THE INCONVENIENCE OF HAVING AN ELDER BROTHER.

Many a beaming brow I’ve known,And many a dazzling eye,And I’ve listened to many a melting toneIn magic fleeting by;And mine was never a heart of stone,And yet my heart hath given to noneThe tribute of a sigh;For fancy’s wild and witching mirthWas dearer than aught I found on earth;And the fairest forms I ever knewWere far less fair than—L’Inconnue!Many an eye that once was brightIs dark to-day in gloom;Many a voice that once was lightIs silent in the tomb;Many a flower that once was dightIn beauty’s most entrancing mightHath faded in its bloom;But she is still as fair and gayAs if she had sprung to life to-day;A ceaseless tone and a deathless hueWild Fancy hath given to—L’Inconnue![Pg 273]Many an eye of piercing jetHath only gleamed to grieve meMany a fairy form I’ve met,But none have wept to leave me;When all forsake, and all forget,One pleasant dream shall haunt me yet,One hope shall not deceive me;For oh! when all beside is past,Fancy is found our friend at last,And the faith is firm, and the love is true,Which are vowed by the lips of—L’Inconnue!

Many an eye that once was brightIs dark to-day in gloom;Many a voice that once was lightIs silent in the tomb;Many a flower that once was dightIn beauty’s most entrancing mightHath faded in its bloom;But she is still as fair and gayAs if she had sprung to life to-day;A ceaseless tone and a deathless hueWild Fancy hath given to—L’Inconnue![Pg 273]

Many an eye of piercing jetHath only gleamed to grieve meMany a fairy form I’ve met,But none have wept to leave me;When all forsake, and all forget,One pleasant dream shall haunt me yet,One hope shall not deceive me;For oh! when all beside is past,Fancy is found our friend at last,And the faith is firm, and the love is true,Which are vowed by the lips of—L’Inconnue!

I donot care for the paternal acres. To say the truth, Halbert Hall never pleased me. As a child I detested the long dark avenues of stunted trees; and the heavy melancholy stream of moaning water, and the long passages, with their doleful echoes, and their countless doors, and the vast chambers with all their pomp and pageantry of faded furniture and family portraits. I am happier here in Lincoln’s Inn, though one floor is my palace and one lackey my establishment; and I leave the Hall, without a sigh, to my elder brother.

I shall not die for the lack of ten thousand a year. I never longed to keep hounds, or an opera dancer; to give champagne dinners, or to represent a county; to win at Doncaster, or to lose atrouge et noir. Your true Epicurean does not need great wealth; I can afford to wear a tolerable coat, and drive an unexceptionable cabriolet; to be seen sometimes at the Opera, and keep myself out of reach of the Bench; to throw away a trifle at picquet, and cook a wild duck for my antagonist. These things content me; and, except when some unusual temptation has awakened my appetite or some more than common loss, for a time, ruffled my[Pg 274]philosophy, I would not readily exchange them for the rent-roll and the three per cents. of my elder brother.

As for the title, it is not to be mentioned seriously as the object of a reasonable man’s ambition. In old times a belted lord had certain privileges and pastimes, which might make life pass pleasantly enough. It was interesting to war upon his equals; it was amusing to trample on his inferiors; there was some merriment in the demolition of an abbey; there was some excitement in the settlement of a succession. Nowadays, it is as well to be called Tom as my Lord, unless you have a mind to dine at the dullest tables, and make speeches to the drowsiest audience in the world. So I resign my chance of the peerage without reluctance; the more that the coronet must pass from the temples of its present apoplectic possessor over an artillery officer, a rural dean, and an attaché to an embassy, before it decorates the honoured brows of my elder brother.

But when I have resigned philosophically all longings after these distinctions and advantages, which would be mine if I could date my birth but a twelvemonth earlier—when I have congratulated myself that I am not bound, by any necessity or interest, to do battle for the privileges of the order or talk nonsense in support of the Game Laws—why am I to be crossed at every turning by some hateful memento of the inferiority to which my unlucky planets have doomed me? Why are smiles to grow colder, and conversation more constrained, at my approach? Why are my witticisms listened to with such imperturbable gravity? And why does Lady Montdragon look zero when I bow, and turn away to whisper “Viper!” in her daughter’s ear?

