Beauchamp's Career -- Volume 1

of Rosamund, the lette

uard was

ck Wilmore, a messmate, offered to second him, though he should be dismissed the service for it. Another second would easily be found somewhere; for, as Nevil observed, you have only to set these affairs going, and British blood rises: we are not the people you see on the surface. Wilmore's father was a parson, for instance. What did he do? He could not help himself: he supplied the army and navy with recruits! One son was in a marching regiment, the other was Jack, and three girls had vowed never to quit the rectory save as brides of officers. Nevil thought that seemed encouraging; we were evidently not a nation of shopkeepers at heart; and he quoted sayings of Mr. Stukely Culbrett's, in which neither his ear nor Wilmore's detected the under- ring Stukely was famous for: as that Englan

n to Paris; he was ordered to join his ship, and he lay moored across the water in the port of Bevisham, panting for notice to be taken of him. The slight of the total disregard of his letter now affected him personally; it took him some ti

eeling was one of genuine regret that Frenchmen should have behaved unworthil

xt sat at his uncle's table, and h

lf a fool, sir. All I know is, I waited for my bett

e like the kingdom of Great Britain and Manchester, boy Nevil. We can fight foreigners when the time comes.' He directed Nevil to look home, and cast an eye on the cotton-spinners, with the remark that they were binding us hand and foot to

; were halfhearted, and were beaten; and then we petted them, and bit by bit our privileges were torn away. We made lords of them to catch them, an

asked, 'belong to

You shall see the machines they work with. You shall see the miserable lank-jawed half-stewed pantaloons they've managed to make of Englishmen there. My blood 's past boiling. They work young children in their factories from morning to night. T

oo horrible for comment. Everard sipped claret. Nevil lashed his head for the clea

by the belly. The head and the legs of the country are sound still; I don't guarantee it for long, but the middle's rapacious and

e with jolly admiration of the

. It's a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if ever you're bitten-and it's the curse of our country to have politics as well as the ot

g signs of decay? and signs how ignoble! Half-a- dozen crescent lines cunningly turned, sketched her figure before the world, and the reflection for one ready to die upholding her was that the portrait was no caricature. Su

inners. But Nevil was for a plan, a system, immediate action; the descending among the people, and

old-fashioned ornaments! The fault must be ours. Shrugging and sneering is about as honourable as blazing fireworks over your own defeat. Back we have to go! that's the point, sir.

don't,' sai

an our duties. As for titles, the way

he gets his dig in the ribs for all his attitudinizing. It's very well for a man to talk like that who owns no more than his barebodkin life, poor devil. Tall talk's his jewelry: he must have his dandification in bunkum. You ought to k

one,' said Nevil, depressed by th

he gods: and I wouldn't yield an inch of ground. It's no use calling things by fine names-the country's ruined by cowardice. Poursuiv

ighed Nevil, entangled

t pe

ople of Great Bri

en the battle's done,

the people to

s wait for the wi

laimed despondingly,

e're confoundedly out of

their natural alliance with the people, and lead them, as they did of old, to the battle-field. How might they? A comely Sussex lass could not well tell him how. Sarcastic reports of the troublesome questioner represented him applying to a nymph of the country for enlightenment. He thrilled surprisingly under the charm of feminine beauty. 'The fellow's sound at bottom,' his uncle said, hearing of his having really been seen walking in the complete form proper to his budding age, that is, in two halves. Nevil showed that he had gained an acquaintance with the struggles of the neighbouring agricultural poor to live and rear their children. His uncle's table roared at his enumeration of the

dy past eighty, hitherto divided from him in sympathy by her dislike of his uncle Everard, who had once been his livin

se as that is should never be a home for you.' She hinted at Rosamund. Nevil defended the persecuted woman, but with no better success than from the attacks of the Romfrey ladies; with this difference, however, that these decried

and make you my heir, and I would have educated you. You shall see a great-nephew of mine that I did educate; he is eating his dinners for t

izabeth Beauchamp, respecting her for her constitutional health and brightness, and regretting for the sake of the country that she had not married to give England men and women resembling her. On the whole he considered her wiser in her prescription for the malady besetting him than his uncle. He kne

owers growing along the banks in Summer.' The old lady replied immediately, enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds: 'Colonel Halkett informs me you are under a cloud at Steynham,

thank you, but I shall not cash the

s one of a family I take an interest in, and let him run before they came up. My uncle heard a gun; I sent the head gamekeeper word in t

le to a Christian gentleman. You will receive from the publisher the "Life and Letters of Lord Collingwood," who

hat fit, we held the standing by the Moslem, on behalf of the Mediterranean (and the Moslem is one of our customers, bearing an excellent reputation for the payment of debts), to be good, granting the necessity. We deplored the necessity. The Press wept over it. That, however, was not the politic tone for us while the Imperial berg of Polar ice watched us keenly; and the Press proceeded to remind us that we had once been bull-dogs. Was there not an animal within us having a right to a turn now and then? And was it not (Falstaff, on a calm world, was quoted) for the benefit of our constitutions now and then to loosen the animal? Granting the necessity, of course. By dint of incessantly speaking of the necessity we granted it unknowingly. The lighter hearts regarded our period of monotonously lyrical prosperity as a man sensible of fresh morning air looks back on the snoring bolster. Many of the graver were glad of a change. After all t

, the purifier a

, and told with approval how the Royal hand had trembled in committing itself to the form of signature to which its action is limited. If there was m

olutely unanimous, and

d, for it excluded

of those negrophiles and sweaters of Christians, whose isola

nse; they abused the treasonable barking cur unmercifully. They printed almost as much as he would have uttered, excepting the strong salt of his similes, likening that rascal and his crew to the American weed in our waters, to the rotting wild bees' nest in our trees, to the worm in our ships' timbers, and to lamentable afflictions of the human frame, and

e shall see what staff

vi

rue young Beauchamp-Romfrey to be st