of wings that can be desired. He seems to be irresistible we admire him and hate him, and some time elapses before we begin to suspect that he is merely a stage dragon, and not one of those who really walk this earth. -- ple of the power which a real artistic insight may exhibit under the most disadvantageous forms. To realise his characteristic power, we should take one of the great French novelists whom we admire for the exquisite proportions of his story, the unity of the interTo sum up, then, the results of our analysis, est and the skill-so unlike our common it seems clear that Richardson was a man of English clumsiness - with which all details true genius; and we can distinguish the are duly subordinated. He should have, too, points of analogy between him and the French the comparative weakness of French novelschool, at first sight so distinct in their meth- ists, a defective perception of character, a od, and who yet express so warm an admira- certain unwillingness in art as in politics to tion for his talents. His defects are obvious, allow individual peculiarities to interfere and in large degree due to his era. He knows, with the main flow of events; for, admitting for example, nothing of the influence of Na- the great excellence of his minor performers, ture. There is scarcely throughout his books Richardson's most elaborately designed charone description showing the power of appeal-acters are so artificial that they derive their ing to emotions through scenery claimed by interest from the events in which they play every modern scribbler. In passing the their parts, rather than give interest to them Alps, the only remark which one of his - little as he may have intended it. Then characters has to make, beyond describing we must cause our imaginary Frenchman to the horrible dangers of the Mont Cenis, is transmigrate into the body of a small, plump, that "every object which here presents it- weakly printer of the eighteenth century. self is excessively miserable." His ideal We may leave him a fair share of his vivascenery is a large and convenient country- city, though considerably narrowing his house, situated in a spacious park," with views of life and morality; but we must surplenty of "fine prospects," which you are round him with a court of silly women expected to view from a "neat but plain whose incessant flatteries must generate in villa, built in the rustic taste." And his him an unnatural propensity to twaddle. views of morality are as contracted as his All the gossiping propensities of his nature taste in landscapes. The most distinctive will grow to unhealthy luxuriance under this article of his creed is that children should unnatural stimulant, and the fine edge of his have a reverence for their parents, which wit will be somewhat dulled in the process. would be exaggerated in the slave of an He will thus become capable of being a Eastern despot. We can pardon Clarissa bore a thing which is impossible to any for refusing to die happy until her stupid and unsophisticated Frenchman. In this way ill-tempered old father has revoked a curse we might obtain a literary product so anomwhich he bestowed upon her. But we can- alous in appearance as Clarissa · a story not quite excuse Sir Charles Grandison for in which a most affecting situation is drawn writing in this fashion to his disreputable old with extreme power, and yet so overlaid parent, who has asked his consent to a cer- with twaddle, so unmercifully protracted tain family arrangement in which he had a and spun out as to be almost unreadable to legal right to be consulted. the present generation. But to complete "As for myself," he says, "I cannot have Richardson, we must inoculate him with the one objection; but what am I in this case? propensities of another school: we must give My sister is wholly my father's; I also am him a liberal share of the feminine sensitivehis. The consideration he gives me in this in-ness and closeness of observation of which stance, confounds me. It binds me to him Miss Austen is the great example. And in double duty. It would look like taking perhaps, to fill in the last details he ought, advantage of it, were I so much as to offer in addition, to have a dash of the more uncmy humble opinion, unless he were pleased tuous and offensive variety of the dissenting to command it from me." preacher for we know not where else, to Even one of Richardson's abject lady-cor- look for the astonishing and often ungramrespondents was revolted by this exagger-matical fluency by which he is possessed, and ated servility. But narrow as his vision which makes his best passages remind us of might be in some directions, his genius is the marvellous malleability of some precious not the less genuine. He is a curious exam-metals. CHAPTER XX. THE DEBATE ON THE BALLOT. PHINEAS took his seat in the House with a consciousness of much inward trepidation of heart on that night of the ballot debate. After leaving Lord Chiltern he went down to his club and dined alone. Three or four men came and spoke to him; but he could not talk to them at his ease, nor did he quite know what they were saying to him. He was going to do something which he longed to achieve, but the very idea of which, now that it was so near to him, was a terror to him. To be in the House and not to speak would, to his thinking, be a disgraceful failure. Indeed, he could not continue to keep his seat unless he spoke. He