Thus it has been from my infancy. My mother, to be sure, had the usual maternal peculiarities, and was always in our nursery squabbles the unfailing protectress of the party which was most immediately dependent upon her protection. But she died, poor lady, almost before I could be sensible how much I needed her alliance, leaving me to carry on the war unaided against an adversary whose auxiliaries were many and zealous, in the butler’s pantry and the servants’ hall, in the tenant’s cottage and the keeper’s lodge. I was[Pg 275]as handsome as Frederic; but his dress was more carefully tended, and his ringlets more studiously arrayed. I was as ravenous as Frederic; but his acquaintance with the cellar was more close and his visits to the store-closet more frequent. I was the bolder rider, but my pony was as rough as a bear. I was the better shot, but my gun was as heavy as a blunderbuss. Both learnt the lesson, but the praise and the shilling were for him; both plundered the orchard, but the reproof and the correction were for me. And when our father, with an unwonted exertion of impartiality, sent us to the same school, and supplied us with the same means of extravagance, though my hexameter was as smooth and my laugh as hearty, my scholarship as sound and my pluck as indisputable as my brother’s, he had more patrons and more friends than I had; and somehow or other, between Halbert major and Halbert minor there was a plaguy difference, though I scarcely yet suspected where it lay.

But I was soon able to discover of what materials the talisman was composed. My father broke his neck in a fox-chase, and my brother was master of the kennel and the stud; my uncle died of a late division, and my brother represented the borough. We came into the world, and began to jostle for places like the rest of its industrious citizens.

I met Lord Fortalice at a dinner-party. What could be more condescending than his lordship’s manner, or more flattering than his expressions? He had heard of my renown at college; he was confident of my success in life; he knew a host of my connections; he had had the sincerest respect for my father, he could assure me the Duke of Merino entertained the highest opinion of my talents, and Lady Eleanor had pointed me out last week as a model to her son. But when at last his lordship hoped that my principles would allow me to support the Bill which’ was next week to be before Parliament, and understood from me that the interests of sixty-seven independent men were in my brother’s hands, not mine, he gradually withdrew his civilities from me, and devoted himself thenceforth to the entertainment of a puny divine, who[Pg 276]spoke in monosyllables, and took an appalling quantity of snuff.

I was introduced to Tom Manille at the Opera. He was charmed to make my acquaintance; he had been told of my good fortune at the Salon, and was aware what a favourite I had been with the Baronne de Lusignan. Did I want a servant? A friend of his was going to dismiss one who was worth all the Indies. Was I looking for a hunter? His cousin had one, which would suit my weight exactly. He would make my betting-book, he would superintend my cellar, he would take me to asoirée chez Mademoiselle, he would give me a special recommendation to his tailor. He must make me known to the Somerses—their cook was Ude’s first pupil. Of course I should belong to the Club—his influence was omnipotent there. A few weeks elapsed; and Tom Manille was riding my brother’s horses, and drinking my brother’s chambertin. He always calls me “My dear fellow!” and never passes me without a most encouraging nod. But I have never dined with the Somerses, and last week I was blackballed at the Club.

I wrote a treatise on the state of the nation, and submitted it to an eminent publisher. He was wonderfully delighted with the work. The views were so sound, the arguments so convincing, the style so pure, the illustration so apposite. I began to look forward to an infinity of popularity and an eternity of fame; I dreamed of laurel wreaths; I calculated the profits of tenth editions. In imagination I was already the pilot of popular opinion, the setter-up and the putter-down of Cabinets. But when I struck out the magical M.P. from the proof-sheet of my title-page, my fall was immediate and disastrous. My language lost its elegance, and my subject its importance; and my pamphlet lies forgotten in the limbo of unpublished embryos, wanting only life, and willing to win immortality. I should have been the most influential writer of the day if I had not had an elder brother.

At Brighton I fell in love with Caroline Merton. She was an angel, of course; and it is not necessary to describe her more particularly. Her mother behaved to me with the[Pg 277]greatest kindness; she was a respectable old lady who wore a magnificent cap, and played casino while her daughter was waltzing. Caroline liked me, I am sure; for she discarded a dress because I disliked the colour, and insulted a colonel because I thought him a fool. I was in the seventh heaven for a fortnight; I rode with her on the downs, and walked with her on the Chain Pier. I drew sketches for her scrap-book, and scribbled poetry in her album. I gave her the loveliest poodle that ever was washed with rose-water, and called out a corpulent gentleman for talking politics while she played. Caroline was a fairy of a thousand spells; she danced like a mountain nymph and sang like a syren; she made beautiful card-racks and knew Wordsworth by heart; but to me her deepest fascination was her simplicity of feeling, her independence of every mercenary consideration, her scorn of Stars and Garters, herpenchantfor cottages and waterfalls. I was already meditating what county she would choose for her retirement, and what furniture she would prefer for her boudoir, when she asked me, at an ill-omened fancy ball, who was that clumsy Turk, in the green turban and the saffron slippers. It was my elder brother. She did not start nor change colour; well-taught beauties never do; but she danced that night with the clumsy Turk in the green turban and the saffron slippers; and when I made my next visit she was just sealing a note of invitation to him, and had lighted her taper with the prettiest verses I ever wrote in my life.

