Tilly, and Piccolomini — the great contests of William of Nassau with Louis XIY., Turenne and Luxembourg, of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy with the same Louis, and his great generals, Tallard and Villa rs — were devoured by both pupil and teacher with an enthusiasm which filled their daily rides 222 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. and walks with most animated discussions. Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, passed under close but patriotic review; and the exploits of AYolfe, Abercrombie, Sir John Moore, and Wellington brought them down, in a glow of ardent nationality, to our times. Nor did the heroes of the ocean pass without their due notice. Drake and Blake, Jervis, Duncan, Rodney, Sir Sidney Smith, Nelson, and Colling wood received their full fame. But Philip did not, at the same time, fail to expose the vices and defects of the different great commanders. He held that nothing added so much lustre to great martial or historic deeds as great merits and Christian virtues ; and that the avarice and speculations of Marlborough cast a deep shadow on his fame. In severest terms he described the narrow and sordid policy which sent such feeble commanders to compel the Americans to submit to abject tyranny, and the long series of flagrant blunders which lost those THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 223 great colonies to the Crown ; whilst he lauded the genius and moral sublimity of Washington, who, with a shoeless and shirtless army, drove the aggressor from their soil. He impressed it on Charles, that only one amongst many thousands of officers can hope to become a Nelson or a Wellington ; but every officer, if he be true to God, his country, and himself, is capable of achieving a reputation of which his friends and descendants may be proud. And that no officer should forget that almost every man who has within the last three hundred years added splendour to his country's martial and naval annals, or who has contributed to extend her empire from the rising to the setting sun, has risen from the modest but robust ranks of the English gentry. Drake, Blake, Marlborough, Nelson, Clive, Wolfe, Wellington, were all such men. That the Law, the Camp, and the Quarter-deck were the great avenues to national honour ; and that out of them sprung nearly all the additions to 224 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the nobility ; and that, therefore, every young man devoting himself to any one of those pro- fessions should aim, by bravery and persever- ance, by all the talents that he has, and all the virtue that he can acquire, at the very top- most heights of his profession, and reach the highest that he can, certain that the altitude of his aim, and the vigour of his onward march, will carry him immensely farther than he otherwise would reach. That there is only one fall that a soldier need fear, that of neg- lect of his duty to his country or his God. If he fall young, he falls with honour, and is embalmed in the regrets of his friends and nation ; if he fall from honour by cowardice, negligence, or vice, he falls ignominiously and for ever, and it were better for him that he had never been born. It must be confessed that Philip did his duty bravely. He instilled those noble principles and generous emotions into his pupil which had been so zealously and constantly THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 225 appealed to in his own soul by his father. It was Hugh Meynell Stanton still enunciat- ing the great truths and sentiments which he had gleaned from the noblest of the classic writers, and from the Divine Author of that divine code of morals which is every year root- ing out more and more of the old man Adam, with his pride of life, pride of intellect, pride of morals, his revenges and cruelties, and bringing the world nearer to that model in the heavens, where magnanimity, forgiveness of injuries, and love and enlightenment of our neighbours, especially the poor and desolate, have been the keys to the pearly gates of eternity, and have peopled the gold-crystal pavilions of the new Jerusalem with the chil- dren of harmony. And he did not teach in vain. He could see his pupil's cheek flush and his eye lighten as he portrayed the glories of the path he might thus travel ; and the rapid progress that he made in the acquisition of VOL. I. Q 226 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. knowledge was the best proof that it was the kind of knowledge that had a charm for him. In the beginning of November the young ladies came home, bringing a perfect flood of new life and animation into the house. Cray- thornewaslikeamountain stream, which through many months has grown low though clear, and calm even to monotony ; but, with the first showers in the mountains, rushes on brim-full, dashing in lively turbulence over rock and bank, and filling all the air with its sonor- ous song. They came blooming in health and spirits, full of anecdote of old and new incidents and acquaintances. Those who had returned before had now a thousand questions to ask after this and that individual who had been the object of their wonder, and often of their fun ; and what guests, men or women, had vanished from the scene. Then there were rides arid drives about the neighbourhood to see their old friends, and old friends com- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 227 ing in to welcome them home, and gather bits of Paris news. When this freshet had subsided in the little life-stream of Craythorne Manor, then the ordinary routine of existence began to show itself The ladies brought their music and their voices with them, which added won- derfully to the pleasure of the evenings ; and Philip, who knew enough of the theory of music to make him desirous of knowing more, and who had been accustomed to accompany his father and mother in singing their fa- vourite anthems, now availed himself of their skill, and accompanied them often with his rich tenor voice. In the duties of the day and the charms of the evenings, the time flew with a rapid fascination which Philip had never yet experienced. Helen Freemantle, though she lived with her father at the Rectory, spent the greater part of her time at the Manor-house with her cousin, where, indeed, her father was q2 228 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. chiefly to be found. Occasionally, when the Eector was not there, Philip and Charles would walk home with her, and any one who chanced to meet them might hear their merriment long before they came up, and the clear, ringing laughter of Helen above all. " There go those young gentlemen and Miss Freemantle," the cottage dames would say, as they heard them pass their doors. *^ Well, it's a fine thing to be young and rich; and the young think that a fine morning will last fine all day, but it doesn't always ; and the mother of Miss Helen was a blithe young thing in our time, and where is she ? Where we must all go, sooner or later, rich or poor. And the young man as teaches 'em, that looks as grave as a judge when one meets him alone, how he can laugh when he's with Miss Helen ! Well, well, they say he's a gentleman born, and mayhap they may make a match of it one of these days. Pretty and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 229 merry as she is, she might maybe do worse, for he's likely-looking, and an uncommon schollard, they say." If they noticed when Philip accompanied her alone, as sometimes happened, they might probably become more confirmed m their simple fancies, for on these occasions Helen was always noticeably more quiet and demure. She asked the young man questions about books and plans for winter's reading, and spoke with so much direct good sense, and such an evident feeling for the pleasures of books and intellect, as quite surprised and in no small degree delighted him. She told him that she and Paulina were quite envious of what Charles told them of their historic readings, and that they were really thinking of making a bold attack on him, and request- ing to be allowed to join them and make a class. Still more, that both she and Paulina were desirous of learning something of Latin, as it was continually interfering with their 230 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. enjoyment of English books, and they did not know why gentlemen should monopolize the ancients any more than the moderns. Philip expressed himself only too much honoured by the prospect of such pupils; though ^Charles, when it was mentioned, called it a bore, and said he did not want to be pestered with blue-stockings. What de- termined Charles more against the scheme, however, was, that Hargrave Freeman tie, who but ill concealed his chagrin at not being in- vited to head the party to Paris, and seemed especially to begrudge Philip's having been included in it, wrote to Lady Peter>, saying that as Charles's studies must have been greatly interrupted, he hoped his tutor was going to work double tides with him, which, he said, Mr. Stanton could not complain of, after such an extraordinary indulgence : and he added that, as the young ladies were not over-stocked with some kinds of knowledge — as the history of the Church, and the lives ol THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 231 the great men it had produced — it would be well if Mr. Stanton devoted a certain number of hours to them in that department, in which he believed he was tolerably well instructed, when Charles was not wanting him. Lady Peters thought it a good idea — as what came from Har grave was pretty sure to be thought so — and so did Mr. Freeman tie ; but Sir Huldicote pooh-poohed it, saying — "What was the use of bothering the poor girls with church affairs? They heard enough of them on Sundays in the service, and they knew from the Almanac when all the fasts and saints'-days were, and what need they more ? " Charles was especially indignant, and wanted to know what Cousin Hargrave had to do with him, or his sister, or Mr. Stanton, and thought they could carry on very well without his intruding his advice. This he said, however, when the Rector was gone. 232 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. *' Oh fie ! " exclaimed Lady Peters ; " how can you speak so of your cousin, who has always taken such an interest in you children, and is so capable of advising in such matters?" Charles thought the Peters were quite capable of advising themselves, and went out in great dudgeon. He now suspected that little Helen, as he called her, had been prompted about the Latin and the history from the same quarter. It was all Hargrave's scheming. *^He means to take your Paris trip out of you," he said, when he saw Philip ; *' but we can't have the house turned into a school." ^^ Never mind," said Philip, who liked the idea of his fair scholars too well to give it up ; "never mind — we can modify the plan, and go on much in our own way." But Charles was still set fiercely against it, and the moment he met Helen he burst out — " So, my sweet cousin, your idea of the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 233 Latin, &c., was not quite original after all. It was Hargrave's happy idea." Helen flushed crimson at Charles's tone and insinuation, and replied gravely — " No, Charles, you are wrong. It is odd that Hargrave should have written as he has at this moment, but what I said to Mr. Stanton was entirely the scheme of Paulina and myself; we never consulted or were led to it by any one ; but if you dislike it, we won't intrude — we'll struggle on by ourselves as well as we can." Charles was touched by the feeling Helen manifested, for she knew that he had a grudge against her brother, and he said, with a smile, " Would you swear now ? " '* Yes, I would swear it ! " said she, also smiling. "Then, it's all made up," said Charles, kissing her hand in ludicrous imitation of an old French beau of their late acquaint- ance ; " we'll admit you to our class." 234 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Helen made him a profound curtsey, and, with one of her hearty peals of laughter, ran away. The matter was now soon arranged. Philip gave the young ladies their Latin lessons without interfering with his usual duties, and in the afternoon they joined Charles, when, instead of Church history, general history was continued; and all parties were satisfied — for Lady Peters wrote to her nephew that his hint was adopted, and the Rector of Fishfang felt his end accomplished, and the over-indulged tutor set to extra work. Philip, on his part, did not stint his labour. As the young ladies accompanied them on horseback, he recommended to them works of poetry and general literature, for their own pri- vate readings ; and, first and foremost, advised them to go through a course of Shakspeare and Milton, and of Dante for their Italian reading. That would occupy them for a THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 235 considerable time. As the evenings grew long, he volunteered to read to them, as they sat at work, some of the finest passages of Spenser's "Fairy Queen," or some of the best poetry of the modern school; the metrical romances of Scott, CampbelFs " Plea- sures of Hope," or one of the Waverley novels, which were now pouring from the press, and creating a universal sensation. Sir Huldicote and the Eector generally retired to the smoking-room, and over their pipes discussed topics more to their tastes; but Lady Peters greatly enjoyed the novels of the Great Unknown, and declared that she had never enjoyed her evenings so much for years. The young people all seemed to be of the same opinion, and the time flew on in these occupations and amusements till Christmas came to interrupt them by its festivities. It had been agreed to invite a number of the younger members of several families 236 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. whom they had met in Paris, and who happened to be in town or the neighbourhood, to spend the Christmas week at Craythorne ; and the house at that time was full with the Ponsonbys, the Woodhouses, the Malthuses, the Gordons, and others — chiefly young men and women. So long as the visit lasted, it was a time of unbounded gaiety and never- ceasing bustle. Riding-parties, shooting- parties in the fine frosty