was experiencing all the advantages of prior information. It
delighted her to meet Lady St Julians driving distractedly
about town, calling at clubs, closeted with red tapers, making
ingenious combinations that would not work, by means of which
some one of her sons was to stand in coalition with some rich
parvenu; to pay none of the expenses and yet to come in first.
And all this time, Lady Marney, serene and smiling, had the
daily pleasure of assuring Lady St Julians what a relief it
was to her that Charles had fixed on his place. It had been
arranged indeed these weeks past; "but then, you know,"
concluded Lady Marney in the sweetest voice and with a
blandishing glance, "I never did believe in that hay fever."

In the meantime the impending event changed the whole aspect
of the political world. The king dying before the new
registration was the greatest blow to pseudo-toryism since his
majesty, calling for a hackney coach, went down and dissolved
parliament in 1831. It was calculated by the Tadpoles and
Tapers that a dissolution by Sir Robert, after the
registration of 1837, would give him a clear majority, not too
great a one, but large enough: a manageable majority; some
five-and-twenty or thirty men, who with a probable peerage or
two dangling in the distance, half-a-dozen positive
baronetcies, the Customs for their constituents, and Court
balls for their wives, might be induced to save the state. 0!
England, glorious and ancient realm, the fortunes of thy
polity are indeed strange! The wisdom of the Saxons, Norman
valour, the state-craft of the Tudors, the national sympathies
of the Stuarts, the spirit of the latter Guelphs struggling
against their enslaved sovereignty,--these are the high