If your father was an alderman, you may nevertheless be votedcomme il faut; if your nose is as long as the spire of Strasburg, you may yet be considered good-looking; if you have published a sermon, you may still be reputed a wit; if you have picked a pocket, you may by-and-by be restored to society. But if you have an elder brother—migrate! Go to Crim Tartary or to Cochin China—wash the Hottentot—convert the Hindoo! At home you cannot escape the stigma that pursues you. You may have honesty, genius, industry—no matter. You are a “detrimental” for all that.

[Pg 278]

Last summer I saw Scribe’s amusing scenes, “Avant, Pendant, et Après,” at the Théàtre de Madame. In the “Avant,” when the Duchess of the oldrégime, after bestowing upon her eldest son unearned military rank and the richestpartiin all France, was quietly dooming her youngest born to live poor, unknown, and Chevalier of Malta, a fine little fellow, who was sitting in the front row before me, looked up at his father, and cried, “Mais nous avons changé tout cela, nést ce pas, mon papa?”

Much of it is changed. But to change it all, we must wait for a stranger revolution than that which has regenerated France.

Wehave all been occupied for a great many years in considering whether we ought to emancipate the Catholics from their disabilities. Let us at last begin to think whether it is not high time to emancipate ourselves from the discussion of them. My respectable and Popish cousin, Arthur M‘Carmick, inhabits a charmingentresolin the Rue St. Honoré, where he copies Vernet and reads Delavigne, dreams of Pauline Latour, and spends six hundred a year in the greatest freedom imaginable; yet, because he is not yet entitled to frank letters and address the Speaker’s chair, Arthur M‘Carmick wants to be emancipated. I, whom fate and a profession confine in my native country, am fettered by the thraldom, and haunted by the grievance, at every turn I take. In vain I fly from the doors of Parliament, and make a circuit of five miles to avoid the very echo of the county meeting; my friend in the club and my mistress in the ball-room, the ballad-singer in the street and the preacher in the pulpit, all combine to harass my nerves, and weary my forbearance; even Dr. Somnolent wakes occasionally after dinner, to indulge in a guttural murmur[Pg 279]concerning martyrdom and the Real Presence; and Sir Roger, when the hounds are at fault, reins up at my side, and harks back to the Revolution of 1688. Our very servants wear our prejudices, as constantly as our cast-off clothes, and our tradesmen offer us their theories more punctually than their bills. Not a week ago my groom assured me that there was no reason to be alarmed, for the Pope lived a great way off; and my barber on the same day hinted that he knew as much as most people, and that all he knew was this, that if ever the Catholics were uppermost they would play the old bear with the Church. I could not sleep that night for thinking of Ursa Major and the Beast in the Revelations. Yet I, because I may put on a silk gown whenever it shall please His Majesty to adorn me in such radiant attire, and because, some twenty years hence, I may have hope to be in the great council of the nation, the mouthpiece of some two or three dozen of independent individuals—I, forsooth, am to petition for no emancipation.

There are persons who cannot bear the uninterrupted ticking of a pendulum in their chamber. The sustained converse of a wife vexes many. I have heard of a prisoner who was driven mad by the continued plashing of water against the wall of his cell. Such things are lively illustrations of the disquiet I endure. It is not that I am thwarted in an argument or beat on a division; it is not that I have a horror of innovation, or a hatred of intolerance; you are welcome to trample upon my opinions, if you will not tread upon my toes. I will waltz with any fair Whig who has a tolerable ear and a pretty figure; and I will gladly dine with any septuagenarian Tory who is liberal in his culinary system and puts no restrictions upon his cellar. The Question kills me: no matter in what garb or under what banner it come. Brunswick and Liberator, reasoner and declaimer, song and speech, pamphlet and sermon—I hate them all.

Look at that handsome young man who is so pleasantly settling himself at his table at the Travellers’. He spends two hours daily upon his curls, and the rings on his fingers would make manacles for a burglar; surely he has no leisure for the affairs of the nation? The waiter has just[Pg 280]disclosed to his view theanguilles en matelotte, and the steward is setting down beside him the pint of Johannisberg. And he only arrived yesterday from Versailles; it is impossible he can have been infected in less than four-and-twenty hours. Alas! there is theCourierextended beside his plate; and the dish grows cold, and the wine grows warm, while Morrison sympathizes with the feelings of the Home Secretary, or penetrates the mysteries of the Attorney-General’s philippic.