mornings, dinners, dances, and music, and games, some old English, and some recently introduced from the Continent. When that tumult subsided, came a series of dinner-parties and dances at the houses of neigh- bouring friends; and in most of these Philip was included, and always of the number when. Sir Huldicote declining, a vacant corner was left for him in the large family coach. What delicious quaternions, as Milton would call them, were then made up of Paulina, Helen, Charles, and Philip, which came driving with THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 237 flashing lamps through the nocturnal lanes around Craythorne to Wooton, or Denbigh, Norbury, or Abinger, to a festival even- ing, where they appeared the most gay and distinguished of the throng. Paulina, with her tall graceful figure and her beautiful yet thoughtful face; Helen, all lightness and brightness ; Charles, the handsome easy youth; and Philip, dark, yet comely, and attracting all eyes by his air of intellectual solidity and vigour. What delicious drives were those when returning through the dark, often stormy, winter's mornings, the ladies closely wrapped in furs — and good old Lady Peters, who never lost an opportunity of displaying her Parisian attire, wrapped up likewise, but invariably asleep, whether going or returning — they discussed the prominent persons and incidents of the evening, till the carriage suddenly stopping at the lodge gate, they as suddenly found that they had been pursu- ing their conversation in dreams, or had been 238 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. again moving in high delight to the remem- bered music. Ah ! too delicious ! How beautiful in me- mory afterwards appeared even so trivial an incident as that of the two young men riding back from Mickleham in the clear moonlight, beneath the broad-spread shadow of Boxhill, and finding all fast asleep, even the groom that waited up for them, and of stabling quietly their own horses, and entering their bed-rooms by a ladder reared to one of the windows, and appearing in the breakfast-room in the morn- ing, to every one's astonishment, who thought they had remained at their friend's house all night. Winter flew away, spring began to break — the parties had well-nigh ceased — the studies ■were resumed, and all was quiet deep, and deep content. A friendship — shall we venture to say, a more than friendship ? — had grown up amid these studies, these pleasures of imagina- tion and of hope, and these adventurous pro- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 239 gresses into the fairy-lands of thought and feeling — betwixt some of the party ? Did no suspicions ever cross the mind of the elder parental personages that a life of such in- timacy amongst young, congenial people — amongst studies that called forth every evi- dence of merit and talent, of assimilated ideas, which opened the heart and the soul to their noblest but most perilous emotions — amongst daily walks in park and wood, dnily rides over the airy heath, amongst evening dances and festivities — might draw forth affections and link them fast, even before the parties them- selves were aware? Not a thought, not a dream, not a most passing supposition of such a contingency ever disturbed the profound repose of — the two old gentlemen at least ; as to Lady Peters, I cannot answer so distinctly. She, I am bound to confess, had womanly instinct sufficient to surmise what all this might lead to ; but the surmise had stolen gradually into her mind, 240 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. never startling her by its abruptness, and only after she, like the young people, had fallen into the sphere of Philip's fascination. Many a time, with her eyes closed into dozing slumber, on their winter-night drives, and even otherwise, had she weighed the possibility of such a marriage, saying to herself he has good blood, as good as ours, and he is a man of powerful mind ; he may be a statesman in time, as well as Chatham and Doddington, whose fathers were plebeians. Thus she re- conciled her inner being to the fact, though from an instinctive sense, likewise, she never hinted the idea either to her husband or the Kector; and yet, strange to say, had they spoken of it to her otherwise than favourably, she would at once, under their stronger repre- sentation, have seen it from their point of view, and disavowed in her own heart the once cherished idea. Lady Peters' mind, like that of many an- other woman, took, chameleon-like, its hue THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 241 fi'oru its surroundings ; but being, at the same time, of a reticent character, she lived in her own inner world of thought and feeling — which probably was the instinctively true — until her husband or the Eector, or more pro- bably the all-potent archdeacon, roused her out of it, and then, ashamed of what she considered her own weakness, and without giving any suspicion of having entertained it, she became their most violent partisan, atoning, as she believed, for her former heresy, by now be- coming its strenuous opponent. At the time, therefore, of which we are now writing. Lady Peters had closed her eyes to the outward, and was indulging pleasant romantic dreams of love and future greatness for her children, under the fascination of Phi- lip's intellect and powers of pleasing, listening with no less delight than her daughter to the reading of " Eimini," '* Lalla Ptookh," the early poetry of Shelley, and the novels of the Great Unknown, which made the evenings spent at VOL. I. E 242 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. home more dangerous by far than the more bril- liant evenings spent abroad. But, in the mean- time, were not their acquaintance observant of these suspicious circumstances ? No doubt of it. And what then ? "That is a fine young fellow, that Mr. Stanton," had often been remarked. "Are the Peters not afraid of an attachment in that quarter ? " " Perhaps they have no objection," it was replied ; "the young man is of a very good family, and may have expectations." " I daresay Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters know their own business," said a third. At length with many it became a settled conviction that there was an understood engagement betwixt Philip and Paulina; though some said " No," it was with the lively Miss Freemantle, a much more probable thing. And one old gentleman — a noted humorist — had even asked the two young ladies, as long ago as the Paris visit, which of THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 243 them was going to carry off the handsome young fellow of their party ; at that time to the great astonishment and indignation of both girls. But the truth was, that, softly and insen- sibly, a mutual respect and regard had grown in the minds of Philip and Paulina. In the familiar and joyous hours of their happy life, they had been drawn together as by a natural affinity. Neither of them felt that they were entering on a path where there was any breach of confidence or forgetfulness of duty, for they had gone a great way in that direction ere they were aware. Young spirits, upright and untouched by the sordid calculations of the world, do not reason od such matters as the old. It was impossible for any who heard him not to acknowledge that Philip was a young man worthy of any woman's love. Hand- some, well-born, generous, high-thoughted, and overflowing with all the wealth of know- r2 244 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ledge and the enthusiasm of genius. And such a nature was on his side, in the very- order of things, as deeply impressed, not only with the brilliant beauty, but the womanly sentiment of Paulina. Paulina was by no means of a naturally facile, condescending character. To the eye of the stranger, her beautiful form and face had an air of hauteur — her dark, large eyes, her luxuriant dark brown tresses, her de- meanour full of grace, gave to the general eye the expression of the proud beauty, the fortunate possessor of rank, accomplishment, and glorious charms, who might aspire to a coronet. And, in fact, Paulina was proud — proud of her country, her family, her Church. A word of disparagement to any of those, but especially the latter, would bring the flush of indignation to her cheeks, and even the glitter of a suppressed tear of wounded feelings. But to the friend who had won her confidence by his or her recognized moral worth and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 245 intellectual consanguinity, there was a higher heaven in that eye, and a tone in that rich voice which spoke of deep and earnest feeling, and a spirit that could love enduringly, and suffer martyrdom for its faith or its affec tion. Philip had been admitted within the charmed circle of that fair womanly spirit's aspirations and sympathies. He had led her inquiries to a nobler range of conceptions and rules of life than are, or were at that time, sought in ladies' schools ; he had cleared away doubts, and strengthened innate, but hitherto obscure, faculties ; and in their walks and rides, and sittings beneath the trees of the old park, he had by degrees let her draw from him his own and his father's history; and to a bosom so ingrainedly and intensely attached to her own Church, and to all that related to it, amounting, as it did in her case, almost to a passion, a sacred superstition, that was enough to call forth all the most glowing 246 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. impulses of a serious but ardent, nature. She expressed frequently the deepest indignation at the treatment of such a man as Hugh Meynell Stanton ; perhaps she saw, with the quick, electric flash of a true woman's mind, that such a fortune might also await the warm spirit and' generous temperament of the son — and such a thought was in itself a potent and binding spell. In short, brief as had been their intimacy, the charm and mutual confidence of long years seemed to live in it. So softly, yet surely, had the union of mind and feeling grown in them, that there seemed to have been no especial devising, no especial declaration of it. They seemed to have seen, felt, and known, as by clear vision of the heart, that they were kindred, and stamped by God and nature for each other. They could look back to no particular day, hour, or place when this knowledge flashed upon them, or was avowed and admitted. It had come THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 247 like the spring, like morning, like life, as natural and unquestioned. Helen Freemantle bad, with a quick in- stinct, seen and felt it all ; and, in their daily walks or daily hours of reading and converse, had quietly dropped aside and gloried in their happiness. She was made the first confidant of her cousin, and entered into the new and, as it seemed, most natural, most beautiful alliance with all the enthusiasm of her nature. In one of their walks, as they saw Philip and Paulina going before them, she suddenly said to Charles — "Now, how would you like Mr. Stanton for a brother-in-law ? " " Better than any man alive ! '' replied he, with emphasis, yet devoid of any curiosity or surprise, which made Helen aware that he had not been blind any more than herself. From that hour all reserve on the subject was gone amongst the young friends. Charles and Helen entered into the alliance — 248 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. for scheme it was not — with the energy and rainbow auguries of youth. It was resolved now that Philip should study with Charles at Oxford, not as a merely friendly, but as a family arrangement. To their young spirits there appeared no difficulties in the way. Philip had all the qualities to bring honour to such a connection, and, with their own for- tune and influence, Charles argued there could be no real obstacle to his success in life. But the parents of Paulina? Would they see no rocks a-head ? None, or only such as a little patience could steer clear of. The want of fortune was all that could be urged against Philip ; and in how many cases did wealthy families overlook that when all else was promising, and set themselves, by promoting the fortunes of the young people, to render it of no consequence ! Still, it was deemed better to leave things in their present position — not, however, from THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 249 any desire to continue clandestine attachment, or to avoid the apprehended resentment or opposition of Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters ; but from a well-grounded fear of mischief from another quarter — that of the Reverend Canon Freemantle. Yes, Hargrave Freemantle was now become a canon of Wells. With this accession of dignity his influence at Crackenthorpe and Craythorne was wonderfully increased. The Rector was never tired of talking of my son the Canon. Sir Huldicote repeated his long conviction that Hargrave was destined to achieve lawn-sleeves, and Lady Peters re- iterated her favourite assertions. " Yes, Hargrave has a head ! What a head ! — so clever, so calculating, so far- seeing ! " She had always known that he would be a most fortunate man. And scarcely was he invested with this new honour, when it was announced that he was coming to Crackenthorpe to spend a few 250 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. weeks with his father. What so natural as that he should be desirous to receive the con- gratulations of his own family and nearest of kin ? What so natural as that he should long to flatter his venerable father by the reflected honour of such a son — that the old man should see him grace his pulpit no longer as his humble curate, but as the wealthy rector of Fishfang, the son-in-law of a prelate, the canon of Wells? What so natural as that the canon himself should wish to breathe his native air, and shake hands with his old, and, one might say, native friends, in the quiet consciousness of his present dignity? Nay, the weakness of human nature may be par- doned, if he enjoyed even the idea of the wonder and worship of the simple farmers, clod-hoppers, and village dames, who had seen him as a boy sliding on the village pond, climbing the belfry windows for sparrows' nests, and angling in the Mole, like Tennyson's young and lanky squire, though the poet THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 251 himself was not then born ; or doing his father's parish duty with a ceremonious face of unbeneficed expectation, and should now doff their round hats to the great dignitary. But however natural it might be, and how- ever great a flurry both Crackenthorpe Eectory and Craythorne Manor were thrown into by this first visit of the great man and his great lady, there was a startled but un- pleasant feeling in the minds of our four young friends. Charles had always a decided repugnance to his clerical cousin. In his humblest days he had assumed a tacit autho- rity, a pretension of unexpressed, but not the less felt, superiority, which had irritated him — and now he expected a more undisguised manifestation of this assumption. He had a feeling that he would be catechised as to his progress, and that, although he knew the great progress he had made, he was far from sure that Hargrave would admit it. He had 252 TnE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. always a knack somehow of examining all the joints of your armour, and of finding a flaw where you least expected it — of making him- self master of all your attainments, and then, instead of praising, quietly passing them over, and fixing, as with the fang of a wild cat and the pertinacity of a leech, on the one weak and neglected place. Neither was he by any means easy as to Philip's coming well off with him. In point of scholarly knowledge and of talent he had no fear — there he knew Philip was his master ; but then, Hargrave had the facility of direct- ing the attention to some point that had never before been mentioned as essential, and of plac- ing it in the very foreground. The brilliant attainments of the teacher, and his equally bril- liant services, would in a moment be left in the shade ; and over this one now imperative point he would look grave, shake his head, declare it was a pity, and be at a loss to know how it was now to be made up. He could THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 253 see his father and mother then become sud- denly anxious, and the unhappy tutor would fall fathoms in their estimation, and cling like drowning people to the great master of finesse for salvation in this deplorable discovery. He trembled for Philip's patience under this anticipated trial; and entreated, whatever were the provocation, that he would remain self- possessed and bear it. Hargrave would, at all events, perpetrate no rudeness — he was much too great a master of his art for that ; and the only way to cope successfully with him was to be as polite and impassive as himself. Philip promised to be on his guard ; '^but," he said, ^^ he could anticipate no un- pleasantness or dissatisfaction as far as precep- tor and pupil were concerned, and that they were both prepared to meet any scrutiny." The pupil, however, shook his head, and repeated his usual remark, ^^ You don't know Hargrave." And he was right in his apprehensions. 254 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. He knew his cousin well ; and even Helen, with the natural leaning of a sister, was far from blind to her brother's character, and felt a cloud on her usually light spirits. 255 CHAPTER IX. In about ten days from the announcement of his intention, the reverend Canon and his family arrived. On the appointed day a couple of carnages, well loaded with people, imperials, and trunks, emerged from the road to which the eyes of the Rector and Helen had been directed, and rolled briskly over the village green. As they had post-horses they were driven by postil- lions, who cracked their whips and dashed rapidly through the old rectory gate, fetch- ing every man, woman, and child to the doors in eager curiosity. 256 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. On the driving-box of the first carriage sat a couple of stout men in clerical livery; and on that of the second, another smart, handsome man, and a maid, who, to the simple vision of the villagers, looked quite a lady. These were the coachman, butler, valet, and lady's-maid. The venerable figure of the tall old Kector, with his hair looking whiter, and his face more vermilion than ever, and the elegant and blithe figure of Helen, were seen already at the first carriage door — for they did not wait in modern dignity to receive their guests within their own door ; and they were followed by John the groom, and Thomas the foot- man, Molly the cook, and the two house- maids, all standing, however, in the background, but in eager haste to receive the great people. And the next moment out stepped the well-known, but it appeared now more portly, figure of the reverend Canon ; and next a young, good-looking, and handsomely- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 257 dressed lady, who, after hearty hand-shaking and some kisses betwixt the Kector and his daughter-in-law, and Helen and her new sister, hastened on into the house. Then Thomas the footman, the two house- maids, and the rest, putting their heads into the second carriage, lifted out first one and then another child, and then received one child in arms, and afterwards a baby in long clothes, wrapped in a scarlet cloak ; and as they were exhibiting one to another all these treasures, with real or affected wonder, and the disengaged servants were lifting up and carrying the other children, out came from within the carriage a smart nursemaid, followed by a woman of a more mature age — the head-nurse, in fact. Meanwhile the first carriage had been con- ducted to the stable-yard, now followed by the second, where they were to be lightened of their load of luggage, and the old Eector's double gig removed to an open shed to VOL. I. S 258 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. make room for them in the modest coach- house. And all the newly-arrived disappeared into the rectory, to the no small wonder of the villagers as to how it was to contain them. And truly poor Helen very soon began to participate in the wonder. She had not, in her maidenly calculations, reckoned on such an influx of servants, and especially of great rosy gentlemen's gentlemen, who wanted as much accommodation as their masters. The rectory was of moderate dimensions — consisted, on the ground-floor, of a dining, drawing, and breakfast-rooms, and another small room used for the Rector's study — though it displayed more riding-whips, and hat and coat pegs, and boot racks, than books. This sanctum was obliged to be turned into the servants' hall, for such gentlemen and ladies as the Canon's men and women servants could not sit in the kitchen, where Thomas, and Molly, and the maids always took their meals. Then to con- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 259 trive sleeping-room for such a host seemed still more perplexing. The difficulty, however, was at length overcome by Thomas having a bed made in the corn chamber. John was married, and had his own little cottage, but it could take in nobody, for he had a wife and four children, and only one room. The two housemaids were lodged at a widow's cottage hard by, but even then it was found that all was still wrong, for Mrs. Hargrave Free- mantle, going to see the childrens' sleeping apartments, found that the three elder chil- dren were all to be accommodated in an airy upper chamber with one of the nurses. This, she declared, was impossible ; she was grieved to give so much trouble, but a chamber under the roof was too hot for such a purpose — besides, the elder children always slept in a room with Mrs. Tebbut, the elderly nurse, and the infant in a separate room under the care of the wet nurse. Helen was confounded. How the extra rooms were to be conjured up s2 260 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. and attached to the old parsonage, unless her father and herself gave up their chambers, or she had some genii of miraculous power at hand, was past her comprehension ; and whilst deploring eloquently the limited space of the old house, she pointed out the size, airiness, and the three large windows of the upper chamber ; but Mrs. Freemantle only shook her head, said she did not know what w^as to be done, and lamented that the Canon, with ^^ his un- willingness to give trouble," had not accepted the offer of rooms at the Manor, as she wished him to do, because he must have known the capabilities of his father's house. What good genius helped the distracted Helen out of the difficulty, and how it was overcome, remains unknown to us, excepting that the good Rector and his daughter requested and received sleeping accommodation for them- selves at the Manor — from which amply-sup- plied residence, also, John, the groom and gar- dener, was seen that evening driving back to the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 2fil rectory with a cart-load of beds, qmlts,blankets, bolsters, and the like ; so that no doubt all were accommodated to their mind — though the Eector's servants had to make way, and Molly the cook confided to the village butcher the next day, with very knowing nods and grimaces, that she had seen the time when Mr. Hargrave could dispose of himself in a corner,'but now (good Lord !) he ought to have brought a castle with him ! Though the Rector and Helen were actually turned out of their house to accommodate their guests, yet she took her way with her father in the evening to the Manor with a very uncomfortable feeling, fearing that her sister-in-law thought herself poorly lodged. She was also annoyed that Hargrave should have brought such a formidable menage with him, when he well knew their amount of room. With his wife, whom she had never seen be- fore, she was inclined to be pleased. She evi- dently was used to ample space and luxuries sur- 262 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. rounding her, and she was a lady-like person, and quiet in her manners ; still she wished she had shown more warmth in returning her ar- dent embraces, and more consideration for the trouble she caused. But, argued the young girl, she was a bishop's daughter, and accus- tomed, no doubt, to much luxury ; and as to warmth of feeling, she was a married woman, growing sedate with family cares, and having so many objects to divide her affections — whilst she herself was perhaps, spite of her schooling in London and her short insight into society in Paris, too much accustomed to country warmth of feeling. Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters were enrap- tured with Hargrave's wife. She was just what they expected her to be. There was such propriety in her style, in her ideas ; her manners were so quiet and self-pos- sessed. It was evident that she had been accustomed to move in the very best society, and knew perfectly what became her posi- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 263 tion and her husband's in the Church. As for her antecedents in life and training, we may just whisper that her mother was as simple a woman as circumstances ever raised out of her proper habitat; for the bishop, who only late in life had risen into notice through political incident, had married the daughter of a small farmer when he was not very sober. But we must do him the justice to say that when he did rise, he gave his daughter the best training that was pur- chasable for her — for he was proud of his ad- vancement, and anxious to connect himself through his children's marriages. Whatever Mrs. Freemantle might want, it was not tact. As for Hargrave, though he had brought with him rather too cumbrous a retinue, it was said, for a simple visit to a country parsonage, yet it was probably through concession to his wife's wishes; yet nobody blamed him, and he was himself too good a judge of the savoir vivre to betray any symptoms of self- 264 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. inflation on account of his advancement in station. He would have considered that to be weak and vulgar, and unworthy of a man who prided himself on being a master of the great philosophy of social life. Such vanity might be that of a nobody who had made his way from vulgar poverty to vulgar wealth, and who imagined that his importance would not be felt unless he bore it on his front and in his manner. It might suit a parvenu millionnaire, though it would render even him ridiculous — but was beneath a gentleman and a scholar, who ought, in any circumstances, however flattering, to be too proud to believe that he had ever been less than a gentleman, or that mere outward contingencies could make him more than that. It might live in the centre of his soul, but must never appear on the surface. Hargrave Freemantle, therefore, appeared in particularly good spirits, as a man naturally must who feels his way secure and bright- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 265 ening, but he was only the more affable and agreeable. He met his friends with a degree of frank cordiality which was unusual with him ; and he seemed delighted to recognize the villagers whom he had known in his earlier years, and to enter into conversation with them about their welfare, and the changes which time had necessarily made in their little circle of connections. He could not be said to condescend — that would have been equally defective in an artistic point of view ; there was not the slightest air of condescension about him, but the natural bearing of a man who felt that he and his neighbours had been old acquaintances, and were so still. Whether they had descended, or he had ascended, were circumstances that could not come into view where people met who were unchanged — in fact, were too superior to petty feelings to be capable of change. At the Manor, a wonderful relief was felt by the young people. He was most amiable 266 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. towards them all, affectionate towards his cousins Charles and Paulina. So far from entering on any rigorous inquiries with Charles, he merely said, passingly and almost gaily— " Well, my boy, how are you getting on?" To which Charles replied, he thought very well. To Philip he was courteous, though rather distant ; but then Philip was a stranger — that distance might wear off. Everybody, in short, was wonderfully pleased with him. Lady Peters even secretly thought of consulting him on the all-important subject of Philip being connected with the family, but she kept her counsel, and satisfied herself by joining in all the praise lavished upon him. Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters lauded the Canon to the skies. How well he bore his good fortune ! How natural, how good, how unassuming he was ! His prosperity had THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 267 really vastly improved him. It was care and disappointment, reasoned his partial admirers, which hung on him before, which had made him appear somewhat cold and reserved. The sun of fortune had dispelled these clouds, and he now stood forth in all his proper warmth and agreeableness. The villagers declared that Mr. Hargrave was a man in ten thousand — that he had not a bit of pride about him — and was just as free, now he was a great man, as when he was a lad. Hargrave, on all hands, had risen into ex- traordinary favour. Paulina never thought so well of him ; Helen was all delight, and called on Charles to confess that he had mis- judged him ; and Charles half melted into a more gracious mood towards him, yet added, admitted that he seemed better than he used to be, more from pride in his own sagacity than anything else — that still he must see a little more of Hargrave before he was 268 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. convinced of having wronged him. Helen was exasperated, and declared that he was the only person in the whole neighbourhood who now cherished an unworthy prejudice against her brother. The next minute, Helen, quitting the room, was followed by Charles, who whispered to her, so solemnly that it sent a chill through her — " Nevertheless, Helen, good as your brother may be, remember you have another's secret to keep ; be on your guard, that you may be faithful ! " Helen paused a moment, as if struck with a new idea, and then, as solemnly saying, " I will," went, with a slow step and ponder- ing air, out of the Manor. For more than a week, the reverend Canon and Mrs. Free mantle were occupied with a series of invitations to the great houses of the neighbourhood ; and then with several dinner parties given at the Manor in return — for there was no room at the rectory for such THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 269 extensive and expensive hospitalities ; and Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters claimed the privi- lege of entertaining their mutual friends in honour of their nephew. Both Hargrave and his wife were declared by all the families round to be the most estimable and most charming people, and a great honour not only to Crackenthorpe and its vicinage, but to the counties and country which had produced them. Mrs. Freemantle was pronounced a perfect jewel of a woman, who would have adorned the highest station, had she been born in the very lowest. The fact was, she did not occupy a very illustrious one at the time of her birth, nor for a good while after. Her new friends found her so sensible, so gracefully quiet, possessed of such a calm dignity, and yet so domestic. The rectory-gate was visited by more splendid equipages in the space of ten days than it had ever seen in the memory of man ; and John, the gardener and groom, had never 270 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. in the whole period of his long service had so much trouble in obliterating the hoof-prints of horses and the tracks of wheels from the front gravel-walk, with rake and roller, as during that time. When the heyday of this sudden and flattering intercourse had a little subsided, the relatives at the Manor began to take a closer view of the relatives at the rectory ; and it was seen, rather than felt, that in the calm and quiet dignity of Mrs. Freemantle there was a something that very unassumingly, and in the most natural manner in the world, took more than it gave. Of course. Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters delighted to honour and give all sorts of precedence and power to their niece — which the lady as willingly, and with the most amiable grace, as truly accepted. By some inexplicable means, it turned out, whatever circumstances occurred or conversa- tion began, that Mrs. Freemantle became the chief person, and the centre of everything. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 271 As woolsacks are said to resist artillery much more effectually than stone walls, so, with the most soft and easy manner, Mrs. Freemantle seemed to roll back without an effort any attempt to divide with her the pride of place, or the attentions of the company. Whatever acts of affectionate interest proceeded from Paulina or Helen were received by her, not with any hauteur as a right, but with a quiet smilingness, as if quite proper and agreeable ; but no such cordial amenities flowed from her in return. Still, she was by no means cold, by no means distant ; she was friendly, affable, nay, apparently kind, but not warm. There was no empressement in her manner, no posi- tive demonstrations in her acts — all was negative, unsatisfying ; there was a void — could it possibly be of — heart? In less than another week, Paulina said, with an almost bitter emphasis, to Helen, ^^ Helen, I now understand your sister-in-law — she is selfish to the very core." 272 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Helen dropped abruptly into a chair, and, hastily putting her handkerchief to her eyes, burst into tears. Poor Helen ! she had already made the same discovery, but had been unwilling to admit that it was a fact. How- ever much she sought to draw nearer in spirit to her sister-in-law, there was a certain invisible barrier, beyond which she could never advance. As birds deceived by a light at night will mistake it for the sun, and dash against a light-house or a window in flying towards it, and so wound or stun themselves — so Helen, in rushing forward with affectionate impulse towards her relative, felt an in- scrutable repulsion when there was no outer sign of it, and, like the deceived bird, felt hurt and benumbed. She had nothing to complain of — Mrs. Freeman tie was courtesy itself; yet she did in her own soul complain, and wonder why it was. At length, coming to the conclusion that her sister-in-law was so much more mature in mind that she could THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 273 not find that attraction in her which she did in her sister. It was deeply painful to her, and as time went on the feeling grew stronger. At all times and in all conversa- tions Mr. Freemantle seemed to recognize her own affairs and interests only ; those of Helen or of her father did not seem to find a place with her. It was dear Hargrave, and the dear children, and the friends at home with whom she corresponded, that made up her world. That, thought Helen, is very amiable ; " but oh ! that she could find a little room in her heart for us here." Never had Helen felt herself so small and insignificant as in her sister's society. Her- self, her father, everything belonging to them, except what was necessary for Mrs. Freemantle's comfort, were as impercepti- ble in her thoughts as if they did not exist. Whenever the Eector spoke of his parishioners or parish concerns at table, Mrs. Freemantle would break in, in the very midst VOL. I. T 274 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. of his observations, yet with a well-bred air, with a ^^ by-the-bye, Har grave, I wonder how so and so is going on — or what will be the upshot of such and such a thing;" and the Crackenthorpe matters vanished at once from the tapis, and Fishfang, or the people and things at the palace at Agrimony, became the theme of animated discourse. Besides this, Helen felt that her sister used her more as a landlady in the main than a sister. Though she apologized for giving her trouble, yet she was never averse to give her a good deal — in fact, she did not appear conscious that she was at all exacting, but she would send Helen about the house with messages to the nursery, and to make fresh arrangements to accommodate the movements of herself and husband. Breakfast, and luncheon, and dinner were continually altered from their old times, on account of their calls and their drives, and the like, where most people would have regulated THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 275 their movements to suit the family routine. " Dear Helen," she was continually saying, " would you just run up to my room for my writing-case, or that little book you will see on the dressing-table? I am sorry to ask you, but I am so anxious to get on with this work ; " or she had so many letters to write, that she should be so glad if Helen would go to the Manor and ask Lady Peters so and so, she wanted to know before she sent to the post. Half, three-fourths of these things could be done by a pull of the bell, or a note of two lines sent by a servant, but Helen complied rather than seem ungracious. When Mrs. Freemantle had been something more than a week, she became gradually more conversant with Helen. Wondered she spent so much time at the Manor, as she wanted her company, seeing they should not be long together; and when Helen, flattered by this expression of interest, remained principally with her, she began to inquire T 2 276 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. a good deal about their life at the Manor, and of her impressions of Paulina, Charles, and the tutor, as she generally called him. " Don't you find it dull here ? " she asked. " Not at alV said Helen ; *^ we are always so occupied with studies of one kind or another, and don't really long for much visiting." ^* But young people should not always live in books. It is necessary to mix with the world to acquire due information and to make connections." '^ Oh," said Helen, laughing, *^ we have connections and acquaintances enow — more than we can always be civil to." ^^ Paulina is a very fine girl," continued Mrs. Freemantle, not seeming to notice Helen's observations ; '' and, by proper management, might make a splendid match if she went into great circles." " Oh, Paulina will do well enough, depend upon it," said Helen, smiling. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 277 " Well enough ! that is not the thing, dear Helen — it should be to do the very best ; and it would be a pity to have her thrown away on some mere country squire/' " There is no danger," said Helen. " Paulina has sense enough, and pride enough, to make her own way." *' But to make one's way," added Mrs. Free- mantle, "it is necessary to make opportunity, and it makes all the difference whether a girl like Paulina accepts a mere country coach and dowry, or a coronet." " Paulina will never sell her soul for a coronet," added Helen. Mrs. Freemantle turned on her a look of wonder. " My dear Helen, how strangely you talk ! Eeally, I do think it is time that both of you girls went more to town in the season. I begin to fear that this Mr. Stanton is filling your heads with some of his father's strange notions." 278 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " And from what I can learn/' said Helen, boldly, " I doubt whether he could teach us better." " What, Helen ! you absolutely shock me ; don't you know that he was a leveller and a Jacobin ? " " Was he ? " said Helen. " Then Philip is not at all like him, for a man of more noble and Christian sentiments does not exist." ^^ You are quite enthusiastic in your advocacy, Helen," said Mrs. Freemantle. ^^ Philip indeed ! Is that the way you speak of him ? Are you really on that familiar footing? I think your father and uncle should look to it. Does Paulina talk of him, or to him, in this brotherly sort of way ? " Helen suddenly felt that she had been led on to dangerous ground, and replied : — " Paulina speaks of and to everyone as becomes a right noble and sensible girl, as she is ; but I don't pretend to answer for her, and I must refer you to herself for any inquiry THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 279 you may wish to make into her life and conversation." " My dear Helen/' said Mrs. Freemantle, with much dignity, " excuse me if I say that you have a hrusquerie which again con- vinces me that you would be all the better for a little more introduction to society. But I won't be offended with you ; it is only a little rural rust, which I fear your young pedagogue is not qualified to wear off. You must come and see us at Agrimony." '' Excuse me, dear sister," said Helen, feel- ing that she had been too hasty, " but I am apt to be warm when my friends are reflected on. So let us drop this subject." It was this conversation, and others like it, which made Helen almost start, and become very thoughtful, when Charles uttered his warning. Helen watched herself with double care, and it was well, for it spared her many a sharp self-reproach in after-years. As for Hargrave, he never questioned 280 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Helen on anything connected with Philip and his teachings at the Manor ; but Helen had a strong feeling that he had not the less sought to inform himself on that head through his wife. What was still more remarkable, he had never gone into any inquiries with Charles or Philip as to the progress of their studies. He had merely run in one day, looked at the books that they were using on the desk, the problem they were attempting to solve, and then turning to the books on the shelves, ran them over with his eye-glass, and even took one down and read a little in it, and then the same with others. He was suddenly called away to attend his wife on a morning visit, and never resumed the subject. But not the less had he informed himself of all that he wanted to know, and formed his own conclusions. There is no need to ask a man what calling he is of, or what he does, if you can only see his tools. Hargrave Free- mantle had seen the tools which Philip used in his teaching, and he was satisfied. 