Lord--at that time had been lately called into the administration, and he
was especially anxious to secure the support of all the talent that he
could enlist in its behalf. The times were those in which party ran high,
and in which individual political writings were honoured with an
importance which the periodical press in general has now almost wholly
monopolized. On the side opposed to Government, writers of great name and
high attainments had shone with peculiar effect, and the Earl was
naturally desirous that they should be opposed by an equal array of
intellect on the side espoused by himself. The name alone of Eugene Aram,
at a day when scholarship was renown, would have been no ordinary
acquisition to the cause of the Earl's party; but that judicious and
penetrating nobleman perceived that Aram's abilities, his various
research, his extended views, his facility of argument, and the heat and
energy of his eloquence, might be rendered of an importance which could
not have been anticipated from the name alone, however eminent, of a
retired and sedentary scholar; he was not therefore without an interested
motive in the attentions he now lavished upon the Student, and in his
curiosity to put to the proof the disdain of all worldly enterprise and
worldly temptation, which Aram affected. He could not but think, that to
a man poor and lowly of circumstance, conscious of superior acquirements,
about to increase his wants by admitting to them a partner, and arrived
at that age when the calculations of interest and the whispers of
ambition have usually most weight;--he could not but think that to such
a man the dazzling prospects of social advancement, the hope of the high
fortunes, and the powerful and glittering influence which political life,
in England, offers to the aspirant, might be rendered altogether
irresistible.

He took several opportunities in the course of the next week, of renewing