caring for nothing but the House of Commons and the world of
politics. At heart I am an agriculturist. Give me three acres and
a cow--anybody's, I don't care--and I will settle down in peace and
quietness, remote from political strife, never turning an ear to
listen to the roll of battle at Westminster. I am often distraught
between the attractions of interludes in the lives of CINCINNATUS
and of WILLIAM OF ORANGE's great Minister. Of the two I think I am
more drawn towards the rose-garden at Sheen than by CINCINNATUS's
unploughed land. Before I die I should like to create a new rose and
call it 'The Grand Old Man.'"

Quite a revelation this of the true inwardness of the SQUIRE. Would
astonish some people in London, I fancy, if ever I were to mention
this conversation. But, to quote once more from a revered authority:
"We all live a dual life, and are not actually that which, upon
cursory regard, the passer-by believes us to be. Every gentleman, in
whatever part of the House he may sit, has a skeleton in the cupboard
of his valet."

The SQUIRE stayed here only a morning, passing on to other scenes.
I watched his departure with mingled feelings; sorrow at losing a
delightful companion, and apprehension of what might happen if he
were to remain here to go through the full cure. The place is, as SARK
says, the most brimstony on the same level. You breathe brimstone,
drink it, bathe in it, and take it in at the pores. At the end
of three weeks or a month you are dangerously saturated with the
chemical. An ordinary lucifer match is nothing to a full-bodied
patient at the end of three weeks treatment at Aix-la-Chapelle. If the
SQUIRE had stayed on, I should never have seen his towering frame pass
underneath a doorway without my heart leaping to my mouth. Some day he