281 CHAPTER X. The visit of Mr. and Mrs. Freemantle was now at its close. It had extended to nearly three weeks, when a summons from the bishop, who was in town, caused them rather hastily to pack up and prepare for departure. It was the day previous to their setting off, and the four young people, with Mrs. Free- mantle and the Rector, had gone to lunch with a neighbouring family, with whom they had engaged to dine a few days later, when the bishop's letter arrived to cut short further engagements. The reverend Canon excused himself on the plea of having some important 282 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. letters to write before he left, but was urgent that his wife and as many of the young people as possible should go. Hargrave had made his calculations, in fact, with his usual tact. Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters stayed at home, and Hargrave agreed to lunch with them. Ac- cordingly he ran in and sat down with them, but appeared much absorbed, as if he had weighty matters on his mind. He expressed, however, much pleasure in the visit, and pro- mised to look in again in the evening with Mrs. Freemantle to say good-bye, as they should start early in the morning. Towards the end of the meal. Lady Peters said, ** By-the-bye, dear Hargrave, you have never told us what you think of Charles's progress." " It was a subject I was coming to," said the reverend gentleman, with an air of great solemnity. *^ On the whole, I don't think that there has been bad progress in the classics and mathematics; but it seems to me that THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 283 there has been, nevertheless, a considerable waste of time in other directions/' " Really !" ejaculated Lady Peters, remem- bering all the poetry and novel reading in which they had indulged, with a sudden fear. " I mean," said the Canon, *^ in the depart- ment of history. It strikes me that there has been an erratic sort of reading, and not always in the best direction." " The devil there has ! " broke out Sir Huldicote. " How you distress me ! " exclaimed Lady Peters. " But, perhaps, I can better explain my- self," added the Canon, gravely, "if we just step up to the study." Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters rose simul- taneously, and followed the Canon, who, run- ning his fingers over a number of books, said, " All this looks well : here are Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, the Greek and Latin historians, with some poets and other writers, 284 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Terence, Plutarch, and so on ; and, if we open them, they appear pretty well thumbed. Here we have Euclid, Napier on ' Logarithms,' Hutton's ^ Mensuration,' and Hutton's 'Mathematical Tables.' Here is a quaint old book, Gregorii Astronomia ; and look at this ! Geometricse Elementa. sectio. ix. ' De Mortibus Satellitum circa Alios,' &c. Here is Dunn's ' Practical Astronomy,' with all about the longitude ; Bonnycastle's 'Algebra;' Adams on 'Mathematical In- struments,' &c. Enough, indeed, on these branches at present. Here, again, we have modern history, and comments on the old — Gibbon, Hume, Clarendon, Robertson, Niebuhr, Botta, Sismondi, Heeren, and others. But why have we so much of what is little more than biography ? ' Charles XII. of Sweden ; ' ' Marlborough's Campaigns ; ' Napo- leon's Campaigns ; Lives of Washington and Nelson, and the like — rather a guidance to a particular pencliant, than the steady, un- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 285 swerving march of that general inquiry necessary for a gentleman and a statesman ? This leads me to fear that the old bent towards the army in Charles is at the bottom of it. In fact, if we wanted any confirmation, we have only to glance at this very signifi- cant corner of the shelves : — * Art de la Guerre, ouvrage de M. le Marechal de Puy- segur ; ' * Elements of Tactics, by a Prussian General, translated by Landmann ; ' ' Trial at Large of Lieut. -General Whitelocke ; ' ^ Legislation Militaire ; ' the * Spirit of the Modern System of War, by a Prussian Officer;' six volumes of ^Miiller's Elements of the Science of War ; ' a book on the ^ Sword Exercise ; ' ' The Articles of War ; ' ' Vauban and Cormontaigne's Systems of For- tification ; ' ^ Le Sage's Memoires des Ponts et Chaussees; ' * Carnot de la Defense des Places Fortes ; ' * The Siege of Gibraltar, by John Drinkwater,' &c. " Surely," said the Canon, ^^all that is plain 286 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. enough. That means the army, and no mis- take." ** The devil ! " again ejaculated the baronet ; " what has Stanton been about ? " "But," interposed Lady Peters, "Mr. Stanton has a very large mind — takes very comprehensive views ; I would merely suggest — may not this form a necessary part of Charles's education ? " The Canon smiled gloomily, and Sir Huldicote again asked, in the devil's name, what Stanton had been about ! " What he has been about is evident," said the wily Archdeacon ; " you will do me the justice to remember that I had strong objections to employing this young man, on account of his father's principles." " But he cannot, he dare not," said Lady Peters, now startled by a new idea; "he would not venture to poison the mind of Charles.'^ "What he has ventured to do, perhaps THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 287 this volume may better inform us than any- other evidence," said Hargrave, taking down an old folio. ^' This is ' May's Parliamentary History/ so-called — that is, the history of the juntos of the Rebellion. This May was a malignant and creature of Cromwell, and his carcass was flung out of the grave which it had polluted in Westminster Abbey, by the righteous vengeance of the restored monarch, Charles II., for his vile and lying records of the proceedings of these so-called parliaments of rebels and regicides. And now, look here ! on the margin of the account of Oliver's turning out the Long Parliament, and shutting the door, is written in pencil, * Bravo ! ' Perhaps you may recognize the hand.'' Both Sir Huldicote and Lady Peters stared at the word with eyes that seemed to gaze on a monster or a ghost, for it was Stan- ton's. " Oh, the villain ! '' burst forth Sir Huldi- 288 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. cote ; ^* is that the way he has been misguid- ing our precious child ? " ^^ Oh, Heaven defend us ! " exclaimed Lady Peters, deeply distressed ; for she was the most loyal of women, and sunk half fainting into a chair. " Child, you observe, dear uncle," continued Hargrave ; '* it would be well if we might not justly say children. But see ! we have only too much proof of what has been going on here." He opened a few pages further on, and displayed a written sheet of note paper. ^' This is, I think, in the same hand." ^^ It is Stanton's ! " again exclaimed Sir Huldicote, and Lady Peters groaned from her chair. *^ Well, this appears to be a sort of syllabus or headings of a course of reading and com- ment on this very book. First, this vile and prevaricating journalist is styled ' a most able and impartial historian.' Then the principles THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 289 which guided ^ the great men of the Com- monwealth/ as they are styled, all considered — their determination to maintain the constitu- tion, forsooth — these very murderers and regicides who slaughtered their own king, and annihilated the constitution. Then comes the examination of the extraordinary speeches of the Lord Protector, pregnant, according to these notes, with the profoundest principles of policy and national justice, the said Cromwell being pronounced ^ the greatest man who has ruled these kingdoms since Alfred ; ' and all this is followed by a dissertation on the origin and training of this usurper — his faith as a Christian man, his heroism as a warrior, his wisdom as a senator, the nobility of his pur- pose, and his influence on the permanent destinies of the nation." Here the skilful Canon paused, and, handing this paper to Sir Huldicote, said : — *^ It is for you to determine whether these VOL. T. u 290 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. are principles in which you will have your children educated." *^ God forbid ! " exclaimed the exasperated baronet. " The villain shall pack this hour, this minute, bag and baggage, and the devil go with him ! '' " Oh ! dearest Hargrave," exclaimed Lady Peters, trembling from head to foot, and now falling under the influence of the Archdeacon, "what is to become of us? Such horrible principles — such horrible teaching — from so young a man ! What do we not owe you for detecting this frightful baseness ! " " And," said Hargrave, with a still deeper gravity and a solemn gloom of countenance, enough to have terrified much wiser heads than he had got betwixt his iron hands, " I wish this was only the worst." " The worst ! " exclaimed the unhappy pair in one voice. " What worse can there yet be?" But Lady Peters knew as well as he did THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 291 what was that worse, and blessed her stars that she had never, by word or deed, as she thought, sanctioned such a frightful misfor- tune. The Canon shook his head ; and then, as with a degree of hesitation, as if what he had to say was almost too dreadful to pass his lips, he inquired, in a low and measured voice — " Would you like your daughter to marry the teacher of these doctrines of anarchy ? " *^ Marry ! " frantically screamed the baronet. "Nephew, you frighten us to death. In the name of Heaven, do not speak of such a thing,*' said Lady Peters, with another groan of agitation and dismay ; and Sir Huldicote hissed through his clenched teeth, " Damna- tion ! " " Hush ! '^ said Har grave ; " calm your- selves — nerve yourselves to act as becomes you. Eemember that the happiness of your u2 292 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. own child is at stake. We do not know how deeply the poor girl may be bewitched by this young, but artful and too subtle, scoundrel. For him, let him pack ; but as for her and the other young people, who are more or less implicated in this bad business, we must remember they are our own flesh and blood ; they are young and romantic, and we must be merciful and discreet. We must save them by wise management." ^^ True 1 true !" cried Lady Peters, bursting into tears ; " but what, dear Archdeacon, do you recommend ? Paulina is a sensible, good girl — oh, what an awful, painful thing ! — I trust she is safe ! — Charles cannot have en- couraged it. We must have proof.'' ^^ Proofs ! damnation !" cried Sir Huldicote fiercely ; ^^ I believe it all. But, first of all, V\\ pitch the beggarly vermin to the ." He was hurrying out, but Hargrave caught him by the arm. " Uncle ! dear uncle !" he cried, " you must be quiet, or you will spoil THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 293 all ! As I have laid open the mischief to you, you must suffer me to point out the remedy. You owe me that — you owe it still more to youi' children. Sit down and listen.'' "Yes, yes, sit down!" cried Lady Peters, catching her husband by the arm — "let us hear what our dear nephew says ; " and every moment she was becoming more and more the partisan of his views, looking back to her former feelings as snares of the Evil One, and hating Philip in proportion to the fascina- tion he had once had over her. Sir Huldicote sat down, but he looked very wild, and his right hand had a clutching motion, as if he was impatient to handle his horsewhip and inflict instant vengeance on the culprit. Hargrave then assured them that there was no doubt of the fact that a clandestine attachment existed betwixt Pau- lina and Stanton. That Charles and Helen were deep in it. That it was planned that Stanton should accompany Charles to Oxford ; 294 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. should take orders, and then marry Paulina. Moreover, that Charles was determined not to become a diplomatist, but a soldier ; and that this scheme was encouraged by the tutor for his own ends. **What he is capable of," he added, "you may judge from what you have seen." Here, again, he had much difficulty in re- straining the baronet from rushing off, but Lady Peters held him down by his coat skirts, and the Canon seized him by the arm. " Hear me !" Hargrave cried, and the in- furiated man assumed a stolid calmness. Hargrave then told them that everybody but themselves had long known about this affair ; and Lady Peters, terrified lest she herself was to be implicated, denounced her former favourite as "a serpent, and a wily cockatrice, who wounded and then stung his benefactors !" and she vehemently believed all she said. But the Archdeacon, without noticing her remarks, offered to call in some THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 295 of the servants to give evidence — advising, however, and in fact stipulating, that the business should be managed in a manner so as to preserve the credit of the family, and as little as possible to hurt the feelings of the young people of the family. " Why," he asked, " should you set all the world talking, when everything necessary can be done, and the young Judas be packed off with sufficient punishment to himself, but without any scandal to the house T' Whereupon the reverend Canon proceeded to give much good advice as to the manage- ment of the whole affair. The discovery was to be opened forbearingly and kindly to the young people, who were to be considered as having been misled ; but the offender was to be sent off, and effectual means taken to cut off all future communication between him and them. He was not to be allowed to remain in the neighbourhood ; and any attempt at cor- respondence was to be prevented at all costs. 