Watch Lady Lansquenet as she takes up her hand from the whist-table. With what an ecstasy of delight does she marshal the brocaded warriors who are the strength of her battle; how indignantly does she thrust into their appointed station the more ignoble combatants, who are distinguished, like hackney-coaches, only by their number; how reverentially does she draw towards her those three last lingering cards, as if the magic alchemy of delay were of power to transmute a spade into a club, or exalt a plebeian into a prince. Then, with what an air of anxiety does she observe the changes and chances of the contest; now flushed with triumph, now palsied with alarm; and bestowing alternately upon her adversary and her ally equal shares of her impartial indignation. Lady Lansquenet is neither pretty nor young, nor musical nor literary. She does not know a Raphael from a Teniers, nor a scene by Shakespeare from a melody by Moore. Yet to me she seems the most conversible person in the room; for at least the Question is nothing to Lady Lansquenet. One may ask her what her winnings have been without fear. “I have lost,” says her ladyship, “twenty points. I am seldom so unfortunate; but what could I expect, you know—with a Popish partner!”

I will go and see Frederick Marston. He has been in love for six weeks. In ordinary cases I shrink with unfeigned horror from the conversation of a lover—barley-broth is not more terrible to an alderman, nor metaphysics to a blockhead, nor argument to a wit. But now, in mere self-defence, I will go and see Frederick Marston. He will talk of wood-pigeons and wildernesses, of eyebrows and ringlets, of sympathies and quadrilles, of “meet me by moonlight” and[Pg 281]the brightest eyes in the world. I will endure it all; for he will have no thought to waste upon the wickedness of the Duke of Wellington or the disfranchisement of Larry O’Shane. So I spoke in the bitterness of my heart; and, after a brief and painful struggle with a Treasury clerk in the Haymarket, and a narrow escape in Regent Street from the heavy artillery of a Somersetshire divine, I flung myself into my old schoolfellow’s armchair, and awaited his raptures or his apprehensions, as patiently as the wrecked mariner awaits the lions or the savages, when he has escaped from the billow and the blast. “My dear fellow,” said my unhappy friend, and pointed, as he spoke, to a letter which was lying open on the table, “I am the most miserable of fortune’s playthings. It is but a week since every obstacle was removed. The dresses were bespoken; the ring was bought; the Dean had been applied to, and the lawyer was at work. I had written out ten copies of an advertisement, and sold Hambletonian for half his value. Λ plague on all uncles! Sir George has discovered ‘an insuperable objection.’ One may guess his meaning without comment.”

“Upon my life, not I! Have you criticized his Correggio?”

“Never.”

“Have you abused his claret?”

“Never.”

“You have thinned his preserves, then?”

“I never carried a gun there!”

“Or slept while his chaplain was preaching?”

“I never sat in his pew.”

A horrible foreboding came over me. I sat in silent anticipation of the blow which was to overwhelm me. “Oh, my dear friend,” said Frederick after a long pause, “why was I born under so fatal a planet? And why did my second cousin sign that infernal petition?”

My father’s ancient and valued friend, Martin Marston, Esq., of Marston Hall, has vegetated for forty years in his paternal estate in the West of England, proud and happy in the enjoyment of everything which makes the life of a country gentleman enviable. He is an upright magistrate,[Pg 282]a kind master, a merciful landlord, and a hearty friend. If you believe his neighbours, he has not been guilty of a fault for ten years, but when he forgave the butler who plundered his plate-closet; nor uttered a complaint for twenty, except when the gout drove him out of his saddle, and compelled him to take refuge in the pony-chair. If his son were not the readiest Grecian at Westminster, he was nearly the best shot in the county; and if his daughters had little interest in the civil dissensions of the King’s Theatre, and thought of Almack’s much as a Metropolitan thinks of Timbuctoo, they had nevertheless as much beauty as one looks for in a partner, and quite as many accomplishments as one wants in a wife. Mr. Marston has always been a Liberal politician, partly because his own studies and connections have that way determined him. and partly because an ancestor of his bore a command in the Parliamentary army at the battle of Edgehill. But his principles never interfered with his comforts. He had always a knife and fork for the vicar, a furious High Churchman; and suffered his next neighbour, a violent Tory, to talk him to sleep without resistance or remonstrance—in consequence of which Dr. Gloss declared he had never found any man so open to conviction, and Sir Walter vowed that old Marston was the only Radical that ever listened to reason.