had been put there that he might speak. He would speak. Of course he would speak. Had he not already been conspicuous almost as a boy orator? And yet, at this moment he did not know whether he was eating mutton or beef, or who was standing opposite to bim and talking to him, so much was he in dread of the ordeal which he had prepared for himself. As he went down to the House after dinner, he almost made up his mind that it would be a good thing to leave London by one of the night mail trains. He felt himself to be stiff and stilted as he walked, and that his clothes were uneasy to him. When he turned into Westminster Hall he regretted more keenly than ever he had done that he had seceded from the keeping of Mr. Low. He could, he thought, have spoken very well in court, and would there have learned that self-confidence which now failed him so terribly. It was, however, too late to think of that. He could only go in and take his seat. He went in and took his seat, and the chamber seemed to him to be mysteriously large, as though benches were crowded over benches, and galleries over galleries. He had been long enough in the House to have lost the original awe inspired by the Speaker and the clerks of the House, by the row of Ministers, and by the unequalled importance of the place. On ordinary occasions he could saunter in and out, and whisper at his ease to a neighbour. But on this occasion he went direct to the bench on which he ordinarily sat, and began at once to rehearse to himself his speech. He had in truth been doing this all day, in spite of the effort that he had made to rid himself of all memory of the occasion. He had been collecting the heads of his speech while Mr. Low had been talking to him, and refreshLIVING AGE. VOL. IX. 326. -- ing his quotations in the presence of Lord Chiltern and the dumb-bells. He had taxed his memory and his intellect with various tasks, which, as he feared, would not adjust themselves one with another. He had learned the headings of his speech, - so that one heading might follow the other, and nothing be forgotten. And he had learned verbatim the words which he intended to utter under each heading, — with a hope that if any one compact part should be destroyed or injured in its compactness by treachery of memory, or by the course of the debate, each other compact part might be there in its entirety, ready for use; -or at least so many of the compact parts as treachery of memory and the accidents of the debate might leave to him; so that his speech might be like a vessel, watertight in its various compartments, that would float by the buoyancy of its stern and bow, even though the hold should be waterlogged. But this use of his composed words, even though he should be able to carry it through, would not complete his work; for it would be his duty to answer in some sort those who had gone before him, and in order to do this he must be able to insert, without any pre-arrangement of words or ideas, little intercalatory parts between those compact masses of argument with which he had been occupying himself for many laborious hours. As he looked round upon the House and perceived that everything was dim before him, that all his original awe of the House had returned, and with it a present quaking fear that made him feel the pulsations of his own heart, he became painfully aware that the task he had prepared for himself was too great. He should, on this the occasion of his rising to his maiden legs, have either prepared for himself a short general speech, which could indeed have done little for his credit in the House, but which might have served to carry off the novelty of the thing, and have introduced him to the sound of his own voice within those walls, - or he should have trusted to what his wit and spirit would produce for him on the spur of the moment, and not have burdened himself with a huge exercise of memory. the presentation of a few petitions he tried to repeat to himself the first of his compact parts, a compact part on which, as it might certainly be brought into use let the debate have gone as it might, he had expended great care. He had flattered himself that there was something of real strength in his words as he repeated them to himself in the comfortable seclusion of his own room, During 146 and he had made them so ready to his The debate began, and if the leisure afforded by a long and tedious speech could have served him, he might have had leisure enough. He tried at first to follow all that this advocate for the ballot might say, hop ing thence to acquire the impetus of strong interest; but he soon wearied of the work, and began to long that the speech might be ended, although the period of his own martyrdom would thereby be brought nearer to him. At half-past seven so many members had deserted their seats, that Phineas began to think that he might be saved all further pains by a "count out." He reckoned the members present and found that first by they were below the mystic forty, two, then by four, by five, by seven, and at one time by eleven. It was not for him to ask the Speaker to count the House, but he wondered that no one else should do so. And yet, as the idea of this termination to the night's work came upon him, and as he thought of his lost labor, he almost took courage again, almost dreaded rather than wished for the interference of some maliBut there was no malicious cious member. member then present, or else it was known that Lords of the Treasury and Lords of the Admiralty would flock in during the and thus Speaker's ponderous counting, the slow length of the ballot-lover's verbosity was permitted to evolve itself without interruption. At eight o'clock he had completed his catalogue of illustrations, and immediately Mr. Monk rose from the Treasury bench to explain the grounds on which the Government must decline to support the motion before the House. 