296 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ^* Nephew ! nephew !" said Lady Peters, in an agony of terror and gratitude, *'you are the man to help us, and you are the man to carry us through with it." " To be sure he must," said Sir Huldicote ; ^^ or we shall be ruined altogether." " What I can, my dear uncle," said Har- grave, "I will do; but, mark me, I must not be seen in this matter, or I shall never be forgiven. I know that hard thoughts of me are entertained already, and for me to appear in it, in the slightest degree, would ruin everything. No, no, I will advise you with all my ability, but not a word of my having revealed it ! It must appear your own dis- covery, and yours only. And, again, mark me, drop not a word or a hint of the means by which you have come upon the knowledge. Enough that you know. Let them suspect whom they will, but never let them be able to fix the fact on any one. Those who have discovered it to me have done it out of good THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 297 ■will to US all, and they must not be ruined or annoyed for their good service. You under- stand me, my dear relatives, and you will pledge me that this shall be so ?" The confounded and bewildered pair felt dreadfully left aground by this proposal. Lady Peters knew that her husband had far more passion than policy, and they both would have preferred that he who had raised the storm would breast it for them ; but Har- grave Freemantle was far too skilful an engineer to have the mine fired till he was at a safe distance ; there was, therefore, no help for it, but to trust to his secret counsel, and to promise that nothing but the fact itself should escape them. With that he gave them the directions for the first proceeding, and prepared to set oflf from Crackenthorpe that very afternoon. Lady Peters was then to inform the three young people of the discovery of their secret, whilst Sir Huldicote made Philip aware of it, and discharged him on the spot. 298 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. And here most likely the reader will be anxious to learn how Hargrave Freemantle had made himself master of this secret. Nothing was simpler or easier. Few family secrets of this kind remain secret amongst servants. The servants of the hall communicated it to Hargrave's servants, and it was ever his policy to have only those about him whose interests were in serving him ; and once on the trail of this secret, he had already matured every step for crushing the scheme of his young relatives. Yet why should he wish to crush it ? Simply because he believed it to militate against his own plans. So long as he thought that Philip Stanton had influential connec- tions, he was glad to have him at Craythorne — something, he trusted, might be made out of him ; but he had taken care to sound his relations of Druid's Moor, and he discovered that his very name was poison and pest to them. From that moment the expulsion of Philip from Craythorne was determined. When he THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 299 came upon the scene, and found how far matters had gone, his resolve acquired tenfold force. Was this Philip Stanton to enter the church and the family of Craythorne at the same time, and render him a second or a cipher there? Was Crackenthorpe Eectory thus to pass from him ? Little as it might seem, considering his present advancement and future hopes, it was not in the nature of Hargrave to yield that little willingly to a rival. His plans of action, therefore, had been carefully prepared ; they were now ripe, and the blow must be struck, and must be decisive. Before he left the Manor he had Tom Gossett, a groom who acted as a confiden- tial servant, and was much employed in riding on messages, and was in great favour with Charles, and Paulina's own maid called in, who declared that they had often seen Philip and Paulina walking alone in the garden, and had overheard the conversation of both them and Mr. Charles and Miss Free- 300 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. mantle, which confirmed all that Hargrave had said. ^^ And why did you not inform me or Lady Peters ? '' asked the baronet, angrily. The well-instructed couple of eaves-drop- pers replied that they thought everybody knew — "leastwise Lady Peters" ; and the re- proof was so palpable for their own blindness, that both the baronet and Lady Peters were silent. No sooner did the reverend Canon reach the rectory, than the carriages already at the gate drove ofi" ; and if a qualm came across the great artist's bosom when he thought of the misery and desolation he was leaving at the Manor, it was far more than neutralized by the proud sense of the acute intellect which had thus blown to the winds a connec- tion that boded him no profit. And before he had driven beyond view of the chimneys of Craythorne Manor, the thunderbolt which he had prepared had fallen on that ancient roof, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 301 and hearts lay bruised beneath it, that to the latest moment of their existence would bear the scars of that stroke. The young people were returning to the house as the Canon made his exit quietly by another door. They had set down Mrs. Freemantle at the rectory, where the carriages stood ready, only waiting the horses putting to, and they expected to find the Canon at the Manor, and take their leave of him. Mrs. Freemantle had been particularly agreeable on that morning ; she had parted with the cousins and sister-in-law with an appearance of warmth that had surprised them, and had even shaken hands cordially with Philip. They felt as though they had done her injustice, and were hastening to say good-bye all the more friendlily to her husband, when, as they entered the hall, a servant said Lady Peters wished to see them in her room upstairs, except Mr. Stanton, whom Sir Huldicote was waiting for in the library. 302 thI: man of the people. The young people glanced at each other with a look that expressed much ; and, as soon as the servant had gone away, they almost at the same moment said to each other, " What's this ? " There was evidently something in the wind ; and an instant foreboding struck every mind. " Is the Canon here ? " asked Charles, as another servant crossed the hall. " No, sir ; he is just gone." Charles gave a low whistle, saying : — " My mind misgives me that he has been at work here." "Don't judge, lest you misjudge," said Helen, warmly. " Well, then, let us see, at all events," re- plied Charles; and the three went silently upstairs, and Philip took his way towards the library. We will follow the children of the house first. When they entered Lady Peters' room, which was a sort of second drawing-room on THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 303 the first floor, adjoining her bed-room, on the side opposite to the dressing-room, they found her ladyship seated on the sofa, with a face full of agitation, and with eyes which showed that she had been weeping excessively. As they entered she rose hastily, and said, "Paulina, my dear, come with me — children, wait there." She led the way to her bed- room, closing the door mysteriously but hastily on Paulina ; and then turning full upon her, said : — " Oh, child ! what a business is this ! Oh! how could you — how could you be so foolish?" " Mother ! mother ! what do you mean ? " exclaimed Paulina, her heart at the same mo- ment preparing her for the truth. " Don't ! don't ! " cried Lady Peters, " don't pretend — don't deny : it is all out — your father knows all ! " Paulina stood petrified. " Oh, could I have believed that a child of 304 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. mine ! — but, thank Heaven, the impostor, the deceiver, the Judas, will be driven from this house, and all will yet be well. It has been a dream — a folly of youth ! Oh ! he has such art — such hypocrisy ! " " Mother," said Paulina, pale and trembling, *Mf you mean that the regard which I enter- tain for Mr. Stanton is known to you and my father, I will not make any attempt to deny or conceal it. I feel that I have no cause. Philip Stanton is a young man of whom no woman need be ashamed, either as wife or mother-in-law ; and as soon as circumstances permitted you should have known all, and we should have asked your blessing on the attach- ment. When you are cooler you will confess that you have done Philip injustice by the cruel epithets you have used." ^' Oh, my poor Paulina," exclaimed Lady Peters, " this is the worst part of it — this is what I feared. But he is a cunning, artful, wicked demagogue — he holds the most THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 305 violent, terrible opinions — he has been teach- ing them to Charles — he is true neither to his king nor his God ! Oh ! I wish we had never seen his face ! — he is a wicked, artful, danger- ous man ! " '^ And who, pray, has been telling you all this, dear mother ? But it can but be one man, and that is Hargrave ! " " Now, don't accuse that good, kind, wise relative. If we had but half his prudence ! Dear Paulina, I myself have admired Mr. Stanton ; I listened with pleasure to his con- versation, but all the more dangerous is he because he is so clever and so artful ! " " I was sure it was he," continued Paulina, looking lofty and enlarged, as it were, with her indignation ; " nobody but Hargrave could have done this ! " ''He! Hargrave! tell us," said Lady Peters, laughing hysterically; *^why, every creature about the place, every groom, every scullion, I find, talks about you and him. VOL. L X 306 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. But, my dear child," added she, laying her hand tenderly on her daughter's arm, and looking serenely at her, " he must go ! It is a great blow to me, as well as to you or any- one else, but let us thank Heaven that his true character has come to light. Paulina, he is a wicked man — he is a dangerous man — really a very dangerous man — and I blame myself as much as anyone for being befooled by him. But, thank Heaven, we know him now ! — your father will dismiss him at once. It is best, on some occasions, to be as positive as your father is ! " Paulina gazed vacantly at her mother, and sunk softly on the sofa ; the sense of Philip subjected to the coarse insult of which she knew her father was capable, suddenly over- came her ; she put her handkerchief to her face, and sobbed convulsively. "There, that's right, my poor, dear girl, have a good cry ; it will do you good, and I know all will be well," said her mother, kissing THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 307 her tenderly, feeling now no sentiment in her mind towards Philip but that of anger, and shame for herself that she could have contem- plated patiently the thought of such an alliance. So saying, she left her for a moment, to open the matter to Charles and Helen. The two distracted young people had heard the loud words of the mother to her daughter, and were well satisfied that the secret was out ; and when Lady Peters began to expostulate with them for their share in Paulina's impru- dence, they at once commenced as passionate a defence of both Paulina and Philip. Charles declared that he was as noble a fellow as ever walked, and worthy of any woman alive. " Oh, Charles, Charles ! '^ said his mother, " what trouble your infatuation has brought on us all ! And you, Helen — you don't defend this ? " But there was no Helen there. The mo- ment she heard of Paulina's distress, she had x2 308 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. vanished, and was now locked in her cousin's arms, kissing and consoling her with all the passionate sympathy of her nature. Lady Peters hurried after her; and Charles flew downstairs, three or four steps at a time, and rushed off to the rectory, to tell the Canon what he thought of him. We need not say that he found no Canon there, and returned, prepared to take the part of Philip manfully, and to exhort him to bear the storm bravely till it blew over. Meantime, Philip, with a beating heart, had advanced to the library. He found Sir Huldicote pacing the room impatiently ; his face inflamed with rage till it appeared purple and almost black. As he entered, the infuriated baronet paused by the table, on which lay a parchment-bound private ledger, and a number of bank-notes. " Scoundrel ! viper ! Judas ! " he exclaimed. '^ Your villainy is out — I know it all, and if you don't pack off this instant, bag and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 309 baggage, I'll have you pitched out, as you deserve ! " " Sir Huldicote," said Philip, who knew the baronet's habit of indulging in storms of passion, and in them of using the most insulting language, yet was scarcely prepared for an explosion like this, "how have I deserved such words as these ? " " Kascal ! do you dare to bandy terms with me ? Have you not made use of my kindness to steal the affections of my daughter? — is that nothing ? " "Sir," said Philip, steadying his nerves, " I confess to having been inspired with a deep and admiring affection for the noble mind and endowments of your daughter — but is that a crime ? Is that an offence deserving of such accusations ? " " What ! " said the baronet, almost choking with rage ; " You ! a beggar, a pauper, a pitiful, pennyless schoolmaster, do you dare to talk thus to me ? '' 310 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. "Whatever I am/' replied Philip, endea- vouring to suppress his feelings, " I am by birth and education a gentleman, equal in everything even with you. Sir Huldicote — for I have a right to speak proudly on this point, ex- cept in amount of fortune ; but can mere pro- perty make or unmake a man ? " " D d scoundrel ! " exclaimed the baronet, losing command of himself. " There are your wages!" — he used the word "wages" to be more insulting — "take them, and begone! These are the villainous principles your father taught you." Philip had laid his finger on the notes to push them back towards Sir Huldicote, when the reflection on his father reached him; a fire flashed in his eyes ; he raised himself erect and proudly, and said, in a voice which had lost all tone of deprecation : — " Sir 1 touch not that sacred name — a name hallowed by every virtue and every sufiering, or I may forget the respect I owe to members THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 311 of this family. And for those wages ^^^ — ^he paused on the word — " as you think I have not earned them, I will none of them." He turned to leave the room, but the baronet, no longer master of his passion, seized the ledger, and hurled it at his head. It flew close past him, and dashed against the wall. Philip halted a moment, as in amaze- ment, and then composedly walked from the room. Composedly, I own, only in appear- ance. A storm of outraged feelings was struggling in his bosom — a host of agonized feelings flashed through him with spirit-speed. He saw all the misery, all the consequences, except the end — which was hidden in the gloomy, lurid bosom of the future. Hope, in that wild, lacerating moment, had no place. The enveloping clouds left no opening for the sun ; she had no place in the