seemed to feel themselves the undisturbed possessors of their oaken home. Poor old fellows!-many of them, too, such wonderful hands at chopping one hair into little bundles of hairs, the better to make springes with-so many too, the Eloquent Dumb-the Great Forgotten the Illustrious Dim-the Folio Furniture in calf or truly pastoral vellum,-for five-and-twenty years had stood upon the shelf, and no rude hand had ever touched them. They had been bought by Doctor Gilead, and made to stand before all men visiting the library, as vouchers for the learning of the rector. But when Scipio of course, sir, you remember the story-when Scipio, by the fortune of war, was made the some time guardian of a beautiful princess, Scipio himself was not more respectful of her charms, than was Doctor Gilead of the fascinations of the Fathers: he never knew them-never. We are aware that there may be vulgar souls who, judging from their simial selves, may doubt the continence of Scipio: we think this very likely; for sure we are that many folks, seeing the scholastic beauties possessed by Doctor Gilead, believed he must enjoy them: for the Doctor, like Scipio, never bragged of his abstinence. He, good soul, suffered men to think just what they pleased: but this we know, although the Fathers were for five-and-twenty years in the power of Doctor Gilead, yet, a Scipio in his way, he never-to speak scrupulously like a matron-he never so much as laid his little finger on them.

Therefore, shortly before the arrival of his lordship, was it a great surprise to the Fathers to find themselves one morning taken from the shelves and opened. How stiff, poor fellows, were they all in the back! And no doubt, very much astounded was Origen, and Basil, and Theophylactus, and Jerom, and Tertullian, and other respectable Fathers, to find themselves dusted and thwacked as they, when in the flesh, were wont to dust and thwack their disputants; the man-servant and the maid-servant, otherwise intent, taking no more account of them than if they were old day-books and ledgers. In the vanity of their hearts-at least, in as much vanity as can belong to churchmen-they thought they were to be consulted and reverenced; in a word, made much of. And their owner, Doctor Gilead, did make much of them. He paid them the deepest devotion of which the good man was sensible; for he had them all packed off to be newly furbished and newly gilt ; and there the dead Fathers of the Church stood glistening with gold; and doubtless as uneasy in the splendour forced upon them as any bishop in a coach-and-four. There they were, like the

cherubim, "in burning row;" doomed, however, to perpetual silence perpetual neglect. Now and then the good Doctor would, of course, glance at them to satisfy himself that they stood in order he would occasionally run his eye along the shelves, like an officer inspecting his regiment; but the Doctor no more thought of consulting some of those picked men of the army of martyrs, than would the very gorgeous colonel pause to gossip with the drummer. There they stood, a sort of divinity guard of honour. A body, very necessary to assert the importance of the rank of the great man in whose service they were called out, but on no account to be made familiar with. And the tumultuous mob departed from the Hall and left the Fathers-with their newlygilt backs glittering in the sun-to meditate on human turbulence and human vanity. Poor Fathers! twice were they doomed to be fed upon. They had been duly eaten in the grave, and now their body of divinity, embalmed, as they vainly thought it, in printer's ink, was drilled and consumed by that omnivorous library worm, of the birth and history of which entomologists have, we are sure of it, a very false and foolish notion. Now, it is our conviction, that as the worms that consume the body of the author are bred not in his grave dust, but in his own flesh, so do the worms the only living things that go entirely through some tomesfound in books, wholly originate and take their birth from the written matter of the volume. Hence, the quiddities, and concetti, and what Eve, once in her pouts with Adam (for the phrase is as old) called the maggots of the brain, that abound in much controversial theology do, in process of time, become those little pestilent things that entirely eat up paper, print, and all. A warning this to men, if they would have their printed bodies last, to take care and avoid the aforesaid quiddities, and concetti, and maggots. For little knows the thoughtless beholder of many a tall sturdy volume, what certain devastation is going on among its leaves. Many a controversialist who has shaken thunderbolts, but which, indeed, were nothing worse than little pebbles in a tin-pot-by means of which, by the way, we have seen boys make asses gallop, pebbles jingled in a pot being thunder to asses-many a Jupiter of syllables in his day is, at this moment, being slowly but surely devoured, and that too by the vermicelli bred in what he deemed his own immortal thunder. Was there not, to give a very familiar instance, the famous Miianbettimartinius, who wrote a mighty folio to prove that there were no fleas in the Ark? Did he not stand upon his flea as a post

diluvian creation-stand upon it as the great pyramid on its base, for the bows and salaams of all posterity? And where and what is Miianbettimartinius now? A dead body of polemics. Now and then we see him handsomely bound upon a rector's, a bishop's shelf; Doctor Gilead had a very fine tall copy; but we can see through the binder's cuticle; our mental vision can pierce through calfskin, and behold the worms at work. Pooh! the whole thing is as alive and wrigging as an angler's box of gentles.