66 Phineas was aware that Mr. Monk in- come from such daring. As the ballot would Then Mr. Turnbull rose slowly from the bench below the gangway. With a speaker so frequent and so famous as Mr. Turnbull no hurry is necessary. He is sure to have his opportunity. The Speaker's eye is ever travelling to the accustomed spots. Mr. Turnbull rose slowly, and began his "There was nothoration very mildly. ing," he said, "that he admired so much as the poetic imagery and the high-flown sentiment of his right honourable friend "unless the member for West Bromwich,” — Mr. Monk sat for West Bromwich, it were the stubborn facts and unanswered arguments of his honourable friend who had brought forward this motion." Then Mr. Turnbull proceeded after his fashion to crush Mr. Monk. He was very prosaic, very clear both in voice and language, very harsh, and very unscrupulous. He and Mr. Monk had been joined together in politics for over twenty years; - but one would have thought, from Mr. Turnbull's words, that they had been the bitterest of enemies. Mr. Monk was taunted with his office, taunted with his desertion of the liberal party, taunted with his ambition, and taunted with his lack of ambition. "I once thought," said Mr. Turnbull, "nay, not long ago I thought, that he and I would have fought this battle for the people, shoulder to shoulder, and knee to knee; - but he has preferred that the knee next to his own shall wear a garter, and that the shoulder which supports him shall be decked with a blue ribbon,- -as shoulders, I presume, are decked in those closet conferences which are called Cabinets." Just after this, while Mr. Turnbull was still going on with a variety of illustrations drawn from the United States, Barrington Erle stepped across the benches up to the place where Phineas was sitting, and whispered a few words into his ear. "Bonteen is prepared to answer Turnbull, and wishes to do it. I told him that I thought you should have the opportunity, if you wish it." Phineas was not ready with a reply to Erle at the spur of the moment. "Somebody told me," continued Erle," that you had said that you would like to speak tonight." So I did," said Phineas. "Shall I tell Bonteen that you will it." do great hell around him. "I had rather wait," he said at last. "Bonteen had better reply." Barrington Erle looked into his face, and then, stepping back across the benches, told Mr. Bonteen that the opportunity was his. Mr. Turnbull continued speaking quite long enough to give poor Phineas time for repentance; but repentance was of no use. He had decided against himself, and his decision could not be reversed. He would have left the House, only it seemed to him that had he done so every one would look at him. He drew his hat down over his eyes, and remained in his place, hating Mr. Bonteen, hating Barrington Erle, hating Mr. Turnbull, but hating no one so much as he hated himself. He had disgraced himself for ever, and could never recover the occasion which he had lost. Mr. Bonteen's speech was in no way remarkable. Mr. Monk, he said, had done the State good service by adding his wisdom and patriotism to the Cabinet. The sort of argument which Mr. Bonteen used to prove that a man who has gained credit as a legislator should in process of time become a member of the executive, is trite and common, and was not used by Mr. The chamber seemed to swim round be- Bonteen with any special force. Mr. Bonfore our hero's eyes. Mr. Turnbull was still teen was glib of tongue, and possessed that going on with his clear, loud, unpleasant familiarity with the place which poor Phinvoice, but there was no knowing how long eas had lacked so sorely. There was one he might go on. Upon Phineas, if he moment, however, which was terrible to should now consent, might devolve the du- Phineas. As soon as Mr. Bonteen had ty, within ten minutes, within three min- shown the purpose for which he was on his utes, of rising there before a full House to legs, Mr. Monk looked round at Phineas, defend his great friend, Mr. Monk, from a as though in reproach. He had expected gross personal attack. Was it fit that that this work should fall into the hands such a novice as he should undertake such of one who would perform it with more a work as that? Were he to do so, all warmth of heart than could be expected that speech which he had prepared, with from Mr. Bonteen. When Mr. Bonteen its various self-floating parts, must go for ceased, two or three other short speeches nothing. The task was exactly that were made, and members fired off their which, of all tasks, he would best like to little guns. Phineas having lost so great have accomplished, and to have accom- an opportunity, would not now consent to plished well. But if he should fail! And to accept one that should be comparatively he felt that he would fail. For such work valueless. Then there came a division. a man should have all his senses about him, The motion was lost by a large majority, — - his