When I visited Marston Hall two months ago, on my road to Penzance, matters were strangely altered in the establishment. I found the old gentleman sitting in his library with a huge bundle of printed placards before him, and a quantity of scribbled paper lying on his table. The County Meeting was in agitation; and Mr. Marston, to the astonishment of every one, had determined to take the field against bigotry and persecution. He was composing a speech. Poachers were neglected, and turnip-stealers forgotten; his favourite songs echoed unheeded, and the urn simmered in vain. He hunted authorities, he consulted references, he hammered periods into shape, he strung metaphors together like beads, he translated, he transcribed. He was determined that, if the good folk of the West remained unenlightened, the fault should not rest upon his shoulders. Every pursuit and amusement were at an end.[Pg 283]He had been planning a new line of road through part of his estate, but the labourers were now at a standstill; and he had left off reading in the middle of the third volume of “The Disowned.” I found that Sir Walter had not dined at his table for five weeks; and when I talked of accompanying his party to the parish church on Sunday, Emily silenced me with a look, and whispered that her papa read the prayers at home now, for that Dr. Gloss was a detestable fanatic, who went about getting up petitions. Mr. Marston could talk about nothing but the Question, and the speech he meant to make upon it. “Talk of the dangers of Popery,” he said, “why old Tom Sarney, who died the other day, was a Papist; I hunted with him for ten years; never saw a man ride with better judgment. When I had that horrid tumble at Fen Brook, if Tom Sarney had not been at my side my Protestant neck would not have been worth a whistle that day. Danger, forsooth! They are Papists at Eastwood Park, you know; and, if my son’s word is to be credited, there is one pretty Catholic there who would save at least one heretic from the bonfire. My tenant Connel is a Papist; never flinches at Lady-day and Michaelmas. Lady Dryburgh is a Papist, and Dr. Gloss says she keeps a Jesuit in her house. By George, sir, she may have a worse faith than I, but she contrived to give twice as many blankets to the poor last Christmas. And so I shall tell my friends from the hustings next week.”

When I observed the report of the proceedings at the County Meeting in the newspaper a fortnight afterwards, I find only that Mr. Marston “spoke amidst considerable uproar.” But I learn from private channels that his speech has been by no means thrown away. For it is quoted with much emphasis by his gamekeeper, and it occupies thirteen closely written pages in Emily’s album.[Pg 284]

“Itis the best bat in the school. I call it Mercandotti, for its shape. Look at its face; run your hand over the plane. It is smoother than a looking-glass. I was a month suiting myself, and I chose it out of a hundred. I would not part with it for its weight in gold; and that exquisite knot! lovelier, to me, than a beauty’s dimple. You may fancy how that drives. I hit a ball yesterday from this very spot to the wickets in the Upper Shooting Fields; six runs clear, and I scarcely touched it. Hodgson said it was not the first time that a ball had been wonderfully struck by Mercandotti! There is not such another piece of wood in England. Collyer would give his ears for it; and that would be a long price, as Golightly says. Do take it in your hand, Courtenay; but, plague on your clumsy knuckles! You know as much of a bat as a Hottentot of the longitude or a guinea-pig of the German flute!”

So spoke the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant, thedecus columenquethat day of his Dame’s Eleven; proud of the red silk that girded his loins, and the white hose that decorated his ankles; proud of his undisputed prowess, and of his anticipated victory; but prouder far of the possession of this masterpiece of nature’s and Thompson’s workshop, than which no pearl was ever more precious, no phœnix more unique. As he spoke, a bail dropped. The Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant walked smilingly to the vacant wicket. What elegance in his attitude! What ease in his motions! Keep that little colleger out of the way, for we shall have the ball walking this road presently. Three to one on Ragueneau’s! Now! There was a moment’s pause of anxious suspense. The long fag rubbed his hands, and drew up his shirt-sleeves; the wicket-keeper stooped expectantly over the bails; the bowler trotted leisurely up to the bowling crease, and off went the ball upon its successive errands; from the hand of the bowler to the[Pg 285]exquisite knot in the bat of the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant, from the said exquisite knot to the unerring fingers of the crouching Long Nips, and from those fingers up into the blue firmament of heaven with the velocity of a sky-rocket. What a mistake! How did he manage it? His foot slipped, or the ball was twisted, or the sun dazzled him. It could not be the fault of the bat; it is the best bat in the school!