darkened heaven to erect her bow. With rapid steps he hastened up to the study, collected such of his books as his agitation permitted him to 312 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. recognize ; sprung to his room, flung them and his clothes and other things into his trunk, and descended the stairs like a man in a dream — and in the next few minutes was out, and traversing the park towards the town. As he rushed along that noble avenue, now gloomy with evening, and its yet naked boughs whistling in the harsh March wind, as he passed glade after glade, who shall describe the whirling thoughts, and cutting memories, that, like the dogs of Actaeon, were pursuing their own master ? That old house, the scene of so much beautiful, sacred time, now the haunt of misery, discord, and odious passions — those garden hours of mirth and happi- ness — those walks and rides, in which youth and hope had made a paradise of life — all gone — all a black, despairing void ! How and where he passed he knew not— and it was only as he entered the cottage of Mrs. Rudd, and the light flashed full on him, that he seemed to recover consciousness of time and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 313 place. The scene which opened on him was a strange contrast to the whirlpool of terrible sensations in which he was struggling. There sat the old sexton at his supper, as he had seen him sitting year after year, at the little round deal table, his grey hair brought down over his forehead, and his weather-beaten, time- worn, but quiet face, a faithful index of the monotonous life which glided on with him. There burnt the cheerful fire beneath the broad chimney, and the old tortoise-shell cat slept, cosily couched in her accustomed seat, the leather-bottomed chair. The kettle sung on the clean pipeclayed hob, and the cricket sung in the warm wall. What a picture of tranquillity ! But Philip stood like a ghost in the midst of that profound calm. He stood still, like a man bewildered ; and Mrs. Rudd, who had risen from her place at the table opposite to the old man at his entrance, struck by his ghastly look, exclaimed : — '^ Mercy on us, Mr. Philip, what has hap- 314 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. pened ? Speak ! — speak, a-God's name, what ails you ? " '^ Come here, mother,'' he said, with a quiet voice, but which had a woe in it that went like a knife to her heart, and he led her into the little dark garden behind. ^^It's all over, Mrs. Rudd,'* he said ; ^^ I have left the Manor ! " *^Now God be good to us! " said the poor woman, who loved Philip as if he had been her own child; "for I am sure something dreadful has happened.'' " It has, mother — it has ! " said Philip, holding fast and faster her hand ; and he went on and told her all the story, as if she had been his mother indeed. Long before he had done — and it did not take him many minutes, for he spoke in terms quick, expressive, lightning-like in their meaning and power, telegrams of sorrow and desolation — yet long before he ceased, the poor woman was weeping silently and trembling vio- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 315 lently. When he stopped, she pressed his hand, and said^ with an eager sort of patience : — *' Don't despair — no, don^t despair, Philip Stanton — the prayers of the righteous avail muqh, and I am sure you have those of your sainted father in heaven, and I am sure you have mine, poor sinner as I am. But don't despair, I say. That Hargrave Freemantle, minister as he is, is a hard, deep, and malicious man, and he has great power over that poor, passionate Sir Huldicote; but there is a stronger power than either of theirs — ay, there are two for that matter — there is God, and there is the heart of a true woman ! '^ Philip pressed the poor woman's hand at those last words ; they were a light, the only one that had pierced the fierce storm- cloud. " But come, Mr. Philip ; come in and have some supper." 316 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. ** No, mother, no," said Philip ; " I cannot eat, and I cannot bear that Mr. Kudd should see my trouble. 1 will take a turn on the hills. I cannot rest — I must be in motion; but your words have done me good.'' " Walk on the hills ! — what, and all in the dark and the cold ; no, I will send Thomas off to bed — see, he is going now of him- self — and we will sit and comfort one another." Philip consented, and the old woman again pressed him to eat ; and then, recollecting her- self, she said : — '^ But, good gracious ! what's to be done ? Where in the world can I put you ; for I have a lodger, and not another bed. But you shall have one — we can do very well here to-night on a few clothes by the fire." "You shall do nothing of the kind, mother," said Philip ; " if I stay, I will lie on THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 317 the couch here. Give me a rug to wrap my- self in, and I will try to sleep." He said this to induce the old woman to think him calm, and to go to bed, and at length he succeeded. What night he himself passed we may well imagine. It was long before it was day that he was up, and stole quietly out. He could not sleep, and he felt an irresistible desire to tread once more his old paths — to wander round once more the old Manor, where so beautiful a dream of life had quitted him, to be so rudely broken. He knew that no one would be out to see him ; and, having indulged in this melancholy plea- sure, he was returning towards the town, when he saw Charles hastily approaching. He felt assured that if he could escape the watch that would be kept on him, and the strict injunction that would be laid upon him, he would make an effort to see him. He hastened to meet him, and the two young men, seizing each other's hand, stood some 318 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. time in deep and expressive silence. At length Charles said : — '^ This is a sorrowful business, Philip. Did not I say you little knew Hargrave ? You know something of him now. But you must not confound us with him, or with those he has long had too much power with. We can- not resist the storm — we must let it blow over — but remember, wherever you go, that you have friends in this place that will never alter their feelings towards you so long as you are the same Philip Stanton. I fear you met with but rude treatment from my father, but if you can't forget it, don't think of it more than you can help — think only of those who love you." Philip continued to press his hand as he spoke, and asked how Paulina and Helen had borne it. " Much as you may suppose," said Charles ; " but they are both staunch spirits, and we have all agreed that there is nothing for it THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 319 but to trust and wait the turning of events. We can establish a correspondence under certain regulations, and so keep alive our old friendship. The girls are bent on seeing you once more before you leave — and as the only chance will be during the half-hour before dinner, while Paulina will be supposed to be dressing, they will for a few minutes manage to get out to the avenue at half- past five to-day precisely.'^ Philip was delighted. **But," added Charles, "you must be quick and watchful, for there is a sharp look-out kept; we have false hearts some- where — would to Heaven I could make it out! — amongst the servants; and I am greatly mistaken if the arch-deacon himself is not somewhere near, consulting and direct- ing. Tom Gossett, who went with the coach- man to bring back the carriage horses, says they changed at Leatherhead and went on to Kingston last night — but I have 320 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. my own thoughts about Hargrave, and I will tell you why. Yesterday my father told me I should be off to Oxford forth- with. I told him I had neither talent nor taste for public life, and would rather go into the army. He stormed at me, and swore I should not ; yet before he went to bed he said he had considered it, and I should have a commission. Now, he never alters a plan of that sort with- out Hargrave's advice, and he could not have that from Kingston in the time. Ergo — The man himself lies hidden some- where about." The young men went into much other conversation on the matter, which we need not detail. Philip declared his intention of going to London for the present, and Charles engaged fco send off his trunk that day. Before going he took a roll of notes from his waistcoat-pocket, and saying, ^^ I found these on the library-floor, and from the THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 321 amount I guessed they were yours. Don't be foolish, put them up." Philip took the money without further hesitation, and the friends hastened off, each his own way. VOL. I. 322 CHAPTER XL Philip returned to the cottage, and joined Mrs. Eudd at breakfast with a good appetite. The prospect of the meeting in the evening kept up his spirits, and he talked over his plan with the old woman of going to town and seeking a situation. She told him that her lodger was a very learned man, and much employed by the Government. He was a great calculator, and often went abroad to help in the war. She showed him the direction of a letter to him addressed, " On his Majesty's Service. Jeremiah Sterland, Esq." THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 323 " Why," said Philip, " Jeremiah Sterland — that is one of our most famous engineers. He is a very famous man indeed." *^And why should he not do something for you, Mr. Philip? If I might tell him how ill-used you have been, I daresay he would try to help you." *^You may tell him, Mrs. Rudd, whatever you please, for I am sure you would say nothing but what you ought." What Mrs. Eudd told to the great mathe- matician we know not, but as Philip was sitting in the old arbour in the garden, where his father had read and written his sermons on many a bright summer day, and was thinking on past times, a short, round, broad man in dark clothes and Hessian boots, and a broad hat with a very flat brim, as if he had the habit of laying it always brim downwards, appeared at the opening of the arbour, and said, "Do I see Philip, the son of Hugh?" Philip started to his feet, and r2 324 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. assured his visitor, with much deference, that he was right. The stranger, who appeared a man of about fifty, took off his hat and laid it on the table, displaying a large massy bald head, the remaining hair of which was of a strong, wiry texture, and considerably grey. " I am glad," said this remarkable-looking man, " to see the son of Hugh Stanton." "Did you know my father, sir?" asked Philip. " Never personally, the more is my loss," he replied ; " but in London, some years ago, I heard him preach — and having once heard him, I never went anywhere else when I could hear him again. Ay, my young friend, you come of a good stock, of the sons of the prophets. Philip, son of Hugh, I tell thee there was soul there — a man, a giant, a Marvell and a Hampden rolled into one, and thundering great truths from the pulpit, as they from the senate and the battle-field. I tell thee, son of Hugh Meynell, that I have THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 325 sat and listened, and my heart has seemed to grow larger and larger, and my thews and sinews to become strong as bow-striffgs, and I seemed ready to do battle for the Lord and for Gideon ; and yet have I done more than sell myself, too much, too much, to the Philistines for a poorer, meaner, more selfish glory and gain?" The strange yet stalwart and massy-bodied man shook his wonderful head, and looked on the ground as reflecting, and sighed deeply. Then raising his eyes, he gazed on the astonished and yet enraptured young man, and added : — *^ Yes, I see it ; the same intellectual type — a more vigorous physique, however, but poetry, eloquence, and enthusiasm, and steady God's truth ; no truckling, no selling the bread of the sanctuary to the sons of Belial for filthy lucre ; but perhaps the same martyrdom for all that — perhaps so ; and yet, God forbid it ! — we must do what we can." 326 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. He rose, stretched a strong, broad hand across the table, seized that of the young man, shook it, held it, seemed to think, and then added : — *'Yes, my friend Philip, thou shalt be thought of; it shall be my mission, my pledged and sacred mission, and so God help us both. Thou art skilful in calculation ? — in algebra, in mathematics, and the different metries ? '' " Philip trusted that he was well furnished in these respects, but would be most happy to give him any proof in them." *^ Enough," said the singular man; "the word of the son of Hugh Meynell Stanton is more to me than the oath of twenty sons of Pechab. I will take thought for thee, and that speedily." And with that he again shook him by the hand, held his hand ponderingly, shook it again, and returned, as in a deep reverie, to the house. Philip stood in bewildering THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 327 amazement. ^^Is he an inspired madman, or a simple calculating machine?" he thought. And yet how he had comprehended and estimated his father ! It was the first time that he had heard such praise of his persecuted parent, and it was music to his ears. " There must be," he thought, '^ a soul under that strange disguise. The man has a stupendous fame ; he must be more reliable than he seems." Philip hastened to communicate his interview and his impression to Mrs. Rudd. "It is his way," she said ; "it always was. I lived in his service twenty-five years ago, and he seemed always lost in calculations, but what he says is gospel — what he says he'll do." Philip, strengthened by this, and impatient for the evening, went out, and ranged far over Leith Hill, and along the deep wood-embow- ered lanes about Lonesome Lodge, all day — the meeting with Paulina, at once so exciting and so painful, and the half oracular, half dreamy 328 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. image of Jeremiah Sterland, perpetually alter- nating in his mind. But the day at length declined — evening came on with its shadows, and with a beating heart he hastened through the park towards the great avenue. As he