full courage, perfect confidence, by any number you might choose to name, something almost approaching to contempt as Phineas had said to Lord Brentford; for listening opponents, and nothing of fear but in that there was no triumph to the in regard to listening friends. He should poor wretch who had failed though fear, be as a cock in his own farmyard, master and who was now a coward in his own esof all the circumstances around him. But teem. Phineas Finn had not even as yet heard the sound of his own voice in that room. At this moment, so confused was he, that he did not know where sat Mr. Mildmay, and where Mr. Daubeny. All was fused, and there arose as it were a sound of waters in his ears, and a feeling as of a con He left the House alone, carefully avoiding all speech with any one. As he came out he had seen Laurence Fitzgibbon in the lobby, but he had gone on without pausing a moment, so that he might avoid his friend. And when he was out in Palace Yard, where was he to go next? He looked at his watch, and found that it was just ten. He did not dare to go to his club, and it was impossible for him to go home and to bed. He was very miserable, and nothing would comfort him but sympathy. Was there any one who would listen to his abuse of himself, and would then answer him with kindly apologies for his own weakness? Mrs. Bunce would do it if she knew how, but sympathy from Mrs. Bunce would hardly avail. There was but one person in the world to whom he could tell his own humiliation with any hope of comfort, and that person was Lady Laura Kennedy. Sympathy from any man would have been distasteful to him. He had thought for a moment of flinging himself at Mr. Monk's feet and telling all his weakness; but he could not have endured pity even from Mr. Monk. It was not to be endured from any man. He thought that Lady Laura Kennedy would be at home, and probably alone. He knew, at any rate, that he might be allowed to knock at her door, even at that hour. He had left Mr. Kennedy in the House, and there he would probably remain for the next hour. There was no man more constant than Mr. Kennedy in seeing the work of the day, -or of the night, to its end. So Phineas walked up Victoria Street, and from thence into Grosvenor Place, and knocked at Lady Laura's door. 'Yes; Lady Laura was at home; and alone." He was shown up into the drawing-room, and there he found Lady Laura waiting for her husband. 66 "And what have they done, those leviathans of the people? Then Phineas told her what was the majority. "Is there any thing the matter with you, Mr. Finn?" she said, looking at him suddenly. "Are you not well? 'Yes; I am very well." "Will you not sit down? There is something wrong, I know. What is it?" "I have simply been the greatest idiot, the greatest coward, the most awkward ass that ever lived!" "What do you mean?" "I do not know why I should come to tell you of it at this hour at night, but I have come that I might tell you. Probably because there is no one else in the whole world who would not laugh at me." "At any rate, I shall not laugh at you," said Lady Laura. "But you will despise me." "You cannot help it. I despise myself. For years I have placed before myself the ambition of speaking in the House of Commons; for years I have been thinking whether there would ever come to me an opportunity of making myself heard in that assembly, which I consider to be the first in the world. To-day the opportunity has been offered to me, and, though the motion was nothing, the opportunity was great. The subject was one on which I was thoroughly prepared. The manner in which I was summoned was most flattering to me. I was especially called on to perform a task which was most congenial to my feelings; and I declined because I was afraid." "You had thought too much about it, my friend," said Lady Laura. "Too much or too little, what does it matter?" replied Phineas, in despair. "There is the fact. I could not do it. Do you remember the story of Conachar in the Fair Maid of Perth;'- how his heart refused to give him blood enough to fight? He had been suckled by the milk of a timid creature, and, though he could die, there was none of the strength of manhood in him. It is about the same thing with me, I take it." "I do not think you are at all like Conachar," said Lady Laura. "I am equally disgraced, and I must perish after the same fashion. I shall apply for the Chiltern Hundreds in a day or two." "You will do nothing of the kind,” said Lady Laura, getting up from her chair and coming towards him, "You shall not leave this room till you have promised me that you will do nothing of the kind. I do not know as yet what has occurred to-night; but I do know that that modesty which has kept you silent is more often a grace than a disgrace." This was the kind of sympathy which he wanted. She drew her chair nearer to him, and then he explained to her as accurately as he could what had taken place on the House this evening, how he had prepared his speech, how he had felt that his preparation was vain, how he perceived from the course of the debate that if he spoke at all his speech must be very different from what he had at first intended; how he had declined to take upon himself a task which seemed to require so close a knowledge of the ways of the House and of the temper of the men as the defence of such a man as Mr. Monk. In accusing himself, he unconsciously, excused himself, and his ex |