A week afterwards I met my talented and enthusiastic friend crawling to absence through the playing-fields, as tired as a posthorse, and as hot as a salamander, with many applauding associates on his right and on his left, who exhibited to him certain pencilled scrawls, on which he gazed with flushed and feverish delight. He had kept his wicket up two hours, and made a score of seventy-three. “I may thank my bat for it,” quoth he, shouldering it as Hercules might have shouldered his club; “it is the best bat in the school!” Alas for the instability of human affections! The exquisite knot had been superseded. Mercandotti had been sold for half-price, and the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was again to be eloquent, and again to be envied; he had still the best bat in the school.

I believe I was a tolerably good-natured boy. I am sure I was always willing to acquiesce in the estimation my companions set upon their treasures, because they were generally such that I felt myself a vastly inadequate judge of their actual value. But the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was exorbitant in the frequency and variety of his drafts upon my sympathy. He turned off five hockey-sticks in a fortnight; and each in its turn was unrivalled. He wore seven waistcoats in a week, and each for its brief day was as single in its beauty as the rainbow. In May, Milward’s shoes were unequalled; in June, Ingalton’s were divine. He lounged in Poet’s Walk over a duodecimo, and it was the sweetest edition that ever went into a waistcoat-pocket; he pored in his study over a folio, and there was no other copy extant but Lord Spencer’s and the mutilated one at Heidelberg. At Easter there were portraits hanging round his room; Titian never painted their equal. At[Pg 286]Michaelmas, landscapes had occupied their place; Claude would have owned himself outdone. The colt they were breaking for him in Leicestershire, the detonator he had bespoken of Charles Moore, the fishing-rod which had come from Bermuda, the flageolet he had won at the raffle—they were all, for a short season, perfection; he had always “the best bat in the school.”

The same whimsical propensity followed him through life. Four years after we had made our last voyage to Monkey Island in “the best skiff that ever was built,” I found him exhibiting himself in Hyde Park on “the best horse that ever was mounted.” A minute was sufficient for the compliments of our reciprocal recognition, and the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant launched out forthwith into a rhapsody on the merits of the proud animal he bestrode. “Kremlin, got by Smolensko, out of my uncle’s old mare. Do you know anything of a horse? Look at his shoulder! Upon my honour, it is a model for a sculptor. And feel how he is ribbed up; not a pin loose here; knit together like a ship’s planks; trots fourteen miles an hour without turning a hair, and carries fifteen stone up to any hounds in England. I hate your smart dressy creatures, as slender as a greyhound and as tender as a gazelle, that look as if they had been stabled in drawing-rooms and taken their turn with the poodle in my lady’s lap. I like to have plenty of bone under me. If this horse had been properly ridden, Courtenay, he would have won the Hunters’ Stakes at our place in a canter. He has not a leg that is not worth a hundred pounds. Seriously, I think there is not such another horse in the kingdom.”

But before a month had gone by, the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was ambling down the ride in a pair of stirrups far more nearly approachingterra firmathan those in which his illustrious feet had been reclining while he held forth on the excellences of Kremlin. “Oh yes,” he said, when I inquired after “the best horse in England,” “Kremlin is a magnificent animal; but then, after all, his proper place is with the hounds. One might as well wear one’s scarlet in a ball-room as ride Kremlin in the Park. And so I have bought Mrs. Davenant’s Bijou—and a perfect[Pg 287]bijou she is; throws out her little legs like an opera-dancer, and tosses her head as if she knew that her neck is irresistible. You will not find such another mane and tail in all London. Mrs. Davenant’s own maid used to put up both in papers every night of the week. She is quite a love!” And so the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant trotted off, on a smart dressy creature, as slender as a greyhound and as tender as a gazelle, that looked as if it had been stabled in a drawing-room and taken a turn with the poodle in my lady’s lap.

An analysis of the opinions of my eccentric friend would be an entertaining thing. “The best situation in town” has been found successively in nearly every street between the Regent’s Park and St. James’s Square; “the best carriage for a bachelor” has gone to-day on two wheels and to-morrow on four; “the best servant in Christendom” has been turned off, within my own knowledge, for insolence, for intoxication, for riding his master’s horse, and for riding his master’s inexplicables; and “the best fellow in the world” has been at various periods deep in philosophy and deep in debt—a frequenter of the Fives Court and a dancer of quadrilles—a Tory and a Republican—a prebendary and a Papist—a drawer of dry pleadings and a singer of sentimental serenades. If I had acted upon Volant’s advice, I should have been to-day subscribing to every club and taking in every newspaper; I should have been imbibing the fluids of nine wine merchants, and covering my outward man with the broadcloth of thirteen tailors.