entered that grand mass of trees, that natural temple, the shadow deepened, and for a moment he looked in vain to descry any object but the little circle of subdued light at the farther end. As he advanced, however, all became clear, but his quick eye ranged in vain through the solemn space to discover a moving object. He began to fear that the close watch at the Manor had prevented the ap- pointed meeting ; but at length, as he reached within a short distance of the upper end, he saw two dim figures move forward out of the line of the trees, and stand in the middle. They were Paulina and Helen, wrapped in their grey cloaks. Philip felt himself tremble as he sprung forward towards them. As he reached the spot, Paulina only stood there ; THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 329 Helen had drawn back, to allow full freedom to the meeting of the lovers, which would pro- bably be their last for years. Philip sprung forward, exclaiming, "My Paulina!" No word found its way from Paulina's lips, till a long and silent embrace had enabled her tears to flow, and restored her utterance. Then Philip saw what deep traces of suffering marked her fine features. Her face was pale and marble- like as that of a statue ; but in her eyes affec- tion and resolution gave a new and touching beauty to her expression. It was a sublime image of sorrow and endurance which stood before him. She was the first to break the silence. " Dearest Philip," she said, in tones that thrilled through him, and lived in his memory long afterwards, " this is a trial indeed ; but let us bear it, as becomes those who do not sorrow without hope. We have but a few minutes for this interview, but that is enough to assure each other that nothing but God 330 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. can really separate us. The storm is too strong for us ; it is of no use to contend ; but we can wait and endure. We have a subtle and powerful enemy ; but we have a means of correspondence which you will find explained here," and she gave him a paper. Philip kissed it, and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket. ^* And let me entreat you, Philip, whatever you have suffered in this place just now, to remember it only to forgive it. My father and mother are under an influence almost supernatural — the day may come when that spell may be broken, and then they will do you justice. At all events, we are in the hands of God, who can make ways and means at his pleasure. Let us be true to each other, and trust to Him. So long as Philip Stanton is himself, he will never lose his place in my heart." "And never," replied Philip, with all the em- phasis of his soul, " shall you find him different. So long as I know that this heart beats ua- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 331 changingly for me, I shall endure all that for- tune may have in reserve with patience, and even with joy.'' A low piping on a dog-whistle was now heard, and Paulina, starting, said — '^ That is the signal to part — Charles waits for us. Farewell, and God go with you ! " One more passionate embrace, and Paulina turned and hurried out of the avenue. Philip stood as if nailed to the ground, gazing after the departing figure ; but, at this moment, he found himself suddenly embraced by another female — it was Helen, whose face, unlike that of Paulina, was flushed with excitement, and glittering with a profusion of tears. She hastily embraced and kissed Philip, as she would have done a bro- ther on a sorrowful parting, and then saying, " Good-bye, Philip, good-bye ! " darted after her cousin. As Philip slowly retraced his steps down the dark avenue, he might well have asked himself when those who had now parted should 332 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. meet again ? — for the chances were that it would be long first ; but he was roused from his reflections, as he issued into the open air, by seeing a grey figure suddenly withdraw itself behind a neighbouring tree. With the certainty that they had been watched, he darted forward, turned round the tree, and stood face to face with the Eev. Canon Free- mantle ! The surprised clergyman was not in his clerical habit, but arrayed in a grey suit, and a round hat, which he wore when out with his gun or his rod. He had sud- denly pulled down his hat over his brow, but he was too familiar to the eye of the in- censed Philip to be unrecognised for a mo- ment. " So, then,'' said Philip, with a stern, mea- sured voice, " Mr. Freemantle is not charged wrongfully with being at the bottom of all this mischief. He is not then in London, as given out, but watching the movements of his victims ! " THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 333 ^'To any charges brought against Hargrave Freemantle by those whose opinion is of mo- ment, he can answer," replied the Canon. " With you, sir, he has no concern ; " and was turning away, but Philip seized him by the collar, and said : — ^' Stay, man, you shall listen to me ! ^' " Hands off! " exclaimed the Canon. He was a man of desperate courage and strength when roused and obliged to turn at bay, though his cunning willingly avoided extremities, and a fearful struggle appeared imminent. *^ Hands off! will you murder me?" and Philip felt him tremble with fear or rage, he knew not which, in his grasp. " No ! " said Philip, who had felt a mo- mentary impulse to fell him to the ground, but was recalled to a better mood, as by the voice of his father in his soul, ^^ overcome evil with good." "No," he said,. "I am no mur- derer. It is you who have murdered my reputation, my peace, and the peace of those 334 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. whom you ought to have loved as your own flesh. I will not touch a hair of your head — I leave you to God and your own conscience ; '' and, relaxing his grasp, he strode away to- wards the town. Hargrave Freemantle also moved away in another direction, chagrined and chap-fallen; not from the words or the contempt of Philip — they moved him not at all ; but because he had made a false move in his game, and had been detected where he meant to have worked in most perfect concealment. He was supposed to be in town, and he was found to be here in the not very creditable position of a spy. Tom Gossett had indeed told Charles that Hargrave and his family had taken post-horses for Kingston, but he should have left out the Canon himself, who, on the plea of walking up an ascent near Juniper Hill, had never got in again, but had turned up a valley to the right, the slopes of which were overgrown with thick juniper bushes and dark fir-trees, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 335 and pursued his way to a hut inhabited by a keeper, where he remained secreted, to con- duct, by his counsel, the present afiairs to a crisis. Thither Tom Gossett himself had ridden to deliver letters to him, and bring back answers; and from that obscure retreat the Canon himself had issued, under the shades of night, and visited Craythorne and Crack - enthorpe, to consult personally with his father and uncle. It was not more than two hours after this rencontre of himself and Philip, that, as the latter individual was sitting at supper with the old sexton and his wife, there came a thundering knock at the cottage door, as with a cudgel or some heavy instrument. Philip and Mrs. Eudd rose simultaneously, with a feeling of some unwelcome visitant ; and when the latter opened the door, there sat a burly figure, wrapped in a wide dark great-coat, and seated on a stout horse. The moon was now lighting up a brilliant sky, and the sexton's 336 THE MAX OF THE PEOPLE. wife at once recognized Sir Huldicote Peters, with a groom on his horse posted at some distance in the rear. ** Woman ! " said the baronet, in a voice of anger, '^ you are harbouring a fellow here that I will have away." "Please, your worship," said Mrs. Rudd, with a deep curtsey, "I have nobody but those who are very quiet and respectable people." " Silence, woman ! " cried the incensed baronet. "You must pack off that young Stanton. It is you and your lodger who encourage him in his contumacy. I'll take a course with you if he is not sent off instantly." But at that moment another figure issued upon the scene. It was that of the mathe- matician, whose massive features now bore some resemblance in colour to those of the inflamed baronet. He stood in the clear moonlight, with his shiny large bald head, and THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 337 stretching out his large hand from the wide sleeve of an ample dressing-gown, he said : — " Lodger, indeed ! Is that your word for me?" The baronet sat on his horse, with a face like that of a man who sees an apparition. His whole air was changed as by a miracle ; his expression was that of a beaten hound. " What ! " he at length got out, ^' is it you, Sterland ? Who could imagine you thrust into this snail-horn ? Why did not you come to the Manor? Why did not you let me know r *' Fool ! " said the indignant mathematician, and, turning on his heel, re-entered the house. *' Sterland, Sterland!" shouted Sir Hul- dicote ; *^ tell him,'' he said to Mrs. Eudd, " that I want one word with him." Mrs. Eudd went in, and came back quickly. "Excuse me, sir, but you know Mr. Sterland, and he won't come." YOL. I. z 338 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. " Won't come ! but what did he say ? " The poor woman curtsied again, and said : — " It does not become me to speak it, your worship/' " Damn it!" cried the baronet; " but I say, out with it ! " The poor woman curtsied again, and then said, tremblingly — " He said you had got one word, and that was the most fitting that he had.'' Sir Huldicote turned his horse, and rode slowly down the hill. And why should Sir Huldicote Peters, of Craythorne Manor, baronet, thus quail before the incivility of the uncouth mathematician ? Simply because there are such characters as master and servant, master and slave ; and the most absolute master is often a man called a mortgagee, and the most trembling slave another man called a mortgager. These were the precise relations of Sir Huldicote Peters and Jeremiah Sterland. In those THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 339 extensive purchases of new lands round Craythorne, and for their improvements, Jeremiah Sterland, a man of large estate, and of larger income from his profession, and a bachelor withal, had furnished Sir Huldicote with heavy sums. Spite of the new corn- law, the unsettled appearance of the country, and the fear of its repeal, caused much uneasi- ness to those who had deeply involved them- selves with purchases at exorbitant prices. Money was extremely scarce, and if the mortgagees called for theirs, many an estate must go to the hammer. Sir Huldicote had had many uneasy nights and days on this score, and the terror of having roused a lion where he only expected to kick forth a dog, may in his case be understood without much difficulty. Scarcely was he gone when the mathema- tician called for Philip into his room, there to see him stand as much metamorphosed in one direction as the baronet had been in another. z2 340 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. That dreamy, Lalf-awake air had vanished. His face was lit up as by a new fire. He was prompt and decisive in word and action ; and Philip could then comprehend how he had acquired his great renown, not only for calm, deep calculation, and for plans of forts, bas- tions, mines, and other means of military offence and defence, but for the improvised measures which in moments of great peril had enabled our armaments to do miracles of military triumph. *^ Philip, son of Hugh ! " he said, seizing his hand, ^* there is a proverb — * walls have ears and hedges have eyes.' What we spoke in the garden to-day has been by some means carried to that rude, foolish man. You are not safe here — at least from insult. This poor woman may come to harm if you remain. The word then is march — but whither ? I have not yet found the proper hole for such a royal peg as you ; that requires more time ; but there is wanted a schoolmaster in a ham- THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. 341 let in Wiltshire. Slumbercumb it is called, and very likely most aptly ; but there you will be safe and out of the way, and useful, till you hear from me, which shall be with all speed. Youll go ? " " Certainly, sir," said Philip, " before the sun rises in the morning." " Good," said the extraordinary man ; " and for money on the way ? " — he was lugging out a huge pocket-book from his coat that was hung on a peg. '^ I have it, sir — I have it," said Philip. ^* Good again ; but a map ? " he took a map of England in its case from his table. ^' That will be useful. The place is not in it ; it is too insignificant ; but I have made a cross with a pencil where it should be ; and so, good- bye, and God be with you ! I must now proceed with some pressing calculations, for which I sought quiet here, though it has not been perfect, as you see — but no fault of yours." And with that he shook Philip cordially by 342 THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. the hand ; and as Philip paused a moment to thank him — " Oh, thanks and all that," he said, ^^ when they are earned. This is only a pis-aller — a makeshift." And with the word he was seated, and already pen in hand. Philip retreated and made preparations for his journey. Charles had sent up his trunk, and, therefore, he took merely a change of linen, in a small valise, and his pocket bible ; he left directions for his trunk to come after him, wrote a note to Charles, enclosing his address, which Mrs. Eudd was to give him herself, and at the same time inform him of his rencontre with Hargrave ; and the next morning, before it was day, he was up, break- fasted with Mrs. E,udd by the light of the fire, and with most affectionate adieus to the good old dame, who watched him from the door with her apron at her eyes, he passed into the dark street, and strode manfully away. END OF VOL. I. .^ cccc ,. ( ^ ^e^-- ^ ^ r-ay^^x ^r A ^ r<-^g '' c C C( ^ cc < <- f^ M4 mr^i. ,^;<^ /i:^^ \/i^\ UNIVERSITY OF ILUNOI9-URBANA III 30 12 047698045 '^. STF- - >^^^ ^ :>^ ^' -^&''^m^ ,j^-f^-->^--^_ y:^"y^m ^.^: . r^^> ^'y^j>m ^l>-:\i#^^.:A^ ^_,^ll