But we must really quit the Fathers, and fall in with the mob. We shall not attempt to count the number of votes upon horseback -the number of votes on foot-that preceded and followed, and on each side hemmed about the carriage of the noble candidate. Everybody, save Tangle, looked happy. And he, although he rode in a very fine coach, would insist upon looking as though he was taking a final journey in a cart; and although a young clergyman of excellent family, one in whose orthodoxy Doctor Gilead had great hopes for one of his daughters-although the young gentleman let off some capital jokes, bran-new from Cambridge, in Tangle's private ear, for his private delight, he Tangle did nothing but slightly bow, and look glassily about him, as though that very promising young clergyman was at the moment imparting the most solemn consolation; which, it is but hard justice to him, again to assure the reader, it was not. Tangle's soul was with his guineas. And it was as if every guinea had a particular hold of his soul, and each guinea was flying a different way, -tearing and tugging at the poor soul in a thousand directions. The young clergyman was incessant in his attentions. "I say, old Death's-head"-thus familiar did the great cause in which both were riding make the man of Cam and the man of law,— "I say, look at that girl with cherry ribands."

Tangle was determined to put down this libertine familiarity at once and for ever. He, therefore, never deigning to look at either cherry lips or cherry ribands, observed, "Sir, I am a married man. Mr. Tangle believed that he had at once abashed, confounded his free acquaintance. He had uttered that, which he felt ought to silence any decent person: he had spoken his worst, and looked to be, at least, respected. He wished, however, to be very secure, and therefore repeated,-"Sir, I am a married ." Whereto the young clergyman responded, and let us do him justice, with evident sympathy-"Poor devil!"

man.

The procession moved on-the music played-and there was

not one of the mob who did not feel a huge interest in the very handsome young lord who was going up to parliament to take especial care of all of them.-In the like way, that when the knight of old was armed, and about to go forth to slay the dragon that carried off men, virgins, and cattle, and continually breathed a brimstone blight upon the crops and herbage, making dumpish the heart of the farmer-in the like way that he was attended by sage, grey-headed reverence, by youths and maidens, bearing garlands and green boughs, and accompanying him with shouts, and prayers, and loving looks, so did the young lord St. James take his way to the hustings, that he might therefrom depart for Parliament, there to combat with and soundly drub the twenty dragons always ready to eat up everybody and everything, if not prevented by the one particular member. Young St. James would be the champion against the dragon taxation: he would keep the monster from the farmer's bacon-from the farmer's wife's eggs-from the farmer's daughter's butter: he would protect their rights; and the farmer, and farmer's wife, and farmer's daughter, all felt that they had a most dear and tender interest in that splendid young gentleman, who would do nothing but bow to them, and smile upon them, just for all the world as if he was no bit better than they.

"He'll let 'em know what 's what when he gets among 'em," said an old countryman to Flay, who, that he might be as near as possible to the lord about to be made a law-maker, walked with his hand upon the carriage. They 've had it all their own way long enough; he'll make 'em look about 'em."

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"The man for the constitootion. That's plain with half an eye; he's born with it all in his head, like a cock with a comb," said Flay. "It's in the family," continued the barber; "in the family."

The procession halts at the Hall. We pass the cheering, the groaning of the opposite parties. We pass all the hubbub of the election, as familiar to the British ear as the roar of the British Lion. It was plain, that it was already known there would be no contest; whereupon dark and blank were the looks of the Yellows, and very loud and fierce their denunciations. The Blues, too, though they put a boldly happy face on the matter, were ill at ease. A sharp opposition would have given them great delight, inasmuch as their tried patriotism would have shone all the brighter for the test.

And now the solemn business is opened by Mr. Mayor, too oppressed by the greatness of the occasion, to suffer one word of his very eloquent address to be heard by the multitude; who, no doubt, in gratitude, cheered uproariously.

The Reverend Doctor Gilead then stept forward; and suddenly the crowd seemed to feel themselves at church, they were so hushed. The Doctor said that nothing but his long knowledge, his affection for his lordship, could have induced him to break from that privacy which they all knew was his greatest happiness. But he had a duty to perform; a duty to his country, to them, and to himself. That duty was to propose the distinguished nobleman before them, as their legal and moral representative in parliament.

And young St. James was duly proposed and seconded. “Is there no other candidate?" asked the Mayor, with a conscious face that there was not.

"Yes," cried a voice; and immediately a man stept forward, whilst the Yellows roared with triumph. "I have to propose, said the man,—and reader, that man was no other than Ebenezer Snipeton, husband of Clarissa,-" I have to propose, as the representative of the borough of Liquorish, Matthew Capstick, Esq.'

A shout of derision burst from the Blues. For a moment, the Yellows, taken by surprise, were silent: they then paid back the shout with shoutings vehement.

"Does anybody second Matthew Capstick?" asked the Mayor aghast.

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I does," cried Rasp; and again the Yellows shouted.

The Reverend Doctor Gilead looked haughtily, contemptuously, at the farce acted about him. Nevertheless, he thought it necessary to demand a poll for young St. James; the show of hands-as the astounded Mayor was compelled to own-being “decidedly in favour of Mr. Capstick."

CHAPTER XXV.

"WHY you never mean to do it?" asked Bright Jem anxiously, sorrowfully.

"A man is wedded to his country, Jem; and being wedded, must listen to her voice," was the answer of Capstick.

It was nearly midnight, and the late muffin-maker and his man sat alone in the Tub. The news of his probable election for