It is a pity that Volant has been prevented by indolence, a doting mother, and four thousand a year, from applying his energies to the attainment of any professional distinction. In a variety of courses he might have commanded success. A cause might have come into court stained and spotted with every conceivable infamy, with effrontery for its crest, falsehood for its arms, and perjuries for its supporters; but if Volant had been charged with the advocacy of it, his delighted eye would have winked at every deficiency, and slumbered at every fault; in his sight weakness would have sprung up into strength, deformity would have faded into beauty, impossibility would have been[Pg 288]sobered into fact. Every plaintiff, in his showing, would have been wronged irreparably; every defendant would have been as unsullied as snow. His would have been the most irreproachable of declarations, his the most impregnable of pleas. The reporters might have tittered, the bar might have smiled, the bench might have shaken its heads; nothing would have persuaded him that he was beaten. He would have thought the battle won, when his lines were forced at all points; he would have deemed the house secure, when the timbers were creaking under his feet. It would have been delicious, when his strongest objection had been overruled, when his clearest argument had been stopped, when his stoutest witness had broken down, to see him adjusting his gown with a self-satisfied air, and concluding with all the emphasis of anticipated triumph, “That ismycase, my Lord!”

Or if he had coveted senatorial fame, what a space would he have filled in the political hemisphere! If he had introduced a Turnpike Bill, the House would have forgotten Emancipation for a time; if he had moved the committal of a printer, Europe would have gazed as upon the arrest of a peer of the realm. The Minister he supported would have been the most virtuous of statesmen when both Houses had voted his impeachment; the gentlemen he represented would have been the most virtuous of constituents when they had sold him their voices at five per cent. over the market price.

Destiny ordered it otherwise. One day, in that sultry season of the year when fevers and flirtations come to their crisis, and matrimony and hydrophobia scare you at every corner, I happened to call at his rooms in Regent Street, at about that time in the afternoon which the fashionable world calls daybreak. He was sitting with his chocolate before him, habited only in hisrobe de chambre; but the folds of that joyous drapery seemed to me composed in a more studied negligence than was their wont, and the dark curls upon his fine forehead were arranged in a more scrupulous disorder. I saw at a glance that some revolution was breaking out in the state of my poor friend’s mind; and when I found a broken fan on the mantelpiece and a[Pg 289]withered rosebud on the sofa, Walker’s Lexicon open on the writing-table and an unfinished stanza reposing on the toast-rack, I was no longer in doubt as to its nature; the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was seriously in love.

It was not to be wondered at that his mistress was the loveliest being of her sex, nor that he told me so fourteen times in the following week. Her father was a German prince, the proprietor of seven leagues of vineyard, five ruined castles, and three hundred flocks of sheep. She had light hair, blue eyes, and a profound knowledge of metaphysics; she sang like a siren, and her name was Adelinda.

I spent a few months abroad. When I returned, he was married to the loveliest being of her sex, and had sent me fifty notes to inform me of the fact and beseech me to visit him at Volant Hall, with the requisite quantity of sympathy and congratulation. I went, and was introduced in form. Her father was a country clergyman, the proprietor of seven acres of glebe, five broken armchairs, and three hundred manuscript discourses; she had dark hair, black eyes, and a fond love of poetry; she danced like a wood-nymph, and her name was Mary.

He has lived since his marriage a very quiet life, rarely visiting the metropolis, and devoting his exertions most indefatigably to the comfort of his tenantry and the improvement of his estate. Volant Hall is deliciously situated in the best county in England. If you go thither, you must go prepared with the tone, or at least with the countenance, of approbation and wonder. He gives you, of course, mutton such as no other pasture fattens, and ale such as no other cellar brews. The stream that runs through his park supplies him with trout of unprecedented beauty and delicacy; and he could detect a partridge that had feasted in his woods amidst the bewildering confusion of a Lord Mayor’s banquet. You must look at his conservatory; no other was ever constructed on the same principle. You must handle his plough; he himself has obtained a patent for the invention. Everything, within doors and without, has wherewithal to attract and astonish;[Pg 290]the melon and the magnolia, the stable and the dairy, the mounting of his mother’s spectacles and the music of his wife’s piano. He has few pictures, but they are the masterpieces of the best masters. He has only one statue, but he assures you that it is Canova’schef-d’œuvre. The last time I was with him, he had a theme to descant upon which made his eloquence more than usually impassioned. An heir was just born to the Volant acres. An ox was roasted, and a barrel pierced in every meadow; the noise of fiddles was incessant for a week, and the expenditure of powder would have lasted a Lord High Admiral for a twelvemonth. It was allowed by all the county that there never was so sweet a child as little Adolphus.

Among his acquaintance, who have generally little toleration for any foibles but their own, Volant is pretty generally voted a bore.

“Of course our pinery is not like Mr. Volant’s,” says Lady Framboise; “he is prating from morning to night of his fires and flues. We have taken some pains, and we pay a ruinous sum to our gardener, but we never talk about it.”

“The deuce take that fellow Volant,” says Mr. Crayon, “does he fancy no one has a Correggio but himself? I have one that cost me two thousand guineas, and I would not part with it for double the sum; but I never talk about it.”

“That boy Volant,” says old Sir Andrew Chalkstone, “is so delighted to find himself the father of another boy, that, by Jove, he can speak of nothing else. Νow I have a little thing in a cradle, too; a fine boy, they tell me, and vastly like his father, but I never talk about it.”

Well, well! let a man be obliging to his neighbours, and merciful to his tenants, an upright citizen and an affectionate friend, and there is one judge who will not condemn him for having “the best bat in the school!”

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.LONDON AND EDINBURGH[Pg 291]

FOOTNOTES:[1]Maccabees, ch. i.[2]We might have added stage managers. Their genius for the Bathos Precipitate is frequently displayed in notices of the following kind:—“Monday, January 7.“The new drama, entitled ——, has been received with uninterrupted bursts of applause, and will be repeated every evening till farther notice.”“Tuesday, January 8.“In obedience to the wishes of the public, the new drama, entitled ——, is withdrawn.”[3]Sir Francis Wentworth points our quotation thus:Sic nos servavit A—Poll—Ο!—Hοr.[4]Every one knows the gradations of vis, visit, and visitation;vis inertiæ, therefore, signifies an idle visit.[5]Stipula.Hence the term stipulation.[6]The ceremony was rarely, if ever, used in the reign of Tiberius.[7]This was the customary response, signifying, “Where you are the master I shall be mistress.”[8]The greater part of the satire here alluded to was retrenched in our Second Edition.[9]In Petty Cury, Cambridge.[10]Pattison.[11]Bulwer—afterwards Lord Lytton.[12]Stapleton.[13]Ryland of St. John’s.[14]Macaulay.[15]Ord.[16]Praed.[17]Charles Austin.[18]Churchill.[19]Moore.[20]Prosser.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]Maccabees, ch. i.

[2]We might have added stage managers. Their genius for the Bathos Precipitate is frequently displayed in notices of the following kind:—“Monday, January 7.“The new drama, entitled ——, has been received with uninterrupted bursts of applause, and will be repeated every evening till farther notice.”“Tuesday, January 8.“In obedience to the wishes of the public, the new drama, entitled ——, is withdrawn.”

[2]We might have added stage managers. Their genius for the Bathos Precipitate is frequently displayed in notices of the following kind:—

“Monday, January 7.

“The new drama, entitled ——, has been received with uninterrupted bursts of applause, and will be repeated every evening till farther notice.”

“Tuesday, January 8.

“In obedience to the wishes of the public, the new drama, entitled ——, is withdrawn.”

[3]Sir Francis Wentworth points our quotation thus:Sic nos servavit A—Poll—Ο!—Hοr.

[3]Sir Francis Wentworth points our quotation thus:

Sic nos servavit A—Poll—Ο!—Hοr.

[4]Every one knows the gradations of vis, visit, and visitation;vis inertiæ, therefore, signifies an idle visit.

[5]Stipula.Hence the term stipulation.

[6]The ceremony was rarely, if ever, used in the reign of Tiberius.

[7]This was the customary response, signifying, “Where you are the master I shall be mistress.”

[8]The greater part of the satire here alluded to was retrenched in our Second Edition.

[9]In Petty Cury, Cambridge.

[10]Pattison.

[11]Bulwer—afterwards Lord Lytton.

[12]Stapleton.

[13]Ryland of St. John’s.

[14]Macaulay.

[15]Ord.

[16]Praed.

[17]Charles Austin.

[18]Churchill.

[19]Moore.

[20]Prosser.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:have writtten a farce=> have written a farce {pg 39}Susan sung us some simple=> Susan sang us some simple {pg 53}Ammon to ussume the quart-pot=> Ammon to assume the quart-pot {pg 66}

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

have writtten a farce=> have written a farce {pg 39}

Susan sung us some simple=> Susan sang us some simple {pg 53}

Ammon to ussume the quart-pot=> Ammon to assume the quart-pot {pg 66}

[The image of the book's back cover is unavailable.]

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